The Magician's Tower

by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

  Systematically, she applied pressure to the corners of the box with her thumbs.

  More than half an hour passed, and the front half of her dress began to dry. Tendrils of steam rose off the fabric, spiraling into the upper reaches of the pyramid in swirling, chaotic patterns that broke apart and rejoined like misty puzzle pieces. Oona placed the box on the floor in front of her and stood on it. She jumped up and down. Nothing. She stepped from the box and watched its immaculate surface flicker in the firelight, as if it were an animal that might at any moment make a sudden dash for the door.

  The tower continued to sway in the storm, and the rain seemed to fall even harder. Thunder cracked overhead. The tower trembled, yet Oona remained oblivious to her surroundings.

  It was as if nothing else in the world existed, save for the puzzle before her, and it was as she stared fixedly at the box, its shinny black surface flickering in the orange fire glow, that the idea came to her. It seemed so simple. Too simple, perhaps, but all the same … she picked the box up, and then, before she could think twice about what she was doing, she tossed it into the fire.

  Half expecting the architect to protest, she glanced over her shoulder, but the tiny man in the tall hat, who was waiting patiently in his place at the center of the room, remained as quiet as snowfall.

  By now the fire had burned down to mostly red-hot embers. Surely the box would instantly catch fire, and hopefully, if her hunch was correct, crack open from the heat. The box landed on the embers with a dazzling spray of sparks, several of which sizzled out on Oona’s damp dress. She brushed them away with the back of her hand and waited for something to happen.

  Nothing. Not only did the box not catch fire, it did not so much as begin to smoke. Again, Oona watched the box, waiting. One minute. Three minutes. When five minutes had passed, Oona reached out a tentative hand and felt the top of the box, which remained cool to the touch.

  “Remarkable,” she said, and pulled the box from the fire, amazed at how the object managed to maintain a steady temperature, no matter what its environment—yet truthfully, when she thought about it, she was not amazed at all. Was this not the very sort of thing she had been learning about for the past five years? It was indeed. This was no logic puzzle, no comprehensible riddle. It was nothing the mind could grasp at all. This box was undeniably …

  “Magic,” she said.

  It came out sounding as if she should have known it all the time; as if it were some inevitable element in her life that she could not get away from. Deny it all she wanted, magic was a part of her world, and perhaps even more so, it was a part of her. Indeed, it was so much a part of her that she now realized she had recognized the box to be a magical object from the moment she had first set eyes on it.

  “And a magic box,” she said, “requires a magic key.”

  She thought of her uncle, and of all the spells and charms she had learned over the years as his apprentice. She thought of the Lights of Wonder spell he had taught her, and how Oona had used it to delight her mother and baby sister. And how the spell had gone so completely wrong, ending in their deaths.

  And, of course, she thought of these last few days, when she had retained the hope that perhaps she had not been the cause of their deaths after all. It had been a false hope. Ridiculous, now that she thought of it. Oona had been there … had seen it all happen … and yet some part of her still clung to the thought that perhaps some other action, besides her own incompetence, had in the end caused the spell to go so wrong.

  There are times when we humans open like a flower, our petals reaching outward for the answers we seek. But often, the answers that we are looking for are on the inside, and no reaching outward is necessary.

  Oona shook her head, confused. Those had been her uncle’s words from the day before. But why were they popping into her head now? She didn’t even know what those words had meant.

  But then another thought began to materialize in her head, one that was definitely related. It was an image of the Wizard standing in the Pendulum House front garden, the hedge clippers clasped in one hand, just before he had spoken those cryptic words. And then the curious occurrence with the rose. How beautiful it had been. The rose had opened to the Wizard’s will. How truly …

  Oona’s head gave a little jerk. “The rose. The spell. Of course.”

  Remembering her empty pockets, it occurred to her how fortunate it was that the simple spell had not required a conductor.

