The Magic Nation Thing

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  The snowboard dudes seemed impressed and surprised, and so was Abby. Surprised, anyway. Only top-level skiers did the Fingers.

  “Way to go,” the guy named Alex said. “But boarding uses a whole different set of skills. It does help though to have been a skier. Did you know you can take snowboarding lessons right here at the center?”

  Then Paige asked about where and how to sign up for lessons, and the other guy, Pablo, started answering her questions. The whole conversation couldn't have been going on more than fifteen minutes when Woody said, “Hey. Where's the midget?” It wasn't until then that anybody noticed that Sky had disappeared.

  At first no one was too worried. “He probably had to go to the bathroom and went back to the center,” Paige said, and Abby said she'd go see. “You can stay here in case he comes back from somewhere else,” she told Paige. And Paige said, “Okay, I'll stay here,” which was obviously exactly what she wanted to do. She was still talking to Alex and Pablo as Abby and Woody started for the center.

  When they got there Woody went to look in the men's restroom while Abby checked out the café. But Sky wasn't in either place. When they went out of the warm building into the thin cold air, Abby noticed that the clouds that had been drifting around all morning seemed to be getting darker and thicker. And just as she was looking up at the solid gray sky, heavy white flakes began drifting down, slanting sideways in the sharpening wind.

  While she was looking up at the threatening sky and thinking about Sky out there somewhere all by himself, and maybe lonely and cold, Abby found herself remembering the kind of warning she'd felt when he'd been captured by Ludmilla. Something like a reflection of the terror he'd been feeling right at that moment. But when she closed her eyes and tried to open her mind to Sky and whatever he was feeling right then, nothing happened. At least nothing for several seconds, and when she did feel, or imagine she felt, a surge of reflected emotion, it wasn't what she'd expected. Not at all like the fright she'd felt outside Ludmilla's kitchen, the quick flash that burned across her mind was more like resentment. Like some sort of “it's your fault” accusation that flickered just once and was gone. Even though she went on trying, there was nothing more.

  And then Woody, who'd gone on ahead, yelled, “Hey, come on,” and she followed him through the thickening snowfall back to the edge of the woods where Paige and the snowboarders were waiting.

  “He wasn't there?” Paige asked, and when Abby shook her head, she said, “Where could he be? Why would he just disappear like that?”

  Abby had no answer to the where question, but she was beginning to have an awful feeling that she knew something about the why. Not for sure, but just maybe, the why might be related to why Sky had kicked the checkerboard over and run to his room when she'd paid too much attention to Woody. Only this time it might have been the snowboarders instead of Woody who had turned Sky into a green-eyed monster. But even if that did explain the why of it, there was nothing she could feel or see that would explain where he might have gone.

  A sudden gust of wind raced through the trees that bordered the run, shaking the branches so that here and there heavy clumps of snow broke loose and tumbled to the ground. Abby was staring into the wooded area when she suddenly noticed that the rest of them, Paige and Woody and the two snowboard guys, were doing the same thing.

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “Where else could he have gotten out of sight so quickly?” And then all five of them shoved off toward the patch of forest. Once into the grove Paige and Abby started calling, “Sky. Skyler! Where are you?” And then they were all calling as they split up and moved farther in among the trees.

  A few minutes had passed, ten or even more, before Alex yelled, “Hey. Come here. Everybody come here.” Following the sound of his voice, they found him holding up some kid-sized skis and poles. “Are these his?” Alex asked, and grabbing them away from him, Abby demanded, “Where did you find them?”

  “Right there.” Alex pointed. “The skis and the poles too were right there, leaning against that stump. So he must have left them here, and then … what?”

  They looked around. The place where the skis had been found was near the end of a deep grove of old-growth pine trees that had been left standing to divide two ski runs. Just beyond the stump, the forest ended as the two runs met and leveled out. So since Sky had come this far and left his gear, it looked as if he might have been headed down the path that led to the center. But Abby and Woody had just been there to look for him—and he wasn't there.

