The Magician's Lie

by Greer Macallister

  In the quiet, he remembers how tired he is, and that isn’t good. Cuffs or no, she needs to be watched and guarded. Sound will help keep his eyes open and his mind clear. He should get her talking again. Her story will be something to hold onto when the exhaustion threatens to drag him into unconsciousness.

  “You aren’t telling me what I want to hear,” he says. “I asked about the murder. You’re telling me this other story instead.”

  “They’re all the same story.”

  “Which couldn’t start a little closer to the end?” He takes one free pair of handcuffs and latches it first around the leg of the chair. He opens the other half of the cuff and draws it forward, circling it around her ankle, pushing the clasp until it clicks shut.

  She says, “Where does yours start, officer? Did you play cops and robbers as a boy and find yourself always on the angels’ side? Or is this just a job to you, a way to line your pockets? Is it the first thing you ever wanted to do or the last?”

  He was right; the Lovell fits, on the largest setting. In a pinch, it seems, a woman’s slim ankles can stand in for a man’s thick wrists. He repeats the motion with the other pair of cuffs, linking her other ankle to the leg of the chair, so both ankles are trapped. “What difference does that make?”

  “It makes your story different,” she says. “How you came to be who you are. And if I wanted to know your story, I’d want to know it from the beginning.”

  “You don’t want to know my story.”

  “I do, actually. Very much. But I’m not the one in charge here, am I?”

  “No.” He’s glad to hear her acknowledge it. “Well, it isn’t a long story. I was born here, grew up here, plan to live here my whole life.”

  “I bet you were one of those charmed boys. You have the air. Always the best at everything.”

  “Second best,” he says before he can stop himself.

  “Who was the best then?”

  “No point in telling you, is there? If you don’t know him?” Despite her visit to Waterloo, Mose Huber’s name wouldn’t mean anything to her, even if he were inclined to share it.

  “I’m interested,” she says.

  Her eyes are shadowed from this angle, and he can’t even tell the half-brown eye from the blue one. He wishes he had a real jail to put her in. She is too close this way. He thinks again of what she did onstage, how rapt he was, and he realizes he has to ask.

  “What I’m interested in,” he says, “is the Halved Man. How does it work?”

  “It’s fake,” she says flatly. “Fake blade, fake blood, trap door. That’s all.”

  “No, explain it to me. What’s the secret of the trick?”

  “What kind of magician gives away her secrets?”

  “One who’ll be hanged if she doesn’t.”

  Quietly, leaning in, she says, “Is that what you think they’ll do? You think they’ll hang me?”

  “Without a moment’s hesitation,” he says.

  She stares at him with her lips shut tight.

  They sit together in silence, two figures in two chairs, on the fringes of the circle of lamplight.

  After a time, the magician says quietly, “Here in this room, while I tell you what there is to tell, it’s just us two. And these are all just words. Once I step outside that door, there’s a whole real world again, and that frightens me more than I can say.”

  “I understand that,” he replies, offering his own honest response. “There are things in the real world that scare me too.”

  “Such as? I’d like to hear.”

  He opens his mouth to answer her, but another noise drowns him out.

  The telephone is ringing.

  It is a long, rattle-clanging, uneven sound, and it takes them both by surprise.

  Holt freezes.

  The telephone rings again. It makes a brittle echo against the close wooden walls, sounding louder and louder in the tight, small space. He feels like he’s sitting inside a drum. It wakes the pain in his head, which he had almost managed to forget. No forgetting it now.

  He tries to be logical, fighting for clarity against the noise and the drink and the lack of sleep. No one from Waterloo knows he’s found her. It can’t be Mose. Or could it? There are only a handful of telephones in this part of the state, and no reason for anyone to call from farther away at this time of night.

  Iris, then, it must be Iris. The telephone in his house, installed so he can be reached at any hour, is one of the handful. He’s not ready to answer the question he knows she has. She wants to know what the doctor said, whether anything can be done. He can’t tell her, not yet. Especially not with this one watching. But he wants to answer just to make the ringing stop. The sound makes it almost impossible to think.

  Maybe now is the time to strike. He raises his voice to be heard over the telephone’s ring. “Did it surprise you? How much blood there was? When it was for real?”

  She shakes her head. “I wasn’t there. I told you, I wasn’t there. I was already running.”

  “If not the murder, what were you running from?”

  The long, shrilling metal clang sounds, falls silent, and then starts up again. His head is beyond buzzing now. Aching. Howling.

  She says, “I didn’t even know anyone was dead. You have to believe me.”

  A ring and a silence, a ring and a silence, while their gazes lock.

  Putting his face close to hers, he says, “Why did you kill him? Your own husband? How could you try to cut him apart?”

  She blanches, visibly, and says, “Did you say cut?”

  He turns his back on her then, turning as if to answer the telephone, but only to hide his face.

  “Tell me!” she shouts. “How did he die?”

  The telephone rings and rings. It takes all he has not to fling the door open and run outside, away from the sound and from her, gulping in fresh air. Instead he breathes his own breath again, growing unpleasantly warmer, struggling to stay put.

