Magic or Not?

by Edward Eager

  "That's not magic. That's nature," said James the ex-Boy Scout, unconvinced. "You'll have to do better than that."

  "All right," said Lydia. Her jaw was set and her expression was dangerous. "All right, I will!"

  "What's that?" said Kip, wanting to change the subject. He pointed to a sprawly, branchy, trailing plant with notched leaves and cup-shaped purplish-red flowers.

  "That," said Lydia, her eyes taking on a dreamy, other-worldly look, "is crawling rabbitbane. It's one of the most powerful magic plants there is. It's been used by witches from time immemorial."

  "What does it do?" said James, inexorable.

  "It kills rabbits, from the name," said Kip.

  "That's right," said Lydia. "It does. It'd kill you, too, if you ate it. It's deadly poison. But if you burnt it, now..." She broke off.

  "Now what?" said James. "What if we did?"

  "Well," said Lydia slowly, "there's no telling what might happen. It does all kinds of things. It makes unseen things appear and seen things disappear. It transforms people so they're unrecognizable, overnight. And if the right person burns it at the right time and breathes the smoke, it can bring..." She stopped again.

  "What? What can it bring?" said James.

  "A visitor from another world," said Lydia.

  "What kind of visitor? A dear little fairy?" scoffed James.

  "A genie?" said Laura.

  "A Martian?" said Kip.

  Lydia stared at them solemnly. "I don't know. Nobody knows. It's not in the magic books."

  There was a pause.

  "O.K.," said James. "What are we waiting for? Let's be burning."

  There were seven flowers on the plant and all were gathered in a second. But burning them didn't prove too easy. The petals shriveled and turned black at the edges and several fingers were scorched, but there was no smoke to speak of (or to breathe).

  Then James and Kip made a fire of sticks and paper, and the charred remains of the crawling rabbitbane were cast upon it. The blossoms flared up for a second and were gone, but not before four noses bent over the fire and sniffed. James watched to see if Lydia sniffed, too, and she did. Then four throats coughed. There was smoke all right, but it smelled more like stick-and-paper smoke than anything else.

  "Is that all?" said Kip, as careful James stamped out the smoldering ashes.

  "What did you expect, fireworks?" said Lydia nastily.

  "I thought it'd be different somehow," said Laura. "I thought magic smoke would smell sort of special. Like in that poem. You know. 'Whiffs of gramarye!'"

  Lydia's face lighted up. "Do you know that, too? We seem to have read all the same things!"

  "Yes, we do, don't we?" said Laura, beaming at her.

  James broke in on this literary discussion. "Well?" he said. "When does it get going? When do the little fairies start turning up?"

  The light went out of Lydia's face and it looked closed and hard. "I haven't the slightest idea," she said. "Probably never. Probably we weren't the right people at the right time. Or probably it's all a hoax and I made the whole thing up!"

  "Probably," agreed James, grinning at her challengingly.

  Laura was alarmed. "No!" She glared at James. "That's silly. It wouldn't happen right away! More like tomorrow morning, wouldn't you say?" She turned to Lydia.

  "I don't know anything about it," said Lydia stonily. "I have to go feed my horse." And she stalked away.

  There was something about the thin, hunched look of her back and shoulders as she rounded the corner of the house that Laura couldn't bear. She ran after her. Then when she caught up with her, she couldn't think of anything to say. She walked along at her side in silence.

  "Laura and Lydia," she said finally. "We sound like sisters in a book."

  "We don't look it," muttered Lydia.

  Laura tried again. "Are you crazy about horseback-riding? Does it sort of rule your whole life?" For she had met girls in real life and in books of whom this was true.

  Lydia shrugged. "It's a means to an end."

  They were nearing the barn now, and a whinny sounded from inside. Laura hung back. "I'm scared of horses," she confessed.

  Lydia looked at her. Suddenly she grinned. "So am I."

  "But you ride all the time!" said Laura. "Night and day, Kip said!"

  "I know," said Lydia. "That's why." And she started away.

  Laura called after her, stammering slightly, not sure how her words would be received. "Could you.... could you come over to our house tomorrow morning? I'd.... we'd like you to."

  Lydia turned in the doorway. She wasn't smiling. She looked as if she were going to say no. But she didn't. "All right," she said. Then she was gone.

  Laura ran and overtook the boys just as they were turning from the driveway into the road. She saw no sign of old Mrs. Green. Alice the dog was biffing far ahead of them down the road, as though glad to get away from the witch's house.

  "I don't care what anyone says," said Laura, as soon as she got her breath back. "I like her!"

  "So do I," said Kip, rather as though he were surprised to hear himself saying it.

  They both looked at James.

  "All right, so do I," he admitted sheepishly. "If only she didn't have such a chip on her shoulder all the time."

  "She's like that in school, too," said Kip. "That's why nobody gets along with her."

  "I think..." said Laura, stammering slightly the way she always did when she was very serious, "I think she makes things hard for herself. I wonder why."

  There was a pause. "Anyway," said Kip, "there's one thing you can't deny. She's interesting."

  And all agreed.

  And then they all went back to the red house and had sandwiches and did the most unmagic things they could think of all afternoon.

  It was nearly dinnertime when Kip went home, but he found his mother still out working in the garden. Kip's mother was like that. She belonged to the Garden Club.

  Kip went and hung over her, wanting to know when dinner would be ready and what was for dessert, and making distracting desultory conversation and tracing patterns with his bare toes in the loose gritty black earth of the rock garden until his mother told him to stop.

  He stopped, but not for that reason. He was staring at a plant that sprawled over a big rock. It was a branchy, trailing plant with notched leaves and cup-shaped purplish-red flowers.

  "I didn't know we had crawling rabbitbane, too," he said.

  "What?" said his mother.

  "That," said Kip, pointing.

  "That," said his mother, "is Callirrhoë invo-lucrata."

  "Are you sure? What's its common name?"

  "Poppy mallow."

  Kip had a sinking feeling. Still, his mother could be wrong. The Garden Club didn't know everything. "I heard," he said, "that it's called crawling rabbitbane. I heard it's a powerful magic herb. I heard it's been used by witches from time immemorial."

  "Humph!" said his mother. "It's a western wildflower. I don't think it's been in cultivation more than fifty years or so. The only magic trick it does that I know anything about is sow itself all over the place!" Her thumb and forefinger annihilated half a dozen unwanted seedlings. "There. Now come in the house and wash your hands." And she went inside.

  But Kip didn't follow her. He sat down on a garden chair and started thinking hard.

  3. The Silver Mine

  When Laura came bounding out of the house next morning with James following more sedately at her heels, Kip was already there, sitting on a rock eating a Popsicle, orange this time.

  "Hello. You must have got up early," said Laura.

  "That's right. I guess I did." Kip spoke through a yawn. "No particular reason. I just thought I would. It was such a nice morning and all."

  "Oh, is that why?" said James. "I thought maybe it was because you believed all that yesterday. I thought maybe you couldn't wait to meet the dear little fairy."

  "James!" said Laura. "Don't you start talking like that wh
en she comes."

  "Do you suppose she will?" said Kip.

  "Of course she will," said Laura stoutly.

  "I'm not counting on it," said James. "I don't know if she'll have the face."

  "Stop it," said Laura. "If you're so sure there isn't any magic, what are you doing here? Why waste your time? Go do something useful. Chop wood or go fishing."

  "Oh, I'm open to conviction," said James cheerfully. "That reminds me, though. I'll be back in a second." And he went loping toward the backyard.

  Kip finished his Popsicle and stuck the stick into the ground. "Surprise for James," he said. "Here she comes now."

  Laura looked. Lydia was coming toward them down the road, walking slowly, not riding the black horse this time. ("And that's a good sign," thought Laura to herself. "It shows she doesn't think she has to prove anything to us.")

  "Hello," she called.

  "Hello," said Lydia, coming up to them.

  "Hello," said Kip.

  There was a silence. Nobody could think what to say next.

