The Beautiful Side of the Moon

by Leye Adenle

  I looked around.

  ‘Are you searching for a mirror?’ she said. It was disconcerting to hear myself talking to me.

  ‘Yes.’

  I sounded like her.

  ‘Don’t. Mirrors are not your friend. I will perform in your place this time. No one else but you and I will know it. All you have to do is smile and do whatever I ask you to do on stage. Do you remember why we are doing this?’

  ‘To learn magic.’

  ‘To use their imagination to see beyond. When their minds open. What should I do?’

  ‘Just watch. When you see it, you will know. We are running out of time.’

  Chapter 33 One False Start

  In my body and dressed as me, Adesua walked out onto the stage.

  The children’s excitement exploded and they screamed in one roaring, joyful voice, ‘Magic!’

  They were eager to see me perform. They would see Adesua perform.

  Brother Moses was on the stage. I looked at him expecting him to look at me but he nodded at Adesua instead before he turned to the audience.

  ‘Queen, ladies, gentlemen, children, I present to you, the amazing, the fantastic, the exciting, the marvellous, the dazzling, the one, the only, Mr Magic!’

  Brother Moses raised his hands. Orange sparks flew from his sleeves. The audience clapped and the chil- dren screamed as if he was a rock star. Then, fireworks still pouring out of his sleeves, he turned his back to the crowd and stood on the edge of the little stage. He winked at Adesua, and without warning he crouched, swung his hands backwards over his head and he leapt into the air, did a double backflip, and landed on the ground in front of the queen. The children loved it and they clapped even louder and screamed. The adults were also impressed and they too clapped. I wasn’t sure if he had managed the feat by magic or by athleticism.

  Titus Titus was in front glowering at Adesua, his accomplices by his side. He really didn’t know she was me and I was her.

  Adesua, or rather, ‘Mr Magic’, pulled the tip of a black cloth from inside his jacket and the cloth kept coming out and coming out until it was the size of a large blanket.

  Mr Magic spread the blanket out in front of him, raised it up to his neck, smiled at the audience, then raised it further so it covered his entire body. I was watching from behind. Mr Magic stepped back and dropped the cloth and the shape of a box formed under the material as it settled down. Wasting no time, Mr Magic snatched the cloth away to reveal a big black box that had not been there before.

  The children cheered.

  Mr Magic held the cloth to me. I rushed to take it and then I remembered to smile. Holding the black material, I wondered what to do with it. I folded it neatly while still smiling at the audience who, thankfully, were concentrating on Mr Magic.

  I found myself looking for Rachel in the crowd, even though Adesua had told me she’d been taken to the magnetic garden. As Mr Magic performed his tricks, I imagined what the magnetic garden was. What made it magnetic, how come it could heal, and why was it losing its power?

  White doves flew away from Mr Magic’s hands. I remembered that I should be watching the people for when their imagination opened up some sort of channel for me. This was the whole point of being in Faka fiki.

  A drop of water fell upon my forehead. I looked up and blinked as another drop fell onto my eyelid. It was the wrong season for rain. I looked at Brother Moses. He was beaming at Adesua. I looked at Titus Titus. He was staring at me. I got the feeling he had been looking at me for some time. A satisfied smirk was on his face. A drop of rain fell before my eyes and splashed at my feet. I looked at the sky again. The clouds were in motion, swiftly gathering over us and blocking out the brilliance of the morning sky. I looked at Titus Titus. His smirk became a grin. He too looked at the sky and held out his palm. I saw the single raindrop hit his hand. He grinned widely as he looked at me and he nodded and kept nodding. He wanted me to know it was his doing. He knew that Adesua was me and that I was her.

  The sky darkened even more and the clouds let fall their rain. The townspeople covered their heads with their hands and ran in different directions, each to their homes. The show was over and I had learnt nothing. I was no more of a magician than when we started. Adesua’s soul depended on me learning magic. Rachel’s safety depended on me learning magic. The lives of all the townspeople depended on me learning magic.