  Kneeling down, she placed the box in front of her and raised one finger, playing the memory of what had happened in the garden over in her mind. She closed her eyes, concentrating as thoroughly as she could, and uttered the words her uncle had spoken, hoping beyond hope that she remembered them correctly.

  “Abra-ord-ion-all.”

  The box clicked.

  Oona opened her eyes, her breath suddenly filled with excitement. The box remained on the floor in front of her, only now there appeared to be a seam running around the top portion—a very defined lid—and an intricate pattern of magical symbols materialized on the box as if they had been carved into the smooth surface. Carefully, delicately, Oona flipped the lid open, her hands shaky from the lingering effects of the spell. Beneath the lid lay what Oona recognized immediately as a magic wand. Beneath the wand was a small piece of metal embossed with the words Property of Oswald.

  Oona gasped. “Is this what I think it is?”

  “It is indeed,” said a voice from behind her. It was not the voice of the architect. It was a voice that caused all the fine hairs along Oona’s arms and neck to stand on end, a voice she would never be able to forget her whole life, even if she lived to be a hundred years old. At the sound of it, time seemed almost to stop, and her heart dropped sickeningly into her stomach. Could it be true, or had she simply imagined hearing it?

  Oona jumped frantically to her feet, spinning around in a whirl of skirts, only to find Red Martin, the notorious criminal mastermind, standing ominously beside the architect, smiling his broad, malevolent smile at her.

  Dressed in a simple tan suit, Red Martin smiled a winning smile and extended his hand to Oona. Oona stepped back, cringing at the thought of being any closer to this horrible man who was not only responsible for most of the crime on Dark Street, but was also the man behind the murder of her father.

  “Thank you, Miss Crate,” he said with an air of false appreciation. “Thank you for opening that box for me. I’ve been trying to do it for more than five hundred years.”

  At first, the statement startled Oona, but then she remembered her own discovery from three months ago: how Red Martin had been using turlock root to keep himself the same age for hundreds of years.

  “You?” Oona said, her voice trembling nervously. “How did you get up here?”

  Red Martin continued to smile at her, though the smile came nowhere near his eyes.

  “Where do you think I’ve been hiding all these months? Other than in Faerie, of course,” he said. “What better place than here in my tower?” He gestured to a hidden door in the side of the pyramid. It hung open on its hinges, apparently leading to some hidden room beyond.

  “Your tower?” Oona said dubiously.

  Red Martin spread his hands wide. “Yes, mine. Who do you think has been designing and putting on this competition for the last half a millennium?”

  Oona looked questioningly at the architect, her confusion growing more and more profound by the moment.

  Red Martin began to chuckle. “Surely not this absurdly dressed man. Nor any previous so-called tower architects. They have all been hired men to play the part. Nothing more. The tower has been an instrument of my own, to find someone bright enough, and clever enough, to open that box.”

  He arrowed his finger at the box on the floor.

  Oona suddenly recalled the achingly boring history lesson from the Museum of Magical History and began to understand. It all made a kind of bizarre sense. She stared at Red Martin in disbelief. “It was you … five h
undred years ago. You were Bernard T. Slyhand, the painter who stole Oswald’s wand.”

  Red Martin clapped his hands together, applauding. “Very good, Miss Crate. Slyhand was one of my many names. And yes, it was I who stole Oswald’s wand all those centuries ago. But when I stole the wand, it was stuck inside the protective case that Oswald himself had made for it: that black box. I had no way of opening it. Nevertheless, I sent a ransom note to Oswald, along with a hurriedly painted portrait of the wand, in the hope that he would think I had managed to somehow open the box. But the painting was done purely from memory. Indeed, I have what is called an eidetic memory, which means that—”

  “I know what it means,” Oona said. “It means that you have the ability to remember any thing or event in perfect detail.”

  “Very good,” said Red Martin. “I’ve never met anyone else with a memory to match my own. But I’m special in that way, I suppose.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Oona said. “Sir Baltimore has an eidetic memory as well.”

