Barney Milo - A Kind of Magic: A Three-volume Novel of Eco-magical Realism

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

MILO BARNEY was born in the city, grew up in the woods

and spends time now in both places.

The A Kind of Magic Trilogy are Milos first novels.

CHAPTER 1

Silent Wings

It was the most beautiful day of the year, and there was nothing to do.

It was a bright sunny blue-sky day in the middle of a rainy summer. The honey bees and butterflies were scrambling from flower to flower. Even the wasps were too intoxicated with the sweetness of the wild purple phlox to think of stinging anyone.

Griffin was watching one butterfly in particular a gorgeous tiger swallowtail. A yellow and black, furry stained-glass window, six inches across at least, with ten pale blue spots, five on each wing, like a babys toe prints along the bottom of each. Thats how he knew she was a girl.

She was perched on the golden-red pincushion of a coneflower so close to him he was afraid to cough. Then she sailed off past the zinnias to the huge golden pumpkin blossoms, lying flopped open in the sun like old linen napkins. Her flight was so easy, so silent. Youd think something so big would make a noise: a flutter, a buzz, a flap of wings. But she sailed over the garden fence and into the woods to lay her eggs on the tulip poplar tree, without a sound.

Griffin knew all these facts about her because hed looked her up in his grandmas butterfly book. But he knew the butterfly because hed watched her in the sunny garden visiting the flowers his mother had planted between the tomato plants and the zucchini, so Grandma would have something bright to look at from her bedroom window.

It was almost too hot to sit in the garden chair now at noon especially with Griffins dog Buster breathing down his neck. Buster liked to be in the garden with Griffin patrolling for chipmunks and toads but Griffin sat him up behind him in the garden chair for safekeeping. Of the toads and the chipmunks.

He had just about decided that he qualified for an afternoon soda (it was 12:02) when the phone rang somewhere in the long, one-story house. After some muffle of voices, a call rang out. Griffin? Its Cece for you shes BORED!

Now, Cece was Griffins second cousin Cecelia younger by 2 and a half weeks and her family was renting a house through the woods while her Dad was on a 6-month Coast Guard tour of duty on the Arctic Circle. She was only 10 and 10 months, Griffin was 11 minus 1 month and 5 days. They tried not to let the age difference get in the way of their friendship.

Cecelias folks had moved the family here to be near Griffins. Since Ceces mom had given her not one, but two little siblings under the age of 3, her mothers response to Ceces boredom was, if she couldnt be useful, she should be outside.

So the phone call got made, and Griffin and his dog Buster were summoned to make an extraordinary adventure out of an ordinary afternoon.

They didnt need to talk on the phone. They had a secret meeting place pre-arranged, so no grownups could overhear their plans. They always met at a big flat-topped rock in the diagonal middle of the old field between their houses, now overgrown with hundred-year-old trees. Two stone walls west of the driveway, then one south. You start at the nearest corner, find the 45 degree angle between the two walls, and start walking in as straight a line as the trees allowed.

It was easier than that, though, since there were landmarks: you walked between two big bumps in the old field. Griffin was hoping that they might be burial mounds from the Native tribes that had roamed these woods. His dad thought that they were probably all that were left of the giant roots of some fallen trees, mouldered down to a big lump of clay and rocks and old leaves. Griffin had seen trees knocked over like that, after a hurricane. And, although he was in awe of their ropy framework of twisted arms of roots sometimes 15 feet high in the air he still liked his idea better.

Even though he was tempted to dig in the mounds to find the buried remains of a Delaware chief, he didnt. If he found nothing, then his dreams of ancient tombs was over. And if he really did find something like that, then the woods would become an archaeological treasure instead of just a land preserve, and his days of roaming the woods as lord of the forest would be over. Sometimes it was better just to wonder.

So he clambered over the stone walls, in the same places where the deer had managed to knock over huge rocks to make a path. Hoof tap by hoof tap, the stones had fallen to leave a pathway any forest person could see, clear as a neon sign. Griffin found his corner, where an old log had hollowed out to look like an alligator head. He put himself in the corner, faced right in the middle, and walked toward their meeting rock.

Cecelia had had a morning not so much boring as bad. She was woken up by Bo-bo Babys crying, then almost-three-year-old Emma started bawling to get out of her baby-cage. It was vacation, but there was no escape for Cecelia. Mamma needed her help so she dragged Emma out of her cage, sat her on the potty, threw out her pull-ups, gave her a tee shirt and a bag of pretzel goldfish and turned on the TV.

Cece had a lot of shows she liked, but Emma cried if she couldnt watch Elmos World. Over and over. Cece was okay with that as far as Mr. Noodle. Cece still liked the crazy way he had of moving his neck like a turtle eating a popsicle. But after that she couldnt take it anymore. She was 10 and three-quarters. She had a life to lead. Somewhere else.

Her last four houses (the ones she could remember) had been in neighborhoods. Theyd been surrounded by families with kids around her age, out biking and rollerblading, pushing doll-strollers and bouncing in each others backyard trampolines. Here there was no base, no PX, no rec center, no station school. Not even sidewalks. Just paths in the woods.

School was out. She had only gone for a couple of weeks before the end of the year. Not long enough to make any friends among the already life-long best friends of the girls in her new class. Now she was in the middle of three months of big fat nothing. Unless she wanted to go to the supermarket with her Mom and those babies. Again. Not!

Thanks to their cousins brilliant idea... Rent the house down the road for the summer, its cheap and well be able to give you a hand with the kids! ... here they were, stuck all summer in the woods. At least there was Griffin who was pretty okay for a boy. At least he wasnt mean or anything, and he was really happy to show her his woods.

To him, it was like every rock was a street sign or maybe a newspaper with little traces of life as stories to tell. He had told her about growing up here lonely himself, as a little kid with no brothers or sisters or neighbors. How he had wished so hard for someone to play with that he almost believed there was someone, out there in the woods.

When he was a kid, he said, he used to build little huts out of stones and sticks and acorn caps, at the mossy cool bottom of a tree, among the roots; a tiny house with an acorn chimney, stone roof, mossy furniture and front lawn. Even an upturned acorn cap for a birdbath for visiting emerald bottle flies.

But no one ever came. That he could tell. He told Cecelia that once, when he was very sick, hed heard a voice, different from the crickets and the whirring locusts. It was whispery, and it was calling his name. Griffin. Griiiiifffiiinnn! His mom had said it was just a fever dream. But he wasnt so sure.

Cecelia stepped out of the kitchen door of their little house. The family that had built it was Dutch, so it had a split door. The top was already open to let in the cool forest breeze. Now she turned the heavy lock-bolt of the bottom half and swung it open. Closing it firmly behind her to keep the babies from following her, she slipped down the cool stepping-stone path into the woods.