The Marvelwood Magicians

by Diane Zahler

  “No, I won’t give it to you,” Mattie said. Master Morogh narrowed his eyes, but he didn’t speak. “I won’t, unless you give back Selena’s grace and Bell’s and my mother’s talents.”

  “Mattie, no!” Selena cried. She grasped Mattie’s hand. Mattie’s head was immediately filled with her distress, and she shook her friend off. “He’ll know everybody’s secrets,” Selena said. “He’ll know all the secrets in the world.”

  “I can’t help that,” Mattie told her. “It’s my family. And you’re my friend.”

  “Don’t do it for me,” Selena begged.

  “I will give their talents back, in return for yours,” Master Morogh said.

  “And you can’t try to take them again. You have to leave us alone. All of us.”

  “Done, done, done,” said the ringmaster.

  Mattie took a deep breath. “How can I be sure you’ll do what you say?” she asked him.

  “I swear it to you, on my life,” he answered. “You know that if a Traveller swears an oath on his life, he must keep his promise. Otherwise, he’ll be cursed.” Da had said this before, many times. Mattie hoped it wasn’t just a piece of Traveller folklore.

  “Then do it,” she commanded. Her heart pounded so hard she felt almost sick.

  Master Morogh took off his glove, revealing his intact hand. Mattie shook her head. She didn’t know where she got the nerve, or even why she did it, but she said, “The other hand.”

  For a moment there was total silence. The four of them were alone in the space between the wagons. Master Morogh gritted his teeth. Then he pulled off the other glove and held out his three-fingered hand. Despite herself, Mattie gasped.

  “Look at me, child,” Master Morogh said. “Look into my eyes. Look hard. Look long. Look. Look. Look.”

  Mattie looked. His eyes changed from green to gray and back again. They darkened, and she felt herself sinking into their depths. From far away, she heard another thunderclap, one loud enough to shake the wagons. She was filled with dread, and she wondered, Is this how Bell felt? Is this what happened to Maya? Oh, what will be left of me when he’s done?

  As if she were sleepwalking, Mattie extended her hand, and the ringmaster reached out to her. And their fingers touched.

  CHAPTER 14

  Mattie felt an agonizing shock, as if she’d touched a live wire. A whole slew of images raced through her mind, almost like a movie on fast-forward, but she couldn’t focus on them. All she could think of was how much it hurt. Oh, it hurt! It was like her insides were being sucked out through her fingers, where they touched Master Morogh’s. She couldn’t breathe at all. It seemed to last forever. The dark sky flickered overhead, and then Master Morogh pulled his hand away, and she fell backward into Bell’s and Selena’s arms. She could see their faces above her. They wavered wildly, like images in a funhouse mirror. And then she saw nothing, nothing at all.

  When she opened her eyes, she was lying on the floor in her own wagon with her head in Maya’s lap. The ringmaster was gone. The room spun around her.

  “Did it work?” Mattie whispered.

  Bell danced into her line of sight. “Look, Mattie!” he crowed. He disappeared, then reappeared again.

  Mattie closed her eyes against the dizziness.

  “Maya?” Mattie said.

  “What did you do, child? Oh, what have you done?” Maya leaned over, her long hair tickling Mattie’s face.

  “I did it for you,” Mattie said. “For you and Bell. I had to.”

  Da’s face swam into view. “Mattie, Mattie. There’s more at stake than just the family.”

  “I know, Da,” Mattie said. “But it’s the family that matters most.” She was almost surprised to hear herself say it—and to know, with absolute certainty, that it was true.

  “Are you all right?”

  Mattie wanted to say yes, but she wasn’t. She was all wrong. “Where is everyone?”

  “They’re securing the tents. There’s a storm coming.”

  Now she could hear it—the wind outside the wagon, strong enough to rock it a little on its wheels, and the thunder she’d heard before, closer. A flash of lightning outside the window stabbed into her skull, and she moaned.

  “Mattie, are you sick?” Tibby said. Mattie turned her head gingerly and saw her sister sitting cross-legged next to her.

  “Maybe a little, Tibs,” she said weakly.

  “Oh no,” Tibby crooned, placing a sticky hand on Mattie’s forehead. “That bad man did it. That bad, bad, bad man.”

  “Don’t say things nine times anymore,” Mattie said to her. “That’s what he does.” Tibby nodded, her face serious.

  “You’re a brave lass,” Da said. He sounded exhausted.

  “I was afraid, Da.”

  “That makes your courage all the greater,” he told her. “And Bell says that Morogh swore on his life that he wouldn’t harm us again.”

  “Yes,” Mattie said dully. She could see, now that the vertigo was easing, that the light had come back into Maya’s eyes, and into Bell’s. They looked like themselves again. She tried to be glad for them. Then she tried to figure out why she wasn’t glad. After all, she’d always said she didn’t want to read minds. And now she couldn’t. But thinking felt like swimming through river mud, and she ached with tiredness.

  “Do we have to leave tonight?” she asked Da. “I’m not feeling very good.”

  “We can wait,” he said. “Tomorrow is soon enough. The ringmaster won’t be bothering us now that he has what he was after. Oh, Mattie …”

  “It was the only way,” Mattie said. “It was my talent he wanted most. He wouldn’t have stopped till he got it.”

  “I never asked you to,” Maya murmured. “I would never have.”

  Mattie put a hand up to her mother’s cheek. “I know you didn’t. I know that. Don’t blame yourself, Mama.” Mattie hadn’t called Maya that since she was Tibby’s age, and it made her mother’s tears spill over. Mattie could hardly bear it.

  “Can I go to sleep?” she asked Maya. Maya raised her up and helped her undress and put on her pajamas and climb into her bunk.

  “Rest now, jaani,” she said. Jaani meant sweetheart in Hindi. Maya never used words like that.

  Mattie turned her back, and in an instant she was asleep. But her mind didn’t seem to rest at all. It dreamed and dreamed, and the dreams were of being lost in a new town, and losing Tibby in a grocery store, and misplacing her socks at a laundromat. The one that woke her up was losing all her hair in one great clump that lay on the floor and seemed to breathe, in and out, in and out.

  She lay very still, trying to quiet her wild heart. She didn’t need dreams to tell her that she’d lost something. She tried to figure out where exactly the emptiness was, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. She only knew that there was a hole, a big hole, a black hole, like Maya had taught her about in their science studies, and it moved around inside her until it seemed like every important part of her had been drawn into it.

  There was a hard rap at the door of the wagon, and Mattie started. Wasn’t it the middle of the night? But Da and Maya were both awake, sitting together and talking in low voices. Da went to the door, Maya behind him. Mattie climbed out of her bunk and peered through the curtain. The five Bellamy brothers stood outside, all equally sodden with the rain that Mattie could hear pelting against the tin roof.

  “Bellamys!” Da said. “What can we do for you?” He stepped back to let them in. There was barely enough room in the wagon for the brothers, thick and hulking as they were. Maya pushed through the curtain to find towels, and Mattie handed her two threadbare ones.

  “Sorry it’s so late,” said a Bellamy—Mattie could see it was Oto. “We had to tend to the tents before the storm. But we wanted to know how Mattie was. We saw you carrying her. Did she fall? Is she sick?” He took the towel Maya offered and dried his wet head and face, then handed it to one of his brothers.

  “Mattie’s fine,” Maya said. But the tremble in her
voice made her statement unconvincing.

  Mattie came into the main room. “I’m all right,” she said. The Bellamys all flashed her the same smile, but it didn’t reach their eyes.

  “We know there’s something going on with Morogh,” Elso said, taking his turn with the towel. “That man’s not to be trusted. Do you have history with him?”

  “Nay,” Da said. “Not history. Not exactly.”

  “Simon,” Maya said in warning.

  “They should know, love. Who’s to say that Morogh won’t turn on them, hurt them the way he did those other tumblers? And what’s the harm now? We’re leaving. We’ll not see these folk again.”

  “You’re going?” Negyed said. “Before the final night? Leaving us all in the lurch?”

  “You do not need us,” Maya said. “We will not be missed.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Maso said.

  “You do not understand. We must go! The children are not safe here anymore,” she insisted.

  The brothers looked at her, alert and interested, and Da sighed wearily. “Sit, Bellamys. We haven’t chairs enough, but sit. And we’ll tell you a story.”

  The Bellamys sank cross-legged to the carpet, and Mattie joined them. Bell and Tibby woke up at the sound of voices and came out, jostling for a place close to Maya. And then Da told the brothers everything.

  The looks that crossed their faces would have been funny under other circumstances. In quintuple, they were astonished, fearful, bewildered. They stared at each Marvelwood in turn as Da described their talents, and then they stared at each other, amazed. Mattie was almost as amazed that Da was telling them. She and Bell exchanged glances with each gasp or muffled exclamation from the Bellamys. Maya sat as still as a statue, Tibby on her lap.

  “Well,” Oto said when Da was finished. “That’s quite a story. We knew the man wasn’t to be trusted, that there was something. We’d seen things over time, strange things. But we couldn’t quite put it all together. And we’d never have guessed about you and your—your—”

  “I levitate,” Tibby said proudly, and she rose, still cross-legged, a few inches off Maya’s lap.

  “So you do.” Oto shook his head in wonder. “Boy, if I could do that …”

  “You’d just float around, even lazier than you are now,” Harma finished, and his brother jabbed him in the shoulder, hard, while Tibby giggled.

  “So what can we do?” Elso asked. “How can we help you?”

  “There’s nothing to be done,” Da said. “Our Mattie did what was needed when she traded her talent away.”

  Mattie knew she should have felt pride at his words, but she didn’t. She just felt tired, and empty.

  “And will he keep his promise?” Maso asked. “And not take others’ skills?”

  “He must,” Da said. “It’s a Traveller curse if he dinna.”

  “But we have to get Mattie’s talent back,” Harma insisted. “He’s got far too much power with that. If he can read minds, who knows what he’ll do?”

  “We’ll force him to give it back,” Negyed said.

  “We’ll kidnap him,” Oto added.

  “We’ll threaten him,” Maso said.

  “We’ll feed him to Dee’s elephant,” Harma said.

  “Elephants eat people?” Tibby asked, and even Mattie had to laugh a little.

  It was very late by the time the Bellamys stood to leave. Tibby was long asleep in Maya’s arms. The brothers wanted to confront Master Morogh directly, though Maya protested. Negyed insisted that the ringmaster would back down if the whole circus threatened him, but Mattie had her doubts.

  “We’ll have to involve the others,” Oto pointed out, and Da nodded reluctantly. “They’re very fond of you lot, you know. You shouldn’t worry.”

  “Not worry?” Maya said. “When what they know about us could be worth money—or more?”

  The brothers stood at the open wagon door as the rain poured down outside. “You have a pretty low opinion of us, don’t you?” Harma said to Maya, and she flushed. “We take care of our own here. I’m sorry if we haven’t made that clear to you—or if you haven’t felt like you were one of our own. But you are, whether you like it or not.”

  Maya bit her lip. “No, I am the one who is sorry. You have been nothing but welcoming and kind to us. I only … well, we have always kept to ourselves. Our secret has always been ours alone. It is very hard for me to know it is out in the world.”

  “It’s not out in the world, not at all,” Harma assured her. “It’s amongst friends, that’s all. We’ll keep your secret, I swear to you.”

  Maya smiled at him then, her real smile, and its brightness made the five Bellamys blink in surprise and then smile back in pleasure before they plunged back out into the raging storm.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Let’s sleep,” Da said, closing the door. “It’s very late, and we’ve quite a day coming.”

  Maya tucked Mattie into bed, smoothing her hair from her face. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” she said.

  “You didn’t, when you lost your talent,” Mattie pointed out.

  “No,” Maya said. “But you did not want yours. We are different in that way, it seems.”

  “No, we’re not,” Mattie admitted in a low voice. “I was wrong. I didn’t know.”

  Maya touched Mattie gently on the cheek. “Try to rest,” she said.

  It wasn’t long until the wagon was full of the sounds of sleep. But Mattie had slept so deeply before the Bellamys came that now she was wide awake. She could hear the funny whuffling noise Da made instead of a snore. Maya always slumbered in silence, so Mattie could only hope she was asleep. Carefully she climbed out of her bunk, changed into jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers, tiptoed to the door, and pulled it open.

  She was shocked by the gust of wind that yanked the door out of her hand and slammed it against the wagon wall. It made so much noise that she was sure everyone would wake up. But there was no sound behind her, so she stepped out, grabbed the knob, and forced the door closed.

  Mattie had no idea what time it was, but there were lights on in a few of the wagons, including the Silvas’. She pushed against the wind and pelting rain, which soaked through her clothes in just a few moments, and arrived at the spot at the Silvas’ wagon that she thought might be outside Selena’s bunk. Then she rapped, very gently, on the wall.

  When no one answered she rapped again louder, and then louder still. A head poked out of the window above her—Sofia. Even with her face puffy with sleep, she was gorgeous.

  “Hey, Mattie, what are you doing up?” she whispered.

  “Can you get Selena?” Mattie said. The rain in her eyes made her blink hard when she looked up.

  Sofia disappeared back inside, and a moment later the wagon door opened and Selena came out. Mattie didn’t know how Selena knew not to say anything, but she did. She just wrapped her arms around Mattie and hung on.

  Mattie didn’t cry. Her face was so wet that Selena probably thought she was crying, but her feelings were too complicated for tears. It was so weird to touch someone and not be able to read her thoughts. It just felt completely and entirely wrong.

  Finally Selena let her go. She was completely soaked now, too. When she spoke, she said exactly the right thing. “You still know what I’m thinking,” she said. “You know you do.”

  Mattie stared hard at her. After a minute, she realized Selena’s words were true. Her face showed everything. She was sorry, she was sad. But it was clear that she was glad Mattie was okay.

  “Do you want to come inside?” Selena said. “We can be really quiet. No one will mind.”

  “Is it okay if we don’t?” Mattie asked.

  “Huh. Well, we might get wet if we stay out here.”

  Mattie looked at Selena’s dripping hair and down at her own sodden clothes, and suddenly she was laughing. It was a little hysterical, but still, she laughed. It felt good.

  A bright flash and a tremendous crack of thunder
made both girls jump. “We should probably go somewhere, though,” Selena added. “Or we might get fried by lightning.”

  She took Mattie’s hand, and they ran around the wagons until they came to the tigers’. There was a canvas drape over the bars to keep the cats from getting wet, so Mattie couldn’t see them. The girls crawled under the wagon and leaned back on their elbows. It was a little muddy, but drier. Mattie liked knowing Hasha and Hadi lay right above them.

  “Is it back?” Mattie asked. “Your grace—can you feel it?”

  “Yes,” Selena said. “I did a backflip earlier—the first time I haven’t fallen since Thursday. Since he hypnotized me.”

  “I’m glad,” Mattie said.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Selena asked. Mattie nodded, and Selena said, “What happened, exactly?”

  “Master Morogh touched me.” Mattie stopped for a second. “And it was like—well, like getting hit by lightning, I guess. And it hurt. I fainted, or passed out, or something.”

  “I know,” Selena said. “It was really scary. I thought you were dead for a minute. Bell ran to get your parents, and they came a few minutes later. Tibby went a little nuts.”

  “She did? What did she do?”

  “She was screaming and crying. We were all so scared. Your parents were trying to wake you up, and Bell and I were trying to quiet Tibby down, and the Bellamys were there. Master Morogh was just gone.”

  Mattie was quiet, imagining the scene.

  “How … how do you feel?” Selena asked.

  Mattie thought about it. “I don’t know, exactly. I feel wrong, like something is missing. I feel … kind of awful.”

  “I get it, a little at least,” Selena said. “I felt that way. I couldn’t even do a cartwheel right. I almost fell off the ladder yesterday. Only it’s worse for you, probably.”

  “It’s like Bell said: I didn’t know how important it was.”

  “Well, it was a part of you,” Selena said.

  “That’s what Maya always told me,” Mattie said miserably. “I hate that she was right.”