Magic at Midnight

by Lyssa Chiavari

  No, she was wrong. No, she’d been wrong all along. It’d just been a game, a bit of fun to pass a lazy afternoon before his evening shows. The firebreather had winked one big blue eye, shook out his sunny hair, and left the stall with chuckles still tumbling out behind him.

  “A game.” Sella crushed a mound of spotted red seeds into the mortar. “He said it’s just a game.”

  “He’s right.” Miss Janus rearranged the candles and jars lining her shelves; she didn’t glance back at Sella. “Look around—the strongmen, the lion tamers, him, me. We’re all just playing a game here, trying to entertain the ticket money out of as many pockets as we can. There’s no shame in it.”

  Sella pounded the pestle, ground down until it was grit. “Right, so it’s all a con then. No power, no magic. Just more card tricks. Guess I should go back to my old act then… at least I was good at that.”

  Miss Janus’ fingers flinched, hovered near a bottle full of thick green syrup. “Magic and games aren’t mutually exclusive. Just because you’re playin’ doesn’t mean the ability isn’t there.”

  “Is that a riddle? Or maybe this is another one of your lessons—‘no one will believe you if you don’t believe yourself’—or something like that?” Sella’s tone went low, sharp with a hiss at the end of it.

  “It is a lesson, and, hell, I probably should’ve taught it to you sooner. But I wanted you to know your own magic before you had to learn the rest of it.” Miss Janus turned. She toyed with a little glass vial, squeezing at the tip of its rubber dropper. “It don’t matter if you believe yourself, don’t even matter if you’ve got real talent—though, for the record, I think you do. It don’t matter if they believe you, not really. At least half the folks who stop by my stall are hoping they can point a finger in my face at the end of the reading and call me a fake. Don’t matter if you’re right or wrong, whether you get to the truth or not. You know why? Because the truth don’t matter. Because nobody cares about the truth. All folks care about, all they really care about, is what they want the truth to be. So that’s what you need to learn. Stop worryin’ about getting things right and start figuring out what the person in front of you wants to hear. Then you tell that to ’em like you just cracked their soul open like a soft egg and see if they don’t stop laughing at you.”

  The whine of the ceramic bit at Sella’s ears. She let go of the pestle and stretched out her stiff, sore knuckles. “Why did you offer to teach me?”

  Miss Janus’ lips twitched; a strange, sorrowful shadow crept across her face. “Because you have talent and everyone else was wasting it, just like they wasted mine.”

  “Magic?” It was a soft, hopeful question. Sella hated how her voice frayed and split with it.

  The shadow settled deeper into the grooves of Miss Janus’ skin. “Yes, but more than that. You have a talent for deflection and redirection, for showmanship and for surprising the audience into believin’ that where you led them was where they wanted to go. That and this, they’re the same talent, Sella—just different tools.”

  Sella looked down at her palms, patterned with lattices of thin scars and fragile, broken lines.

  “Besides, I heard that you ran away from home to join the circus, and I can’t believe pulling cards and clipping cigars was what you did it for.” Miss Janus spun away again. She unwrapped her turban and hung it on a stubby post, then sat across from Sella at the cramped table.

  The neat, close-cut buzz of hair stood in stark contrast to the rest of her costume baubles still swinging around her wrists and neck.

  For a heavy-haze moment the foot or so between them was caked in silence. At the base of Sella’s skull, that bright coldness began to crackle.

  “Okay.” Nothing more than an exhale dancing out of Sella’s mouth.

  “Okay,” Miss Janus echoed, smiling with all her teeth. “Then help me get that powder into one of these empty jars, but be careful with it. You don’t wanna take any chances with crab’s eye seeds.”

  Sella didn’t question it, never questioned the nondescript bits and pieces that went into Miss Janus’ ingredients. But she tapped it into the jar slowly, made sure not to get any of the dust on her.

