A Hidden Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

become a real person to me. Then, whenever I hear that name, I'll think of you, remember the afternoon we shared tea, and wonder what ever happened to you. I don't want to get involved. I'm no good with people. I don't get to see a lot of them, here in the forest, and I like it that way. So, whatever your problems are, they're your problems. I don't want to know your name and I don't want to know you. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
    "Yes."
    "Good."
    "It's Jennifer."
    The sorcerer glared at her.
    Jennifer smiled. It was the smile she usually saved for her father when he was angry. It was slow and unsure and eventually turned into a sad little frown with downcast eyes.
    This last part, however, made it hard for Jennifer to tell what kind of reaction it was getting.
    She could hear the sorcerer stand up. When she finally looked at him, his face had not softened; but he stood by the open door waiting for her.
    He sighed as she came in. "Mine's Norman," he said.

Norman
    THE COTTAGE WAS BRIGHT and cheery but so cluttered that moving about was difficult.
    The young sorcerer gathered a pile of books and papers off the table and put them on a nearby chair. Then, realizing that he had now filled the only available chair in the house, he picked them back up and looked around helplessly before adding them to an already tilting stack of boxes on the floor.
    Jennifer sat on the edge of her seat to keep from leaning on the unfolded laundry draped over the back.
    He removed a potted geranium from the top of a little three-legged stool and, still holding the plant, pulled the stool closer to Jennifer.
    "Now, Jennifer," he said, "tell me again."
    She had already explained everything once, while he had been preparing the tea. Now she began again.
    "With the mirror," he interrupted. "You're leaving something out there."
    "What?"
    He gave her a disappointed look. "If I knew that, would I need you to tell me?" He kept changing all the while they were talking—short to tall to old to young. At the moment he was about her father's age and had given himself less kinky hair.
    Jennifer wasn't sure if it would be polite to comment on all this, but she found it most distracting.
    Norman was still talking. "You see, there has to be a way to break the spell; and by the rules of magic, the mirror had to tell you
how." He held up a hand to forestall her objection. "It might not have told you clearly, but it did tell you."
    Jennifer thought that over for a while. "Oh, like a riddle." He nodded, and Jennifer watched, fascinated, while he made a strange motion, chewing on air, with his hand close to but not touching his mouth. Seeing her expression, he suddenly remembered that he didn't currently have a beard and tapped his teeth instead.
    "Let's go over everything you can remember the mirror saying," Norman suggested.
    They did, several times. But again and again they found themselves facing two ideas that seemed most likely to hold the key, but that they couldn't decipher.
    The first was when the mirror had said, "Lesson One: Don't disbelieve something just because you can't see it." ("A valid point," Norman admitted, "though it's too bad the mirror felt obliged to prove it.")

    Lesson Two was bothersome to the young sorcerer: "If the answer isn't in you, it isn't."
    "Well," Norman reasoned, "if it's in
you,
then it can't very well be in
me
"
    That sounded distressingly like he was still trying to get out of helping her, so Jennifer quickly asked, "Are you going to tell me about Malveenya?"
    "I've never actually met her, but from what I hear she's extremely powerful and has a temper that would make that mirror of hers seem gentle as a month-old bunny."
    "Oh," the girl said.
    "I gather she likes to use pain and fear on helpless creatures—not necessarily to get her own way, but just because she likes to."
    Jennifer gulped and decided she didn't really want to know any more about Malveenya. "Is there anything we can do about Alexander?" she asked