The Magicians' Convention

by Elena Paige

15

  The Ancient Relic

  Toby heard talking in the background. He opened one eye cautiously. What had happened to him? The last thing he could remember was walking past the curtain and toward the couch. He looked around the purple room. He saw a crystal ball and it jogged his memory. He was in Holly’s room. The girl that talked to dead people.

  “Ouch,” he said, turning his head and expecting it to hurt. But it didn’t hurt at all. The last thing he remembered was something hitting his head.

  “You’re awake,” came the same distant voice he had heard a moment ago.

  “Abby?”

  Abby, Wesa, and Holly all came toward him like little mother hens checking on their chicks.

  “I’m so sorry I hit you,” said Abby, patting his head.

  “You were the one who hit me?” He scowled at her as he pushed her hand away .

  “With my doll.” Abby looked genuinely sorry as she cuddled it to her. Its porcelain eyes looked at Toby like it wasn’t sorry for hitting him at all.

  “We’re so glad you’re all right, Bonnie and me,” said Holly, googling her eyes at Toby.

  Toby took the hint. Abby didn’t know it was Wesa, and for whatever reason, Holly didn’t want her to. Toby raised his eyebrows to signal he understood.

  Looking back at Abby, he said, “Any reason you hit me with your nasty little doll?”

  “That’s very immature of you to call my doll nasty. Besides, I thought you were an intruder. I was in here waiting for Holly. I wanted my doll’s fortune told.”

  “Your doll’s fortune told? Seriously?” Toby wondered why Holly and Wesa were smiling like that was a perfectly normal explanation for why Abby had hit him on the head with her porcelain doll.

  Abby’s face looked rigid, and she was looking right through him as she talked. Something wasn’t right about her. Toby wondered why she was acting so weird.

  Wesa stepped out from behind Holly, who was taller than her. “We need to get back to our job, remember?”

  “I'm sure I can help,” said Abby.

  “I’m not sure you can,” said Wesa.

  “You’re looking for the Fiordi hat right?” she said.

  Toby sucked in a breath. “Why did you call it that? How do you know we’re even looking for a hat?”

  “Mr. Kirby told me,” said Abby, standing as straight as a soldier.

  “You don’t seem like yourself,” said Toby, feeling more and more worried about her .

  Wesa pressed Abby to answer. “What did Mr. Kirby tell you about the hat?”

  “We lost Thatch!” said Toby, remembering he hadn’t followed them to Holly’s room.

  Wesa continued pleading with Abby. “Tell me, Abby. It’s so important—you have no idea. What does the hat do?”

  “I don’t know why it’s so important to you . It’s Toby, Thatch, and Wesa who are looking for the hat, not you!” She turned her back on Wesa.

  Remembering that Abby could only see her as Bonnie, not Wesa at all, Toby tried to convince her another way.

  “Bonnie is more important than you understand. She knows stuff. Secret things. And she’s helping us find the hat.” He didn’t sound as convincing as he had planned.

  Abby took the bait anyway. “I guess I can tell you.”

  She sat down on the couch next to Toby and sat her doll between them. Toby glared at it.

  “I’m helping Mr. Kirby find the hat. Me and Elouise are helping Billy, Rod, and Jim too,” said Abby in a monotone voice as she continued hugging her doll to her.

  “Have you gone bonkers? Your grandmother is on our side. The good side!” said Toby, grabbing Abby with both hands and shaking her.

  Abby just stared straight ahead.

  “So why are you telling us about this?” said Wesa.

  “Mr. Kirby told me to,” she replied.

  “What has he done to you? I’ve known Abby forever, and she’s not normally like this, I swear. Something’s wrong with her,” said Toby.

  “I’m absolutely fine. I’m working with the right team,” said Abby, putting both her thumbs up .

  “Well, tell us about the hat then,” said Wesa.

  “It’s called the Fiordi hat. It’s an ancient relic. Mr. Kirby has Thatch, by the way. He’d like to swap Wesa for Thatch. Do you know where she is?”

  “She’s definitely under some sort of spell,” whispered Toby to Wesa.

