Odds Are Good (29 page)

But he also knew the state of his pockets.

“I don't think I can afford that,” he said sadly.

The old man started to say something, then paused. He looked into the distance, nodded as if he was listening to something, then blinked. His eyes widened in surprise. After a moment he shrugged and turned to Justin.

“How much money do you have?”

Though he was tempted to turn and run, Justin dug in his pocket. “Forty-seven cents,” he said at last.

The old man sighed. “We'll consider that a down payment. Assuming the trick is satisfactory, you will owe me . . .” He paused, did a calculation on his fingers, then said, “Three days and fifty-seven minutes.”

“What?”

“You heard me! Now do you want it or not?”

Something in the old man's voice made it clear that “not” was not an acceptable answer. Swallowing hard, Justin said, “I'll take it.”

The old man nodded. “The instructions are inside. We'll work out your payment schedule later. Right now, it's late, and I am tired. Take the side door. It will get you home more quickly.”

Justin nodded and hurried out the side door.

To his astonishment, he found himself standing beside the tree once more. He would have thought the whole thing had been a dream . . . if not for the small cardboard box in his hands.

 

Justin walked home slowly. The later it was when he got there, the greater the chance his uncle would be asleep.

Luck was with him; Uncle Rafe lay snoring on the couch, a scattering of empty beer cans on the floor beside him.

Justin tiptoed up the stairs to his room. He set the box on his desk, then used his pocketknife to cut the tape that held it shut. He wasn't sure what he would find inside; clearly it was too small to hold the entire trick. Probably he'd have to go out and buy the trunk and stuff, which would mean that he'd never get to try it.

The box contained two items: a small instruction book and a bag that—to Justin's astonishment—shook out to be as large as the canvas sack the magician had used.

The fabric was smooth and silky, and the colors shifted and changed as he looked at it. It was very beautiful, and at first he was afraid that it would be easy to tear. But it felt oddly strong beneath his fingers.

He opened the instruction booklet.

The directions were written by hand, in a strange spidery script. On the first page of the booklet were the following words:
WARNING
: D
O NOT ATTEMPT THIS TRICK UNLESS YOU REALLY MEAN IT.
D
O NOT EVEN TURN THE PAGE UNLESS YOU ARE SERIOUS
.

Justin rolled his eyes . . . and turned the page.

The directions here were even weirder:

 

To begin the metamorphosis, open the bag and place it on your bed. Being careful not to damage the fabric, climb inside before you go to sleep. Keep your head out!

After you have slept in the bag for three nights, you will receive further instructions.

 

Justin stared at the bag and the booklet for a long time. He was tempted to just stuff them back in the box and take the whole crazy thing back to the old man. Only, he wasn't sure he could find the store again, even if he tried.

He rubbed the whisper-soft fabric between his fingers. It reminded him of his mother's cheek.

He climbed inside the bag, feet down, head out, and slept. That night his dreams were sweeter than they had been in a long, long time. But when he woke he felt oddly restless.

Justin slept in the bag for the next two nights, just as the directions said. In his dreams—which grew more vivid and beautiful each night—he flew, soaring far away from his brutal uncle and the house where he had felt such pain and loss. He came to long for the night, and the escape that he found in his dreams.

On the morning of the fourth day, Justin felt as if something must explode inside him, so deep was the restlessness that seized him. Eagerly, fearfully, he turned to the instruction booklet that had come with the silken sack. As he had half expected, he found new writing on the page after the last one he had read—a page that had been blank before.

 

Sometimes a leap of faith is all that's needed.

 

Wondering what that was supposed to mean, he went to the bathroom to get ready for school.

His shoulders itched.

The next morning they were sore and swollen.

The morning after that, Justin Jones woke to find that he had wings. They were small. They were feeble. But they were definitely there.

Justin had two reactions. Part of him wanted to shout with joy. Another part of him, calmer, more cautious, was nearly sick with fear. He knew Uncle Rafe would not approve.

He put on a heavy shirt and was relieved to find that the weight of it pressed the wings to his back.

The next morning the wings were bigger, and the morning after that, bigger still. Justin wouldn't be able to hide them from his uncle much longer.

The wings were not feathered, nor butterfly delicate, nor leathery like a bat's. They were silky smooth, like the sack he slept in. To his frustration, they hung limp and useless. Late at night, when his uncle was asleep, Justin would flex them, in the desperate hope that they would stretch and fill, somehow find the strength to lift him, to carry him away from this place.

 

Exactly one week after the first night he had slept in the sack, his wings became too obvious to hide. When he sat down to breakfast that morning, his uncle snapped, “Don't slouch like that. Look how you're hunching your shoulders.”

Justin tried sitting up straighter, but he couldn't hide the lumps on his back.

“Take off your shirt,” said his uncle, narrowing his eyes.

Slowly, nervously, Justin did as he was told.

“Turn around.”

Again, Justin obeyed. He heard a sharp intake of breath, then a long silence. Finally his uncle said, “Come here, boy.”

Turning to face him, Justin shook his head.

His uncle scowled. “I said, come here.”

Justin backed away instead. His uncle lurched from the table, snatching at a knife as he did.

Justin turned and ran, pounding up the stairway to his room. He paused at the door, then went past it, to the attic stairs. At the top he closed the door behind him and locked it.

A moment later he heard his uncle roaring on the other side of it. For one foolish moment Justin hoped he would be safe here. Then the door shuddered as his uncle threw himself against it. Justin knew it would take only seconds for the man to break through.

He backed away.

Another slam, another, and the door splintered into the room. Stepping through, Uncle Rafe roared, “Come here, you little heathen!”

Shaking his head, mute with fear, Justin backed away, moving step-by-step down the length of the attic, until he reached the wall and the small window at the far end. His uncle matched his pace, confident in his control.

