Half Magic

by Edward Eager

  "Honestly!" he said to Jane in disgust. "Making birds come in and talk to her! No wonder she thinks she's crazy! Whose heart's desire would that be? No, don't you remember how she always used to say she wanted to be City Editor of the paper some day? Let me have that." And he took the charm from Jane.

  "Careful!" said Mr. Smith.

  "It's all right. I know what to say," Mark reassured him. And he wished.

  The owner of the newspaper walked into the office.

  "Ah, dear lady," he said. "How happy you look with your little family around you!"

  Their mother turned a woebegone face upon him and said nothing.

  "What part of Mother's little family is Mr. Smith?" whispered Katharine to Mark, giggling.

  "Shush," said Mark.

  "We are making some changes in the organization," the owner of the paper went on, "and I am glad to tell you that from this moment on you may consider yourself City Editor, at a sizeable increase in salary."

  "No," said the children's mother, shaking her head stubbornly. "It isn't true. It's just some horrible crazy dream! You aren't even real. You're just a ... a figment of my imagination!"

  "Well, really!" said the owner of the paper, looking displeased. Apparently he did not like being called a figment.

  "Aw, Mother," said Mark. "Don't worry; just take it. Don't you remember how you've always said you could run the paper singlehanded better than the rest of this whole dopey crowd down here does?"

  "You don't say!" said the owner of the paper, coldly. "In that case, perhaps I had better withdraw my offer. Perhaps you had better look for a job somewhere else!" And he made a dignified exit.

  "This is worse and worse!" moaned the children's mother. "Now I'm unemployed! And he'll tell everybody it's because I've gone raving, tearing mad, and he'll be right, because I have!"

  "There, there," Katharine soothed her. "Mark just didn't know. He couldn't, because I'm the only one who knows what your heart's desire really is!" She turned to the others. "Mother told me once that when she was our age she always wanted to be a bareback rider." And Katharine took the charm in her hand.

  "Dear me, I hardly think—" began Mr. Smith.

  But before he could finish his sentence Katharine had wished, and he and the four children found themselves sitting in the front row of the grandstand inside an immense circus tent, and the ringmaster was just cracking his whip and announcing that La Gloria, the Best Bareback Rider in the World, would now perform her death-defying act.

  There was a crash of cymbals, and La Gloria rode into the ring on a white horse. La Gloria was the children's mother. Only she didn't look at all like herself in pink tights and a frilly skirt. And she didn't act like herself, either.

  She rode round the ring with grace and speed, and jumped her horse through hoops with spirit and style. And, what was most alarming of all to the four children, she seemed to be enjoying it!

  "Hoop-la!" she cried. "Allez-oop! Whee!"

  "Stop her!" wailed Martha. "She'll hurt herself! She'll fall!" And she jumped over the rail and ran into the middle of the ring, with Jane and Mark and Mr. Smith behind her. Forgetting the charm in her hand, Katharine ran with them. La Gloria had to rein in her horse to keep from running them down.

  "Get out of the way! You're spoiling the act!" she said haughtily.

  "This is awful! She doesn't know us!" cried Martha.

  "Of course she does. Don't you?" said Jane.

  "No, and I don't wish to!" said La Gloria. "Out of the way! The show must go on!"

  "Why?" said Mark, ever willing to argue a point.

  Behind them in the grandstand the audience was beginning to be restless.

  "In my opinion people who interrupt other peopie's entertainment should be ejected!" said a lady in the front row.

  "You're right!" said the lady sitting next to her. "They should be ejected first and then put out!"

  An angry murmur began to grow.

  "Down in front!" yelled somebody.

  "Get the hook!" yelled somebody else.

  The ringmaster approached, cracking his whip.

  Then, just as it looked as though there might be unpleasantness, Katharine unwished, and they found themselves back in the newspaper office.

  Their mother sat at her desk, a dreamy, faraway smile on her face. Katharine turned to her anxiously.