  “I’ve got one more lesson for today if you’re up for it.” Miss Janus moved to the water basin, filled up the kettle and set it on the wood heater to boil. “Some folks want things, some folks need things—most folks do both. But wanting something and needing something ain’t the same, and folks don’t usually want what they need. You’ll make more customers by givin’ them what they want, but sometimes folks oughta get what they need. And you can give that to them too.”

  She took the jar from Sella and spooned out a tiny pour of crab’s eye seed dust into the open top of the kettle, then screwed the lid on and perched it on a high shelf.

  “Let’s invite our firebreather back for another session.” Miss Janus floated out of the room like an afterthought. “Maybe the tea leaves will be more insightful for him.”

  ♛

  Miss Janus was careful—had been careful, Sella came to learn, for years. Most of what she tied up in spell bags was nothing more than sea salt or pebbles or farm dirt for the weight and crisp dried petals for the scent. People wanted to feel the magic in their own two hands, she’d said. It made it more tangible, easier to accept. Most of the incantations were purposeful gibberish from a language that Miss Janus had made up herself, just to be sure she wasn’t stepping on any other mystical toes. And most of the tea was chamomile or lavender or thick country breakfast—that last one tended to leave the best dregs behind.

  But once in a while the tea was bitterer, the bags were heavy with power, the words weren’t gibberish. Sometimes people needed gentle reassurances and promises for a happier future, but once in a while…

  The firebreather got sick, but he didn’t die. His stomach turned for five days until he was dry heaving and spitting tacky red, but he didn’t die. They said it must have been a bad torch, a bad swallow for the show. They said he might not be able to keep performing, not if it was going to be like this. But he didn’t die.

  He didn’t laugh at Sella again either.

  The second time it happened with another worker, a few whispers scratched up. But it had been months—almost a year—and there wasn’t any proof. The third time was too soon, too sloppy, and someone put in an anonymous call to the wardens. It had been Sella’s fault; one of the new midway barkers had gotten pushy and she must have poured too much in because he collapsed in his tent that night and never got back up.

  It was Sella’s fault, but Miss Janus took the blame, all of it, ripped it out of Sella’s arms and hung herself with it. Sella didn’t know why, but when the wardens came to the stall with their handcuffs, Miss Janus held her arms open for Sella and pulled her close.

  “No tears today.” She kissed the spiny hairs at the top of Sella’s head. “It’s time for my last lesson: eventually, the game’s gotta end. For all of us.”

  Sella nodded, clung to Miss Janus’ shawls. Hot tears washed out all the creaky, cobwebbed corners inside her.

  “But the magic?” Miss Janus’ fingers dipped into Sella’s skirt pocket, letting something solid drop in. “That’s forever.”

  The last time Sella saw Miss Janus was in fresh-shined cuffs being shuffled down the empty midway. Some folks said she pled guilty, said she’d die for it. Other folks said that the judge had taken pity on her, sent her to a well-house for life. Those folks said she died anyway—before, after, by time or sickness or her own self—but Sella never could find out the truth.

  A few folks said she transformed, said she twisted herself into the air and vanished, and what—Sella recalled—did the truth matter anyway?

  Sella left that night, took the first road out of town and boarded up in whatever spare rooms she could find along the way. She wandered from place to place, towns without names worth remembering, careful not to stay longer than a few nights at each stop. She didn’t count the days, but eventually the g
round began to thaw again and she found herself waking up to the thin ebbs of the sea. The salt stung familiar as she breathed out through an open window and, for the first time without Miss Janus, she let herself stand with feet firmly set on the ground below her.

  She ate at the tavern shunted under the boarding rooms. After a filling, beige meal, she marched over to the owner, shook his hand, and asked for a job. That night—after the closing shift—she went upstairs and started to unpack her small, tattered luggage. In the pocket of a skirt, rancid with the stench of long travels, she found a spell bag half the size of her fist. She held it for a moment before setting it softly on the bed; when she untied it the contents scattered across the blanket.

