It's Magic, You Dope!: The Lost Fantasy Classic Read online

  "Yes,” said the voice, sweetly.

  Completely nuts. I sighed to myself sadly. And such a nice voice, too. But nuts or not, she might still be young and beautiful. Would Annabel or Mr. Garson believe that she was nuts? It took me two seconds to answer that.

  No. That was the likely conclusion. Of course, if I said, “Tell them who you are,” and she said, “A wood nymph,” they'd think she was nuts. But if I walked out of my study with a girl who wasn't ‘dressed according to my standards,’ I'd never have a chance to play quiz with them.

  Then again, maybe she wasn't in anything wispy. She might be wadded into a Mother Hubbard and combat boots for all I knew. A nut wouldn't know the difference, would she?

  "May I turn on the light?"

  "Why?"

  "I've never seen a ... um ... wood nymph before."

  "No one has,” said the voice, with finality.

  "Well, I wouldn't mind being the first man to see one,” I hazarded.

  "Who would?” said the voice, and that strangely nostalgic laugh tinkled again. I had to forcibly wrench my emotions back from that warm grassy streamside field.

  "I can't just talk to a voice. Do you have a name?"

  "My name is Lorn,” she said, in a voice that was a velvet caress. It made the backs of my knees itch.

  "It's certainly a pretty name,” I said sincerely.

  "Naturally. All our names are pretty. Because all of us are pretty."

  Curiosity was killing me. I began to wonder if I could edge toward the light without her noticing. She might just be kidding about seeing me in the dark. “This requires some thinking,” I said, as a ruse to preclude the necessity of my speaking for a few moments. Carefully, I eased myself out of the chair and groped my way toward the light switch. My fingers touched it, and I whirled as the fluorescent ceiling light sputtered and popped on. The top of the bookcase was void of tenants.

  However, in the center of the room, something was standing, watching me balefully from beneath lowered brows topped with bone-colored horns. From the waist upward, excluding those pointy, inch-long horns, it was a youth of about ten years, but from the waist down it seemed to be wearing dark brown angora tights. It smelt slightly.

  "You're a wood nymph?” I gasped, disappointment mingling with shock at the sight. Wood nymph it might not be, but human being it could not be. For answer, I received a guttural growl from the thing.

  And at the same moment, a suppressed giggle came from behind my armchair. “Lorn?” I queried, hopefully taking a step toward the chair.

  The thing in the center of the rug made a motion with its head that demonstrated forcefully the fact that those horns were more than ornamental. Its small cloven hooves pawed the carpet like those of an animal about to attack.

  "Timtik!” said Lorn from behind the chair. “Don't gore him unless you have to. He's really rather nice."

  "I don't trust humans!” rasped Timtik, his voice the kind of sound you hear over a tin-can-and-string telephone. “You saw the way he tried to sneak a peek at you, Lorn!"

  I was nonplussed. “Who or what is this thing, Lorn? He looks something like a satyr, but his size is too—” At this moment, a bit of lore regarding the behavior of wood nymphs and satyrs passed across my mind. Their almost symbiotic relationship was so firmly rooted in ancient mythologies that somehow I began to feel that if she was a wood nymph, and this was her current flame, and he was only four feet tall, might not she also be...

  "Lorn,” I said haltingly. “Are you ... are you and he ... um...” I stopped, dismayed.

  "Nonsense,” said Lorn. “Timtik is a faun, and that's not quite the same as a satyr. He and I are just good friends. Why, I don't even have a steady satyr!"

  I felt ice in my stomach and my heart seemed to be pumping gelid sludge. “Then, you um ... date satyrs?"

  "Well, of course! Why not!"

  I scratched my head. “I dunno. But in all the portraits I've seen, they look so ... well ... repulsive."

  "Let me put it this way,” said Lorn. “If you lived in a world peopled by, say, bald-headed women with bad teeth, what would you do?"

  "Shoot myself,” I said.

  Lorn sighed. “I mean if you did go out with someone. You see, Albert, satyrs are all I've got. That's the reason I date them. Those stories you heard were just about the bad satyrs. Some of them are perfect gentlemen, and a few are even shy."

  "How did you know my name?” I asked.

  "I heard your wife mention it, Albert,” answered Lorn.