  Chapter 34 Like Father Like Son

  ‘What was that?’ Brother Moses asked again, but Adesua and I knew not to answer. He turned away from us and continued to march back and forth in his wet purple clothes in the living room of the queen’s guest house which was to be our new home. Adesua and I stood side by side as ourselves and in our dry normal clothes as he grew angrier with each step he took.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ he said. ‘What made you do it? This was his one chance and you blew it. You just don’t want to believe in him, do you? You refuse to believe. Now see what you’ve done. Titus Titus knows everything. He knows he’s not ready.’

  ‘I thought it would work,’ Adesua said.

  ‘You thought? You thought? No. You did not think. It was his show. His show. If you had been thinking you would have remembered that. How is he going to learn anything if you keep doing everything for him? How?’

  He was being hard on her. Her only thought had been for me. She had lost her soul protecting me; it was my turn to protect her.

  ‘She was only trying to help me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to do anything up there on my own.’

  ‘I’m coming to you. You, this is the last time you pull a stunt like this. Got that? You have almost cost us everything. Everything. And you, when are you going to start believing in yourself? Who told you that you wouldn’t have been able to perform without her help? Did she tell you that? Do you think I would have allowed you to go up on that stage if I didn’t know you could do it? Why do you think Titus Titus is here? To watch a charlatan? To capture a pretender? He is here because of you. You. He has come to get you, and the only way I can protect you is for you to protect yourself. You have to become who you are.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he just take me?’

  ‘Precisely. Why. I’ll tell you why. Because he is afraid of you. What if you try to capture a sleeping lion and it wakes up? He knows who you are. He believes in you even though you don’t believe in yourself. He wants your powers for himself. He wants you on their side and to accomplish this he must corrupt your mind. He wants to turn you. It is safer and a million, million times more re- warding for him than the risk of trying to kill you. Do you get it? Don’t just nod at me if you don’t. Do you get it or don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Adesua, you try.’

  Brother Moses walked away, throwing his hands about over his head. He sat down heavily on a sofa and let out a long gasp. His body collapsed as his spirit deflated and the anger on his face gave way to sullenness.

  Adesua spoke gently, cautiously. She was afraid of him, or she was still beating herself up for making the mistake of performing in my place. I still didn’t see how that mattered.

  ‘We haven’t told you everything,’ she said. ‘It is not just your father who predicted you. Every other grand magician who has reached the same level he reached has had the same vision of Mr Magic but only your father recognised his face, because it was the face of his son.

  ‘All the other grand magicians on our side also believe you are the one, but no one knows what it means. We are not sure if you are one of us or one of them. If you join them, they will have the advantage of your power and the Great Schism will be over. They will have won.

  ‘They will reveal themselves to the world. They will use their powers openly. They will become gods walking the Earth.’ Brother Moses spoke with a sunken voice. ‘Slaves and masters. Everyone you know, your friends, your cousins, your colleagues at work, your friends from kindergarten, your teachers, your neighbours, they will all become slaves. It has happened before,
when the great pyramid was built. A handful of men and women turned the entire population of the world into slaves and made them build the pyramids. They want to do it again. They just need a magician like you on their side.’

  Adesua’s demeanour and voice remained subdued.

  She touched my arm.

  ‘It is important that you learn how to protect yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I did what I did today. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it wouldn’t help you. I made a foolish mistake.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said to her. ‘It is not her fault. Have you guys even considered that maybe I am not Mr Magic?’

