Authors: Sherwood Smith
Tags: #magic, #aliens, #young adult, #short stories, #fiction
Whispered Magics
Whispered Magics
Tales
by
Sherwood Smith
Book View Café Edition
August 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-289-1
Copyright © 2013 Sherwood Smith
The Princess, the Page, and the Master Cook's Son
Short fiction is hard for me to write. Even as a kid I
tended to think in chapters. I think I was ten when I realized that stories I
wrote for myself did not have to be the two and three pages efforts one wrote
for teachers. I distinctly recollect the immense sigh of relief, and before
that first one was tossed out with a lot of other trash from its hiding place
in the piano bench, it had reached some eighty handwritten pages, about halfway
through the story.
Except for “And Now Abideth These Three” and “Mom and Dad at
the Home Front,” these stories were written for specific anthologies, most of
which were aimed at young people. I included the two stories just named because
they both concern kids.
As a kid, I thought about magic all the time. It would have
to be secret, of course. What would I do if I found it? How could it find me?
All these stories arise out of the intensity of childhood imaginings, or out of
childhood experience in which the longing for magic was particularly strong.
“Mom and Dad at the Home Front,” which went on to my utter
surprise to be a Nebula finalist, got its inspiration from my watching my kids
play. A fellow writer, in telling me why they wouldn’t vote for it for the
Nebula, said it was not a very good story as it by rights should have been
horror. And I understood. Yes, if I had written a realistic story, the parents
finding their kids gone without a trace really would have been horror.
But as it happens I am too much of a wimp to read or write
horror, and anyway, it wasn’t my intent; the focus, for me, was that poignant
joy cut with grief when parents realize that if they have done a good job of
parenting, they must watch their beloved kids begin to push away from the nest
and test themselves against the world.
The rest of the stories, except “The Love that Dolls Talk,”
appeared in various anthologies. This story was wanted, but the uber-editor
decided against it because it didn’t have enough overt magic. So I stuck it
back in the trunk, as there wasn’t much of a market for tweenie short stories
in those days.
“Glass Slipper” appeared under the title “Visions.” Bruce
Coville loved the story, but he felt that “Glass Slipper” sounded too much like
a Cinderella tale, which this wasn’t. So I offered the (I thought) boring
replacement title. But here it goes back to being “Glass Slipper” because I
feel that this really is a Cinderella tale in the ways that count. There is
just no handsome prince or romantic love, but the bond of friendship is just as
strong.
Two are my attempts at science fiction, one is neither
fantasy nor science fiction, and one . . . you decide
I hope you enjoy them.
Sherwood Smith
Summer 2013
Before Rick spoke, I saw from his expression what was
coming.
I said the words first. “The kids are gone again.”
Rick dropped onto the other side of the couch, propping his
brow on his hand. I couldn’t see his eyes, nor could he see me.
It was just past midnight. All evening, after we’d made sure
our three kids were safely tucked into bed, we’d stayed in separate parts of
the house, busily working away at various projects, all of them excuses not to
go to bed ourselves—even though it was a work night.
Rick looked up, quick and hopeful. “Mary. Did one of the kids
say something to you?”
“No. I had a feeling; that was all. They were so sneaky after
dinner. Didn’t you see Lauren—” I was about to say
raiding the flashlight and the Swiss Army Knife from the earthquake kit
but I changed, with almost no pause, to “—sneaking around
like . . . like Inspector Gadget?”
He tried to smile. We’d made a deal, last time, to take it
easy, to try to keep our senses of humor, since we knew where the kids were.
Sort of knew where the kids were.
How many other parents were going through this nightmare?
There had to be others. We couldn’t be the only ones. I’d tried hunting for
some kind of support group on the Internet—
Seeking
other parents whose kids disappear to other worlds
—and not surprisingly the
e-mail I got back ranged from offers from psychologists for a free mental exam
to “opportunities” to MAKE $$$ IN FIVE DAYS.
So I’d gone digging again, this time at the library, rereading
all those childhood favorites: C. S. Lewis; L. Frank Baum; Joy Chant; Ruth
Nicholls; and then more recent favorites, like Diana Wynne Jones. All the
stories about kids who somehow slipped from this world into another,
adventuring widely and wildly, before coming safely home via that magic ring,
or gate, or spell, or pair of shoes. Were there hints that adults missed? Clues
that separated the real worlds from the made up ones?
“Evidence,” I’d said, trying to be logical and practical and
adult. “They’ve vanished like this three times that we know about. Doors and
windows locked. Morning, back in their beds. Sunburned. After the last time,
just outside R.J.’s room you saw two feathers and a pebble like nothing on
earth. You came to get me, the kids woke up, the things were gone when we got
there. When asked, the response was, and I quote, ‘What feathers?’”
But Rick knew he had seen those feathers, and so we’d made our
private deal: wait, and take it easy.
Rick rubbed his hands up his face, then looked at me. And
broke the deal. “What if this time they don’t come back?”
We sat in silence. Then, because there was no answer, we
forced ourselves to get up, to do chores, to follow a normal routine in hopes
that if we were really, really good, and really, really normal, morning would
come the same as ever, with the children in their beds.
I finished the laundry. Rick vacuumed the living room and took
the trash cans out. I made three lunches and put them in the fridge.
I put fresh bath towels in the kids’ bathroom.
At one o’clock we went to bed and turned out the light, but
neither of us slept; I lay for hours listening to the clock tick, and to Rick’s
unhappy breathing.
o0o
Dawn. I made myself get up and take my shower and dress, all
the while listening, listening . . . and when I finally nerved
myself to check, I found a kid-sized lump in each of the three beds, a dark
curly head on each pillow. R.J.’s face was pink from the sun—from what sun?—and
Lauren had a scrape on one arm. Alisha snored softly, her hands clutching
something beneath the bedclothes.
I tiptoed over and lifted the covers. Her fingers curled
loosely around a long wooden wand with golden carving on its side. If it wasn’t
a magic wand, I’d eat it for breakfast.
Alisha stirred. I laid her covers down and tiptoed out.
o0o
“A magic
wand
?”
Rick whispered fiercely. “Did you take it?”
“Of course not!” I whispered back. “She’d have woken up, and—”
“And what?” he prompted.
I sighed, too tired to think. “And would have been mad at me.”
“Mad?” Rick repeated, his whisper rising almost to a squeak.
“Earth to Mary—we are the parents. They are the kids. We’re supposed to keep
them safe. How can we do it if they are
going
off the planet every night
?”
I slipped back into Alisha’s room. She had rolled over, and
the wand had fallen off the mattress onto her blue fuzzy rug.
I bent, my heart thumping so loud I was afraid she’d hear it,
closed my fingers round the wand, and tiptoed out.
o0o
“Hmm.” Rick waved it back and forth. It whistled—just
like any stick you wave in the air—but no magic sparks came out, no lights, no
mysterious hums.
“This has got to be how they get away,” Rick murmured, holding
the wand up to his nose and sniffing. “Huh. Smells like coriander, if
anything.”
“Except how did they get away the first time?”
“Good question.”
I felt my shoulders hunch, a lifetime habit of bracing against
worry.
Rick grimaced. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m thinking
it, too, but maybe it’s okay. Maybe the other world isn’t a twisted disaster
like ours.”
“But—why
our
kids?”
Rick shrugged, waving the wand in a circle. “Found by a kid
from another world? Some kid who knows magic, maybe?” His voice suspended, and
he gave me a sort of grinning wince. “Kid magician?” He laughed, the weak,
unfunny laugh that expresses pain more than joy. “Listen to me! Say those words
to any other adult, and he’ll dial 1-800-NUTHOUSE.”
I gripped my hands together, thinking of my kids, and safety.
I said, “Touch it on me.”
“What?” Rick stared.
“Go ahead. If it sends me where they go—”
Rick rubbed his eyes. “I’m still having trouble with the
concept. Right. Of course. But we’ll go together.” His clammy left hand closed
round my equally damp fingers, and with his right he tapped us both on our
heads.
Nothing happened.
Rick looked hopeful. “Maybe it’s broken.”
“I don’t think we’re that lucky,” I muttered, and went down to
fix breakfast.
The kids appeared half an hour later, more or less ready for
school. The looks they exchanged with each other let me know at once that they
were worried—desperately—about something.
Then three pairs of brown eyes turned my way.
“Um, Mom?” R.J. said finally, as he casually buttered some
toast. “Did you, uh, do house cleaning this morning? You know, before we woke
up?”
“No,” I replied truthfully, watching his toast shred into
crumbs. He didn’t even notice.
“Did you, like, find any, um, art projects?” Lauren asked.
“Art projects?” I repeated.
R.J. frowned at his toast, then pushed it aside.
Alisha said, “Like a stick. For a play. A play at school.
Uhn!” This last was a gasp of pain—someone had obviously kicked her under the
table. Her eyes watered, and she muttered to Lauren, “What did you do that
for?”
“The play was last month, remember?” Lauren said in a sugary
voice, rolling her eyes toward me. “Mom helped paint scenery!”
I fussed with my briefcase, giving them sneakier looks than
they were giving me, as I watched them trying to communicate by quick whispers
and pointing fingers. Rick came in then, looked at us all, and went out
again—and I could hear him turning a laugh into a cough.
o0o
“You all reminded me of a bunch of spies in a really bad
movie,” Rick said later, when I was driving us to our respective workplaces. He
grinned. “All squinting at each other like—”
“Rick.” I tried not to be mad. “It is our
kids
we’re spying on. Lying to. I feel terrible!”
He said, “I don’t. At least they’re home—”
“They’re not at home. They’re at school.”
“They’re safe. The wand’s in the trunk of the car, by the way.
As soon as I can, I’m going to take the damn thing out and burn it, and make
sure the kids
stay
safe.”
I sighed as I drove past palm trees and billboards—the
once-reassuring visual boundaries of mundane reality. Mundane made sense. It
was safe, because there were no reminders in that everyday blandness that the
rules we make to govern our lives are not absolute, and that safety is an
illusion.
