Kingston and the Magician's Lost and Found

by Rucker Moses

  No—

  Something’s horribly wrong.

  Blue light blasts from the Mirror. I don’t see Pops anymore. Tons of light and energy pour into our world.

  I tumble back out of the Mirror and onto the stage floor. Mom falls with me, clutching me to her chest.

  Mom gets to her feet, still clutching me. “What are you doing, King? Are you trying to toss yourself away, just like he did?”

  I feel her nails bite my arm. Her hands are trembling and it’s like they send an electric current through me, shaking me. “He was here,” I blubber. “I had his hand in my hand, Mom! We can bring him back!”

  But she doesn’t hear me at all. She gets to her knees, ignoring me and the blazing blue light rushing from the Mirror. “And if this young lady hadn’t come looking for her little brother, what would have happened then, Kingston?”

  I notice Sula is behind her. She’s got her arm around Sol, who’s shaking her off like he’s seriously annoyed and pointing up to the roof.

  A burst of wind crashes down from above. Cold air fills the warm, humid theater as overhead beams buckle and crack.

  I look to the hole in the roof. The light from the Mirror surges up there.

  A voice booms. It’s deep and carries through the entire place.

  “The night the caterpillar’s world ends . . .”

  A figure floats down from the hole in the roof, spotlit by the intense beam of blue light-energy.

  It’s Urma Tan, gliding through the rafters, head to toe in black with crystals woven throughout her dress.

  “The night the caterpillar’s world ends,” she says in her smooth, prowling voice, “the caterpillar sees darkness. But something much more beautiful emerges.”

  She looks alive. Power radiates off her as she descends from above.

  The light in the Mirror is like a blazing star. I have to squint to see that Pop . . . is gone.

  Mom turns to Urma. “What in the world?”

  Urma drifts and hovers just a few feet above the stage. She holds out a gloved hand toward the Mirror. The blue star leaps from inside the glass and levitates to her fingertips as though she called it to her. She tilts her head back, opens her mouth, and eases the star down her throat. She glows from the inside. The blue energy beams through her translucent skin and then blasts forth, exploding from the inside out like a thousand blue suns.

  I’m blinded by it. I’m sure we all are.

  When my eyesight comes back, there are fresh crystals everywhere. I mean, it’s like we’re on the North Pole all of a sudden. Blue-tinted white crystals cover every inch of the Mercury. They line the stage, the empty seats, the walls, the mezzanine, and even fill the hole in the roof. Everything is bright now, like Urma banished the summertime and made an ice cave.

  The crystals even cover me and everyone else. I look around at my mom, V, Too Tall, Sol, and Sula—all of us are practically wearing suits of armor made of crystal that hold us fast to the crystalized floor. We’re each like a human stalagmite.

  I can’t move. The crystal is like cold hard steel. My arms, my legs, my knees, my jaw are all locked up tight. It’s even hard to breathe. The Lost and Found is on the floor between my feet, partially covered in crystal. I can just barely look down to see the Watch of 13. The hand inches to forty-five minutes away from the thirteenth hour. Mint appears from stage right. He stalks in gingerly on the crystal floor, careful with each step.

  “You were right, Urma,” he says. “The boy came through.” He surveys the stage and forces a pleased smile. But I’m not so convinced this is what he had in mind.

  Behind him, four more of his scarred goons haul out the heavy, hog-tied bodies of my two uncles. Long Fingers and Crooked Eye groan and cuss into the gags across their mouths, hands twined tight behind their backs. Urma’s goons drag my dad’s brothers along the crystal floor and toss them beneath Urma’s feet like they’re hefting trash bags. My uncles struggle against their bindings until they accept it’s hopeless.

  The crystals hold me rock-still, but my stomach is doing backflips. A rage ignites in my chest. But I can’t call out. My lips are clamped shut.

  Urma Tan, still hovering in the blue light, is now slowly rotating like a figure in a snow globe. There’s a serene smile on her face. The way someone looks when they’re eating an insanely good meal. Mint and the goons just watch, entranced. Like they’re waiting for words or a message. She doesn’t seem to notice that any of us are here. I’m not entirely sure what’s happening. It seems like this hunger for Realm energy has consumed her completely.

  I think about how I held her crystal back at her place on Torrini Boulevard. Urma was turning gray. I dropped the crystal and left it for her because she needed it to live. Now it’s like she just lives to feed. If I hadn’t given her back the crystal, could I have stopped all of this from happening?

  I want to help my uncles up. I just want to move, so bad. I want to free my friends.

  But I feel the energy draining from me. I’m stuck thinking about how wrong things have gone. And how it’s all my fault. The final pieces click into place. It was Urma who put the code on the marquee. She was around Maestro and Dad, she must have known the code from way back when. Then she must have found the box. But she couldn’t open it. She didn’t have the Watch of 13. She needed Long Fingers for that. Or, as it turned out, me. She said she wanted the box to recharge her crystals. But we did her one better and built her a whole portal and went and opened it for her. So she could do . . . this. Just drink and consume endlessly, not caring if she breaks our world.

  I was so blind, so fixed on being the hero and rescuing my father, I ruined everything he sacrificed himself for.

  I watch the energy gush from the Mirror.

  I wonder, Did she do this last time?

  Was she consuming the energy when my dad broke the Mirror?

  As these thoughts lay me low, I realize I have to resist. It’s not over, I tell myself. It’s not over. It’s the only thought that keeps me from giving up. It can’t be over. I won’t let it be.

  My finger moves.

  The index finger on my Realm hand.

  It begins with that little finger wiggle. It’s not over, I repeat to myself. The crystal that formed around my Realm hand cracks. I feel the hard crystal split down my arm. There’s suddenly space around my hand. My fingers flex and it can move. I make a fist and summon all the concentrated force that I can manage. I put all that bad feeling of letting everyone down into that fist. I let it build and build. All the disappointment in myself. How I let down V and Tall, and all their faith in me. And Sol, who somehow believed in me, too. How I broke Mom’s heart. And how bad I just missed Pop.

  I see the clock click closer to 13 . . .

  And I let it all go.

  I flex my hand flat and shatter the crystal surrounding me into tiny pieces. I can somehow feel every little shard in my Realm hand, like they’re all tied to strings looped around my fingers. I feel them like extensions of me. I hold each shard suspended, like hail frozen in time. I feel as though they’re waiting for my direction. So I send them at Urma.

  Every last crystal shard flies at her like a maelstrom.

  She waves her hand and the shards come to an abrupt halt.

  I fall to the crystal floor, drained, and land on top of the Lost and Found. I realize that was all of my power. And she stopped it cold.

  She turns to me with a feline grin. I hear Mint’s hoarse laughter. With a flick of her fingertips, she sends the sharp shards right back at me.

  I hug my arms around the Lost and Found, and leap in the only direction I can.

  Straight into the Mirror.

  I’m floating.

  There’s no ground beneath me, but also nothing pulling me down. I’m just there. Momentum carried me through the Mirror, and then I stopped. I’m in empty Realm space, hoverin
g in the air, if air is even what you’d call it. I imagine this is what it’s like with no gravity. I’m not even sure what I’m breathing, or whether I’m breathing. I just seem to be alive somehow.

  I turn back the way I came. I can see through to the other side of the Mirror. There’s Urma, looking after me. She doesn’t like that I got away, but she’s too busy feeding to care. There’s Mom, V, and Tall, all locked up in crystal, with Sula and Sol. There’s Long Fingers and Crooked Eye, tied up near Urma Tan’s feet. And there’s Mint and crew, looking dumbfounded. Their eyes are all on the Mirror.

  I know what I need to do. Break the glass from the inside, like Dad did. But I don’t know how. There isn’t exactly a rock around for me to throw through the glass. Really, from this side it doesn’t even look like glass. It just looks like a portal to reality itself, wreathed by blue flame.

  I am in the Realm. I see other portals lit up in the darkness ahead of me, like mirrors tinted electric blue. They must lead to other echoes, other realities, just like Black Herman told me in the graveyard. Two portals are close to me. One is moving closer and the other is shrinking. The rest trail off forever, repeating and repeating until they’re just like far-off stars.