  James came round the corner of the house, talking to himself. "That's funny," he was saying.

  "What is?" called Kip.

  "The old lawn mower I was using. I forgot to put it away yesterday. Now it's not in the shed or anywhere."

  "That's funny," echoed Kip. "Who would want to steal a rusty old thing like that?"

  James came toward them, walking with his head down the way he always did when he was concentrating. He was concentrating so hard he almost ran into a young maple sapling that stood in the middle of the lawn. He stopped short just in time and stood looking at it.

  "That wasn't here yesterday," he said.

  "Don't be silly; of course it was," said Laura.

  "No." James was a very observant kind of boy. "I made a mental map of the whole frontyard. That tree wasn't there."

  "It must have been. Trees don't move by themselves!" said Laura. Then she caught her breath. "The magic! Don't you remember? It makes unseen things appear and seen things disappear! It's working!"

  "It is?" Lydia sounded surprised, almost alarmed.

  "Sure. Didn't you think it would?" said Kip, giving her rather a peculiar look, Laura thought.

  James went up to Lydia and held out his hand. "I apologize," he said.

  Lydia looked at his hand as if she didn't want to take it. Then she made a grab for it and dropped it again quickly. "That's all right," she muttered, looking away.

  "I don't get the point, though," said James, scratching his head. "Why would the magic go to all that effort just to take away an old lawn mower and give us an old maple tree? We've got enough maple trees!"

  "'Maple trees, maple trees, that's all there is around here!'" quoted Kip, giggling. "It's a better maple tree than the lawn mower was a lawn mower, anyway," he pointed out.

  "No, don't you see?" said Laura excitedly. "This isn't the real magic. It's just showing us it's here. So we'll be prepared. The real wonderful part'll come later!"

  "What was it you said would happen next?" said James to Lydia.

  "I don't remember," said Lydia, looking at the ground.

  "You don't? I'll never forget!" said Laura. "It makes unseen things appear and seen things disappear," she repeated in thrilling tones. "It transforms people so they're unrecognizable, overnight. And if the right person burns it at the right time..." She broke off, staring across the lawn.

  Deborah was trotting toward them from the woods to one side. Deborah was the kind of four-year-old girl who gets up at the crack of dawn and plays happily by herself for hours, and nobody worries much about where she is or what she's doing. Now as she came nearer, Laura uttered a cry.

  "Your hair! What have you been doing to yourself?"

  Where once had been tight black pigtails was short hair cut straight across in back in the classic style known as mixing-bowl.

  "It wasn't me," said Deborah happily. "It was magic. I'm transformed."

  "That," said James, "is putting it mildly. Pretty amateurish magic, if you ask me. You're unrecognizable all right. You look terrible."

  "I like it," said Deborah, trotting past them to begin another of her mysterious solitary games under the apple tree at the far end of the yard.

  Kip giggled.

  James gave him a sharp look. Suddenly everything seemed to fall into place in his mind. "Uh huh" he said grimly. He strode over to the maple sapling and checked. "I thought so. New-dug earth. Magic wouldn't have to do a thing like that." He went back to Kip. "Let's see your hands."

  Kip looked as if he didn't know whether to giggle now or not. He held out his hands. They were suspiciously clean, as if he'd just scrubbed them.

  Laura was the last to realize what was in James's mind. "Oh," she cried. "Do you mean it isn't true?"

  Lydia pushed past her. Her eyes blazed at Kip as if she would like to pummel him. "Do you mean to say," she said, her voice trembling, "that you got up early this morning and hid the lawn mower and spent all that time and work planting that tree and then cut off that little girl's hair just to play a trick on me?"

  "No. It wasn't that. Honest," said Kip. "I just didn't want the game to stop."

  "A game?" wailed Laura. "Is that all it was to everybody?"

  "I found out that plant wasn't crawling rabbit bane," Kip went on. "I found out there's no such a thing. And I was kind of sorry. I thought maybe I could sort of rescue you. The tree and all that were all I could think of to do. I guess it wasn't very good. But what would you have done if I hadn't? When the time came?"

