The Magician's Elephant

by Kate DiCamillo

  Even Iddo raised his head.

  Only Peter kept his eyes on the elephant and the magician who was walking around and around her, muttering the backward words of a backward spell that would send her home.

  And so Peter was the only one to see her leave. He was the only one to witness the greatest magic trick that the magician ever performed.

  The elephant was there, and then she was not.

  It was as simple as that.

  As soon as she was gone, the clouds returned, the stars disappeared from view, and it began, again, to snow.

  It is incredible that the elephant, who had arrived in the city of Baltese with so much noise, left it in such a profound silence. When she at last disappeared, there was no noise at all, only the tic-tic-tic of the falling snow.

  Iddo put his nose up in the air and sniffed. He let out a low, questioning bark.

  “Yes,” Tomas said to him, “gone.”

  “Ah, well,” said Leo Matienne.

  Peter bent over and looked at the four circular footprints left in the snow. “She is truly gone,” he said. “I hope she is home.”

  When he raised his head, Adele was looking at him, her eyes round and astonished.

  He smiled at her. “Home,” he said.

  And she smiled back at him, that same smile: disbelief, then belief, and finally joy.

  The magician sank to his knees and put his head in his shaking hands. “I am done with it then, all of it. And I am sorry. Truly, I am.”

  Leo Matienne took hold of the magician’s arm and pulled him to his feet.

  “Are you going to put him back in prison?” said Adele.

  “I must,” said Leo Matienne.

  And then Madam LaVaughn spoke. She said, “No, no. It is pointless, after all, is it not?”

  “What?” said Hans Ickman. “What did you say?”

  “I said that it is pointless to return him to prison. What has happened has happened. I release him. I will press no charges. I will sign any and all statements to that effect. Let him go. Let him go.”

  Leo Matienne let go of the magician’s arm, and the magician turned to Madam LaVaughn and bowed. “Madam,” he said.

  “Sir,” she said back.

  They let him walk away.

  They watched his black coat retreating slowly into the swirling snow. They watched, together, until it disappeared entirely from view.

  And when he was gone, Madam LaVaughn felt some great weight suddenly flap its wings and break free of her. She laughed aloud. She put her arms around Adele and hugged her tight.

  “The child is cold,” she said. “We must go inside.”

  “Yes,” said Leo Matienne. “Let’s go inside.”

  And that, after all, is how it ended.

  Quietly.

  In a world muffled by the gentle, forgiving hand of snow.

  Iddo slept in front of the fire when he came to visit.

  And Tomas sang.

  They did not ever, the two of them, stay for long.

  But they visited often enough that Leo and Gloria and Peter and Adele learned to sing, along with Tomas, his strange and beautiful songs of elephants and truth and wonderful news.

  Often, when they were singing, there came from the attic apartment a knocking sound.

  It was usually Adele who went up the stairs to ask Vilna Lutz what it was he wanted. He could never answer her properly. He could only say that he was cold and that he would like for the window to be closed; sometimes, when he was in the grips of a particularly high fever, he would allow Adele to sit beside him and hold his hand.

  “We must outflank the enemy!” he would shout. “Where, oh where, is my foot?”

  And then, in despair, he would say, “I cannot take her. Truly, I cannot. She is too small.”

  “Shhh,” said Adele. “There, there.”

  She would wait until the old soldier fell asleep, and then she would go back down the stairs to where Gloria and Leo and her brother were waiting for her.

  And when she walked into the room, it was always, for Peter, as if she had been gone a very long time. His heart leaped up high inside of him, astonished and overjoyed anew at the sight of her, and he remembered, again, the door from his dream and the golden field of wheat. All that light, and here was Adele before him: warm and safe and loved.

  It was, after all, as he had once promised his mother it would be.

  The magician became a goatherd and married a woman who had no teeth. She loved him, and he loved her, and they lived with their goats in a hut at the foot of a steep hill. Sometimes, on summer evenings, they climbed the hill and stood together and stared up at the constellations in the night sky.

