Browne, who at once telephoned to Robert’s parents, accepted my story without question; and forbore to interrogate the boy because of the latter’s manifest exhaustion. It was arranged that he should remain at the school for a rest, under the expert care of Mrs. Browne, a former trained nurse. I naturally saw a good deal of him during the remainder of the Christmas vacation, and was thus enabled to fill in certain gaps in his fragmentary dream-story.
Now and then we would almost doubt the actuality of what had occurred; wondering, whether we had not both shared some monstrous delusion born of the mirror’s glittering hypnotism, and whether the tale of the ride and accident were not after all the real truth. But whenever we did so we would be brought back to belief by some monstrous and haunting memory; with me, of Robert’s dream-figure and its thick voice and inverted colors; with him, of the whole fantastic pageantry of ancient people and dead scenes that he had witnessed. And then there was the joint recollection of that damnable dusty odor… We knew what it meant: the instant dissolution of those who had entered an alien dimension a century and more ago.
There are, in addition, at least two lines of rather more positive evidence; one of which comes through my researches in Danish annals concerning the sorcerer, Axel Holm. Such a person, indeed, left many traces in folklore and written records; and diligent library sessions, plus conferences with various learned Danes, have shed much light on his evil frame. At present I need say only that the Copenhagen glass-blower—born in 1612—was a notorious Luciferian whose pursuits and final vanishing formed a matter of awed debate over two centuries ago. He had burned with a desire to know all things and to conquer every limitation of mankind—to which end he had delved deeply into occult and forbidden fields ever since he was a child.
He was commonly held to have joined a coven of the dreaded witchcult, and the vast lore of ancient Scandinavian myth—with its Loki the Sly One and the accursed Fenris-Wolf—was soon an open book to him. He had strange interests and objectives, few of which were definitely known, but some of which were recognized as intolerably evil. It is recorded that his two Negro helpers, originally slaves from the Danish West Indies, had become mute soon after their acquisition by him; and that they had disappeared not long before his own disappearance from the ken of mankind.
Near the close of an already long life the idea of a glass of immortality appears to have entered his mind. That he had acquired an enchanted mirror of inconceivable antiquity was a matter of common whispering; it being alleged that he had purloined it from a fellow-sorcerer who had entrusted it to him for polishing.
This mirror—according to popular tales a trophy as potent in its way as the better-known Aegis of Minerva or Hammer of Thor—was a small oval object called “Loki’s Glass,” made of some polished fusible mineral and having magical properties which included the divination of the immediate future and the power to show the possessor his enemies. That it had deeper potential properties, realizable in the hands of an erudite magician, none of the common people doubted; and even educated persons attached much fearful importance to Holm’s rumored attempts to incorporate it in a larger glass of immortality. Then had come the wizard’s disappearance in 1687, and the final sale and dispersal of his goods amidst a growing cloud of fantastic legendry. It was, altogether, just such a story as one would laugh at if possessed of no particular key; yet to me, remembering those dream messages and having Robert Grandison’s corroboration before me, it formed a positive confirmation of all the bewildering marvels that had been unfolded.
But as I have said, there is still another line of rather positive evidence—of a very different character—at my disposal. Two days after his release, as Robert, greatly improved in strength and appearance, was placing a log on my living-room fire, I noticed a certain awkwardness in his motions and was struck by a persistent idea. Summoning him to my desk I suddenly asked him to pick up an inkstand—and was scarcely surprised to note that, despite lifelong right-handedness, he obeyed unconsciously with his left hand. Without alarming him, I then asked that he unbutton his coat and let me listen to his cardiac action. What I found upon placing my ear to his chest—and what I did not tell him for some time afterward—was that his heart was beating on his right side.
