Our lives are filled with defining moments. Often, it's much later that we look back on a thing and accept its significance.
The first time you asked your Best Friend to come sit with you, the day you went left instead of right and discovered that wondrous used-book store, the first time you tasted Indian food. We don't always know what they are in the moment, but later, with wisdom, experience, and hindsight we come to perceive how these small actions set the stage for so much to come.
For Theodore, this was one of those moments. But this time, he knew it.
***
Theodore stood staring at the door to The Forbidden Office of The Magician Detective for what he felt had to have been at least three weeks. "What am I doing?" he whispered, emphasizing the point to the closed door.
He felt a bit like someone had hollowed out both his stomach and the top of his head. And for some reason he was very sweaty. He experimented taking his hat on and off, but it didn't seem to help. Gently, like a wounded hunter testing a sleeping beast, he kicked the door with his foot, and it creaked open to welcome him.
He stepped in to the familiar Office and his body shivered with its electricity, like diving head-long into cold water. He fully expected The Magician Detective to be inside despite having just walked out the front door. Relieved to find the space unoccupied, he waded through the sea of discarded documents, sat down in the Magician Detective's chair, and answered a long-standing question by spinning around until he was dizzy. He'd always suspected that it was a spinny chair. The act took the edge off, at least for a moment.
The spiraling motion landed him with his back to the desk, facing the little red door that had always stood directly behind The Magician Detective. He studied it, and tapped it with his foot. He looked more closely, and carved in a small simple style were three letters:
"GUP"
He sat thinking about the breadcrumbs of information he'd picked up about getting through this door.
Colonel Truncheon had said he needed to concentrate on his "purest form of creative expression." A 'Power Pattern,' he'd called it. Of course, that had to be his love of card tricks, like the true Magician Detective he admired.
He pulled the reliable and well worn deck of cards out of his new backpack and focused. While the Magician Detective was clearly a master with cards himself, on the rare occasions that Theodore had convinced him to show him something, he really just did that trick without demonstrating any underlying principles. Over time, Theodore had developed his own abilities, though he'd certainly never seen any of the fire and sparks appear that typically accompanied The Magician Detective's work. Outside of sheer stubborn practice, most of what Theodore had eventually learned he'd picked up from one very generous book he'd discovered languishing in a forgotten corner, "The Royal Road To Card Magic."
He'd practiced overhand and riffle shuffles until his fingers were calloused, and by now he moved the cards about with fluid ease between his hands, any average bystander would be impressed. He fanned the deck and went through the motions of reverses and forces, nervous at first but then falling deep into his own routines. Periodically he kicked the door a bit, but it did not budge. How did this work?
He tried some of the fancier tricks he knew less well, a double lift and a waterfall shuffle, fumbled a bit and then moved onto more physical tricks he'd been experimenting with. He made two cards jump back and forth between his hands, if there had been a viewer it would have looked as if they'd switched suits. The door remained unimpressed. As a last resort he held a tattered Seven of Clubs (his favorite) against the door. He even thought about its strange connection to the 7 Layers, he tried to summon the chalkboard image of the different Layers that Mister Caruthers had shown him to his mind. He focused all of his mental energy on the door and moving it, hoping to will a kind of non-existent card trick into life.
He looked at the watch again, already close to nine, and started to worry at how long the Magician Detective might be out looking for his own deck of cards. He wondered if he was just being foolish up here, maybe he should just go back downstairs and get back to work? Maybe the structure of school was just the thing he needed?
Frustrated, his mind drifted to a doodle he'd been doing earlier, but he brushed it aside like a passing noise and re-focused.
The cards fell from his hands and he collapsed into the door, sweating some more. "I sweat a lot," he said. He knocked his head against the red wood and chanted in rhythm, "Stupid. Stupid. I am dumb." He sang this part, a little song he and Isobel would trot out when they'd done something particularly foolish, like the time they'd decided to cover the couch in strawberry jam. It was her idea.
He sat with his back to the door and took a breath. What was it Colonel Truncheon had said about sandwiches? Gruyere?
"A concentrated creative expression," he whispered.
He thought about how much time he'd spent practicing his card tricks to get as good as he was. It felt creative, didn't it? He wasn't sure. More like compulsive than creative, if he was honest, though he wasn't sure about the difference. In the past, if a particularly hard trick had vexed him, he'd learned to step back from it and pause. Typically, he'd unwind and figure it out by sitting down... and doodling.
He doodled even when he wasn't thinking about it, but he felt oddly ashamed of the habit. Only Nanaface had ever complimented his work, but in that way that an adult who loves you unconditionally will compliment even your worst ideas. If he could be bothered to notice, The Magician Detective would scold him for the waste of time, but worst of all had been Isobel. She would make fun of his drawings without exception, cutting straight through him with statements like, "Learn to draw!" He'd learned to hide them from her. That collective stage didn't inspire much confidence, but he had to admit, despite it all, in his heart he loved doodling more than anything.
"Huh," he said aloud. It was worth a try.
He opened his backpack up and pulled out his inscribed pad of paper. He took out a small pen and, gleefully ignoring the Magician Detecrive's first and only real directive, he drew.
He figured that, if the key was his drawings, he'd better do it right, or at least what he thought he was supposed to feel was "right." He started with some so-called realism and sketched the spinny chair.
He sat staring at the door, and as he often did, he started doodling without even thinking about it. He was no longer drawing like he thought he should, instead he was drawing in his favorite manner, with intertwining and unpredictable lines, not knowing where they'd lead. An elaborate doodle.
He forgot himself or what he was trying to do and got lost in the moment. Interlocking lines met with intricate patterns and unfamiliar objects took shape – both abstract and representational at once. This was the way that he drew. Abstract trees and caves emerged from a latticework of angles, blending into strange creatures and the face of a tiger-ish creature, a volcano, and fire. He didn't even notice the sparks coming off of his pen as colors flowed in to fill in the shapes behind his every line.
He felt something in his mind shift, like apiece sitting just right in a jigsaw that he could swear he'd tried a dozen timesalready. The little red door eased open against his weight and he caughthimself, momentarily disoriented. A cool breeze caressed his cheek.
Theodore had found his Power Pattern: weird doodles.
"Wow," he said, genuinely amazed. "I did not see that coming. Because I'm dumb."
He peered through the crack and could see mostly darkness. He thought he could detect the branches of some large trees swaying, and he heard a fierce screech on the breeze.
Amazed, he put the little notebook back in his pack and stood up. A new sensation coursed through him, but he couldn't find the words for it. It felt as if, for the first time in his life, he was in exactly the right place, doing exactly the right thing. He accepted this and reached for the door to pull it wide open.
"Easy there, cow-poke," a familiar voice drawled from behind him. He spun to find the source.
Mr. Caruthers perched upon the oaken desk, pointing a sword at Theodore's head. "The Guardian can't let you through..." he said.
***
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