"I guess that's the way with wizards," said Barnaby. "They let the witches do the work and then take the credit. It's the same way in stories."
"Why, yes," said Fredericka. "Even the Wizard of Oz was a humbug. Remember?"
Then she broke off. She had had an exciting thought. And the more she thought of the thought, the more exciting it was. "You know what?" she said. "This could be Oz, back in prehistory times. Before the books tell about it. Nobody knows what it looked like, then. Mr. Oswaldo could even be the real Wizard of Oz. This could be how he got there in the first place. And we're in it from the beginning!"
"But in the book the real Wizard tells Dorothy he came in a balloon," objected Abbie.
"Yes," Fredericka admitted, "but in the book the real Wizard doesn't always tell the truth. Think back."
Everybody thought back.
Fredericka went up to the nearest cheering peasant and tapped him on the shoulder. "Please," she said, "what country is this?"
"We be called Dragonland," said the peasant, "up till now, but now all that be changed. Have to think up something new. Oswaldoland, maybe."
"You see?" said Fredericka to the others. "It all works out. The name could have got shortened in the mists of time. Anyway, I'll always think it was Oz. I'll feel part of it from now on."
"Or if it isn't," said Abbie, "it's someplace else just as interesting!"
And all agreed.
"And now," said Barnaby, "I guess it's time to go."
"How do we do that?" said John.
"I'm not sure," said Barnaby. He went up to Mrs. Funkhouser and the round gentleman, and the other four followed. "Are you really going to stay and rule the country?" he asked.
"I must do as my public demands," said the round gentleman. "They want me. Listen to them cheering."
"I suppose I'll have to stay, too," said Mrs. Funkhouser. "Somebody'll have to see that you're picked up and kept out of trouble!"
"They've offered us a lovely palace," confided the Wizard (if it was truly he). "The one the princesses used to live in that the dragon ate."
"Thirty rooms!" said Mrs. Funkhouser grimly. "Think of the dusting!"
"Come, come, dear lady," said the round gentleman (who might be the Wizard) in rather a lordly way. "The maids of honor will attend to that."
"I," said Mrs. Funkhouser, "have never trusted a maid yet and never will!"
"Could we have our book now?" said Susan. "We'll be taking it home with us. Are you sure you'll be all right here without it?"
"Just let me take one more quick glance," said the round gentleman. He studied the first three or four pages briefly."There! That'll give me enough new tricks to stay in business for years!"
Susan offered Mrs. Funkhouser a look at the book, but she waved it away.
"I won't be needing it. Just use my common sense. All a matter of good housekeeping."
"What method of travel were you planning to use?" the round gentleman asked the five children.
"That's just it," said Susan. "We're not quite sure."
"Vanishing cream," said Mrs. Funkhouser promptly, without so much as a glance in the book's direction. "There's some in my top bureau drawer." And Fredericka ran to fetch it.
"Shall we let her?" whispered Abbie. "What if we just vanish? And don't turn up anywhere?"
"Trust the book," counseled Barnaby. "It's done pretty well so far."
And then Fredericka returned with the jar of vanishing cream, and Mrs. Funkhouser rubbed a little on the foreheads of each.
But Susan clasped the book tight and wished, too, just in case.
You may wonder what vanishing feels like. The answer is that it feels like nothing at all. One second the five children were standing in a magic country (that might or might not be Oz), watching a wizard (who might or might not be the Wizard) give a demonstration of One Hundred Easy Card Tricks, while a crowd of peasants cheered.
The next second they found themselves sitting on the front steps of Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka's little white house in Connecticut.
"Back from the library already?" said Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka's mother, coming out the door on her way to try to sell someone a split-level colonial ranch house. "You were quick."
"I don't feel quick," said Abbie, when her mother had driven off. "I feel as if I'd been away for years. Do you suppose that place really was Oz?"
"If it was," said Fredericka, "I'm disappointed. I'd have thought we'd meet famous people, Dorothy and the Scarecrow and all those."
Barnaby shook his head. "I don't think that's how it works. I think it's more like this. Everybody has to go to Oz—or any other magic country—in his own way. The adventures that are written down in books have already been. If we tried to horn in on them, we'd be just tagging along. So we have to make our own adventures. It's as if there were different doors."
"That's what the dragon said," said Fredericka dreamily.
"It did?" said Barnaby, interested. "What else did it say?"
"I forget," said Fredericka. "But it was interesting at the time. That dragon had a nice side, in a way. I'm kind of sorry it's gone."
"Maybe it isn't," said John. "Maybe its better self will merge with the kitten."
"Or maybe its worse self will," said Abbie. "Maybe the kitten will grow up with man-eating tendencies. They'll have to watch over it and curb it and mold its infant mind."
"Only we'll never know whether they did or not, or what happened." Susan sighed.
There was a silence.
"Anyway, we're started now," said Barnaby. "It's your turn tomorrow."
Susan shook her head. "Tomorrow's Sunday."
"What of it?" said Fredericka. "It's summer. There's no Sunday school."
"Even so," said Susan. "Magic's not a Sunday thing. Not that it's sinful or anything, I don't mean. But they just wouldn't mix."