He had gone into the glass right-handed and with all organs in their normal positions. Now he was left-handed and with organs reversed, and would doubtless continue so for the rest of his life. Clearly, the dimensional transition had been no illusion—for this physical change was tangible and unmistakable. Had there been a natural exit from the glass, Robert would probably have undergone a thorough re-reversal and emerged in perfect normality—as indeed the color-scheme of his body and clothing did emerge. The forcible nature of his release, however; undoubtedly set something awry; so that dimensions no longer had a chance to right themselves as chromatic wave-frequencies still did.
I had not merely opened Holm’s trap; I had destroyed it; and at the particular stage of destruction marked by Robert’s escape some of the reversing properties had perished. It is significant that in escaping Robert had felt no pain comparable to that experienced in entering. Had the destruction been still more sudden, I shiver to think of the monstrosities of color the boy would always have been forced to bear. I may add that after discovering Robert’s reversal I examined the rumpled and discarded clothing he had worn in the glass, and found, as I had expected, a complete reversal of pockets, buttons, and all other corresponding details.
At this moment Loki’s Glass, just as it fell on my Bokhara rug from the now patched and harmless mirror, weighs down a sheaf of papers on my writing-table here in St. Thomas, venerable capital of the Danish West Indies—now the American Virgin Islands. Various collectors of old Sandwich glass have mistaken it for an odd bit of that early American product—but I privately realize that my paperweight is an antique of far subtler and more paleologean craftsmanship. Still, I do not disillusion such enthusiasts.
ELOMA’S SECOND CAREER, by Lorie Calkins
Eloma presented herself at Wizard Bartholliver’s door, burdened only by the small bundle of clothing and few keepsakes she could carry. It had been painful in some ways, to part with the home and possessions of a lifetime, especially her healing herbs and implements for cooking. But what elation that freedom had brought her! At last her path would be her own. From her father’s charge to her husband’s, she’d never had the responsibility to make her own way in the world. Until now.
Her son, Sartha, with his wife and young family, had been happy to have the house, but they begged her to stay on in their home. Eloma’s yearning for new goals was strong, though, and she knew it was best for her son and his wife to raise their children and mind their shop in their own way. Now she stood on the wizard’s doorstep, waiting to ask for a chance at those new goals. She put aside the question of what she would do if she were turned away, noticing instead that the porch needed sweeping, and two of its planks felt soft with rot.
At last one of the wizard’s young apprentices opened the door. “No donations this day, old woman. His Wisdom says to buy no peddled goods, neither,” he said, and the door snapped shut. Eloma rapped again, this time with the handle of her walking stick.
“Who taught you your manners, you little pip?” she said when the same green-robed lad cracked the door open. “Do I look like a beggar?! Let me speak with your master, boy, before I tan your hide for insulting a guest!”
A panic of indecision swept the boy’s countenance. He must have deemed his master’s wrath less formidable than the old woman’s, perhaps unsure whether she might be a sorceress incognito, for he gestured her into the receiving room and fled through a doorway that was curtained with coruscating orange, yellow, and blue light. The wizard himself soon retraced the boy’s steps. “What is it you want, old woman? We have plenty of rags, and need no housekeeping help!”
“Oh you don’t?” Eloma crossed to a
low table in front of two loose-jointed wooden chairs, raising puffs of dust from the carpet with her wooden clogs. She picked up a carved bowl from the floor under the table and tipped it to display the fur-blue contents to the old wizard. “Is this one of your spells, then?”
The wizard’s face reddened, and his frown grew stormy, but Eloma had known her husband’s frown for too many years to be put off by that of a stranger, even one she hoped to learn from. “How-be-it, I’m not applying for a housekeeping position. I am applying as an apprentice.” There, she’d said it. “I want to become a sorceress.”
