Quiet Magic (9 page)

She leaned forward, tipping her palms
upward in a showing gesture.

"Mr. Davis, our candles are not second
nature to us, but first nature. I can't say how long it has been
so, but the family dates back centuries, and there is always a
candle burning in the house when someone is home. There are candles
for talking, candles when we play music, when we have guests, for
weddings, for funerals--and for lunch."

She flipped her hands quickly, as if
switching gears. Rob noticed that they were competent looking
hands, with a stain here and there that might be new paint or an
old tattoo.

"I think that Jeffrey does not find
school easy," she was saying when Rob brought his attention back to
her bright face. "In fact he will not find it easy. I was afraid of
that when Madelaine accepted her grant and went off to do research
for a year and a half. She had been teaching Jeffrey and Phoenix at
home. None of the rest of us is a teacher--at least, not as
recognized by this state. No tutors were to be found. So Jeffrey
must go to school--and Phoenix when her leg is healed..." She
smiled at him.

"The maiden aunt rambles. But the
point is, Mr. Davis, that Jeffrey has been taught much that I feel
is not taught in the first grade of this school. In other cases,
Madelaine came to the knowledge by a different path..." She
stopped, eyes focused beyond the tips of her outstretched
fingers.

"You're saying," Rob said slowly,
"that Jeffrey is in a new environment, probably being taught things
he already knows and that he'll be bored."

She smiled, eyes still hazy in
thought. "But he's a polite boy, so he won't say anything. Only
feel ready to scream with frustration and strangeness and noise."
She lifted her eyes to his.

"He'll need his candle more than ever,
to remind him who he is, who we are. To remind him that there is a
place that is not strange and people who do not ignore him,
perhaps, because he is only a little boy.

Rob sighed, leaned back in his chair
and regarded nothing with great intensity for a time. Finally, he
said, "Is there some kind of a substitute? A--I don't know--a
flashlight? A painting?" He looked at her, unaware of the
admiration lighting his face. "You're a painter, aren't you? Why
not paint him a picture of a candle?"

"Paint a picture?" She frowned, then
suddenly stood, radiant, holding her hand out to him. Confused, he
rose, took it and stood holding it tightly in her own. She did not
pull free.

"Mr. Davis, you have hit upon the
solution. Not a painting, exactly--but no playing with fire in
defiance of the rules, either!" She smiled and disengaged her hand;
frowned again briefly. "What day is it?"

"Day? Thursday," Rob said, content
that she felt some sort of compromise had been reached.

"Thursday." She laid her hand on his
sleeve. "You must allow us a day's grace, Mr. Davis. I think that
by Monday all will be harmony, as Uncle Tulaine would say. In the
meantime, I will pick Jeffrey up and take him to lunch tomorrow--if
that's not against school regulations?'

"No--here, I'll write a note for
Jeffrey's teacher." He scrawled a line on his notepad, signed it
"R. Davis," and handed the slip to Elmira Brown, maiden aunt. She
folded it carefully and placed it in the pocket of her
jeans.

"Thank you, Mr. Davis," she said as he
opened the door for her. She moved away a step, then turned back to
him. "You should come to dinner on Sunday. Around seven." And she
was gone.

Rob shut his door on Mrs. Jenson's
look of speculation.

* * *

IT WAS AN old house, and a large one;
the roof overhung the second story to form a porch around the
entire perimeter--one side of which had been converted to a
sunroom. Wisteria and ivy grew where they would. There was a walnut
tree by the gate.

Rob stood for a moment, regarding the
house, the flagstone walkway, the fence and gate of black
wrought-iron. Carefully, he worked the latch and let himself in,
making sure the gate closed firmly behind him. He walked the
flagged path slowly, breathing in the smells of damp grass and
growing things. His feet found the steps to the porch and he
mounted.

At the front door he paused,
confronted with choice: a heavy brass knocker in the shape of a
man's beak-nosed face or a cord attached to a ceramic bell
suspended from a roofbeam.

He rang the bell.

There was a moment when he feared no
one would answer. Then there was a creak in the hallway beyond and
the door swung open to reveal a stoutish woman of
indeterminate--though undeniably middle--years; apron tied around
her sturdy waist and a smear of flour on her cheek.

He smiled. "My name is Rob Davis. Miss
Brown invited--"

"You to dinner," she finished for him,
a broad grin on her face. "Of course she did. She had an aversion
to poor Mr. Marley, too. Bell was the first thing out of the kiln
when she came to us." She pulled the door wider.

"Well, come on in, if you're company.
I'm Jessie Martin." Having gotten him safely into the hall, she
turned and pointed up the stairs. "They're all in Elmira's studio.
Up the stairs and follow your ears. Might as well go on
up--dinner'll be awhile" She grinned again. "Did she tell you
seven?"

Rob admitted it, a little
dazed.

"Well, we do hit seven sometimes,"
said Jessie, as one being fair. "But tonight it'll be close on to
eight." She tipped her head. "Starving?"

He laughed, "No'm, not quite
yet."

"You start feelin' that way, you send
Jeffrey down for some beer and cheese, because I tell you the
truth, sugar, dinner's been as late as nine, some
nights."

Again he laughed, and she joined; and
seemed about to shoo him upstairs when an odd look crossed her
face.

"What can I be thinking of? You hold
on a minute right here." She startled him with her speed, heading
off into the back of the house, toward what must be the kitchen. He
surveyed the hall in which he stood, glimpsing a portion of
comfortable living room filled with older furniture and what
appeared to be piles and piles of books--at the side of the sofa,
by each chair, overflowing one table. On the walls were candle
holders and --

"Oh, I do forget sometimes when I'm
cooking. I just don't know sometimes where my manners go..." Jessie
Martin, returning.

She carried a white taper in her right
hand, a bulky box of strike-anywhere matches in her
left.

Bustling past, she nodded at the
center branch of the five branch candelabrum to the left of the
front door; its fully lit twin was on the right.

"Now light your candle and put it up
there in that middle spot." She shook open the box and laughed when
he looked around for a place to strike it. "Right there, sugar,"
she directed with another nod and Rob saw the rough metal plate set
into the door.

He lit the candle, noticing the
fineness of the wax. It wasn't dyed white or tinted white; the
candle itself was of fine, translucent, white wax.

The candle flame steadied after a
moment, and the efficient Jessie Martin took the match and hurried
him up the wide stairs.

"Do we have one of Jason's?" Heard
through the door Jeffrey's voice had an edge to it, but Rob wasn't
able to determine if it was annoyance or excitement. "He makes
those grayish ones, like fog--you know."

Rob tapped on the door and the boy's
voice cut off, to be replaced by a cool, "Come in."

He did, and slammed to a halt just
inside the door, mouth a little open. He began, for lack of any
other way to deal with it, to take inventory of the
place.

Start with the kiln over to the left,
standing tall on its blue tile pedestal, flanked by workbenches,
tools hung neatly above on pegboard sheets, clay confined to
covered pans. Proceed to the potter's wheel nearby; catalog yet
another bench piled high with sheets and shards of stained glass,
coils of copper ribbon, gnomish lumps of lead.

Moving his eyes past the workbench, he
stared at the easels--three--each with an unfinished painting upon
the prop.

Rob finally took a second step into
the room, and then a third, craning to see. One painting was--would
be--a round black vase stuffed full of blown red roses. Another was
very nearly an ocean lashed furious by a wind almost seen, pounding
against towers of rock. The canvas flanked by these contained a
mist-blue castle poised high on an indigo cliff.

A faint clink drew his eyes up, and he
began to inventory all over again, counting windchimes of pottery,
of stone and glass and shell--dozens of windchimes, hanging from
every exposed beam.

"Hi Rob!" The edge on Jeffrey's voice
was excitement, the man decided, giving himself a brisk mental
shake and deliberately shutting his mouth. He turned to pay his
respect to his hostess.

And felt his gape return. The back
room of the wall was gone, replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows
opening onto a porch. Grouped before the windows was a cluster of
mismatched furniture: a Victorian chaise in rose brocade, an
ottoman in plaid wool, two nondescript chairs of the overstuffed
variety, two elbow tables on which resided beaded lamps, and a
large-ish square table in the very center of the group.

Elmira was smiling at him from the
chaise. Her jeans today were pristine blue, her white shirt
unblemished. A wry girl with light brown hair tumbling over her
shoulders sat in the overstuffed chair nearest the center table at
which Jeffrey knelt, sorting what seemed to be random lumps of
colored wax. A pair of crutches leaned on the arm of her
chair.

"Hi, Jeffrey." Rob thought his own
voice sounded a little odd, but the boy was absorbed in his task
and didn't look up. The girl did, quickly, showing him dark-lashed
gray eyes and a smile that changed her face from wry to lovely
before she glanced back down at the table.

"There's one." She pointed and
Jeffrey's hand closed around a mist-gray lump, bringing it up for
her inspection.

Rob lowered himself carefully into the
unoccupied overstuffed chair, sparing a moment to admire the
life-sized statue of the borzoi lying between his seat and Elmira's
chaise.

Elmira grinned at him.

"It takes some people that way," she
said, with a mixture of amusement and sympathy, "And, then, some
other people come in, go out, and never see what's
here."

"It is a bit overwhelming," Rob
confessed. "I'm sure I haven't really seen half of it."

She smiled and extended a languid hand
to stroke the statue of the dog. It sighed and thumped its tail
twice on the floor. Rob leaned back in his chair and closed his
eyes, opening them when he heard her low, cool laughter.

"Poor Mr. Davis," she
offered.

He sat up straighter. "Rob. And not
altogether poor. Just easily thrown off. Mine has been a simple
life. So far."

She laughed outright and the dog
thrust its nose into her hand. "But Uncle Tulaine would have it
that ours is the simple life."

"Your Uncle Tulaine, Miss
Brown--"

"Elmira."

"Elmira--"

"Aunt Elmira," Jeffrey cut in, "we've
got everybody now." He was at her side, offering a pottery bowl
piled high with wax shavings.

"Very good." She swung her feet to the
floor, suddenly not languid at all, and stood with a dancer's
smooth ripple of muscle. "Is it permitted for Rob to help us with
the final stage?"

Jeffrey glanced over, blue eyes
candid, brows pulled together. "Well..."

Rob held up his hands. "Just an
explanation, Jeffrey--and a chance to watch, okay?"

"Sure," the boy said, face clearing.
"That's okay."

Elmira had brought a candle to the
square table where the girl was clearing the wax lumps away,
carefully placing them in plastic bags. Jeffrey set the bowl down
and took the bags to the other side of the room, near the
door.

"I'll take them back to the candle
room after we finish," he told his aunt's raised eyebrow and she
nodded.

He took his place by the table and
drew the candle to him. Rob stepped closer, trying not to intrude
on the--ritual?--that was taking place.

The candle was a lovely thing, as
white as the guest-candle he'd lit, or whiter, no more than four or
five inches tall, slender and smooth. The base in which it sat was
rainbow-colored--stained glass? he wondered--and the flame was a
constant wedge of orange touched with blue along the
edge.

Reverently, Jeffrey picked up the
candle and began to turn it upside down. Instinctively, Rob reached
out to keep the child from the flame--and let his hand drop,
blushing and feeling foolish, as the boy glanced up from his
concentration and turned the candle around so Rob could see the
hole in the bottom of both candle and holder.

"Aunt Elmira made it," the girl said.
"She's going to make one for me, too, so we can both have a candle
at school."

Rob stared at the construct. He'd been
completely fooled: The candle was so artful, so magically right
that he'd never doubted it was wax and flame.