Whispered Magics

  “She needs to learn to fit in,” Rick said. “In this world. Where we live.”

  I felt myself slipping over to his way of thinking, and groped for words, for one last argument. “What if,” I said. “What if those people from the other world find their way here, but they only have the one chance—and they offer the kids only the one chance to go back? Forever? What if we make them choose between us and that world? They’ve always come back, Rick. It’s love, not duty, that brings them back, but they don’t even know it, because they’ve never been forced to make that choice.”

  Rick slammed out of the garage, leaving me staring at R.J.’s little-boy bike.

  o0o

  I was in bed alone for hours, not sleeping, when Rick finally came in.

  “I waited until Alisha conked off,” he said, and drew in a shaky breath. “Damn! That kid racks up more under-the-covers reading time than I did when I was a kid, and I thought I was the world’s champ.”

  “You put the wand back?” I asked, sitting up.

  “Right under the bed.”

  I hugged my knees to my chest, feeling the emotional vertigo I’d felt when Lauren was first born, and I stared down at this child who had been inside me for so long. Now a separate being, whose memories would not be my memories. Whose life would not be my life.

  And Rick mused, “How much of my motivation was jealousy, and not just concern for their safety? I get a different answer at midnight than I do at noon.”

  “You mean, why didn’t it ever happen to me?”

  His smile was wry.

  o0o

  They were gone the next night, of course.

  It was raining hard outside, and I walked from room to silent room, touching their empty beds, their neatly lined up books and toys and personal treasures, the pictures on their walls. Lauren had made sketches of a girl’s face—Princess Elte? In R.J.’s room, the sketches were all of great birds, raptors with beaks and feathers of color combinations never seen in this world. He’d stored in jewelry boxes the feathers and rocks he’d brought back across that unimaginable divide.

  Alisha’s tidy powder-blue room gave nothing away.

  The next morning I was downstairs early, fixing pancakes, my heart light because I’d passed by the three rooms and heard kid-breathing in each.

  I almost dropped the spatula on the floor when I looked up and there was Alisha in her nightgown.

  She ran to me, gave me a hug round the waist. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

  “Thanks?” My heart started thumping again. “For pancakes?”

  “For putting it back,” she said. “I smelled your shampoo in my room that day, when the wand disappeared. But I didn’t tell the others. I didn’t want them to be mad.”

  I suddenly found the floor under my bottom. “Your dad put it back,” I said. “We were in it together. We didn’t mean to make you unhappy.”

  “I know.” Alisha sat down neatly on the floor next to me, cross-legged, and leaned against my arm, just as she had when she was a toddler. “We didn’t tell you because we knew you’d say no. Not to be mean. But out of grownup worry.”

  “We just want to keep you safe,” I said.

  She turned her face to look up at me, her eyes the color of Rick’s eyes, their shape so like my mother’s. “And we wanted to keep you safe.”

  “Ignorance is not real safety,” I pointed out. “It’s the mere illusion of safety.”

  Alisha gave me an unrepentant grin. “How many times have you said about us, they’re safer not knowing?” she retorted, and then she added,” That’s why we always go at midnight, and we’re only gone a couple of hours. We can do that because the time there doesn’t work like here.”

  “But another world. How can we set safety rules? We don’t know what happens.” I held her tightly against me.

  “You send us to school,” Alisha said, pulling away just a little, so she could look at me again. “You don’t know what happens there. Not really.”

  I thought back to my own school days, and then thought of recent media orgies, and felt my heart squeeze. “True. But we’re used to it. And habit and custom are probably the strongest rules we know. Can we go with you to the other world? Just to see it?” I asked.

  Alisha shook her head. “There’s a big spell. Prevents grownups, because of this big war in the past. Only kids can cross over—not even teenagers. One day we’ll be too old. I know you’ll be real sorry!”

  I tried to laugh. It wasn’t very successful, but we both smiled anyway. “It’s not every set of parents who have kids who cross worlds—you’ll have to give us time to get used to it.”

