Free Half Magic by Edward Eager Page A

theaters in town and looking at the pictures on the outside. A time of argument followed. Mark liked Westerns and thrilling escapes, but Martha wouldn't go inside any theater that had pictures of fighting.
    Jane and Katharine liked ladies with long hair and big eyes and tragic stories. They wanted to see a movie called Barbara LaMarr in
Sandra.
Mark finally agreed, because there were a lot of pictures outside of a man who wore a mustache, and that meant he was the villain, and that meant that somebody would hit him sooner or later. Martha agreed because all the other theaters had either pictures with fighting or Charlie Chaplin.
    All of the four children hated Charlie Chaplin, because he was the only thing grown-ups would ever take them to.
    When they came into the theater Barbara LaMarr in
Sandra
had already reached its middle, and the children couldn't figure out exactly what was happening. But then neither could the rest of the audience.
    "But, George, I do not seem to grasp it all!" the woman behind the four children kept saying to her husband.
    The four children did not grasp any of it, but Barbara LaMarr had lots of hair and great big eyes, and when strong men wanted to kiss her and she pushed them away and made suffering faces at the audience with her eyebrows, Jane and Katharine thought it was thrilling, and probably quite like the way life was, when you were grown-up.
    Mark didn't think much of the love blah, but he watched the villain getting more villainous, and the hero getting more heroic, and patiently waited for them to slug it out.
    Martha hated it.
    That was always the way with Martha. She wanted to go to the movies like anything until she got there, and then she hated it. Now she kept pestering the others to read her the words and tell her what was happening (for in those days movies did not talk). And when the others wouldn't, she began to whine.
    "Be quiet," said Jane.
    "I want to go home," said Martha.
    "You can't!" said Jane.
    "Shush!" said all the other people in the theater.
    "I want to, anyway," said Martha.
    Jane finally had to put her under the seat. This usually happened in the end.
    "Let me out!" said Martha, rising up from below.
    But Jane pushed down heavily on the seat, and Martha collapsed under it.
    It was dark and gloomy down there, with nothing to look at but dust and old gum other people had got tired of. Martha thought of crying, but she had tried this once in the past, and Jane had kicked her. She decided she might as well go to sleep.
    Meanwhile, on the screen above, the hero was finally having his fight with the villain, and Jane and Mark and Katharine forgot all about Martha in their excitement. Jane also forgot to keep hold of her handbag, and it slipped from her lap and fell to the floor.
    The wretched Martha, thankful for small favors, took the handbag and put it under her head, though it made rather a lumpy pillow.
    I hope it is not necessary to remind you of what was in the handbag.
    Jane remembered suddenly, and felt for it, in a panic. It wasn't on her lap. She reached down to feel for it on the floor. At that moment she heard Martha speak.
    "Ho hum. I wish I weren't here!" Martha said sleepily.
    "Darn!" was the first thought of Jane. "Another wish wasted. Now she'll be only
half
here, I suppose."
    Then, as the idea of this sank in, her blood froze. She didn't dare to look. Would just a severed head and shoulders meet her gaze, or would there be only a pair of gruesome legs running around down there?
    At last she made herself lean over and see.
    The charm hadn't worked it out that way at all. Martha was half there, to be sure, but it was
all
of her that was half there! Her outline was clear, but her features and everything that came between were sort of foggy and transparent. It was as though it were the ghost of Martha that stared up at Jane.
    She stared up at Jane and saw her horrified expression; then she stared down at herself. And then Martha—or the half of her that was