The Genie of Sutton Place (11 page)

Madame Sosostris gazed up where the smoke had been. “I only hope Nelly will, too.”

The sisters drifted out through the antique shop, with many expressions of friendship, and thanks, and elderly affection. Madame Sosostris just kept sitting there, amazed at what she thought she'd done.

I bustled in. “Hi, Madame S.! We came in through the back—”

“Timmy!” We hadn't seen each other since Sam opened his pet shop. “I thought you'd given up on me.”

“Oh—Madame Sosostris—” amid magic, pleasure, and everything else, there was also a small place to be ashamed—“you didn't really think that. You know I—”

“Sure, sure, I know.” She whacked my shoulder. “You should have been here! I've just had— Who's this?”

“He's Dooley!” I said, with a little too much enthusiasm. “I mean—he's Aunt Lucy's new chauffeur.” Even with her, I didn't want to blow his cover. “Dooley—Madame Sosostris.”

“Mistress—” He did his little bow.

“Hi, Dooley!” But Madame Sosostris is an American medium. She stuck out her hand for him to shake. Then, as was always her habit, she flipped his over for a little investigation. “Say—that's some palm. I'd like to browse around in that.”

“Perhaps on some other occasion.” Dooley discreetly withdrew his hand … Lord knows what she might have read in those lines.

“Hi there!” squawked Felix, who was riding on Dooley's shoulder.

“Hello, bird!” said Madame Sosostris. “Pollywannacracker?”

“No!” Felix plumed his feathers regally. “How about a dish of ectoplasm?”

“That's some bird, Tim. Where did—”

“Madame S., we're in kind of a hurry. May we look at Lorenzo's diary? Where we found the genie spell.”

“Your books, lad. That never panned out, did it?”

“Well—uh—” I pretended to be very busy at those notebooks.

“It's important to differentiate between genuine occultism and silly fairy tales.”

“Like genies, mistress?” Dooley had himself a little private joke.

“Here's the passage!” Nobody seemed to be taking this seriously—not even Dooley—except me. I thumbed through some pages and found what I wanted. “Listen! There's more. He went back to the British Museum.” I explained to Dooley, “That's where he found the spell.”

He was paying attention by now, all right. “May his scholarship be blessed!”

“I took out the page with the spell on it—but here's another entry from London. ‘May 20, 1938. I continue to be entranced by Al-Hazred's
Necronomicon.
And have discovered a few more pages of it—though much mutilated. Apparently the Slave of the Carpet incurred the Wizard's wrath, for he writes,
On this, the last day of Ramadan in the seventh year of the reign of the Great Haroun Al-Raschid
—'”

Dooley shuddered—I'd never seen him frightened before—and murmured, “
Ayee!
—the fatal day—”

“‘—
I have bound the sinner in his lower prison.
Then many lines obliterated—until this phrase—
and she above all!—the orchid of the guarded garden—!
Then three lines blurred, and—
in my bones I feel his mastery depart, as the mortal appetite possesses him.
'”

“What's mortal appetite?”

“Shh, Madame Sosostris.” We were at the crux. I went on reading, “‘Much lost. And final entry
most
enigmatic!
Yet my own heart, mortal, despite my magic, does pity the poor potent fool. Therefore have I written the runes of his release
—' Would that be the spell, Dooley, do you think?”

“Read on!” Dooley urged. His eyes were burning—almost like in the tapestry.

“‘—
and he shall be ever with them, and yet never see the words.'
I don't understand—”

“Read
on!
”

“‘And should I choose to summon him, and he defy my will once more, I can return him to the deadly delicate web again by one word only—'”

Dooley started and said nervously, “One word—” It was really upsetting to see this—this being who I thought was so powerful, become so afraid.

I went on reading,
“‘—for to seal the spell I have decreed that the mere pronouncing of the five letters printed upon the stars, which all the children of the Highest among men revere, shall fall upon his ears like thunder and resolve his soul among the threads.
'” It was as if a chill wind blew through the séance room after I'd spoken those cryptic words. “That's all there is.” I sort of shivered. “But I'd like to know—what does it mean?”