The old man stared at her as if she had suddenly shape-changed into a chamber pot, rather the same way Sartha had looked when she’d shared her plan with him. Then the wizard snorted and guffawed. He laughed, chuckled, giggled, and guffawed again, holding his sides and shuddering with abandon, until he had to drop onto one of the rickety chairs for support. The groaning creak of the wood sobered him enough to sit upright. A dozen apprentice boys and girls had slipped past the coruscating curtain, and gaped in amazement at the spectacle of their master, laughing. “Old woman,” he said, still smiling, “Thank you. That was the best laugh I’ve had since I turned His Wisdom Lasordu’s chair into a rotten roc’s egg, back in school. I’ll buy anything you’re selling. It was worth it.”
It was Eloma’s turn to frown. But she glared instead, willing the pompous magician to become a block of lake ice in the coldest winter of the land. She straightened, admittedly no taller than the young lad who first opened the door, but as tall as her old bones would allow. “I am selling nothing,” she repeated, in tones a block of lake ice could understand. “I came to indenture myself as an apprentice. I wish to become a sorceress.”
With a flick of one gnarled hand, the wizard sent the various-aged apprentices scrambling back through the doorway. Bartholliver rose, re-robing himself in hauteur. “Old woman, I cannot bargain with you. You have obligations to attend to—a husband, a family, or such. I would not accept you anyway, even were your father here to barter for the apprenticeship. You are too old to learn the vast knowledge required to do magic.” Another arrogant flick of his fingers was intended to dispose of her.
“Well, old man, if we are to dispense with courtesy here, I can do that. See how quickly I learn? My face may be wrinkled, but my mind is not! How much I can learn, or how well, only time will tell about me, just as it is with your more youthful charges, I am sure. My father is long dead, and so is my husband. No one must barter on my behalf, for I own myself. As for obligations, I have none. My children are grown, with families of their own. I have given away my house and all that was in it. All of my possessions are in this sack.” She nudged the brown cloth bag with one foot. “And none of them are rags.”
“I can’t accept a grown woman as apprentice. The townsfolk would gossip. Both of our reputations would be ruined.”
“My reputation with the cackling hens at the village well is of no concern to me. As for yours, well, I doubt it could be any more unsavory.” She raised her eyebrows at his fleeting smile. “The rumor-mongers say you use your magic to satisfy all of your desires, but after seeing you, I think you merely delude yourself to believe you have none.”
Wearing the frown of an ogre with a headache, Bartholliver raised his nose a twig higher in the air. “Madame,” he uttered with pained civility. “My apprentices toil for their upkeep, as well as studying their lessons. How do you propose to merit your keep?”
Now Eloma smiled. She had won a concession of courtesy as well as tacit victory on his earlier points, and the answer to the current question was obvious. “You have already denied a need for the services I am most competent to offer in trade, Your Wisdom, but I am strong and healthy, and will chop wood or carry water, hoe the garden or run errands, just as your other apprentices do.” She smiled, but avoided the eyes of the curious faces that poked through the magic curtain.
“Oh, Master!” the boldest blurted, “Ask her can she cook!” The others nodded in eager agreement, but all of them disappeared when the wizard swung around.
Looking angry, then thoughtful, the wizard said, “It is true that our recent meals have lacked, er, …”
“Edibility!” shouted a voice from behind the curtained doorway.
Bartholliver growled as if to clear his throat. “Well then, can you cook?”
Eloma grinned. “I’m a good cook, if I must say so. And I can give you some advice on teaching those youngsters some manners, too.”
“Done!” Bartholliver said, glancing back at the doorway. “The kitchen is out that way.” He waved toward an ordinary doorway. “I will expect dinner at sunset and breakfast at dawn. I give you permission to press any idle apprentice into service to help you cook and clean,” he clarified her job description. “And you may sleep in the kitchen, or make a pallet in the female apprentices’ sleeping room.”
“Fine. When should I report for my first lesson?”
“My apprentices must prove their mettle before they may learn magic,” he smirked. “I will let you know when I deem you ready to learn.” With a hiss of his embroidered black robes, he vanished through the curtained doorway.
