Magic or Not?

by Edward Eager

  "No," said Laura, rapt. "He's kissing her hand!"

  Another moment and Mr. Bundy went tramping down the twisty trail and Miss Isabella went back inside. She appeared to be singing to herself.

  "Well?" said Laura. "Has everybody seen enough? Shall we go home?"

  "Horse," said Deborah happily.

  5. The Long-Lost Heir

  "How'll we get organized?" said Kip next morning, as the four children sat under the apple tree behind the red house. "Shall we go out and hunt for the magic or let the magic come to us?"

  Everybody looked at Laura. After all she was the one who had realized there was magic in the first place.

  "Well," said that priestess of the unseen slowly, wrinkling her forehead, "I don't see that it much matters. I think we ought to just go about our daily life and keep our eyes peeled for when opportunity knocks."

  "Good," said James. "Then let's go explore that river. I've always wanted to track one to its source."

  But the others rejected this. "What good turns could we do there?" said Lydia scornfully. "We don't want to waste our magic on mere beavers! Let's go where there're people."

  And all agreed that town was where there were the most of these.

  "Ought we to speak to the well first?" Kip wondered, as they went down the path to the gate.

  "How can we till we know what we want to wish?" said Lydia.

  "We might drop it a hint," said Kip.

  Laura paused by the wellhead. She looked down sternly at the mysterious depth below. "You know," she told it meaningfully. And they started up the road.

  The first part of their journey was unproductive. All they met were a milkman who seemed quite happy in his work and sundry squirrels who appeared equally well adjusted. And the houses they passed looked serene and untroubled under the morning sun.

  "Maybe we ought to start ringing doorbells," said James. "Maybe we ought to have a door-to-door campaign. Somebody must have a problem!"

  Laura shook her head. "It'll come when it comes. You can't force it."

  A man came walking down the road toward them, and the four children quickened their steps. Maybe now the adventure would start.

  But the man's face, as he came nearer, was wreathed in smiles and he swung a hickory stick jauntily. "What weather!" he cried. "Glorious. Up at six. Did three miles already. Mean to do three more. Makes you glad to be alive, doesn't it?"

  "Sure, I guess it does," said Kip, rather dispiritedly.

  "No good we can do him," said James, when the man had passed.

  "Not a care in the world," agreed Lydia bitterly.

  A car slowed up beside them and a woman looked out. "Want a ride? Hop in," she said. So they hopped in. Maybe this time opportunity would really knock.

  But the woman's face was plump and jolly and her voice had the ringing tones of utter optimism. "Isn't it a glorious day?" she said. "So cool for July!"

  "Here we go again," muttered James to Lydia. "'What weather! Makes you glad to be alive!'"

  The woman had overheard. "It certainly does!" she cried. "You took the words right out of my mouth!"

  "Don't despair," muttered Lydia to the others. "Maybe she wears a painted smile to hide a breaking heart." She raised her voice. "But don't you sometimes feel," she said, "that it's all a mockery? When you've got troubles down inside, doesn't a wonderful day like this make you feel worse?"

  "It certainly doesn't!" said the woman. "Times I feel like that, I just jump in my little car, throw out the clutch, and away I go!"

  And she suited the action to the words, zooming along the road blowing her horn and waving at the other motorists and now and again singing snatches of song, "I Love Life" and "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella."

  "Whew!" said James, when the enthusiastic woman had finally set them down at the corner of Main and Elm.

  "'You took the words right out of my mouth,'" quoted Kip, giggling.

  "The trouble with this town," said Lydia, "is that everybody's too darned happy! Nobody needs a helping hand at all."

  It may have been that the magic overheard these hapless words and took its revenge. Or, as Kip said afterwards, it may have been a coincidence.

  But hardly had he and Laura and Lydia and James taken three steps down Main Street when a voice hailed them.

  "Oh, children!" were its insulting words.

  Kip and Laura and Lydia and James looked up and down the street. No children seemed to be in sight.