  The magician showed his wife the star that he had gazed upon so often in prison, the star that, he felt, had kept him alive.

  “It is that one,” he said, pointing. “No, it is that one.”

  “It makes no never mind which it was, Frederick,” his wife said gently. “All of them are beautiful.”

  And they were.

  The magician never again performed an act of magic.

  The elephant lived a very long time. And in spite of what they say about the memory of elephants, she recalled none of what had happened. She did not remember the opera house or the magician or the countess or Bartok Whynn. She did not remember the snow that fell so mysteriously from the sky. Perhaps it was too painful for her to remember. Or maybe the whole of it seemed to her like nothing more than a terrible dream that was best forgotten.

  Sometimes, though, when she was walking through the tall grass or standing in the shade of the trees, Peter’s face would flash in front of her, and she was struck with a peculiar feeling of having been well and truly seen, of having at last been found, saved.

  And then the elephant was grateful, although she did not know to whom and could not think why.

  And as the elephant forgot the city of Baltese and its inhabitants, so they, too, forgot her. Her disappearance caused a stir and then was forgotten. She became to them a strange and unbelievable notion that faded with time. Soon, no one spoke of her miraculous appearance or her inexplicable disappearance; all of it seemed too impossible to have ever happened to begin with, to have ever been true.

  But it did happen.

  And some small evidence of these marvelous events remains.

  High atop the city’s most magnificent cathedral, hidden among the glowering and resentful gargoyles, there is a carving of an elephant being led by a boy. The boy is carrying a girl, and one of his hands is resting on the elephant, while behind the elephant, there is a magician and a policeman, a nun and a noblewoman, a manservant, a beggar, a dog, and finally, behind them all, at the end, a small bent man.

  Each person has a hold of the other, each one is connected to the one before him, and each of them is looking forward, their heads held at such an angle that it seems as if they are looking into a bright light.

  If you yourself ever journey to the city of Baltese, and if, once you are there, you question enough people, you will — I know; I do believe — find someone who can lead you, someone able to show you the way to that cathedral, to that truth that Bartok Whynn left carved there, high up in the stone.

  1. Peter is told by the fortuneteller that the “truth is forever changing.” Do you agree? Are there important truths at the beginning of The Magician’s Elephant that aren’t true by the story’s end?

  2. The old magician keeps insisting that he intended to conjure a bouquet of lilies, not an elephant. But is he being honest? Why did he want to perform real magic that night in the Bliffendorf Opera House? Why couldn’t he undo his magic?

  3. The elephant and the magician have been placed behind bars, but they aren’t the only confined characters in the novel. What restricts Madam LaVaughn? How free are Peter and Adele?

  4. One dark day Peter decides “that it was a terrible and complicated thing to hope, and that it might be easier, instead, to despair.” In what ways is despair easier
than hope? Does Peter really believe that hope isn’t worth the fight? Do you?

  5. Discuss the elephant’s predicament. How has she been failed by the magician’s trick? What is the magical transformation she seeks?

  6. Sister Marie has no doubt that every creature has its own name, even the elephant. Why are names so important? Would you be a different person if you had a different name?

  Coming in Spring 2016 from Kate DiCamillo

  Have you ever in your life come to

  realize that everything, absolutely

  everything, depends on you?

  Two days ago, Raymie’s father left home with a dental hygienist. If Raymie can win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father will see her picture in the paper and (maybe) come home.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek. . . .

  here were three of them, three girls.

  They were standing side by side.

  They were standing at attention.

  And then the girl in the pink dress, the one who was standing right next to Raymie, let out a sob and said, “The more I think about it, the more terrified I am. I am too terrified to go on!”

  The girl clutched her baton to her chest and dropped to her knees.

  Raymie stared at her in wonder and admiration.

  She herself often felt too terrified to go on, but she had never admitted it out loud.

  The girl in the pink dress moaned and toppled over sideways.