  She hugged me again, and flitted away to get dressed.

  o0o

  “R.J. has taken to telling me stories,” Rick said a few days later. Not—quite—admitting anything, just offering me these stories instead of me reading to him.”

  Only Lauren went about as it nothing were different, everything were normal. Keeping the other world secret was important to her, so we had to respect that and give her the space to keep it.

  o0o

  “Alisha told me more about magic,” I said that next week.

  The kids were gone again. A spectacular thunderstorm raged like battling dragons outside. We didn’t even try to sleep. We sat in the kitchen across from each other, hands cradling mugs of hot chocolate. Rick had put marshmallows in it, and whipped cream, and just enough cinnamon to give off a delicious scent.

  “Magic.” He shook his head.

  “The amazing thing is, it sounds a lot like the basic principles of engineering.”

  “I think R.J. has learned how to turn himself into a bird,” Rick said, stirring the marshmallows round and round with his finger. “They fly in a flock, and watch for the Grundles, who I guess have a bad case of What’s-yours-is-mine as far as other kingdoms are concerned.” His smile faded, and he shook his head. “Nothing will be the same again, Mary—we can’t even pretend to be a normal family.”

  “Is anybody?” I asked. “I mean, really?”

  What is normal?

  We live in our houses and follow schedules and pick jobs that are sensible and steady and keep the bills paid, but in my dreams I fly, as I did when I was small.

  “The universe is still out there, just beyond the palm trees and malls and freeways,” I said. “And the truth is we still don’t really know the rules.”

  What we do know is that we love our children, will always love them, until the stars have burned away to ash, and though parents are not issued experience along with our babies’ birth certificates, we learn a little wisdom and a lot of compromise as the children grow.

  Rick said slowly, “Well, I hope Lauren and her sword-swinging princess pal are kicking some serious Grundle butt.”

  We remember how to laugh.

  The Glass Slipper

  We’d just stepped off the school bus and were starting up the long hill toward home. We passed a couple of old storefronts and had reached the vacant lot when all four of us saw a flash of gold in the gutter right below our feet.

  “Hey!” Lissa exclaimed.

  “What’s that?” Nikki yelled.

  I crouched down on the edge of the curb, poking at the trash that the rain had piled up in the gutter. In the midst of the withered leaves and soggy papers and mud gleamed a roundish thing, kind of like an extra-large gold coin. As the other three watched, I picked it up and shook it off.

  “What is it, Margo, a badge or something?” Pat asked.

  “I don’t know, but I like it,” I said. Sunlight glanced down between a couple of clouds and made the thing glitter and shine so it looked like liquid flame in my hand. It would be great in my collection of Weird Things, I decided—if no one else wanted it.

  “It’s pretty,” Lissa said, touching it daintily. “I wonder who lost it?”

  “Is that carving on it?” Nikki pushed her curly black hair out of her eyes as she peered down at my hand. “It looks like something is written on i
t.”

  “No, it’s leaves,” Lissa said, setting her backpack on the sidewalk and bending over my hand.

  I tipped my palm so everyone could see the thing. The glitter was so bright it almost hurt my eyes.

  Lissa gasped. “There are words on it! Look . . . it’s kind of old-fashioned, but I can read it. Here’s an ‘I’, and there’s ‘molder’ —”

  “Holder,” Nikki said. She grabbed my fingers in her strong brown hand, staring down at the talisman, then up at us, a funny look on her round face. “It says, ‘I grant the holder one wish’.”

  “Whoa,” I said, feeling kind of like little electrical shocks were zinging through my entire body. Had I, Margo O’Toole, found real magic at last? “Lemme see—” Nikki let go of my hand and I nearly smacked myself in the face. “You’re right,” I said, examining the fancy letters, which looked like something from a fairy tale book.

  “D’ you think it’s real?’ Nikki asked, rubbing her hands.

  “No way,” Pat said, crossing her arms. “Toss it. It’s all gross with mud and gunk, so it’s probably crawling with germs.”

  “If you do, it’s mine,” Nikki said. “In fact, didn’t I see it first?”

