What the Night Knows (with bonus novella Darkness Under the Sun)

referred to a psychiatrist. John was not embarrassed at all for himself, but for Father Bill.

Somehow they were chatting about the weather again, and then about the latest oil crisis and the cost of gasoline.

Soon John was shepherded out of the office, along the hallway, to the front door in a cloud of earnest sophisms, sincere platitudes, and heartfelt encouragements.

Alone on the front porch, he stood at the head of the steps, buttoning the collar of his raincoat and putting up the hood.

A jacket of sleet had begun to encase some of the black limbs of the bare trees, the ice like the ivory shell in a bone scan, the bark like malignant matter in the marrow.

Sleet slanting through the day added no glitter to the scene, as if the ice pellets had formed from dark water.

Just twenty-three days until November seventh. Just fifty-six days until December tenth.

43

AS THE DAYS PASSED FOLLOWING THE ENCOUNTER IN THE guest bedroom, Naomi’s secret gradually lost some of its luster, though she polished it with her imagination so regularly and so vigorously that it should have been as bright as a bejeweled diadem. Over and over, she relived the incident, sometimes with fabulous elaborations and with such hot excitement that the memory melted like a buttery candle, dissolved into a scintillating puddle of incoherent fantasy and pure delight. At other times, in the reliving, the events in and around the window seat struck her as too pat, almost scripted, wooden, even goofball on close examination.

But wasn’t it shamelessly ungrateful to wish all her life for a moment of magical revelation and then to doubt its validity when at long last the wish was granted? By worrying that the assassins-of-the-Apocalypse-and-the- imperiled-kingdom rap seemed just a smidgen trite, wasn’t she calling Melody a liar? And when you began asking yourself questions like this, as though you were both the detective and the suspect, wasn’t that a sure sign that you already knew the answers and didn’t much like them? Well, wasn’t it? Well?

By the morning of October sixteenth, twelve exhausting secret-keeping days after Melody’s visit, Naomi realized that all her doubts sprang from a single source: the acts of magic that Melody performed. When you thought hard about them, the opening-and-closing drawers and the flying book weren’t so fall-down-in-amazement magical.

Indeed, they were not magical at all. Turning a pumpkin into an elegant horse-drawn coach was magic. Transforming a chameleon into a tiny human being with a seven-word spell was magic. The events in the guest bedroom were mere phenomena. Paranormal, yes. Magical, no. Like dowsing successfully for water was a phenomenon but not magic.

Melody was no Merlin or Gandalf. She certainly possessed some kind of power, you couldn’t deny that, but it wasn’t a talent for magic so fabulous that recruiters from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry would ever be beating down her door. The business with the dresser drawers and the violence with which the book flew across the guest room and slammed into the wall—that seemed to be more like the work of a poltergeist. Paranormal phenomena lacked the charm and the finesse of real magic.

By the afternoon of the sixteenth, when Walter Nash drove Naomi to junior-orchestra practice at the civic auditorium, she was a mess. Not physically, of course. Whether or not she might be destined to inherit a kingdom of magic, she would always brush her hair a hundred strokes every day, maintain clean teeth, and that kind of stuff. Her clothes weren’t a mess. She wore a blue skirt and matching blazer with a crisp white blouse and a smashing blue beret with a furry red pompon, so she felt stylish but not overdressed. She believed that she looked very much like a first-chair flautist, which was in fact her position in the junior orchestra. She was a mess mentally because she couldn’t stop tearing apart the story Melody told her, examining it critically piece by piece, even though she wanted to believe.

Practice went well enough, but Naomi didn’t feel the music all the way down in her bones as she usually did. In one piece, she had a modest solo passage, and the conductor, Mr. Hummelstein, praised her performance. But Mr. Hummelstein was old, and while there wasn’t anything wildly wrong with being old, he was one of those old men with absolute forests of hair bristling from his ears. So when he complimented your playing, you couldn’t bask in the praise because you couldn’t be sure that he had heard you clearly.

During a twenty-minute break between two fifty-minute practice sessions, the young musicians always socialized. Naomi was usually a fiend for socializing. She could spin through a chattering crowd with all the energy of—but with far more refined social graces than—a whirling dervish. On this occasion, however, she was subdued, as distracted by her Melody dilemma as she was when participating in the orchestra rehearsal.

At the end of the second session, after she packed up her flute, as Naomi made her way up the inclined center aisle of the auditorium, toward the lobby, Melody was suddenly walking at her side. No wind. No oak. Only Melody.

Surprised, Naomi said, “How did you just happen?”

“Please, m’lady, let’s keep moving,” Melody said. “I can see Walter right now, with remote viewing. He had no choice but to park at the hateful red curb. You don’t want him to be ticketed.”

“Remote viewing?”

“I can’t turn a pumpkin into a horse-drawn coach.”

That statement didn’t halt Naomi, although she gaped at Melody, speechless, as they continued along the aisle.

Speaking softly that others nearby might not hear, Melody said, “I can’t transform a chameleon into a tiny human being, either, but then, m’lady, please remember that I never claimed to be a sorceress or a white witch.”

Her mind racing back through the conversation in the guest room, twelve days previously, Naomi supposed this might be true.

Melody continued, “I only said that you are the one and true heir to a kingdom of bright magic. In your kingdom, you will regain magical abilities. But I am not of royal blood. Those of my humble station in the kingdom have only certain psychic abilities, such as remote viewing, some clairvoyance, and a little psychokinesis, which is the ability to move small objects—like your book—with the power of the mind.”

At the head of the aisle, Melody stepped out of the way of the departing musicians, into the pathway behind the last row of seats.

As Naomi joined her, the woman raised a handsome compact piece of luggage that she had been carrying at her side. “I am herewith consigning this attache case into your care, m’lady.”

Anyone else would have called it a briefcase, and the use of the elegant word attache—not to mention herewith—gave Naomi a little shiver of pleasure, renewing her sense that a fabulous adventure must be approaching.

As Naomi accepted the attache case, Melody said, “It contains items of a most magical nature that you will need on the glorious night we travel. You must guard them until then and allow no one to see them.”

“May I look in the case?”

“Later at home, yes. Not now. However, you must not unscrew the lid from the reliquary—that is the jar. The precious items in the jar must never come into contact with air until the moment they are needed. Otherwise, all will be lost.”

“You can trust me to be responsible with it,” Naomi said softly.

“You must swear to keep this secret, m’lady.”

“I do. I swear.”

“The lives of multitudes depend on your discretion.”

“Yes. Multitudes. I swear.”

“Finally, m’lady, you must put aside doubt. I’m not offended to be doubted. But when the time comes to make the great journey, you must have full confidence in me. One who doubts will not be able to fly between the worlds. One who doubts will not be able to return to her throne. If you doubt, you will be lost, you and your family, too, and all the people of your kingdom—all will be lost.”