The learning of magic was by no means easy. The days went by with
Chris's mornings and afternoons spent in Mr. Wicker's study, reading
books too heavy for him to lift, learning incantations by heart, and
how to blend simple formulae over the fire. He had told his master at
once about Simon Gosler, his horde of money and his hiding places for
it. Mr. Wicker though interested and attentive, gave Chris the
impression that what he had been told was not new to him. At times
Chris was allowed to run about the large vegetable garden and climb
the orchard trees, but he was told that the moment had not yet come
when he could wander at will in early Georgetown.
Chris had tried it once, rebellious and bored at the now familiar
ground, but it was as if an invisible wall kept him in the confines of
Mr. Wicker's land, a slippery glass wall he could feel but not see,
and in which he could discover no chink in which to put his toe to
find the height of it. So there was nothing left to do but to work as
fast and as well as he could. "There are rumors," Mr. Wicker had told
him quietly, too quietly, "that Claggett Chew is preparing his ship,
the _Venture_, for a voyage East. There is much activity about his
ship, and he is laying in stores, so I am informed. We must get
forward with all haste, for his ship is a fast one--faster than the
_Mirabelle_."
Chris therefore threw himself into all the preliminaries of his task.
His head swam when he laid it on his pillow at night, and Becky Boozer
would stand with her hands on her barrel-sized hips, shaking her hat
until its plumes and roses waved madly, over "her boy's" shadowed eyes
and weary air.
For Chris was now as accepted a member of the household as Mr. Wicker
himself, and had it not been for the robust guffaws of Ned Cilley, and
the ministrations of the now devoted Becky, Chris's days would have
been tedious indeed.
One afternoon when he returned, after a rest, to Mr. Wicker's study,
he saw that there was something new in the room. A bowl with a
goldfish in it stood on the table, but Mr. Wicker was not to be seen.
Now, however, Chris was not the boy he had been a few weeks before. He
went straight to the bowl and addressed the fish.
"Sir," he said to the goldfish, "I am here. What shall I do first?"
The goldfish might almost have been said to have changed its
expression and smiled, before, brushing a drop of water from his
sleeve, Mr. Wicker stood beside the table smiling.
"How you have improved, my boy!" he exclaimed. "It is now time for you
to try, and this is as good a change as any."
All at once, at the imminent prospect of really changing himself into
some other form, Chris became frightened and his hands grew cold.
"Oh, sir! Do you really think I know how?" he cried, gazing up into
the face of his master. "Suppose I change and can't change back?"
Mr. Wicker shook his head with a smile.
"Never fear, Christopher. You know enough to start, and I feel
reasonably sure that you will be quite able to change back again. If
you get stuck I can help you. Come now," he said, putting out his hand
to touch Chris's shoulder in a reassuring way, "here you go. Remember
Incantation Seventy-three, Book One."
Chris stared at the fishbowl, empty now. He remembered Incantation 73,
Book One, quite well, but his knees began to tremble and he stood as
if paralyzed. Mr. Wicker waited patiently beside him for a few moments
for Chris to get up his courage.
Then as nothing happened, with a voice like a whip Mr. Wicker said:
"Start at once!"
Chris was so startled at his usually gentle master's tone that without
further thought or effort on his part, he began intoning to himself
the words and sounds of Incantation 73, Book One. As he went on,
concentrating on becoming a goldfish in the bowl on the table, he
became aware of a humming sensation in his head. This grew until it
seemed that all his body was filled with the strange new vibration,
tingling from his feet to the crown of his head. The sensation spread,
faster and faster. His head swam and he felt faint and a little sick,
but he persisted through the final words. Somewhere deep inside him
there seemed a sudden lurch, and then a wonderfully cool, liquid
sensation. He felt buoyant and rested and looked about, only to get a
wavery, enlarged glimpse of Mr. Wicker, looking more like a reflection
in a circus mirror than himself. With a light twist of his body Chris
floated over, to see that the room looked the same, and rolling back,
could see that Mr. Wicker was peering in at him from above and smiling
broadly.
[Illustration]
"Good Lord--I'm a fish!" Chris said, and he heard the words muffled as
they came back to him through the water of his bowl. Well, what do you
know? he thought, not without a feeling of pride, and commenced
experimenting with his tail and fins with such enthusiasm and delight
that some little time elapsed before Mr. Wicker's voice boomed close
by.
"Better come back now. Take it slowly, son. Seventy-four, Book One:
The Return."
The same strange sensations flooded Chris as he made the change back
to his own shape, but when he stood once more on his own two feet on
the carpet in Mr. Wicker's study, he was pleased and happy despite his
weakness. Mr. Wicker took hold of his arm and helped him to a chair,
and taking a small vial from the cupboard at the end of the room, he
dropped a pellet into it and handed it to Chris.
"This will seem to smoke. Sniff the smoke and drink the liquid that
remains," he said.
[Illustration]
Chris did as he was told, and his momentary weakness vanished, leaving
him quieted and as strong as usual.
