Shadowland

    ' 'And I am . . . ' I started to say, but he held up a hand and violent color seemed to play around it.

    ''Charles Nightingale. William Vendouris. Dr. Collector, but none of those now. You will take a new name, one known to the Order. You will be Coleman Collins. Only to us at first, but when this war finishes and we may go where we please, to the world.'

    'I knew without his telling me that it was a colored name — the name of a colored magician who had died. It was as if I had heard the name before, but I could not remember ever having heard it. I wanted to deserve that name. At that second I became Coleman Collins in my heart, and wore the name I had been born with as a disguise. 'What do you want with me?' I asked.

    'He laughed out loud. 'Why, I want to be your teacher. I want to work with you,' he said. 'You don't even know who you are yet, Coleman Collins, and I want the privilege of helping to show you how to get there. You may be the most gifted natural the Order has uncovered — or who has uncovered himself — in the past decade.'

    ''What do you want me to do?' I asked.

    ''Tonight you will stay here. Yes, here. It will be all night. And if you are welcomed tonight — don't worry, you'll see what that means — if you are welcomed, soon you will be able to repeat what you did with Mr. Washford whenever you wish.' He laughed out loud again, and his wonderful voice rolled out over the mustard field like the hallooing of a French horn. 'Of course, I cannot recommend that you do it every day.'

    ' 'And after tonight?' I asked.

    ''We begin our studies. We begin your new life, Mr. Collins.'

    'He stood up from his throne, and the sunlight died. Speckle John stood before me in a vast starry night, really only an outline in the darkness. I could not make out his features. 'You will be safe during the night, Doctor, safer than you would be in our part of Ste. Nazaire. Tomorrow we begin.'

    'Then he was gone. I moved forward, reaching out, and my fingers touched the back of his chair. The night seemed immense. I could hear only a few isolated crickets. The stars seemed very intense, and I fancied that I was looking at them with eyes made new by Speckle John.

    'Well, there I was, alone on a hill in the middle of the night — the actual night I suppose, for the earlier daylight must have been an illusion. I had not a notion of where I was, and only Speckle John's word that the next day would find me returned to Ste. Nazaire and my work. His chair stood before me, and I was too superstitious to sit in it, though I wanted to. Even then, I wanted that chair for my own. I knew what it represented.

    'I stretched out on the mustard, which was not very comfortable at first. 'If you are welcomed,' he had said, and I could not rest for wondering what that meant. Once it even went through my mind that I was the Victim of a gigantic hoax, and that the Negro would leave me out in the wilderness. But I had the evidence of his extraordinary presence, and the care with which he had sought me out. And he had turned night to day and back again! What sort of 'welcome' could follow that?

    'Even an excited man must sleep sometime, and so it was with me. I began to doze, and then to dream, and finally fell into a deep sleep.

    'I was awakened by a fox. His pungent, musky odor; the sound of his breath; a jittery, quick, nervous presence near me. My eyes flew open, and his muzzle was a foot from my face. Terror made me jerk backward — I was afraid he'd take my face off. Mr. Collins, the fox said. I understood him! I said or thought 'Yes.'

    'You need not fear me.

''No.'

    'You belong to the Order.

''I belong to them.'

    'The Order is your mother and father.

''They are.'

    'And you will have no other loyalties.

''None.'

    'You are welcomed.

'He trotted away, and I did not know if I had spoken to a fox or to a man in the form of a fox. For a long time I lay in the field consumed by wonder. The stars were dimming, and all I could see was blackness. I began to realize that I could float off the ground if I wanted to, but I dared not do anything to affect the mood of the night and myself as part of the night. That was floating enough. Finally I heard wingbeats. I could not see it, but I heard an enormous bird land some few feet away from me. I never saw it, but I thought, and I think now, that I knew what bird it was. Once again, I was terrified. Then it spoke, and I understood its voice as I had understood the fox's.

    'Collins.

''Yes.'

    'Have you worlds within you?

''I have worlds within me.'

    'Do you want dominion?

''I want dominion.' And I did, you see — I wanted to tap that strength within me and to make the duller world know it.

    'The knowledge is the treasure, and the treasure is its own dominion.

'I suppose I muttered the words 'knowledge . . . treasure.'

    'See the history of your treasure, Collins,

'Then a scene played itself out before my eyes. I was a child, an infant in arms. My father was carrying me. We were in a theater in Boston, one which had been torn down during my adolescence. Vaughan's Oriental Theater, it was called. A colored man in evening dress was performing on stage, exhibiting a mechanical bird which sang requests called out by the audience. My father shouted out 'Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage,' and everybody laughed, and the metal bird began to warble the saccharine melody. I remembered being moved by the music, and astounded by the ornateness of the theater. 'See his name, Charlie,' my father said, pointing to the sign on the side of the stage. 'His name is Old King Cole. Isn't that funny?' I remembered staring openmouthed at the man on the stage, wanting to smile because my father said it was funny, but too overwhelmed to see the humor. Then I froze. The magician, Old King Cole, was staring directly at me.

    'So there it was — a buried memory, maybe the central memory of my life, and one that I think had guided me throughout my life even though I had consciously forgotten it. The man onstage was the original Coleman Collins. Or was there another Coleman Collins before him? And I knew that someday that would be me on the stage, though I would require a different professional name.

    'You saw.

''I saw.'

    'And you know that the magician saw you.

'I remembered Old King Cole looking down from the stage, finding me there in my father's arms, a child perhaps of eighteen or twenty months, and . . . recognizing me?

    ''I know.'

    'I have doubts about you, the owl said.

    ' 'But he saw me!' I said, now reliving the wonder of those few seconds as if they had happened only five minutes ago. 'He chose me!'

    'He saw the treasure within, the invisible bird sighed. Be worthy of it. Honor the Book. You are welcomed.

'The huge wings beat, my interrogator flew off, and I was alone. Either I had been asleep all along or I slept again: I remember everything blurring about me, a feeling of wandering, drowsy bliss invading my every cell, and I slept solidly for hours. When I woke up, I was leaning against a wall back in Ste. Nazaire, only a block from the hospital. Withers was just walking past, taking an early — morning constitutional at a loafing Southern pace, and he saw me and snarled, 'Too drunk to get home last night, Dr. Nightingale?' 'You're welcome,' I said, and laughed in his face.

'Thereafter, I saw Speckle John almost every day. I received a note, usually from a messboy, waited outside the bookstore, and was led through the maze of slum streets until we came to that shabby, foul-smelling tenement which was more school to me than any university. I was taken back to that time when we all lived in the forest: I entered that realm which was mine by right since infancy. For a year Speckle John taught me, and we began to plan working together after the war. But I knew that the day would arrive when my growing strength would confront his. I was never content with the second chair.