  "Oh, children!" said the voice again, and this time there was no mistaking whom it meant. A woman was standing in the door of the art supply store, looking straight at them. Her arms were piled high with framed masterpieces. "Children," said the woman for the third time, "I am in charge of arranging the pictures for the sidewalk art show and my team hasn't showed up. I know you won't mind helping. It's a civic project."

  "Oh," said James and Kip and Lydia and Laura.

  "You boys can just carry these screens around and space them by the curbstone," said the woman, "and the girls can help me hang the pictures."

  "What's it all in aid of?" said James, who had heard this phrase somewhere.

  "Why, it's to encourage our local amateur artists!" said the woman. "I guess we'll show people our town's got talent! Anybody can enter and just about everybody has!"

  As the four children surveyed the crowded interior of the art store, it did indeed look as if this were true. There were forty of the big, heavy screens for James and Kip to place strategically along Main and Elm Streets, and each screen could display six pictures.

  And as Laura and Lydia and the women dealt with these, Laura began to feel that perhaps too many local artists had been encouraged. Some of the pictures were good, but there were the usual woolly landscapes and studies of squinting sinister Arabs and stalwart Indian chiefs. And there were others so modern and strange that Laura and the woman couldn't decide which way was up and which way was upside down. But somehow Lydia always knew.

  And so the morning wore on and the sun grew hotter, and perspiration dewed each brow, and the magic didn't see fit to come to their aid or make the minutes go by any faster. By the time the tardy members of the woman's team arrived to take over, nearly two hours had passed, and James and Kip and Laura and Lydia agreed that it was time to cheer their flagging spirits with hot butterscotch sundaes.

  Kip and Lydia led the way to the other drugstore, not the best one nor the fairly good one, but the old one that hardly anybody ever went into anymore. Kip felt sorry for it because its interior was dim and dingy and fly-haunted, and Lydia liked it because it had old bottles of red and green water in the windows and the woman clerk always acted so surprised when any customers came in at all.

  "Honestly, some of those pictures!" said Laura ten minutes later, licking the last strings of butterscotch from her spoon. "Why, any of us could do one as good as those!"

  "Let's!" said Kip.

  Everybody looked at everybody else.

  "She said anyone can enter," said James. "Who are we to be behindhand?"

  There was an investigating of pockets. James and Laura had twenty-seven cents between them, and Kip, who had treated them all to the sundaes, had the change left over from two dollars (money he had earned mowing lawns). Lydia had nothing at all.

  Altogether there was enough to buy a drawing pad and a box of crayons, and the reluctant woman clerk was summoned again from the dark beyond where she preferred to stay.

  After that there was concentrated silence for a while, but then James and Kip began looking over each other's shoulders and snickering and pushing each other's elbows and at last crumpled their papers up and announced that they couldn't draw for nuts.

  "It's harder than it looks," James admitted.

  Laura persisted for a while. She had a marvelous scene in mind, blue sky and green trees and white houses, all fresh and new-washed, the way they had looked early that morning when she had come along the road, but somehow the crayons refused to cooperate. And no magic touch came t
o guide her faltering hand, either. At last she too crumpled up her picture and looked idly across the table at Lydia's. Then she looked again.

  Lydia had used only the black crayon, and at first what she had done seemed like just a lot of meaningless lines and curves, but when Laura looked a second time, she saw that the curves were eyes and that the picture was dozens and dozens of pairs of eyes that seemed to be looking straight at her and that somehow added up to form a pattern and even seemed to say something, though Laura wasn't sure just what.

  The others were looking at Lydia's picture now, too.

  "That's good," said James judicially.

  "No it isn't," said Lydia.

  "I didn't know you could draw," said Kip.

  "I can't. It's just doodling," said Lydia. She made as if to crumple up her paper like the others.

  "Don't!" said Laura, snatching it away.

  And then the drawing was forgotten (for the moment) as they all pushed back their chairs and got up, and Kip knocked a nickel against the glass countertop to lure the woman clerk from her inner fastness. He paid for the art materials, and the four children started for the door. And it was then that they found the long lost heir.