  “We all saw it at the same time,” Lissa said quickly, flinging her blonde braids over her shoulders. “You know we did. Margo just picked it up first.”

  Nikki grinned at me. “But if you don’t want it—”

  “Who said I didn’t want it?” I retorted quickly. “That was Pat.”

  Everyone looked at Pat. All four of us girls are the same age, and we live on the same block in a not-so-safe part of the city. We’ve been going back and forth from school together for several years, because we aren’t allowed to go alone. Pat’s the tallest, and sometimes it feels like she’s the oldest. Her lips were pressed together in a familiar line, and her dark eyes were, well, austere.

  “You guys, it’s not going to work. Let’s get home before we get into trouble,” Pat said. She sent a worried look up the street.

  “Just a sec.” I turned it over in my hand. “Well, it’s not like there’s a name or address on it. I say finders keepers.”

  “We can make a wish first and then throw it away.” Lissa looked my way, wrinkling her nose. “And after that, you can wash your hands.”

  “Let’s go.” Pat’s voice was sharp. “I can’t believe you’re messing with that thing at all.”

  Nikki and Lissa gaped at her. They were obviously thinking, was this really good old Pat, who was always so quiet and fair, and so kind she couldn’t even step on bugs?

  I knew she hated any mention of magic these days, but I couldn’t tell them that.

  “So, if we only get one wish,” Nikki said, “we better think a little.”

  “If it’s even real,” I said, sneaking a look at Pat.

  It didn’t help. “I can’t believe you dummies,” she muttered, and whirled around so all we saw was her back. Next to us was a weed-choked vacant lot, left over from a fire. Stalking in the direction of a charred old tree stump right in the middle, she yelled over her shoulder, “I’ll get started on my homework while you waste your time on that thing.”

  We all watched her march through the wet weeds, drop down onto the tree stump, and yank her notebook out of her backpack. Lissa and Nikki turned back to me and shrugged, looking down at the talisman. Nikki’s brow puckered, and Lissa threw her braids back. “What do you think? Should we wish for a thousand wishes?” she suggested.

  “I’ve never read a story where that worked,” I said. “The magic might just split up a thousand ways and you’ll get a little of each wish—like just the front porch if you wish for a mansion, or if you want a really cool pair of shoes, you’ll wind up with half a shoelace.”

  Nikki gave a loud snort. “That’s one thing I really hate—those stupid stories where the person is granted a wish and goes for something that seems perfectly okay, but then it turns out to be a total disaster.”

  Lissa bit her lip and did a little jazz step, backing away. “You think that thing is going to zap us? It was in the gutter, after all. Maybe it zapped someone else.”

  I thought over all the magic stories I’d ever read—and I’ve read a lot. “Someone might have tossed it,” I said, “but then maybe, after it grants its wish, it might just kind of jump into space and land anywhere.”

  “That’s one big jump, Margo.” Nikki grinned sourly as she looked around at the familiar run-down apartment buildings and crummy old stores. “I haven’t heard of any sudden millionaires in this neighborhood.”

  “Is that what we should wish?” Lissa asked. “For a million bucks?”

  “Or a billion?” Nikki added, closing her eyes.

  For about ten seconds, it felt great. I thought about my mom and me getting away from our dinky apartment and buying a house with my share of the money. A mansion! With an entire theme park in the yard. And a limousine—for each of us.

  Then I thought about what would happen if we couldn’t prove how we’d gotten the money. “I wonder if the IRS would believe us,” I said. “The FBI sure won’t.”

  “Who says the IRS would have to know?” Lissa demanded. “We’ll keep it a secret, of course.”

  “Margo’s right.” Nikki threw her backpack down next to Lissa’s and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Anybody who suddenly spends big amounts of money gets investigated by nosy tax agents. I’ve seen it in a million detective shows. They’ll think we’re with some kind of creepy gang.”

  “We won’t spend big amounts.” Lissa fluttered her hands, turning a pirouette. Then she stopped and sighed. “But then, even if we spend tiny amounts, we’ll get investigated by nosy families. At least, I sure will.”

