Mistification

by Kaaron Warren

  The sacrifice complete, Marvo stood, arms and legs in a star, head tilted to the ceiling, eyes rolled white. She watched him for an hour. He didn't move and neither did she.

  He saw: great death, terrible sudden death, then slow and painful death. He saw fear, he saw hopelessness and destruction. He saw suicide and voluntary sterility. He saw a blackness, a deep velvet blackness which he knew was the extinction of humanity.

  He saw how it would happen, why the mist would drop, disappear. He saw answers for why he was in the room. He lived in the big house because his grandmother thought he would be best protected there. It was a house built by her ancestor, lost, then taken over by the quiet religious people who had died there. There was a magic story, once fact, about the house and its ability to protect. It was a feat, to build that house.

  He saw his own future: black. His own future was dark. Eyes rolled that way, Marvo saw his own death.

  He was performing before a small audience of children. He was presenting them with white doves and silk scarves – soon he would ask a child to come on stage for the trick where he plays cards. Andra breathed calmly beside him. He knew her skills. She followed him in whatever he did. Then the auditorium went dark, and, spotlit, stood a man with an odd beard and a loose coat.

  The man reached into his pocket and removed a gun. He shot, and Marvo collapsed. The beard fell off, the odd disguise.

  When Marvo woke from his trance, he knew the face of his killer. He recognised her as the woman cruel to Andra. The woman vanquished. Doctor Reid, Doctor Marcia Reid. If he could find her first, destroy her, then he would not die.

  He felt his way around the cellar, enjoying the rough bumps of the walls.

  Andra sat at the kitchen table with the last of the women.

  "Aren't you jealous? How do you let him do that? She's so beautiful. And listen to them. I've never heard anything like it."

  "He is his own man," Andra said.

  "You can talk to me," the woman said. "You seem like you have a lot pent up. Tell me. You're always helping others. Let me help you. If you're unhappy, leave him. It's simple. Women will look after you."

  Andra smiled. "He's the perfect man, but he needs his freedom."

  The woman snorted. "He's got the wool pulled over your eyes."

  The girl stumbled up the stairs, her eyes blind, her smell fearful.

  "What is it?" asked Andra. "What happened?"

  Hearing no sympathy in Andra's voice, the girl leaned against the wall. Andra did not help her; she did not give her the stag heart bone.11

  "I'll take her home. Let you know what happens," the other woman said. She kissed Andra on the cheek.

  Andra stared after the two of them, the girl like a puppet.

  Andra waited for Marvo to walk up the stairs, describe the silly girl, make Andra laugh. He didn't appear. The door was locked.

  Andra wanted to know what he had seen down in the cellar.

  "Only a dream," he said. "Only with you am I real." But still he did not tell her the story of his birth, or of his dream. He did not tell her how he saw through his own mist; his mist did not reach into the future. He suffered a leaden feeling of mortality and saw that the magic of the present is only the trivia of the past, misunderstood.

  He saw his line of descendants. He saw: a tall, thin man, all ribs and kneecaps, rubbing raw meat in dark grey ashes. Those ashes were old, Marvo knew. A hundred years at least. Fire didn't burn anymore. He saw his descendants cold and hungry.

  "I'll tell what I didn't see," Marvo said. "I didn't see me performing ever again. Tell that man we can't do it anymore."

  "Marvo!"

  Marvo thought that by avoiding performances he could avoid death.

  "Tell him."

  "We have a contract. We'll lose a fortune."

  "There are plenty of ways to make money," he said. "I can count cards, you know. That's only one way. I can cheat at cards."

  The promoter knew what a treasure he had in Marvo. "When you're ready, come back to me," he said. "You go somewhere else and we'll see trouble. You come here and I'll wait a decade for you. Hopefully not that long!"

  Marvo began a harder search for people's stories, for their histories. It made it easier to chase Doctor Reid, to figure the way she would run. How she would chase.

  Marvo now had two missions. To find Doctor Reid and perhaps stop his own death, and to create the mist for the people, to keep them happy. He realised he could solve both in one; he needed to find a way to make the mist as thick as it had ever been.

  He saw terrible darkness and knew it was his future, his life after death. He knew it was the afterlife of all on earth, all sentient beings. His grandmother had spoken to him of this place as she neared death. He wanted to know what he could do, whether his blood would help, whether he could keep her with him alive forever.

  "Eternal life brings loss of all feeling. Like the fairy story of the girl who was happy to walk with knives in her feet in order to be living on land, not sea, seekers of eternal life have to accept that they will be numb to love, hate, fear and elation. They will taste food but not love the taste. They will not be able to get drunk. They will have sex but not enjoy it," she told him. "I don't want that."