"How'll we get through a whole day?" said Abbie. "The thought might be father to the wish."
"Better shut the book up somewhere safe," said Barnaby.
"I'm going to," said Susan.
"Without reading the chapter, now it's finished?" Fredericka wanted to know.
"Dwell in the dead past if you want to," Barnaby told her. "I know what it says."
"I'd kind of like to look," said John. And he took the book from Susan and began to read.
"It's got illustrations," reported Fredericka, hanging over his shoulder. "Is that what I look like? That isn't what I look like!"
And then the Good Humor man came driving along the road, ringing his bell, and everyone ran to catch up with him, and magic was forgotten in the cooling joy of sheer sherbet.
But first Susan ran across the street to her own house and put the book away carefully in her top bureau drawer.
And later that day, just before supper, without saying anything to the others, she took a walk along lower Weed Street.
As she rounded the familiar bend, she wondered whether she would see a mere hole in the ground where Mrs. Funkhouser's house had been. But to her surprise the house was still there, the same as always. The sign by the driveway was still there, too.
But when Susan came nearer, she saw that the sign didn't say, "Slow. Cats, et cetera" anymore.
The sign said, "For Sale."
And when she went up close to the house and peered through its windows, she saw that every stick of furniture inside was gone.
It was nice to know that whatever the name of the magic kingdom where Mrs. Funkhouser now reigned, she apparently had her salt and her ammonia and other useful supplies for a respectable witch with her. She had prob'ly moved her possessions to the palace, thought Susan, and then prob'ly she hadn't wanted the house there to remind her of her humble origins; so she had prob'ly rubbed vanishing cream on it, too.
And maybe some of the magic from the book had got into the vanishing cream so that it still worked. Or maybe Mrs. Funkhouser (unlike the late dragon) had started believing in her own power so much that she was beginning to be a r
eal witch now, though Susan was sure she would always be a respectable one.
While she was thinking these thoughts, a woman had come out on the porch next door and was regarding her curiously.
"If you're looking for Mrs. Funkhouser and Mr. Oswaldo," said the woman, "they've moved. All of a sudden, as ever was. And they do say," she went on, "that he's gone back into vaudeville."
Susan thought of the round gentleman as she had last seen him and of Mrs. Funkhouser and her housewifely witchcraft.
"Yes," she said slowly. "Yes, I guess you might say they both have. In a way."
And she started walking home.
3. Taming It
"This time no magic kingdoms," said Susan, "and no dragons." And the others (all but Fredericka, who, having survived one dragon, was ready to tackle another) agreed.
It was the second day after the five children had found the book, and they were assembled on John and Susan's front porch.
Sunday had been a day of rest, by Susan's decree.
At first Fredericka had fretted and Abbie had sighed and even Barnaby had wanted to make plans. But Susan had been unusually strong-minded and had put a stop to it.
"If we start all that, we'll be tempted and we might give way," she said. "Let's not even think about the magic."
This didn't seem possible, but later it turned out that it was. Books were read and games were played and walks taken, and a few good deeds were even done, to be on the safe side, though nothing good enough or interesting enough to tell about. And the hours passed.
And now at last it was Monday, and here the five children were with the dishes and other chores out of the way and Grannie established at the parlor table just inside the front window with a particularly hard jigsaw puzzle that should keep her out of harm's way for half an hour, at least.
And the time was ripe, and it was Susan's turn.
"No dragons," she repeated, "and no witches. I like it better in the Nesbit stories and those other ones where the magic's more sort of tame."
"Tame is blah," said Fredericka.
"Maybe tame isn't what I mean," said Susan, "but where at first everything starts out real and sort of daily. Then when the magic comes it's more..." She paused, seeking a word.
"Of a contrast," supplied Barnaby.
There was a silence.
"Aren't you going to ask anything more?" said John.
"I don't want to know any more," said Susan. "I want us just to go about our business and wait for whatever happens."
"There are entirely too many blue pieces in this puzzle," said Grannie from inside the window. "They can't all be sky or if they are, it's monotonous."
John and Susan went inside and got her started on another corner where some of the blue sky might be somebody's dress. With that settled, the five children left the porch and walked along the road to town as if it were any ordinary Monday.
They passed Mrs. Funkhouser's empty house and discussed where its former occupants were now, and Fredericka wished she had Ozma's magic picture so she might see what they were doing at this moment.
But she did not have the book in her hands; so the picture did not appear.
On Main Street the five children compared finances. Susan had sixteen cents and Abbie had eleven. John had a dollar he'd earned cutting lawns, and Barnaby had fifty cents he'd made selling magazine subscriptions (he had sold one so far). But this money was to be saved toward their college educations.
Still, twenty-seven cents divided by five gave everyone a nickel each with two cents over toward tomorrow. So the candy store was the next stop.
But nothing magic happened there, either (save for the magic that lies in Turkish Taffy and Chocolate Almond-Butterscotch Delight).
It was when they came out of the store and turned the corner that Susan noticed the strangeness first.
"The street's different," she said. "Look."
The others looked.
Instead of short, friendly Cherry Street, with its white houses and big trees, blocks of drab apartment houses stretched far into the distance ahead.