  Brother Moses looked at me. ‘You learnt to stop your mind being read and no one taught you how to do it,’ he said. He stood up. ‘You roared like a lion and those minions backed down.’ He began walking towards me. ‘You looked a powerful magician in the eyes and you said you would follow him.’ He stood close to me. ‘Do you know why I didn’t tell you how to use the time machine?’ I stared blankly back at him. ‘Because I don’t know how. Your father gave me that ball. He showed me how to start it, but he didn’t show me how to use it to travel back. I asked and he said, ‘When the time comes, you will know what to do.’ I thought it was a gift from him to me, but no, I was wrong. It wasn’t for me. That is why he didn’t tell me how to use it. It was meant for you all along. And when the time came, I knew that you would know what to do.

  ‘Only one magician had ever travelled back in time. That magician was your father. Now there are two.’

  Chapter 35 God’s Eye View

  ‘If you don’t know it by now, I’ll tell you. There is no such thing as magic. Not in the way people imagine it to be.’

  Brother Moses walked to the window. He lifted the curtain and looked up at the sky. It was still dark outside and the unseasonal rain hadn’t stopped.

  ‘This rain, it’s only magic until you know how he did it. When you learn the secret of how it’s done and you can do it too, it’s no longer magic. My tricks, the cards in my sleeves, the things I keep in my hair, you can do all of those things. You just have to know how I do it. Did you know that there is no space too small to hold an entire universe? You can keep an entire galaxy in the fold of your palm. Think about that.

  ‘But the vanity. Oh, the vanity. We look down on the plants. We don’t say sorry when we step on the grass. We fish the oceans. They’re not sentient, we tell ourselves. They don’t feel. They don’t think. They are not like us. We are intelligent and they are not. We are great and they are small.

  ‘Yet we are all stardust. The same matter in me is in the fish and in the grass. Atoms. And in an atom there could be a whole new world.

  ‘Civilisations could exist in the tiniest bits of us. Entire worlds could be clinging to a single blade of grass. We mow the lawn and end a million worlds and we don’t even know it. We don’t think anything of it.

  ‘Yet we are atoms too. We also live in a world so small it fits on the tip of a needle of another world. All of us. Our entire planet. Our entire solar system, on the tip of someone’s needle. Think of it.

  ‘We are nothing. Our minds tell us otherwise, but our minds are foolish. We are nothing. Knowledge is such a burden.’

  He had been speaking facing the window. He shook his head and when he turned, he had luminescent tears running down each cheek, like galaxies escaping from his eyes.

  He was crying stars and telling me magic was not real. My eyes were fixed on his glistening tears. He walked up to me until he was really close. His brow was furrowed as if he’d seen something on my face that shouldn’t be there. He looked into each of my eyes in turn, over and over again, as if he was searching for something. All the time his face was squished with puzzlement, almost as if he was confused, or surprised.

  ‘Maybe I was wrong,’ he finally said. ‘Maybe we’ve all been wrong. It has happened before that we’ve all been wrong. But I was sure this time. I was so, so sure. Maybe Efosa misled me. Maybe Efosa was misled himself.’

  ‘What do you mean you’ve been wrong before? Was there another Mr Magic?’

  ‘We thought it was your father.’

  ‘My father? Why?’

  ‘He was the greatest, grandest, magician ever. We thought he had the God’s eye view.’

  ‘God’s eye view?’

  ‘Yes. He could see everything from all dimensions. He could see the beginning and the end of all things. The God’s eye view.’

  ‘How do you know he wasn’t the one?’

  ‘Because he saw you before you were born and he was afraid of you. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe he made a mistake.’

  He shook his head and turned away. Adesua watched him. From the look on her face I guessed she was filled with empathy for him. She looked to me and it felt as if her eyes were begging me to do something. I had nothing. ‘Brother Moses,’ she said, ‘you can sneak away with him now. If anyone comes, they’ll find all three of us. You can train him at Snake Island. Or somewhere far away. He hasn’t had a chance. Just give him a chance. Let him try.’

  Brother Moses shook his head. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘I chose this place because if something were to happen to him here, the magnetic garden could heal him. Even I had my doubts, you see. Now I know it. Mr Magic would have been able to heal himself.

  ‘I’m afraid we are left with just one option. We have to let Titus Titus know that he is not the one. Maybe then he’ll let him be, and the girl too. I must return to the glass- house at once and tell the rest that I’ve been wrong.’

  ‘What happens then?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that. You won’t re- member any of this, I’ll take care of that. I promise. You’ll return to your life as it was before we interrupted you.’

  ‘And what will happen to Adesua’s soul?’

  ‘Her soul? I’m afraid that is lost forever. But that won’t be your concern. You won’t remember any of this. It’ll be like none of it ever happened. Your conscience won’t bother you. Spaceships won’t take you up. Bad magicians won’t come looking for you.’

  ‘A minute ago you were so sure I was the one, now you’re telling me to just forget everything? What made you change your mind?’

  ‘It’s your eyes.’

  ‘My eyes?’

  ‘Yes. They are just like his.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Efosa. Your father. You have the same eyes. You have his eyes. His exact eyes. The very same eyes he had.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  He walked up to me and looked into my eyes. ‘Efosa, are you in there? You found a way to come back, didn’t you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You have latent knowledge. You can do things you shouldn’t be able to do. Did they tell you the circumstances of your birth?’

  ‘What circumstances?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘You can’t just say stuff like that then tell me it doesn’t matter. And what makes you think I want to forget everything? I want to help. If I have my father’s powers, then I can help.’

  ‘But you are not Mr Magic. You are Efosa. He saw Mr Magic and he was afraid of him.’

  ‘He saw me. I am Mr Magic.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Efosa saw him, but Mr Magic made him think it was his son he saw. Mr Magic tricked him. The real Mr Magic is out there and we are wasting time here. That is what he wanted. Don’t you see? He sent us on this wild goose chase so we wouldn’t know to search for him. Your father was powerful, and Mr Magic, coming across him, would have known this. For all we know, he is watching us right now.’

  ‘The real Mr Magic?’

  ‘Yes. Keeping us in sight. Keeping an eye on the only magician that can challenge him.’

  ‘Me? Keeping an eye on me? No. On Efosa.’

  ‘If I am not Mr Magic, then who could it be? I don’t know.’

  I didn’t know what to think. I stared at him and he stared back and Adesua stood sil
ently and watched the two of us. She never believed I was Mr Magic; now more than ever I wanted her to. I suddenly thought of Rachel.

  That was someone else whose safety depended on me being Mr Magic.

  ‘Where is Rachel?’ I said.

  Chapter 36 The Real Mr Magic

  I had seen flying magicians, a woman standing before me in my own body, an umbrella that deflected bullets, even a UFO, but I did not know what to expect of the magnetic garden, and I wanted to know its secrets.

  Brother Moses went to the queen to seek her permission to enter the garden to see our friend, Rachel. Only the people of Faka fiki knew the way there, and only their men were allowed to go into it. That was why the men were short while the women were not. The strength of the garden had stunted the men’s growth.

  The queen would do anything for Brother Moses; he needed only to ask her. I already knew there had been something between them many years ago, even if that something was never explored or spoken about or allowed to blossom when it first had the chance. But the some- thing lingered and could still be sensed, even if only in the spontaneous smiles and restrained looks of two people who were unable, unwilling or not bold enough to be who they were meant to be together. She gave her blessing to our intrusion into their secret garden.

  We had to take off all our clothes and wrap white cloths of linen around our bodies.

  Three men from the village would lead us there. Odedina, being one of our guides, repeatedly asked Adesua to check for rings, even after she had shown her fingers and pulled her earlobes for all to see. He kept asking anyway, every few steps, as if he were reading from an instruction manual that told him to repeat the question several times.

  ‘I do not have any metals on me,’ Adesua eventually said with finality and a dab of anger. It was then that Odedina explained the danger of leaving a metallic object on the body. He said, ‘The magnetic garden will tear earrings from your ears, and any other rings from any other places.’