Any Which Wall (8 page)

“You should have just asked us nicely,” said Susan. “Why on earth would you come to the door with a knife?”

“Because I was in the middle of chopping,” said Merlin, “which generally requires a knife. And if you’ll recall, I did ask nicely, but people never seem to respond well when I ask nicely.” He wiped a clump of
what appeared to be dried bird poop from his hair as he said, “For some reason, magical visitors are always nervous around me at first.”

“I can’t imagine why,” said Susan. She wondered how long the poop had been there.

“Do you get lots of magical visitors?” asked Henry, deciding that he’d rather be friends with Merlin than not.

“Yes,” answered Merlin proudly. “I’m quite famous in certain circles. There are movies about me, and statues, plus I’m in loads of books. I even got a mention in Harry Potter! I was on a Wizarding card. Pretty fancy, right?”

Henry couldn’t help thinking that Merlin was being kind of braggy, but he was still feeling relieved not to have been kidnapped by an evil madman, so he managed to avoid saying so. Besides, if anyone had a right to be braggy, he supposed Merlin did. He
was
pretty famous.

Merlin continued, “And not just in English. Tales about me have been translated into hundreds of languages. Hundreds! I’m very big in Japan.” He set his chin against his chest and grinned at them. One of his teeth wiggled on its own.

“Hey, that reminds me!” said Roy. “Speaking of languages, I was wondering what that first language you
spoke was. The language you spoke right before you came out and grabbed Henry.”

“Language?” Merlin didn’t understand the question. “I only speak one language, but maybe you heard me practicing my backward-speak. It’s useful when I want to converse with the Lady of the Lake or anyone who happens to be living inside a mirror.”

Emma gasped. “You mean like Alice when she was through the looking glass?”

“Hmph,” said Merlin, shaking his head. “Not hardly! That Carroll fellow never could get his facts straight, though he did spin a good yarn. Don’t you agree?”

Emma did agree.

“But that means you speak English in Camelot?” asked Roy.

“Goodness, no,” said Merlin, laughing. “I don’t speak a word of what you call English. I speak a language your world doesn’t quite remember, a lovely tongue. Your best professors might call it Devonian, and some might say it was Celt-ish.”

“Then how come we can understand you?” asked Roy. “I don’t speak Devonian, but I can follow everything you say.”

“I’m sure you can,” said Merlin. “When you’re on a magical adventure, the magic is the language, if you get
my drift. Everything that occurs passes through the magic, and it all gets translated. Which gives you instincts you might not otherwise have. On a magic adventure, you’ll always understand the lay of the land. You’ll be able to choke down foods you couldn’t stomach at home, and you’ll know the words to songs you’ve never heard before. That’s just the magic at work! Magic transforms you.”

“Wait, you aren’t speaking English right now?” asked Emma.

“Nope, my pet. In effect, you’re speaking Devonian.”

“I am?” asked Emma, mightily impressed with herself. She wondered if this was something she could do for show-and-tell in the fall.

“Indeed, and if you leave here and go visit the Temple in Jerusalem, you’ll know Aramaic too, or ancient Hebrew, or whatever language might be required of you, depending on the year of your visit. If you go to Venus, you’ll be fluent in Venusian.”

“Cool!” said Henry.

“That is cool,” said Roy, “but then why do characters in books always say old-timey stuff like ‘Ods bodkins’ and ‘By my troth’? If everything gets translated, shouldn’t ‘Ods bodkins’ be translated too, into something like …
oh, I don’t know … ‘Gosh!’ or maybe ‘Dang!’?”

“You—” said Merlin, poking Roy in the chest with a large toad that had hopped up to peer into the bowl of blue flames, “are smarter than you look.”

Roy didn’t know how to respond to the toad or the compliment, but it didn’t matter because Merlin kept on talking. “Downright clever boy. I never even thought about that, but yes, yes, that’s so. It
is
silly to have a Frenchman and a Spaniard understanding each other fluently, except when the Frenchman means to say ‘Mon Dieu’ or the Spaniard cries ‘Caramba!’ I suppose we should remember that books are often written in the spirit of truth but without proper research, and maybe some books get written by people who never actually stumbled upon magic themselves and so had to imagine it.” Merlin began to cough again. “Hargh!”

“That’s a nasty cough,” said Susan. “Do you have cough syrup in Camelot?”

“Ah, there’s no syrup that can help this cough. Comes of gazing into bowls of burning weeds all day,” sighed Merlin. “It’s an occupational hazard. I should really install better ventilation in this place, but I’m a lazy man, and nobody would understand it anyway. I
do
live in the fifth century.”

Henry lifted his eyes from his weed-water dish,
which he had been poking around in. “Is that where we are, the fifth century?”

“No, that’s
when
you are, my boy. If I were you, I’d be more precise with my language.
Where
you are is Camelot.”

That reminded Henry of something. “But if this really is Camelot, where are King Arthur and all the knights? Asleep?”

Just as Emma had envisioned stained-glass windows and jesters, Henry had imagined swords clashing and jousting tournaments. He wondered if Camelot would be worth a return trip by daylight.

Merlin sighed and ran a hand through his snarled hair. “No, Arthur’s off fighting the Saxons, as usual.”

“Saxons? What are Saxons?” asked Henry.

“Greedy fellows who like to play with knives and spears, Saxons are. Thieving sorts and mean, drunken louts. Arthur spends all his time battling them. Always with the Saxons. I tell him there’s not much point in it, but nobody listens to old Merlin.”

“Not much point?”

