The story contains
the same main elements as those by Eager and Nesbit: a group of children
who find some kind of talisman that will grant their wishes. In this case
it's a little token with a wishbone depicted on it, and it makes wishbone
wishes come true. But, also in common with Eager and Nesbit's visions,
the magic never goes quite the way the children expect it to go. Yet ultimately
it does help the children solve or at least ameliorate their real troubles.
In this scene, Maximilian
and his newfound friends, triplets Flavia, Cassandra & Guinevere, have
traveled back in time to "meet a famous magician and help him with his
act." They find themselves at Jack Hoeffler's Five Cent Circus, where they
meet a little boy named Erich. They are all trying to help Melvin the Marvelous
(a magician who doesn't bathe as often as his friends might want him to!)
become a more interesting performer...
"Hello, hello, hello."
He cried loudly, making a leap at the stage, where he almost fell over
as he landed.
"Welcome, ladies
and gentlemen." He waved one hand, and a bouquet of fake flowers came out
of the sleeve of his jacket and stuck at his wrist.
"Ah! Uh!" Hastily
pulling the flowers the rest of the way out he flourished them toward the
audience before tossing them into a corner. Though the words were right,
his delivery made it all too obvious that he'd memorized the spiel. He
sounded like a fast-talking robot, no inflections. "Yes mas-ter I will
do your bid-ding right a-way."
"What you are about
to see," he went on in a nervous monotone, sweat sparkling among the thin
sprinkling of hairs at the top of his high forehead, "is the result of
years of practice and centuries of wisdom. Do not try these tricks at home,
ladies and gentlemen!"
He waved the other
hand, and the head of a cross-looking pigeon appeared at the cuff of his
sleeve and emitted a cranky squawk. He shook his arm several times and
the bird finally fell out, landing on the stage without any effort to spread
its wings. Melvin the Marvelous stooped and picked it up, stroking it as
if he'd like to wring its neck. The audience stirred silently on its benches.
Maximilian heard a suppressed snicker to his left, where Flavia was sitting.
"For my first trick,"
Melvin the Marvelous said, shoving the pigeon into his pants pocket, "I
will need a volunteer from the audience." He paused hopefully, looking
out at the eleven stony faces staring up at him.
"Don't feel bad
if I don't chose you; I can only use so many volunteers at once, you know."
He laughed hollowly. Then his face beamed with relief as Erich's hand went
up. "Ah, here's an intrepid young man. Come right up!" he exclaimed. Erich
leapt to his feet and hopped up onto the stage before Melvin the Marvelous
had finished inviting him. "Such enthusiasm!" Melvin carolled nervously.
"Now!" Melvin continued,
"if you'll hand me that cage, that's right, and the black velvet cloth,
and of course my wand!" Erich quickly gathered the things. "Yes! Will you
show the audience that the cage is empty, please?" Erich turned to the
audience and held the cage up, turning it this way and that in the best
magician's-assistant manner. "Perfect. Now, nothing up my sleeves . . ."
Somebody in the
back tittered as Melvin pulled his sleeves back. The gesture seemed to
produce a muffled pigeon squawk. "We simply put the black satin cloth over
the cage as my assistant, chosen randomly from the audience, holds it,
there we are, and," he waved the wand over the cloth-covered cage several
times, "Alla-kazooey, alla-kazammy, hey . . . presto!" He tapped
the cage sharply with his wand, whipped the black cloth away with a flourish,
and turned to the audience, clearly expecting thunderous applause. Instead
he got silence.
Erich tugged his
coat tail. He turned, frowning. "What?" Then he saw the cage. Empty. He
seemed to shrink six inches.
"This is awful,"
Flavia whispered.
"I don't understand
it," Melvin muttered. "I did it exactly the way he taught me." He took
the cage from Erich and looked into it with the most woebegone expression
the children had ever seen.
"That's it," Flavia
whispered, so softly that only those next to her could hear. "I wish .
. ."
As Melvin turned
the cage from side to side, something fluttered on its floor. He looked
more closely, turning it again. Another flutter, another turn. Then suddenly
a white dove burst up, kicked open the cage door with a move worthy of
Jackie Chan, and flew out, followed by another, and another, and another.
Furthermore, they were talking! "Pretty Polly," the first one shouted.
"Lovely Lily," said the next. They flew around the tent, calling at the
tops of their voices.
"Lazy Lenny!"
"Crazy Charlie!"
"Moony Melvin!"
"Dirty socks!"
"Awful underwear!"
"Horrible hairbrush!"
"Uh-oh," said Cassandra,
on the other side of Flavia. It didn't matter now how loud you talked,
because the birds were making so much noise you could hardly hear yourself,
let alone anybody else. "You shouldn't have wished they could talk,
you should have wished exactly the things they could say!"
Flavia just shook
her head in dismay. "This is nuts."
"Have a bath!" the
birds shouted.
"Brush your teeth!"
"Do some laundry!"
"We're not animals,
you know!" the birds all shouted together.
Melvin the Marvelous
stood on the stage paralysed with horror. The children in the last row
began to laugh and shout at the birds. "Say some more! Say some more!"
Their mother tried to shush them.
If you'd like to
read some of the books by Edward Eager or E. Nesbit that inspired Maximilian's
Magic, I highly recomend:
