The Green Man

by Michael Bedard

  She fit the material roughly in place and trimmed away the excess. She had just started turning the raw edges under and stapling it down, when she had the odd sensation of being watched. She swung around. Rimbaud was standing at the window, staring in.

  It might simply have been her imagination, but she couldn’t help but feel there was something different in the way he looked at her. She continued feeling it even after he came inside and offered to help lay out the new felt.

  They knelt side by side in the display area, tucking and stapling. It went a lot quicker with the two of them working, though it was a tight squeeze in the narrow space. Normally, she would have been happy to be this close to him, but now she felt almost afraid.

  “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

  “No, nothing.”

  “You seem awfully quiet.”

  “Just tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept waking up with noises – raccoons or something – on the roof.”

  They finished tacking down the felt. While she set up the new display, he roamed the store, searching for a book. At that moment, Emily walked through the door. O felt her heart sink. Her aunt would be sure to think it was more than mere coincidence the two of them were together in the shop in her absence. She scrambled out of the window to greet her.

  “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

  As Emily leaned in to look at the new window area, O glanced over her shoulder, trying to get Rimbaud’s attention. He was nowhere in sight.

  “It looks great.”

  “How was your visit?”

  “Oh, fine. It’s a lovely day. We sat on a bench and chatted.” She put down her bag and took off her hat. “I need to talk to you.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about that boy.”

  “Emily, maybe we –”

  “No, it can’t wait. I’m worried. There’s something you need to know.”

  There was a quiet creak of floorboards, and Rimbaud appeared at the far end of the aisle, by the desk. For a long moment, the two stood facing one another. Rimbaud seemed larger, more imposing. He wore a curious expression on his face. The air was charged with tension.

  “Did you find anything?” asked O, as cheerfully as she could manage.

  “Yeah, this,” he said and came to show her the book he had chosen.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Thanks again for your help with the window.”

  “My pleasure.” With a quick nod in Emily’s direction, he was out the door.

  O and Emily traded glances. Then Emily picked up her bag and walked back through the shop and upstairs to the flat.

  O stood looking out the window. She was glad Emily hadn’t seen the book Rimbaud had selected. It was a book on magic.

  30

  Among the things ranged onstage prior to the magician’s performance that night was a long low wicker basket, somewhat the shape of a coffin. During the show, the magician drew many of the props he required from it. The children were amazed at the sheer number of things he took from it, and when they felt it could not possibly contain one more thing, the magician removed yet another object from the basket. It seemed to be a bottomless well from which he could draw whatever he wished.

  Finally, however, it appeared he had come to the end of it. For now the magician walked over to the basket and, instead of reaching into it, turned it on its side so that everyone in the room could see it was quite empty.

  “How are we to proceed with the show?” he asked. “For it seems our inexhaustible trunk is exhausted. But wait, there is one small item left.” The audience strained to see what he saw inside that they could not.

  As he reached into it, one or two children noticed a glint of metal catching the candlelight. And, as the magician straightened, they all saw the long curved blade and the jewel-encrusted handle of the sword he held in his hand.

  “This sword, my friends, was a gift to me from the sultan of Khadiz. It has been through many battles and tasted much blood, but none who possessed this sword has ever tasted defeat. Now, alas, it is far from the battlefield and waits patiently for the next illusion in tonight’s show, when, for a brief time, it will be called back into service – for the illusion entitled the Indian Basket.

  “I will require the assistance of a volunteer – some brave, adventurous spirit who is not afraid of darkness or danger. And, of course, for assisting in the show, our volunteer will receive a copy of the professor’s little book, which explains the secrets of the magical arts you are witnessing tonight.”

  A murmur went through the room as neighbor turned to neighbor, each wondering if the other might have the courage to venture up onstage. Finally, a boy sitting by himself near the back of the room stood up. He was tall and thin, and his clothes were too small for him.

  There was an awkwardness to his movements as he made his way toward the stage, as if his limbs were wired together like a marionette’s. The other children shifted over slightly to let him by, muttering to one another and tittering into their hands, so that the sound of it moved through the room. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor, too shy to meet their gaze, as if he was used to their laughter and had turned inward to shut it out.

  As the boy stepped from the shadows into the flickering light of the stage, the magician welcomed him and asked him his name. He muttered something inaudible as his eyes scanned the ground at his feet.

  The children laughed louder now, more assured in their mockery, as though the boy had been brought onstage for their amusement. His feet did an unhappy shuffle against the wood of the stage, and his hands clenched and unclenched at his side. It appeared to take every ounce of his courage to stand so exposed before them.

  The magician understood it all. “Tell us your name again,” he said, “so that even the mouse in the corner over there can hear you.” And his hand fell lightly on the boy’s shoulder. A shudder went through the boy, and he raised his eyes to look the magician full in the face.

  “Carl,” he said, with a boldness no one would have expected of him moments before. “My name is Carl.” He looked deep into the magician’s eyes, cocking his head ever so slightly to the side, as though words were passing between them that no one else in the room could hear.

  “Very good,” said the magician. “I’m sure even the little mouse in his hole could hear that.”

  The boy smiled, and with that smile appeared to come a new confidence. The children looking on were stunned into silence. But the boy took no notice of them. His attention was all on the magician’s eyes.

  “Now, Carl, I would like you to take this sword and examine it carefully. Remember, the blade is very sharp.” He held the sword flat in the palms of his hands and passed it to the boy. As the boy took it by the handle, his eyes danced over the jewels, glimmering in the candlelight.

  “Now, Carl, this sword possesses great power. It was a sword only the bravest of the sultan’s warriors was allowed to touch. It brought invincibility to its bearer in battle.”

  A smile passed over the boy’s face, and he raised the sword.

  “Can you feel its power?” asked the magician.

  “Yes,” said the boy. Everyone in the room could hear him now.

  The magician raised his hand in the air, and an apple appeared in it. “Now, Carl, I would like you to pass the sword very lightly over this piece of fruit to demonstrate to our audience just how sharp it is.”

  The boy ran the blade of the sword across the apple, and it passed through it with the ease of a warm knife through butter. The twin pieces fell to the floor. A murmur ran through the crowd as the upturned halves wobbled to rest and the blade of the sword gleamed in the gaslight.

  “Now, Carl,” said the magician, taking the sword from the boy, “I want you to step inside this basket here and lie down.”

  Without the slightest hesitation, the boy lay down inside the long narrow basket, disappearing from view.

  “You remember, Carl, that I asked for a volunteer of unusual
courage. Are you that one?”

  “Yes,” came the voice from the basket.

  “And you are not afraid of the dark?”

  “No,” said the voice.

  “Very well, then,” said the magician, and he closed the lid and secured it with a length of cord. A hush fell over the room.

  The magician went over to the table and picked up the sword. He fixed the audience with his eyes. Then, without a word, he walked to the basket and thrust the blade of the sword through it, so that the point pierced the other side.

  Several children shrieked in terror as the blade emerged red with blood. Twice more he ran the basket through with the sword. A terrible silence had fallen over the room. All eyes were on the basket, sitting deathly still on the stage.

  The magician wiped the blade clean as he contemplated the crowd, then set the sword down on the table. “Life and death,” he said as he began to untie the cord that secured the basket. “What are they? Is death no more than a dream from which we soon awake?”

  The cord fell slack, and the magician tipped the basket over on its side so that the lid fell open with a dull slap against the floor of the stage.

  There was no boy, no blood, only an empty basket that had once been the storehouse for countless props and, for one impossible moment, a site of terror.

  “Reality or illusion?” said the magician with a smile. “Which is which?”

  There was a faint rustling in the shadows behind the stage, and out into the light strode the boy, as sound and healthy as ever. But he moved now with a new authority. As he took the little book from the magician’s hand and made his way offstage, he looked directly into the faces of those who had formerly been his tormentors. They looked back with awe and moved aside to allow him to pass as he returned to his place.

  The show continued.

  31

  In the dream O was at another poetry reading, but this time Rimbaud read. It seemed every word was meant for her alone. She was so overcome with emotion that, when he sat back down beside her, she leaned over and kissed him. But instead of the full warm lips she imagined, those that met hers were as cold and lifeless as glass. She woke from the dream with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was Saturday, August 8.

  Whatever terror it held for her, she knew she had to return to the ravine. Emily had said the magician was a master of disguise. But whatever shape he might assume, O knew one thing for certain: he would not come with fangs and claws. He would have the allure of mystery about him, the fascination of the unknown. He would appear as if from nowhere, without warning and without history, and he would mesmerize with his words. He could be young or old, male or female; for he could change age and sex as easily as one changes a suit of clothes.

  Despite everything O’s heart told her about Rimbaud, Emily had planted a seed of doubt. Where had he appeared from so suddenly? Where did he live? Why did she have the constant feeling he was with her even when he was nowhere near?

  Maybe Emily’s madness was not so mad at all. Perhaps, with Rimbaud, she was in the presence of someone not wholly human. Perhaps he had simply stepped into this world for a time, taken this shape to suit his purpose. When he had accomplished that, he would step back again and vanish without a trace. Maybe that was what the line in his poem meant: “In dark of night, I spin this dream of flesh.”

  She knew he had noticed a change in her. She felt utterly transparent around him, as if he could pick through her thoughts with the same ease that he plucked books from the shelves of the Green Man. Now that she’d decided what she must do, she had to keep her distance from him or he would instantly know her intentions.

  After breakfast, she busied herself around the shop. It bothered her to keep Emily in the dark, but she would never have agreed to what O had in mind. Recently, Rimbaud had taken to dropping by in the early afternoon to see if there was anything that needed doing around the shop.