“No. The Saxons will win in the end, Arthur knows that. And someone else will kill off the Saxons, eventually. It’s just the way things are, but you can’t tell Arthur anything. It’s in his nature to play with his
sword, and honestly, he doesn’t listen very well.”

Henry, who more than once had the words “poor listening skills” written on his report card, thought for a minute and decided that he would probably rather go off to a glorious battle than sit in a muddy courtyard with a bunch of pigs and burning weeds.

“So, what else is going on, if Arthur’s not here?” Henry asked.

“Not much,” admitted Merlin. “The pigs root. The chickens lay eggs and peck at each other. The queen wanders around looking stately.”

“A queen?” Emma’s eyes got big.

“Yes,” said Merlin, “and if you want to, you can run along and meet her. Guinevere’s generally up about this time of night, rehearsing her despair in the moonlight.”

“I want to,” said Emma. “I want to see the queen, and this was my wish.”

“Fair enough,” said the wizard, nodding. “But before you go, a gift!” Merlin motioned to the dishes of weed water, cool in their hands. All this time, Henry, Emma, Susan, and Roy had been holding their dishes carefully. Now they peered into them.

“Just say one word,” said Merlin. “One word only. Whisper it into the dish, and the potion will give you a glimpse.”

“Just one word?” said Emma. “We shouldn’t ask it a question?”

“Heavens, no,” said Merlin. “Then you’d only get the future of the first word you asked, which would probably be ‘what,’ and let me tell you, a glimpse of ‘what’ is sure to be vague. No fun at all.”

“Should we close our eyes?” asked Susan.

Merlin chuckled at the suggestion. “You can, but if you do that, you won’t be able to see the glimpse. Visions are awfully visual. Now, who wants to go first? I’m due for a three-day nap as soon as the four of you leave.”

“A three-day nap?” Henry couldn’t believe that anyone would voluntarily surrender to such a fate.

“Yes, I don’t have any visitors scheduled for a bit, and I don’t rest easy when I do rest, so I like to put myself to sleep for a good stretch every few weeks. Gives me a chance to dream.” Merlin got a faraway look on his face. “Such dreams …” He shook his head so that the bird’s nest dangled precariously, and pointed at Susan. “You, nearly grown! You go first!”

Susan, startled and unprepared, leaned over her bowl and said the first word that came to mind. She murmured the word “love” and then blushed as soon as she’d said it.

Henry snickered.

Slowly, a wisp of faint smoke curled up from the bowl and turned into what looked like a round picture
frame. In the center of the frame was a small group of people jostling each other. Susan couldn’t help noticing that at the center of that crowd was a young man in a blue T-shirt, with a shock of blond hair that stood straight up. Only his back was showing, but he had a confident posture and he seemed to be laughing at something. Susan barely noticed the other people standing beside him, until something happened to jerk him so that he almost fell over and toppled onto an old lady.

Henry made a snorting noise in his throat and rolled his eyes, but Susan ignored him and stared at Merlin. “What is it?” she asked. “Who’s that guy? Why am I seeing him?”

“I can’t answer that for you,” said Merlin. “I only know that it’s just some part of your future. Fate is limited, my dear, and so are visions. I can show you a moment in your future, but what it will mean to you—well, that’s up to you. Free will and all its bothersome trappings.” Susan’s vision began to fade and the wizard turned his attention to the others. “Now you!” he said, motioning to Henry.

Henry pushed his tongue against his teeth in concentration, thinking deeply before he grinned and said into the bowl, “Trouble.”

His wisp rose—a paler color than Susan’s—and in
no time at all they were all staring at Henry’s picture frame. Inside it was a palm tree on a beach set against a blazing tropical sun. The palm tree waved and small waves rose and fell behind it, crashing to gentle surf before the scene faded.

Henry was indignant. “That’s not trouble!” he said. “That’s, like, the opposite of trouble!”

“Be careful what you ask for,” said Merlin as he watched the scene fade. “You just might get it.”

He patted Emma on the head. “Your turn!” he said brightly.

Emma’s hands shook as she held her bowl. “Friends?” said Emma, with her lips to the bowl but her eyes on the wizard.

Emma’s picture frame rose before her, but inside it was not a person or a scene. It was a plain black oval, a circle of absolute darkness.

“It’s broken, I think,” she said, shaking her bowl of weed water gently from side to side.

“I don’t think so,” said Merlin. “My magic is pretty unbreakable. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see what that darkness is.”

Now it was Roy’s turn. “I can’t figure out the best word to say,” he said. “This magic is tricky.”

Merlin laughed. “By definition! Perhaps it’s best not
to overthink. That can be just as dangerous as under-thinking, and sometimes far worse. Maybe you should just say the first word that pops into your head.”

Roy thought this advice through carefully before he nodded. Then he leaned into his bowl and whispered, “Home!”

His dish steamed and popped and a wisp of smoke curled from it. Inside the frame that hovered in the air, they saw a man. The man looked enormous, as wide as two men and taller than most. He was heavily muscled and angry, squinting into the sun. He opened his mouth in a snarl, but before anyone could tell why, the vision faded.

When Emma saw the man, she shivered. “That was home?” she asked nervously. “He didn’t look like home.”

“Whoever that man is, he has the posture of a Saxon,” muttered Merlin distastefully. Then he slapped his hands together, ready to be done with them. “Well, I guess that’s that,” he said brightly. “See you around!”

“But, Merlin,” Susan said, “that really wasn’t home, not at all. We know everyone at home, pretty much, and that man was nobody we know.”

Merlin knitted his unruly eyebrows and said, “Perhaps, Susan, there is more to your home than you know.
Places and times and people you’ve never seen. Things beyond your experience.”