Shadowland

    'Trance,' Tom said. 'Voice.'

    'That's right. Wonderful memory. While we're here, I want to thank you for all you've done for Del. He's needed someone like you for a long time.'

    A wave of sick feeling, disguised as friendliness, flowed from the magician, and Tom knew he was in deeper trouble than any the troll-like men could have caused him.

    'Would you like to see Ventriloquism? That's fun. I always enjoy Ventriloquism.' He smiled down at the boy as they swayed along in the crowded train. 'This is all very elementary, of course. I hope you'll stay long enough for me to show you some of the more difficult things. It's all within your power, I assure you.' 'We'll be with you all summer.' 'Two and a half months is not long enough, little bird. Not nearly. Now. Where should that voice come from? Up there, I fancy.' He lifted his distinguished face and nodded at a grille set in the car's ceiling.

    Instantly a hysterical voice crackled out: 'EMER­GENCY! EMERGENCY! BRACE YOURSELVES AGAINST THE SEAT IN FRONT OF YOU! BRACE YOURSELVES. . . '

The magician was gone. A fat woman in the aisle beside Tom's seat shrieked; she had been holding a paper carton containing several cups of coffee. As she shrieked, the coffee sailed upward, spinning into the air.

    Now many were shrieking. Tom folded his head down between his knees and felt hot coffee spattering his back. The jolt knocked him off the seat entirely, and the noise of the wreck was a nail driven into his eardrums. He could see the woman staggering backward down the aisle, her face caught in an expression between terror and dismay. The railroad car lifted its nose into the air and began to tilt sideways. 'They broke my leg!' a man yelled. 'Jeeesus!' His yell was the last thing Tom heard before the sound of an explosion going off loud as a bomb a short distance down the track. 'Light,' came the voice of the magician. A shattering burst of whiteness, caused by another explosion, flashed through the car. Inches from Tom's head, a Dixie cup shot up into flame. Tom batted it away, but could not see where it went. 'Jeesus!' screeched the man with the broken leg. The uptilted car swayed far over to the right and began to topple.

    All about Tom, who was now lying faceup in the aisle, the burns on his back singing like an open wound, people groaned and screamed: the car sounded like a burning zoo.

    He gripped one of the seat supports and thought: I'm going to die here. Didn't a lot of people die?

When the car struck the ground, the screams inten­sified, became almost exalted.

9

Tom opened his eyes. He was lying in the hollow where Pease and Thorn and the others had labored over their badger-baiting. Coleman Collins, looking ruddy and healthy and ten years younger in his outdoorsy clothes, took a pull off a bottle and winked at him from where he sat beside the shredded mound.

    'That wasn't just magic,' Tom said.

    'What is 'just magic'?' The magician smiled at him. 'I'm sure there is no such thing. But you went to sleep. I imagine that you were dreaming.' He lifted a knee and extended an arm along it. He looked like a scoutmaster having a chat around the fire with a favored boy.

    'I was up there — ' Tom pointed. 'You said, 'All right. You've had your blood.' Then you saw me. And you said, 'There's another one to throw in the pit. Go to sleep, boy.''

    'Now I know you are tired,' Collins said, leaning against what was left of the mound. 'You have had a very long day. I promise you, I never said any of those things.'

    'Where are all the others?' Tom sat up and looked around the clearing. Firelight showed a mound of earth where the pit had been.

    'There are no others. There is just you and me. Which is, I assume, what you wanted.'

    'Mr. Peet,' Tom insisted. 'He was here. And a lot of others — with funny names, like a bunch of trolls. Thorn and Snail and Rock and Seed . . . You were all trying to get a badger to come out of its house. There were two dogs — Mr. Peet shot one of them.'

    'Did he, now?' The magician shifted his position against the mound and looked indulgently toward Tom.

    'I assumed that you followed me because you wanted to talk. You disobeyed me, that is true. But any good magician knows when to break the rules. And in doing so you demonstrated courage and intelligence, I thought — you were curious, you wanted to see what the terrain was like.'

    Terrain meant more than the land they sat on. Tom nodded.

    'I think also you must have read some of my posters — relics of my public career. Isn't that right?'

    'I noticed them,' Tom admitted. He thought he trusted Coleman Collins less than anyone else on earth.

    'You will hear all about it — this is to be the summer of my unburdening.' Collins drew up his knees and looked soberly at Tom over their tops, where he had knit his hands together. Suddenly he reminded Tom of Laker Broome. 'As for now, I want to say something about Del. Then there is a story I want you — only you — to hear. Then it will finally be your bedtime.

    'My nephew has had an unsettled life. He was on the verge of flunking out of Andover when the Hillmans moved. Now, you may not think much of the Hillmans — you see, I am being very frank with you — but for all their faults, they want to protect Del. And he does need protection. Without a good anchor, without a Tom Flanagan, he will pound himself against the rocks. He needs all my help, all your help too. Watch out for him. But also watch him.'

    'Watch him?'

    'To make sure he does not go off the deep end. Del does not have your healthy relationship with the world.' He drew his knees in tighter. 'Del stole that owl from Ventnor School. Had you guessed?'

    'No,' Tom said.

    'I heard about the theft from the Hillmans. They know he took it, too. But they did not want him expelled from yet another school.'

    'Another boy took it. Some kids saw him do it.'

    'Del wanted another boy to take it. Del is a magician too: a better one than he knows, though nothing like the magician you could be. Del stole that owl, no matter whose hands were around it. Watch out for Del. I know my nephew.'

    'That's plain crazy,' Tom said, though a tiny area of doubt had just opened up within him. 'And here's something else that's crazy — all that stuff about my being better than Del. Del is better than I'll ever be. Magic is all he really cares about.'

    'He is better at things you will learn very quickly. But you have within you powers you know nothing of, my bird.' He looked at Tom with a kind of fatherly omni­science. 'You are not convinced. Would you like proof, before your story? You would?' He turned his head. 'There is a fallen log over there — see it? I want you to pick it up.' When Tom began to stand, he said, 'Stay where you are. Pick it up with your mind. I will help you. Go on. Try it.'

    Tom saw the edge of the log just protruding into the clearing. It was one that Thorn had not thrown on the fire, perhaps three feet long, dry and gnarled. He thought of a pencil on his desk, jerking itself upward, at the end of one of Mr. Fitz-Hallan's classes.

    'Are you afraid to try?' Collins asked. 'Humor me. Inside yourself, say, Log, go up. And then imagine it lifting. Please try. Prove me wrong.'

    Tom wanted to say, I won't, but realized how childish it would sound. He closed his eyes and said to himself, Log, go up. He peeked: the log reassuringly sat on the grass.

    'I didn't know you were a coward,' said the magician.

    Tom kept his eyes open and thought about the end of the log rising. Still it did not move. Log, go up, he said to himself. Log, go up! The end of the log twitched, and he stared at Collins' amused face. 'A mouse?' said the magician. Up! Tom thought, suddenly full of rage, and knowing that it would not move. UP!

But the log obediently stood on end, as if someone had pulled a wire. UP! It rose and wavered in the air; then Tom felt a wave of helpless blackness invading his mind like nausea, and the log began to spin over and over, accelerating until it blurred. No. Enough, Tom said in his mind, and