by Rucker Moses
“It’s not so bad. I was tired of running myself down, hopping from echo to echo. I miss performing sometimes. The crowds. And I miss jumping from world to world, across oceans and eras. Would you believe I visited the pharaoh’s court in Egypt, met history’s first magician, Dedi himself, almost five thousand years ago? Nah, you probably wouldn’t believe that. But it’s true. And come to find out, he wasn’t the first by a long shot. In fact, we lucky to even know his name.”
“Wait, so you traveled back in time?”
“Well, sort of. As you said, the Realm is full of echoes. Each one is a moment in time, preserved. And you can jump from one echo to the next, if you know how to do it.”
“But I thought once the rift closes, you can’t leave your echo anymore.”
“Well, that’s not quite the case. See, each echo is a twenty-six-hour loop of a moment in time. A moment centered around—”
“A rift,” I say.
“Correct. Now, everything about that echo stays the same as the moment in real time, including the rift. So at the thirteenth hour, there’s a rift somewhere in each echo, and if you can find it, you can jump through it, into other echoes. We call it riding echoes. But it’s a dangerous pastime, young man, and you could end up stuck.”
“How do you end up stuck?”
“When you ride echoes, you can miss and get stuck in the portal itself. You have to be careful.”
“Mr. Herman, I’m not trying to ride echoes or anything like that. I lost my pop. I just want him back.”
“But your daddy’s not the type to sit still. You might have to follow him.”
“I need to open a portal or a gate or something, just to pull him through before it’s too late. He’s coming home. I know he is. He just needs my help.”
“You might be right about that. If you can open a portal, and he meets you there, you should be able to help him home, as long as there’s no new echo pushing your daddy’s echo out of reach. But opening a portal—that ain’t exactly child’s play.”
“You need the four elements of magic. Right? Force, Illusion, Mystic, and Sorcery. That’s how you open a portal, when all four elements come together. Right?” I ask, though I can’t picture how this might work.
“Heh. Quite the magic student we got here. Well, your daddy got three of them from me, anyway. My three best tricks. He must have got the fourth from somewhere else.”
He sure did. Maestro’s Mirror.
“Where?” I ask.
“I couldn’t say.”
“No, I mean did he get the objects from your grave?”
“You make your own daddy sound like a common grave robber. Yes, he got them from me, but he had my blessing. We talked, just like you and me are doing. And I showed him the way.”
“And that’s where he returned them?”
Black Herman shows a sly grin.
“Please. Show me the way.”
He turns his head to the mausoleum up on top of the hill.
He winks and smiles. The clouds move and the moonlight fades and the half-lit sketch of Black Herman vanishes into the shade.
The mausoleum is dedicated to the life of Black Herman. Scenes of his greatest triumphs are carved in stone along the walls. There’s him at a stadium of thousands. Him in his study in Harlem, surrounded by well-dressed community folks. Him at the pharaoh’s court in ancient Egypt. Him as a young man in a small West African town. Him in a coffin, buried alive before a crowd in America.
There’s a familiar box that’s set on a podium against the back wall.
I look at the box in my hands, to make sure it’s still there.
The Lost and Found and the box against the wall are practically identical. The only difference I can see is the locking mechanism with the Watch of 13. The box in Black Herman’s mausoleum doesn’t have one. Otherwise, they are the same.
I reach to open Black Herman’s box, but my hand goes right through. I try again, but it’s like the box is only an illusion.
“That won’t work. You not here, my boy.”
I look around for Black Herman, but don’t see him. It’s just his voice talking to me.
“So how do I get the elements?” I ask, getting an anxious chill.
“The box, young man. The place where the fading echo meets the rising earth.”
“What? That’s just a riddle,” I say. “Give me something I can do.”
“Your daddy figured it out.”
That makes me pause.
If my dad figured it out, so can I.
Black Herman must have known that would work on me. Am I that easy to see through?
The box, the box . . .
Where the fading echo meets the rising earth.
I don’t know what that means. But I do know there’s two boxes, one a Realm box and one a real box (though at this point I don’t know which is which).
If I’m looking for the place where they meet, maybe I should introduce them to each other?
I set the box in my hands over the top of the box on the platform.
“That’s it,” Black Herman says.
I line up the sides of each box so there’s no space between the two. I lower the Lost and Found box so it phases through the podium box. When the two boxes occupy the exact same space, I hold still. To my naked eye, it looks like one single box.
Only I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if I let go. Will the Lost and Found keep phasing and fall through the podium and through the floor? If none of this is really here, what is there to hold it up?
I close my eyes. Trust, I think. This is the spot where the fading echo meets the rising earth.
It has to be.
I let go of the box and open my eyes.
The Lost and Found sits on top of the podium in Black Herman’s mausoleum. Two boxes are now one.
I touch the wood and it feels solid, too. I open the lid, reach in, and pull out a leather sack tied with leather strings.
One by one, I remove the objects.
The deck of cards.
