Iz thought this over with narrowed eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Like that. Every minute interesting.”
“But then wouldn’t you figure that out and think that it could never happen that a million dollars would fall out of the sky and then you’d be rich? And you’d think all the other good things could never happen and then they would and you wouldn’t have to do anything and then there’s no story at all?”
“You’d have to actually believe it couldn’t happen. You wouldn’t be able to fake it.”
“How would anyone know?”
“The universe would know. And stop you before it happened.”
“That would never happen.”
“See? You’re already doing it right. Now that you thought that, it will happen. You’re perfect for Alwaysland, Mr. Doubtful Skeptic. Let’s call you D.S. for short.”
“What a stupid idea! It’s impossible to live in a world where something crazy could happen any second. You could be walking down the street and a giant octopus could fall on your head. Or your feet could turn into skateboards. Or a building could come alive.”
“Yeah! Now you’ve got it!”
“But that’s not fun,” he protested. He hated this habit of hers of acting like he’d said something right when he was disagreeing with her. “You couldn’t do anything. There have to be some sort of rules. Things have to be what they are.”
“Hmm,” Izzy gave him the old side-eye. “I can see how that might get tricky. So… what if it were only grand, romantic things? Like… if you thought love at first sight didn’t exist, then it would happen to you? Bam, like lightning. Although… maybe that’s the world we already live in. Nobody believes in grand, romantic things, but they’re happening.”
But Matthew knew that Izzy’s words were the top layer of something else. It was unlike her, but he felt some kind of black thing he couldn’t see, something dark emanating from his friend that he didn’t understand. And then she said two more words that seemed to point more clearly.
“Like magic.”
“The grand, romantic things are like magic?” Ari said delicately.
“They are magic. Or a product of magic.” Izzy struggled. “Or they represent magic. Look,” she said, “don’t you think there are things that…you have to take a step back, when you’re in front of them, and stop and stare? And maybe your mouth falls open, because that thing in front of you, it has so much life-ness in it? Doesn’t that ever happen to you?”
“Life-ness?”
“Oh, don’t be a doodiehead. Some things are bigger. Some things are greater. Some things tower over you and take up all the space and make you feel a great blooming inside of you. I believe you know what I’m talking about, Aristotle.”
Izandria Dauntless sat up and swiveled to put her feet on the floor and close her legs. When next she spoke it was more quietly. “I believe you may have seen some of those kinds of things this summer.”
A tight pang gripped Ari’s stomach. She hadn’t finished what she meant to say yet, and he already felt backed into a corner. Like it had to be her way or there was no other way. Like she took the magic out of things by demanding that he notice it.
The thing about Izzy was that, when she wanted them, she knew where your softest spots were and how to get at them. There wasn’t a shred of mercy in her.
Today, Izzy looked like a greenish black storm cloud rolling in. Her eyes had changed. She looked up at him with a kind of intense curiosity that made him believe she would not like what she saw, if he let her get to the thing she was looking for. If he had believed in witches, he would have thought she was one.
“Of course I know what you mean. But it’s not magic. Magic isn’t real.”
“So you meant it.”
“Meant what?”
“That stuff you said the first time we met. The first thing you ever said to me. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! I didn’t think you were serious. Or, at least, I thought a few months of Izandria Dauntless would set you right. I didn’t think you could do all the things we did and still believe it. If only I had listened!”
Ari could agree that listening was not Izzy’s strong suit. But remembering was most certainly not his, and he couldn’t recall what he’d said to her the first time they’d met.
“What was the first thing I ever said to you?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know.
“You came up and saw my sign on the tree, which said: Magic Here, 5 Cents Per Request, Inquire Within. And you said, ‘There’s no such thing as magic.’”
That did seem vaguely familiar.
“And what I’m seeing now,” she continued, “is that perhaps it is true, for you. There is no magic in your world. But that’s only because you kill it. I thought I could change things by bringing the magic, and you would see, and that would be that. But you don’t see. You won’t see. That’s what you said, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re destroying the magic, not because there isn’t any, but because you don’t want there to be any.”
“Oh, yes,” Aristotle said. “I hate magic; that’s why I hang around you, queen of making magic out of nothing.”
Iz shot daggers at him out of narrowed eyes. “All right,” she said dangerously. “Prove it.”
“Prove what?”
“That you don’t hate magic.”
“How am I to do that?”
“Let’s sort out Alwaysland. Then we’ll go there. Together.”
And now he thought he saw where she’d been trying to get him to go all along.
“All right,” Aristotle said reluctantly. “How will we get there?”
“Well, it certainly won’t be by flying. That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I expect we shall go by motorcar, like rich folks.”
That seemed reasonable. And not like magic. But Aristotle decided it wasn’t exactly the right time to say that.
“Who will drive?” he asked cautiously.
“I will, of course. You’re too fragile.”
He spluttered and could not stop it—“I am not!”
“Yes, you are. You’re a boy. Boys are terribly fragile. It’s all right. I’m strong enough for both of us. I can drive us to the moon and back, if I have to.”
Aristotle sighed. Better not to challenge that, either. It was Alwaysland, after all. And Iz probably could drive them to the moon and back.
“What will I do?”
“You’ll look pretty, like Wendy does for Peter.”
Ari frowned. “No, that won’t do at all. I’ll have to fix the motorcar when it stops running. And bring you cherries from the tree for your supper. And… sing to you when you get bored of driving.”
Izzy pulled at her lip. “Hmm. You might be of some use, then. OK, maybe I’ll let you come along.”
Ari gave her the side-eye. “You already said I could come along.”
“Did I? Well, I changed my mind for a minute and then I changed it back.”
“We’ll need characters,” Ari said. “Let’s have a girl who cares only for science. She studies what exists and what it does, and she never gets dirty. She’s quiet and proper and she follows the rules so she can win the Nobel Prize one day.”
Izzy wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t like that character much. Why would I want to follow her?”
“She’s a scientist! She might invent the next most important theorem, like Einstein with relativity.”
“Now you’re talking out of your hat. You don’t even know what that means. The science part is all right, but how does a person do science without getting dirty? I don’t think that’s right. She’d have to be a bit smudged up.”
“No, she wears a white lab coat. And she really wants that prize. She wouldn’t do anything to risk not getting it.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “God, she sounds like a perfect bore. We’ll have to make the boy her total opposite to have any fun.” Her eyes lit up. “That’s it! The boy must be a grand, true, heroic adventurer, who leads a whole pack of boys, who isn’t s
cared of anything, who’s loud and restless and a bit like an animal. Full of fuss and flair. But then… whyever would he hang around that girl?”
What a nice picture she painted, Ari thought hazily. Here he had made her character into everything he knew she wouldn’t want to be, and she… did she think he wouldn’t want to be that kind of boy? Or simply that he wasn’t and would never be?
That was worse.
Aristotle’s chin sagged. “This is a stupid game.”
“Why, we’ve only just gotten the characters figured out. We’ve no idea of the shape of the land—perhaps there should be islands? And neighborhoods with nicknames on the islands? Who lives there? What kind of animals are there? What are the natives like? There are so many questions to answer! You can’t quit now, Aristotle.”
He could be a hero. He absolutely could. But she wouldn’t let him. She always had to be the hero. How was he going to be the hero if she got there first?
He stood up abruptly. “I’m going home.”
Izzy’s face snarled with displeasure. “What? Where did that come from? We’re in the middle of making up a story. Not to mention reading Peter and Wendy.” She waved a hand at the book. “You can’t go now.”
“I can do whatever I want. And I shall. Including declaring, once again, that there’s no such thing as magic.” He felt only a small pang, this time. It was true, after all.
“You’re right,” she said. “You should go.” Izzy glared, trying to burn his face with her eyeballs. “You know why? Because I am the kind of person who one hundred percent and then more believes in magic. Not any hoodoo voodoo woowoo, but real, right here in front of you magic. The world, the way it is, is magic. Science is magic. The roof of my house is magic. Waking up is magic. And, I’ll tell you what, if on any day I wake up and I don’t see magic right here in front of me, I either go and I find some, or I make it my own self. And if you don’t know that about me by now and one hundred percent love it, then you don’t belong here.”
“Izandria—“ He tried to start, to explain, to find words—
She covered her eyes with one hand and pointed toward the yard with her other. “I don’t want to see you. Go.”
This tone of her voice was one that Aristotle had always obeyed. So he went.
Being the Story in Which Matthew Wanders the World in Search of Answers
The boy called Aristotle neither saw nor spoke to his friend Izandria Dauntless for four whole days. When he first walked away from Castle Beauregard Mandelgreen, he had no idea how hard that would be. It had seemed like it would be easy. He didn’t feel like talking to her. But by the morning of the fifth day, his heart hurt so much that his head began to hurt, too. His whole body began to hurt, down to his toe joints. He wondered whether Izzy missed him as much as he missed her. He wondered what she was doing without him. He wondered whether she might show up at his house with a teanic. He sort of hoped she might, although he had a sinking feeling that he knew, quite definitely, in his bones, that she wouldn’t.
Still, he kept feeling, on every day, like today might be the day she turned up again. It seemed both natural, like the only thing that could happen, because it had to happen, and yet impossible at the same time, because it wasn’t happening.
Every day was an empty hollow pit. Every summer afternoon was a missed opportunity—what should have been a teanic or a grand adventure… wasn’t. There should have been made-up stories and new character names and trouble, lots of trouble. There should have been discussions and wonderings and fearing for their lives, his and hers. Instead there was only a vast nothingness—a cavern of lack.
To ease the discomfort, Matthew wandered.
He thought of himself as aimless, but the truth of it was that the destinations he found himself in were reflections of memories. First it was the tree he met her in, with that stupid sign on it, the cause of everything. The desire to blame the sign flared hot, but Matthew knew that wasn’t quite it. Whatever was happening now had nothing to do with that. It would have come up with or without the sign.
He went to the zen garden. He supposed Dolores would kick him out, but she wasn’t there, which only added to his general disappointment. He wandered around the place, kicking pebbles into the stream, until he had to acknowledge that it was not helping the emptiness. He apologized to Dolores under his breath for returning and for the pebble kicking, and he left.
He wandered farther and found himself at the pond where they sank the boat and Iz nearly drowned. He stood in front of the ugly little pond with the murky water and missed that boat. But Iz had survived. He would have traded the boat for Iz again and again. Every time.
He made a circuit of these places each day, and then on his way home, he walked past Castle Beauregard Mandelgreen. Well, it wasn’t really on his way home, but he walked past it and then home. He walked to it, and then past it, and then turned around and walked past it again, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t know why he thought it, but he thought Izzy would have been proud if she’d known.
Where was she? How could she disappear from his life, so thoroughly, so easily, without another word? He couldn’t stand it.
He wanted to do something.
But he felt stuck. Some days he felt like Izzy had been the only motion there had ever been. Something had been lost, and he didn’t know how to recover it. Or if it could be at all.
Then, one lovely summer day, early in the morning, Matthew sat on the curb, not wanting to walk or move or feel or be. He wished he could disappear. Why did things have to happen like this? He had not felt like this before Izzy. She had wrecked him in two. For a moment he wished he had never met her. He had been happy, hadn’t he? Without her. Before her. He wouldn’t’ve known.
But that felt all wrong, too. Not knowing Iz? It was like in The Wizard of Oz, when everything’s black and white at first, and then turns to color. She had turned his world to color. How could he wish that away?
He kicked at a stone in the street. He picked up a sparkly bit of gravel and examined it. He squished an ant with his thumb.
This was dumb. The whole thing was dumb. Everything was dumb. Dumb dumb dumb.
He was done with it. He shot up from the curb like a rocket and ran. He careened alongside the woods, running down the street with abandon, because it seemed the only thing that made sense. The pumping of his legs and burning of his lungs felt like life. It felt like fighting the loss.
As he ran, he fell into a rhythm, and in an instant, with an urge he could not explain, he had to look to his left. And there beside him, close enough to reach out and touch, was a tall, lean red fox.
The animal kept pace, running alongside him, looking straight ahead as though Matthew weren’t there, but sharing in a moment of inexplicable connection, animal to animal.
They ran together for half a block, and then just like that, the fox was gone again, disappeared into the woods, leaving Matthew with a strange feeling of having stepped into another world. When he looked up and around and started trying to see where he was, he realized he was lost.
He plodded up the street a bit farther, and what he saw then made him wonder if that fox had taken him through a portal. In front of him, at the end of the street, a tall, red brick tower stretched to the heavens. It looked more like a castle than Castle Beauregard Mandelgreen. It had a clock on its face and lots of skinny castle windows, and rounded archways everywhere, over its door, and over its road, and over its first floor windows. Yes, it had its own road, which went right through the arch beneath the tower and continued on alongside the rest of the building that attached to the tower. Somehow, Matthew had definitely come through a portal. If only Iz were here.
He continued down the road and under the archway. A mailbox startled him, only because he didn’t feel like it ought to be there, but it turned out, once he got up close to the tower, that across from the tower, on the other side of the road, there was a doorway into a courtyard, with a little pool surrounded by stone tiles, and beyond tha
t a regular, human-sized door into the base of the large building adjacent to the tower. Matthew would have turned around right there and then, but the door was open.
Whatever would Izzy say if he walked away from the most interesting open door he had ever seen?
So he approached, and he poked his head around the door, and it led into the biggest, weirdest-shaped, most interesting place full of strange things he had ever seen, and so he kept wandering, right on in, hardly thinking of anything anymore except seeing what in the world this room was and what in the world all these things were.
The room had grand, lofty ceilings, a bit like a barn, and it was absolutely, positively stuffed to overflowing—posilutely FLOWED, Izzy would say—with THINGS. It was hard to tell, at first, what the things were, exactly, because there were so many, and they were so un-everyday. A big piano, that was obvious, but when Matthew walked farther in, it soon became clear that every square inch of space was covered with things that were not so obvious. There were keyboards, yes, and drums, and microphones, and then there was a computer, hooked up to more keyboards and a strange looking pegboard box with wires of all colors coming out of it every which way. There were several other boxes with funny-looking knobs.
Matthew spun in a circle, examining the room—there was so much to see. In the corner near the stairwell he spied a collection of funny-looking pianos that begged to be played. Matthew wandered to the nearest one and pressed a key, then another, and another.
The sounds the machine made were not like a normal piano—they made Matthew think of lying in a bright green clearing with Izzy, cloud-gazing and dreaming up new adventures. They sounded like playing in the creek until the sun went down, splashing and digging for toads. They sounded like star-gazing and drinking cherry limeade. They made him feel… at peace. Like everything was as it should be.
They sounded like magic.
“Enjoying the Mellotrons?” a voice said from behind him.
Matthew spun around, putting his hands behind his back.
The man had white, frazzly hair that grew everywhere, including on top of his head and his chin and his nose. He wore rectangular spectacles and had a round, red face with excitable eyes that looked like a young boy’s, though the man was obviously an adult (his hair being white and all). He looked exactly as Matthew would have expected for a man who lived in a tower full of un-everyday things.
A Possibility of Magic Page 7