Any Which Wall

by Laurel Snyder

  “I guess they’re to keep people out, not just in,” Susan suggested.

  “I don’t know,” said Henry, “but they’re way too high to climb. That’s for sure.”

  In one corner of the yard, pigs slumbered noisily in a great pile. One wakeful beast rooted in the dirt, though for what, nobody wanted to guess. Susan kicked the bone in the direction of the pigs and they stirred.

  Although the courtyard was a dismal, dingy, odorous place and the kids were freezing in the dank midnight air, the moon and the stars above the walls glittered with a special light. They looked somehow close to the ground, as though they were hanging just over the walls.

  Everyone gazed up, but after they had taken note of the stars and the moon (and the snoring and snorting swine), there wasn’t much to do, and they stood around, waiting for an adventure to happen to them. Henry inspected a broken wheelbarrow of sorts, and Susan stepped in a greenish puddle and pulled her foot out with a slurp. The slurp made the bad odor stronger.

  Finally, after nine minutes that felt like ninety, Emma stomped a foot and asked, “Where is everyone?”

  “Asleep, I guess,” replied Roy. “After all, it’s nighttime.” He yawned, as if on cue.

  “You mean, I won’t get to see anyone?” asked Emma, sounding despondent and maybe a little overtired.

  “Not unless someone’s having a nightmare or getting a midnight snack,” said Henry. “Man! Having magical adventures isn’t as fun as I thought it’d be. Let’s just go home.”

  But just as he said this, they all heard a funny sound, a hacking cough. It came from a low building (if you could call it a building) off to the right, a building they hadn’t noticed in the shadows. It was really just a small lean-to, a series of wooden planks propped against one of the stone walls of the yard. There was a dark hole of a doorway, and a faint glimmer came from within.

  The kids all froze.

  The coughing was followed by a mumble of funny words. Something like “deednir evelcyre vera uoysiht gnid aerera uoyfi.”

  “Maybe,” whispered Emma, “maybe we should go home. I won’t mind. I won’t need another wish or anything.”

  But Henry was already moving toward the door, so the others followed. Creeping closer, they saw a flicker and a wisp of smoke rising in the moonlight through the doorway in the lean-to. The others kept at a distance, but Henry went and stood a few feet from the doorway. “Someone’s awake, at least,” he whispered, “but listen to him—he’s either totally crazy or he doesn’t speak any English.”

  “Or both,” added Roy.

  “Maybe he’s contagious too,” murmured Susan warily.

  “Jeez,” said Henry. “Now is not the time to worry about germs.”

  Susan had already moved on to other concerns. “Do you think the magic doesn’t translate for us?” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?” asked Roy quietly.

  “I never thought about it before,” she whispered, “but you know how in books, kids who time-travel can always understand people in other countries, and in the past and stuff? Well, maybe our magic doesn’t do that, and if it doesn’t, we won’t be able to understand anything anyone says anywhere we go, which would be awful.”

  “You’ve got a point,” said Henry, craning his neck to see inside the hovel. “But wouldn’t they speak English in Camelot? It’s in England!”

  Perhaps he spoke too loudly, because just then a man burst through the smoky doorway—a wild-eyed man with a rat sitting on his shoulder. The man stared at Henry, and Henry stared back. The rat, who was missing half of its tail, stared too.

  “Hargh!” spat the man, coughing and hacking. The rat crawled up into the man’s beard, maybe to avoid getting wet. “Hargh!” coughed the man. He wore a dirty brown tunic. There were twigs and what looked to be a bird’s nest tangled in his long, matted hair, and his face was caked with mud. He was missing a number of teeth, and in one hand, he held a long, dark knife. It glinted in the moonlight.

  Roy froze.

  Emma squeaked.

  Susan turned to run.

  But Henry was stuck, close enough to smell the man (who did not smell as bad as you might think, given his dismal appearance—rather like a pile of old leaves). Henry felt a hand close on his shoulder. His stomach flipped.

  “Hargh!” The man coughed again and dry leaves flew from his ragged cloak onto the ground. Then he said, “Come!”

  Henry was paralyzed.

