The Magic Spectacles by James P. Blaylock

Author:James P. Blaylock [Blaylock, James P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936535675
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2012-08-15T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4: The Battle on the Meadow

The window was open, just as they had left it yesterday evening. John could see the bunk beds against the far wall, the circus poster, the bookshelf above the bed. It was all so clear that he could almost read the titles on the spines of the books.

Danny stood up and ran toward it, but after a few steps he slowed and stopped. The window was getting dim, fading away as if it had been painted with water on a summer sidewalk. The glass dust from the coffee grinder whirled around and around like a pale green wind devil, and then went racing off across the meadow. By then the window was gone.

John stood up and stepped away from the magnifying lens, and Polly lowered the jar of glass chips and walked slowly back toward where Mr. Deener was lifting the lid from the doughnut basket.

“Mrs. Barlow has insisted that I eat a number of these glazed doughnuts,” Mr. Deener said, helping himself. “I suggest you do too.”

John could see that Danny wasn’t happy with the experiment. He looked as he had that morning when he was talking about going home through the cave. “At least we know it’s still there,” John said.

“Certainly it’s still there,” said Mr. Deener. “If you open a window it stays open until someone shuts it.” He took a bite of doughnut – not like a pig, but very daintily, like he was eating a finger sandwich at a high tea. The doughnuts were all his now. There was no rush.

“We kind of wanted to see if we could get through it,” Danny said, very slowly, as if to make sure that Mr. Deener understood him, and would quit talking nonsense.

“The moon is a window,” Mr. Deener said, “gesturing with a doughnut. “Imagine that this doughnut is the sky. Now, the hole in the middle of the doughnut is the moon. From the Earth there seems to be a face on it, because actually there’s a man looking through it, like this. …”

He held the doughnut about a foot in front of his face and looked at them through it. Then he ate the doughnut and licked the sugar off his fingers. “The trick is simply to get to the moon,” he said, “which is no farther away than your window is, and to crawl through it to the other side.” He pulled doughnuts out of the basket, looked at them, and put them back, as if searching for just the right one, and all the time he talked and talked – about doors and windows, about the moon ladder, about crawling in through the moon‘s ear with a flashlight and a picnic basket full of doughnuts.

None of this talk was making Danny any happier. He looked at John and made the pinwheel sign. And just as he did, there was a loud thwack and the big glass lens shattered into pieces. There was the sound of goblin laughter from the woods behind them, and a rock whizzed past John’s ear, smashing a jar of pond water.

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