  "My wife?” I was momentarily perplexed. Then a small light flickered in my head. “Oh, you mean Annabel. She's not my wife. She's...” I glanced at the door, then lowered my voice. “She's not even much fun to have around for long. Much too bossy."

  "I'm so glad!” Then Lorn's voice quickly extinguished the sparkle in its intonation and added, “But you do have a wife around, don't you?"

  "No,” I admitted, shaking my head. “At the moment, I have nary wife, nor fiancée, nor even a close friend of the opposite sex."

  "Oh,” said Lorn.

  There was a pause of about ten seconds’ duration, during which Timtik scratched idly at the thatch of fur on his haunch with talon-like fingernails.

  "Oh, well, in that case...” Lorn said, and stood up into view from behind the armchair.

  I sat down. On the floor. Hard. She stood there, smiling at me, deep blue eyes crinkling beneath flaming copper brows, long unruly coils of hair falling to her creamy shoulders like a sunrise—like a sunset—like an explosion in a ketchup factory! Her lips were soft, pink, and unpainted, and I could feel their moist warmth at ten feet. Those waves of flaming hair fell like coiling cataracts to her bare shoulders, and below that ... Well...

  I looked in wonder as I clambered back to my feet.

  She'd been right. She had no clothes on at all by my standards, but she was not exactly bare, either. From her arching clavicles to her tiny toes she was swathed, or wrapped, or festooned, by a silky, satiny, gauzy, fluffy veil-type thing, its shades mingling emerald and viridian, like the color of moss on a bright but overcast day.

  How it stayed up, on, or around, I had no idea.

  "That's an unusual garment you're ... uh ... wearing, Lorn. How—How in the world do you keep it up?” I blurted.

  "It's magic, you dope!” Timtik muttered, clomping his impatient hooves on the rug. He'd ceased his guard-stance once Lorn had risen up from behind the chair like the sun coming over a jungle valley at dawn, like a torch-haired South Seas volcano-goddess-like ... I restrained myself from bursting into poetry. It was an effort.

  "It's my diaphanous drapery,” Lorn beamed, turning about to give me the complete vista. It dipped so low in back that I could have counted all her ribs if I'd wanted to put my hands on her bare back. And suddenly I wanted to, very much, but she'd already completed her rotation and my chance was gone.

  "It never falls off?” I said, amazed. “Kind of looks as though if a gust of wind came prowling—"

  Lorn shook her head decisively. “Not unless I wish it off."

  Timtik began to show some interest in the conversation. “Lorn is the only one who knows the magic words that drop the drape. Maggot taught her when she wove it."

  "Who taught her?” I'd been oddly stirred by the name.

  "Maggot,” said Timtik, impatiently. “She's a witch lives in Drendon."

  "Drendon I echoed, savoring the word. And then realized, with a dizzy feeling in my brain, that I knew these two here before me in my study.

  It was Susan Baker and her brother Timothy. And ‘Maggot’ could only have rung that dull bell in my mind if it were Mrs. Maggie Baker, Susan's mother.

  A lot of things danced through my brain in a few short instants, even as my lips tried to make intelligent response to the faun's statement. Maggie Baker, switched into Drendon from cooking things in her kitchen, simply became the Drendon equivalent of a mixer, brewer, or concocter: a witch. And Susan, still in the throes of her unwonted ur
ge to do me that fan-dance, sitting sad and, of course, loran in the spot where the tree had appeared, had become a tempting, winsome, lovely creature whose proper appellation would be wood-goddess, or tree goddess.

  Not that I was sure yet. The face of Lorn might be the face of Susan, but where Susan's had always been reserved, vapid, and a bit lovably dopey, Lorn's was pert, peppery, and lovably dopey. The flame-colored hair had been a distraction, as had that ‘diaphanous drapery.’ But a sharp look now made me surer than ever that I was facing the girl I'd lost forever scant hours earlier. She was disguised somewhat, but all the differences seemed to be for the better.

  And she treated me like a stranger.

  I wondered if some word-associations might trigger her memory. “Drendon,” I said carefully. “Why, that's the name of a forest, isn't it? Sort of contiguous with ... um ... Earth. Normal? Here, where only a little of it shows, we call it Porkle Park.” I didn't know how much of what I said was true, but I had to see if they'd react at all.

  Timtik reacted first. With disgust.