  Two of Miss Janus’ heaviest, gaudiest rings rattled out, along with a few shimmering crystals and some tightly-tied bags full of dark dust that would’ve all looked the same except for Miss Janus’ ornate handwriting on their labels. Underneath all that was a bundle of cash and a note—smudged and crumpled from the packaging—written in the same flourished, elegant lines:

  You’ve always had the talent, you’ve learned the skills, now the tools are yours.

  One final lesson: When you have the power, you’ve already won.

  I’m so proud of you and I—

  The ink trailed off; Sella finished the sentence for herself.

  ♛

  Days, weeks, months slid by dull from the carousel of lukewarm plates and sloshing mugs and the same two-dozen glassy smiles from the same two-dozen glassy regulars. Sella kept her tips rolled up with Miss Janus’ gift. It stayed shoved inside her oldest pair of socks, being saved up for something she didn’t know yet.

  Something she wanted. Something she needed.

  So she lived, dull and glassy, until tent frames started going up on the longest pier and new, clever faces began crowding in for the lunch rush. Then the posters went up, shouting in thick black lettering:

  COMING SOON! THE CARNIVAL BY THE SEA!

  CAN YOU RESIST ITS SIREN CALL?

  HELP WANTED:

  crew, performers, sideshow talents, midway workers, unique individuals

  Apply onsite.

  The cold brightness tickled up Sella’s spine, an echo rusty and electric. She tore down the paper and folded it crookedly, jamming it into her coat pocket. That night she counted her savings and packed her bags. The next morning she bought a rickety caravan off one of the local merchants and dragged it down the pier to a prime spot, staying with it until the management found her.

  The first thing she did—after signing her contract—was paint in wide, loopy script across the side of it:

  Seek what you want and find what you need with Sella the Seer!

  ♛

  The Carnival by the Sea was different than her other troupes, smaller and cleaner and far more mundane than the lumbering spectacles that had tugged her out of her childhood and into the grim world. It stayed static, propped up on the boardwalk until the waves began to freeze. Then the stalls shuttered and the carnival folks burrowed into the town for the winter. There were no raucous late night shows, no feather fan dancers or oddities on display. Children ran up and down the midway from the opening gates until dusk and families played wholesome games that were only slightly rigged against them and the big tent—the only one they had—ran an early dinner show and nothing else.

  For her part, Sella’s caravan filled full of teenagers with growing pains—anxious and awkward about everything in their scrambled lives—and a variety of women—mothers, grandmothers, spinsters—who had lost the thread of themselves and what they wanted years ago. Most of them were painfully earnest and sincere; no one got handsy or threatened to walk out without paying, and Miss Janus’ ingredients stayed tucked in a low drawer under a pile of towels.

  It was a Tuesday in the muggiest slice of summer when she first came with a knock on Sella’s open door as the sun was already edging along the horizon.

  A girl stood there, half-hidden behind the signs and draperies that hung at the caravan entrance. She wore a long dress printed in shocks of color that lay stark against her dark skin; it reminded Sella of gold lamé turbans and decadent silk scarves and sequin-lined everything. She wasn’t small or frail—truth be told, she was probably just a little shorter than Sella—but she seemed brittle, her profile cut out against the fading sky.

  A large burst of tight curls haloed her head, red like they’d been dipped in blood and left to soak it in.

  Sella sat up straighter on the small pile of cushions against the wall. “The carnival’s closing soon.”

  The girl—and she could be a woman, now that Sella saw the fullness of her—made a series of brisk gestures with her hands, then looked back, eager and expectant.

  Sella swallowed down a dry throat and tried again. “I don’t think I can take another customer tonight.”

  The girl paused—huffed out a sound without words—then began miming what Sella finally understood to be writing. She found a scrap journal and a pencil and passed them to the girl.

  She scribbled out a few lines, then passed the journal back.

  I couldn’t come any earlier. 10 minutes and I’ll pay you double, please.

  The shadows were still short and, anyway, locking the gates was mostly a show for the rowdier children and their lingering parents. Double her price would’ve been tempting any day, but that one had been particularly long and quiet, and Sella had never been one to turn down a generous offer.