  The man cleared his throat, stood up perfectly straight, and said, in very proper English such as a grown-up actor might use in a very serious movie, “Please come, I haven’t time to wait.” Although his voice was pleasant, he was frightening to look at, running his tongue over his three visible teeth.

  Then Henry felt the man’s fingers like a claw on his arm, but he still did not move. His mind churned.

  “Hello?” the man asked, shaking Henry’s arm roughly. “Hello? Are you deaf?”

  “No!” called out Emma. “He’s not!”

  “Then all of you come NOW!” said the man, releasing Henry and turning to go back into his hovel. “Follow me, I say!” But when he looked back over his shoulder and saw all four kids still frozen in their tracks, he threw his knife emphatically to the ground. “Oh, this just won’t do!” he said. “What is wrong with the children of the future? Don’t they listen to their elders?”

  With a quick movement that caused the rat to tumble from his shoulder, the filthy man strode back over and grabbed hold of Henry’s arm again. “I said COME!” he shouted as he dragged Henry, stumbling and shocked, through the dark doorway.

  THE ADVENTURE had taken hold of Henry, so now Susan, Roy, and Emma took hold of the adventure! Susan arrived at the lean-to first and ducked inside, with the others close on her heels. In the odd dim light of the lean-to, they found Henry sitting in the corner on a lumpy pile of leaves and blankets.

  Henry jumped up when they entered, but the strange man blocked the doorway. He stood in the very center of the room, at a small table that was covered with herbs and leaves. A blue fire burned in a metal bowl before him. The filthy old fellow did not appear to be concerned with the entrance of Susan, Roy, and Emma behind him. He was chopping something and tossing bits into the bowl.

  “Fingers?” whispered Emma to Susan beside her. Susan did not reply.

  Nobody wanted to anger the man, but he was busy, distracted for now—and they couldn’t just stay put, could they? Henry looked up at the others and mouthed something, but it didn’t matter what he was trying to say because before anyone could act, the strange man spoke.

  “What are you called?” he said as he poured a trickle of water into the chopped fingers (or whatever they were) and stirred the mess together. “Your names. What are they?” He used a courteous tone, as though he had not just grabbed at Henry, as though he were not a filthy madman.

  Susan felt Emma’s cold hand creep into hers and she remembered that she was the oldest, so she stepped forward, on best behavior. She cleared her throat and said, “Pardon me, sir?”

  “You have names, don’t you? What are they? I knew to expect four children—my visions told me you’d be arriving—but I don’t know your names.” The filthy man turned around and handed Roy, Susan, and Emma each a dish full of chopped-up stuff, which only looked like soupy weeds and sticks, and not fingers after all. “My visions can be weak on details. You know how it is with visions.”

  When he leaned down to hand Emma her bowl, he winked, which made him seem friendly. Emma tried to wink back but only succeeded in squinting both eyes. The man chuckled. “What should I call you?” he asked, a smile lingering in a corner of his mouth.

  “Emma,” said Emma timidly. “Or something else if you want.”

  The man stepped back to look her up and down. He said, “No. Emma is fine. Suits you.”

  Feeling bolder, but still speaking softly, Emma confessed, “Actually, my name is Emily, Emily Rose O’Dell, but nobody calls me Emily because there are four Emi
lys in my class at school. It’s a very popular name.”

  “Why then, Emma is perfect,” said the man, “a great name!” He smiled, showing Emma his three teeth.

  For some reason, saying the word “great” made the man seem harmless, because nobody can smile and say “great” and still seem evil—even if they happen to be a filthy old man who smells like musty leaves and has three teeth and a terrible cough. Villains never think things are great, not even their own dastardly plots. Now the filthy old man seemed friendly, grinning gummily down at them, waiting for their names. The kids looked into their bowls. Were they supposed to drink it?

  Susan thought maybe she could just pretend to sip it, to be polite. “My name is Susan,” said Susan, starting to raise the shallow bowl to her lips.

  “No!” cried the man. “Don’t!”

  She lowered it again fast, sloshing as she did so. “I’m sorry. I thought—why? Is it poison?”

  The man barked a funny cough-laugh into his matted beard. “Hargh! Ha-ha-haw! No, no, it won’t hurt you, but it’ll taste like a moldy shoe.”

