Peter Beagle - The Line Between

Marvyn shook his head until the tears flew, protesting, «No, I didn't, I didn't — look!» He pointed to a handful of grubby dried weeds scattered on the bed — Lidia would have thrown them out in a minute. Marvyn gulped and wiped his nose and tried to stop crying. He said, «They're really hard to find, maybe they're not fresh anymore, I don't know — they've always looked like that. But now they don't work," and he was wailing afresh. Angie told him that Dr. John Dee and Willow would both have been ashamed of him, but it didn't help.

But she also sat with him and put her arm around him, and smoothed his messy hair, and said, «Come on, let's think this out. Maybe it's the herbs losing their juice, maybe it's something else. You did everything the way you did the other time, with Milady?»

«I thought I did.» Marvyn's voice was small and shy, not his usual deep croak. «But I don't know anymore, Angie — the more I think about it, the more I don't know. It's all messed up, I can't remember anything now.»

«Okay," Angie said. «Okay. So how about we just run through it all again? We'll do it together. You try everything you do remember about — you know — moving around in time, and I'll copy you. I'll do whatever you say.»

Marvyn wiped his nose again and nodded. They sat down cross–legged on the floor, and Marvyn produced the grimy book of paper matches that he always carried with him, in case of firecrackers. Following his directions Angie placed all the crumbly herbs into Milady's dish, and her brother lit them. Or tried to: they didn't blaze up, but smoked and smoldered and smelled like old dust, setting both Angie and Marvyn sneezing almost immediately. Angie coughed and asked, «Did that happen the other time?» Marvyn did not answer.

There was a moment when she thought the charm might actually be going to work. The room around them grew blurry — slightly blurry, granted — and Angie heard indistinct faraway sounds that might have been themselves hurtling forward to sheltering Sunday. But when the fumes of Marvyn's herbs cleared away, they were still sitting in Thursday — they both knew it without saying a word. Angie said, «Okay, so much for that. What about all that special concentration you were telling me about? You think maybe your mind wandered? You pronounce any spells the wrong way? Think, Marvyn!»

«I am thinking! I told you forward was hard!» Marvyn looked ready to start crying again, but he didn't. He said slowly, «Something's wrong, but it's not me. I don't think it's me. Something's pushing…» He brightened suddenly. «Maybe we should hold hands or something. Because of there being two of us this time. We could try that.»

So they tried the spell that way, and then they tried working it inside a pentagram they made with masking tape on the floor, as Angie had seen such things done on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even though Marvyn said that didn't really mean anything,

and they tried the herbs again, in a special order that Marvyn thought he remembered. They even tried it with Angie saying the spell, after Marvyn had coached her, just on the chance that his voice itself might have been throwing off the pitch or the pronunciation. Nothing helped. Marvyn gave up before Angie did. Suddenly, while she was trying the spell over herself, one more time — some of the words seemed to heat up in her mouth as she spoke them — he collapsed into a wretched ball of desolation on the floor, moaning over and over, «We're finished, it's finished, we'll never get out of Thursday!» Angie understood that he was only a terrified little boy, but she was frightened too, and it would have relieved her to slap him and scream at him. Instead, she tried as best she could to reassure him, saying, «He'll come back for us. He has to.»

Her brother sat up, knuckles to his eyes. «No, he doesn't have to! Don't you understand? He knows I'm a witch like him, and he's just going to leave me here, out of his way. I'm sorry, Angie, I'm really sorry!» Angie had almost never heard that word from Marvyn, and never twice in the same sentence.

«Later for all that," she said. «I was just wondering — do you think we could get Mom and Dad's attention when they get home? You think they'd realize what's happened to us?»

Marvyn shook his head. «You haven't seen me all the time I've been gone. I saw you, and I screamed and hollered and everything, but you never knew. They won't either. We're not really in our house — we're just here. We'll always be here.»

Angie meant to laugh confidently, to give them both courage, but it came out more of a hiccupy snort. «Oh, no. No way. There is no way I'm spending the rest of my life trapped in your stupid bedroom. We're going to try this useless mess one more time, and then … then I'll do something else.» Marvyn seemed about to ask her what else she could try, but he checked himself, which was good.

They attempted the spell more than one more time. They tried it in every style they could think of except standing on their heads and reciting the words backward, and they might just as well have done that, for all the effect it had. Whether Marvyn's herbs had truly lost all potency, or whether Marvyn had simply forgotten some vital phrase, they could not even recapture the fragile awareness of something almost happening that they had both felt on the first trial. Again and again they opened their eyes to last Thursday.

«Okay," Angie said at last. She stood up, to stretch cramped legs, and began to wander around the room, twisting a couple of the useless herbs between her fingers. «Okay," she said again, coming to a halt midway between the bedroom door and the window, facing Marvyn's small bureau. A leg of his red Dr. Seuss pajamas was hanging out of one of the drawers.

«Okay," she said a third time. «Let's go home.»

Marvyn had fallen into a kind of fetal position, sitting up but with his arms tight

around his knees and his head down hard on them. He did not look up at her words. Angie raised her voice. «Let's go, Marvyn. That hallway — tunnel–thing, whatever it is — it comes out right about where I'm standing. That's where El Viejo brought me, and that's the way he left when he … left. That's the way back to Sunday.»

«It doesn't matter," Marvyn whimpered. «El Viejo … he's him! He's him!»

Angie promptly lost what little remained of her patience. She stalked over to Marvyn and shook him to his feet, dragging him to a spot in the air as though she were pointing out a painting in a gallery. «And you're Marvyn Luke, and you're the big bad new witch in town! You said it yourself — if you weren't, he'd never have bothered sticking you away here. Not even nine, and you can eat his lunch, and he knows it! Straighten your patch and take us home, bro.» She nudged him playfully. «Oh, forgive me — I meant to say, O Mighty One.»

«You don't have to call me that anymore.» Marvyn's legs could barely hold him up, and he sagged against her, a dead weight of despair. «I can't, Angie. I can't get us home. I'm sorry… "

The good thing — and Angie knew it then — would have been to turn and comfort him: to take his cold, wet face between her hands and tell him that all would yet be well, that they would soon be eating popcorn with far too much butter on it in his real room in their real house. But she was near her own limit, and pretending calm courage for his sake was prodding her, in spite of herself, closer to the edge. Without looking at Marvyn, she snapped, «Well, I'm not about to die in last Thursday! I'm walking out of here the same way he did, and you can come with me or not, that's up to you. But I'll tell you one thing, Ex–Lax — I won't be looking back.»

And she stepped forward, walking briskly toward the dangling Dr. Seuss pajamas…

…and into a thick, sweet–smelling grayness that instantly filled her eyes and mouth, her nose and her ears, disorienting her so completely that she flailed her arms madly, all sense of direction lost, with no idea of which way she might be headed; drowning in syrup like a trapped bee or butterfly. Once she thought she heard Marvyn's voice, and called out for him — «I'm here, I'm here!» But she did not hear him again.