* * * *
Dinners and breakfasts passed, and Eloma settled in. She reorganized the household, prepared the meals, made the garden flourish, cleaned and repaired the entire house, and taught the youngsters how to do everything as she went. One morning as she perused the market stalls for fresh fish for dinner and some yardage for a new apprentice’s cloak, she passed Sartha’s stall, and he stopped her with a reproach. “Mother, why don’t you come home now? You’re just a housekeeper in that place, without even the title. You could do the same for us, and at least you’d be among family!”
“I’m not a housekeeper. I’m an indentured apprentice to the wizard.”
“You’re not apprenticed to that magician any more than I am. What magic has he taught you? Come home, where you can sit in the sun and mind your grandchildren.”
“I’m too young to sit in the sun and let my mind rot, grandchildren or no. I love the little ones, Sartha, but I want an interesting life. I want a second career, and I’m going to have it. I’m done with raising children and keeping house!”
“Are you then?” Sartha raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, but said nothing more.
Angered by the truth of Sartha’s words, Eloma dickered more shrewishly than usual for the fish and yard goods. After three months, despite frequent requests, the wizard had taught her nothing but a few parlor tricks. She wanted to learn more than just delusion and misdirection. She had become so engrossed in setting the house to rights, doing the things she knew so well, that she had lost sight of her dreams. I’m already very good at self-delusion, she thought.
* * * *
“Valmar!” she called to a green-robed boy in the garden. “Come and prepare this fish. You are cooking tonight!” Then she pulled her brown cloth sack from beneath the bed she had built, thinking to pack her belongings, but something nagged at her mind. If I leave now, even to go on to something more interesting, or something I might do well, he will have won. And I will never know whether I could have been a sorceress. Also, there were the terms of the indenture. In her anger, she had thought to accuse the wizard of failing to teach her, thereby breaking the contract. But now she recognized that the Wizard’s Guild might consider illusions enough instruction for a beginning apprentice, and find her to be the party in breach. She pushed the sack under the bed again, and turned her hand to dinner.
“Never mind, Valmar. I will prepare the fish myself. But light the stove for me before you go out, please.” Eloma stared at the dead fish on the table, too discouraged to do more. Cooking seemed to be too much trouble now. Nothing seemed worth while, if she was going to be stuck here as a servant for the rest of her life. On the other side of the table, Valmar hurried to the stove, as i
f to do the smaller chore quickly, before she changed her mind, and her gaze wandered to him. The boy opened the firebox, but instead of taking a match, he made a gesture with his fingers and tossed an imaginary scrap at the neatly-laid tinder. At once, the flame caught. A smug grin had replaced the chore-weary sulk on his face when he turned. “Anything else?”
The housekeeper’s face showed a new expression as well—determination. “Yes. Teach me that spell.”
Valmar looked flustered. “I…, I can’t teach you. You’re just an old woman.”
Nothing could have stiffened her resolve more than those words. “I am an apprentice, just as you are. I am paying my way the same as you. Or don’t you think that cooking and cleaning are worthy payments?” Valmar had been conscripted for enough household chores to know that they were hard work. He stared down at the floor.
“I’ll take that as agreement. Why shouldn’t I learn the spells you’ve learned, if I’m paying the same price?”
“But you’re old!” He hunched into himself, ashamed of what he’d said, expecting a blow that never came.
“So I am. You are older than the other apprentices, too. Yet you wear the novice robe.”
He gulped and said in a soft voice, “I was apprenticed first to a butcher, but the killing gave me nightmares.”
“So it was the wrong trade for you. No shame should follow you for that.” The boy looked up at her in surprise. “Now you are older than the other beginners. Does that make you incapable of learning what they do?”
“Of course not!” he said, then, “Oh.” He thought for a long time, his face weighing things first to one side, then to the other. Eloma waited. At last he said, “The fire spell is not the first. You should learn in the same order that we do, for magic can be dangerous to experiment with.” It sounded like one the wizard’s lectures, but Eloma saw that was exactly what she needed.
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 6