  "There!" she said. "Now do you believe?"

  Their mother's smile vanished. She looked stubborn. "That didn't happen," she said. "It was a dream."

  "How do we all know about it, then?" said Katharine.

  "You don't," said their mother. "You couldn't." And nothing any of the children could say would make her believe anything else. After five minutes of trying, they were all breathing hard and beginning to feel a bit desperate.

  "May I point out," said Mr. Smith, at last, "that if you would only listen to me—"

  But Martha interrupted him.

  "Of course if you ask me," she said, "the trouble is, none of those wishes were any good because we didn't make her believe first."

  The others looked at her.

  "Of course," said Mark.

  "Out of the mouths of babes," said Jane.

  "Why didn't we think of that?" said Katharine. "Naturally you have to believe in magic—otherwise if it starts happening to you all sanity is despaired of!"

  "Exactly," said Mr. Smith. "Now I suggest—"

  But Martha had the charm in her hand.

  "Oh, Mother," she said earnestly. "Mother dear, if you just wouldn't be so stubborn about it! I wish you'd believe what we keep telling you! I wish it twice!"

  "I do, dear. I believe you," said their mother.

  "You believe there's a magic charm?"

  "Naturally, dear. If you say so, dear."

  "And everything's all right and you're going to get married and live happily ever after?"

  "Whatever you say, dear."

  "There!" Martha turned in triumph to the others.

  But Mark was looking at their mother suspiciously.

  "Something's wrong here," he said. "That doesn't sound like Mother at all!"

  "No, it doesn't, does it, dear?" said their mother.

  "We don't want a mother that just agrees with everything all the time!"

  "No, you don't, do you, dear?" said their mother. "I wouldn't either."

  "You see what I mean?" said Mark. "Why, I bet if I said the moon was made of green cheese she'd just say, 'Yes, dear. I know, dear.'"

  "Isn't it true?" said their mother. "I couldn't agree with you more, dear."

  The other three were just as alarmed as Mark by now.

  "This is awful!" Jane cried, turning on Martha. "You've taken Mother and turned her into some awful sappy blah character without any gumption at all! Why, Mr. Smith won't even want to marry her in this condition!"

  "No, he won't, will he?" said their mother, contentedly. "I wouldn't, either."

  There was a stunned silence.

  "And now," said Mr. Smith, in a grim voice, "perhaps you will permit me to make a suggestion?"

  No one had the heart to reply.

  Mr. Smith took the charm from Martha's hand firmly.

  "I suggest that we start over," he said, "and I suggest that we take it more slowly. And that somebody thinks before acting!" And he held the charm out before him solemnly, almost as if he were in church.

  "I wish first that Alison may be restored to her own natural, stubborn, lovable self, and I wish this twice. But I further wish that her mind, without losing any of its natural, stubborn, lovable character, may be made open to receiving the secret of this charm, and this I also wish twice. And I thirdly wish that she may be twice relieved of the fear that has come to her through the magic of this charm, and may be twice ready to receive any boon it may grant her."

  There was another silence. Then the children's mother looked round at them all, and smiled. And it was plain that these last wild minutes, ever since they had arrived in the office, had vanished f
rom her mind.

  "Hello," she said. "How nice of you all to come and surprise me."

  "We came," said Mr. Smith, "to bring you a gift." And he put the charm on her desk. "This is a magic charm, and it works by halves. Ask twice for whatever you wish, and you will receive it once. It is from all of us, with our love. Now. What is your heart's desire?"

  "But you know what it is," said the children's mother, not picking up the charm. "My heart's desire is to marry you and have the children love you as much as I do. And not to have to work on the paper anymore, but stay home and take care of the children instead of having to have Miss Bick. And to have the children be able to go to the country in the summers the way they've always wanted to. And to have you shave off that beard."

