Something Dark and Magical

He felt its menace in his bones, close now, upon him any moment, and yet unseen. He tried to run, but no—he was held fast. He thrashed about, fighting for freedom. No use. And the danger came closer.
     He couldn’t shout for help—only a strangled whimper came out, the sound of an injured animal. A pitiful reminder of his plight.
     At least it served to wake him.
     The worst nightmares leave deep wounds. He felt drained—relieved, but weak from the exhaustion that follows an adrenaline rush. As he grasped for memory, still with no hint of the nature of the threat, he came fully awake at last, and saw the truth—the deadly danger was no dream, but was everywhere around him. Fear rebounded, overwhelming. He sat up, eyes wide, heart pounding in terror.
     But what had caused it?

Norm Pardee was all too familiar with danger. Years of experience with magic had put him into many situations where his life hung in the balance. But until now he had always understood the threat; this menace he couldn’t comprehend. No words could describe it. He was lost in a sea of unknown terror.
     His surroundings were just as baffling. He was not in his bed, but on the well-worn living room couch in the trailer where his friend Dara lived with her parents. The place was not right, though, and Norm shuddered as he looked around. It had no life, no warmth. None of its usual sounds or energy.
     Why was he here alone? Where were Dara and her family?
     Where was Burny?
     Something beyond his control had happened. Something dark and magical.
     He struggled to remember coming to the trailer, but magic leaves a fog in the mind that blurs the details where paradox meets impossibility. The unseen threat was everywhere, and Norm feared what might come next.
     A faint light filtered through the heavy curtains. He walked to the front door, intending to pull it open, but hesitated.
     Burny would say, “Norm, stop and think—there might be something terrible out there!”
     Norm winced at the thought of Burny, his big black-and-white bristly-haired dog, his friend and advisor. Norm had been able to understand Burny for four years—magic’s first gift—and for all that time they talked about everything. Now Norm was in trouble, and without his dog he felt alone and vulnerable.
     He gritted his teeth. Fighting fear, he opened the door.
     Serious mistake. He was yanked forward, out the door, and barely saved himself by clinging to the doorframe. The violence of it undid him.
     Hanging by his fingers, he got a glimpse of—what? He could see nothing at all. The trailer seemed to be suspended in a cloud. A shrieking wind assailed his ears and buffeted his body.
     Norm strained every muscle to regain the safety of the trailer, and succeeded only after he managed to hook a foot over the sill. He pulled himself inside inch by inch until he lay on the carpet drenched in sweat and shaking with effort.
     The door was still wide open. To close it he had to reach far out to grasp the handle while hanging onto the frame for dear life. It was almost more than he could do.
     Once the door was safely closed, he leaned against the wall for support, gasping for breath, his heart hammering. He understood that he was at one of those magical boundaries where everything is hazy. He knew what lay beyond it—Dara’s sorceress mother called it the seventh dimension—a vast darkness, a howling, freezing-cold cyclone. That terrible wind nearly had him as he hung from the doorframe.
     Close, he thought. Too close.
     He returned to the couch. The interior was deserted and full of fear, but outside was death.
     Once again, he knew what Burny would say.
     “Norm, this has to be Morgana’s doing.”
 

