by Jordan Bell
It seemed exactly as he’d said. Impossible.
“But perhaps you are still skeptical.”
The Magician spun his free hand across the front of the now bent column of fire, fingers spread as if he were stroking the contour of a crystal ball. The yellow bright tip of the bent column threaded, fanned out so that it suddenly had shape and depth. It crawled across an invisible plane, lengthened, frayed. It did things fire did not do, could not do, had never done before. It rippled.
When the yellow ends rethreaded, the flame had formed the shape of a miniature lion, mane fluffed out, eyes dark and expressive. It had paws and tufts of hair between its toes. It had a tail.
It was too bright to stare at but I could not take my eyes away.
There was silence in the theater, the silence of frozen, disbelieving awe. Real. Not real.
Real.
He waved his hand again, a flourish at the wrist, and the damn thing started walking.
One oversized paw in front of the other, it walked in place hovering above the Magician’s hand. Its tail swished. Its ear flicked. And then it opened its fire jaws and gave the audience a tiny, yawning roar.
The theater exploded in emotional applause. Magic triumphed over reason and won all our hearts. Stole them right out of our chests, just like he’d promised. I clapped so hard my palms ached and my eyes watered. If it was an illusion it was a brilliant illusion. A marvel of wonder.
“Did you see that?” “My God. It walked.” “Impossible. God damn impossible.”
While we roared and begged for more, all of us adults behaving like children, the Magician never wavered his concentration. The firelight created a strange pattern of light and shadow across his face, giving his serious eyes a demonic and powerful look that was at once terrifying and hypnotic. If he’d turned into a black winged demon we would have all of us followed him into hell.
Suddenly the Magician snapped his hands together in a cracking boom of skin against skin and the lion vanished in a puff of smoke and dropped the Magician and the stage into a fathomless darkness.
The woman beside me clutched her chest, practically panting, eyes as wide as the moon. I felt it, the running pounding of my heart, a little scared and thrilled at the same time. I could not remember why I’d ever come to the carnival. I could not imagine going home.
The lights faded on, the bare bulbs hanging above the stage giving only enough light to throw the theater into shadow. He stood one ankle crossed over the other, toe touching for balance, small crystal juggling balls wending between his spread fingers. His face relaxed in casual disinterest as if he were waiting for us and not the other way around.
Katya returned to her kneeling behind him, waiting for her cue.
“I have one last trick for you.” The balls spun and one by one they vanished until his hands were empty. “One last taste of romance and pleasure. One last illusion.” He shrugged and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Or magic.”
The Magician turned and started for his assistant, holding one hand out to her. She started to reach for it, big white smile glittering beneath the lights, but before they touched, he turned again suddenly to stare at us, his brows drawn but eyes wide.
“I need a volunteer from the audience.”
“You what?” I heard the surprise in Katya’s outburst, saw the mixture of confusion and horror as her hand hovered between him and the aborted trick.
He gazed down the rows, a dozen hands in the air waving manically. I willed him to skip over me.
He didn’t.
“You. The lion-haired girl. Come here.”
I froze. Every gaze locked on me and I didn’t dare meet any of them. He knelt at the edge of the stage, one elbow propped on his bent knee. He pointed at the spot in front of him.
“Come here.”
I shook my head, unable to find my voice, and shrunk a little lower.
His eyes narrowed a sliver.
“Now.”
“Go,” the woman beside me whispered. She nudged her elbow into my kidney.
Against my better judgment, I stood. The blood rushed into my face. Every drop of it. I could feel the heat and the red scorching my cheeks.
“Leave your coat.”
I tugged the buttons, slipped it off, and left it in my chair. He held out his hand and I took it.
On stage, he didn’t release my hand. He brought me to where Katya now stood, frantic eyes darting between us and her strained smile giving away that she had no idea what was going on.
“Please don’t ask me to do anything weird,” I whispered. There were too many strangers staring at me and the hot bulbs above us were already making me sweat.
His mouth turned up in a half grin, wry and secretive. He did not answer.
“One last trick. Are you ready?”
“No, not really.”
He brought two fingers to his eyes to center me. “Look into my eyes. Keep looking, that’s all you have to do. I’ll do the rest. Try not to blink. Good girl.”
Looking into his eyes was not as easy as he made it sound. Gazing, unblinking, into anyone’s eyes was an intimacy reserved for lovers and enemies, not strangers. The Magician’s eyes were storm grey, but also blue, glacial blue, nearly iridescent but for the grey clouds that darkened them. If I didn’t know better, I would have believed this too was an illusion and that if I didn’t blink soon he’d hypnotize me.
But I did as I was told and very quickly I felt the stage floor slip away and the lights around us dim. The heat sunk back and I could feel a chill, a touch of early winter where it didn’t belong. I felt his fingertips press along the curve of my wrists. From the spot between my eyes down through the middle of my body, I felt a lingering sense of vertigo.