  "Aren't you forgetting your little brother?" said the woman.

  James and Kip and Laura and Lydia looked around. The woman did not stay for an answer but retreated into the gloom at the rear.

  It was Lydia who saw the little boy first. He was a very little boy and he was sitting silent and contented on the floor in a far corner of the store, playing with a celluloid pinwheel.

  "Well, for heaven's sake!" said Lydia. "Are you lost?"

  "Lost," said the little boy contentedly.

  Lydia went up to him. "Can't you find your mother?"

  "Mother," said the little boy, throwing his arms possessively round one of Lydia's legs and beaming up at her angelically.

  "Aw!" said Lydia, her iron soul melting.

  "He is lost," said Laura.

  "Or strayed," said Kip.

  "We'd better take him to the police station right away," said James.

  "No!" cried Laura. "Don't you see? It's the magic working at last! It's our good turn for today. It must be. We're supposed to find him and take him home by ourselves!"

  James was studying the little boy. "He's dressed awful fancy," he said. "He's probably the long-lost heir to untold millions."

  "Only the richest velvet is allowed to touch his satin skin," said Kip, giggling.

  "Exactly!" said Laura. "We'll restore him to his sorrowing parents and earn priceless rewards!" She lowered her voice. "He's probably been kidnaped and held for ransom. This place is probably a thieves' den in disguise! It looks like it! That's probably why they never seem to want any customers!"

  And the others agreed that this was only logical.

  "But the woman wanted us to take him," objected Kip.

  "She's probably the kidnaper's downtrodden wife, like Nancy Sikes," said Laura. "She was probably feeling remorseful. She might change her mind any minute and betray us to the gang! We've got to get out of here! Come on!"

  "Come on!" repeated James, chirping encouragingly at the little boy.

  "Carry," said the little boy, holding up his arms trustingly.

  "Oh!" cried Lydia, melting again. She scooped the little boy up in her arms and held her cheek against his. "Oh, tweety wee swummy doodle!"

  James and Kip looked away in disgust. Laura marveled. She would never have recognized Lydia in this guise.

  But this was no time to be standing here marveling. "Hurry!" she breathed. And the four children stole out of the drugstore (or kidnapers' den), Lydia carrying the long-lost heir.

  Once in the everyday light of Main Street, things didn't seem quite so perilous, and Laura remembered something.

  "Wait here," she said. "I have to go straighten that last picture I hung."

  "Honestly!" said Kip. "At a time like this!"

  "Psst," James hissed in his ear, and gave him a meaningful look. The two boys squinted across Main Street at the art store and watched what Laura did. Lydia was too busy exchanging endearments with the little boy to notice.

  "There," said Laura a second later, rejoining them.

  "Now what?" said Kip.

  "Back to the wishing well, I'd say," said James, "and bring it up to date, just to make sure."

  So they turned their steps toward Silvermine Road.

  Luckily a woman offered them a lift before they'd gone a block, and as luck would have it, it was the same optimistic woman who had brought them into town that morning. Now she proved to be not only optimistic but inquisitive.

  "Well! Something new has been added!" she cried enthusiastically. "Is that your baby brother?"

  "Brother," said the little boy contentedly, and the four children did not correct him. If that was the way the magic wanted it to be, so be it.

  "Where'd you find him?" went on the woman.

  "He was waiting in the drugstore," said Laura. After all, that was perfectly true.

  The woman set them down at the red house, and Laura was first to reach the wishing well.

  "We found the long-lost heir all right," she told it. "Now let us get him back to his ancestral acres and earn the reward."

  Thé wishing well gave its usual reply (silence).

  "What next?" said Kip. "How do we know where to take him?"

  "Why not ask him?" said Lydia.

  "That's right," said James. "We never thought of that."

  The four children formed a circle round the long-lost heir, who was sitting contentedly on the grass blowing his pinwheel.

  "Where do you live?" asked Laura.

  "Home," said the long-lost heir. And that was all they could get out of him.

