Any Which Wall

A Brief Note on the Existence and True Nature of Magic

I
N
Q
UIET
F
ALLS

I
F THE
K
EY
F
ITS

W
ORKING THE
W
ALL

M
AGIC IN THE
N
IGHT

G
REETINGS AND
G
LIMPSES

E
MMA ON
H
ER
O
WN

T
HE
W
ORST
P
IRATE IN THE
W
ORLD

M
ANY
W
AYS TO
B
UCCANEER

G
OING
N
OWHERE
, R
EALLY

S
OAP AND
S
CISSORS

S
USAN’S
W
ISH

B
ROOKLYN
B
OUND

A Brief Note on the True Nature of (Fun and) Disaster

T
HE
E
ND
(
OR
S
OMETHING
L
IKE
I
T
)

G
REAT
T
HANKS

H
ave you ever stumbled onto magic? Maybe while you were trudging to school one drizzly day, or in the middle of a furious game of freeze tag? Has anything odd ever happened to you?

If you’re shaking your head right now, if you think that nothing out of the ordinary ever happens, you might be mistaken. Because it’s possible that you stumbled onto magic and missed it—that you were teetering on the edge of a strange and wonderful adventure but then turned the other way. This happens all the time
.

I know a boy (we’ll call him Horbert, though that isn’t his name, thank goodness), and for years he lived in a house where the bathtub had a magical drainpipe that led straight to the lost city of Atlantis! But Horbert was always in such a hurry to get where he was going that he never lingered in the bath. Whenever he got really filthy, and his mother nagged him to wash, he just jumped in and briefly splashed at himself
.
Then he’d spring right from the tub, and out the door he’d fly, afraid that his older brother Noah was beating his high score on Super-Space-Zombie-4000, his very favorite video game. Though mermaids sang in the plumbing, he never heard their call
.

This is sad but not uncommon, so maybe you need to ask yourself whether you’re in danger of becoming a little like Horbert. These days, most people are. Most people are just too busy for magic—watching TV and checking their e-mail—so it stands to reason that when something unusual happens, folks are often looking the other way
.

You might think that magic would be too extraordinary to miss. You might be saying, “Oh, trust me, if I stumbled onto magic, I’d know it!” But that’s not necessarily true. Because there are many kinds of magic in the world, and not all of it starts with a sound track of thunderous music to alert unsuspecting explorers to fabulous adventures ahead
.

Some magic (the kind you hear about most often) is loud and full of dragons. But that magic is rare, generally reserved for scrappy orphans and misplaced princes. Some magic is mysterious, beginning with the somber tolling of a clock at midnight in the darkest corner of a graveyard. However, that magic is unlikely to include you if you don’t visit cemeteries late at night (which I don’t think you’re supposed to do). There is also magic especially for very tiny children, full of kindly rabbits
and friendly old ladies with comfortable laps. It smells like sugar cookies and takes place mostly in gardens or bedrooms the pale colors of spring. But you outgrow it about the time you learn to read
.

So perhaps the very best magic is the kind of magic that happens to kids just like you (and maybe even the occasional grown-up) when they’re paying careful attention. It’s the most common magic there is, which is why (sensibly) it’s called Common Magic. Common Magic exists in the very unmagical world you yourself inhabit. It’s full of regular-looking people, stop signs, and seemingly boring buildings. Common Magic happens to kids who have curious friends, busy parents, and vivid imaginations, and it frequently takes place during summer vacations or on rainy weekends when you aren’t allowed to leave the house. Most important, it always starts with something that seems ordinary
.

This magic, the magic in this particular book, was Common Magic. It happened last July, to Henry and Emma, and Susan and Roy, and it started with a wall…
.

B
UT FIRST
everybody had to
find
the wall … and that might never have even happened if Emma O’Dell hadn’t learned to ride her bike. So if you think about it, the magic
really
started with a bicycle.

It was summer in Iowa, and for the first two weeks of vacation, Emma and her older brother, Henry, just hung around the house because their parents were too busy with work, and silly things like mowing the lawn, to take Henry and Emma to the beach or the mountains, or even to the park for a picnic. Henry and Emma were free from school but stuck at home.

Often the two of them played halfhearted games of Parcheesi, and that was fine but nothing special. Sometimes they started a game of Don’t Touch the Floor, but it wasn’t much fun without their mom around to yell at them for thumping and knocking things over.

Then, at the beginning of the third week, Emma learned to ride the shiny green bike she’d gotten for her sixth birthday only the month before, and that’s when the summer opened up like a giant map unfolding—full of mud puddles and climbing trees and trips to the library. That’s when vacation really began, since Henry and Emma were allowed to ride anywhere they wanted in Quiet Falls, as long as Henry kept a careful eye on his sister and called to check in occasionally. Quiet Falls was a friendly town, and the O’Dells knew everyone in it, so nobody worried too much.

“Why don’t Mom and Dad ever ride
their
bikes?” Emma asked Henry one early afternoon of bicycle freedom, over gooey pizza at Pagliano’s. “Maybe they’d like to come with us sometime?” As a rule, Emma asked a lot of questions. There was something in her upturned nose and big blue eyes that made her look as though she were
always
about to ask a question.

Henry shook his head. “Nah. Parents are kind of lazy when it comes to doing fun stuff outdoors.”

“Then why do they have bikes?” asked Emma.

“That’s just how parents are,” Henry explained wisely as he ate the cheese off the top of his slice and wiped his greasy hand on his jeans. “They like to talk about how they
used
to do things or about how they plan
to do things
someday
, but parents aren’t very good at
right now
.”