"There now," Mr. Wicker said, rubbing his hands with immense
satisfaction, "that was not so bad, was it? A peculiar feeling, but as
you come to do it more often and more quickly, the change will come
more rapidly and in time you will be scarcely aware of the sensations
at all." He looked at his pupil with pride. "You will do famously, my
boy. In another moment, when you have rested, we shall try another
one."
From that time, Chris became increasingly proficient, and as his
ability grew he began to find magic a wonderful game, which he and Mr.
Wicker played together. They played this new and unique form of
hide-and-seek, each one taking a new shape, turn by turn, as a
challenge to the other's powers of imagination and detection. Soon
Chris could turn himself into a limited number of things, for even Mr.
Wicker's magic had a limit: a singing bird in a cage, a part of the
pattern in the brocaded curtains, or a section of the design in the
Indian rug. The bluebottle fly or the goldfish became as easy as
saying "Eureka!" and on one occasion Chris turned himself into the
chair on which Mr. Wicker was sitting, and then walked across the room
on his four wooden legs carrying Mr. Wicker, who laughed more heartily
than he had in years at this display on the part of his student.
One day Chris wandered alone into the dusty shop. The time had nearly
come when he could walk about in early Georgetown and know that it
would still be the Georgetown of the past, and not the one into which
he had been born. This afternoon, a rainy one, he had tired of
changing himself into and out of objects. Mr. Wicker was busy, and
Becky Boozer had gone off to market accompanied by Ned Cilley. Chris
felt somewhat forlorn and lonely, as any boy might, and kicked an old
piece of wood ahead of him into the darkness of the shop.
Going up to the shop window, he stood with his hands thrust into his
pockets staring glumly first out the window and then, idly, at the
three objects he had once loved to contemplate, the _Mirabelle_ in her
bottle, the coil of heavy rope, and the carved wooden figure of the
Nubian boy.
Without interest at first, Chris stared at the little Negro boy, so
gaily dressed in full red trousers, gilded jacket and white turban.
The figure's shoes, carved in some Eastern style, had curved
up-pointing toes. Then all at once the idea came to Chris. If he was
to be a magician, could he make this boy come to life?
The prospect excited him wildly, for he had no companion with whom to
laugh and share jokes. Grown people, however gay and kind, were never
quite the same. The more he thought of it, the more Chris knew it had
to be attempted. He squatted on his haunches, examining the carved
wooden figure attentively, and felt convinced that, once alive, the
boy would be an ideal and happy companion.
But how did one change inanimate to animate? Chris got up and stole
back to Mr. Wicker's door. He heard the magician going up the spiral
staircase to his room above, and after changing himself to a mouse to
slip under the door and see that the room was really empty, Chris
resumed his proper shape and opened the doors of the cupboard at the
far end of the room.
On its top shelf was Book Three, a book a foot thick and bound in
heavy brass studded with semi-precious stones in the form of signs and
symbols. With difficulty, standing on tiptoe, Chris lifted it down,
and placing it on the floor, turned over page after page.
The afternoon, rainy before, increased in storm. Dusk came two hours
before its time; thunder snarled in the sky.
At last Chris found it. There were the words, and there the charm.
Certain elements were to be mixed and poured at the proper time. He
hurried, memorizing as he closed the book, and hoisted it once more to
its high shelf. Looking about, he found the ingredients that had been
listed, and in an empty vial poured first two drops of this, and then
seventeen of that, and ran to heat it at the fire.
Mr. Wicker began moving about upstairs; the floorboards creaked, and
still Chris could not leave until the potion fumed and glowed.
After what seemed an endless time, amid a growing grind of thunder and
in the almost darkened room, the phial in Chris's hand gave off an
arching rosy glow. Chris, his cheeks hot from excitement and the fire,
tiptoed out just as Mr. Wicker's step creaked on the topmost tread of
the spiral stair. With infinite caution Chris closed the door silently
behind him, and running lightly forward, reached the figure of the
Negro boy.
The words came out, interrupted by peals and cracks of thunder. The
shop was black except for the paler crescent of the bow window giving
onto the street. With a crash of thunder all but drowning out his
words, the boy shouted in the emptiness of the shop as he poured the
rosy liquid on the figure made of wood.
And then, appalled at his audacity, Chris dropped the phial which
splintered on the floor. Watching there in the darkness, he shook so
with nerves that he had to kneel.
For in the blackness lit only by the lightning and its own eerie glow,
the wood was changing as he watched.
It was as if the stiffness melted. Under his eyes the wooden folds of
cloth became rich silk, embroidery gleamed in its reality upon the
coat, and oh! the face! The wooden grin loosened, the large eyes
turned, the hand holding the hard bouquet of carved flowers moved, and
let the bouquet fall. The feet of the boy twitched and shifted in
their pointed shoes.
[Illustration]
Aghast, Chris remained frozen as the boy moved slowly, and a final
_Boom!_ of thunder seemed to split the sky apart. Outside, the rain
poured down as if over some skyward dam.
The boy looked down at Chris with a radiant smile and put out his
hand.
"I'll help you up," he said to the kneeling boy in front of him. "I am
Amos."
And as they turned, the light and the dark hands holding firm, the
firelight was streaming from the distant door and Mr. Wicker waited.