Small Magic, page 36
It just isn’t given to us to fully imagine and confront the worst of our fears, because until they happen they are only abstract possibilities.
Jack McCall is forty years old. He has a wife and a daughter and a son. He is the owner of a private company offering individually designed planning, advice, and resource conservation programs for public and private entities engaged in parks and recreation development and maintenance. (Or, at least, that is how he pitches it to his clients.) He is a longtime resident of his community and well liked, if considered a bit odd because of his insistence on remaining a very private person outside of work. And because of the black staff he always carries with him. But those who know him well, those few who know some of the details of his life and his family history, understand. His is an odd story, one of miracles and strange events—of near-death experiences and unexplainable truths.
Some of what makes him seem so peculiar to others he has kept to himself. The fact that he knows good and evil exist in substantive form. The fact that he has encountered both all too frequently since he was thirteen and fought the dragon in Sinnissippi Park as a boy. The fact that some of the odder creatures of the park became known to him, including the protector of the park, Pick, and the owl, Daniel, and the troll, Wartag. The fact that he once shrank down so far that he was able to fly the length and breadth of the park aboard Daniel, with Pick as his companion and guide. The fact that the reason he fought the dragon was that he had cancer, and to defeat the cancer he had to defeat the dragon.
All that is in the past, along with much more that he would like to forget but cannot. Now he lives near Lincoln Park in West Seattle. So much has happened in the years since his miracle recovery. His life has changed in so many ways. He no longer lives in a small town but in a large city and is married with children. He has finished school and works for a living. He has been healthy all these years since his cancer went into remission; there has never been a recurrence.
But there is one thing more, one thing that defines the nature and boundaries of his life above all others. One thing that no one knows.
He is a Knight of the Word.
And everything he sees and thinks as he stares down at the Winston home is happening in a dream.
Two
Jack McCall was twenty-two years old, standing in a campus parking lot, graduation over, parents come and gone, packed up and ready to leave for Hopewell, when the stranger approached. A part of him thought it would be a good idea to turn and walk the other way when he saw the man. Well over six feet and close to three hundred pounds, he looked as if he could deconstruct someone who was less than six feet by several inches and nowhere near two hundred, just by giving him a hard look. He appeared to Jack to be Native American, with a face that might have been carved from granite. With his massive body barely concealed under patched-up camo and worn combat boots, both of which suggested military experience, he was of indeterminate intentions and wholly intimidating.
But Jack stood his ground because he had stopped running from the things that frightened him by the time he turned fourteen.
“Are you Jack McCall, kem’sho?” the other asked.
Jack nodded uncertainly. Kem’sho? He brushed back his mop of blond hair where it drooped down over his forehead. “Do I know you?”
“You do not. I am called Two Bears—O’olish Amaneh in the language of my people. Now we are acquainted. Where can we sit and talk?”
Jack did not feel like engaging in a conversation with this hulk, but he also suspected he could not avoid it. “What do we have to talk about?” he asked.
Two Bears gave him a look. “That is what I wish to discuss with you. Why don’t we get on with it?”
Chastened by the rebuke and by now a bit curious, Jack led the other out of the parking lot and onto one of the campus quads where empty benches occupied shady patches of lawn under centuries-old oaks and elms. The campus was practically deserted, the bulk of students, parents, professors, and other graduation invitees departed. Jack would have been gone as well if he hadn’t stopped to help his roommates carry down their gear and pack their cars. He now found himself regretting his Good Samaritan act.
Sitting side by side on the bench, each turned slightly to face the other, they spent a moment in silence before Two Bears spoke.
“You don’t have a plan for the future,” he said, making it a statement rather than a question.
Jack nodded. “And you know this how?”
Straight-faced, Two Bears tapped his temple. “Intuition. I have a proposition for you. One that would give you a direction in your life that you currently lack. One that would provide you with a worthy purpose and an assurance that you would be helping a world in great need of assistance.”
Jack smiled. “You want me to become a politician?”
Two Bears shook his head. “You are not listening. I used the words ‘help the world,’ not ‘feed at the expense of the world.’ ”
“Look,” Jack said. The lack of direction or purpose in this conversation was making him impatient. “Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”
“I want you to travel to Wales for a week and speak with the Lady.” The other’s hard face wore an impassive expression. “I have the tickets for your journey in my pocket. You would leave in three days.”
Jack stared. “You’re kidding, right?”
Two Bears stared back, his face impassive.
Jack blinked. “Who is the Lady?”
“That is what you are going to Wales to find out.”
“But I don’t want to go to Wales.”
Two Bears gave a shrug of his massive shoulders. “You just think you don’t want to go to Wales. You think there is no reason for it. But you are wrong. There is every reason for you to go. College is over, boyhood is finished, and what lies ahead is unknown. But you must embrace it. You must learn for yourself what it is. My explaining it to you would be insufficient. Take the tickets and fly to Wales. Speak with the Lady. Pick would tell you the same thing I am telling you. It is necessary for you to go.”
