Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

  Or close the wall up with our English dead.

  In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

  As modest stillness and humility:

  I stumbled over humility and ground to a halt for a second. Josh snickered and Evelyn shushed him.

  From my backpack, Sparx hissed quietly at me. “Punch it up, kid. This is a speech designed to convince an army to fight harder in the face of tough odds. Think Lord of the Rings movies. Théoden getting the Rohirrim ready to charge the orcs at the battle for Gondor. Aragorn before the walls of Mordor.”

  I almost said, Is that what this is about? Instead, I kept going.

  But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

  Then imitate the action of the tiger;

  I didn’t botch it too badly, but my voice sounded weak and wavery in my own ears, and I knew I’d never done a worse reading. I felt like the faith Evelyn had shown in me by letting me be the youngest student in this class was wasted. Like I was betraying all the faith she’d shown in me over the years, and I wanted nothing more than to simply walk off that stage and never come back.

  I had to do better.

  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

  Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;

  But I hadn’t done my homework and I barely understood what I was saying. It would take a miracle to get me out of this with any grace at all.

  A miracle … or magic?

  Hadn’t Sparx said I had the power of silvertongue … the fascination of fire. I could make people listen to me if I tried. Heck, wasn’t it supposed to be harder for me not to use it? Not using my magic was the main thing Sparx and I had been working on for the last few days. He said you have to learn how not to do things before you mastered doing them. Maybe if I let my inner fire off the leash just a little … My throat warmed as I spoke the next line.

  Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

  Oh. That’s what it was supposed to feel like! The speech was talking about looking fierce here. Looking fierce and feeling fierce and …

  Let pry through the portage of the head

  Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it

  As fearfully as doth a galled rock

  O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,

  Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.

  That bit really didn’t make any sense to me, but I imagined myself leading an army and trying to rouse them, and my throat grew warmer still. Out in the audience, I could see the other kids sitting up straighter and listening more closely.

  Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

  Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

  To his full height.

  Right, this I could work with. I lifted my chin and flared my nostrils, declaiming the lines so I could hear my words ringing out across the theater. Fire roared in my throat, and I saw Dave stand up in the audience, then Aleta.

  On, on, you noblest English.

  Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!

  I could feel their sudden fierce belief in the speech rising with my own and amplifying it as they rose on the floor of the theater to stand with me. This was the most brilliant speech ever. I wasn’t just saying it. It was TRUTH. I was Henry V, and I would lead my troops onward into battle! The belief flowing from my fellow students buoyed me up and filled me with a power beyond anything I could imagine. In that moment, they made me a king.

  I lost track of the exact words I was saying as they roared through me and brought my followers cheering to the brink of battle. We would smash the enemy and burn their cities!

  I noticed Josh then leaping from his seat and sprinting toward the door with his hands clapped over his ears. Here was the very enemy himself! I pointed at Josh.

  “DESTROY HIM!”

  As one, the class turned toward Josh and a great howl went up as of hunting dogs readying themselves for the pursuit. This was my triumph!

  7

  Muskrat, Packrat, Give the Hare a Bone

  A VOICE SOMEWHERE in the back of my mind was screaming, “No, no, no!” over and over again, but I could barely hear it above the roar of the blood in my ears and the howling hunter in my heart. I glanced at the slip of paper in my hands and saw the last few lines of my speech.

  I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

  Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:

  Follow your spirit, and upon this charge

  Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”

  As one, my army turned toward my enemy.… That’s when Sparx kicked me in the back of the head with both feet. My whole world went purple and foggy for a few long seconds and my skull felt like someone had turned it inside out. I landed on my knees, hard, and suddenly reality seemed to snap back into focus with an unnatural clarity.

  If I didn’t act right now, my schoolmates might chase Josh down and literally tear him apart, but I didn’t know how to fix things. “What do I do?” I whispered.

  Sparx had leaped down to the stage beside me. “You and Shakespeare started this; you and Shakespeare can stop it. I know just the cantrip, but I need you to repeat everything I say with the full power of that silver tongue, and I need you to repeat it EXACTLY.”

  I nodded.

  He cried then, “Hold enough!” and I repeated it.

  That halted the immediate rush toward Josh, and Sparx nodded. He began to speak then, declaiming clearly and cleanly with a full stop at the end of each line to allow me to echo him.

  If we shadows have offended,

  Think but this, and all is mended,

  That you have but slumber’d here

  While these visions did appear.

  On some level I recognized the words as coming from the closing speech of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when Puck tells the audience that they have merely been dreaming and none of the events they’ve witnessed are real. Evelyn had given it to me to read in her first- through sixth-grade advanced theater class, which I had taken last year. As I spoke I could feel the power I had gathered earlier flowing out of me in great pulses, leaving me measurably weaker with each word.

  And this weak and idle theme,

  No more yielding but a dream,

  Gentles, do not reprehend:

  If you pardon, we will mend.

  But on a deeper level still, with the belief of my audience driven by the fascination of fire, I was Puck, and when I wove my spell to put the events just passed into the frame of a dream, I knew that it would bind them all to that version of reality, and no one who was there would remember it as anything other than a fanciful dream of the theater. I knew it because I was as bound by the power of my silver tongue as any of my listeners.

  And, as I am an honest Puck,

  If we have unearned luck

  Now to ’scape the serpent’s tongue,

  We will make amends ere long;

  Else the Puck a liar call:

  So, good night unto you all.

  Give me your hands, if we be friends,

  And Robin shall restore amends.

  I felt my knees go spongy as I finished the speech and noticed the members of my class slowly sagging back into their seats and dropping into sleep one by one. I’d done it. With Sparx’s help, I had corrected my terrible mistake. No one would even remem … wait. Even as I thought it, I saw Josh, hands still clapped over his ears, duck through the exit and run out of the theater.

  “You,” said Sparx, his voice flat and angry. “Somewhere we can talk privately, right now.”

  I scooped up my bag and led us through the rear stage door into the scene shop beyond. Behind us, the class snored blissfully away.

  When I closed the door, Sparx leaped up onto a table saw and reared back so that our eyes were nearly on a level. “NEVER, EVER DO THAT AGAIN!”

  “I—” But Sparx clapped his paws sharply together and shook his head.

  “You shut up. I’m not done yet. You’re one of the most powerf
ul young idiots it’s ever been my headache to have to babysit, but you have no control whatsoever. ZERO. That’s not all right. With my help you’ve managed to clean up your own messes twice, but only barely. That could get someone killed, and if that’s not your plan, you need to get a grip.”

  “I—” A paw went up again and I stopped.

  “I don’t want to hear it. What I want to hear is yes or no, and only yes or no. Can you do that?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “It’s a start. Do you want to get someone killed?”

  “No.” I shook my head wildly.

  “So, you’re going to listen to what I tell you and stop ad-libbing with dangerous magic?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. I’m not going to ask for your word, because either you will do what you say you will or you won’t, and promises are thin tissue. Words can have great power. You can use rhymes and spells to control the shape of the fires within, but those are lessons you won’t be ready to learn anytime soon.”

  He canted his head to one side. “You look like maybe some of that has gotten through your thick skull, which is a start. Now, we’re going to go back out there and gently wake people up. And then you’re going to give that speech again without magic, and bomb it badly because you didn’t prepare for it and that’s what you’ve earned. Right?”

  “Yes.” And that’s what we did, complete with the worst performance I’d ever given. Evelyn was very disappointed and I had to apologize and promise her that I would be ready to give the speech again on Monday and get it right then.

  If that wasn’t all awful enough, there was a message from my mom waiting at my afternoon advisory group meeting saying not to take the bus because Oscar was going to pick me up so we could all go out to dinner.

  “I can wait with you,” said Dave. “My dad’s supposed to come by and take me out as well. Not that he’s going to show up.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  “It is what it is. Mom gave me ten bucks to get fast food and catch the light rail when he doesn’t show up. I figure if I do the dollar menu I can squeeze a couple of comic books out of that as well.”

  We settled on the ledge of the playground out back, a much better place to meet parents than the front door with all the bus traffic. After a few minutes I realized there was one more piece of fallout from the incident this morning that I had to deal with, and this one really scared me.

  “Dave.”

  “Yeah.” A long silence followed before he raised an eyebrow at me. “Come on, cough it up.”

  “What do you remember from theater this afternoon?”

  “Besides you crashing and burning on your speech?”

  “Yeah, besides that.”

  He grinned. “I remember nailing mine.” He looked at me with sudden concern. “Ah, come on. It wasn’t that much of a burn, and I’m sure you’ll do better on the next go.”

  “It’s not that. It’s … well, I did some magic and it went all wrong … and … well, you got caught in that, and I’m really, really sorry.”

  “Did somebody hit you in the head or something? Because nothing like that happened.”

  “It did, but you not remembering it is part of the magic. Look, just let me tell you about it. I owe you that, even if it makes you hate me forever.” So, I did.

  When I was done, Dave gave me a long appraising look. “For true?”

  “For true.”

  “Huh.” Dave’s eyes went far away.

  “Do you hate me?”

  He laughed. “Nah. It’s kind of creepy and I should probably be honked off, but mostly I’m thinking how handy that silvertongue thing could be. I wonder if you could teach me how to do it.”

  “Probably not,” said my bag. “But nothing’s impossible.”

  “Cool!”

  He might have said more, but Oscar’s big gray sedan pulled up at that exact moment. I punched Dave gently in the shoulder and hopped to open the passenger door. Before I could slide in Oscar leaned over, shook his head, and jerked his chin toward the back seat. He was wearing a pair of blue mirror shades and his I’ve-had-a-bad-day face. Great.

  I closed the door quickly, grimaced at Dave, and crawled in back. That was always creepy since the car was a police conversion and you couldn’t actually open those doors from the inside, though the cage between the seats had been removed so you could get out of there if you had to.