  Sella nodded, inviting her into the narrow space. “Ten minutes.”

  The girl sat across from her, held her palms out flat and still. They were smooth like glazed clay, with lines so fine that Sella could barely make them out.

  She put the journal next to the girl, set the pencil on top of it. “So, what brings you to Sella the Seer?”

  The girl didn’t reach for the paper; her fingers didn’t twitch to form signals. The only movement was her hands stretching wider, grasping toward Sella.

  She had learned how to read folks, taken the lessons of Miss Janus and taught herself how to crease folks over on the spine and bookmark all the parts she’d need from them. But this girl was veiled—mirrored like polished marble or the first thin gloss of snow—and in the twilight shade Sella couldn’t find a page to flip to. She fumbled, spun out vagaries and pulled at every snag she could find, hoping it would unravel the girl. But she sat still and, even as Sella talked, smiled sweet and mild at every prod but gave no further response.

  After ten minutes, she spilled a bag of change onto the table and climbed out of the caravan. Sella counted out nearly three times her rate in tarnished gold coins before stumbling out onto the dark boardwalk, trying to trace the strange silent girl’s path. But she was already gone, lost in the chilled starless night.

  ♛

  She came back three weeks later, which was more than Sella had thought to hope for. She drifted in at the hottest streak of the afternoon and waited in line behind two old women and a younger boy who kept pulling at the hem of his shirt. She brought her own notebook this time, ready with neat phrases already written out.

  Theo—she pointed to herself. And below it:

  I want to be happy—each letter was spaced out precisely, perfect except for a few ghost markings that hinted at this not being the first question she’d tried out.

  It was a start. Sella’s fingers circled Theo’s wrist as she gazed more intently at Theo’s weak, fracturing palm lines. Sella told her that there was happiness woven there, but also sorrow and trials. She shook her head, solemn, and said Theo would need guidance to traverse her fate. By the end, Theo swayed like the sea beneath them was rocking her. She poured more gold coins on the table and left, fast and unsteady.

  Sella cursed, clipped it under her breath. Maybe she’d pushed too much, poured it over too thick, sounded too ominous. It would be a shame to lose the money, but not a disaster—she didn’t want for customers here. But there was something else, something in the girl’s—Theo’s—hu
ngry-deep eyes and unreadable skin that hooked into the core of Sella and pulled.

  It was simple enough then: Sella didn’t want her gone.

  ♛

  A week went by—stuffed with groggy sessions and confused patrons gingerly asking if something was wrong—and Sella didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until a knock and a smile interrupted the watery new moonlight.

  I want to be free—and Sella knew that itch, that restless rattle in the bones. She shuffled the dog-eared tarot deck that Miss Janus had given her, folded into a wine-dark lace cloth, and held the cards out to Theo.

  Third time makes a habit, and the knot of fear in Sella’s gut began to unclench. Theo came back for weeks at a time, then would disappear for a month or two, but Sella didn’t worry. She’d come with the high-noon heat or the icy wind off the north seas, and Sella would pull cards or read crystals or pour tea. Sometimes she would tie off little spell bags full of shattered shells and sweet-smelling herbs to send back with Theo to wherever it was she came from. There was no regularity to any of it, save for the gold coins and the journal. Always one sentence, a statement masking a question, and Sella began feeling those sparks of cool light racing down to her fingertips and sizzling through the bridge of her nose. She began closing her eyes and listening again, letting the pulse of silence point her along the way.

  Theo’s statements became more specific, more certain:

  I want to be safe.

  I want to be known.

  I want to make the right decisions.

  I want to be loved—

  “You are,” Sella whispered, etching her fingernail where Theo’s love line ought to be. “Your love protects you… will always protect you.”

  Theo’s gaze snapped up; for the first time, she reached for the pencil Sella kept on the edge of the table. She wrote, fast and sharp, and against her delicate prepared words it looked like a scrawl: