The Rebirth of Wonder (14 page)

On the left was cracking plaster, painted
white long ago, now faded to a dull gray; the lath beneath had
patterned the gray with darker two-inch stripes.

On the right the wall was rough stone, the
last remnants of ancient whitewash still visible in streaks here
and there; black pipes emerged from the stone near the ceiling,
turned a right angle, and descended the wall to eye level, where
they connected to the rusted green metal box of the water meter.
Farther in, near the corner, was the black steel of the fuse box,
two thick metal-wrapped cables leading out the top and into the
ceiling. The ceiling, far above, was bare planking, dark with age;
the floor was gray granite.

And the far end of the passageway was another
rough stone wall – but in this one was a door. A black six-panel
door, full-sized, its ancient finish crazed and pebbled, speckled
with the orange of old shellac.

“
Oh, my God,” Art
said, staring.

There had never been a
door there before. He
knew
that. There were never any costumes stored here
that might have hidden it.

He fished out his key ring, just in case, and
stepped forward into the passage. With the ring in his left hand,
he reached out with his right and gripped the blackened brass
knob.

It turned. The latch clicked, and the door
swung open.

And warm sunlight spilled into the corridor
around him.

At 10 p.m., in a New England cellar, sunlight
lit the passage, colored his sneakers with gold.

He blinked, and stepped through the door.

Chapter Fourteen

Maggie saw the light the moment she stepped
into the central corridor.

“
Art?” she called,
as she made her way step by step down the passage. “Art, are you
there?”

She hesitated at the corner, then turned, and
found the open door.

And Art.

He was sitting in a meadow, surrounded by
golden flowers and dancing butterflies. The sun hung huge and
orange in the west; he was facing it, watching it.

Maggie approached cautiously, but he heard
her somehow, and looked up, startled. He said something, but she
couldn't hear it – which came as no surprise, really. She had never
seen such a door before, but she had heard of them and knew
something about how they worked. The moment she had seen the meadow
she had known what she faced, and that knowledge was itself
something of a shock, but once that was past mere details were
nothing.

She hesitated again on the threshold, then
stepped through.

In an instant, the silence of the theater
basement was replaced with the whirring of insects and the singing
of the birds that pursued them. A gentle breeze rippled through the
grass and flowers.

She turned quickly, and made certain that the
door was still there, still open.

It was; its frame was part of a small,
colorful little shed built against the side of a steep hill. The
shed was enamel and gilt and painted porcelain, but through it she
could see the rough stone and plaster of the basement corridor, the
fuse box, the water meter, all of it sane and normal.

“
Maggie,” Art said.
“Sit down.”

“
I don't know
if...”

“
Sit down!
” Art bellowed.

Maggie sat down quickly.

For a moment, the two of them sat there in
the grass, staring at each other. Art's expression was blank, and
Maggie's wary.

Then Art spoke, saying wearily, “Maggie,
whoever you are, will you tell me something?”

“
What?” she
asked.

“
What the hell is going on?” He waved an arm at the
landscape, taking in the meadow, the sinking sun, the grove of
trees nearby, the towers that glittered above the trees in the
distance. “What
is
this place?”

Maggie sighed.

“
I suppose,” she
said, “that I'll have to tell you everything.”

“
Please,” Art
said.

“
I told you I'm a
witch...” she began.

“
No,” he corrected
her, “you told me that your grandmother had been called a
witch.”

“
All right, you're right, I did,” she agreed. “Well,
whatever I told you, I
am
a witch. A real one, and the last
real Scottish witch in the world.”

“
Wiccan, you mean?
There aren't any in Scotland?”

“
No, not Wiccan. They're just pagans. I mean, some of
them
think
they're witches, but...” Her voice trailed off.
She paused, then said, “Let me start over.”

“
By all means,” Art
agreed.

“
This is magic,” she
said, waving an arm to take in the entire landscape that surrounded
them. “It's real magic, the stuff that's in all the old
stories.”

“
It's not a fake, like the holodeck on
Star Trek
?” Art
asked. “Or some kind of amusement park, or teleportation, or
something?”

“
No,” Maggie said.
“It's magic. This is Faerie.”

“
I didn't really
think it was fake,” Art said. “It's too real.” He plucked a blade
of grass and crumpled it between his fingers.

A thought struck Maggie as she watched, and
she asked him, “You haven't eaten anything, have you? Chewed on a
bit of grass or anything?”

“
No,” he said. “It
didn't seem like a good idea.”

“
Good.
Don't.”

Art nodded. When Maggie didn't immediately
continue with her explanation, he asked, “If this is Faerie, where
are the fairies, or elves, or whatever it is that lives here?”

“
Shh!” Maggie looked
around, worried, but spotted nothing nearby save butterflies and
flowers. In the shadows of the trees a few fireflies were rising,
like sparks from a fire. The birds were settling in for the night.
Nothing larger than a meadowlark could be seen
moving.

Slightly reassured, she
said, “I don't know. I don't
want
to know. I've never been here before, any more
than you have; nobody's been able to find a way into Faerie since
long before I was born. Nobody knows what's happened in Faerie
since... well, since about the First World War, I guess. So maybe
the locals are hiding, maybe they've forgotten what humans are, or
maybe they're just minding their own business. I don't know. I
haven't been here, I've just heard about it.”

