Merlin Slept Here, Page 3

Chapter 3: Investigating Your Inn’s History

  When, weening to returne whence they did stray,

  They cannot finde that path, which first was showne,

  But wander too and fro in waies unknowne,

  Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene,

  That makes them doubt, their wits be not their owne.

  -Edmund Spenser

  No guest came to the inn on the Wednesday evening of Bob’s discovery in the basement. He spent a lot of time on the phone with Julie and agreed with her that he really ought to meet her family if he were not so tied down with the inn. She invited him to go with her and her parents to dirt track racing on Friday night, for her little brother would be driving one of the quarter-midget race cars. He could say only that he wished he could and that he lamented the non-reservation system of Wizards’ Inns. They agreed that the inn adventure would be over soon anyway. The Bernards would claim the property, make Bob leave, and shut the place up. What Herr Stringer would then do for his wizards was anyone’s guess.

  The following day, Thursday, after returning from a Quali-Mart shift and eating supper, he mowed the lawn, showered, and as was becoming usual, settled on the front porch to watch the Ghastly Path and hope that a guest would appear on it. The summer evening was very long. At dusk he still had seen nothing more interesting than emerging fireflies. He got up, locked the house, and took a walk down the path, more for the exercise than with any expectation of meeting someone, for all his guests on previous evenings had arrived by this time.

  Slowly he entered the little, hummocky wood beyond the path and, just to be doing it, wandered around. The path had retained a reasonable amount of light, the wood very little. It was so very dark that it was a relief to look up through the thick branches at bits of dimly glowing sky. Frank the Indian had told him that the other portal, the one Magi arrived by, was out here somewhere and, if properly called upon at night, would show up with a faint glow. But without the magic words, he would not see it.

  He heard a car on the road, then heard it slow down and stop. A car door slammed. This could only be someone visiting him. Maybe Julie had tried to call just as he started walking, had gotten no answer, and had driven over more quickly than usual? But there had hardly been time enough for that, and anyway she was not the sort to just show up without discussing it with him first.

  While thinking these things, he fumbled to find his way back to the Ghastly Path. Not finding it readily, he adjusted his angle and tried again. This, he decided, was taking too long: he must have been going the wrong direction. He was suddenly amused to find himself lost, or at any rate unsure of which way he was facing. He had known this would happen sometime, for the little wood was close and featureless. But it was only a few acres. By walking in a straight line, he would soon come either to an open field, his Aunt and Uncle’s orchard, the road, or his own yard. The difficulty, he laughed to discover, was holding to a straight line. Everything was so up and down, entangled in bittersweet, and blocked by thorny bushes and low branches, that he was hardly surprised that he was not soon finding a way out.

  After some minutes, it ceased to be funny. Everything that could be seen, which was not much, looked alike wherever he went. While moving around and peering ahead, he began to have a suspicion. He remembered that, just after Peterbridge had conjured the living room door, the Englishman had said something enigmatic about having done something to the wood too. What had he done?

  “Made it into a trap for the innkeeper,” Bob muttered to himself, finally standing still. “But if I can open the living room door, why can’t I walk out of here?”

  He began to be excited about the romance of being caught in a spell. It would surely end when the sun rose if not before, and in the meantime, what a rush! Just like being in a fantasy story. Happy again, he stopped trying to leave the wood and merely moved slowly through it, experiencing its lonely, enchanted atmosphere. Who knew what more might happen? He was prepared, or rather joyously unprepared, for ghost, elf, or unicorn. Preferably no monster, or at least no big one.

  After an unguessable number of minutes, he was scared nearly witless when something apparently huge tore at the branches close beside him and, moving away, smashed through the underbrush. He felt ready to die of fright until he realized what it was. Its gobble told him that he had disturbed a roosting wild turkey. That was cool. Not magic but very cool.

  Everything was quiet again for a long time, except that once or twice he thought he heard someone calling his name. That could be magic or just the person who had driven in to see him. He had not yet heard the car leave. Then he heard the very faint sound of distant fireworks and was reminded that July fourth was not far off.

  When he was beginning to consider looking for a place to lie down and get some sleep, he heard more moving-through-the-woods noise—something big enough to be a deer or a person (or a reasonably sized monster). He waited where he was and it came nearer.

  “I beg your pardon for being in your wood. Is it all right?”