  Susan sniffed the bowl and discovered that it did smell something like a shoe.

  “Besides, I don’t have time to make more, so let’s not waste it.” He turned back to Henry and shoved a dish into his hands too. Henry cautiously edged around the table and rejoined the others.

  “What is it?” Susan peered into the dish.

  “First things first, Susan. I need all your names,” said the man insistently. “It’s only proper.”

  So Henry and Roy told him their names too.

  The man nodded at them. “Good, good.”

  Then Roy asked, “What about you, sir? What’s your name?”

  “Why, don’t you know? After all, it was your wish that brought us together.”

  “It was my wish,” said Emma proudly.

  “Well, then you should know,” said the man, patting her head. “Naturally, I’m Merlin.”

  Henry, Emma, Susan, and Roy, who had been expecting a wise-looking wizard with a wand, a long white beard, and maybe a blue cone-shaped hat, were surprised.

  “I didn’t think—” began Emma.

  “That’s very dangerous,” said Merlin, shaking his head from side to side, “not thinking.”

  Henry brushed the leaves from his shorts, now that all signs of danger had passed, and said grumpily, “I thought Merlin was supposed to be a good guy. If you’re Merlin, why’d you grab me like that?” He rubbed his arm, which was sore where Merlin had gripped him.

  “Yes, I am sorry about that, but I couldn’t have you all out there waking people up, and my potion was burning, so I couldn’t afford to stand and chitchat all night either. When you wouldn’t come with me, it seemed the only way to get you all inside.”

  “You should have just asked us nicely,” said Susan. “Why on earth would you come to the door with a knife?”

  “Because I was in the middle of chopping,” said Merlin, “which generally requires a knife. And if you’ll recall, I did ask nicely, but people never seem to respond well when I ask nicely.” He wiped a clump of what appeared to be dried bird poop from his hair as he said, “For some reason, magical visitors are always nervous around me at first.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” said Susan. She wondered how long the poop had been there.

  “Do you get lots of magical visitors?” asked Henry, deciding that he’d rather be friends with Merlin than not.

  “Yes,” answered Merlin proudly. “I’m quite famous in certain circles. There are movies about me, and statues, plus I’m in loads of books. I even got a mention in Harry Potter! I was on a Wizarding card. Pretty fancy, right?”

  Henry couldn’t help thinking that Merlin was being kind of braggy, but he was still feeling relieved not to have been kidnapped by an evil madman, so he managed to avoid saying so. Besides, if anyone had a right to be braggy, he supposed Merlin did. He was pretty famous.

  Merlin continued, “And not just in English. Tales about me have been translated into hundreds of languages. Hundreds! I’m very big in Japan.” He set his chin against his chest and grinned at them. One of his teeth wiggled on its own.

  “Hey, that reminds me!” said Roy. “Speaking of languages, I was wondering what that first language you spoke was. The language you spoke right before you came out and grabbed Henry.”

  “Language?” Merlin didn’t understand the question. “I only speak one language, but maybe you heard me practicing my backward-speak. It’s useful when I want to converse with the Lady of the Lake or anyone who happens to be living inside a mirror.”

  Emma gasped. “You mean like Alice when she was through the looking glass?”

  “Hmph,” said Merlin, shaking his head. “Not hardly! That Carroll fellow never could get his facts straight, though he did spin a good yarn. Don’t you agree?”

  Emma did agree.

  “But that means you speak English in Camelot?” asked Roy.

  “Goodness, no,” said Merlin, laughing. “I don’t speak a word of what you call English. I speak a language your world doesn’t quite remember, a lovely tongue. Your best professors might call it Devonian, and some might say it was Celt-ish.”

  “Then how come we can understand you?” asked Roy. “I don’t speak Devonian, but I can follow everything you say.”

  “I’m sure you can,” said Merlin. “When you’re on a magical adventure, the magic is the language, if you get my drift. Everything that occurs passes through the magic, and it all gets translated. Which gives you instincts you might not otherwise have. On a magic adventure, you’ll always understand the lay of the land. You’ll be able to choke down foods you couldn’t stomach at home, and you’ll know the words to songs you’ve never heard before. That’s just the magic at work! Magic transforms you.”