  His mind soars and races. What does she mean? Is it possible that she’s telling the truth, that she had nothing to do with the murder? She is waiting on his answer. All the more reason to stay silent. If he waits for her to speak, there might be some clue in what she says next.

  The ringing sound stops, blessedly, and the magician speaks into a longer silence. “What happened to you, anyway? The way you hold yourself. Stiff. Like you’re afraid of breaking something.”

  He tries to hide his shock. “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Look, I want to tell you everything,” she says, sounding sincere. “I do. I will. But it won’t make sense to you yet.”

  He doubts murder could ever make sense to him, but maybe it’s time to humor her a little. For now. She seems to relax when she tells her story. If vinegar doesn’t work, he’s capable of honey.

  “Then what would you like to tell me?”

  “What happened next. When we arrived at Biltmore, where I was to dance for Madama Bonfanti.”

  “Go on, then,” he says.

  The phone blurts a strange, smothered half ring, and they both hesitate, waiting for the rest of the ring to come.

  When it doesn’t, she starts her story again.

  Chapter Six

  1894

  The Flying Cage

  After many hours, the light in the coach changed from dappled to bright, and I raised myself to look out. We had come out of the wooded area onto a lawn that seemed to stretch for a mile. Beautiful, flat grass, as green as an emerald, the likes of which I’d never seen. I couldn’t imagine the work it had taken to make it so lush, so even, so perfect. And I could smell flowers too, a distant hint of roses in the still, warm air.

  The jouncing stopped as we turned onto a steadier, smoother path, and in a moment, I got a look at the bulk of the house itself.

  I
gasped.

  It was a castle. It was too enormous, too grand, to be called a house. Great jutting spires soared toward the sky. I had no words for it, other than the words Mother had used to describe the capitals of Europe: majestic, substantial, sublime.

  The gray stone walls soared up, impossibly high, into sharp turrets. The roof itself was steeply gabled, and the lowest floor was marked out with a series of arches, a single one of which could have embraced our entire house back home. Columns of windows held huge panes of glass the size of the coach we rode in. I counted two dozen windows without even trying, and that was only on the side facing the coach. Behind the house, the mountains rose gracefully in the distance. My gaze kept skipping from window to arch to turret to gargoyle and back again. There was far too much to take in at once.

  The wide iron gate stood open for us, and a neat gravel drive extended between two perfectly flat and green spaces of lawn. And again, the smells, of flowers and grass and sweet pure nothing, crashed over me. It felt almost unfair that there should be a place so beautiful in the world when there was such ugliness elsewhere. My grandparents’ home had been large and well-appointed, but it had no more similarity to this home than a hut to a palace, or a single lit match to a forest fire.

  The drive took us under a broad stone arch, off to the side of the main entrance, and brought us into an enclosed courtyard. A groom took the horses’ reins, and in the face of the house, two great tall front doors swung open with a whisper. I realized afterward there must have been two or more hidden servants pulling them aside, but in the moment, it seemed like magic.

  Just inside these broad doors, I could make out the dim shape of another inner door, and on both sides of it, clusters of figures who stood waiting. Black-coated men and white-aproned women. Mother had warned me to expect only the servants at the gate, and though I was still a little disappointed to see no one of note awaiting us, it was best that I not be presented yet. Now I only looked like an ordinary, everyday girl, nothing worth their time or attention. It would take dance to transform me. For today and possibly forever.

  I clambered down awkwardly, by myself, yanking my hand back with a jolt when Ray offered me his arm. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said just before we left home, and it preyed on me. The trip had done me no favors. My hair tumbled out of its poor restraints.

  “Good heavens, you’re in disarray,” said my mother, as if seeing me anew now that we had arrived. “Get yourself cleaned up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  We were separated and taken to different rooms. I was unsure whether my mother’s presence would have been reassuring or unsettling. So much depended on the next few hours. In any case, I wasn’t given the choice.

  Soon enough, I found myself alone in an enormous bedroom, lushly furnished and streaming with light. At the center of it all was a four-poster bed so broad it could have fit eight girls my size lying shoulder to shoulder. The luxury of the place left me shaken and uncomfortable. It seemed so foreign, so unnecessary. Why was I even here? What did I expect? At the back of my brain, Ray’s threat was echoing. I needed a way to calm down, to feel myself again. What could I do?

  I slung my pointe shoes, the ribbons of which were tied together, over my shoulder and lit out down the long, foreign hall. If discovered somewhere I shouldn’t be, I could always say I was lost. It would probably be the truth anyway. I quickly lost track of where I had started, and since I had no idea where I was going, one hallway was as good as another.

  Once I found my way outside and I could see across the broad back lawn to a series of outbuildings still under construction, I knew my destination. No one stopped me as I slipped out the door and walked barefoot across the lustrous grass toward the cluster of wooden buildings, half shells. The most complete building was the one I wanted. I opened the door a crack and edged my way inside.

  A barn. Like everything else here, grander than ours at home. Clean and unfinished and smelling of freshly cut boards. I breathed in the smell deeply—it helped settle me a little—and I explored with interest. I looked up to see a completed hayloft at one end and a long narrow beam reaching to the far end to brace the sloped roof. The idea came to me instantly. This was what I needed, for confidence. I’d walk the crossbeam en pointe.