  A little after noon, O told Emily she had to go downtown for a while. If Rimbaud came by while she was out, there were boxes on the back porch to be flattened and bundled and a bag of books to be taken down to the Sally Ann. That would keep him busy.

  She went up to her room, put on jeans, a long-sleeved tee shirt, and a pair of running shoes, then slipped out the window and down the fire escape. Soon, the shop was far behind her. She followed the route by memory, threading her way through the maze of streets traced indelibly in her mind since the day she followed Rimbaud to the ravine.

  Finally, she turned down the silent dead-end street. Climbing the low wooden fence, she tramped through the stand of goldenrod and burdock that bordered the ravine and stood at the edge, looking down into the green dark.

  The voice in her head – the reasonable, daylight voice – was doing its best to talk her into turning around and heading straight back home. What did she hope to prove in the end? What did she expect to find? Some sign that Rimbaud was living here? Some proof he was not who he said he was, but a shape the magician had assumed? The whole idea was madness, said the voice. She had strayed too close to Emily’s erratic orbit and been pulled in herself, and now she, too, was caught up in this crazy fantasy her aunt had spun.

  The sunlight was warm on her face. Behind her stood the quiet houses, secure in their calm. The reasonable part of her was very convincing. Its arguments made perfect sense. She listened to the voice and was tempted to turn back to the world of light.

  But then she looked down into the shadows of the ravine. And wound in with the chatter of squirrels, the song of birds, and the rustle of leaves in the wind, she could hear Emily, telling her incredible tale. It was the other side of her that heard that voice – the side that did something so unreasonable as write poems, that peopled the shadows of the Green Man with presences when she was alone in the shop, that lay fearfully in bed and imagined footsteps on the deck in the dark, that dreamt the unimaginable and woke to find it real.

  Her heart was pounding in her chest. She said farewell to all the shuttered houses on the shuttered street and started down.

  The way seemed less perilous than before. Her runners were not as slick as her flats had been. Roots seemed to hunch up from the ground to give her footholds. Branches bent down for her to latch on to. She passed silently through the green portal and entered the twilight world of the ravine.

  Halfway down she heard a voice – a voice composed of furtive scurryings, the distant babble of water, the insistent whispering of the wind in the trees.

  Welcome! She felt as if she had entered a room lit by gaslight, and a chalk-white face had leaned out over the skirt of the stage and spoken to her. At a sound of scurrying in the undergrowth, she spun around, expecting a tall stranger dressed in black to be standing there, smiling at her. And the words that spilled from his mouth would branch and leaf and launch themselves up into the low limbs of the trees and curl and wind there, until it seemed the whole of this green world had sprung from his melodious mouth.

  A squirrel, darting across the carpet of leaves, raced up the trunk of a tree and chattered down at her. Good Lord, girl, get a grip, she told herself. She breathed slowly, trying to calm herself. The last thing she needed was to panic. Panic and she would be in the power of whatever it was that made its home here.

  The steep pitch began to smooth out as she neared the base of the hill. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she moved with ease. She turned and looked back up the hillside, piecing out the path she had taken. She was afraid that if she were to come up in some other place, she would be unable to get out. She knew there was a way out here, so it was here she would go back up. She decided to mark the spot.

  The moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree lay half-hidden among spindly saplings and wildflowers by the bank of the stream that ran through the ravine. She stooped to pick up a branch and scraped a crude arrow shape in the damp ground, pointing to the place where she’d come down. She plunged the sharp end of the branch into the soft soil, then moved a few yards off and looked back, wonde
ring if she would see it.

  She noticed a plastic bag snagged on a fallen branch, bobbing in the water of the stream. She reached down and freed it, dumped out the slimy water inside, and tied the bag by the handles to the top of her marker. A breeze caught it and it ballooned out from the side of the stick. She was sure to see it now.

  She took a quick glance at her watch. It was going on three. The sun sifted down through the canopy of leaves that enclosed the ravine. She would just look around a little and then head back, while there was still plenty of light. The thought of being down here as night fell filled her with terror.

  She began walking along the bank of the stream. Her plan was to follow it as far as she could go. She had no idea where it ended, but if she stayed close to the water, she would keep her bearings; and if she wandered off for any reason, she need only find her way back to it and she would know instantly that upstream lay her marker and a safe way out.

  Caledon was scored with an intricate network of ravines. Over the years many had been filled in, their streams buried, homes and businesses built over them. But where the ravines were too wide or deep, they were left untouched, remnants of the wilderness that had once covered the land.

  Yet, even here, civilization had left its mark. Bits of trash littered the stream and lined the bank. Here, a bicycle frame, rusting in the water; there, a car tire lying among the weeds. A battered shopping cart, a broken chair, bundles of discarded flyers swelling around the plastic ties that held them together – unwanted things that had found their way here.

  At one spot, it looked as if someone had backed a pickup to the edge of the ravine and dumped its contents down the hillside – drifts of crumbling drywall, scrap lumber, bags full of garbage. The green world accepted it all without complaint and slowly covered it over.