  “Wait, you aren’t speaking English right now?” asked Emma.

  “Nope, my pet. In effect, you’re speaking Devonian.”

  “I am?” asked Emma, mightily impressed with herself. She wondered if this was something she could do for show-and-tell in the fall.

  “Indeed, and if you leave here and go visit the Temple in Jerusalem, you’ll know Aramaic too, or ancient Hebrew, or whatever language might be required of you, depending on the year of your visit. If you go to Venus, you’ll be fluent in Venusian.”

  “Cool!” said Henry.

  “That is cool,” said Roy, “but then why do characters in books always say old-timey stuff like ‘Ods bodkins’ and ‘By my troth’? If everything gets translated, shouldn’t ‘Ods bodkins’ be translated too, into something like … oh, I don’t know … ‘Gosh!’ or maybe ‘Dang!’?”

  “You—” said Merlin, poking Roy in the chest with a large toad that had hopped up to peer into the bowl of blue flames, “are smarter than you look.”

  Roy didn’t know how to respond to the toad or the compliment, but it didn’t matter because Merlin kept on talking. “Downright clever boy. I never even thought about that, but yes, yes, that’s so. It is silly to have a Frenchman and a Spaniard understanding each other fluently, except when the Frenchman means to say ‘Mon Dieu’ or the Spaniard cries ‘Caramba!’ I suppose we should remember that books are often written in the spirit of truth but without proper research, and maybe some books get written by people who never actually stumbled upon magic themselves and so had to imagine it.” Merlin began to cough again. “Hargh!”

  “That’s a nasty cough,” said Susan. “Do you have cough syrup in Camelot?”

  “Ah, there’s no syrup that can help this cough. Comes of gazing into bowls of burning weeds all day,” sighed Merlin. “It’s an occupational hazard. I should really install better ventilation in this place, but I’m a lazy man, and nobody would understand it anyway. I do live in the fifth century.”

  Henry lifted his eyes from his weed-water dish, which he had been poking around in. “Is that where we are, the fifth century?”

  “No, that’s when you are, my boy. If I were you,
I’d be more precise with my language. Where you are is Camelot.”

  That reminded Henry of something. “But if this really is Camelot, where are King Arthur and all the knights? Asleep?”

  Just as Emma had envisioned stained-glass windows and jesters, Henry had imagined swords clashing and jousting tournaments. He wondered if Camelot would be worth a return trip by daylight.

  Merlin sighed and ran a hand through his snarled hair. “No, Arthur’s off fighting the Saxons, as usual.”

  “Saxons? What are Saxons?” asked Henry.

  “Greedy fellows who like to play with knives and spears, Saxons are. Thieving sorts and mean, drunken louts. Arthur spends all his time battling them. Always with the Saxons. I tell him there’s not much point in it, but nobody listens to old Merlin.”

  “Not much point?”

  “No. The Saxons will win in the end, Arthur knows that. And someone else will kill off the Saxons, eventually. It’s just the way things are, but you can’t tell Arthur anything. It’s in his nature to play with his sword, and honestly, he doesn’t listen very well.”

  Henry, who more than once had the words “poor listening skills” written on his report card, thought for a minute and decided that he would probably rather go off to a glorious battle than sit in a muddy courtyard with a bunch of pigs and burning weeds.

  “So, what else is going on, if Arthur’s not here?” Henry asked.

  “Not much,” admitted Merlin. “The pigs root. The chickens lay eggs and peck at each other. The queen wanders around looking stately.”

  “A queen?” Emma’s eyes got big.

  “Yes,” said Merlin, “and if you want to, you can run along and meet her. Guinevere’s generally up about this time of night, rehearsing her despair in the moonlight.”

  “I want to,” said Emma. “I want to see the queen, and this was my wish.”

  “Fair enough,” said the wizard, nodding. “But before you go, a gift!” Merlin motioned to the dishes of weed water, cool in their hands. All this time, Henry, Emma, Susan, and Roy had been holding their dishes carefully. Now they peered into them.