“Close your eyes.”
“What?” I asked nervously. “Why?”
He exhaled as if I tried his patience. Reluctantly I obeyed and the falling sensation eased.
Somewhere out in the audience, someone gasped.
“Now. Open.”
A cold brushed my skin, a winter wind that didn’t rustle the curtains or the Magician’s hair, and around us white glittery snowflakes fell. An invisible barrier kept us from the audience, from Katya, from the rest of the world. It was as if we’d been caught within a snow globe only big enough for the two of us.
The snowflakes slowed, seemed to hang perfectly still around us.
He circled until he was behind me, taller and broader than I was. He drew back my hair to expose my neck to him and the audience and ran his hands down the length of my arms. His skin was so warm. It broke my thoughts.
“This…” I murmured but he cut me off.
“What is your name?”
I tried to remember.
“Sera...Serafine.”
The snowflakes glittered so delicately. A single, perfect star shaped flake stilled in front of my nose and as soon as I reached out to touch it, it exploded in a shower of white sparks. Somewhere far away, I heard the audience’s applause.
“And why did you come here, Serafine?” His breath kissed my neck as he slid around my body, his hands never losing contact with my elbow, my wrist, my fingers. I stared at the key hanging around his neck, and when I was brave enough, I stared into his eyes.
“This isn’t real,” I implored. “How is this happening?”
He canted his head very slightly. “You don’t like it?”
“Oh, yes but...how?” I sounded breathless. My chest hurt with how hard it was pounding. A snowflake fell upon my cheek and melted, leaving a faintly wet trail, like a kiss.
The Magician narrowed his eyes. He leaned in close and all I could see was him, his handsome, stormy face. He tilted his face down to mine and I foolishly thought he might kiss me while a room full of strangers watched.
I don’t think I would have minded.
He brought his hand to my face, touched his thumb to my open lips, and dragged the pad across them. He nudged them wider so that the tip of his thumb fit just
between my teeth. Unintentionally, maybe, and to my blushing embarrassment, my tongue touched his skin. Just barely, but I felt it through my whole body. Between my legs. Electrifying every inch of my skin.
The Magician felt it too, sucked in a shuddering breath like he might suffocate right here in this little snowy world he’d made for us.
“Why are you here?” he said quietly, alarm and warning and …want…creating a dangerous mix.
“I…”
“Tell me,” he commanded, his voice soft, barely more than an exhale. He seemed closer, or the space between us felt smaller.
And then…“Ladies and gentleman! I give you Imaginaire’s greatest illusionist!”
Katya’s voice cut through our cold quiet and the audience rushed back beneath the hot lights as they all took to their feet in a thunderous ovation.
I blinked rapidly, shook my head to clear it. The Magician stood paralyzed between me and his audience. One violent glance towards Katya sent her shrinking back as he took to the middle of the stage and bowed.
While the room showered him in love and adoration, I jumped down off the stage, snatched up my coat, and ran out of the tent.
* * *
The cold against my skin acted as a much needed salve to the heat soaking my body. I’d never seen, never felt anything like what had just happened to me inside the Magician’s tent. His voice, seductive despite its harshness, had cast the promised spell and even forewarned I’d allowed myself to become ensnared by it.
Behind the Magician’s tent I collapsed against a support pole, far from the lights and the path traveled by delighted carnival guests. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to calm down. So much had happened in a few hours. Day time turned to dusk. Soon it would be full night and I’d have lost a whole day to chasing ghosts. Everything I’d seen and everything I’d felt was like something from a dream but also so familiar. I believed now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my mother had once walked these paths and visited these tents. This place was absolutely her home. I’d never sensed her in our sad little apartment, but for the first time since her death I thought she might be close.
I didn’t know if I was upset or maddeningly in love. They felt like the same emotion.
There was heaviness to his presence that I recognized immediately even before I opened my eyes to confirm it. Tucked away in the alcove between tents, the heat from his body brushed across mine.
“Open your eyes.”
I expected, like a dream, that he’d disappear upon waking. But no. When I obeyed his will, I found him standing so close we almost touched. Gently he hooked a finger beneath my chin and tilted my face up to his so that his mask hovered above my upturned nose. This close I could see the mask was made for him and him alone, molded perfectly to the shape of his bones.
The Magician set a hand on the pole above my head and used the leverage to lean in.
“Did you enjoy my show?” he murmured.
“It was…” That strange sensation of being drugged, drunk, and bewitched clouded my senses and muddled my thoughts. “…very …”
I tripped over the last word as he collapsed the space between us with each drawn syllable. I could smell the powder of his make-up. His breath puffed against my cheek, just off center from my mouth.
“It was,” I stammered, trying to remember exactly what it was we were even talking about. The shape of his mouth turned up ever so slightly.
“Yes? What was it?”