  This numbness Marvo saw when he glimpsed the future.

  He would not tell Andra what he saw or what he planned to do. She had taught him so much he knew his plan was faulty. He didn't want her to tear it to pieces for him. He could imagine her words. "But how will you save the world? By pretending that nothing is happening? By giving them a shock, something to gossip about, some entrancing story to help them forget, some amazing prize?" There was no point telling Andra.

  Marvo did not lose confidence that what he was doing was correct. He did not consider for a minute trying to stop the danger, work towards solving the problem which would lead to war. He felt his way was best. Blind to truth, the people would be happy until the day they died, and they would not give up. They would procreate and live on.

  Marvo was angered by the truth he saw. He blamed the girl, for being the sacrifice, and Andra gladly agreed. The girl was not so innocent, said Andra.

  "She must have been or I wouldn't have seen the future," said Marvo.

  He created the illusion that the encounter was desperately unhappy. With sleight of hand, he distracted Andra from seeing his flushed face, red cheeks, his short breath.

  He flashed a storm – lightning and thunder to terrify the strongest of heart.

  "Don't you know what's real and what's illusion?" he said. Andra nodded and smiled and his little trick had worked.

  He was dangerous when he was unhappy. He could easily take his mist and go away. There were many kinds of mist, though.

  Marvo drew his own mist. He sometimes used alcohol as the agent.

  The mist covered, enveloped, acted as a barrier.

  He could drop it at will, drop the mist to cover his departure. The mist might drop for many years, or for seconds only. It could help the dreaming; it stood as a wall between an unbearable fact and a person. The mist could be very welcome.

  The mist could cover half the world, leaving the other free to see; during war, this was often the case. War was a time of great illusion, great unseeing. People were blinded to murder, its name changed. They forgot how much they hated their brother and began to hate the man over the barrier as evil.12

  Some truth will always come through; a massacre in a public place in China, the death of a famous son or daughter.

  The magic existed regardless. The mist was only cleared for terrible moments, when there were spates of child killings, as parents suddenly saw clearly the world they had brought their children into. Tsar Ivan IV killed his heir in 1581, on a day when the mist was low. There were spates of suicides. Many were quietly buried – by the time the news reached the people the mist had dropped again, reality was forgotten and truth was a fog.

  While Marvo was seeking stories to understand his life, and hunting Doctor Reid,
he let his work slip. The mist was thin in some places; nonexistent in others. When the mist dropped, the world saw things, like a day of terrorism, bombs in one nation, shooting sprees in another, fires elsewhere. Observers assessed conspiracies; how else could so much happen in one day, at one time? There was no conspiracy. These things happened every day. The world did not see them. Marvo was not the first in his line to forget his work; suicides are many. So many.13

  The true magician, Betta, came to see him, disguised as a census taker. She said, "You know that suicides have tripled. You are being lazy."

  "Not lazy. I've seen the end of the world. I need to know how to make the mist strong enough so they don't suffer."

  "We can all help you," Betta said. "But you still need to keep the mist."

  "How can you help?" Marvo said.

  "We can help with the mist. All of us vigilant."

  "How can you stop me from being killed, though?"

  "That won't be a problem. Surely you see that by seeing it you circumvent it?"

  "I don't think so," he said. "I don't believe that."

  "This is not the worst time in history, Marvo. We have survived more; we have helped the human race survive more."

  Andra brought a cup of tea to Marvo where they sat in the lounge room. Nothing for Betta.

  "It is time for me to go. I am not here to hurt your man, Andra. I am here to help him. I won't take him from you unless I have to," Betta said.

  Andra walked to the front door and held it open. "You don't need to see us again," she said.

  Marvo sat holding her hand. "I'm losing you," she said. "You are slipping away to the big picture and I am just a detail to be forgotten."

  "You're the only person keeping me alive, Andra. You should know that without being told. You have to help me, though. My work is slipping. People are dying. The suicide rates are higher than they have ever been. Help me to stay focused. I don't want to be the first failed magician."

  "You're far from the first. And suicide isn't always bad, you know. Sometimes it helps."

  The Boy Fits

  In other days, the dried brains of suicide were considered an infallible remedy for epilepsy.

  There was one man whose only son suffered terribly. It was unbearable to watch, the damage that was done. Each fit made the man die a little.

  Finally, he followed the instructions of a witch he met. His wife was away or else she would have stopped him.

  The witch told him he needed to unbury a suicide and take his brain. The brain should then be dried on a hot iron plate and burned and the ashes given to the sufferer.

  There were no suicides the man knew of so he decided to create one. There was a young man in the suburb who caused nothing but heartache to everybody. He hurt animals, pushed little children off their bikes, made his mother cry.

  The man went to see him and used words of such persuasion, provided such an opportunity, that the young man committed suicide.

  The cure worked: once the son had eaten the ashes, he did not have a fit again. People all round wanted to get some of the cure.

  While the man did not confess in public what he had done, word got out. Suicides were encouraged, then, and the family rewarded. It was considered a brave thing to do.

  #

  "That's a good story, Andra. Perhaps I should find people who are happy to suicide, who would have done it anyway. Perhaps that will make me feel better."

  It didn't, though. Marvo couldn't help but save them. He performed magic for a cowardly man who hated the sight of a world without mist.

  He was perched on the top of a bridge, rocking back and forward to take the pressure off, so if he fell he could think "It's not my fault, I fell."

  The man clutched a large stone in his hand.

  "Where is that stone from? What is it?" Marvo asked.

  "This is a toadstone, to help protect me from witchcraft."

  "You are scared of all witches?" asked Marvo.

  "Yes." The man tucked his hands into his armpits, so he was not tempted to hold on.

  "Scared of witches but not scared of dying? What is it?" said Marvo. "What's so bad?" It was a cold night and his breath hissed and fogged.

  The mist should stop people from committing suicide. This was Marvo's tradition.

  The man said, "I'm dying anyway, I'm in a bad way. The doctor said it was two months at most."

  "Doctors are very fallible. They only interpret facts; there is nothing incontrovertible. Perhaps if you tried another doctor, the verdict would be different."

  The mist drifted under the man's nose. He climbed off the bridge, leaving his toadstone on the railing, and walked away. He didn't see Marvo; didn't look back.

  The man, though Marvo was not affected in any way by the information, lived for many years. He became a bus driver, taking the job in a good interview from a man who, if allowed to drive the bus, would have driven drunk and killed fourteen people.

  Marvo wondered about the toadstone and found out all he could about it. He knew Andra would love such a stone, and he wanted to keep the man's stone for himself.14

  Marvo became very excited about stones and their properties. He looked for distractions; he couldn't think of how to make the mist thick enough. He needed a break from the future. He studied stones, to decide which he would like. This led him to reading about jewel theft. It sounded exciting to him; a challenge. He had no problem with theft. He had always picked up small objects and kept them, but grand scale jewel theft was different. It needed real magic.

  The stones seemed magic to him because such beauty dug from the dark earth can only be so.

  Marvo walked into the jewellery store as a young woman and her older lover. If it was a cliché, he wasn't aware of it.

  "I want to see rings," Marvoshe said.

  "No, we'll have them set once we've chosen the stone," said Marvohe, a man who had made his money by not wasting it. "We'll see your best stones – a selection."

  The jeweller, used to wealthy and demanding customers, was unhurried in his response. He brought out his best; he was not one to play games.

  "Would madam like to see some jewellery while sir is looking at the stones?" said the jeweller.

  "No, madam wouldn't," said Marvohe. "She's got lessons to learn, like you and me."

  The jeweller sniffed, saying with that sniff, "I have nothing left to learn, particularly from your kind."

  That sniff took away any doubts Marvo had about making the man a victim. He did have a lesson to learn; that he could be wrong in his immediate character assessments.

  Once all the stones were on the bench, Marvo turned into a large emu, and ate the stones. Then he turned into a wisp of smoke and disappeared under the door, with the jeweller's stock of precious stones.

  Then he ran home, running for the pure joy of it.

  "I don't believe in magic," the jeweller would later tell police, "but they turned into an emu and ate the stones, then turned into smoke and disappeared under the door. I never expected those two to do anything like that."

  Marvo was not aware of the consequences of his act. Andra was so happy with his gifts she did not ask where they came from. But he did not know the jeweller was arrested as the thief (he did not own the shop) and, for want of any other suspects or any evidence or an emu escaping from the zoo, he was found guilty and imprisoned. In jail, he polished peach pits and sold them as precious stones.

  Marvo spoke to Andra, as he laid the jewels around her naked body. "In India, if you bathe while wearing a turquoise, the water it touches protects you from boils. Copper is a sacred metal to the Hindus and copper rings are worn to ward of the Devil who gives you sciatica. Coppers in uniform don't ward off any devils. A diamond will endows wearer with courage, making them more fearless than careful.

  "The jacinth strengthens the heart and is often worn near there.

  "The sapphire sharpens intellect and prevents bites from venomous animals.

  "An emerald will prevent giddin
ess and strengthens memory.

  "The amethyst promotes sobriety; the wearer is caused to abstain from strong drinks and from sleeping too much.

  "Chrysolite wards off fevers.

  "Onyx prevents attacks of epilepsy.15

  "The opal will cure weak eyes.