Authors: Peter Straub
Del laughed out loud. Then Tom did recognize the scene and the postures — eleven men leaning or lookingtoward the tall bearded man in the middle, one selfconsciously looking elsewhere.
'It's that painting,' he said. Collins smiled.
The music tightened up, became a fraction louder. A piano hit a rolling stride. The men at the table began moving their hands in unison, then rose, danced in front of the table and sang:
La ba la ba, la ba la
ba!
La ba la ba, la ba la
ba!
We
got fish
for suppah,
First one
thing,
then anothah,
We got
fish
for suppah,
First one thing, then anothah.
We ain't
got
no menu,
Butourfishwill send you.
We
got fish
for suppah,
First one thing, then anothah.
Last night we had bread and fish,
Tonight we got fish and bread.
Tomorrow night we gonna change the dish,
And have plain fish instead.
Ah!
We
got fish
for suppah,
But first one thing, then anothah,
We
got fish
for suppah,
First one thing an' anothah.
A saxophone slipped out from beneath a robe as easily as Bugs's bugle from his military jacket. The squat bearded man holding it breathed out a solo while others waved their hands and did a buck-and-wing. Another disciple produced a trumpet and blasted. Strutting and hand-waving from the disciples: after the chorus they all showed their teeth and shouted:
AH!
We got
fish
for suppah,
But first one
thing,
then anothah,
[the stage began to revolve again]
We
got fish
for suppah,
But first one thing an' anothah.
[men and table now out of sight]
The music had ended. They were looking at a flat black wall. 'Simple pyrotechnics,' Collins said. 'Now, would you like to advance to Level Three and fly?'
'Oh, yes,' both boys said at once.
14
Then all blew away like dust, like'a dream, and it was night, much colder than before —
and he was skimming, naked and wrapped in a fur blanket, along in a sleigh with Coleman Collins. Snow blew in a tempest about them, half-obscuring the horse ahead. They were following a track through dark trees, going up; plunging blindly on, the horse flickered gray against the surrounding white.
The magician turned his face to Tom, and the boy shrank back against the cold metal edge of the sleigh. The face was bone, hard and white as a skull. 'I have taken you aside,' were the words that came from this apparition. 'Everything is just as it was, but we have stepped aside for a moment. For a private word.' The face was no longer bone, but animal — the face of a white wolf. 'I forbid you nothing.
Nothing,'
uttered the awful face. 'You may go anywhere — you may open any door. But, little bird, remember that you must be prepared to accept whatever you find.' The long jaws spread in a smile filled with teeth.
The horse drove madly on through the buffeting wind and snow.
'What night is this?' Tom cried out.
'The same, the very same.'
'And did I fly?'
The wolf laughed,
You may open any door.
Uphill into deeper night and tearing cold; the horse working against the snow.
'It is the same night, but six months later,' said the wolf. 'It is the same night, but in another year,' and laughed. Tom's whole body suffered wkh the cold, tried to flee back into itself.
'Did I fly?'
Collins said through his wolfs face, 'You are mine. Nothing that is in magic will be unknown to you, boy. For you are no one else's but mine.'
The trees fell behind them, and they seemed to streak upward through an utter barrenness.
We got
fish
for suppah:
Jesus doing a buck-and-wing.
The wolf said: 'Once I was you. Once I was Del.' He turned and grinned at the freezing boy wrapped in fur. 'But I learned from a great magician. The great magician became my partner, and together we toured Europe until he did an unspeakable thing. After he did the unspeakable thing, we could no longer remain together — we had become mortal enemies. But he had taught me all he knew, and I too was a great magician by then. So I came here, to my kingdom.'
'Your kingdom,' Tom said.
The wolf ignored him. 'He taught me to do one thing in particular. To put a hurtin' on things. His words. He spoke that way. And finally I put a hurtin' on him.' The long teeth glittered.
'Did you put a hurtin' on the train?' Tom asked.
The wolf lashed the horse: not a wolf, but a man with a wolfs head. 'No one but you will understand your future. You will be as the man who brings forth diamonds, and they say, is this pitch? You will be as he who brings forth wine, and they say, is this sand?' The long snout swiveled toward Tom. 'When that happens, boy,
put a hurtin' on them.'
The horse reached the top of the rise and halted. Itsteamed in the frigid air, hanging its neck. Tom saw foam spring out on the horse's flanks.
'Look down,' the figure beside him commanded.
Tom looked over the steaming, foaming horse into a long white vista. The land dropped, the green firs resumed. At the bottom of the valley lay a frozen lake. Above it, on the far end, Shadowland sat on its cliff like a jeweled dtollhouse. Its windows gleamed.
'Pretend that is the world. It is the world. It can be yours. Everything in the world, every treasure, every satisfaction, is there.
'Look.'
Tom looked toward the shining house and saw a naked girl in an upper window. She raised her arms and stretched: he could not see her. anything like as clearly as he wished, but what he saw was like a finger laid against his heart. Shock and tenderness vibrated together in his chest. Seeing the girl was nothing like looking at nude photographs in a magazine — those acres of spongy flesh had only a fraction of the voltage this girl sent him.
'And look.'
At another window men gambled: one player raked in a huge pile of bills and coins. Tom looked back to see the girl, but where she had been was only incandescent brightness.
Are you his too, Rose?
'And look,' the man with the wolfs face commanded.
Another window: a boy opening a tall door, hesitating for a moment, outlined in light, then suddenly engulfed in light. Tom understood that this boy — himself? — was undergoing an experience of such magnitude,.such joy, that his imagination could only peer at its dimmest edge; swallowed by light, the boy, who might be himself, had found an incandescence and beauty greater than the girl's — so great that the girl must be a part of it.
'And now look,' he was commanded.
In the gleam of another window he saw only an empty bright room with green walls. The column of a pillar. The big theater.
Then he saw himself flow past the window, many feet above the ground. His body sailed past, must have turned in the air, floated before the window again and spun over as easily as a leaf.
'I did,' he breathed, not even feeling the cold now.
'Of course you did,' the magician said.
'Alis volat propriis.'
Laughter boomed from the magician, from the hillside, from the valley, from even the steaming horse and the frigid air.
'Don't wait to be a great man . . . ' came the magician's floating voice, and Tom lapsed back and fell
through
the fur and metal, falling through the hillside and the laughing horse and the wind.
' . . . be a great bird.'
He remembered.
In the big green room. Coleman Collins before himself and Del, saying, 'Sit on the floor. Close your eyes. Count backward with me from ten. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You are at peace, totally relaxed. What we do here is physiologically impossible. So we must train the body to accept the impossible, and then it will become possible.