Shadowland

him! He's going to — '

    The sparrow came to rest on the knee of the magician on the left.

    'The young man is a magician, ladies and gentlemen,' Collins said through the mask of Herbie Butter. 'This part of the performance is concluded.' He tenderly reached forward and closed his fingers about.the spar­row's body, and his companions faded into dark pools cast on the stage by opposed spotlights. 'My friends in the audience, this young man's pet has given his life so that his master may advance another stage.'

    He's what you call a stooge, someone whispered behind Tom. You'll see. It's all part of the act.

Collins stood up from the owl chair, gripping the sparrow in his right hand and holding it out, brandishing it. 'You see before you a real bird,' he caressingly intoned. 'You have seen it fly. What is it? A boy's pet, a winged rodent, or a messenger of spirit? You have heard how magical birds aid their masters in quests and divina­tions, you know how they roam widely and freely in the world, bringing rumors of goodness here and there, soaring above what holds us to our earthly existences — ladies and gentlemen, aren't birds our very image of the magical?' He thrust forward the bird, and it — Del — poured out a cascade of melody unknown to any sparrow, as though its whole body had been filled with leaping song.

    Oh, Del. That's you. And you're not afraid.

'You see — a special bird. Does it not deserve a place in the eternal?'

    Still the heartbreaking cascade of melody erupted from the captured sparrow.

    'Do I need my fiddlers three?'

    'NO!' bellowed the audience of beasts.

    'Do I need my pipe and my bowl?'

    'NO!'

    'No. You have it, ladies and gentlemen. You compre­hend. The singing bird is magic itself. It is indeed the messenger of spirit. And it could sing, I assure you, any melody you called out — but it has already surpassed such vulgar tricks. So I propose to give this living spirit messenger, with your permission, ladies and gentlemen of the perfect audience, its final form. Its ultimate form.'

    'No!' Tom shouted, echoing the roars of the audience.

    'Yes.' Collins smiled down at him and released the bird. The song cascaded fully out, spearing Tom with what Del was bringing forth from his trapped soul, the liquid and overflowing song which was Del's only speech. Del ascended an inch above the magician's hand and

    no no no no-please —

froze, shooting out a spray of refracted colors, was silent, the miraculous song cut off in the middle of an ascending note; the ghost of the note sailed into the ceiling; and a glass bird fell back into the magician's hands.

    Del.

'You are in Shadowland, boy,' Collins said. 'You are part of the performance. You cannot leave.' He bent forward, and Tom stepped up to stand before him, afraid that he would drop what Del had become as Del had deliberately shattered the Ventnor owl. The audience ceased its roaring. Tom vaguely saw Rose coming toward him with an expression of total dismay — We can't do it, Tom, I thought we could but I was wrong, we'll always be here — and tremblingly took the glass sparrow from Collins' hands.

    'Now for your own conclusion,' Collins said. 'You know it's over, don't you? Look. Our audience has gone home.'

    Tom did not have to look. He knew the seats were empty now, waiting for the next repeat performance and the next after that.

    'Rose is already mine,' Collins said. 'And so are you, but you don't know it yet.'

    The lights snapped off. Collins' fingers brushed his own, and the glass sparrow was filled with glowing many-colored light.

29

Tom stepped backward in the punctured darkness, aware after a moment of blinding pain that the magician had healed his wounds. In the moment of pain, the glass sparrow had jumped out of his hand and landed safely on the carpet before the stage, where its inner light darkened and died.

    The handkerchieves fell from his hands.

    'Tom?'

    'Wait,' he said, and picked up the glass sparrow. No light was left in it.

    'Now it is your time, apprentice,' Collins whispered.

    'Why did you heal me?' Rose found his waist, her arm circled him, and they both backed in lockstep into the first row of seats.

    'I want you as you came,' Collins said. 'Aura. I don't want you to have the aura of a wounded fawn. I want the original Tom Flanagan, complete in every aspect — the shining boy.'

    Tom pushed Rose sideways, toward where he remem­bered the door was placed.

    'You can see me, can't you?' Collins whispered. 'Even in the dark, boy? I can see you perfectly well.'

    And he could see the magician, for he was wrapped in a dazzling, rippling band of color.

    'Del was not enough. The other messenger demands you.'

    'Or you,' Tom said. He held up his right hand. It was in darkness, but ribbons of light ran about it. Rose sucked in her breath, terrified.

    'You've frightened our dear little Rose. She's never seen you in full dress before. Never seen your choir robes. But then, you haven't either, have you?'

    'I'm as good as you are,' Tom said, knowing he was not.

    The magician ripped off the wig and sent it sailing toward the stage, where first it glimmered and then dimmed like a cheap lightbulb.

    'Speckle John thought so too.'

    CRASH! Another deafening, destroying wingbeat.

    'The owl wants to be fed.'

    Tom made sure of his grip on the glass sparrow with one hand; clamped Rose's wrist with the other and gave a signaling tug; and ran.

30

Behind him in the empty theater Collins started to laugh, and Rose went only a few steps before she said, 'I can't. I can't run. You go. I'm his anyway.'

    'You won't stay.' He yanked her along behind him and pulled her through the open door.

    'We can't get away.'

    He looked past Rose and saw a flickering outline coming calmly, inexorably toward the door.

    My little girl is right. Collins was feeling inside his mind as he had felt inside Skeleton's. You cannot. Look at me.

The outline blazed like a tightningbolt, so strongly that purple and red. radiance flashed through the door and made the wall opposite momentarily gleam like a neon sign.

    You will be at home in Shadowland, Tom. I am your father and mother now.

'Just come on,' he said, and dragged her down the hall. She had begun to cry: not from fear, he knew. From pain. 'Hurry,' he commanded.

    They had exactly one chance, Tom thought. An impos­sible chance, but their only one. If Collins could send a fishing line into his mind, he could send one back. Burn that ball back — Skeleton had said it, dredging up what must have been some miserable childhood memory. Okay, I'll burn that ball back. I'll take off his head with it.

    Rose sobbed with every step.

    'Only a little more. Only a few more feet.' He felt for the light switch on the wall outside the kitchen, and his fingers ran over ribbed plastic. 'There.' Yellow light fell on them. '

    The curled posters, the shattered glass. The carpet had been singed into black popcorn. Big oval blisters bulged from the walls, surrounded by meteor showers of smaller, round blisters.

    No need for shadows now.