For his first eleven years, Norm led a perfectly ordinary life. He was an only child who got along with his parents and did well in school. He loved to read.
     Of all his early days, the ones he remembered best were his ninth birthday, when he got Burny as a puppy, and his twelfth, when he bought a used orPad that included the black-square app. He didn’t know that app was already notorious, and he had no idea where it came from or what it might do, but twelve-year-old boys don’t stop to consider risks. So he tried it out, and he was never the same afterward, because it was magical. It was then that he first understood that Burny was actually speaking, and that was only the beginning. The orPad sent them on wild rides to other places and times. Sometimes it put them in danger. Norm was lucky Burny went along, because no boy that age has sense enough to be safe around magic without a dog to take care of him.
     In the week after Norm got that orPad, Burny got far more experience with magic than he wanted, as he pointed out repeatedly. He was a sensible dog who relished his naps and his kibble, and he did like digging an occasional hole, and chasing cats. But duty comes first, and Burny’s main job was taking care of Norm, even if it meant putting up with the black-square app, which he disliked from the start. He was sure Norm’s enthusiasm would get them both into trouble. His misgivings came to a head at the end of that first week, when the app tried to kill him and Norm. That was their first encounter with the seventh dimension, and they were lucky to escape alive. Burny hoped Norm would turn away from magic then, but boys rebound quickly, and four years later it was still a big part of his life.
     Burny conceded that the orPad trips were sometimes enjoyable. He and Norm visited a Gypsy camp in long-ago England, where Norm met Adara, an exotic-looking girl his own age with olive skin and dark curly hair. Life in a Gypsy caravan had made her tough, and her determination and courage made a big impression on Norm. She was unlike anyone he had ever known, and he found her fascinating.
     At the end of that summer, to Norm’s astonishment, she became part of his life. On his first day in seventh grade at Muddle St. Middle School, he met Dara, who looked so much like Adara that Norm would have known she was the same person even if her name hadn’t tipped him off.
     A seventeenth-century Gypsy girl living in Norm’s hometown? That was the doing of Dara’s mother, Jo. As Norm came to know Dara, he discovered that Jo could do many things that lay beyond explanation.
     Norm and Dara were twelve then, and they had been best friends ever since. Together they fought Morgana the Fey, the infamous sorceress of the King Arthur legends, who detested Jo over an ancient rivalry and made a habit of venting her wrath on Dara’s family. Fortunately, Norm and Dara were able to thwart those attacks, with Burny’s help. The three of them freed Dara’s father from Morgana’s captivity shortly after Norm and Dara met. Morgana got revenge two years later by kidnapping Dara. Norm and Burny’s rescue effort was long and perilous, ending in a pitched battle that almost cost Burny his life.
     Naturally, Morgana came to hate Norm and Burny too, and her rage was fearsome. She would always be a threat, and Burny’s instinct to blame everything on her was more evidence of his good common sense.
     Norm and Dara were sixteen now, juniors at Ambiguous Avenue High School, where Norm was the editor of the weekly newspaper. He would turn seventeen during the summer. He planned to skip his senior year and start as a special student in the Unorthodox Writing program at the nearby University of the Undiscovered Artist.
     Jo had said from the beginning that Norm and Dara defeated Morgana because together they wielded their own ancient power. She suspected they might someday marry, but the two of them enjoyed life as it was and fought each battle as it came. They didn’t think about tomorrow.
 

Then came the day Norm woke in Dara’s trailer in the middle of nowhere. Literally nowhere. He was alone, without Burny or anyone else. Norm was no quitter, and he didn’t give up. But he had no idea what to do.
     He tried grasping his amulet, a wooden rooster charm full of Jo’s magic. It had protected him against Morgana for four years, and Jo had told him to hold it when he was in trouble. This time, as Norm had half-expected, it was no help at all. He already understood that what was happening was new. I’ll need some other kind of magic to save myself, he thought, and the home of a sorceress should be a good place to find it. He circled the trailer’s living room, determined not to overlook anything.
     Dara’s father, Rico, carved wooden miniatures, including Norm’s and Dara’s rooster amulets. Rico’s workbench was littered with wood shavings, as if he had just stepped away and would be back any moment. A single knife sat on the table. Other tools were neatly stored in a rack against the wall—small knives, planes, files, and saws, along with a lighted magnifier. Bins underneath held supplies—screws, sandpaper, glue, rubber bands, wire, clamps, string. Rico made his own chains, hand-bending every link. He sold his exquisite carvings at fairs and over the internet. Some had magic, arranged by Jo. Those he called good luck charms.
     Norm saw no finished talismans—he would have been happy to try one. Nothing in Rico’s work area seemed likely to help.
     Norm shook his head and turned to Jo’s desk, an ornate antique that would have been at home in Victorian England. Norm hesitated, reluctant to intrude on Jo’s private space, but thinking the matter through, he decided his need to escape back to the real world came first.
     He opened a drawer and picked up a small red leather bag that he knew well from the time he and Burny were searching for Dara. It had held her amulet and kept it from touching his own.
     Empty, the bag was lifeless.
     He saw a dark blue satin purse that had once sent him, Burny, and Dara to Morgana’s forest. Its two compartments were snapped closed. Jo had said one of them was dangerous, but he couldn’t remember which. He sat in Jo’s chair with the pocketbook on the desk in front of him. He picked it up and turned it in his hands. When he held it to his cheek it felt warm.
     He was afraid of it, so he set it aside.
     Jo’s desk had many drawers and compartments. It took Norm some time to look through them. He encountered things he didn’t understand, including a heavy cube of glistening metal and a glass sphere the size of a softball. He picked up a small container, like a pillbox. It sounded empty when Norm shook it, but when he opened it, he became dizzy and confused, until he had the presence of mind to close it.
     He came to a familiar object—a tiny rooster amulet, badly burned. All but the head was mostly gone, and only a few links of the chain remained. It had been Morgana’s for a time, after Jo tricked her into taking it, and it had helped Norm and Burny find Dara. As he held the scorched remains, Norm remembered it all—how Morgana tried to kill him, how Burny almost died saving him. Since that day Morgana hadn’t reappeared.
     Until now.
     Norm wracked his brain. He even considered looking outside again, on the chance that something might have changed, but as he approached the door and heard the howl of Morgana’s devil wind, he changed his mind immediately, coming back to the couch, breathing hard and more determined than ever to find a solution.
     The blue satin purse, he thought. That’s my best chance. But he had heard Jo use the word dangerous only a few times—for Morgana, and the forest demons. And one of those pockets.
     The larger one feels warm, he thought, but that could mean anything. It could hold the magic slippers that will take me home. Or the wicked witch.
     After ten minutes he realized he would have to guess. He squeezed his eyes closed—and opened the small pocket.
 

