The Magic Cottage Read Online Free PDF

accurate to say de focused) back to normality, everything losing that peculiar linear depth. Midge had both hands around my face and was studying me with that same warm concern of a moment ago.
    ‘Are you okay?’ she asked, her hands soft against my cheeks.
    ‘Uh, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I’m fine.’ And I was, for the mood, the unexpected shift in perception, had vanished, leaving hardly any after-effects other than the memory. ‘Felt faint for a minute there; must have been the change in altitude,’ I joked.
    ‘You sure you’re all right?’
    ‘Yeah, I promise, I’m okay.’
    I looked around, seeing the room itself now, not the landscape outside. ‘This is something else,’ I remarked after a low, appreciative whistle.
    ‘Isn’t it beautiful, Mike?’ Midge’s smile threatened to split her face in two, so broad and beaming was it. She skipped away from me and did a quick tour (circular, of course), ending up at a quaint fireplace with a rough brick surround. She leaned an elbow on the narrow mantelpiece and grinned at me, her eyes sparkling with merriment.
    ‘Puts a different complexion on things, doesn’t it?’ she said.
    It did. It certainly did. There was a glow to this room that I realised was due to the sun’s unhindered rays reflecting off the round walls; yet contained therein was something more, a liveliness, a vitality, something intangible but nevertheless very real. You have to be open to it, though , a tiny voice at the back of my mind whispered. You have to want to feel it. Cynic at times I may be, but I had finer feelings too and the atmosphere of the room itself (coupled, I’m sure, with Midge’s enthusiasm) was somehow unleashing these feelings. God, yes, I did want to feel it, I did want this place. Despite that, the other side of me asked whether it would be the same in winter when the rain clouds hid the sun. Would this energy inside be lost? Would the magic – there, the word had sprung into my mind for the first time, although I hadn’t realized its significance – be gone? But at the moment, I didn’t care. The present, and the yearning so suddenly induced, was all that mattered.
    I walked over to Midge and held her so tight she gasped. ‘Y’know, it’s beginning to work on me,’ I told her without really comprehending.
    The rest of the cottage was somewhat of an anticlimax. We found a long jagged crack that ran from floor to ceiling in the more conventional room next-door, and mould on the walls in the one next-door to that. The tiny bathroom was at best functional, with dark stains discolouring the bath itself. The staircase led up to what were no more than attic rooms, oddly shaped because they were built into the roof, with small windows providing inadequate daylight. The ceilings were squared off, though, and a trapdoor led into the loft area. I’d have needed a chair or a stepladder to climb up and take a look, so I didn’t bother, but I imagined there were quite a few gaps open to the skies judging by the amount of tiles lying scattered on the ground outside. We poked around on levels two and three, finding rotting windowframes, warped cupboard doors that wouldn’t close, more damp and more cracks in the walls, though the latter were less serious than the floor-to-ceiling one. Even the stairs protested against our weight and one board bent so badly I quickly hopped off, fearing it would collapse. Naturally, there was a fine layer of dust everywhere.
    I don’t know why, but we deliberately avoided entering the round room again – possibly we subconsciously felt its effect was too much to take twice in one day, or maybe we just wanted to remain more objective after having inspected the rest of the cottage. I had no trouble in turning the key when I locked the front door behind us, and we walked back down the path more slowly than we had walked up it.
    Beyond the gate, Midge and I turned and leaned against the bonnet of the Passat, my arm around her shoulders, both