  "Really? Don't you like it?" said Mr. Smith, in surprise. "I've grown rather attached to it, through the years. I'll hate to see it go. But for the rest of your desire, if you marry me I'll do my best to give it to you. Without the help of any charm. We won't be rich, because people who run bookshops seldom are, but summers in the country I think I can manage."

  He took their mother's hand, and the two of them stood looking at each other.

  "Aren't you going to wish?" said Katharine, after a bit.

  "Why should we?" said their mother. "We have our happiness."

  "Oh," said Katharine, disappointed.

  The faces of the four children fell. They had never felt so let-down in all their lives. Then after a moment Katharine's face brightened.

  "But it was a wish that brought you together in the first place," she said, "and it was another wish that made you meet again. It was really the charm that caused everything, in a way!"

  "Maybe that's the one big, important thing it came into our lives to do," said Mark.

  "You mean maybe now it's used up and won't work anymore?" said Martha, alarmed.

  "Oh, and today's the seventh day, too!" cried Jane. "Maybe the magic's over!" She picked up the charm and turned to Mr. Smith. "I don't want to butt in, and I'm sure you could give Mother her heart's desire by the sweat of your manly brow alone," she said, "but just to make sure, I wish all her wishes would come true twice!"

  Mr. Smith gave a cry, and clapped his hand to the place where his beard used to be. The four children agreed later that he looked very handsome without it.

  Only right now they didn't notice, because right now other things were happening.

  For it seemed as though the room suddenly began to shine, and there seemed to be a sound of far-off singing and a faint chiming of bells all about them. And a fragrance hung in the air that was not quite cinnamon and not quite vanilla and not quite the perfume of all the gardens in the world, but a little like all these things and something else, too. It was the scent of magic.

  And their mother and Mr. Smith stood looking at each other and didn't see the shining or hear the singing or sense the fragrance because all they saw was the light of each other's eyes, and all they heard was the beating of each other's heart and all they felt was their love for each other.

  By and by the shining and the singing and the fragrance died away.

  "I guess that's the last wish, all right," said Mark. "It never rang bells and smelled like a perfume shop before!"

  "What did you say?" said their mother.

  "I said I guess that's the last wish," said Mark. "The last wish on the charm."

  "What charm?" said Mr. Smith.

  They had forgotten. Now that they had their heart's desire, they had no need of any other magic. They turned and went out of the office, and the four children followed them.

  Jane still held the charm in her hand, but the children were as sure as they had ever been of anything in their short, full lives that with that last wish the magic had gone out of it, and that there would be no more enchanted adventures for them.

  "Still," said Mark, as they reached the street, and just as though the others had spoken their thoughts aloud. "Still, we might as well test it and see. Wish something. Any old dumb thing."

  "All right, I wish I had four noses," said Jane.

  Everyone looked. But the usual slightly snub one remained the only feature in the middle of the face of Jane.

  "That settles that," said Mark. "Good-bye, charm." But his voice was quite cheerful.

  "I guess it just came to make us happy," said Katharine. "And now we are!"

  "Weren't we happy before?" asked Martha.

  "Oh, sure, in a kind of way," said Mark. "The way some people are happy and some people are unhappy because they're born that way. But there were a lot of things we wanted changed, and now they're going to be!"

  "No more Miss Bick!" said Katharine.

  "Summers in the country," said Jane, "and a practically perfect stepfather! You know," she added, feeling suddenly rather wonderful, "it looks as if we got our heart's desire, too!"

  But all the same, she didn't throw the old, used-up charm away. As they hurried to catch up with their mother and Mr. Smith, she stopped long enough to put it away carefully in her handbag.

  She would keep it a while longer, just in case.

  8. How It Began Again

  And it turned out there was one more wish, after all.

  The last wish was Jane's alone, and she never really knew she made it.

  That night, as she was getting undressed, she found the charm in her pocket, and sat on the bed looking at it for a long time, and pondering the mystery of how it had come into their hands, and why.