  “Maybe he's hiding,” Abby said. “I think he might have been angry because no one was paying any attention to him, so maybe he just went off and hid somewhere.”

  They all looked at Abby, Paige and Woody nodding in agreement, and Alex and Pablo looking surprised and puzzled. “Okay,” Alex said. “Let's find him.” He started off peeking behind every tree and calling, “Come out, come out, wherever you are. Everybody home free.”

  The rest of them looked too, spreading out among the trees, where now the snow was sifting down steadily between the already heavily laden branches. But there was no sign of Sky anywhere. When they were all back at the stump where they'd found the skis, Paige said, “I'm getting worried. I think we'd better go back to the center and get some help.”

  They had almost reached the building when Abby noticed two shadowy figures moving toward them through the swirling snow—two figures that quickly materialized into Paige's mom and dad. Paige gasped and started toward them, shouting, “Mom. Dad. We've lost Sky.”

  WHEN PAIGE'S PARENTS arrived on the scene, a lot of questions were quickly asked and answered. The first questions were about where everyone had been and what they'd been doing when Sky disappeared. Paige and Abby answered everything they could, and Pablo and Alex agreed with them. They explained how there had nearly been a collision and how the snowboarders had come back to be sure everyone was okay. And how they had then started talking about snowboarding. “And that must have been when Sky wandered off,” Paige said, “while we were all talking.”

  “But he didn't tell anyone that he was leaving and nobody saw him go?” Daphne Borden asked, and they all agreed that they hadn't. For a while everyone was talking at once until Sher Borden, who was good at getting people to take turns and answer the exact questions that had been asked, took charge.

  When they got to questions about what should be done next, they quickly decided that there was no use going back to search the narrow grove where they'd found Sky's skis, because all five of them, Paige and Abby and Woody and the snowboarders, had been over every inch of the area, and he just wasn't there. But where else could he be? Then Sher went into the center to call the ski patrol.

  Once they were all inside the center, Alex looked at the clock and said he and Pablo had to go because his parents were expecting them. But before they left, they gave Daphne their phone number and took the Bordens' so they could find out what happened to Sky. “I'll bet the ski patrol will find him right away,” Alex said before he and Pablo picked up their gear and disappeared into the snow.

  The rest of them, Daphne and Paige and Woody and Abby, waited in the lobby just outside the booth where Sher was calling. Daphne kept saying things such as “Don't worry. The ski patrol will know just what to do. Don't worry.” But her face said something very different and much more frightening.

  Abby wandered away to one of the front windows. Rubbing at the mist, she stared out into what was now a blinding swirl of snow. Without even planning to, she found herself concentrating, trying again to sense something, anything at all, about what Sky was thinking and feeling. But nothing was there. No fright or anger or anything else except after a while a relaxed drowsiness. Suddenly remembering something she'd read about how a person about to freeze to death sinks into a kind of dreamlike es cape from the cold and pain, Abby knew she had to do something—anything—even if she was almost sure it wouldn't work. She whirled around and ran across the lobby. When she found Paige waiting outside the off
ice where her father was still talking on the phone, Abby hurried to her.

  “Where are his skis?” she asked. “What did you do with them?”

  Paige didn't need to ask why. Instead she jumped up and headed for the entrance, pushing Abby ahead of her. “Out here,” she said. “On the rack. I left them on the rack.”

  As Paige shoved the two little kid–sized ski poles into Abby's hands, her big eyes looked strangely changed, puckered with worry and fear. This time what she said was not an order. Not “Okay. Do it.” Instead she only whispered, “Can you? Will it work?”

  “I don't know,” Abby whispered back. Doubts flooded her mind. She wasn't sure of anything. How could she be? Sometimes she wasn't sure if it had ever really worked, and she knew for certain it hadn't lately. But she had to try. Clutching the hand grips at the tops of both poles in her hands and closing her eyes, she had hardly started to reach for the warmth and spinning lights when suddenly they were there.

