Tomorrow's Magic Read online

  Nigel silenced his lieutenant with a cuff. “If this scrawny babysitter thinks he can tell me how to be a duke, he needs a little lesson!”

  Huddled together on the ground, Welly and Heather looked on in horror at what they'd brought on their friend. Earl was slightly taller, but there the advantage ended. He was thin and lanky to the point of frailty, a skeleton loosely tied together with skin. Nigel was compact and powerful. His arms, shoulders, and neck were as solid as stone.

  The two crouched and circled each other. The excited crowd of students shrank back to give them room. Nigel made several feints forward, but Earl didn't flinch. Then Nigel lunged to close with him, but Earl was no longer there. He'd slipped aside and now snaked out his foot, sending his opponent sprawling. Nigel bounded back up and swung a fist at Earl's jaw. Again he missed his target. His eyes narrowed to see Earl standing back, head tilted, a taunting smile on his face.

  Furious, Nigel sprang, wrapping his powerful arms around the other's thin chest. Earl staggered. Then he brought up his arms sharply and broke the hold, sidestepping the hook that followed. Again Nigel jumped for him. Earl spun around behind him, grabbing his arm. In one smooth movement, he lifted Nigel off the ground and hurled him through the air. He came to earth with a jarring thump. Groggily Nigel struggled to sit up, then slumped back to the ground.

  The fight was clearly over. The crowd dispersed, chattering among themselves. “He should have listened,” one girl said to a friend. “That's what Justin was trying to tell him. A year ago, before Nigel came, that Earl did the same thing to the strongest boy in the school. Even the tough ones leave him alone now, weird as he is.”

  Nigel's friends had gone to his assistance, and Earl, breathing raggedly, knelt down by Welly, who was dabbing at his cut face with a sleeve.

  “Let's get out of sight,” Earl advised. “He won't want a return match for a while, but the less we rub it in, the better.”

  Heather nodded, looking sadly down at the dead squirrel. “Let's take Sigmund away and bury him. Nigel wanted the pelt. But he shan't have it!”

  She gathered up the lifeless body, and the three children headed quickly toward the far end of the orchard, out of sight of the others.

  As they walked along, Welly said, “That was incredible fighting; where did you learn it?” As soon as he said them, he regretted the words, but Earl didn't seem to mind.

  “I don't know. I've fought like that for as long as I can remember. Most of it's being quick and light. The ones who most pride themselves on their fighting are usually as agile as oxen.”

  Heather stopped by a stump near the orchard's far wall. “Let's bury him here. Kids never come this far. But Sigmund's family does.”

  She placed the squirrel on the stump, and Welly found a sharp-edged rock and started digging. The ground was hard, and after a while he stopped. One eye was beginning to swell, and he was having trouble seeing, though his glasses, at least, had been found intact. Earl took over digging.

  Heather left them briefly to gather a bouquet of leaves. She would have preferred flowers, like they used in the stories, but there were few flowering plants, even in summer. When the hole was deep enough, she lowered the squirrel into it. Tears streamed silently down her cheeks as Earl filled in the dirt and as she strewed leaves over the little mound.

  Smearing tears away with dirty hands, she said, “I know it's silly to make such a fuss over a dead squirrel. But they … they made a place for me in their lives. Oh, I know it's not the same as really being needed, but it was somewhere I fit in.”

  “You fit in with us,” Earl said, putting a hand awkwardly on her slumped shoulder. “Come on, let's rest against the wall. There's a bit of sun.”

  They sat at the base of the old stone wall, its rough surface faintly warm. Peace seemed to seep from the patient stones and the cool evening air.

  “You know,” Welly said after a while, “that's the second time you've gotten us out of a bad spot, Earl. We're really in your debt.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Oh, but we are,” Heather insisted. “If it wasn't for you, we'd either have been eaten by fell-dogs or pounded into footstools for Nigel Williams. We ought to swear you eternal fealty or something. Be your bound knights, as in days of old!”