  I realize Dad must have been here, in this strange space, when he tried to return to us. Is his portal closed for good? I glance down at the clockface on Magician’s Lost and Found. The little hand is maybe thirty minutes from the 13.

  When my hand went through this box, I started a new echo and put Pops on the clock. Wherever his echo is in here, time will be up at the thirteenth hour. I might never be able to find him again.

  As I stare from one portal to the next, I realize I’m falling toward them. I have no clue what’s up or down. I thought I was vertical, but it turns out I’m horizontal. My stomach feels like it’s somewhere near my throat.

  As I get closer, I can see through the entrance of each portal. It’s like I’m looking through a window into someone’s house. Except these aren’t houses, these are echoes, new dimensions created the moment the Realm opens. Within the bigger portal to my right is the Mercury, dark and dormant, blanketed in ash and dust. It’s just as it was yesterday, when I opened the Magician’s Lost and Found. Within the shrinking portal to my left, speeding farther away, is the Mercury, bright and alive, a packed house, and a show on the stage . . . The Mercury of four years and six months ago. It’s not gone. Not yet. Then I crash through the larger portal and I tumble to the Mercury’s stage, covered in dust.

  It takes a moment to orient myself. I’m in the Mercury. From yesterday. Well, not actually yesterday, but a copy of it. The Realm’s echo of yesterday. It’s a dead ringer for yesterday, anyway. Same shadows slanting across the audience. Same sunbeam spotlighting the stage. Same eerie quiet that’s heavy with shows past.

  I realize this is what Black Herman was talking about. I’m in an echo, and if I want to ride to another echo, to where my father disappeared, I must jump through this echo that I created when I opened the Magician’s Lost and Found.

  I glance to the Lost and Found in my hands right now. The clock says twenty-two minutes to go.

  I hear someone coming. Who’s that now? I wonder. Mint? I leap down to the orchestra section and stash the Lost and Found under one of the dusty seats and hide behind it. The footsteps come closer.

  “Oh, hey, King. There you are.”

  It’s Too Tall. He sees clear over my hiding spot. He’s looking right at me.

  My heart is beating a million times a second. What do I do? What do I say?

  “Oh, um. Hey, Tall,” comes out of my mouth.

  “Why you hiding like that?” he asks. I realize he was expecting to see me.

  “Um, I dunno,” I say. “Just got spooked, I guess. Man, this place is creepy, huh?”

  “You said it, man. Jeez.”

  I try to remember exactly what happened yesterday. Where am I now? Well, not me, but the other me, the Realm me.

  “How’d you get those clothes?” asks Tall with his eyebrows scrunched up.

  “Oh, I just, like, had these on, under my other shirt and shorts, you know?”

  “Um, what? My dude, it’s like eighty degrees outside.”

  “Well, I run cool, is all that is.”

  I close my eyes, realizing how lame all this sounds.

  He looks at me like I’m from Pluto.

  But it doesn’t matter at all if this Too Tall thinks I’m crazy. He’s a Realm copy and not the real Too Tall at all. Just like Urma. I just need to get to the echo before the clock runs out. But how?

  Think, Kingston.

  Another portal. That’s how. That’s the only way. Riding echoes. Like Black Herman said.

  I opened the portal yesterday. The one that made this whole echo happen to begin with. I created the portal by accident when my hand went through the Lost and Found. I didn’t see it, but then again, I was under all six-foot-plus of Too Tall at the time.

  When the last portal opened up, you need to be there, and jump through. That’s what Black Herman said. Riding echoes.

  I look up at Too Tall, and panic hits me like a punch to the chest.

  Yesterday, I opened the portal when I stuck my hand into the Lost and Found, and Tall fell on me. But what happens if he’s distracted, and doesn’t fall on me, because I’m here talking to him?

  “Um, Tall, have you been up on the stage?” I ask, my voice trembling with nerves.

  He shakes his head.

  “You see that wild mural up there?”

