There was a tiny silence; then of course Mom said, “Well, try to get home before dark.”
I thought about everything on the long bus ride across town. If I had any kind of dream, it was to get a long way away from this town and Conley the Creep. But I had to learn how to deal with the Mr. Conleys of the world.
College was the way, I thought as I leaned my head against the dirty bus window and watched the streets lurch by. I thought about how money was a constant worry in my family; Mom’s hours at the flower shop were always getting cut back, and though Dad had recently been promoted to manager at the gas station where he’d always worked, his raise had gone straight into the family fund to take care of my great-aunt Sarah, who had Alzheimer’s.
Reality for my parents was the town where they’d always lived, the jobs they’d always had, and the people they’d always known.
The bus reached the highway outside of town and I got off. So far I’d managed not to think about what I’d say to Fay if I saw her.
I’d never been asked to Fay’s home. Though she, Melissa, and I had been best friends for years, we’d always met at the park and then at the library. Every year Missy and I invited her to our birthday parties, and Fay always thanked us, but she always had something to do those two days. The only two days of the year she was busy.
We hadn’t questioned her about it; it was just the way things were. And considering how much the adults of our town were always complaining about the Reeds—whether Matt, Mark, or Luke, or Charity or Hope or Prudence—it was easier that way than to explain that we were friends with one of the Reeds you didn’t hear much about.
Their place was easy to find. One side of the highway was nothing but scrubland, the other a group of rotting buildings, long abandoned. Near a clump of dusty trees squatted a rusting old trailer, with a kind of shed made of battered pieces of sheet metal hammered to the back. Several junker cars rusted around the trash- and weed-choked yard.
I trudged up the rutted dirt road toward the trailer. My heart started hammering when I saw a group of older boys, all tough-looking, standing around the engine of an ancient pickup. Nearby, four or five younger kids were playing some kind of game. They were all thick-built, like Fay, but some were blond and some redheaded.
They stopped playing when they saw me. “Get lost, buttnugget,” a boy yelled at me.
The others laughed; then the big guys looked around.
“Well, hel-lo, baby,” one said, with a nasty sneer. “Come on over, let’s check you out!”
The others greeted this with yells of brainless laughter and disgusting suggestions. Fear choked me; I was ready to drop that envelope and run.
Then a pair of legs appeared from under the car, followed by a muscular torso and a square face with blond hair.
“Shut up,” the young man said, and they shut up.
I stared. It was Joseph Reed, the oldest, the only Reed to be graduated from high school, though several of them were over eighteen. He was also the only one with a job; he worked, as it happened, for my dad.
He’d never talked to me before, but it was obvious he knew who I was. “Fay’s inside, doing homework,” he said, pointing a blackened thumb over his shoulder.
I didn’t tell him I wasn’t there to see Fay. Glad the envelope was in my notebook pressed tight against my chest, I just nodded and went by. The guys were all silent, but I could feel their stares like radiation burns on my back.
Sagging steps led into the open door of the trailer. The first thing that met me was noise from a loud television set. The front door stood wide open, but it did nothing for the thick air inside, which smelled of cigarettes, beer, cooking oil, and hair spray. I stood uncertainly in the doorway, peering into the gloom.
In a corner the TV blared, completely ignored by two huge women, one with bright yellow hair, the other with even brighter red hair. They sat by the kitchen counter, the redhead fixing the blonde’s hair. Heaped-up ashtrays, dirty dishes, and empty beer cans lay everywhere.
The blonde woman raised a beer to her lips, then saw me. Squinting, she said, “You lookin’ for someone, sugar?”
“Are you Mrs. Reed?” I asked.
“Depends on what you want,” she shot back, and both women let loose with loud shrieks of laughter.
“Mr. Conley sent me with this,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, as I pulled out the paper. My forehead panged with the beginnings of a headache, and I wondered if Mr. Conley had meant for me to go through this nightmare in order to end a friendship that was likely already finished anyway.
Mrs. Reed held out her hand for the letter. Her nails were an inch long. Ripping open the envelope with one of those crimson nails, she said, “Who are you?”
I didn’t want to tell her my name, so I blurted out the next thing that came to me: “I’m in Fay’s class.”
As soon as it was out, I regretted it.
She put her head back, expelling a huge cloud of smoke. “Faith!” she screeched. Then she squinted at the letter and dropped it onto an ashtray on the floor. “Matt again,” she said, and laughed.
Then Fay appeared from a back hallway. When she saw me she hunched up, like someone had smacked her.
“I’ll be going,” I said quickly. “You’re busy—”
“Stay awhile.” The red-haired woman poked my shoulder, propelling me toward Fay. “Get the kid to talk a little. Ain’t natural, sittin’ all the time with a book like that.”
Fay looked from them to me, then said, “Come on.”
The hallways reminded me of an old train: narrow, airless, dark. Trying to find some kind of easy way out, I said, “Are all those your brothers and sisters out there?”
I didn’t even know how many of them there were. Too late, I realized the question might seem an insult.
“Sure. Rest are cousins,” she said, using her flat voice. “That’s my Aunt Leah out front.”
“Does everybody have Bible names?” I thought that question, at least, would be safe to ask. But she didn’t answer right away, just pushed aside a hanging beach towel in a doorway and gestured me inside.
It was a tiny room with four futons on the floor. Most of the room was an even worse mess than the living room, except for one corner. There, three plastic boxes stuffed with neatly folded clothes stood next to a tidily made-up futon. On the top of the crates sat an old, cracked radio, propping up a row of library books.
Fay’s radio, I realized. Her bed, her clothes. Her books.
She turned around and faced me, her arms crossed. “Grandma named us,” she said, still flat as poured cement. “Ma not being married, Gran paid for the hospital, so long’s she could name us. Had us all baptized, too. Anything else you want to know?”
Her anger made mine come rushing back. If her magic was so real, then why was she living in this disgusting dump? The tiniest spell could at least empty an ashtray. “Is that the radio where you listened to Middle Earth?” I asked, pointing.
Fay’s cheeks showed dull red, but just as her mouth opened, a set of clicking claws ticked right up behind me, and I got thumped in the back by a stout dog with a shaggy tan coat.
He slobbered onto my hand, which I snatched away and wiped on my coat. I asked, “And is this the dog that talks?”
The dog bounded past me to Fay, jumping up with his paws on her chest. She grabbed his paws and held him, though the dog must have weighed at least as much as she did. Looking him right in the muzzle, she said: “C’mon, Aslan, tell her hello.”
I felt as if someone had doused me with ice water.
The dog dropped down, panting, his tongue lolling out, and thumped his tail. Fay glanced up at me once, then bent close to him. “Please. Say something.”
She’s crazy, I thought, backing up a step. She’s a crazy girl living with a lot of horrible crazy people, and I never knew it.
A sudden gulping sob stopped me in my retreat. Fay buried her face in the dog’s dirty ruff. “Talk,” she cried into his fur. “Talk. Please, Aslan. Please.” An
d she cried, not noisily like a baby, but the terrible soundless sobs of a person who has lost everything, her whole body shaking.
I stood there, my anger gone. Now what do I do?
I looked at Fay, who crouched on her futon, still holding the dog. He sat patiently under her tight grip, his tail stirring as he looked up at me.
I looked at the dog, then around at the room again. This is Fay’s reality, I thought. No wonder she believes in magic. What else could rescue her? A great wave of pity swept through me, piling up behind my teeth and tongue, but I didn’t say anything, because I knew, as surely as I knew she had never come to our birthday parties, had never asked to share our lunches, that Fay would hate pity.
I dropped onto my knees at the other end of the futon and held out a hand to the dog. Maybe I couldn’t say anything, but could I show her how sorry I was?
Her head was still buried in the dog’s fur. I looked past her, wondering what I could do or say next. My eyes lit on that radio, and I remembered all those Middle Earth reports. How much Missy and I had loved to hear those stories. Heck, how believable they had been—true to the characters, as if J.R.R. Tolkien himself had made them up.
This isn’t her reality, I thought. She’s made a reality all for herself, filled with magical happenings and interesting people and faraway places. And in its own way, it’s just as real as Missy’s dream to dance with the New York Ballet.
My pity was gone. In its place were admiration and envy. The radio, the dog, even the trailer—I remembered once in the fourth grade, she told us her house could fly. Trailers moved, and with a little imagination, maybe they could fly. She’d taken bits of her horrible life and made it fun.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I believe you, Fay. I believe you.”
She lifted her head, just a bit. Her red eyes were more suspicious than anything else.
I threw my arms wide. “You’re right,” I said. “I’ve been thinking, and you’re totally, absolutely right—magic can be found if a person looks hard enough. I’m sorry I was so blind.”
She gave a long sniff and sat up, knuckling her eyes. “Wh-what made you change your mind?” Her breathing was still ragged.
“There’s magic here,” I said. “I can feel it.”
She gave another sob, but it was the relief kind, the storm-is-over kind. The dog thrust his muzzle under my hand, then sniffed at my coat pocket, where the ham sandwich from lunch had sat all afternoon, forgotten. I pulled it out, unwrapped it, and gave it to him. Fay and I watched him gulp the sandwich in two bites, then look from one of us to the other, hoping for more.
I patted the dog’s head absently, smiling at Fay. At last, she smiled back.
“Food!” the dog barked. “More food! Food!”
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Copyright & Credits
Whispered Magics
Tales by Sherwood Smith
Sherwood Smith
Book View Café Edition August 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-289-1
Copyright © 2013 Sherwood Smith
Cover illustration by Mega11, www.dreamstime.com
Cover design by Amy Sterling Casil
Production team: Deborah J. Ross, Amy Sterling Casil, Vonda N. McIntyre
First published:
“Mom and Dad at the Home Front,” Realms of Fantasy Magazine, August 2000.
“The Glass Slipper” originally published as “Visions,” Bruce Coville’s Book of Magic, BPVP, March 1996.
“The Princess, the Page, and the Master Cook’s Son,” Heroes in Training, August 2007
“Curing the Bozos,” Bruce Coville’s Book of Aliens, BPVP, February 1994.
“Illumination,” Nightmare’s Dozen, ed. Michael Stearns, Harcourt Brace, Fall 1996
“Finding the Way,” Bruce Coville’s Alien Visitors, Scholastic, October 1999
“The Love that Dolls Talk,” Book View Café, February 2, 2010
“And Now Abideth These Three,” Realms of Fantasy Magazine, 1998.
“Faith,” A Wizard's Dozen, ed. Michael Stearns, HBJ, Fall 1993.
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About the Author
As a child, Sherwood Smith was always on the watch for magic: no fog bank went unexplored, no wooden closet unchecked for a false back, no possible magical token left on the ground or in the gutter. In these nine stories, the impossible becomes possible, magic is real, aliens come visiting. How would our lives change?
About Book View Café
Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.
Book View Café is good for readers because you can enjoy high-quality DRM-free ebooks from your favorite authors at a reasonable price.
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Book View Café authors include New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.
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Sample: A Posse of Princesses
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Book View Café Edition
May 4, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61138-027-9
Copyright © 2008 Sherwood Smith
One
From the tower lookout in the royal castle—highest tower in all the kingdom of Nym—Princess Rhis peered down through the misting rain at a messenger on the main road.
This rider slumped in the saddle of the long-legged lowland race-horse plodding up the steep road, occasionally hidden by tall stands of deep green fir. The messenger had to be from the lowlands. Anyone raised in Nym’s mountains knew that the only animal for the steep roads was a pony. Their sturdy bodies and short legs fared better on steep slopes.
The rider’s cloak was crimson, a bright splash of color in the gloom of a rainy afternoon. None of Nym’s royal messengers wore crimson cloaks. This one must be an equerry from the Queen of faraway Vesarja. Rhis turned away in disappointment and resumed pacing around the little room.
Once, many years ago, the old tower had been a lookout for Nym’s warriors, no longer necessary since the kingdom had established magical protection. Now the small, stone tower room had become Rhis’s private retreat.
Her parents considered themselves too elderly to climb all those stairs any more; her older brother, Crown Prince Gavan, was too busy, as was her older sister, Princess Sidal. And Gavan’s wife, Princess Elda, was too stout—even if she’d approved of frivolities such as spending time in tower rooms, which she didn’t. Something she mentioned rather often.
Rhis loved the lookout. It was cozy, and had a nice fireplace (with a magical firestick in it that burned evenly all winter long), a comfortable cushioned chair, a desk, a small case containing all her favorite books, and a tiranthe—the twenty-four-stringed instrument that Elda insisted only lowly minstrels played. Here Rhis could practice and not disturb, or disgust, anyone. Here she could sit and read and dream and watch the ever-changing weather and seasons over the tiny mountain kingdom. She could also write wonderful ballads.
At least . . . she hoped they were wonderful. Would be, some day. Maybe.
She stopped pacing and frowned down at the paper on the desk, close-written with many, many scribblings. She loved music, and stories, and ballads—especially the ones about people in history who had gone through terrible adventures but had succeeded in finding their True Love.
When she’d begun her first ballad, it had seemed easy. All she had to do was picture a forlorn princess, one who was tall with brown hair—someone a lot like herself. Only instead of having a cozy retreat, this princess was locked up in a tower room, she
wasn’t quite sure why yet, but for some horrific reason, which would require her to escape secretly down all 538 steps, slip out into the treacherous snows of winter, and away—meeting a prince along the road.
Rhis frowned. She knew what kind of prince the princess had to meet. He had to be brave, and good at overcoming vast numbers of evil minions, but he also had to be kind. He absolutely must like music—especially ballads—but he had to be a good dancer. He had to look like . . . .
That was the part that she always got stuck at. Rhis dropped onto her chair and reread her verses about the mysterious prince. Every line began with “The best” or “The greatest” or “The finest”—he had the darkest hair, the bluest eyes, he was the best dancer, but still, somehow, he seemed so . . . um, boring.
With a heavy sigh she dipped her pen and struck out the latest words that just a while ago had seemed so wonderful. What were the bluest eyes, anyway? Were eyes the silver-blue of the morning sky bluer than the dark blue of evening?
Blue eyes were stupid anyway. Everyone in ballads either had eyes of emerald or sapphire or amber. How about something really unusual, like red eyes? Or yellow and purple stripe? But would those be handsome? Rhis frowned and tried to picture a fellow puckering up for a kiss . . . handsome lips, handsome nose . . . and right above, a pair of yellow and purple striped eyes? No. Well, how about red? But what kind of hair would look handsome with red eyes? Not red, certainly, though her favorite color was ‘hair of flame’, which sounded more romantic than anything. But crimson eyes and hair of flame? He’d look like a measle.
Not blond, either. She didn’t want a blond prince, for the people of Damatras far to the north were supposed to be mostly light haired and paler than normal people, and everyone knew they lived to make war.
How about—
A tinkling sound interrupted her musing. It was the summons bell that her mother had magically rigged so that the servants wouldn’t have to climb 538 tower stairs just to remind Rhis not to be late for dinner.
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