  “Did you get that cave thing fixed?” I asked.

  “No.” His voice came out flat and stony.

  “Oh, sorry. Project behind schedule?”

  “Yes.” He slowed the car then and turned to look at me through those cold blue mirrors. “Look, I’ve had a hard day and I don’t want to talk about it. Not only that, but you don’t particularly want to talk to me, either, and we both know it, so can we skip the chitchat?”

  “Uh, sure. I guess. I just…”

  He shook his head gently but finally, and I didn’t say anything more. It was only as he turned away that I realized the expressionless blue of his shades was identical to the color of his eyes and exactly as revealing of the man underneath.

  * * *

  The next couple of weeks went pretty normally, for values of normal that included the weird world of the Free School, smuggling a talking hare into and out of the building every day, and going to all my classes—in part because I was bumping into our principal a lot more often than chance might dictate. I hadn’t actually blown anything up since my mistake with the theater class, and I was even doing a half-decent job at math now that Sparx was tutoring me there as well as in magic. The one upside of my most recent mess was that Josh Reiner treated me like I had the plague and needed to be avoided at any cost.

  Then all of a sudden it was the first week of October and the weather, which had been soggy and gray for weeks, opened out into a perfect golden fall day, and I knew there was no way I was going to stay in classes and miss out on the best part of the afternoon with winter on its way. Not when I could get out, away from everyone, and especially not on a Monday.

  When I told Sparx my plan to play hooky, he gave me his disapproving look but didn’t actually veto the idea—mostly I think because he was sick of hiding in my bag. That was good enough for me. So, after math I slipped out to the playground, over the back railing, and then around the gym and up past the capitol.

  I didn’t want to get anywhere near those tunnels, so I stayed aboveground, and a lone kid out on the capitol lawn was a lot less conspicuous than one over by Regions Hospital, which was my other route for getting from school into downtown proper. The freeway cut between the capitol complex and the main part of downtown, and you could only cross it on the bridges.

  Once I got into the big urban canyons where the streets ran between the concrete towers of the city, I picked up the pace. I didn’t want to stay out in the open where some bored cop might pull over and ask if I was supposed to be there. I just hurried straight on South, heading for the Mississippi. Another bridge took me across the river and then I cut west along the bank, heading for the wooded area of the bluff beyond the high bridge.

  It’s maybe a mile and a quarter from the doors of the school to the little slice of forest, but it was also a perfect day and I walk a lot. As soon as I got to the bluff, I ducked onto one of the many footpaths that run through the woods and got up above the road. The whole area is too steep to build on, so it’s basically a ribbon of wild land running through the middle of the city. I stopped once I was out of sight of the road below and opened up my backpack for Sparx.

  He poked his head out. “Spirits and shadows but I’m coming to hate that bag.” Then he jumped down to the trail, where he briefly stopped to sniff the west wind. “I smell change on the breeze, frost and falling leaves and the fallow Crown lying uneasy in its casket as the season closes.”

  “Fallow Crown?” I asked as we walked along the trail. I was good on frost and falling leaves. That was October in Minnesot
a, but this was the third or fourth time he’d mentioned a crown in connection with the seasons. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Corona Borealis.” His voice went far away, like he was reciting something from long ago—and not for the first time. He was hundreds of years old, and sometimes it came out in his speech. “Four months it rests on Winter’s brow and four on Summer’s. Now, with Summer faded and Winter still lurking beyond the horizon’s edge, the Crown rests.”

  That rang a few bells. “Wait, Corona Borealis, isn’t that a constellation?” We’d covered them in a mythology class I’d taken with our English teacher. I was reminded of something my mother had said, too—a rhyme maybe? “That’s the Crown of the North, right?”

  “That too. Seven stars set in a silver band mark the Crown of the North. Tarnished and black while Winter’s Queen or King wears it, bright and shining on Summer’s warm brow. During the interim the lands rest in harmony between the powers.” He shook himself, visibly coming back into the moment. “At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. These last few years … have been more turbulent.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The Kings and Queens have all come from your people for many long years now, and the process has become opaque to those of us who wear different skins. The Crown of the North lies in humanity’s hands, with all the whims and wiles that brings.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Your kind grow ever more numerous, while the other kindreds remain static or decline. As you have so recently seen, belief is a powerful driver of magic, and your kind believe in yourselves to a terrifying degree. With so many minds dreaming the same dream, how could you not wax in power?”

  “Huh.” I’d have to think about that. “And the fate of the universe all turns on Minnesota?” That seemed unlikely at best.

  Sparx snorted. “No, of course not. There are many crowns north and south, east and west. Some are season crowns, some represent the winds and tides. The one true Corona Borealis rides the skies untouched by any soul on this planet. The Crown that rules the headwaters of the great river”—here he jerked his chin toward the water flowing by below—“is only a reflection of that celestial power, though it’s a mighty one.”