  A look of conviction on his battered face, Welly stood up. “And so we shall! We'll kneel at your feet and offer you our swords!”

  “Except we haven't got any swords,” Heather pointed out.

  “Well, we'll find some!” Welly insisted. Heather jumped up to join him, her grief submerged in new purpose.

  The two scurried off to find something suitable, while Earl watched. He supposed this was silly, but it was something they needed, all of them. And it had a rightness that seemed, somehow, to stretch beyond the moment.

  The others returned with two short sticks and dropped to their knees in front of the older boy, presenting the sticks to him. Lowering his voice, Welly intoned, “We hereby offer you, Earl Bedwas, our swords and our eternal fealty.”

  Earl closed his eyes. A feeling of odd recollection swept over him and was gone. He tried to think what he should do next. Then, taking their swords, he tapped the points on each of their shoulders and, with a flourish, handed their weapons back to them. “Rise, Sir Wellington, Lady Heather!”

  Heather jumped to her feet, braids bouncing and cheeks glowing with excitement. She leaped to the top of the stump, raising her stick into the air. “From now on, we'll follow wherever you lead and loyally do your bidding. The doers of evil shall be vanquished. Your quests are our quests; your enemies are our enemies!”

  Earl looked ruefully toward the orchard gate where Nigel and his friends had disappeared. “That last, anyway, seems likely to be true.”

  SHADOWS IN THE STORM

  The time of cold weather had come again. The leaves on the orchard's few trees turned brown and fell to the ground. And the ground itself was often covered in snow. White feathers and ferns of ice grew on glass-paned windows, while wind from the north carried the raw bite of Scottish glaciers.

  The friendship among Welly, Heather, and Earl grew slowly and gently. Despite his accepting their friendship, the other two knew Earl was still a loner. They respected his need to be alone. But when he occasionally sought out their company or offered to help them with schoolwork, they were pleased.

  They worried about him, too. Now that they knew him, they noticed there were times when he was clearly troubled. Some mornings he came to breakfast his pale face more ashen than before and dark shadows rimming his eyes. They guessed he had dreamed again.

  But Welly heard no more cries in the night. He suspected Earl, trying not to disturb them, had muffled the door with one of his too-few blankets. But he was a very private person, and his friends would not mention it first.

  During the icy weather, Heather made few nighttime excursions to Welly's room. But one night in November, she ventured again over the roofs. She was bursting with ideas, and Cook had given her a rare honeycake, which, after due consideration, she'd decided to share with Welly.

  The two sat on chair and table in the candlelit room, savoring every sweet crumb. When at last there was no more to lick off finger or lip, Heather sighed and tucked her legs under her.

  “You know, there really ought to be some way we can help Earl.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, here we are, his sworn retainers. He's obviously troubled, and we aren't doing a thing about it.”

  “But what can we do? The troubles are inside him. They have been for years. If it helps him to talk about it, he knows we'll listen. But if he doesn't want to, we can't make him.”

  Heather tugged absently on a braid. “No, but the root of the thing is that he doesn't know who he is. If we could help him learn that, we'd be doing a lot.”

  “But how can we find that out when he hasn't a clue himself?”

  “Oh, but there are clues. They just need tracking down. Take that language he was spea
king when they found him. There's a fine clue.”

  “Sure, but the masters didn't know it, and he stopped speaking it after he learned English. Now he says he doesn't remember it at all.”

  “I'll bet that's what he was speaking when we woke him during the dream.”

  “A lot of good that does if he can't speak it when he's awake.”

  “Well,” she persisted, “the very fact that he was speaking a weird language when they found him suggests that he or his family didn't originally come from that village, doesn't it? And if it was strange to the masters here, it's probably not a Yorkshire dialect or anything like that but something really foreign.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, I don't know. Most foreign places aren't supposed to exist anymore. But there is Scandinavia. Maybe he comes from there.”