“Norm?”
     “Burny! Where are you?” Norm was overjoyed. He was still alone, but Burny’s growl was unmistakable.
     “Roderick, please.”
     “Yes—Roderick. Sorry.”
     Burny had wanted Norm to call him Roderick from the beginning. More than a year ago Norm finally agreed, when Burny was badly hurt saving Norm’s life. Even so, Norm still thought of him as Burny. He sometimes made mistakes, which Burny always corrected.
     “I’m in the trailer with Dara and her parents,” Burny growled, “and your mother. The question is, where are you?”
     “I’m in the trailer too. But it’s deserted and in some eerie place. Outside is nothing but a strange grey fog. When I opened the door, I had to hang on to avoid being pulled out.”
     “Norm, you know Morgana’s behind this.”
     Norm laughed. “Roderick, I’m so happy to be talking to you that I shouldn’t say how predictable you are.”
     “I wish you were. I’ve been at my wits’ end. Your parents have been ready to call the police for two days, but Dara’s mother said that wouldn’t help, that they had to be patient. That worked for them, but nothing has for me. I hear some dogs go crazy when they’re separated from their people. What took you so long?”
     “Two days? I only woke up a couple of hours ago.”
     “You’ve lost track of time. You went missing Sunday morning. It’s Tuesday.”
     “No wonder I’m hungry.”
     “Norm, wait a minute—everybody is telling me what to say. Dara’s mother says you might be stuck there awhile, but you’ll be okay as long as you don’t leave the trailer. Your mom says she loves you.” Norm heard a mumble of other voices, then Burny again. “Dara says you’d better come back safe and sound, or she’ll kill you.”
     Norm had to smile, because he could hear that his dog was impatient. Burny saw his role as protector, not messenger. Norm could imagine him sitting up, looking both devoted and annoyed.
     “Don’t get me wrong,” Burny went on. “I’m glad you’re found. It’s been awful. I didn’t feel like doing anything at all. So instead I thought about everything that has happened to us, and I have one question—why me? Other dogs lead peaceful, happy lives, and ancient beings never try to kill them.”
     “Why you? Because you talked to me in a dream.” That happened the night before Norm’s ninth birthday, and next thing you know he was bringing Burny home from the animal shelter.
     “That makes it seem like my fate. I would never have been happy with any other boy, but life would have been easier.”
     Burny’s voice was drowned out more and more by background noises—a jumble of voices, like the sound of a crowd, not steady, but fading in and out.        Then a final explosive burst of static, and silence.
     In the last half-second, what had Jo said? Sombrero? What could that mean?
 

Norm’s confidence had soared when he learned that Dara and the others knew what was happening, but now he felt more alone than ever. And he hadn’t eaten for two whole days! He was too eager to escape his strange situation to think about food, even now that he realized how hungry he was.
     It had been hours since he woke, but the light level never changed. Was this an endless afternoon? Or was he in some other-worldly place that had no time at all?
     Remembering Jo’s voice, Norm decided to look for a sombrero. Rico liked hats, and the shelf above his work table held several—a fanciful Dr. Seuss hat, a fedora, a tweed cap, a bike helmet, and a wool watch cap, the only one Norm could imagine Rico wearing. There was nothing even remotely like a sombrero.
     Norm was reluctant to start looking through closets, and after he made a complete circuit of the living room he sat on the couch to think, discouraged and hungry.
     On the opposite wall was a framed painting Norm knew well. Made by a Nez Perce artist, it showed him with Burny and Adara, Dara’s counterpart in the Gypsy world. A Native American man was handing her an arrow. That all happened when Norm was twelve. In a later magical misadventure, when Norm was freezing in the mountains in wintertime, the same man brought him food and warm clothes—and the painting.
     If only it had shown a sombrero.
     The Indians had given Adara the arrow because she and Norm helped them. She turned it end over end and handed it back. They liked that. Norm never understood what it meant, or how Adara knew to do it.