Thorn and Snail were gawping up at him, already backing away.
'Freak!' Snail screamed.
Tom moaned. The birch swung up out of its hole, trailing a four-foot-long ball of crowded roots and packed earth. It hung in the air, parallel to him, and Tom almost heard the birch howling in pain and shock. He dropped it as he would a dying mouse or rabbit, some small life he had injured; self-loathing filled him. Not knowing why, he mentally saw an uprooted dandelion, and imagined blood pouring across his hands.
Thorn and Snail were disappearing back into the woods when he fell to the asphalt.
4
Eventually Tom picked himself up and tottered back down the sloping grass. Shadowland gleamed at him, burnished by the strong light. The house looked utterly new. The brick steps beckoned, the doorknob pleaded to be touched. Tom's head pounded.
An unmistakable rush of welcome warm air and fragrance washed over him.
Tom went down the hall, took the short side corridor, and threw open the door to the forbidden room. No wise, spectacled face looked up at him; the room was neither a crowded study nor an underground staff room. It was bare. Silvery-gray walls; glossy white trim around the windows, a dark gray carpet. Empty of life, the room called him in.
An invisible scene hovered between those walls, waiting for him to enter so that it could spring into life.
Tom backed away from the invisible scene — he could almost hear the room exhale its disappointment. Or something in the room . . . some frustrated giant, turning away . . . Tom closed the door.
And continued down the hall to the Little Theater. The brass plate on the door was no longer blank: now three words and a date had been engraved on it:
Tom cracked the door open, and the audience in the mural stared down at him with their varying expressions of pleasure, amusement, cynicism, and greed. Of course. Just inside the door, he was so close to the stage as to be nearly on it. He backed out.
He went a few steps down the hall and let himself into the big theater. It too shone; even the banked seats were lustrous. Tom walked deeper into the theater. The curtains had been pulled back from the stage. Polished wood led to a blank white wall. Ropes dangled at varying heights above the wood.
Tom went halfway up an aisle and sat in one of the padded seats. He wished he could lead Rose and Del out of Shadowland that afternoon: he did not want to see anything of Collins' farewell performance. That would contain more than one farewell, he knew. He knew that the way he knew his own senses.
These too seemed to have taken part in the general change within him. It was as if his senses had been tuned and burnished. All day, he had seen and heard with great clarity. Since he and Del had returned to the house, this intensity of perception had increased. Ordinary, almost inaudible sounds needled into him, full of substance. Oddest of all had been his awareness of Del, sleeping in his bed: that dot of warmth. He was still conscious of it. Del shone for him.
Then Tom felt some shift in the house, a movement of mass and air as if a door had been opened. The house had rearranged itself to admit a newcomer. Tom could half-hear the blood surging through the newcomer's body; his muscles began to tense. He knew it was Coleman Collins. The magician was waiting for him. He was somewhere in the theater, though nowhere he could be found by ordinary search.
Tom left the chair and walked down the aisle toward the empty stage. What was it Collins had said about wizards, in the story about the sparrows? They gave you what you asked for, but they made you pay for it.
He crossed the wide area before the stage and went toward the farthest aisle. Tom remembered seeing those green walls forming around him, flying together tike pieces of clouds. The white columns reminded him of the bars of the gate — solid uprights between open spaces. Then he knew where the magician was.
Feeling foolish but knowing he was right, Tom pressed his palm to the wall. For an instant he felt solid plaster, slightly cooler than his hand. Then it was as if the molecules of the plaster loosened and began to drift apart. The wall grew wanner; for a millisecond the plaster seemed wet. Then only the color was there, solid- looking, but nothing but color. His hand had gone inward up to the wrist. On the other side of the wall of color, his fingers were dimly, greenly visible. Tom followed his hand through the wall.
5
He was in an immense white space, his heart leaping. Coleman Collins sat in the owl chair regarding him with an affectionate sharpness. He wore a soft gray flannel suit and shining black shoes. A glass half-filled with neat whiskey sat on the arm of the chair beside his right elbow. 'I knew when I first heard your name,' Collins said, propping his chin on laced fingers, 'and I was certain when I first saw you. Congratulations. You must be feeling very proud of yourself.'
'I'm not.'
Collins smiled. 'You should be. You are the best for centuries, probably. When your studies have ended, you should be able to do and to have anything you want. In the meantime, I want to answer whatever questions you may have.' Collins lowered his hand and found the glass without looking at it. He sipped. 'Surely even an unwill ing bridegroom has a query or two.'
'Del thinks he was chosen,' Tom said.
'That's of no consequence to you.' Collins tipped his head and looked purely charming. It was like looking at Laker Broome trying to be charming; Tom read the magician's tension and excitement, half-heard the drumming of his pulse. 'In fact, I suggest that you can no longer afford to worry about matters like that. One of the perils of altitude, little bird — you can't see the lesser birds still trying to find their way out of the clouds.'
'But what's going to happen to Del when he finds out? I don't want him to find out.'
The magician shrugged, sipped again at the whiskey. 'I can tell you one thing. This is Del's last summer at Shadowland. It will not be yours. You will be here often, and stay long. That is how it must be, child. Neither of us has a choice.' He smiled again at Tom, and took a familiar envelope from a jacket pocket. 'Which brings me to this. Elena gave it to me, as you should have known she would. I couldn't let it go out, you know. I am still considering the insult to my hospitality.'
It was the letter to his mother, and Tom looked at it with dread. Collins was still smiling at him, holding the letter upright between two fingers. 'Let's dispose of it, shall we?'
A flame appeared at the envelope's topmost corner.
Collins held it until the growing flame was a quarter of an
inch from his fingers, then tossed the black burning thing
upward; it vanished into the flame, and then the flame
itself vanished, disappearing from the bottom up.
'Now that is no longer between us,' Collins said. 'And there shall be nothing like it in the future. Understand?'
'I understand.' Tom had gone very pale — somehow the letter had been proof to him that he would escape Shadowland.
'This is far more important to you than your schooling, boy. This is your real schooling. And in fact I want to show you something you are bound to ask me about sooner or later.' He bent down and retrieved a slim leather- bound book from beneath the chair. There was no title on cover or spine. 'This is the Book.