“Pick? How do you know…?”
“Once upon a time, the fairy creature Pick—who was then and is still caretaker and guardian of Sinnissippi Park in the town you grew up in—helped you to find a way to defeat a dragon. You, in turn, helped him to save the park. Yours has been a special life, Jack McCall. You have found the magic in the world and embraced it. You have fought against the worst of it and channeled your efforts to good purpose. Did you think this would be the end of it? Did you think your involvement with the magic would stop there?”
Jack shook his head, now fully flummoxed. “But how do you know all this? How is it you know about Pick and the dragon and Sinnissippi Park?”
“It is my business to know.” Two Bears rocked back an inch or two and then leaned closer. “Sinnissippi Park and much of the land that surrounds it is my ancestral home. It was the homeland of my people, the Sinnissippi, for centuries. Now they are all gone, and I am all that is left. The magic that was once ours and that once protected our homelands is still there, but it is threatened. So it is given to me to protect what remains of the legacy of my people and of the other Native Americans throughout this part of the world. To do so, I serve the Lady.”
“But who is the Lady?” Jack practically shouted, his frustration reaching a new level.
Two Bears did not react. “We’ve come full circle, kem’sho. The answer to your question is to be found in Wales. You must go there to find it.”
Jack was about to walk away, wanting no part of any of this; he was not even sure it was true. There were all sorts of ways Two Bears could have learned of Pick and the dragon and the park and himself. To just blindly agree to fly off to Wales meant he would have to put all caution and good sense aside and throw himself on fate and blind trust.
And yet…
“What does kem’sho mean?” he asked.
Two Bears gave a small nod of approval. “In the language of my people, it means ‘warrior.’ It describes what I think you are.”
Jack hesitated, suddenly uncertain. The big man’s words were persuasive and did not feel like lies or dissembling. Although wild and impossible, they nevertheless spoke to a truth he was reluctant to embrace. Once, he had believed in fairy magic, back when he was a boy. Once, he had believed in dragons and elves and magic of any sort. All that seemed far away now, but had he really stopped believing in things that had once seemed so real? Had he really stopped believing that he had beaten back the cancer that had riddled every part of his body and had saved his life by doing so?
“One thing more,” Two Bears said quietly. “The Lady knew of your destiny, back when you were thirteen and dying. She was responsible for keeping the dragon from you. She was the one who summoned Pick to act on her behalf. That was how he found you and became your friend.”
He rose abruptly. Reaching into a pocket in his camo shirt, he pulled out an envelope. “There are your tickets. Use them if you choose. But only by using them will you know if what you’ve heard is true.”
He began to walk away, but Jack was on his feet now, holding the envelope he didn’t even realize he had accepted. “Wait.”
“If you choose not to go, if you decide not to seek out the Lady, you will wonder for the rest of your life if you should have. Be at peace, kem’sho.”
He walked across the quad without looking back and disappeared between the campus buildings, leaving Jack staring after him.
Three
Three days later, Jack McCall was landing in Cardiff, Wales. He was still not sure why he was doing this, save for those final words from Two Bears: If you choose not to go, you will wonder for the rest of your life if you should have.
Fair enough, he supposed. Yet he could not help but wonder if the reverse might not turn out to be true: If you choose to go, you may end up finding out it was a huge mistake.
In any case, he had made his choice, and he was soon driving through the Welsh countryside toward Snowdonia in the north of the country. Wending his way along scenic A470 on the west side of the River Conwy, he was pointing toward the villages of Llandudno and Portmeirion without intending to reach either. His destination would not require him to travel that far, but only to just below the village of Betws-y-Coed. There, according to the instructions handed to him by Two Bears in the same envelope as the airline tickets, he was to take shelter in a small farmhouse, which was only three miles from where the Lady awaited him in an out-of-the-way tourist destination called the Fairy Glen.
Jack had never heard of it, not surprisingly, because when you came right down to it he had never heard much of anything about Wales. Since directions had been provided and he had made the commitment to see this through, he would follow the path laid out for him and save any further questions or concerns about why he was doing this for another time.
He kept close watch on the road signs as he drove to be sure he was doing everything he had been told. But as time wore on and the towns and farms grew sparser, he began to wonder if perhaps he had missed a turning. It wasn’t until he saw a sign indicating Betws-y-Coed was only twenty kilometers away that he decided he was on the right track and began to look for the side road that would take him to his lodgings.
Once arrived, he would have two nights to wait for the rise of the full moon, and then he would meet the Lady. He was to ask directions to the Fairy Glen, but give no explanation as to why he was going beyond saying that he had heard it was beautiful during the full moon and he wanted to see if it was true. There was to be no mention of the Lady or Two Bears. There was to be no mention of anything that seemed out of the ordinary. He was simply to show up as requested, drive to the Fairy Glen, and listen to what the Lady had to say.