  And from that she went on to thinking about their mother's being married, and the changes it would bring into their lives.

  She was quite contented about everything. But because she was the only one of the four children who remembered their father, she would have been more contented still if she could have felt sure that he knew about what was going to happen, and approved of it.

  It had been a full day, and she was ready for sleep. Already her eyes had begun to close of their own accord. But as she put out the light and tucked the charm absentmindedly under her pillow, her last waking thought was that she wished her father were with her now, so she'd know how he felt about things.

  She wasn't worrying about the charm, or working out the right fractions, as she wished it. But because there was still this one small corner in Jane that wasn't completely happy, the charm relented, and thawed out of its icy used-upness, and granted the wish, according to its well-known fashion. Immediately her father was half there.

  He was there like a thought in her mind, assuring her that everything was all right, and exactly as he would want it, and that he was happy in their happiness.

  And a wonderful feeling of peace filled the heart of Jane, and she went to sleep with a smile on her face.

  In the morning she'd forgotten all about the wish. She knew only that the sun was yellow and warm, and the sky was blue, and a golden future lay ahead, and all was right with the world.

  She found the charm under her pillow when she was making her bed, and put it in the top bureau drawer, reminding herself to consult with the others later about what to do with it.

  But the next days were so full, what with plans for the wedding, that Jane never did get around to consulting.

  And at last the wedding day came, and happy was the bride the sun shone on, and happy, too, were the four children. And after their mother and Mr. Smith had been pronounced man and wife, Mr. Smith shook hands all round, and their mother kissed them, and then off the two of them went for a week's honeymoon, and Miss Bick came and stayed with the children for the last time, and had her will with them for seven days, and biffed and banged and cleaned and complained until life became a mere burden, but there was always the comforting thought that at the end of the seven days lay freedom.

  And the seven days finally were over, and their mother and Mr. Smith returned, and the four children sang "Good-bye forever!" out of the upstairs windows as Miss Bick took her departure for the last time.

  And it was then that their mother told them t
hat Mr. Smith had taken a house on a lake for the rest of the summer, where it was real country all around, and yet it was near enough for him to drive in to the bookshop every day.

  So from then on all was bustle and squeak, in the words of Katharine, and if the children weren't being taken downtown to buy bathing suits and camera film and badminton birds and beach balls, they were walking to the library and choosing vacation reading or packing their nice shabby old suitcases and the nicer new ones Mr. Smith had bought them.

  And it wasn't until the morning of the day before they were to leave that Jane got around to cleaning out her top bureau drawer, and found the charm again.

  Immediately she summoned a Council.

  "Do you suppose we ought to keep it forever, sort of In Memoriam?" she wondered.

  "Put it in the curio cabinet with the other objects of art," said Katharine, giggling.

  "Maybe we ought to try it again," said Martha. "Maybe it was just tired before, and now it's had a nice rest!"

  "Huh-uh." Mark shook his head. "That last wish was the end. You could tell."

  And the others had to agree that you could. But Martha still wasn't pacified.

  "What about this, then?" she said. "It's used up for us, but how do we know it wouldn't still be perfectly good for other people?"

  This was a thrilling idea.

  "Sure," said Mark. "It stands to reason. It's come down through centuries with its magic unscathed—it'd take more than four paltry children to make it bite the dust!"

  Jane nodded excitedly. "You mean now we pass it on to somebody else!"

  "Anybody we know?" Katharine wondered.

  "We could go round being sort of fairy godmothers and granting wishes," said Martha.

  Mark shook his head

  "That's no good. We'd just get so we wanted to tell everybody what to wish. It'd be sort of like trying to have the charm all over again, secondhand. I think that would be kind of against the rules. It came to us out of the unknown, and I think that's where it ought to go again. I think we ought to let some utter stranger find it, and then put it out of our minds forever."

  And the others had to agree that this did seem like the kind of noble conduct the charm would expect of them.