Shadowland

    She smiled. 'It would be terrible if you didn't. I want to help, Tom. I want to help us.'

    Us. The word seemed to fall toward his heart, along with the darting half-bold, half-sly glances into his eyes.

    'Del thinks a lot of you,' he said.

    'I think a lot of Del.' The sentence put Del at a cliche's distance from her.

    'I mean, he cares about you.'

    'Del is really a little boy,' Rose said, looking straight at him, and Tom felt the moral universe shift about him, expanding too quickly for him to keep track of it. 'Physically he is a little boy. Mentally he has a lot of sophistication because of the way he was brought up, but actually you are a lot older than Del is. That was the first thing. I noticed when I met you. Besides that, you were so grumpy.'

    'Grumpy? I was nervous as a puppy!'

    She laughed; then, with her face turned fully toward him, she took his hand and leaned forward. She was blushing. 'Tom, my life has been so funny. . . . I'm asking you to rescue me, I guess — and that sounds so dumb, like a princess in a story. I hardly even know you, but I feel like we're close already. . . . You're going to have to talk Del into leaving his uncle, and it'll break his heart. . . . ' She leaned an inch closer, and in front of Tom her face filled the room, large and enigmatic and beautiful as a model's face on a billboard. When their lips met, Tom's whole being seemed concentrated in the few centimeters of skin that touched her mouth. By instinct but awkwardly he put his arms around her.

    She pulled back. 'You won't believe me, but the first time I saw you, I wanted to kiss you.'

    'I thought you and Del — '

    'Del is a little boy,' she repeated, and they kissed again. 'We can meet outside sometimes. I'll tell you how. I'll arrange it. And I already know when we can escape. Mr. Collins is planning some big show — some big thing — in a little while. If you and Del will help, we can all get away then.'

    'But where can we go?'

    'Into the village. From there, we can go anywhere. But we'd be safe in Hilly Vale.'

    'I have to get a letter out.'

    'Give it to Elena. She's the only one who goes to the village regularly. I think she'll mail it for you.' Rose stood up and smoothed out her skirt. She looked tense and slightly drawn. 'But be careful. And don't pay attention to anything you see me doing — I'm only doing it because I have to. Because he's making me do it. Just wait until you hear from me. Promise?'

    'Promise.'

    'And do you trust me?'

    'Yes. I do.'

    'We have to trust each other from now on.'

    Tom nodded, and she flickered a tentative smile at him and slipped away out the door.

    A minute later he stood on the balcony outside in the warm fragrant air. He watched her disappearing into the woods down beside the lake, and stayed on the balcony until he saw her entering one of the circles of light. She turned and waved; he waved back at her slight, deter­mined-looking figure.

10

After that he could not fall asleep again. He kept remembering her face swimming up before him, becom­ing more certain and beautiful the closer it came. That she had allowed him to kiss her was a blessing: it had not at all been like kissing Jenny Oliver or Diane Darling. Rose Armstrong was beyond his experience in a thousand incalculable ways. The unknown surrounded her, cast all of her words and gestures into relief — that yearning brooding uncertain beautiful face looming up before him, claiming him, not as much asking for trust as demanding it, had in some way been the essence of Shadowland. Certainly it was as unexpected as everything at Shadowland; as dreamlike, too, in its suddenness. And Rose Armstrong was much better at kissing than his earlier girlfriends. That, the sharp responsive physicality of her mouth, was anything but dreamlike. He lay in his narrow bed, wondering. What was she promising him? Del is just a little boy. He could not bear to think of Rose Armstrong in the company of Mr. Peet's brutes, but his mind perversely would not leave these pictures be: as soon as he closed his eyes, he saw Seed or Thorn pushing toward her, all belly and beard. Then he saw her as he had with Del, pulsing through the dark water.

    After half an hour he threw back his sheets and got up. He felt impatient, constrained by the room. With nothing else to do, he decided to write to his mother. Sheets of paper and envelopes were just under the flap of the desk. Still in his underwear, he sat and wrote.

Dear Mom,

    I miss you lots. I miss Dad too, just like he was still alive and pretty soon I could go home and see him again. I guess I'll feel like that for a long time.

    Del and I arrived safely, but the train before ours had a bad wreck. This is the strangest place anybody could be. Del's uncle is such a good magician that he can really mess up your mind. He keeps saying that I could be a good magician too, but I don't want to be like him.

    I want to come home. It's not just homesickness. Honest. If I can get us out of this place, could you arrange to be back home? I guess I won't be able to get a letter back from you for about two weeks, but could you please . . .

That was no good. He balled it up and threw it in the wastebasket.

    Dear Mom,

    I'll explain later, but Del and I have to get out of this house. Can you possibly cut your trip short and come back sooner than you planned? Send me a telegram. This is urgent. I'm not joking, and I'm not just homesick.

Love,

Tom

This he folded into an envelope, wrote the address of the London hotel where Rachel Flanagan was staying, printed 'airmail' and 'please forward' on it just in case, and put the envelope on top of the desk. He stared at it, knowing that it committed him to trying to get Del to leave Shadowland. Now he was truly the traitor the magician had said he was.

    But he could be a magician without Coleman Collins, and so could Del. You didn't have to lock yourself up in a fortress and apprentice yourself to an alcoholic mad­man. . . . These thoughts bounced against an area in himself which he did not wish to acknowledge, but which was there all the same; part of him was fascinated by Shadowland, and intrigued by the powers Coleman Col­lins might be able to find in him. You are exactly the right age. . . . Two and a half months isn't long enough. This was still tempting: after seeing Collins at work, any career but that of magician seemed flat to him.

    Tom dressed, knowing that he could not sleep. He put the envelope in his wallet, the wallet back in his hip pocket. For a time he paced around the austere room, knowing that there was something he had intended to do, something suggested by a comment made before Rose Armstrong had sent everything but herself out of his mind, but not remembering what it was.

    He had wanted to look at something . . . That was as far as he got.

    Tom flopped down in the chair — the chair where she had sat — and picked up his book. He willed himself into Nero Wolfe's round of the orchid room, the kitchen, and office, but read only ten pages before he gave up. That orderly, talkative adult world was not his. His stomach growled. He decided to go downstairs and see what was in the refrigerator. Collins had not forbidden him that.

    He closed the door behind him and slipped down the hall. The magician's room was dark — what was it like in there, behind the swinging doors? As bleak as Tom's own room? Or would it look like Del's room at home, crowded with photographs and the apparatus of magic? He did not want to find out.

    Down the stairs, around the corner in darkness into the long hall. Scattered ceiling lights dimly shone. This time he remembered to stop before the posters.

    He was looking at one from the Gaiety Theater,' Dublin. A night of spectacle and enchantment, it said in ornate type. Halfway down the list of names Tom found herbie butter, the Amazing Mechanical Magician and Acrobat. Beneath that but in type of the same size was this line: Assisted by speckle john, master of black mystery. Beneath this, in slightly larger type: THRILL TO THEIR