Justin knew that once Uncle Rafe had him, the wings would be gone, ripped from his shoulders. Pressing himself against the wall, letting all his fear show on his face, he groped behind him until he found the window latch. With his thumb, he pulled it open, then began to slide the window up. It hadn't gone more than half an inch before his uncle realized what he was doing and rushed forward to grab him.

“Don't!” cried Justin, holding out his hands.

The wings trembled at his shoulders, and he could feel some strange power move out from them. His uncle continued toward him, but slowly now, as if in a dream. Moving slowly himself, Justin turned and opened the window.

He glanced behind him. His uncle's slow charge continued.

Taking a deep breath, Justin stepped out.

He fell, but only for a moment. Suddenly the wings that had hung so limp and useless for the past few days snapped out from his shoulders, caught the air, slowed his fall.

They stretched to either side of him, strong and glorious, shining in the sun, patterned with strange colors. As if by instinct he knew how to move them, make them work. And as his uncle cried out in rage and longing behind him, Justin Jones worked his wings and flew, rising swiftly above the house, above the trees, his heart lifting as if it had wings of its own.

 

Justin flew for a long time, as far from Barker's Elbow and the home of his brutal uncle as he could manage to go. He changed course often, preferring to stay above isolated areas, though twice he flew above towns, swooping down just so that he could listen to the people cry out in wonder as they saw him. Once he flew low over a farm, where an old woman stood in her yard and reached her arms toward him, not as if to catch him, but in a gesture that he knew meant that she wanted him to catch her up. He circled lower, and saw with a start that tears were streaming down her face. Yet when he flew away, she made no cries of anger as his uncle had, only put her hand to her mouth, and blew him a kiss.

And still he flew on.

Though Justin had no idea where he was heading, he could feel something pulling him north, north and west. After a time, he saw a cloud ahead of him. It was glowing and beautiful, and without thought, he flew into it.

The air within seemed to be alive with light and electricity, and as Justin passed through the cloud he felt a tingle in his skin—a tingle much the same as the feeling he had had just before he found the magic shop.

When he left the cloud, he had come to a different place. He had been flying above land when he entered it, a vastness of hills and forest dotted by small towns that stretched in all directions for as far as he could see. But though it had taken no more than a minute or two to fly through the cloud, when he left it he was above water—a vast sea that, like the hills and forest, stretched as far as the eye could reach. Panic-stricken, Justin turned to fly back. But the cloud was gone, and the water stretched behind him as well.

Justin's shoulders were aching. He wasn't sure how much longer he could stay aloft.

And then he saw it ahead of him: a small island, maybe two or three miles across, with an inviting-looking beach. The wide swath of sand gave way to a deep forest. The forest rose up the flanks of a great mountain that loomed on the island's far side.

With a sigh of relief, Justin settled to the beach. He threw himself face forward on the sand to rest.

Soon he was fast asleep.

 

When Justin opened his eyes, he saw three children squatting in front of him.

“He's awake!” said the smallest, a little girl with huge eyes and short brown hair.

“I told you he wasn't dead,” said the largest, a dark-haired boy of about Justin's age. “They never are, no matter how bad they look.”

“Come on, then,” said the girl, reaching out to Justin. “Lie here in the sun all day and you'll get burned.”

Justin blinked, then glanced back at his shoulders. The wings were still there. Why didn't these strange children say anything about them?

“Maybe I should just fly away,” he muttered, pushing himself to his knees. He did it a little bit to brag, a little bit to see if he could get the children to say something about the wings.

“Oh, you can't do that,” said the little girl, sounding very sensible. “Well, you could. But it wouldn't be smart. Not until you've talked to the old woman.”

“She's right,” said the biggest boy. “Come on, we'll show you the way. But first you ought to eat something.”

“So you've seen people with wings before?” asked Justin.

“Silly!” giggled the girl. “We all had wings when we came here. Were you scared when you went through the cloud? I was.”

Justin nodded, uncertain of what to say. He realized someone else seemed to be in the same condition. “Doesn't he ever talk?” he asked, gesturing to the middle child, a dark-eyed boy who looked to be about nine.

“Not yet,” said the girl. “I think he will someday. But he was in pretty bad shape when he got here.”

“Come on,” said the biggest boy. “The old woman will tell you all about it.”

Justin followed the three strange children up the beach and into the forest, a forest so perfect that it almost made him weep. It was not that it was beautiful—though it was. Nor that the trees were old and thick and strange—though they were. What made it so wonderful, from Justin's point of view, was that it was filled with tree houses . . . and the tree houses were filled with children. Happy children. Laughing children. Children who scrambled along rope bridges, dangled from thick branches, and swung from tree to tree on vines.

“Hey, new boy!” they cried when they spotted him. “Welcome! Welcome!”

No one seemed to think it odd that Justin had wings, though a few of them gazed at the wings with a hungry look.

Justin's own hunger, which he had nearly forgotten in the strangeness and the wonder of this new place, stirred when the children led him to a platform built low in a tree, where there were bowls of fruit and bread and cheese. He ate in silence at first, too hungry to talk. But when the edge was off his appetite, he began to ask questions.

“Ask the old woman” was all they would tell him. “The old woman will explain everything.”

“All right,” he said, when his hunger was sated. “Take me to this old woman, will you please?”

“We can't take you,” said the boy. “You'll have to go on your own. We can only show you the way.”

 

Justin walked through the forest, following the path the children had shown him. The trees were too thick here for him to spread his wings, which annoyed him, because the path was steep, and his legs were beginning to grow tired. He wanted to fly again. Where did this old woman live, anyway? A tree house, like the children? That didn't seem likely. Maybe a cottage in some woody grove or beside a stream? Maybe even a cave. After all, he did seem to be climbing fairly high up the mountainside.