Alchemy. Margaret Mahy

paint that it seems almost featureless. It is easy to believe there is no face at all under all that blank whiteness. Roland finds he is imagining that this man might be young and handsome, perhaps because of his eyes which cannot be painted out. There they are – ginger-brown in colour – sharp and lively, dancing within the still mask. Two helpers advance, shaking out a banner and holding it high in the air.

       The magician turns to face his audience. His eyes slide over Roland, then shift to his father. And here they pause. The magicians’s gaze sweeps around the attentive circle. “I am Quando the Magician,” he cries, his mouth a black gap in his face. Then his gaze comes back to Roland’s father and hesitates before focusing on Roland once more. And from then on it seems as if everything that is said is directed at Roland alone. “I work enchantments,” Quando is telling him, “but never forget, it is also my job to trick you. And it is your job to work out just where the trick leaves off and the true magic begins.”

       Someone carries a small table set with cards and boxes and brightly-coloured scarves on to the lawn beside him. The show begins.

      “Where did it go? Where did it come from? How did he do that?” Roland cries. “Magic? Is it magic?”

      “Trickery,” his father replies, grinning as he speaks. “It’s trickery. Fun, though! Fabuloso!” “Fabuloso” was something he often said when he was taken by surprise. “That’s enough! Let’s move on. How about an ice cream?” Roland is enjoying the show but he likes the idea of an ice cream even more. The trick they are watching ends triumphantly. Hand in hand, they go on their way.

       “You!” Quando cries. He is pointing at them commandingly. “One moment, sir! Yes, you, sir! You’re longing for adventure! Don’t deny it! I know you are.”

      “Me?” Roland’s father replies, startled at being singled out in this way. “No, I’m all for a quiet life!” Magician and man stare at each other. Then, once again, Quando’s gaze drops to Roland.

      “Well, what about your little boy, sir? He looks adventurous? Let’s ask him?” And he sinks on to his haunches in front of Roland. “You’d like an adventure, wouldn’t you?” he asks playfully.

       Roland understands that the magician is not playing. Nor does he fancy an adventure without knowing, beforehand, more or less what sort of an adventure it is going to be. But he does like the thought of being part of a magical trick. Besides, he is always anxious to impress his father with his cleverness and courage. He grins and nods his head.

      At first, his father seems to be holding him back. Roland can feel the fingers around his own fingers tightening… tightening until the grip is actually painful. But then they relax, and, laughing a little, his father pushes him forward. (He is being betrayed!)

      “All right, go on then!” he says. “Rites of passage!”

      Quando is opening the lid of the long box. “You’re not scared, are you? No! Not a brave boy like you!” He asks a question then answers it before Roland can reply himself. Brave! Yes, I’ll be brave! Who said that? Not Quando, because Quando is still talking. “You’re going to amaze everyone. Won’t that be fun?”

      Roland glances at his father who is nodding and smiling on the edge of the crowd. Then Quando helps him climb a short blue stepladder, lifts him and settles him in the box (the coffin). It is padded inside and quite cosy. (How can a coffin be cosy? And how do I know it’s a coffin? Does any kid of four or so recognise a coffin when he sees one?)

       Quando adjusts the box on its trolley, tilting it so that Roland can look at the crowd, and the crowd can look at Roland. Then the lid (its inner surface black… black… black) closes over him. Outside in the sunny fairground, someone – Quando! It must be Quando – knocks three times on the closed lid. The sound rings in the embracing darkness, twisting through the tunnels of Roland’s ears and spiralling into the very centre of his head. The wooden walls around him vanish. He has lost himself.

       Suddenly, he is suspended in a space which falls away beneath him and yet somehow embraces him too. Roland blinks. Those distant grains of light are really suns. He blinks again, and silence shivers through him. It is all around him, yet he feels it deep inside his head like a song he has not yet sung aloud. He has still to find the best words for it. There is no feeling of rising or falling. In this endless space Roland feels he is both a grain of dust and a great flaring sun. He has found himself.

      The lid of the long box opens. Sunlight bursts in on him, making him blink, while the people out there peer at him, smiling, clapping and exclaiming. Quando bows, then gestures at Roland as if he himself had just invented the boy. Smiling, he helps him to sit up again. Roland is, for some reason, anxious to stand up on his own, but Quando catches his shoulders in an unexpectedly hard grip, and holds him still, looking sharply into his eyes. Their faces are only centimetres apart.

      “Where were you?” Quando asks in a low voice. “You disappeared. Where did you go? What did you see?”

       But then a new voice cuts in. That voice, heard for the first time, seems to come from deep inside Roland’s own head, warning him, and giving him urgent instructions.

       “Shhhh!” it says, like a small wave breaking on an endless shore. “Shhh! Say nothing! Don’t let on!”

       And now something else floods through Roland – mischief perhaps, or his own sort of secret greed. Those moments spent hanging in space, with no beginning and no ending, are going to be his alone.

       “It was dark,” he says, looking innocently into Quando’s ginger-coloured eyes. “I was shut in, but I wasn’t frightened.”

       Quando blinks, but his expression does not change. All the same, he expresses something very like relief as he straightens, laughs, then turns towards Roland’s father who is waiting a step or two behind them.

      “So! Well! Thank you for trusting me with your little treasure, sir,” he cries. “Of course, he does have the gift, doesn’t he? Not many people would recognise it.” And Roland feels, just as surely if he were looking up at them, their glances lock somewhere above his head.

       “A gift?” his father repeats. He laughs awkwardly. “We can always be grateful for a gift, can’t we?” Quando laughs too.

       “Some day he may be as talented as I am,” says Quando. And he gives Roland a little parcel wrapped in silver paper, so that Roland knows he really does have a gift.

       Then Roland’s father picks up his son and carries him off through the fair.

       “What happened to you in that box?” he asks. “Quando took the box to pieces in front of us, but you weren’t there.”

       “I was turned into a star,” Roland boasts.

      “You were a star, all right,” his father replies heartily, but Roland has the odd feeling that his father is talking about something different. They sit down under an oak tree and Roland opens the silver parcel which holds six coloured felt pens, a little colouring book and a bar of chocolate. And it is now – now, when everything is over, after he has negotiated the coffin and listened to that inner voice speaking from deep inside his own head – it is now that fear strikes at him… He is being changed! He is being told something that he doesn’t want to hear. And he can’t block his ears because it is being said from deep inside him… said… said… said. An endless word going on and on. Roland has to break it down into short, repeated exclamations in order to understand! Yes! it is saying… Yes! Over and over again. Then, Up! Up! Up! And, almost immediately, that other inner voice speaks out once more, warning him, just as it had warned him earlier about talking too freely to Quando. Whoa! Careful! it says. Take no notice! It’s nothing. It’s nothing! It’s nothing! Three times, like