  She chewed thoughtfully on a braid, suddenly almost chomping it off. “Suppose … suppose Earl isn't his name at all! Suppose it's a title! Maybe he's the earl of someplace, someplace in Scandinavia. And somehow he got lost over here and was hit on the head during the explosions.”

  “Well, I suppose it could be, but how would we prove it?”

  “Maybe just suggesting it would bring it all back.”

  Welly only grunted.

  “Or maybe it isn't Scandinavian,” she ventured, “but Russian.”

  “Russian? All the Russians died during the Devastation.”

  “Surely they all didn't. I'll bet there were some Russian diplomats over here … or spies. And when war broke out, they went into hiding. They were afraid to tell anyone they were Russians. And their descendants didn't tell either, but secretly they kept up the old ways and spoke Russian at home. And then came the explosion at Bedwas, and Earl was the only one left.”

  “I like the Scandinavian earl better.”

  “So do I. But being the secret descendant of Russian spies would be exciting.”

  She resumed chewing her braid, finally sighing and untucking her feet. “But you're right. There's not much we can do unless he wants us to. He's too good a friend to intrude on.”

  Earl himself was indeed troubled. Increasingly so. The dreams were coming with greater frequency and strength. Sometimes he was so gripped in horror, he was unable to make a sound. When he finally awoke, he was exhausted and afraid to sleep for the rest of the night.

  Increasingly, too, strange feelings held him during the day. His schoolwork suffered, and often his mind drifted off during class. His teachers noticed but had said nothing. For that he was grateful. He was afraid they'd decide he was going crazy. In fact, he almost wished he was. It seemed the less complicated solution. But less complicated than what, he wasn't sure.

  By the end of November, the tension was becoming unbearable. Whenever possible, he avoided people, including his two new friends. But when he was alone, he was intensely restless.

  One Sunday morning, he awoke with a feeling of enormous pressure, pressure from inside. He felt he'd explode if he didn't do something. There was an acrid taste in his mind, a remnant of the night's dream. Bitter, distorted feelings lingered like smoke in the corners of the room. He had to get away.

  Hurriedly he dressed in outdoor wear. Slipping downstairs, he left the school grounds as soon as the gates were opened, not bothering with breakfast. Aimlessly he wandered about the winding streets, hoping to find some relief. Early worship services were beginning, and from various buildings came chants, singing, or ritual music. Standing irresolutely before the Armageddonite temple, Earl glanced up to the town wall, and his eyes fell on the dark smear of the hills beyond. Something inside him settled. He headed down the street toward the north gate.

  Once outside the walls, he felt better, no less tense but purposeful. He began walking northeast into the hills.

  The snow on the ground was deep, and moving was more like wading than walking. As the morning progressed, the sky thickened. Slowly great white flakes sifted from it. Feathery soft, they fell silently around him. Looking up, he watched them spiraling down from the sky until he grew dizzy. Then he trudged on.

  He had no idea where he was going, but he had to go. Stopping for a moment, he experimented. Turning to the west, he deliberately set off in a new direction. Within a few steps, the tension and unease returned. They grew until he could barely force himself on. When he turned back and headed northeast again, the anxiety ebbed away. He shrugged and moved northeast. There seemed little to lose.

  He walked for hours. All the while, the snow came more and more thickly. At first it fell in windless silence. But eventually a wind rose, blowing the snow in long streamers past his face. That wind howled with a voice of its own, and it almost seemed he could understand it.

  Suddenly a new feeling came over him. He slowed. Nothing looked different. In the blowing whiteness, the sky blended with the earth. Yet there seemed to be a darkness just beyond the white. A waiting darkness, and it was evil.

  Very slowly he advanced. The wind howled more fiercely, but he sensed a new sound just beyond hearing. Farther on, he heard it, separate now from the wind. Strange, unearthly sounds, voices and yet not voices.

  A speck of light appeared in that darkness, the darkness he felt and couldn't see. And the light was real. Impossibly, a fire burned in the snow ahead. And the voices, for voices they now seemed, came from around it.