He didn’t even know how he was supposed to let the Lady know he was there. Two Bears was no longer around to advise him, and he had already been told it would be a mistake to ask his host for anything other than directions.
So, when he pulled his rental into a parking area next to a well-kept stone cottage just off a side road he had only barely avoided missing, he was resolved to keep everything about what he was doing in Wales secret. He would simply pretend he was on vacation, having just graduated college. He climbed out of the car and was standing there, having a slow look around, when the front door opened and a bearded oldster wearing jeans and a flannel shirt came out to greet him.
“Mr. McCall?” the other asked, advancing down the stone walkway.
Jack waved. “That would be me.”
“Arthur Henry.” He arrived with his hand extended and a pleased look on his face. “Found your way here all right?”
“I had directions.”
“Good ones, too. Most manage to miss us on the first try. Have to call in or muck around a bit first. None of that for you. Come on in. Here, I’ll help with the luggage.”
There wasn’t much luggage to begin with, since Jack had packed everything in a duffel, but Arthur Henry insisted on carrying it himself, refusing to let Jack do the work. “You just go through, leave the rest to me. Got tea and beer, whichever you prefer. College student, right? Got to get a good education these days, if you want to get ahead in the world. Go on, sit in the room with the fire. It gets cold here at night.”
Arthur Henry, it turned out, was a talker. He asked about Jack’s flight, then told a few stories about flights of his own. He asked about Jack’s education, then gave a quick survey of his own. He asked about Jack’s plans for his future, then talked about his own plans for the cottage and the surrounding land. He spent a good deal more time afterward weighing in on the Welsh economy, Welsh politics, and Wales’s place in the British Commonwealth and how it related to the place of Great Britain in the larger world. He then went on to advise Jack how best to use these first several months out of college before entering the workforce.
“Plenty of time to be a vital cog in the business world, Jack. But you need a bit of seasoning first, and this is the time to get that odd bit of experience you won’t find in the nine-to-five workday. Travel is the answer. See the world. See how the other nine-tenths live. This will give you a larger frame of reference, meaning you’ll have a significant advantage over almost everyone else. Because most folks never see even a little of what is out there.”
By now, they were settled in a sitting room before a fire blazing in an old stone hearth, glasses of Welsh beer in their hands and a ruddy glow on their faces. Arthur Henry hadn’t stopped talking since they sat down, although Jack had managed to squeeze one or two words in edgewise in a futile effort to hold up his end of the conversation. Mostly, he just smiled and nodded and let the old man say whatever he chose, content to let him do so for as long as it took to exhaust him.
Although, as the first hour passed and a sizable chunk of the second with it, he began to wonder if he was expecting too much.
Finally, Arthur seemed to realize what he was doing and sprang to his feet with a hearty laugh. “Well, I’m just going on and on, taking up all the air in the room. Come, Mr. McCall, and share some dinner with me. If you’re good, I’ll spare you a few moments of the evening to talk a bit about yourself!”
A stew had been prepared on an old iron stove, and it was delicious. After adding fresh-baked bread (“Make all my own bread,” Arthur advised) and another glass or two of the beer, Jack McCall could honestly say he had never enjoyed a meal more. And he could say that because his host finally took a break from nonstop talking to concentrate on his food.
When that was finished, Arthur directed Jack to his quarters—a cozy bedroom at the rear of the cottage, complete with its own bathroom—to let him unpack before coming to sit once more by the fire. He did invite Jack to talk about himself, and Jack managed to give a sketchy account of his early life, education, and family situation before his time was at an end and Arthur was off and running once again. Wife and kids (three), the former dead now, the kids grown and living elsewhere, life spent working at a lumber mill, fond of cricket, fond of football (European), politics mostly an exercise in futility in his opinion, and the world in shambles mostly because this new generation (Jack’s?) just didn’t understand what it meant to work for a living.
Finally talk worked its way around to Jack’s plans for the time he was spending in Wales. Jack gave a brief overview, consisting of trips into the Snowdonia area, visits to some of the castle ruins that had once been Edward’s detested Iron Ring, built to subdue the wild savages he believed the Welsh people to be, and finally a journey up to Llandudno for a night.
Then he added, as casually as he could manage it, “A friend of mine who’s been here before told me there was a place I needed to visit that’s right around here. Said it was very beautiful, almost magical. He called it the Fairy Glen. Do you know it?”
The old man grunted. “I do. Right down the road a short distance from here.”
“Have you been there?”
“Aye. Twice. Once to see it, once to be sure I was seeing it right. You should go. But in the daytime, not at night.”
“Why is that? I thought it would be beautiful under the full moon.”
The old man went quiet for a moment, lost in thought. “Odd things happen there at night. You can’t be sure what you’re seeing. Daytime, you see it all much better, can’t be so easily fooled. You go when there’s sunlight.”
