• Magic Child Revisited •

“I’d like to ask you girls a question,” Greer said, but first he took a sip from his glass of sherry. Everybody in the room watched him carefully take his .sip. He held the liquor in his mouth for a moment before he swallowed it. “Have either of you ever heard of somebody called Magic Child?” he said.

“No,” Miss Hawkline said.

“The name’s not familiar,” the other Miss Hawkline replied. “It’s a funny name, though. Sounds like an Indian name.”

They both looked puzzled.

“That’s what I thought,” Greer said, looking over at Cameron standing beside the fireplace. The coal burned silently and smoke journeyed upward in departure from this huge yellow house standing in a field of frost at the early part of this century.

Greer as he looked over at Cameron suddenly noticed that part of the fire was not burning and part of the smoke just beyond it was not moving upward but was just hovering above flames of a slightly different color that did not burn.

He thought about the strange reflection in the pool-room chandelier. The fire that did not burn resembled that reflection.

He looked away from Cameron and back to the Hawkline women sitting primly beside each other on the love seat. “Who is Magic Child and what does she have to do with us?” Miss Hawkline said.

“Nothing,” Greer said.