  "So much the better," said James. "Now it's up to the magic to show what it can do. He can play with Deborah in the meantime. Let's have lunch."

  But when they went inside, it turned out that James and Laura's parents had gone to Stamford to another auction and taken Deborah with them. The note they had left went on to say that sandwiches were to be found in the refrigerator, and these, when scrupulously divided, made a frugal repast for five.

  "And now," said James, "let's go explore that river. The magic'll find us wherever we are. No sense in sitting around waiting. A watched well's no better than a watched pot."

  "What about him?" said Laura. "We can't leave him alone here and he'll be too heavy to carry."

  "I don't mind," said Lydia in her newfound character of little mother.

  "You won't have to," said Kip. "They've got an old rowboat down at the tearoom that we can prob'ly hire. I've still got fifty cents left."

  And when they arrived at the tearoom (Lydia trundling the heir in the garden cart), it turned out that the people would gladly accept fifty cents down and the rest on trust; so that was all right.

  As the four children (and the heir) shoved off from shore, the sound of a fire engine was heard in the distance, and James and Kip briefly regretted not being on dry land and able to chase after it on their bikes. But the sound died away in the distance and was soon forgotten in the joy of watery exploration.

  Under the bridge by the tearoom the river was narrow and trickly, and the boat bumped against rocks. But around the first bend was a wide lakelike part edged with water lilies and dark with ducks that scattered before them, making the air sound with their wingbeats. Kip shipped the oars and let the boat drift awhile. The sun was warm and the water sparkled. Lilies were picked and frogs caught and let go again. Perfect peace was enjoyed by all. The long-lost heir slumbered in Lydia's lap. Perhaps some others slumbered, too.

  How many hours went by in soporific floating will never be known. But James was not one to forget a cherished goal for too long.

  "Let's go," he said suddenly, stirring himself. "'Out of the hills of Habersham, down the valleys of Hall!'"

  "Only we're not; we're going upstream," pointed out Kip practically.

  James rowed
for a while, but what Kip had said proved all too true, and he made small headway against the current, for now the river grew ever more deep-gorged and dramatic and rapids-y, and the rocks were big and sharp and hazardous. Around another bend a roaring waterfall appeared ahead, blocking their way.

  "This is too much of a good thing," said James. "We'll have to portage."

  He picked out a safe-looking landing spot and Lydia set the long-lost heir on the shore. That is how his trousers got muddy behind. The others clambered out after him, and James and Kip managed to get the boat out of the stream. They carried it while the girls went on ahead. At the waterfall everybody stopped and Kip showed the others how to walk behind it. That is how the long-lost heir's shirt got so wet.

  But whatever comes down must have been up, and this is true of shore as well as water. So next to the waterfall were rocky heights to scale, and Laura helped the boys get the boat up these. Every once in a while Lydia had to help, too. When she did this, she set the heir down, and every time she did, he began to crawl. That is how he got muddy in front and lost a shoe.

  All this took a long puffing time, but luckily there was a sunny clearing at the top and everybody collapsed with moans of languor and lay prone or supine for a while, making desultory conversation. Everybody except the heir. Having had no work to do, he was still fresh as a daisy and crawled around them in a circle, inspecting the local plant and insect life. That is how he got the mud on his face and the leaves in his hair.

  Next to the clearing was a broad calm level stretch of river, and it was James who got his breath back first and suggested that they board the boat once more. This time Lydia rowed. As she pulled away from the bank, the others thought they heard a fire siren again, but the noisy waterfall was still too near for them to be sure.

  Ever and anon along their course the four children had seen houses on the bank, comfortable country-ish places surrounded by all the natural beauties of wood and water. Now as they rounded the next bend, they saw a house of another color.

  Its color was pink, but that was not the only unusual thing about it.

  It was big and modern and low and glassy and no expense had been spared. There were greenhouses and tool houses and summerhouses galore. No remnant of the original woods had been allowed anywhere near it. As for the river, it had been neatly dredged and made to look as much like an artificial swimming pool as possible, with all the lovely natural rocks carted away.