M Is for Magic Read Online Free PDF

them.
    â€œHello?” I said quietly, feeling embarrassed, feeling foolish. “Hello?”
    There was no answer. The wind rustled the crisp packets and the leaves.
    â€œI came back. I said I would. And I did. Hello?”
    Silence.
    I began to cry then, stupidly, silently, sobbing under the bridge.
    A hand touched my face, and I looked up.
    â€œI didn’t think you’d come back,” said the troll.
    He was my height now, but otherwise unchanged. His long gonk hair was unkempt and had leaves in it, and his eyes were wide and lonely.
    I shrugged, then wiped my face with the sleeve of my coat. “I came back.”
    Three kids passed above us on the bridge, shouting and running.
    â€œI’m a troll,” whispered the troll in a small, scared voice. “Fol rol de ol rol.”
    He was trembling.
    I held out my hand and took his huge clawed paw in mine. I smiled at him. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Honestly. It’s okay.”
    The troll nodded.
    He pushed me to the ground, onto the leaves and the wrappers, and lowered himself on top of me. Then he raised his head, and opened his mouth, and ate my life with his strong sharp teeth.
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    When he was finished, the troll stood up and brushed himself down. He put his hand into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a bubbly, burnt lump of clinker rock.
    He held it out to me.
    â€œThis is yours,” said the troll.
    I looked at him: wearing my life comfortably, easily, as if he’d been wearing it for years. I took the clinker from his hand, and sniffed it. I could smell the train from which it had fallen, so long ago. I gripped it tightly in my hairy hand.
    â€œThank you,” I said.
    â€œGood luck,” said the troll.
    â€œYeah. Well. You too.”
    The troll grinned with my face.
    It turned its back on me and began to walk back the way I had come, toward the village, back to the empty house I had left that morning; and it whistled as it walked.
    I’ve been here ever since. Hiding. Waiting. Part of the bridge.
    I watch from the shadows as the people pass: walking their dogs, or talking, or doing the things that people do. Sometimes people pause beneath my bridge, to stand, or piss, or make love. And I watch them, but say nothing; and they never see me.
    Fol rol de ol rol.
    I’m just going to stay here, in the darkness under the arch. I can hear you all out there, trip-trapping, trip-trapping over my bridge.
    Oh yes, I can hear you.
    Â 
    But I’m not coming out.

Don’t Ask Jack
    N OBODY KNEW WHERE THE toy had come from, which great-grandparent or distant aunt had owned it before it was given to the nursery.
    It was a box, carved and painted in gold and red. It was undoubtedly attractive and, or so the grownups maintained, quite valuable—perhaps even an antique. The latch, unfortunately, was rusted shut, and the key had been lost, so the Jack could not be released from his box. Still, it was a remarkable box, heavy and carved and gilt.
    The children did not play with it. It sat at the bottom of the huge old wooden toy box, which was the same size and age as a pirate’s treasure chest, or so the children thought. The Jack-in-the-Box was buried beneath dolls and trains, clowns and paper stars and old conjuring tricks, and crippled marionettes with their strings irrevocably tangled, withdressing-up clothes (here the tatters of a long-ago wedding dress, there a black silk hat crusted with age and time) and costume jewelry, broken hoops and tops and hobbyhorses. Under them all was Jack’s box.
    The children did not play with it. They whispered among themselves, alone in the attic nursery. On gray days when the wind howled about the house and rain rattled the slates and pattered down the eaves they told each other stories about Jack, although they had never seen him. One claimed that Jack was an evil wizard, placed in the box as punishment for crimes too awful to describe; another (I am