  This was the voice of an older man and sounded so polite and ordinary that Bob was almost disappointed. Surely this was some poor devil, perhaps a stranded motorist, who had wandered into the same spell Bob was in and did not know it. Still, he fashioned his answer to make sure this was not a guest arriving late.

  “Sure, it’s all right. Are you looking for a place to stay the night?”

  “No, thank you. May I come closer and talk to you?”

  “Uh, OK.”

  The man came and stood beside him, but all Bob could tell about him in the dark was that he was of medium height.

  “Thank you,” the man said. “Best for us to spend the time together. It’s a little lonely out here.”

  “Did your car break down?” Bob asked.

  In the moment before the answer came, it suddenly struck him as curious that this man had spoken to him to begin with. It was utterly dark, and he had not been moving or making a sound. How had this fellow known he was there to be spoken to?

  “I’ve never owned a car,” the man said mildly. “Don’t drive.”

  This put a new theory into Bob’s head. The man might be an unusually well-spoken hobo. Perhaps in daylight he would appear in rags.

  “But you travel around a lot?” he asked him.

  “Yes, a lot.”

  “Seen the whole country?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pick up odd jobs?” Bob wished he could pay the old guy to do something. He would at least give him breakfast in the morning.

  “Now and then,” said the man. “But you might wonder how I knew this was your wood.”

  Actually, Bob had thought it was a guess. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve been here before. I know a lot of the history of this property. It was cleared way back in the 1840’s. But I should mention that it was a sacred spot for the Indians long before that.”

  “Are you a historian?” Bob asked, now thoroughly confused about his companion.

  “No.”

  “One of the Chosen?” At this point he felt reckless enough to mention the Magi to a stranger.

  “No. I’m a friend of the Chosen, though.”

  “Well, hang on a minute,” Bob said firmly. This man knew way too much to be a lost passerby. “Because—I don’t know whether you know these woods are under a spell?”

  “I know.”

  “But I don’t know, you see, whether you’re part of the spell. I’m not sure I’m talking to a real, human person here, or what.”

  The man laid a hand briefly on Bob’s shoulder. “Human as you are, friend.”

  “Well, OK,” Bob said hesitantly.

  “Anyway, you can’t leave the wood yet, so I’d like to pass the time telling you a story, a true one, of something that happened at the inn a long time ago. It actually explains the predicament you’re in now. Would you like to hear it?”

>   This seemed harmless enough, so Bob agreed.

  “Well then,” the stranger began, “when your house was a Magi inn during the Civil War, and on a bitterly cold night in 1862, one of the Chosen came here and was admitted by the innkeeper and his horse stabled. The inn had a stable then on the south side. The guest was a Captain Hagley of the Union, and he was on his way south to report to Grant’s army. He was an unusually skillful Mage, and a good thing too, because without knowing it he had been followed by three murderous butternuts. Do you know what they were?”

  “No, what were they?”

  “Southern sympathizers born up north here. There were a lot of Confederate sympathizers in southern Indiana, especially in the early years of the war. These three were the meanest, hardest swearing, bloodiest, and most vindictive butternuts in Indiana; and among them they were carrying two muskets, a revolver, and five knives. They were out for revenge on Hagley partly because he had brought to light a plot of theirs to kill a Union recruiting officer. They knew that he had done it by using magic, too. They knew what Hagley was, only they called him a witch. But also they were furious because Hagley had shot dead the brother of one of them in a previous violent encounter.”

  “And Hagley didn’t know they were on his trail?”

  “Not a suspicion. They came up the road here in the middle of the night, tied up their horses at a distance, and slipped up to the inn. The sworn word among them was that Hagley would die that night, no matter what. One of them took up a position at the back door, which I think you know was the door that opens into the addition that is a ground floor bedroom now. The other two broke in at the front door, hooting and smashing things. Then they lit some candles and a large oil lamp that were in the entrance hall. They didn’t have the courage to go charging up the stairs because they believed Hagley was armed.

  “Fortunately, Hagley was dressed, because the night was so cold that, except for his boots, he had gone to bed with his clothes on. He pulled his boots on and came down the stairs to see what the row was. He got shot at—it was a narrow miss. The plaster’s been patched, but I could show you where the ball went. He more or less fell the rest of the way down, wrestled with one of the butternuts, and then dashed into the living room. He yelled to the innkeeper to stay upstairs where he was and slammed the door shut between the living room and the entrance hall.

