The Magic Cottage

Midge didn't hesitate. She seemed eager to be back inside.

I followed less keenly.

To step into the weirdest room I'd ever seen.

THE PYRAMID ROOM

IT WAS IN the shape of a pyramid, the tapering walls steep and high, apexed so that there was no ceiling.

And black.

Even the floor was black.

Above us—ten feet above, at least—shone small recessed lights, one on each angled wall, their thin beams picked out by dust motes, striking downward like straight translucent bars, creating four soft-edged moons on the smooth floor. Their glow became substantial only when the door was closed behind us.

When that happened, the darkness beyond the pale neons became infinite.

I realized that the room above had to be part of the pyramid, the sloping walls cutting through the ceiling, maybe even piercing the ceiling above that one.

Only a single chair stood in the center of the floor, the light beams like four slender posts spaced around it.

'What d'you do in here—sharpen razor blades?'

Despite the lack of adequate light, I could tell my remark hadn't amused Mycroft. 'Just as a church spire is constructed to draw spiritual grace toward the congregation below, so the pyramid seeks to direct psychic energy,' he said. 'The shape is repeated beneath us, inverted, of course, so that the tip grazes the earth.'

He lowered himself into the chair, resting his hands on the short blunted handle of the cane. 'Midge, would you like to sit as before, and perhaps you'll do the same.' (He hadn't bothered to use my name.)

I wasn't keen on squatting at the Synergist's feet but it had, after all, been a long run through the forest. I followed Midge's example, though I declined the lotus position, preferring to lounge on one elbow, ankles crossed, and giving the impression of being quite relaxed about all this. Midge and I were between two light beams, and I twisted my neck to glimpse her profile, which was intense as she gazed up at Mycroft. There was the smell of incense about the place.

The Synergist leaned toward me. 'You failed to answer my question,' he said.

'Question?'

'Do you believe in Magic?'

'There's a coupla card tricks I know—'

He interrupted, although still not riled. (That can be irritating when you're being deliberately crass.) 'Can you comprehend Man as an identical counterpart to the universe and every force it holds, that the universe itself is no more and certainly no less than an infinitesimal human organism? That the energy driving and governing the universe is the same energy contained within ourselves? Can you understand that Man, with this inner knowledge, could learn to transcend all material limits, and eventually time and space itself?'

I wasn't sure if he was expecting an answer, but I gave him one anyway, maintaining the crassness for my own pleasure and maybe in the hope of piercing his smooth veneer.

'I can't even understand the question,' I replied.

'No, of course not. Perhaps I've overestimated your intelligence.'

There it was, the first chink. I nodded grimly to myself, appreciating the insult.

'Nonetheless,' he went on, his eyes lost in shadow, 'I'm sure it's not beyond you to realize that human knowledge purposely confines itself to a limited reality, one that it doesn't have to fear, and one that scientists and material philosophers show us to be true. Sadly, we choose to see only the least important actuality. The other realities around us—and within us—have tended to be ignored for the last few hundred years.'

'No kidding.'

His hands grasped the metal cane-top just a fraction more tightly. 'Except that now, recently, the reality of precognition, extrasensory perception and psychokinesis has become accepted by even the most ardent of skeptics.

Those hidden powers that have been rejected for so long by scientists are now the subject of scientific study.'

I was becoming impatient. 'I don't get what this has to do with so-called Magic.'

'Surely you can see where I'm leading? Those powers that are inevitably being recognized by the most pragmatic sectors of our society were once considered Magical or supernatural. The view used to be that such powers set aside the natural order of nature, but that was a huge misconception: Magicians merely strive to discover those hidden forces and to work through them and with them, whether they are part of us or part of the whole.'

Much as I tried to remain aloof from all this, I have to admit Mycroft was getting through to me. No, I don't mean I followed what he was saying, but his voice had become soothingly persuasive, almost mesmeric (have you ever been hypnotized? You know what's going on, but you don't realize what's happening), the oddness of the room, with its smell of incense and the soft downcast lights, providing helpful special effects. It all had to be consciously resisted.

I pretended a yawn.

He pretended he hadn't noticed.

'We must learn in stages, first casting off restraints imposed upon us since birth, becoming refreshed again. Convention, rationalism, materialism, our principles and ethics: these are nothing more than psychological screens. We must become children again, innocent of such influences. The very young believe in Magic until they are influenced otherwise. The beliefs of unenlightened maturity must be overturned, and the shackling doctrines of religion thwarted because religion reserves divine power for God alone, whereas the way of Magic offers divine power for all.'

I cringed inwardly, waiting for a thunderbolt to strike. Disappointingly, it didn't.

'Each step the initiate takes must be experienced and mastered, every new mystery revealed must be contemplated, each developing phase considered. And perhaps the first and most important secret is that which lies within ourselves.'

He leaned forward so that his chin very nearly rested on his hands clutched over the cane, and his voice lowered.

'That is,' he said gravely and confidentially, 'the mystery of our own energy, our own astral forces in the earth itself, and so, too, the infinite forces of the universe. A Magician, my friend, is always in search of those hidden links.'

He straightened once again, his face gone to stone. My throat was dry.

'And when those links are discovered,' he added in the same low voice, 'they may be employed for the Magician's purposes.'

He gave me time for it to sink in.

'All that to pull a rabbit out of a hat?' I said.

He allowed a cold smile.

'All that to discover our true self and the veiled power we hold. There is nothing more basic, nor more transcendent. With that knowledge, a man has access to the limitless forces of his own will. He can evoke an imagination so concentrated and so vivid that it can create a reality in the astral light.'

He pointed the tip of his cane at the floor, close to my leg.

'That reality may be reflected in this physical world, if we so wish.'

My rabbit appeared on the spot he was pointing at.

I jumped back and Midge gasped.

The rabbit twitched its nose.

Tentatively, I reached toward the white furry bundle, not believing it was real.

And snatched my hand back when it turned into a black, wicked-toothed rat. I hate bloody rats.