  Red Martin grinned. “Well, at least he thinks he does.”

  Oona frowned, glancing nervously toward the outside door. She considered making a run for it. She might be able to get through the door before Red Martin or the architect could catch up to her, but where would she go from there? Her chest tightened as she fully realized her situation. She was trapped.

  Red Martin pointed at the box. “Anyway, I created this contest to find someone smart enough to open that blasted thing. And here you are. I knew it would be you, Miss Crate. After five hundred years of waiting, I just knew it.”

  Oona turned to the architect, whom she now knew was not an architect at all, and said: “So you have been in league with Red Martin all along.”

  The little man shrugged apologetically. “It’s good money. And it’s more work than you might expect. Red Martin may have designed it, but I saw to its construction. I arranged the use of the carpets from the museum, and had the monkeys brought in from the World of Man. Not to mention reconstructing an entire riverboat.”

  “They are apes, not monkeys,” Oona corrected.

  “Whatever,” the false architect said dismissively.

  Red Martin rubbed his hands together, grinning like a schoolboy. “The flying snakes I smuggled in myself, from Faerie. I bred them right here in the tower.”

  Oona shook her head, realizing how stupid she had been not to have figured it out. Adler Iree had even brought the topic up after their wild ride with the flying serpents, but she had been too determined to win the challenge to give the matter much thought. And then, of course, it had slipped her mind.

  “I should have known,” she said.

  Red Martin nodded his agreement. “You know, I had thought you might win at least some of the challenges. You did disappoint me there. And to think you nearly ruined everything trying to save that stupid Iree girl. I saw the two of you outside on the landing. She was about to fall, and you risked your own life to save her. I’ve never seen anything so foolish in my life. Why would you do such a thing? She was your enemy.”

  Oona slowly shook her head. “You’ll never understand.”

  He shrugged. “You’re probably right. But it does not matter. And now, the key to the Glass Gates is finally mine.”

  He moved to step around her, trying to get to the box.

  Oona blocked his way. “You intend to use the wand to open the Glass Gates?”

  Red Martin stopped less than a foot away, looking down at Oona as if he were truly surprised. “Why else would I want it? On the other side of those gates is Faerie. And while it is true, as you discovered for yourself, that I know a secret way through those gates, it is a miserably tedious task that takes weeks to smuggle my merchandise through.”

  “Merchandise?” Oona said, contemptuously. “You are undoubtedly responsible for smuggling across some of the most dangerous magical objects our world has ever known: objects that cause nothing but mischief, such as pixiewood poison and throttler’s silk. Things that have no business leaving Faerie.”

  Red Martin cracked his knuckles. “I am a businessman. Where there is a demand, I provide the product.”

  “Ah, but only criminals and twisted individuals would want such terrible things,” Oona said. “I know it must have been you who sent the silk to Mr. and Mrs. Dodger. Just because they owed you money? They might have died.”

  “It’s not all bad,” said Red Martin. “Why, just last month I managed to get hold of an entire carton of faerie crumb cake: a marvelously moist pastry dish, best served at room temperature, with molasses and warm milk. One swallow and you’ll hear angels singing!”

  Red Martin made a move to dart around Oona, but quick as a cat she snatched the wand from the box.

  “I do not care about faerie crumb cake!” she shouted. “I care that you wish to use this wand as a convenience—to open and close the Glass Gates at your will, so that you can continue to deluge our world with your so-called merchandise. And you haven’t given a thought to the fact that, the last time that those gates were open, the Queen of Faerie herself threatened to destroy every last living human in existence. Those gates are all that keep her army from passing through into this world, and then on to New York City, and the World of Man! Answer me this, Red Martin. With all of your customers dead, who will purchase your merchandise?”