  “The two inside opened a window and yelled to the one at the backdoor to watch the living room windows, and then the one that had fired his musket took his time reloading. They knew they had Hagley trapped in the living room, or the parlor they would have called it then, and that he seemed to be unarmed. There was no other way out of there, no more than there is now.”

  “Hagley didn’t have a gun?”

  “No, for whatever reason, he didn’t. Not that it would have helped him much, three against one. But he did what he could. Once inside the room, he conjured the door with all his might to withstand evil enemies. The innkeeper had the key upstairs, you see, so Hagley couldn’t lock it. The sort of conjuration he used is better anyway because it would even stop their bullets and musket balls. Then he concentrated on a part of the wall farthest from the windows, there on the right as you go in, and he tried to make a hole appear there so that he could dash through and get away.”

  “And they were trying to open the door?”

  “They tried to just fling it open and jump back. They didn’t want to walk in there, even if they could, because they still didn’t know for sure that he didn’t have his sidearm. If the door hadn’t been conjured, they would have been able to push it open, look into the room, and shoot, and poor Hagley would have had to try to hide off to the side.

  “Meanwhile, Hagley found he just couldn’t do it, open a hole in the wall, I mean. What with the danger, shouting, and confusion, he could hardly think; and that’s a spell that takes great skill and concentration. This was a very isolated place in those days, even more than now, so he could expect no help to come. He had no way to defend himself, and daylight was coming in a few hours. With the light they would be able to see him through the windows and shoot him. He just about gave himself up for dead. But then he considered that he had heard the butternuts shouted instructions to the man outside to watch the windows, and he decided that it would be hard for the man to watch both windows at once. If he could crash through one of them and run, he had a fifty-fifty chance it would be the right one.”

  “He’d take the north one,” Bob put in. “The butternut wouldn’t expect that because it’s a bigger drop with no porch there.”

  “There was no porch on the west side either in those days,” the man said. “It was built on later. The Captain picked up a couple of pokers from the hearth and crashed the west window. He cut his forehead, but his luck held. The butternut outside was around on the north, keeping his back to the wind on such a cold night.”

  Bob, who had been caught up in the story, began to wonder about the truth of it. How could this stranger know all this, right down to the butternut’s motive for being on the north? And why was a wizard coming off so weak in this story?

  “Instead of running,” he asked, “why didn’t Hagley just set the butternuts on fire, or cast them into a parallel universe, or something like that?”

  “He could only do what he was able to do,” the stranger answered. “Magi with great aggressive powers are rare. For every Merlin there are a hundred who quietly, even gently, bring about good things. Now Hagley had two specialties, which is more than most. He could clear people’s minds to see truth, and he could work on boundaries such as doors, walls, or even the edge of this wood. But neither of those specialties was going to drop a hate-filled enemy in his tracks.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Hagley took off toward the stable, but he knew better than to go in there, because they would expect him to go after his horse. Instead he ran around the back of the stable and ended up in this wood here. This was so long ago that it hadn’t even been an orchard yet. The butternuts were close after him and could hear him as he ran. He knew if he let them chase him right through the wood, he’d be in open field on a clear night with a near full moon, and he’d be picked off. So he took his stand here. Right here.”

  Bob took a deep breath. “He conjured the wood.”

  “He did, and in a hurry because the butternuts were practically caught up with him. He conjured it so that enemies outside could not get in. They could run right in a few yards, I mean, but would immediately get disoriented and turned around and charge back out again. A very nice piece of work under pressure. Now, if he had only known it, he might have escaped through the portal in the wood here, but he didn’t know it was here. He had come by the Grantham Road, not by portal. So there he was, trapped.

  “Oh my, it was a long night! Hagley’s head was bleeding, he was battered from his fall down the stairs, and he was freezing without a coat. He started to get rather disoriented. Over and over he had to fight the urge to try to go back to the inn. He knew that, if he did, he would be murdered, but his mind was slipping, and all he could think of was the bed piled with blankets in the upstairs bedroom he had left.”

  “So he didn’t make the heat spot that’s in the southeast room?”

  “No, someone else did that on another cold night.”

  Bob wanted to ask how the stranger could possibly know everything, but he held his tongue, eager to hear the end of the story.