  He halted. There were shapes moving about the fire, dark and wildly leaping shapes. He crept closer. The fire rose, a tall unquenchable pillar, and around it figures jerked and danced. Some were human; others something else. The voices sang and chanted in a strange language or in no human language at all. Yet the words played on the edge of his mind, almost tumbling into meaning.

  Closer now, he picked out one figure among the others: a woman, tall and slender, pale as snow. Her black hair and robes billowed wildly about her. Arms upstretched, she uttered a howling chant. Then she looked down into the fire, and he saw her face.

  He screamed! He knew that face! Instantly she looked up. Her green eyes stared directly at him, piercing the glare of the fire between them. Jabbing a long white hand into the storm, she shouted a word full of terrible power. The word went on and on, an endless stream of hate.

  Around him the world seemed to shatter, and the bonds that had drawn him cracked. Turning, he ran.

  The sound followed him, stabbing at his mind. He must get away from it and from that face! They must not get him!

  The horrible sound faded at last, but he knew they were following. He floundered on, every step weighed into painful slowness. Snow clung to his body and blinded his eyes. Was it an enemy, too?

  No, it was indifferent, didn't care. But he could use it. He could hide in the storm. They might not see; they might not find him.

  He willed himself unseen. To be one with the snow, part of the storm. Snow swirled into his mind, filled his body with cold. He became the cold, the sharp biting wind. He had no breath but the wind, gusting in and out. He had no head, no legs. Only thin white windblown snow. There was no up, no down, only directionless swirling. Swirling around and forward, always forward.

  On and on he went, while a small corner of his mind screamed in fear. He was the snow. Or he was mad. But surely he was dying. No breath, only the wind. He was dying in the storm, as the storm.

  He must gain control, fix on something solid, something real. Vaguely his mind saw the stone archway of the school gate. He concentrated on it with all his power. Stone by stone, he built the picture. Every irregular, hard gray shape. He could feel their roughness, the soft crumbling mortar between them. They were hard and real and fixed to earth.

  In the morning, they found him sprawled in a drift, outside the school gate. His fingers were thrust into a crack between the stones.

  THINGS OF NIGHTMARE

  For two days, Earl hovered between life and death. They wrapped him in blankets and laid him in a bed by the fire in Master Greenhow's study. A doctor was summoned, but he could say only that the boy was suffering from extre
me exposure. Keep him warm, he advised, but only time would tell if he lived or died.

  Gradually, however, his breathing became stronger, and faint color returned to his cheeks. The thin hands lying pale against the blankets were no longer clammy and cold.

  He regained consciousness but, despite questioning, had little to say. It seemed he had gone out into the hills, as he often did, and had become lost in the blizzard. It was a miracle he'd found his way back at all.

  But the recovery was not even. He soon fell into a fever and for several days floated in and out of delirium. Whenever they could, Heather and Welly visited him; but he was always either sleeping fitfully or wracked with fever, tossing about and babbling strange words.

  On the fifth day, the fever broke. When his friends came, they found him propped up in bed, gazing into the low bank of flames that flickered in the stone fireplace. He turned his head when he heard them and smiled wanly. “They say you've come every day.”

  “We have,” Heather said as they hurried to him. “And it's about time we found you looking better. You've had us worried, you know.”

  Welly pulled up a chair for himself, and Heather sat down on the foot of the bed. For a while they said nothing. The firelight played warmly over their faces and on the backs of books on the headmaster's shelves.

  Twisting her braid, Heather said, “Earl, the masters are using you as an object lesson against doing stupid things. But you have too good a head on your shoulders to just go out and get lost in a storm. What really happened?”

  Earl coughed and nodded weakly. “I wish that had been what happened.” He looked at the two of them a moment, then back to the fire. “I can tell you, though, as much as I understand.

  “I went out because something compelled me. I don't know if it was from inside or outside. But something was going to happen, something that touched on me, on what I am. And I had to be there.”

  “Did you find it?” Welly asked.