The pistol.
The skull.
And a shard of mirror glass in the shape of a lightning bolt.
A smile spreads across my face.
I got you, Dad. I’m coming.
I carry the Lost and Found back down the hill, heavy with the four objects rattling around inside.
Getting closer, I think, hurrying to the gates. Closer to Dad, closer to—
Then I stop short.
I realize I don’t know what’s the appointed spot, according to Dad and Long Fingers. I don’t know where to go next. Assuming I can get out of this graveyard. Which I’m hoping won’t be a problem—according to Black Herman, I never left Echo City. Only my mind is here. Or something.
“Black Herman?” I say just before the tall gates.
I look around. I hope he hears me.
“If you were going to go back to reality from the Realm, where would you do it?” I ask him.
There’s a moment of quiet, and then Herman says, “I’m disappointed, Kingston. I thought you could figure that out on your own. When I performed my buried-alive trick, where would I return?”
I grin. “The same spot where you left. Got it, Black Herman. Thank you for all of your help. It was a great honor meeting you. I’ll never forget it. Hope to see you again, somehow.”
I open the gates and step through, toward the heavy fog.
I’m waiting for something to happen, but nothing does.
“Ahem,” says Black Herman.
I think for a moment.
The same spot where you left . . .
“Okay, okay, I think I get it,” I say.
I close the gate behind me and turn the handle with a squeaky clang.
I get a rush of warmth as the fog consumes me once m
ore. My vision goes blank and there’s a sound like when you cup your ear to seashells. The world starts spinning. I have to close my eyes to keep from getting dizzy . . .
I open them, and I’m at the mural of the graveyard. I’m holding the Lost and Found against the wall.
But I lose my balance and fall to the sidewalk and drop the box.
“King!” I hear the combined voices of Veronica and Too Tall.
I roll onto my back and look up.
There are three faces. My cousin looks like she might actually cry. Tall’s eyes are wide. Only Sol seems pretty cool about everything.
“What happened, King? Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay,” says Veronica.
“I think so, V,” I say, rubbing my forehead and feeling the concrete against the back of my head like rock-hard sandpaper.
“Good,” she says, recovering. “Because your mom will kill me. And that won’t work for me, I like living.”
“Can you get up?” asks Tall. “Or you need to lay there for a bit?”
“I’m up, I’m up,” I say as though talking to an alarm clock that’s gone off too many times.
I hold out my left hand for Tall to take it and help me up.
I realize my hand is gone once again. I should be used to it by now, but after having it back, it takes me a second. How did I have it back just now? I wonder. Was it real?
Did I ever have it back? Or was that just my mind, being tricky with me?
“King? King! You there?” asks Tall. “How hard did you hit your head?”
“Tall, how long was I gone just now?”
“What do you mean, how long were you gone?” asks Too Tall.
I open my mouth to clarify, but something stops me. I try to imagine everything that’s happening from Tall and V’s perspective, and I realize I can’t. I have no idea what the last few moments looked like to them.
“What did you see me do, just now?” I ask. “You saw me turn the handle through the box, right?”
“You stuck your hand through,” says V, “and turned your wrist. Then you made a dreamy face. Then you turned your hand again, dropped the box, and collapsed.”
So that whole trip to the graveyard happened in a fraction of time. My body never actually left, like Black Herman said.
The box—I think in a panic—the four objects!
I rush to where I dropped the box on the sidewalk. It lies on its side. I turn the box upright and open it with shaking hands.
“What’s that?” asks Tall.
The leather bag is still there.
Whew.
“I get that this sounds crazy,” I say. “But just now, I was in that graveyard.”
Sol starts chuckling.
“What’s so funny, little man?” Too Tall asks with some bass in his voice.
“Listen to me. I’m telling you, it’s true.”
I explain to them about the enchanted graveyard of magic Black America, and how I met Black Herman in a Prince Albert coat, and how I saw him in a reflection before.
They’re listening carefully to every word. Though I can’t tell if they believe me.
So I pull out the leather bag and untie the leather strings.
“Here. I found this in the graveyard, just like Dad’s note said.”
I take out the Skull of Balsamo—a preserved human skull with copper lining the jawbone. That gets a wow out of them. Then Hooker’s Vanishing Deck—looks like an ordinary deck of cards, with a bear-head insignia. Then William Tell’s Pistol, an old-timey six-shooter with a long barrel. And then the shard of mirrored glass.
Too Tall and V look stunned.
“We have the four elements. You understand now?” I say.
“This is unbelievable, King,” Veronica says, holding up the copper-lined skull and looking in its blank eye sockets.
“I know. I mean, thanks. I mean, what time is it? We got to go.”
“Where to?” asks Tall.
“When you want to return to reality from the Realm, you got to come back the way you came.”
There’s a U-Haul truck parked behind the Mercury. The loading entrance to the theater is actually open, and the truck is wedged into the dock at an odd angle. Whoever left this here was in a hurry. We walk around the truck, and the loading entrance takes us through a tunnel and backstage.
One thing hasn’t changed—the Mercury is so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat.
I check the Watch of 13 lodged in the Lost and Found. The hour hand is just past the 12 and creeping toward the thirteenth hour. One more turn of the small hand and I may never see him again.
“What time you got?” I ask V.
“7:32.” She glances at the watch on her wrist. “Fifty-eight minutes, scratch that, fifty-seven. 7:33 now.”
Too Tall, Veronica, Sol, and I look out from stage left.
On the stage, there’s a huge object with a tarp draped over it, about seven feet tall. It’s the same behemoth that Long Fingers had in his workshop. Now it stands right on top of the trapdoor where I found the Lost and Found to begin with.
“Well, I’m guessing my dad and uncle brought that thing in the U-Haul, huh? But where are they?” says Veronica.
“Hello!” I call, my voice bouncing around the old theater. “Uncle Crooked Eye? Uncle Long Fingers?”
No response.
But it does feel good to hear my own voice echo back to me. Like I’ve announced myself to all the phantom shows and crowds that linger in this magic-rich place.
I’m here. And I’ve come to bring Dad home.
We approach the tarp on center stage.
“What do you suppose it is?” asks Too Tall.
“I think I know,” I say.
“Wait, King,” says Veronica. “This is super creepy. Where are my dad and Uncle Crooked?”
I shrug. “I’m sure they’re just on the way to the graveyard and we missed them.”
“But won’t they need the Lost and Found to go to the graveyard? I’m telling you, King, this is suspect,” V says.
“Look, we have the box, and the elements. We can’t waste any more time.”
I take the tarp in hand and give it a pull with a flourish to reveal the Mirror.
“I knew it!” I say. “This is what he was working on. Your dad wanted to get his brother back just as much as I did.”
Sol steps forward and stares up at the Mirror.
“Whoa,” says Tall. “You mean your uncle made this?”
“Right under our noses,” I say, and admire the craftmanship. It’s an exact replica of Maestro’s Mirror, right down to the snakes tooled into the wood and meeting at the very top. The only missing part is a lightning-shaped hole in the center of the glass.
“Uncle Long never gave up on Dad, though the whole world thought he did,” I say, taking out one object from the Lost and Found at a time and setting them down in front of the Mirror. The skull. The cards. The pistol. “I was wondering where the glass had gone, after the fire. It was your dad, V. He came and gathered up all the glass he could.”
I take the last object out of the bag. The lightning-shaped mirror shard.
“So that’s why all those shards in his workshop,” says V.
“Yup. That shard must have gone through to the other side with Dad. At his workshop, we saw how he tried to duplicate the glass, but it needed this piece to work, all along. Dad had to pass it back. Long Fingers needed the Lost and Found.”
“But King, don’t you think it’s a little sketch that this Mirror is just waiting here like this?”
I lower the lid of the box and I check the Watch of 13 as it ticks toward the 13.
“We’re running out of time, V.”
Sol points to the hole in the Mirror. He nods to me. With trembling fingers, I set the lightning-bolt-shaped shard into
the empty space in the Mirror like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
“Okay, what happens now?” asks Tall. “Don’t you need some Gorilla Glue or something so it holds?”
He gets his answer as something clicks. Blue light starts blazing from all four objects. The skull glows with blue in its eyes. The cards look like they’re surrounded by blue flame. The pistol has a blue flame streaming from the nozzle. And a blue star appears in the depths of the Mirror.
And then it expands like a rising blue sun, pushing away our reflection.
A silhouette is in front of the blue light.
The tall shape of a man.
A figure I know so well.
He steps forward and the blinding blue recedes behind him. His features become clear. Double-dimpled smile. Salt-and-pepper stubble. The same black suit he wore the night of his last performance.
He keeps moving forward. Toward me. Toward us.
He smiles. His eyes narrow.
His open hand reaches for me, and I reach back with my Realm hand.
We did it, I think, he’s here!
It’s just me and Dad.
I forget everything else. I don’t even know where the glass ends and he begins. I don’t know whether I’m standing onstage or I’m inside the Mirror.
All I know is we clasp hands. His grip is strong.
His eyes smile and tear with relief. He mouths, King.
Then something happens. There’s a loud shout. I hear my name, I think.
But I don’t look away. I won’t. I hold on . . .
There’s an arm wrapped around me. Another arm that hooks my right elbow as a hand lands on my chest.
“Kingston, no!”
It’s Mom.
I realize Mom doesn’t even see Pop.
I’m half inside the Mirror. She’s holding me from center stage. I grip Pop’s hand with my Realm hand. Mom is pulling us both back toward her. She’s trying to rescue me from the Mirror. But she’s actually helping me bring Dad back home.
Then there’s an eruption of blue light.
Ferocious energy floods in on me like a dam broke somewhere within the Mirror. There’s so much force I lose my grip and Pop’s hand slips away.