  The pole grips had turned from cold to warm to almost hot, and the feeling was once again of relaxed drowsiness— not of freezing cold, and not of fear. Not at all like the terror of Ludmilla's kitchen. The whirling lights were quickly forming into colorless patterns of white and gray and black, like scenes from an old movie. Dark shapes floated together to form what seemed to be the back of a chair upholstered in dark leather. Or the seat of a car? And behind and above the seat was a glassy rectangle that looked like a car window. Beyond the window, a drift of falling snow—and beyond that, darkness and freezing cold.

  Opening her eyes and staring into Paige's, Abby whispered, “In a car? Could he be in your car?”

  “In our car?” Paige was surprised, amazed, and then suddenly triumphant. “Yes. That's it for sure. He just walked to the parking lot. It's a long way, but Sky could walk farther than that if he was mad enough.” She laughed out loud. “That's just what he would do. I'm sure of it.”

  “But how could he get in?” Abby asked. “Doesn't your dad lock it?”

  “Oh sure. But we all know how to get in. See, there's this little emergency key case inside the back fender. Dad taught us all how to open it and get out the key. So he probably just got in the car, and there are all those car blankets he could wrap up in to stay warm. That's it, Abby! You did it!” Grabbing Abby's arm, she pulled her through the door. “Come on. Hurry. We have to tell Dad.”

  They found Sher and Daphne and Woody peering out through the front entrance. “They're coming,” Paige's dad said. “The ski patrol will be here any minute. Don't worry. I'm sure the patrol …” Suddenly registering the expressions on the girls' faces, he stopped. “What is it? What happened?”

  “Dad,” Paige began. “Abby thinks …” Glancing at Abby, she started over. “We think—we just got this idea that Sky might have gone to the car. He knows where it is and how to get in. And he could have been almost there before it started to snow very much. Don't you …”

  Before Paige even finished, Sher Borden had started to grin. “Yes. Of course. You must be right. That's just what—”

  But at that very minute, three men in uniform entered the room. The ski patrol. Glancing around, they headed directly for the Bordens.

  “Thank you so much,” Sher Borden was saying as they shook hands. “But we may have solved the mystery. It just occurred to the girls that our little boy must have gone to our car. It's just the kind of thing he might do.”

  “Where is the car, sir?” the tallest patrolman interrupted.

  “In the preferred parking lot. Top level.”

  The patrolmen looked at each other and one of them said, “That's quite a way for a six-year-old to walk.”

  All the Bordens nodded, but they nodded harder when Paige broke in, saying, “Not for Skyler. He knows the whole area really well, and he's pretty tough for a six-year-old.”

  “Well,” the tall patrolman said. “Why don't we go check it out? Come on. All of you. There's room in the van.”

  The parking lot was almost empty, and sitting there almost by itself, the Bordens' big snow-covered SUV looked like an igloo. The van had barely slid to a stop when Sher jumped out and clicked open the locks. He slid back the side door and disappeared inside—but by the time the rest of them reached the SUV, he was climbing back out, shaking his head. “He's not here,” he said. “Sky isn't here.”

  Daphne Borden drove Paige and Woody and Abby back to the cabin while her husband went with the ski patrol to continue looking for Sky. The words that kept going through Abby's head were, “To look where? Where could he possibly have gone?” It was Paige who said it out loud. “Where will they look, Mom? Where could he be?”

  Daphne shook her head. Her voice sounded stiff and hoarse as she said, “They'll look first in the center again, I think. The people in the office said he couldn't have come in without being noticed but …” She paused and then went on, trying to make what she said sound like the normal way a Borden said such things. “But they don't know … our Sky.” Her voice cracked halfway through.

  “Yeah,” Paige agreed quickly. “They sure don't. He probably sneaked in without anybody seeing him and hid someplace. In a closet or something like that.”

  It was Woody who asked the question they were all thinking but not saying: “But if he's not at the center, where is he?”

  No one answered. No one said, “Somewhere out in the storm.”

  When they got to the Bordens' cabin, Daphne made hot chocolate and insisted that they all drink at least a little. So they tried, but when Daphne left to take Woody to his room, Paige put down her cup and left the kitchen. And so did Abby.