  “Nah, it’s cool?”

  “Very.”

  He leaps up onstage. I grab the Lost and Found from where I stashed it under the seat. I hold it behind my back as I follow Too Tall. “Man, I already wrecked these kicks when I came down that chute,” he says, eyeing the dusty stage steps as he climbs. “You know, I haven’t even worn these OGs but three times. Dead-stocked out the box.” He shakes his head.

  Exactly what the real Too Tall would say. These Realm copies are identical but they’re not real. So that means I’m somewhere down under this stage. Another me. The thought gives me a chill.

  I see the open trapdoor in center stage, in front of him. I know he was looking at the mural when he fell on me.

  “Wow, that’s your pops, right? Man, that mural is excellent,” he says, eyes fixed on the scene of my dad and Maestro squared off as his feet keep walking, keep walking toward the door . . .

  Get ready, I tell myself.

  “Yooo—” he howls.

  Sure enough, Tall slips and falls into the trap.

  Here’s my chance.

  I watch from above as Tall crashes into me—well, the other me—and my hand is jolted into the box.

  Blue light shoots from the box. From above, I see the infinite reflections of the Realm. This is the moment I created a new echo. I must jump. My echo self falls backward and pulls his hand from the box. A blue burning energy outlines the box. There’s only so much space in this trap beneath the stage. Most of the portal seems to be under the stage where I can’t see. I can’t even make out what the portal leads to. There’s only a little corner I could jump through.

  It couldn’t have been open for long, since I didn’t even see it when I’d opened it. So here goes—it’s my only shot.

  I hold on to the Lost and Found and leap—

  And I hit the side of the trap on the way down and land in the blue flame around the portal’s edges.

  An explosion of energy courses through me. My mind feels like it’s breaking into little bits, spreading out, traveling like lightning, and forming back together. I’m able to think and see, but not feel. I’m not aware of having hands or arms or feet or even breath. But I do see things.

  I see the Mercury, once again. But like I’ve never seen it before.

  I’m on the stage. Maestro is just a few feet away. Pop
is behind him. Urma is about to step through the Mirror. And I’m the Mirror. Literally standing in the Mirror.

  Am I stuck in it? In between echoes?

  I remember something Black Herman said. When you ride echoes, you can miss and get stuck in the portal itself. I look out at a packed house. Everyone, even the ushers in the balcony, have their eyes glued to the performance. The lights are so bright, I have trouble seeing every face in the crowd, at first. But then I find the seat, center orchestra, three rows back. There’s Mom, and there’s me.

  A good four and a half years younger. Smaller, hair much shorter. I look like a blank page.

  I expect to see myself alert and concerned. That’s how I remember it. I was one of the first to realize that something wasn’t quite right. I remember the look on Dad’s face. I remember the tremor of what was about to happen before it happened.

  But it doesn’t go down like that. There’s no tremor. There’s no look on Dad’s face. There’s no look on my face. I mean, I’m watching the show, but watching normal, like I’m waiting for a cool trick, just like everyone else.

  I must have twisted it up in my memory. I must have told myself that I saw it coming.

  I reach to pull myself out of the Mirror and step onstage, but my hand hits the glass from the inside. I can’t reach into the scene in front of me. I look down at the Watch. Ten minutes and time’s up.

  And now, I’m stuck here, too. Does that mean when the portal closes, I won’t make it back?

  So instead of Dad stuck in the Realm forever, it’s me . . .

  There’s Urma, staring into the Mirror. This is a different Urma, though. She looks scared. This must be the original Urma, Sula’s mom. No cold eyes or purplish veins running through her neck. She makes eye contact, for just a brief second. She looks confused.

  Then I look behind the curtain, stage left, and see the other Urma. She’s visible for a moment, only to me, as far as I can tell. She’s stepped from the cover of the curtain and makes this move with her hand like she’s throwing a baseball.

  Before I can take it all in, Sula’s mom flies toward me, right into the Mirror. She goes through me, like a gust of wind that should knock me backward, only I can’t seem to go backward. The force of her passing blurs my vision for a moment.