Free The Age of Magic by Ben Okri Page A

doing this all her life, Mistletoe began drawing figures on the magic canvas. The figures, as if emerging from mirrors, fell out of the canvas and became real. She drew a white horse and it galloped round the field. She sketched a flute and gave it to the black girl. She drew bottles of champagne and passed them round. She inscribed the outlines of a book, and someone asked what it was called.
    ‘You suggest,’ Mistletoe said.
    ‘Astonishing the gods,’ the magician replied.
    Mistletoe wrote out the title, and gave it to her. The daughters of Pan applauded. Then Mistletoe wrote the words: MUST GO NOW . And they all said, ‘No! Stay with us!’
    Mistletoe wrote on the canvas: I LOVE YOU ALL .
    ‘We love you too,’ they replied.
    Then she wrote: ARCADIA .
    And they clapped their hands, and said, ‘We’ll see you there!’
    Mistletoe stopped drawing and returned the wand to the conjuror. The circus folk gathered round and hugged her. They led her to the edge of the field of blue flowers and the magician tapped her on the head with the pentagram wand.
    Mistletoe found herself beneath the bridge, where it was darkest. An illusive melody in her head accompanied her past the fragrance of honeysuckle, when she regained her substance from the riches of the night.

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    He had been searching for her up and down the street. He had ventured towards the bridge but thought it unlikely that she had gone into its darkness. He had been beginning to be frantic, fearing he had somehow lost her forever. Then he decided to be still, and to wait. But his anger and his fear remained.
    He was standing where she had left him, and he still appeared to be gazing at the stars. But his profile communicated to her a sense of estrangement.
    Upon seeing him she knew he had been worried. She wanted to tell him how much she needed a little renewal. I have to keep overcoming myself in order to love more fully, she thought, as she drew closer to him. How can I not breathe the secret hour if it will enrich me?
    Lao stood in the shadow of the woodland, and turned his head slightly in her direction, and she knew that he was still upset. But a woman should have her mysteries, Mistletoe thought, and they should be mysterious even to herself. As she got near him she sensed his conflicting emotions. Loving or eviling, she thought. Which would win?
    From experience she knew that any gesture she made might worsen his mood. She gave him a severe little smile. Then she went past him quietly. She went on down the street. The architect of the dark had redesigned all the houses with night-substance.
    Most places look better and truer at night, she thought. She came to a solitary street lamp. Finding herself in the centre of the light, she turned and saw Lao walking towards her. He had a contemplative look.
    She went on into the darkness, and waited for him, with a question in her mind. When he stood in the ghostly pool of light, alone in a theatre of night, she began speaking to him. She reminded him of something he had written a long time ago. He had written that in dreams the mind is the stage, and the play staged upon it is our drama, already scripted in the book of life.
    As he listened a shiver ran through him.
    ‘If that’s the case,’ continued Mistletoe, ‘then the people in our dreams are all us. The places are us. The meaning is us too. We are the message, and we can change the dream. We can alter the script.’
    She paused. Disturbed by an intimation whose source is dream-like, he stood rooted in the theatre of light.
    ‘You said if we can’t change the beginning we can change the end. If we can’t change the end we can change the middle while dreaming and so change the meaning of the end. But something bothers me.’
    Lao stayed silent. He was struck by the way the night altered the tone of her voice and the implication of her words.
    ‘If the stage is us, and all the people in the dream are us, and the dream is our drama, why are we