  Back in their room, Abby sat on the window seat and stared into almost horizontal currents of windblown snow. The short winter day was over, and beyond the windows' light the forest was endlessly deep and dark. Crouching there, wrapped in blankets and lonely misery, Abby wasn't expecting Paige to join her. In fact, she didn't expect Paige to speak to her ever again. Not now. Not after she had made such a terrible mistake and gotten everyone's hopes up for no reason at all.

  But then suddenly Paige was sitting beside her, and as Abby stared in surprise, she said, “I guess you were right when you said it wasn't working anymore. The Magic Nation thing.”

  Abby swallowed hard before she could answer. “I guess not. My mom said most people stop being able to do it when they grow up. And I thought that had happened to me. But …”

  “But what?” Paige asked.

  Abby's voice tightened as she went on. “But I did think I saw a car. I was sure I did. The inside of a car. I wouldn't have told you so if I didn't.”

  Paige's nod was slow and thoughtful. “I know. I saw how you looked when Dad said Sky wasn't in our car. I was watching you and I could tell. I know you really thought you saw him there.”

  Abby's throat tightened and her eyes began to burn, and when Paige leaned against her shoulder, sniffing and wiping her eyes, Abby began to cry too. They cried together for a long time while outside the window the swirling snow and howling wind went on and on. At last, without saying anything more, they both got up and went to their beds.

  To bed but, for Abby, not to sleep. Staring into the darkness, she continued to go over and over everything that had happened. She had been so sure about the car. How could it have turned out to be so wrong? It had seemed so clear and distinct, but maybe she hadn't looked carefully enough and had jumped to the wrong conclusion. That must have been it. She just hadn't waited to look carefully enough. If only … Suddenly she got out of bed and tiptoed out of the room and down the hall. She opened the door to the boys' room very quietly, and in the soft glow of a night-light, she passed Sky's empty bed and the one in which Woody was fast asleep.

  Inside the big closet, Abby closed the door before she turned on the light. She knew what she was looking for and where it would be. Just inside the door there were two hooks where the boys hung their pajamas. The higher one, Woody's, was empty, but a small pair of Spider-Man pajamas still dangled from the lower
hook. Clutching Sky's pj's in both arms, Abby closed her eyes and waited.

  Once again the warmth was swift and strong, and the spinning shapes formed even more quickly than before. And there again was what had to be the interior of a car— seats covered with dark leather, and, all around, the glassy gleam of windows. This time she could even hear the throbbing hum of a motor and feel a slight sensation of motion. The car was moving, and … lying across a rear seat was a lumpy bundle that ended in a familiar tousle of dark blond hair. Abby gasped in amazement and for a hopeful moment she wondered if they'd found him and he was on his way home in the ski patrol's van. But then she knew that couldn't be true, because they would have called immediately if he'd been found. So what she was seeing was just another trick of her imagination, some kind of cruel meaningless deception. Dropping the pajamas, she ran back to bed.

  SOME TIME LATER Abby woke up to a series of startling sounds. There were footsteps on the stairs—running foot-steps—and then a voice calling. Daphne's voice, she realized, calling, “Girls. Girls, wake up. Someone found Sky. He's all right.”

  Holding a cell phone in one hand, Daphne Borden threw open the door and dashed into the room as Abby and Paige, still only half awake, staggered toward her.

  “Where? Where is he? Who found him? Did someone call?” The questions tumbled over each other, and Daphne's answers did too. “He's on his way here. A man named”—she stopped to glance at a piece of paper— “named Jackson Baker called to say that they'd found Sky. Then Sky got on the phone and he said, ‘I'm okay, Mom. I don't think I'm kidnapped. He says he's taking me home.’ ” Daphne paused again and then caught her breath in a way that sounded almost like a sob. Shaking her head, she added uncertainly, “Mr. Baker asked for our address and when I told him, he repeated it and I could hear Sky in the background saying, ‘I told you so.’ So I guess they're on their way here from …” Her voice trailed away to an uncertain “from Truckee.”