  Her eyes fluttered closed. She was silent. And then she opened her eyes very wide and shouted, “Archie, I’m sorry! I’m sorry I betrayed you!”

  She closed her eyes again. Her mouth fell open.

  Raymie had never seen or heard anything like it.

  “I’m sorry,” Raymie whispered. “I betrayed you.”

  For some reason, the words seemed worth repeating.

  “Stop this nonsense immediately,” said Ida Nee.

  Ida Nee was the baton-­twirling instructor. Even though she was old — over fifty at least — her hair was an extremely bright yellow. She wore white boots that came all the way up to her knees.

  “I’m not kidding,” said Ida Nee.

  Raymie believed her.

  Ida Nee didn’t seem like much of a kidder.

  The sun was way, way up in the sky, and the whole thing was like high noon in a Western. But it was not a Western; it was baton-­twirling lessons at Ida Nee’s house in Ida Nee’s backyard.

  It was the summer of 1975.

  It was the fifth day of June.

  And two days before, on the third day of June, Raymie Clarke’s father had run away from home with a woman who was a dental hygienist.

  Hey, diddle, diddle, the dish ran away with the spoon.

  Those were the words that went through Raymie’s head every time she thought about her father and the dental hygienist.

  But she did not say the words out loud anymore because Raymie’s mother was very upset, and talking about dishes and spoons running away together was not appropriate.

  It was actually a great tragedy, what had happened.

  That was what Raymie’s mother said.

  “This is a great tragedy,” said Raymie’s mother. “Quit reciting nursery rhymes.”

  It was a great tragedy because Raymie’s father had disgraced himself.

  It was also a great tragedy because Raymie was now fatherless.

  The thought of that — the fact of it — that she, Raymie Clarke, was without a father, made a small, sharp pain shoot through Raymie’s heart every time she considered it.

  Sometimes the pain in her heart made her feel too terrified to go on. Sometimes it made her want to drop to her knees.

  But then she would remember that she had a plan.

  These people walked with me

  through a long winter’s night:

  Tracey Bailey, Karla Rydrych,

  Lisa Beck, Jane St. Anthony,

  Cindy Rogers, Jane O’Reilly,

  Jennifer Brown, Amy Schwantes,

  Emily van Beek, and Holly McGhee.

  I am forever in their debt.

  KATE DICAMILLO is the author of the novels Because of Winn-Dixie, a Newbery Honor winner; The Tiger Rising, a National Book Award Finalist; The Tale of Despereaux, a Newbery Medal winner; The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane; and Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, a Newbery Medal winner. About The Magician’s Elephant, she says, “I wanted, I needed, I longed to tell a story of love and magic. Peter, Adele, the magician, the elephant — all the characters in this book are the result of that longing. I hope that you, the reader, find some love and magic here.” Kate DiCamillo is also the author of a picture book, Great Joy; the Mercy Watson and Tales from Deckawoo Drive series for beginning readers; and, with Alison McGhee, the three Bink and Gollie books, also for beginning readers. She lives in Minneapolis.

  YOKO TANAKA is a graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She says, “Reading The Magician’s Elephant made me feel as though I had just watched a breathtaking play onstage. The writing is so poetic, and the atmosphere, dark but warm, is one that I feel so comfortable working in.” Yoko Tanaka lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2009 by Kate DiCamillo

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Yoko Tanaka

  Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Yoko Tanaka

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2009

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  DiCamillo, Kate.

  The magician’s elephant / Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When ten-year-old orphan Peter Augustus Duchene encounters a fortuneteller in the marketplace one day and she tells him that his sister, who is presumed dead, is in fact alive, he embarks on a remarkable series of adventures as he desperately tries to find her.

  [1. Orphans — Fiction. 2. Missing persons — Fiction. 3. Elephants — Fiction. 4. Adventure and adventurers — Fiction. 5. Brothers and sisters — Fiction.] I. Tanaka, Yoko, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.D5455Mag 2009

  [Fic] — dc22 2009007359

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