  "Humans!” he spat. “Who could name something as lovely as a park something like ‘Porkle'?"

  "I'm glad we live in Drendon,” said Lorn. “It's a much prettier name."

  "Then,” I said, wonderingly, “it is contiguous with Porkle Park?"

  "Only right here,” Lorn said briskly. “Our homeland is tangent to the park here, but we live in an entirely different—what?” she asked Timtik quizzically.

  "Dimension is the closest word the humans have for it,” muttered the faun.

  "You see, that's why we're here in the first place,” said Lorn, smiling a blithe smile that any self-respecting temptress would have depleted her bank account to learn.

  I fought a vertiginous impulse to leap the distance between us and cover her face with smoldering kisses, and quaked a little at the unfamiliarity of the feeling within myself. This wasn't like me. I was a librarian and a gentleman. And she was, after all, only a rag, a bone, a hank of hair ... But what a rag! What a bone! What a hank of hair! I cleared my throat, and said puzzledly, “What made you come calling on me?"

  For the first time since I'd seen him, Timtik lost some of his sullen impertinence. He actually looked embarrassed. “It's kind of my fault, Albert,” he admitted, hanging his head. “I tried to hide the key from Lorn, an—"

  "Timtik is a prankster, Albert,” said Lorn. “He took the key from me to hold it for me (he said) because I didn't have any pockets—” (A bad choice of topic; my eyes were again drawn to those draperies of hers, and my breathing became slightly impaired.) “Albert?” said Lorn, a little concerned. “Maybe I should leave. You don't look so well."

  "I'm fine. I'm just not used to ... to ... I'm fine. Please, go on."

  Well, once Timtik had the key, he tried to make me catch him to get it back, and you know how no one can outrun a faun, but he tripped, and I managed to lay hold of his hoof—” (I had to repress a shudder) “so he threw the key, and it came in here, and just as we'd sneaked inside to find it, you came in. That's all."

  "All but one thing,” I said. "What key?"

  "The key to Drendon, stupid!” grunted the faun in his metallic rasp. “We can't get back to our dimension without it, and Lorn'll catch hell from Maggot for keeping me out this late as it is!"

  "Me keeping you out!” Her lovely face was, alive with icy rancor. I watched her features with numb joy. She's beautiful when she's mad, I thought, and wished with biting regret that someone hadn't already coined that phrase. Then the happy thought occurred to me that perhaps the cliché hadn't yet penetrated her dimension.

  "You're beautiful when you're angry,” I ventured.

  Lorn stopped harassing Timtik. “Why ... why, Albert! That's the loveliest thing anyone ever said to me. I'm so glad I showed myself to you."

  "You're glad!” I said, my stomach doing cartwheels. “I've never been so happy in my life."

  "Well, now that he knows why we're here, let's take the key and go!” said Timtik, peering about the room.

  "Go?" I felt my world crumbling into-well-crumbs. I'd been somehow deluding myself that I was going to spend the rest of my life just looking at Lorn, just staring at and drinking in her loveliness, not eating, sleeping or anything, never leaving the room again. Just me and Lorn, and ... well, maybe Timtik could've been bribed to leave us. But would a faun have any use for a quarter? Or an ice cream cone?

  "We have to go, Albert,” said Lorn, her face sweetly sad. “But I will remember you always, and all that sort of stuff. Now, where's that key?"

  I felt she could have looked just a little more miserable about our parting, but Lorn was already down on her hands and knees, peering under furniture, and Timtik was clumping about making an awful racket, yelling, “Here key!"

  Nothing happened, except to Lorn's expression. She became pale and apprehensive. “Call again!” she said.

  I Timtik, too, looked uneasy. ‘Here, key!” he shouted. Again nothing happened. Timtik looked genuinely scared. “The spell doesn't work, Lorn!"

  "But it has to!” she said, rising gracefully from her ungainly crouch on the carpet. “If a spell works, it works, that's all. If the key can hear you, it must answer."

  I felt a growing concern for their plight, despite my desire that they both remain until I could get them unbrainwashed and back into their proper identities. Though I wasn't sure I wanted Susan to change all the way back...

  "Maybe,” I said helpfully, “Magic won't work in this dimension?"

  Timtik stopped clumping. “That's a horrible idea. Maybe—Hey, Lorn!"