"It's like a city," said John.
"We're somewhere else. It's the magic. It's beginning," said Susan, shivering delightedly. "I like it like this when it sneaks up on you!"
"Where do you suppose we are?" said Fredericka.
"I saw a sign last week that said, 'Watch Our Town Grow,'" said Abbie. "Do you suppose it did? Do you suppose this is the future?"
A high, gawky-looking windowless car drove past, honking a horn that said "Ah-oo-ga."
John shook his head. "It's the other way round. That's a 1924 Hupmobile," for he was one who knew about such things. "I don't know where we are, but it's in olden times. We're in the past somewhere."
"It's familiar. I've seen this street before. In a book, I think," said Susan. "Only what one?" Then she stopped short and clutched whoever was handy, pointing up ahead.
On the nearest corner stood a little girl. She was rather a poor-looking little girl, but neat. She wore an old-fashioned apron over her dress, and her dark hair hung straightly down her back in a ponytail. She was looking at something in her hand, something that gave a metallic glint. On the sidewalk nearby sat a fat baby with its thumb in its mouth.
"I knew it was a book!" whispered Susan excitedly. "It's the girl in the Half Magic picture! It's the little girl in the last chapter who finds the charm after Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha pass it on!"
"I always wanted to know what happened next!" said Abbie.
"In Oz we got there before the beginning," marveled Fredericka. "This time we're coming in after the end!"
"Shush," said Susan. "Be careful. Don't scare her."
But Fredericka was pushing forward. "Hello," she said. "Do you know what you just found? You just found a magic charm!"
The little girl looked up with a smile. "Hello," she said. "I thought it might be that."
"Well, it is," said Fredericka.
"Only it works by halves," said Barnaby.
The little girl shook her head. "It doesn't work at all. I wished I could go into future times and meet some children there, but I'm still right where I started."
"But we come from future times!" said Abbie.
"You do? Did my wish bring you?" said the little girl.
"I'm not sure," said Barnaby, scratching his head in a puzzled way. The problem of whose wish had brought whom where was too much even for his giant brain.
"You see, we've got a magic of our own," explained Susan, "and we wished at the same time."
"How interesting," said the little girl. "Maybe we sort of met in the middle."
"Anyway, we're here," said Fredericka, "and that's the better half of any wish."
"Tell me about what it's like," said the little girl. "The future, I mean. Are there no more wars or poor people? Is everything perfect?"
The five children looked at each other.
"Not quite," said Barnaby. "Not just yet. But we're working on it."
"Could I go there and see?" said the little girl. "May I come and call on you?"
"I'm not sure," said Barnaby again.
"Of course we'd be glad to have you, any time," said Susan quickly.
"It's just that in the book Merlin fixed the charm
so it only worked in the present time," said Barnaby.
"Still, that was when the other children had it," said Susan. "Maybe with a new person it'd start all over fresh."
"Who's Merlin?" said the little girl. "What other children?"
"It's a long story," said Barnaby. And he proceeded to tell it to her.
If you have read the book called Half Magic, you will know the story Barnaby told. If not, suffice it to say that the charm was an old, ancient talisman that was found lying on the sidewalk by four children in the year 1924 in a town called Toledo, Ohio. And it thwarted them and had its way with them until they learned its ways and tamed it and had their way with it, traveling through time and space to the court of Ki
ng Arthur and other interesting places. And in the end six lives were changed. After that the four children left the charm lying on the sidewalk again for someone else to find.
"And you came along and found it," finished Barnaby.
"And we came along and found you," said Ab- bie.
"Oh," said the little girl. She thought for a minute. "How does it work?"
"That's where the catch comes in," said Fredericka.
"It's a wishing charm," said Susan, "only it cuts wishes in two and only grants half of them."
"Like if you wished you were in the middle of London Bridge," said Barnaby, "you might end up just in London somewhere, or you might end up on some other bridge anywhere."
"Or the bridge of a ship," said John.
"Or in some dumb old bridge game," said Fredericka.
"Or," finished Barnaby, "you might end up in the middle of the ocean, halfway there. So if you want something, you have to wish for twice whatever it is."
"Or twice as much," said Susan.
"Or twice as far," said Abbie.
"Oh," said the little girl again. There was a pause, as all this sank in.
"Do you want any help?" was the eager offer of Fredericka. "Shall I wish for you?"
The little girl looked at her. "No, thank you," she said. "I think I can do it. I've had the two times table." She held the charm before her and addressed it firmly. "I want to go into the future," she said, "twice as far as to the time and place these children come from, and I want them to come there with me. Twice," she added.
"That's very good," said Fredericka kindly.
But Susan held their own magic book tight in her hands and wished, too.
The next moment the five children and the little girl were sitting on John and Susan's front porch. I hope it is not necessary to remind you of a seventh person who had been left behind.
"Is this the future?" said the little girl, looking around at white houses, green trees, grass, and a picket fence. "It doesn't seem any different."
"That's cause we're in the country," said Barnaby. "Nature stays pretty much the same. There've been lots of improvements in the world, though. Well, changes anyway."