  “Me, too,” Nikki grumped. “Heck—I buy a single candy bar with my babysitting money, and my mom wants to know why the money didn’t go into my college fund.”

  I closed my fingers over the talisman. “I’m just wondering if each of us might get a wish,” I said. “I mean, if I wish, then hand it off to you, Nikki—you’d be the new holder. Then to Lissa.” I was thinking, And if it really works, we could give it to Pat.

  “But it might disappear,” Nikki said, toeing the trash in the gutter, as if another talisman might be uncovered. A car hissed by through the wet street and Nikki jumped back from the splash.

  “Let’s agree on the first wish,” Lissa said. “If it stays, then we agree on the other wishes.”

  “Fair’s fair,” Nikki said, kicking mud off her shoe.

  “Okay,” I said. “So what’ll it be?”

  “A mansion, maybe?” Nikki threw her arms wide. “Everyone has her own room. No, two rooms. Five! A bathtub like a swimming pool for each!”

  Lissa closed her eyes and sighed. I grinned, thinking again of royal palaces with rooms and rooms of fun stuff to do.

  But then Nikki snorted again and said, “Wait a minute. It’s only one wish, you hogs.”

  “What?” Lissa exclaimed.

  “We have one wish,” Nikki repeated, looking from one of us to the other, her brown eyes wary. “If we wish for a palace, we might get one, but I bet it doesn’t come with furniture. And even if it did—” She made a terrible face. “—who’s going to clean up a million rooms? Not me! It’s bad enough being stuck with cleaning our little place when my mom’s too tired.”

  “And who’s going to let a kid keep a palace in the middle of the city?” Lissa said, shrugging her shoulders.

  I groaned. “I can’t think of anything that won’t backfire. Like, if we wish for an unending supply of ice cream—”

  “—We end up barfing at the sight of it,” Lissa said. “I just thought of that as well.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Maybe we could fix things in our lives,” Nikki said slowly. “All four of us have had divorces happen in our families. Maybe it would work for all of us—even Pat—if we wished our parents were back together again, and all happy.”

  We looked at each other. Lissa t
urned another slow pirouette, then faced Nikki. “I hate to say it, but do you really want your dad back?”

  Nikki’s head dropped, and her hair swung forward and covered her face. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I didn’t have to. The few times her dad had visited, it always ended up with him getting drunk and though Nikki never complained in front of me, I think her dad was pretty mean to Nikki and her brothers and sisters.

  She looked up. “I don’t, but my mom might. At least, she’d like another paycheck, or the child support he owes us, or something.”

  Lissa said, “I like my step-parents now. If the magic brought my parents together again, what would happen to my half-brother Sean, since his father is my stepdad, and how about the new baby my stepmom is expecting?”

  I’d been thinking while they talked, and I said, “In the stories, forcing a change onto someone else’s life always turns out rotten. Even if you did it for the best reasons.”

  “It would be a good thing in Pat’s family,” Nikki said seriously. “I mean, except for my dad, who’s just a flake, at least all our parents want us. Hers don’t even want her anymore—and that aunt of hers is mean. She just uses her for a maid and a babysitter.”

  “Which makes it extra rotten,” Lissa added, “because there’s no one in the world who works harder, at school or home, than Pat.”

  “Or is more fair to other people.”

  “I just don’t see why she’s so mad,” Lissa added, whirling in another pirouette, and then stopping to look at Pat on her tree stump.

  I opened my hand again and stared down at the talisman, thinking hard. Pat and I lived next door to each other so we’d spent a lot of time together. When we were little, we’d acted out the adventure stories we read and loved. I’d started collecting Weird Things in first grade, and Pat used to help me—we always hoped one of them would turn out to be left by aliens, or would transport us to another world. Then the problems started at Pat’s home, and trying to test the magic from books to see if it was real turned from a game into a kind of quest.

  Lissa and Nikki knew about my Weird Things collection, but not about the quest for real magic. I thought about how in fourth grade Pat and I used to run into thick fog banks, hoping they’d turn out to be a magic gateway to Middle Earth, and how we tried to open the backs of our closets to see if we could get to Narnia.