  "I don't know," said Lydia. "I guess I hoped something would turn up. I guess I hoped if I wished hard enough it'd be true."

  "You read the wish in the wishing well and left the kittens, didn't you?" said James.

  "Of course I did," said Lydia crossly. "I'm sorry now I started the whole thing. I'm going home. Good-bye."

  "Wait!" Laura turned on James. "You think you're so right always. She didn't do it to be mean. She did it to make friends. Didn't you?" She looked at Lydia.

  "Ha! As if I'd be that soft!"

  "You were. You did."

  "All right, I did," said Lydia. She looked away. Her voice was indistinct. "But it didn't work out. I can't make friends. I never can. I don't know how."

  "You do, too. We are friends. Aren't we?" Laura looked at James threateningly.

  "Sure. I'm not mad at anybody," said James mildly. "I just like to get the facts straight." He went over to Lydia. "I apologized once before. This time is for real. Now that we all know the worst about each other, we can start over from scratch."

  Lydia hesitated, still looking at something in the far distance. Then she relaxed. "All right," she said.

  "You must have hated giving up the kittens," said Laura. "You can have Whitemalkin back if you like."

  "I'm sorry about Deborah's hair," said Kip. "I thought it'd turn out better. She likes it, though," he added, his eyes twinkling.

  "I don't know what Mother'll say when she sees it," said Laura. "Still I guess all's well that ends well."

  She looked around at the others. All of them were smiling. And then suddenly the brightness went out of the day. Now that she had ironed out the awful crossness and got everybody else's ruffled feelings smoothed, she had time to remember her own disappointment.

  "I am sorry about the magic, though," she said. "We could have had all this, and that, too!"

  Lydia's hand tightened on her arm. "Look!" she said.

  Laura looked.

  Coming down the road was a strange apparition.

  An ancient horse pulled an ancient carriage of the type that is known as a chaise (or in the poem of the same name, a one-hoss shay). Sitting in the carriage was a lady. Whether she was old or young was hard to tell. Her face was lined but very pretty. Her dress with its wide-flowing long skirts was old-fashioned, but its lemon-yellow-and-scarlet color scheme was youthfully bright, not to say gaudy. Her white hair was worn in a towering pompadour topped by an immense straw hat
covered with artificial poppies. The top canopy of the chaise was missing (probably age had withered it, thought James), and the lady carried a flowered parasol to shield her complexion from the sun.

  "A visitor from another world!" breathed Laura.

  "Looks as if," said Kip, staring with round eyes.

  The lady chirruped to her horse, and it stopped directly in front of the red house. The lady smiled at them. "Good morning, children," she said.

  "Good morning," said James and Kip and Laura.

  Lydia stepped forward.

  "Did you come because we wished you would?" she said. It sounded bald, put like that, but she had to know.

  "Well, now," said the lady, "did I or didn't I? That's a question. Certainly I have not driven down to the valley for some time. I think it is three years now. Or is it two? No, I think it is three. And

  certainly this morning something seemed to tell me it was time to venture forth and look at the world again. But whether it was your wish, or the fine summer weather, or something else entirely, I would not be prepared to say. But why do you say you wished for me?"

  "We were playing a game," said Kip. "Kind of a wishing game."

  "We wished for a visitor from another world," said Laura.

  "Another world?" For a moment the lady seemed to be looking beyond them, at faraway things. "Yes, it was certainly that. A better world I don't say, but different it was. And slower. And more gracious, I like to think."

  "When was this?" said James, who liked to get at the facts. "And where?"

  "Why, right here," said the lady. "All up and down the valley, when I was young. We may have been country people, but we had pleasant times!"

  "And you still live right here somewhere?" said James. There was a touch of disappointment in his voice.

  "Certainly I do," said the lady. "Pa always said to me, 'Isabella, whatever happens, never sell the old place.' And I never have. I live across the river and up the hill. By the old silver mine."

  "A silver mine!" said James and Laura together.

  "Gee!" said James. "I didn't know there was one."

  "Sure," said Kip. "What did you think the road was named for?"