  “How do we know anything you’re saying is even true?” Holly took off her Doc Martens and opened a can of soda.

  “You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. I’m going to find Elouise.” She swept up her doll and hurried past the purple dividing curtain as though in a sudden hurry.

  “Shouldn’t we go after her and find out where Thatch is?” said Toby as Holly and Wesa fell onto the couch in defeat.

  “You don’t actually believe a word she said, do you?” said Wesa.

  “I’ve known Abby all my life, and that wasn’t her, trust me. Mr Kirby must have done something to her. It’s like she’s in a trance or something. He must have sent her here to tell us for a reason.”

  “Yes, but we can’t swap Wesa for Thatch as I’m not myself. Anyway, we’re here for Holly to help us. We’ll find Thatch on our own, I promise.”

  Holly stood up and walked toward a little table with a giant crystal ball set upon it. “It sounds like you two are embroiled in something pretty serious. I hate Mr. Kirby—he took my dad when he was only trying to protect me. That’s why I’m going to help you.”

  “Was the mother the one that killed the little girl you were talking to?” said Toby.

  “What?” said Holly, who now looked like she was daydreaming .

  “In your performance. What happened to Harold and his wife? Did she really kill her own daughter? What sort of monster does that?” said Toby.

  “Oh, them. I hate doing those stage shows, but Dad insists. Now he’s stuck in security for the whole day, and Harold and his wife are still roaming around the convention.”

  Wesa hugged Holly to her. “It’s terrible your father has been taken. But he’ll be fine. You know he will. You must carry on without him. I’m so sorry to trouble you when you have so much on your plate, but we really need your help.”

  “I know. Your dad is here, Wesa, and he’s helping you,” said Holly, losing all signs of emotion once again.

  Toby figured she was so used to talking to dead people she wasn’t affected by it.

  Wesa started shaking. “He is?”

  “He asked me to help you. He tells me it’s very important that you succeed today. Your dad says that, although your mother pushes you to learn magic, she’s only ever done it for your own good. To protect you. You need to save her.”

  Wesa burst into tears. “I will do my best, Father. I won’t let you down.”

  “He’s going now,” said Holly, looking into the giant crystal ball in front of her. Her eyes started to flicker wildly.

  The crystal ball looked like a giant marble. Toby wondered how she could see things in there, when all he saw was white.

  “I see the Fiordi hat. It is here at the convention. I’m sure of it. It’s purple!” she said, closing her eyes and leaning back in her chair as though already exhausted.

  “Wow, that really helps narrow it down,” said Toby .

  “Shh!” Wesa smacked him on the back of the head.

  Holly leaned forward and reopened her eyes. Except now they were white. No pupil, no iris. Just white. Toby had to cover his mouth so as not to scream. This was freaking him out more than the fact that she talked to dead people.

  Holly looked into the ball again.

  “The legend has caught up to reality. This is Merlin’s hat.”

  “Seriously? Merlin, the magician? As if,” said Toby, not believing a word Holly spoke.

  “Toby! Don’t interrupt her. This is important,” said Wesa.

  “The hat you seek is able to take the powers of other mages. The one after the hat will stop at n
othing to gain it. The seeker of the hat seeks only one person’s powers—Toby’s,” said Holly.

  “Let’s go. Wesa, come on. We’re wasting time. I don’t have any power. We need to find that hat. And Thatch.” Toby wanted to get out of this room all of a sudden. He felt his temperature rising. He needed to get out now. “Come on, Wesa. That’s all we needed to know.”

  Wesa resisted his pull. “Wait. There’s more.”

  Holly turned her head toward Toby unexpectedly. He ducked down, frightened that lasers might shoot out from her eerie white eyeballs. He felt sick to his stomach as the fear of her revelations settled in. He was more a part of this world than he could have ever imagined.

  “You mother. Your father. They are here too—at the convention,” she said.

  Toby felt the words like a smack to the chest. His breath quickened as though he was hyperventilating. “You’re wrong. My parents are dead! ”

  “No! They are very much alive. And they both know you’re here,” said Holly, before closing her eyes and dropping to the floor.