  She gave a tiny shriek, but her hands moved in time. That diaphanous drapery of hers hadn't sagged much, and only exposed a few extra inches of smooth pale flesh. But it was enough to turn my knees to water and bring the water to a boil. “I guess,” I ventured not unhappily, “you're stuck in this dimension, huh?"

  The resultant anguish on their, faces made me feel that high. “Well, maybe, maybe it's because you don't belong here that your magic didn't work. Maybe if I called—Here, key!"

  "See me? See me?” squeaked a little voice. “Whee! Me! Me!"

  "There she is!” said Timtik pointing.

  I looked atop the bookcase and saw what at first seemed to be a dry twig; then it wriggled, and I saw that it was alive after a fashion. Lorn and I sprang for it at the same moment. We crashed front to front, and somehow I found my arm around her waist, while my free hand scooped up the key. My hand scooped reflexively, because at the moment of contact between us, everything was forgotten but Lorn, Lorn, Lorn! And she certainly was staring at me as though something marvelous had occurred.

  "Albert,” she sighed, with wonder in her voice.

  Timtik watched, aghast. “Lorn, he's from another dimension!” he warned.

  At that moment, the key wriggled in my hand. I looked at it, and realized that I held the ... well, the key to Lorn's departure, and that without it...

  I repressed an urge to chuckle, but could not repress the surge of just plain selfish desirous meanness that welled up inside me as I brought up my other hand behind Lorn and prepared to crumple and snap the key like the twig it most resembled. Fire lanced through my fingers! I almost dropped the thing, but the glow which had momentarily heated the twig faded as soon as I ceased twisting it.

  'Timtik went pale (to the waist). “Lorn! He tried to destroy the key! He did! And Maggot's counter-spell worked; I saw it. He doesn't want us to go!"

  Lorn was looking into my, face, sighing gently, her breath in my nostrils sweet and warm and moist as fresh-cut grass. “Who cares?” she said dreamily. “This beats satyrs all get-out!"

  Timtik's face contorted tearfully. “But Lorn. Maggot will be expecting us, and you're supposed to be taking care of me, and I'll never get home again, and—” Here he broke down completely and blubbered salty tears into the hem of Lorn's diaphanous drapery, the horns coming dangerously near to snagging it. Lorn put her hand gently to my chest and pushed me bac
k, with a reluctant smile. “He's right; I'll have to take him home."

  "No, Lorn,” I said. “Don't go. You must stay with me."

  "Well, Albert...” Lorn looked perplexed. “I want to, of course, but I did promise Maggot I'd bring him home tonight. I'll be back. Honestly I will."

  I fought for time, hoping to alter her decision. “But why did you come here in the first place, then? Merely to enchant me and then leave me a broken husk, seeking in vain for beauty I shall never view again?"

  Timtik gagged. “Boy, is he corny!” He seemed quite recovered from his spate of tears. Lorn shot him a cold glance of deep reproach. “I think he's charming!” she said staunchly. Then to me, “I'd never heard of Earth, or anywhere outside Drendon, until Maggot decided to send Timtik out to spy on humans, to get experience. She needs someone to make the transition now and then, to keep her posted, especially on anything scientific. She likes to think she keeps Drendon up-to-date in its technology."

  "I'm studying under her,” said Timtik, proudly. “I'm an apprentice witch."

  My knowledge of gender triumphed over strained credibility. “Warlock,” I corrected. “Boys can't be witches."

  "All right,” Timtik muttered darkly. “Warlock, then."

  "He had to see people,” Lorn went on. “It's part of his training so that, someday, when he has to cast a spell on a human, he'll know how to make the dolls."

  The hair prickled on my neck. “Dolls? You mean voodoo?"

  A light shone in Lorn's eyes. “You know voodoo, Albert?"

  "Just the word,” I admitted anticlimactically.

  "It figures,” Timtik muttered, again darkly.

  "Well, anyhow, Maggot thought Timtik was too young to go alone, and she was mixing a batch of hell-brew to feed the Thrake, so the Kwistians couldn't get into our section of Drendon, and so she sent me. I'll do anything for excitement, and Maggot knows it, so she sent me to watch humans with him, and we were on our way back when he tossed the key in here—"

  "Wait,” I said. “If there are no humans in Drendon, why learn how to voodoo them?"