“
So why have you
heard about it, and I haven't?” Art asked, a bit plaintively. “Why
hasn't anyone been here in so long? Why wasn't that door ever there
before?”

“
Because...” She
sighed. “Because magic is dying. Just like in the
play.”

“
Why?” Art asked.
“Because nobody believes in it any more, like
Tinkerbell?”

“
No,” Maggie said, annoyed. “You've got it backwards,
just like people always do. People don't believe in magic anymore
because there hardly is any magic to believe in. It's wearing out,
getting old and weak. It's been declining for centuries, for
millennia, maybe. Whether you believe in it or not doesn't make any
difference in whether it works, any more than it matters whether
you believe in electricity when you turn on a light – the magic is
still there, and still real. But you need to believe in it
to
control
it, you need to know which switch to flip. And if
you believe in it, it can control
you
, sometimes... it's
complicated.”

“
So explain it. I'm
listening.”

She glared at him, took a deep breath, and
began.

“
Magic comes from
two things, from people and from places; everybody who knows
anything about it knows that there are places of power, that magic
works better some places than other, and everybody knows that magic
works better for some people than for others, and the more you know
about it, the better it works. That's why the old wizards studied
it endlessly. The people grow old and wear out and eventually die –
they may stretch their time out with the magic, but they get older
and weaker, like anybody else.

“
Well, the places
get old and die, too. The Valley of the Kings, in Egypt – it's been
dead for thousands of years, all that's left is the memories. Mount
Fuji's been dead longer than that, no one even remembers why it was
holy. Delphi's gone, Angkor Wat is gone, Obersalzburg is gone.
Stonehenge is just stones now, the magic there is an echo of an
echo. And... well, I won't go through the whole list, but there's
only one left, in Sedona, Arizona. All the magic that remains on
Earth comes from the American Southwest – and that one's old and
weak, too. It'll probably be gone by next year.”

Art started to say something, to ask a
question, then thought better of it.

“
The people have been getting scarcer and weaker, too,”
Maggie continued. “With so few places to draw on, so little
strength left, there
can't
be many true magicians, and we
can't do as much. And now we're all that's left – just the twelve
of us. All the others, the psychics and miracle-workers and
so-called witches, they're frauds and charlatans. There are just
the twelve.”

“
The Bringers of
Wonder?”

Maggie nodded. “That's what Myrddin calls us.
Twelve of us left, in all the world.”

“
Who's
Meer-Then?”

“
Mr. Innisfree.
Myrddin's his real name.”

Art considered that, and accepted it. “And
all the magic you people do is real?” he asked.

She nodded again.

“
So why are you
here?” Art asked. “I mean, why are you in
Bampton?”

“
To bring the magic
back,” Maggie said.

Art blinked. “You can do that?” he asked.

Maggie hesitated, then answered, “I don't
know.”

Art waited.

“
You see, there's
this spell,” she said. “Or sort of a spell. A ritual, anyway.
Someone came up with it long ago – I don't know exactly, some time
in the Dark Ages, I guess.”

“
What's it supposed
to do?”

“
What it does – well, it creates a new magical place, a
new source of power. Or opens one up, anyway – I mean, it
doesn't
create
the magic so much as it finds it and frees it.
And there are only certain places that it can possibly work at any
given time.”

“
Like
Bampton?”

She nodded. “Like Bampton. Right now, the
block of Thoreau Street from Concord Avenue to Dawes Road, right
here in Bampton, Massachusetts, is the only place on Earth with the
potential to become a mystical power spot.”

“
Seems pretty
unlikely. I mean, why here?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Magic doesn't
always have nice, tidy laws and reasons; it isn't science. Right
now, it's here. We can tell that – or some of them can, like
Myrddin and Dr. Torralva; I can't do it myself, I don't understand
the techniques at all.”

Art was going to protest further when a
blood-red butterfly landed on his hand, then flew away again. As he
watched it go, he decided not to argue. Whatever the reasons, this
was happening, wasn't it?

And why
not
Bampton?

“
So you people are
here to open up this new power source?”

“
Like digging a
well,” she agreed. “Or planting a seed.”

“
So you'll do your
ritual, and then you'll all scatter again, and that'll be it? There
will be a little more magic in the world for you witches and
wizards, but the rest of us can just go on as
usual?”

Maggie hesitated, then said, “The others
would probably want me to lie to you and say yes, but I'm not going
to.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I mean it's not
that simple. I don't think you understand the sort of difference
we're talking about here. There hasn't been a new well of magic in
thousands of years – not since Biblical times.”

“
So?”

“
So there won't just be a
little
more magic
in the world. There will be a
lot
. All the stupid little magical
things people do that don't work any more, the hexes and good luck
charms – they'll work. At least, the ones that are done right.
There will be spontaneous magic, too, things that just
happen
. And wishing hard
enough will make things come true, sometimes. Magic will be so easy
that anyone will be able to learn it. Love will be magic again –
you people all say it is, but it hasn't really been, not for
centuries.” She sighed. “We don't know what it'll be like; there
aren't any reliable records, and while some of us have been around
a long time, none of us is
that
old. We don't remember a world where magic was
young.”