Half Magic (9 page)

The next thing the four children knew, they were sitting together in Katharine and Martha's room, and it was still that morning, and they had only been away from home a minute. Yet that minute was packed with memories.

"Did we dream it?" Katharine asked.

"I don't think so, or we wouldn't all remember it," said Mark.

"And we all do, don't we?" said Jane.

And they all did.

"What did that last mean, that Merlin wished on the charm?" Martha wanted to know.

"It means we have to keep our wishes close to home from now on," Mark told her.

"No more travels to foreign climes," said Jane, "and I was all set to take us on a pirate ship next!"

"No more olden times," said Mark, "and I've always wanted to see the Battle of Troy!"

"You might not have liked it, once you got there," said Katharine, from the depths of her experience. "Traveling in olden times is
hard
."

"I don't care," said Martha. "I don't care if I never travel at all. I'm glad to be home. Aren't you?"

And they all were.

As a matter of fact, the four children were all so glad to be home that they stayed around the house all the rest of that day.

And that one minute of the morning had been so crowded with adventure that somehow they didn't feel as though they wanted any more excitement for some time.

They put the charm away in its safe place under the flooring, and spent the morning and afternoon playing the most ordinary games they knew, even the tame childish ones that Martha liked and seldom got to play, like Statuary and Old Witch.

At dinner that night, when their mother asked them what they'd been doing all day, they said, "Oh, nothing," and seemed more interested in talking about what
she'd
been doing, at the office.

After dinner there weren't any secret conferences. Instead, the four children prevailed on their mother to join them in a game of Parcheesi.

And when she tired of Parcheesi, as mothers soon will, and offered to read them
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
until bedtime instead, Katharine said quickly that she'd rather hear a good, solid, down-to-normal, everyday book like
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.

All this was most unlike the four children.

When they'd finally gone to bed, their mother stole into their various rooms, and felt their foreheads and ears. But none of them had a fever.

The trouble was that the adventure with Sir Launcelot had seemed to point a moral.

And if you have ever had a moral pointed at you, you will know that it is not a completely pleasant feeling. You are grateful for being improved, and you hope you will remember and do better next time, but you do not want to think about it very much just now.

And, as Mark put it next morning, it was a moot question what to do with the charm next. Even wishing to do good deeds with it did not seem to be proof against the occurrence of that hot water in which the four children so often found themselves.

"Of course it has to be just nowadays and in our own country after this," Mark said, "but still! What if we messed up the President and Congress next time, the way we did King Arthur? We could cause a national emergency!"

"I know!" said Jane. "We must proceed with Utter Caution. I've been thinking about it all night, and I'm going to make my next wish really serious. I decided the two things I want most in the world are no more wars and that I knew everything!"

Katharine shook her head doubtfully.

"That's
too
serious," she said. "That's kind of like interfering with God. That might be even worse than trying to change history."

"Is there anything that's serious and fun at the same time?" Martha wondered.

It didn't seem very likely that there was.

Arid what with this problem, and the horrid thought that with each wish the charm's power was waning away, and that any day the next wasted wish might be its last, the four children decided to wait until tomorrow before getting on with the serious wishing.

Maybe by tomorrow Jane would have an inspiration. It was her turn next.

Meanwhile today they would have a good old-fashioned day out, the kind of day that had seemed the height of excitement to them, back in the time before the charm had crossed their path. They would put all their allowances together, go downtown on the street car and spend the day, have lunch and see a movie.

To phone their mother and persuade her to tell Miss Bick to let them go was a mere matter of five minutes' wheedling.

Miss Bick made her usual remarks of gloomy foreboding, but the children turned deaf ears, and assembled in Katharine and Martha's room.

"Shall we take it with us or leave it?" Katharine wanted to know.

No one needed to be told what "it" was.

"If we leave it Miss Bick'll be sure to find it," Mark pointed out, "no matter how carefully concealed."

"Think if she made a wish and got half of it!" cried Martha. "What do you suppose it would be?"

"I'd rather not," said Jane. "Some depths are better left unplumbed."

So Jane brought the charm along, wrapped in a special package of old Christmas paper, in her handbag. All the children tied strings around the little finger of each hand, to remind them not to wish for anything, no matter what happened. Then they emerged, and stood waiting at the corner, where they had so often beguiled the summer days by putting pieces of watermelon on the car tracks and waiting for them to squish.

The ride downtown on the street car was uneventful—only the usual trouble between the people who wanted the windows left closed, and the four children, who wanted them open.

Downtown, the children looked in shop windows for a while, then entered that lovely place, the five-and-ten. They bought and ate some saltwater taffy, listened to a young lady play "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" on the piano, and bought and ate some parched corn.

It was then time for lunch.

The four children always lunched at the best soda fountain in town. Today Jane ordered a banana split with chocolate ice cream and raspberry sauce, and Katharine enjoyed a Moonbeam Sundae, thick with pineapple syrup and three kinds of sherbet. Martha always had the same thing, a soda she'd invented, marshmallow with vanilla ice cream, which made the others gag.

There were two things listed on the menu which had intrigued Mark for years. One was called celery soda and the other was called malt marrow, and Mark wondered very much what they could be. Each time he came he promised himself he'd order them next time, but next time his courage always failed. Today he thought of it, thought better of it, and had a double hot fudge dope.

After lunch it was time to choose what movie to see.

The children did this by first making a tour of all the movie theaters in town and looking at the pictures on the outside. A time of argument followed. Mark liked Westerns and thrilling escapes, but Martha wouldn't go inside any theater that had pictures of fighting.

Jane and Katharine liked ladies with long hair and big eyes and tragic stories. They wanted to see a movie called Barbara LaMarr in
Sandra.
Mark finally agreed, because there were a lot of pictures outside of a man who wore a mustache, and that meant he was the villain, and that meant that somebody would hit him sooner or later. Martha agreed because all the other theaters had either pictures with fighting or Charlie Chaplin.

All of the four children hated Charlie Chaplin, because he was the only thing grown-ups would ever take them to.

When they came into the theater Barbara LaMarr in
Sandra
had already reached its middle, and the children couldn't figure out exactly what was happening. But then neither could the rest of the audience.

"But, George, I do not seem to grasp it all!" the woman behind the four children kept saying to her husband.

The four children did not grasp any of it, but Barbara LaMarr had lots of hair and great big eyes, and when strong men wanted to kiss her and she pushed them away and made suffering faces at the audience with her eyebrows, Jane and Katharine thought it was thrilling, and probably quite like the way life was, when you were grown-up.

Mark didn't think much of the love blah, but he watched the villain getting more villainous, and the hero getting more heroic, and patiently waited for them to slug it out.

Martha hated it.

That was always the way with Martha. She wanted to go to the movies like anything until she got there, and then she hated it. Now she kept pestering the others to read her the words and tell her what was happening (for in those days movies did not talk). And when the others wouldn't, she began to whine.

"Be quiet," said Jane.

"I want to go home," said Martha.

"You can't!" said Jane.

"Shush!" said all the other people in the theater.

"I want to, anyway," said Martha.

Jane finally had to put her under the seat. This usually happened in the end.

"Let me out!" said Martha, rising up from below.

But Jane pushed down heavily on the seat, and Martha collapsed under it.

It was dark and gloomy down there, with nothing to look at but dust and old gum other people had got tired of. Martha thought of crying, but she had tried this once in the past, and Jane had kicked her. She decided she might as well go to sleep.

Meanwhile, on the screen above, the hero was finally having his fight with the villain, and Jane and Mark and Katharine forgot all about Martha in their excitement. Jane also forgot to keep hold of her handbag, and it slipped from her lap and fell to the floor.

The wretched Martha, thankful for small favors, took the handbag and put it under her head, though it made rather a lumpy pillow.

I hope it is not necessary to remind you of what was in the handbag.

Jane remembered suddenly, and felt for it, in a panic. It wasn't on her lap. She reached down to feel for it on the floor. At that moment she heard Martha speak.

"Ho hum. I wish I weren't here!" Martha said sleepily.

"Darn!" was the first thought of Jane. "Another wish wasted. Now she'll be only
half
here, I suppose."

Then, as the idea of this sank in, her blood froze. She didn't dare to look. Would just a severed head and shoulders meet her gaze, or would there be only a pair of gruesome legs running around down there?

At last she made herself lean over and see.

The charm hadn't worked it out that way at all. Martha was half there, to be sure, but it was
all
of her that was half there! Her outline was clear, but her features and everything that came between were sort of foggy and transparent. It was as though it were the ghost of Martha that stared up at Jane.

She stared up at Jane and saw her horrified expression; then she stared down at herself. And then Martha—or the half of her that was still there—lost her head completely. Uttering a low wail, she struggled to her feet, scrambled out through the row of seats, and ran up the aisle.

It is not often that one is watching a movie, and suddenly a wailing ghostly figure rises from the floor and scrambles past one.

Most of the ladies Martha scrambled past merely fainted.

The woman who had not grasped it all, before, now gave a shriek, and grasped her husband.

"Oh!" cried Jane, in a rage, catching up her handbag. "I wish I'd never even
heard
of that charm!"

And immediately she had only
half
heard of it. It was like a story she had read somewhere and half forgotten. And so naturally she didn't think of using the charm to bring Martha back to normal again. Instead, she ran up the aisle after her. Mark and Katharine ran after Jane.

An usher, running down the aisle to see what the coinmotion was, ran into them. He saw the handbag, heard the woman screaming, and decided Jane had stolen the bag. This slowed the children up a little, though no one was seriously hurt. The scratch the usher received was a mere scratch.

Meanwhile the ghostly Martha had run on up the aisle. In the darkness of the theater, not many people noticed her, but in the brightly lit lobby it was another story. The ticket-taker squealed, and threw her tickets in the air. The manager came running out of his office. He saw Martha, and turned pale.

"Oh, what next?" he cried, tearing his hair. "As if business weren't bad enough already, now the theater is
haunted
!" He aimed a blow at her with his cashbox. "Get along with you, you pesky thing!" he cried. "Why don't you go back where you came from?"

The hapless Martha moaned, and flitted on through the lobby, and into the street.

The appearance of her ghostly form upon the sidewalk caused quite a stir among the city's crowd of shoppers.

"It's an advertising stunt!" said a stout woman. "What they won't think of to sell these here moom pitchers next!"

"It's a sign!" said a thin woman. "It's the end of the world, and me in this old dress!"

"Tell it to go away!" groaned a well-dressed gentleman. "And I'll give back every cent I stole!"