  16

  Frozen

  Toby’s head was spinning. He could feel Wesa’s stone-cold hand in his as sweat poured from him, putting out the fire in his brain. His parents were alive? How? Where had they been for the last ten years? And he had magic? How was any of this possible?

  Toby dropped Wesa’s hand and ran toward Holly. He knelt on the floor beside her lifeless body and shook her. “My parents can’t be alive. They can’t. You’re wrong. Tell me it’s a lie.”

  Wesa tried to pull him off. “No, Toby! That’s all she can tell us. She needs to rest. We’ll find out the truth, I promise.”

  But Toby couldn’t hear her properly. “What about Grandpa? Does he know my mother and father are alive?” Toby began shaking uncontrollably and let Holly drop back on the floor, unconscious.

  Wesa slapped Toby in the face. “You can ask him yourself as soon as we have the hat. I’m sorry for doing that, but you need to focus. We have to find Thatch and the hat. ”

  The hat! Toby looked at Wesa and tried to comprehend her words. Thatch. The hat. Grandpa. If his parents were alive, Grandpa had to have known. He needed to find that hat more than ever now. With it, he would free Grandpa and ask him about his parents. He had thought little about them since they had died. All he knew was they had gone to Europe and boarded a train. They never made it to their destination. A bomb had made sure of that. He shook his whole body, willing away the pain moving through his heart.

  He stood up still covered in shock while Wesa revived Holly. “There’s one more thing I didn’t get to tell you. I know where Thatch is. He’s in a cupboard. Tied up in the dark. I’m sorry if I couldn’t be more help. I need to rest now.”

  “You’ve been so helpful. And Holly, can you please keep my secret about who I really am for now? If what Abby said was true and the Kirbys don’t know who I am yet, I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Of course,” said Holly. She lifted herself into a chair and rubbed her head.

  “Toby, where are you pulling me to? You don’t even know your way around!” said Wesa as they returned once more to the main hall.

  “Oh. Sorry. Lead the way.”

  He was lost in his own thoughts. Now that the initial shock of finding out his parents might be alive had subsided, his mind returned to the possibility that he had magic. And whoever wanted the hat was really after his magic. What could he do, he wondered, and how did he not know about it?

  He scanned through everything that had ever happened in his life. His life was pretty ordinary. Extraordinarily ordinary in fact. Grandpa never let him go anywhere, or do anything. Nothing in the slightest bit magical had ever happened in his life.

  The huge corner stall brought Toby’s attention back to the convention. Two long tables covered in dazzling purple material dotted in tiny white diamonds sprawled across meters and meters. Behind them sat over thirty magicians, all wearing purple hats. Most of them were watching television screens that floated in midair, showing different parts of the convention.

  Toby noticed two especially big screens were showing the mage stage and the illusionist stage. He paused to watch the TV showing the golden stage, which he hadn’t visited yet. A magician had just cut his assistant in half, and she was now walking around the stage in two pieces. He recognized her instantly. She was the mage he had seen earlier whose top half of her body was separate from her bottom half. How handy to combine real magic with illusion.

  “You are so easily distracted!” said Wesa, waving her hand in front of his face to get his attention.

  “Sorry! There’s so much happening here. Please tell me Mr. Kirby’s room isn’t behind that huge security stall with all the televisions?”

  “This is the first time they’ve had cameras at the convention.”

  “Which means Kirby’s been able to see what we’ve been up to all day,” said Toby .

  “Luckily, I don’t think they can see into the private curtained-off areas. Come on. We need to sneak past the magicians,” said Wesa, taking his hand and squeezing it tight.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  They joined a crowd of magicians, who Toby reasoned must be the people in line to complain. He heard one woman spouting on about how her son’s mage performance wasn’t long enough, while another was arguing that the mage part of the hall was slightly larger than the illusionist half.

  Toby and Wesa pretended to line up with the others. When one of the complaining parties started yelling loudly, they took their chances and slid behind the enormous purple curtain into Mr. Kirby’s private quarters. Toby prayed silently that none of the Kirbys would be in there.

