CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: WINTHROP
They had no trouble at all finding their way Home. Everything was incredibly familiar, as if they'd always lived in Ome and Home was the place next-door.
As they got away from the dragon, the supernatural effects gradually wore off. They went back to feeling human; but it felt good, really good to be human and enchanted.
Miss Prysby told Paul Newman what to expect and how to behave. "You're going out into the world now -- the real world. It's so wonderful, and I'm going to be with you when you see it all for the first time -- brand-new and full of surprises. Oh, brave new world!"
Miss Prysby had learned all the street names when Mr Shermin had told her at the beginning of the trip. So when they arrived in Winthrop, she told Miss Morgan which way to go, and soon they were back at school.
The kids all piled out of the little green VW, and Miss Morgan started walking up the front steps with the torch in her hand. Just then, overhead, they heard airplane noises; and as the plane got closer, they heard:
"Humdrum humbug
beating on his humdrum;
humdrum humbug
beating on his humdrum . . ".
Morgan was caught off balance. She tripped on the top step and fell. The torch hit the door, and the door was ablaze and the building was ablaze, and all Winthrop was ablaze, and the whole world was ablaze with the fire that doesn't burn.
"Out of sight," said Paul Newman.
"Gosh," said Donny, "everything's beautiful".
Mark asked, "Miss Morgan, why wasn't it always this way?"
"I don't know, Mark," she answered. "I just don't know".
Mr Newman asked, "You mean it wasn't always this way?"
The sound above them changed. It was still a drum, but it was a different beat -- a wild dance beat.
"Man," said Mr Newman, "that Humbug's turned into one humdinger of a drummer".
Miss Morgan looked up toward the sound, but all she saw was clouds -- light fluffy little clouds. She wondered if maybe one of them was Cloud Nine. She wondered if Mr Carroll was still there.
The sun came out. Maybe, as Plato said, it wasn't the real sun; but it shone brightly.
Miss Morgan stood up, brushed herself off, and picked up the torch. It was hard to say if it had lost anything in the fall. She opened the blazing door of the school and walked in.
Just then, Mr Shermin came running and stumbling and dancing toward the school. "Marvelous!" he exclaimed, fighting hard to catch his breath. "It's simply marvelous. I never really believed it could be this way.
"I came rushing back, thinking you'd all be depressed and run-down after going through all that for nothing. I hoped that what I had learned would console you a bit -- maybe give you some hope. And I'm greeted with this. It makes my head swim -- like when I changed myself into a fish".
"What did you learn, Mr Shermin?" asked Miss Prysby.
"All I can say is what I thought I learned. I really don't know what to make of this. You see, Mr Plato didn't tell the whole story; or, rather, the story didn't have all the answers. No story could hope to have all the answers.
"You see, it suddenly struck me that just a few days ago this very class was enchanted. Regardless of what was going on in the world around them, regardless of what had developed through the centuries, these children were enchanted.
"Then I realized that Plato's explanation, or at least the way I took it at first, was too heavily weighted on the side of environment.
"Enchantment is in you. It's a spark in you that glows and fades, and maybe it never totally goes out. Lord, I hope it never totally goes out. But it's in you. That's what I came to tell you -- the fire is in you. You don't have to go chasing to the ends of the earth -- it's in you.
"But now I see this . . ".