  “So Hagley shook his head to try to clear it, and used magic again. This time he conjured the wood so that anyone in it threatened with evil could not find his way out when his enemies were nearby. He did this so that, if he totally lost his head and tried his best to leave the wood, he simply couldn’t, not until the butternuts were gone. After that last great effort, he let go mentally and just wandered about, fading in and out of his right mind but never leaving the wood because he couldn’t. Before dawn the butternuts gave up
their watch for him, went back to the inn in a savage frame of mind, and shortly rode away. Hagley survived, reached Grant’s army, and as a member of the general’s staff, was a major reason why the Union captured Forts Henry and Donelson. He fell at Vicksburg the following year.”

  Bob shivered at this unexpected and all too realistic final touch. “What about the innkeeper?” he asked, wanting to hear more about his predecessor.

  “Ah, he could have escaped down the road while Hagley was being hunted outdoors, but he stoutly decided to stay with the inn. When they came back from watching the border of the wood, those three devilish butchers murdered him with Bowie knives. They also shot Hagley’s horse and a little dog of his that I neglected to mention and that used to ride on the horse behind Hagley on a rolled up field blanket.”

  This was worse and worse. Bob felt sick. “Why did the innkeeper stay? Was he crazy?”

  “An innkeeper gets to feeling like the captain of a ship in the old stories. He wants to stand by her, the inn I mean. Haven’t you felt that yourself? This man probably feared that the butternuts would try to burn the place. Oh, and he wanted to be handy if Hagley would survive, perhaps wounded.”

  “He was brave.”

  “Very. So was his wife. She was away helping with a neighbor’s childbirth that night. As a widow, she ran the inn through the rest of the war until it closed.”

  He heard the stranger shift his feet in the dark. “I tell you all this because it points up something you seem to be missing. So much, so very much, rests on the shoulders of your guests. The Chosen don’t hold the world together, but they have a lot to do with maintaining much of what is good in the world. Hagley, no one remembers him, but he contributed greatly to Grant’s early victories, which led eventually to Grant being appointed as commander of all the Union armies, which in turn led to the winning of the war and the freeing of millions of slaves. Has it occurred to you that, each in a different time and place, the Chosen who are your guests are fighting for other important goals? True, your guests are on the run now, but with your help they may be able to return to their posts and from there turn the course of peoples and nations from darkness toward light. Did you know that?”

  Bob had not known that and was dismayed to find that so much depended on him. “Geez,” was all he could say.

  “Please consider what a privilege, what a wildly desirable and unique privilege, it is to be an innkeeper. Savor it. Never turn away a true guest. Or me either. I’m not Chosen, as I said, but I’ll be around to see you again in a few days, and I want you to put me up here.”

  “Uh, OK.” Bob didn’t know why, but he sensed this was all right. Stringer’s rules covered only Magi and non-Magi, not omniscient historians. Also, he had a sneaking suspicion that this man outranked Stringer and could make his own rules. He was on the verge of finally asking him his name and what his connection was with the Chosen when he remembered himself and added, “I’m sorry, sir, but the inn’s been sold out from under me. Unless you’re coming back within a week, the redemption period will be over and I won’t be here.”

  “It will be just a short time before I return,” said the man. “Keep it open for me, won’t you? Don’t close up just because there’s been a land auction. Never close the inn to guests, isn’t that the rule? Stringer’s rules may seem a bit harsh, but you are safe and correct when you hold to them. Anyway, it’s been pleasant talking to you. I’ll leave you now.”

  “Can I leave the wood yet? Is the spell over?”

  “No, not yet. I could get you out, but that wouldn’t be a good idea for the moment. I think you don’t want to sleep yet either, so I’ll provide something to comfort and entertain you for an hour. There’s more to this wood, to any wood, than most people think. I’ll show you this wood. Goodby for now.”

  The man walked away.

  Bob now felt even more fortunate to have been caught in this wood, this—what? He had never given the place a name and felt that it deserved one. The Wandering Wood. That sounded right. He thought there was a ‘Wandring Wood’ somewhere in The Fairie Queene.

  Since he could not yet leave, he found a place to sit down with his back against a skinny tree trunk. Soon he realized that he must be falling asleep, for the blackness of the wood was giving way to colors before his eyes. A few moments later he was deep in a vision.

  He saw the wood as if in daylight, and he saw it without reference to people, not even to himself. And why not? People very seldom came here. But a thousand things were happening. Vegetable growth was everywhere, of so many kinds, from tiniest plants to tall trees. Serpentine vines laced through branches. Mosses clung to fallen logs. Each plant, each part of a plant, was a wonder of architecture, a little world in itself. Even those in decay were fascinating.

  Through the plants and on them and in them went hundreds of kinds of insects. By their species they ate, bred, and made war. Their colors and designs were complicated and astonishing. All summer they teemed here, mindless but purposeful, surviving both rain and drought. To consider just the ants alone brought amazement, as they carried off food, including dead insects, to their common hoard.

  Birds too were in the trees or on the ground. Their songs, thought of by humans as our entertainment, were for them territorial cries, songs of warning, or mating calls. Each feather was complex, resilient, beautiful. Their speeding heartbeats, their quick notice of all around them, the varying rhythms of their flight: all were made clear to him.

  Here and there, now and then, came the mammals: squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, deer, possums, groundhogs, coyotes. And the reptiles: snakes, turtles, lizards. Some lived in the wood, some just passed through.

  The aggregate was a two-acre world of marvels, a place of constant interest, always full of activity. Yet humans looked away. Bob had never seen the wood, not like this. Year by year it lived its rich life without human help or thought. Go away for fifty years, come back, and unless humans had cleared it for their own sovereign purposes, there it would be as before. If all humans died, the wood would hardly know or change.

  Then the vision altered and he saw the wood’s world filtered by the seasons, saw the birds’ numbers dwindle, the plants change color and dry out, the insects die off. Then winter, the last daylight hour of a short, below-zero day with snow on the ground. Bare trees, dead grass almost covered in snow, few birds. But here and there could be seen the green of moss on a fallen tree trunk. Tiny underwater algae plants lived below the ice in the low places between the hummocks. Ants were alive below ground. Earliest wildflowers would not be long delayed. Even this was not a dead wood. Spring was coming.

  Spring came, slowly, diffusely. Fresh growth sprouted through dead grass and leaves. Day by day the sun grew stronger. A deer passed gracefully through, its coat turning from gray to red.

  All was dark again, the vision over. Deeply impressed, Bob decided that he was enthusiastically on the side of slow growth and anonymity, of these woods that did not need humanity. But oh, how humanity needed them! The night was warm. He lay down where he was and slept peacefully for hours.

  He was waked in the dark by the distant starting of a car engine and heard the vehicle drive away down the road. Standing up, he found himself no longer lost, for the direction of the auto’s retreating sound oriented him. Now, as he started out of the woods, despite the utter darkness, he felt confident of his way. The spell was over.

  Yet, before he reached the Ghastly Path, one more wonder took place which he never afterward tried to describe to anyone. He was moving slowly, finding his way through the tangle, when a blaze of light appeared before him not ten feet away. He stood still, turning his head from the glare. When his eyes adjusted, he found himself looking at a single shaft of sunlight falling almost vertically through a gap in the tree branches above. Where it fell, and only there—lighting just a square foot or two—the colors of the wood, mostly green and b
rown, were in full glory, more vivid than any colors he had ever seen. But all around that little space the night remained as dark as a cavern.

  The sun shaft, which did not move and seemed immovable, also seemed to have its own mass like some monumental column. It was breathtaking, joyous. He could have looked at it forever, could have died of hunger and thirst looking at it, and would have died happily. He indeed did look at it for a long time. Then—and oddly he could not remember the moment when it ceased—the shaft was gone, and all was again darkness. He took deep breaths. Finally, he was able to think about it. But no amount of thought could explain it; it just was what it was. He felt a perfect assurance that it continued to exist somewhere, that it always would, and guessed that he had seen only a little of it.

  Feeling peaceful, he walked on, and in five minutes was out of the Wandering Wood, down the Ghastly Path, and into his own yard. He found the locked house undisturbed within, the clocks reading just past four. This meant, unbelievably, that some idiot had waited outside in a car for almost the whole night. Some enemy, the stranger had indicated, for why else had the spell been in effect?

  During the morning he knocked together a sign and painted on it the humorous message, ‘The Wandering Wood. Do Not Exit.” While he was doing this and carrying it down the Ghastly Path to stick in the ground, he tried to sort it all out in his mind. The impression of the wood and its seasons had surely been a vision, apparently sent to him by the stranger. But was it not probable that the stranger too had been a vision? If so, how could a vision send a vision? Yet the stranger had touched him, had gripped his shoulder. When he came to analyzing whether the sun shaft had been a vision or some sort of reality, he gave it all up in something like fright.

  But dang, what a summer he was having!