  “Phew!” he breathed, realizing the room was empty. This room was at least four times as large as any of the others he had been in today. Toby thought it looked more like a well-furnished house than a curtained-off space in a public convention. The furniture was covered in deep purple velvet with brown leather accents, and the room smelled of roses. Statues of magicians doing magical tricks adorned the room like it was a museum.

  “What if he catches us back here?” said Toby.

  “It’s worth the risk. Abby told us Kirby wants to swap Thatch for me, and Holly was clear that Thatch is in a cupboard. I bet he’s in here,” said Wesa, hunting around the room.

  They both paused, and then stared at each other in victory. There was a distinct tapping noise coming from the far side of the room. Toby turned the key, which had been left in the door of the large double-paneled cupboard, and pulled the door open. Thatch’s relieved face looked back at them both.

  As Toby untied the rope and pulled the tape from his mouth, Thatch stepped out and stretched. “What took you so long?”

  “How did you get here?” said Toby.

  “We were so worried,” said Wesa.

  “That rotten Kirby grabbed me at Holly’s performance. Said he knew I was after the hat and I wasn’t going anywhere near it. Said he saw me wandering around looking for it with you two.” Thatch rubbed his wrists, now free from the tight rope, and touched his lip.

  “He was very curious to know who my blonde-haired, blue-eyed American companion was,” he said, smiling at Wesa. “Doesn’t know it’s really you. He said I was going to stay in the cupboard until I told him where you were. He doesn’t know everything after all,” he said smiling.

  “Well, that’s at least one advantage we have over him,” said Wesa, looking worried. “We’d better get out of here before we’re caught, or none of us will find the hat.”

  “So what did take you so long? Did you find out anything interesting from Holly?” said Thatch.

  “That’s exactly what delayed us. And yes, we did,” Wesa glanced from Toby up to the floating candles, while twirling a golden ringlet of hair.

  Toby couldn’t speak. He folded his arms, sat down in one of Kirby’s chairs, and repeatedly kicked at a pillow that lay innocently on the purple carpet.

  “I’ve clea
rly missed out on a lot. Go on then. Spill the beans,” said Thatch, looking from Wesa to Toby.

  “We basically don’t stand a chance, that’s what we found out,” said Toby, raising his voice. He was glad the rooms were soundproof. He wanted to break all the regal-looking statues in this room. He wanted to tear the curtain down and run away.

  “Can I tell him?” said Wesa.

  Toby nodded numbly while Thatch found a pile of his magic tricks laid out on a table. He shoved them back in his overall pockets. Among them was his ebony wand.

  “Holly saw it, Thatch—in her visions. The hat is called the Fiordi hat, and it can take the powers of other mages. And we know why the panther wants it so badly. Toby has—”

  “Look who we have here. It’s our lucky day,” said a new voice, making Toby almost jump out of his skin.

  The Kirby triplets were standing next to the curtain entrance. Billy had his arms crossed and was smiling triumphantly.

  “Oh no!” Toby jumped up from the chair.

  “Who’s the cute blonde?” said Billy to Thatch.

  Wesa flicked her curly blonde hair. “Hiya, handsome,” she said in her southern drawl. She walked toward Billy.

  “Hey, yourself. What are you doing hanging out with these losers?”

  “I’m new to the convention this year, and these lovely boys decided to show me around,” she said, battering her eyelids like mad.

  “Get ’em,” said Billy while still smiling sweetly at Wesa.

  Jim and Rod ran across the room, headed for Toby and Thatch. Thatch threw lamps and ornaments to slow them down. He even levitated some of them with his self-taught illusions .

  “Nice one!” said Toby, ducking behind a large ornate chair. As Jim and Rod closed in, Thatch picked up a heavy stone statue of a magician pulling a rabbit from his hat.

  “Come one step closer and you’ll get it.” He held the statue as high as he could to let them know he meant it.

  Jim and Rod stopped still and looked at each other, then back at Billy, clearly not sure what they should do next.