  Before I could think better of the impulse, I hastily climbed the ladder and donned my shoes, tying the ribbons around my ankles, and then I started across.

  I concentrated every bit of my attention on the small circles where my toes hit the beam. At the start, it was easy. My toes in the pointe shoes took up less than a third of the beam’s width, so it wasn’t hard to land each foot firmly. With each step, the hollow toe box echoed against the wood, through the empty barn. I heard a scurrying elsewhere in the barn, maybe a mouse or a raccoon, but I didn’t want to look away from the beam. I focused and made it to the far wall. I dropped down onto the arch of my foot to make the turn, carefully, one hand against the wall, and started back toward the loft.

  Thud went my toe box against the wood of the beam. Right toe box, thud. Left toe box, thud. One after another after another. I felt myself speeding up as I took the last few steps, nearing the end of the beam, and expelled a sharp breath as I reached the safety of the loft again. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath at all. I set my feet flat on the long wood planks of the loft and stretched my arms up elegantly, striking the established pose of first position.

  I heard Ray before I saw him, his voice all too near, saying, “Nicely done.”

  He stood in the loft, only a few feet away from me. His slow, sarcastic applause echoed off the bare walls of the barn. I nearly stepped backward to distance myself from him, but behind me, there was only emptiness on both sides of the beam.

  “What a wonderful performance,” he said. “Very graceful. You really are a lovely young woman. And a secretly powerful one, as well.”

  “Not today with your nonsense,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

  “I only want to pay you a compliment. Show you my appreciation.”

  He was standing at the top of the ladder, the only way out. In trying to escape him and find a quiet moment to gather my strength, I’d put myself in the worst position possible: utterly alone with him, no one knowing where we were.

  I said, “Thank you. Now get out.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. My practice garments had always seemed modest enough before, but now, I felt exposed.

  “Come over here,” he said. “I want to appreciate you.”

  Instead of answering, I calmly sat down on the floor of the loft and began a stretching exercise, pointing my right toe and bending my body down over it. I moved as if he weren’t there. Maybe if he thought he wasn’t bothering me, he’d give up. I pointed my other toe and stretched my body out in the other direction. If he took the trembling as exhaustion and not fear, I had a chance.

  “Very well, I’ll come to you,” he said and quickly crossed the space. He dropped his body behind mine, pressing his chest against my back, and before I could move, he already had a firm arm around the front of my shoulders, holding me in.

  “How dare you!” I shouted. “Let me go!”

  He had been wheedling and flattering, but now his voice was hard. “Shout all you want, little thing. The house is far away. No one’s listening.”

  He took his free hand and slid it up my knee, toward my thigh, and higher. When I grabbed his paw to haul it off me, he slid his other hand up to grasp my breast. I tore it away, but he moved and it was back again. I began to panic in earnest.

  “Stop it.”

  He hissed, “Let’s try it once. You’ll never know otherwise whether you like it.”

  I tried to scream. He put his hand over my mouth. I tried to bite it, but he was too strong. He let go a moment and then used both hands under my legs to flip me over onto my fac
e, and I could taste blood where my teeth cut the inside of my mouth. The raw pine boards scraped my cheek. When I could feel cool air behind me and the extra weight of my skirts lying heavy on my back, I knew it was my last chance. While he fumbled with the flap on his breeches, I got my knees under me, and with a great fierce burst of all my strength, I drove my heel straight back, right where his legs met, hard.

  Oh, how he howled.

  I scrambled up to get free, but he was still between me and the ladder. One hand clutched between his legs, where the pain was, but his other hand was free and ready. I looked at him and said, “Let me go!” but I could see plainly the rage in his eyes, and I knew he wouldn’t just step aside.

  I lunged for the ladder anyway, hoping.

  He caught me up in his arms, and in another world, with another girl and another boy, it would have been romantic. But I was me and he was him, and my heart flailed madly in my chest like a bird in a too-small cage. He held me in the air, one arm behind my neck, the other under my knees, my feet swinging free, and when he started to walk, I feared he might intend to knock me unconscious so as to do what he pleased unimpeded, but what he did instead was take three steps to the edge of the hayloft and, with one single sweeping motion, throw me free of the earth, into the empty air.

  ***

  I fell fast and landed like a stone.

  The heavy thump of my limp body landing echoed hollowly off the walls of the empty barn.

  The first breath into my screaming lungs was heaven. Then came the pain. All over at first. Eventually it focused into a sharp, vicious ache in one leg, all the way from ankle to waist. I knew then how I’d landed, and what I’d broken.

  I bit the inside of my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. Not that I thought silence would save me, but it felt important. I needed to control something. I couldn’t control how far I had just fallen. Not just fallen, but been thrown. And the person who had thrown me was still above me, still here, and we were as alone as we could be.

  I could hear him coming down the ladder.

  He walked across the bare wood floor toward me. I tuned him out. I focused on the pain instead and felt the worst of it radiating from the ankle, howling.