  Red Martin’s eyelids drooped. “Don’t be so naïve. You think I’ve been smuggling artifacts across the border for over five hundred years without being careful? I know my business, Miss Crate, and no little girl is going to get in my way.” He looked her up and down. “In fact, I can think of one item in particular that I just might be able to get my hands on that would be of interest to you. With that key,” he pointed at the wand, “I could slip over to Faerie in a jiffy and bring it back for you, as a kind of thank-you gift. I take it you have heard of the Punchbowl Oracle?”

  Oona’s eyes slitted. “It is a faerie tale, nothing more.”

  Red Martin grinned. “Yes, I know it is. And I know about Sir Baltimore’s little scheme to distract you from the contest. I knew you would overcome such a blatant bit of misinformation. And of course I was right. But what would you say if I told you that there was an object that could actually do just what the punchbowl is supposed to, and give you a true answer to any question asked? It is called an Orb of Cathesis. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. They are very rare, even in Faerie. In fact, only ten have ever been known to exist. They work only once, and then their power is gone forever. I know just where I can get one. Let me have the wand, and I will fetch it for you. Whatever it is you wish so badly to know—that question that is burning away inside of you—you could learn the answer within a few hours. Just hand over the wand. Now that is a deal if I ever heard one. What do you say, Miss Crate?”

  Oona winced, as if Red Martin had dealt her a physical blow. If what he was saying were true, she could find out once and for all what had happened that tragic day in the park nearly three years ago. To Oona’s surprise, she found a part of her actually wanted to hand the wand over, wanted so badly to believe that, if she could learn the truth from this Orb of Cathesis, to know that she indeed was not responsible for the accident, then she would be able to put all of this confusion behind her. She would be free.

  And yet another part of her—the much stronger, rational part of her personality—understood that whatever answer the orb gave, it would not bring her family back. It would not change the fact that they were gone. She knew that the orb could just as easily tell her that it was all her fault. She also understood that the only reason she was so caught up in this obsession to know the truth was because some man had dressed up like a gypsy woman and simply said: “You are not responsible for the burden you hold.”

  For the second time in less than an hour, her uncle’s words returned to her, filling up her thoughts like some magic spell conjured from the very back of her mind … only this time she thought she understood better what those words actually m
eant.

  There are times when we humans open like a flower, our petals reaching outward for the answers we seek. But often, the answers that we are looking for are on the inside, and no reaching outward is necessary.

  She swallowed a lump in her throat, her heartbeat quickening in her chest as the words meaning struck home. Regardless of what had actually happened, Oona had not meant for it to happen. She had loved her mother and her sister. She had meant only to please them. She knew this as an absolute fact: a fact that was more substantial and solid than any external bit of evidence could ever prove to her. No matter whether she was responsible for the accident or not, it did not change the fact that she had loved them, and still did.

  The idea that she, Oona, would give the wand of the greatest magician of all time over to this scheming, manipulative, greedy scoundrel seemed all at once to be absurd. To believe that all he wanted the wand for was to slip through the Glass Gates from time to time was ridiculous. Even more of a joke was the thought that she could trust him to do anything he promised at all.

  “I’m afraid you misjudged one little thing in your plot to get your hands on this wand,” Oona said.

  “And what is that?” Red Martin asked.

  Oona’s eyes flashed at him. “That if I could figure out how to open the box … then I would also be able to close it again.”

  Oona dropped to the floor.

  Red Martin shouted. “No!”

  He lunged, but too late. Oona’s hand slammed the wand back into the box and closed the lid. As she did, she spoke the counterspell she had heard her uncle utter to the rose.

  “Orx-ord-ion-ah.”

  The box sealed itself, once again becoming a solid piece of impenetrable wood. Red Martin grabbed for the box, but Oona leapt back, clutching the box in her arms. Red Martin was like a cat ready to pounce.

  “I’ve read all of my father’s old files on you, Red Martin,” Oona said, keeping a steady distance. “Every detail he managed to put together. And if there is one thing that has always helped me sleep better at night, it was the fact that you seem to be incapable of performing magic yourself. You seem to rely completely on enchanted objects to perform any magical wrongdoing.”