Madame Sosostris just shrugged her shoulders—she didn't know what was happening anyway—but Dooley slowly and fatefully shook his head, as if he'd seen a black cloud beginning to gather in his west.

The bell over the front door tinkled, and Madame Sosostris went into the front room to see who'd come into the shop.

“Don't you understand
anything
of it, Dooley?” I asked.

“Bits, master.” His cloud seemed to get darker. “But 'tis typical of the Wizard's nature that he hid his threats and promises in words of mystery.”

“Listen, I have an idea. That man at the museum translated the spell that let you out of the carpet—let's go up and ask him.”

“Very well,” sighed Dooley. “But Al-Hazred took a malicious delight in concealing his secrets. I doubt that any mortal man can unravel them.”

“It's worth a try.”

We said goodbye to Madame Sosostris, who was trying to sell a pair of medieval Spanish candlesticks—they were real, too—to a skeptical customer, and drove up to the National Museum.

In the car Dooley was very pensive and still. He put Felix on my shoulder and, when the parakeet began to talk, he said, “Bird, be silent! I'm in no mood for your ironies today.”

The silence, as we drove uptown, got very oppressive. I had to say
something
—so I said, “I wonder what that business of ‘the orchid of the guarded garden'—”

“Ah, that I can explain!” For a second a smile lightened his face. “Sofaya, loveliest of the Wizard's women! He kept her in a sequestered glade. It was she who caused my downfall, master. And, lo, she is dust these centuries ago.”

“How did she cause your downfall, Dooley?”

“She lightly smote me with her eyes.” He laughed, but at something sad, not funny. “And in that delicate blow was my defeat. Her beauty pained me, my heart trembled like a veil, my knees quaked like the sliding earth—and I felt love, the mortal passion, appetite, which the Wizard had forbidden me. He felt my sin against his might, and felt my magic dwindling, and in a rage confined me in the frightful carpet. ‘For love,' he said, ‘enchants enchanters.'”

It all came clear. “And that's what's happening right now! You're falling for Rose. Poor Sam. His ears are probably hanging down to his shoulders by now.”

Dooley was still off in his reverie. “An orchid,” he mused. “A rose. Ah, master, there is much beyond my magic. Much even beyond my imagining. I made a song of my sadness—”

“What about those letters ‘printed upon the stars'?”

“I know not, master.” He'd barely heard me and began to sing:

More potent than the sun am I

And subtle as the air,

But joy I find not on the earth

Nor pleasure anywhere.

For he who bound me in his spell

Forbade me use my heart.

A loveless life I live in vain,

A creature made by art.

There were several other stanzas, too. It was really a lovely song. I wish I could put down the melody, but I don't know music yet. It was even prettier than
“Plaisir d'amour”
 … And it filled up the time till we got to the National.

*   *   *

I thought we'd have to leave Felix in the car, but Dooley said no, he'd get stolen or lonely or something. It was a chilly day for July, and I had a jacket on. Dooley pulled my pocket open with one hand and motioned inside with the other. “Compress thy feathers, little friend, and enter.”

“Dark! Dark!” squealed Felix objectingly.

“I
said
—”

“Okay, okay.” Felix knew it was no afternoon to cross the Genie. He tightened himself and crawled into my pocket. Where, in a muffled voice, he made one last complaint: “Big bully! Magic isn't everything.”

“I'm well aware of that, bird,” said Dooley softly. He wasn't at all like his usual self—a big bear or bull charged with mystery and power. Not that afternoon. “Come, master, let us seek the scholar's help.”

We found Mr. Dickinson in the same crowded little cubicle where he had been before. I introduced Dooley, and Mr. Dickinson said eagerly, “Are you interested in Arabic studies, too?”

“
Extremely
interested!” the Genie said.

“Dooley, why don't you browse around the Near Eastern wing, while I go over these pages from Lorenzo's diary with Mr. Dickinson? Try to find out about those runes—and those letters printed upon the stars that will ‘fall upon his ears like thunder—'”

Dooley flinched, as if he were about to be hit, and said, “An excellent suggestion.”

“We have our famous Al-Hazred room,” Mr. Dickinson offered brightly. “That's where the tapestry hangs that this young linguist was so interested in.”

“I have seen much of it.” Dooley smiled at me wanly. “And am like to see much more.” He left.

I showed Mr. Dickinson the pages I'd brought up. “Fascinating! How fascinating!” he exclaimed, with that special enthusiasm that only a scholar can get when he finds a rare new document.

“I think ‘the runes of his release' just mean the spell—”

“Very probably.”

“This is the part I'm most interested in.”

“Mmm. ‘Printed upon the stars—' Five letters.” He frowned at the pages, wanting them to give up their secrets. “‘Which all the children of the Highest among men revere.' Mmm.” A thought was swimming in his head, somewhere down deep. “Well, now here at least I can be of help. This quotation from Al-Hazred purports to be of the time of the caliphate of Haroun Al-Raschid—is that not so?”

“Yes. It says so right here. The seventh year of his reign.”

“It happened to be the custom in those days to refer to Mohammed the Prophet himself as ‘the Highest among men.'”

“So all the children—”

“All the children of the ‘Highest among men' would be all those people who are Mohammedan. Everyone who belongs to the religion of Islam. Well, of course—!” He smacked his forehead as that thought broke the surface. “Come here—I want to show you something.”

In the back of his crazy little space—and you can't imagine how crowded it was!—there stood this great big pot, vase, whatever you want to call it. It was broken into about a million pieces, and you could see where Mr. Dickinson was laboriously gluing them back together again. “This,” he said proudly, “is one of the very few stellar vases to survive from the period we were speaking of.” He sniffed a bit. “My younger, more irreverent colleagues refer to it as ‘Dickinson's star jar.' They were called stellar vases because, as you can see, even from the little bit left of this, the ornamentation on the surface represents the constellations. The Mohammedans believed—I wouldn't for a moment doubt it, although you can see pretty much what you want in the stars—they believed that the name of the Supreme Being whom they worshipped was written in the heavens in configurations of the stars.” He traced a pattern, from star to star, on the vase. “You see? There, there—”

“What
is
that name?”

“In English, it would be A-L-L-A-H. The five letters printed upon the stars. Yes, indeed, in the minds of many Mohammedans, the greatest name in the world is Allah.”

That was it then …

I thanked him, and without being too rude, I hoped, got out of there as quick as I could.

Dooley was in the tapestry room, staring up at himself. “Did you find the word, master?” he asked, without turning around to look at me.

“Yes.”

“Am I like to hear it?”

“I don't think so.”

“A single word.” Now he smiled down at me and took my hand. “Verily, master, we tread upon the shells of eggs.”

11

The Beginnings of a Birthday Party

An awful week of worry set in.

I did most of the worrying. Dooley got resigned pretty quick. He really expected the worst to happen. Here we'd gone down to Madame Sosostris's hoping to find a cure for the complications of his being a genie, and all we'd found out was that if he
did
fall in love with Rose, it was back to the rug. And in addition—to make matters worse—if he heard just one word, even accidentally, it was right back there just-like-that!

He explained it to me, though, Dooley did. He said that magic was like that—very unlike humanity. If two people have a quarrel, say, they can fume for days and then change their minds. You almost always get a second chance. But not with magic. It's very much stronger than human nature—but also much weaker, more vulnerable. Just one wrong word, or a sinister gesture, and a palace or a whole big city built by sorcery can zip into oblivion. Dooley said that that was the reason the Wizard forbade him to love. He said love was humanity's strongest point, and the thing that challenged magic most … I'm not sure I understand what he means, yet.

And poor Sam! We explained the situation to him, and if you ever saw anyone look dejected, you should have seen the face on this frightened basset-man. For a while he didn't say anything—just looked around the pet shop he loved. Then he made me promise, “If anything
does
happen, Timmy—I mean, if my dog gets too obvious—you
will
take care of the animals?”