Before I could answer, he touched his lips feather soft to the corner of my smile. I turned my head towards his, but he held back where it was almost appropriate, almost damning, even as I exhaled the smallest moan.
“Lovely,” he breathed when he pulled away, his accent stronger in that one word than I’d heard all night, as if he forgot to correct himself. He drew a thumb down the sharp angle of my throat. “Join me for the rest of the evening.” He closed in once more so that I felt his body along mine, his face tilted into my hair. I could feel the key around his neck press into my skin. “Come away with me.”
And like that, all at once, the spell broke. The con rushed in like a bucket of ice water to cool my body and a sharp gasp of laughter escaped before I could stuff it back inside. He instinctively jerked back.
“Yeah sure,” I collected my senses and pushed him away. “And is there a Nigerian prince hiding nearby? Perhaps you’ve got a potion that will make me taller and thinner or an elixir of everlasting youth in your pocket as well.”
“I’m sorry what?”
The Magician withdrew, shocked and appalled, which gave me a different sort of pleasure. I relaxed, even if the memory of his mouth pressed dangerously closed to mine still lingered a bit too fresh.
“Let me guess, it’s this, right?” I held up my wrist, the lion charm reflecting the lights around us. “It means something other than very special guest. It means keep an eye on me, herd me only where you want me to go, and then when you’re done playing with me, tempt me into some dark corner where I can be diced up into little pieces as the main course at a carny feast.”
His body language changed, shifted from seductive and rakish to faintly amused and bored. He folded his arms across his chest and regarded me as if I were a small, faintly repulsive child.
“Come away with me,” I mocked in a poor version of his accent. “Are you kidding me? Don’t get me wrong, that amazing, husky British accent completely melted my heart into a puddle of dumb girly goo. But not dumb enough to think that all that,” I waved my hand at the length of his body, then my own, “would hand pick all this for a secret, decadent rendezvous behind the tents. I appreciate the effort and your show really is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen, but I’ve wasted too much time as it is. I have to see a man about a carnival.”
I stepped out from his immediate physical control. He let me go and took his place at a casual lean against the tree, arms and ankles crossed. He regarded me with those heavy grey eyes, though I did get the impression he was humoring me. I took several steps back towards the path without taking my eyes off him.
“Rook,” I said and pointed in either direction. “Which way?”
The Magician canted his head and pointed down the path to my left.
It wasn’t easy turning and leaving him in the dark. I could have wanted whatever agonizing death lay at the end of that potential tryst, if only he’d kissed me with as much pretend desire as he teased me with. A scary thought, that.
7
__________________
That lying, cheating, dirty rotten magician lied.
Not that I should have been surprised when I circled the same tent twice and found my way back to his darkened stage before backtracking and taking the fork he did not recommend. By the time I found the back lot I was tired and annoyed and would have liked to have strangled the man with one of his magic ropes.
There were no lights back here, no people either since the carnival was still going strong behind me. The lot was roped off to warn away guests, and guarded by a man neither in costume nor mask. He immediately moved to intercept me. I stopped him with a death glare and pointed at the center of his chest.
“Try and stop me. That’s all I have to say to you. Try and stop me.”
I shoved the rope aside and stalked inside.
Alistair Rook’s wagon held first position in the back lot. There were no signs, but it was easily the biggest of the front wagons, not to mention the long side of it had been painted in a hurricane of ravens circling a single, tiny circus tent.
I pounded my fist on the little door.
The latch clicked and the door swung open, forcing me back down the steps or risk being knocked over. The Magician leaned out and stared down at me, this time obviously amused.
“You really are a pest.”
“And you are no longer my favorite person, either.” I pushed a tangle of red hair out of my face and waved him out of the way. “I’m also not here for you. Go away.”
The corner of
his mouth kicked up. “I used to be your favorite person?”
My mouth opened to shoot him a scathing lie, but we were both interrupted.
“Let her in,” came a voice from beyond the Magician. “She’s come this far, might as well hear what she has to say.”
The Magician hesitated then stepped aside and motioned for me to enter. I climbed the steps, suddenly nervous.
Alistair Rook.
The man behind the desk seemed old, sixties, maybe seventies. Like the Magician and the Courtesan, it was hard to tell his age. He wore a shock of white hair, and was slighter than his position seemed to suggest.
His green cat eyes, bright as jewels, defied the wrinkles and the white hair and made him look a touch wicked. They danced in the candle light that lit the room.
Alistair Rook didn’t scare me, but he had something about him that captured and empowered or reduced. He ran a hand across the closed ledger in front of him, then motioned me forward.
“Come, girl.”
His will controlled the world. Before I knew what I was doing, I was approaching his desk, my knees feeling weak and not quite mine.
“Mr. Rook?” I asked. I swallowed. “Alistair Rook?”
“Yes, I am, though I’m afraid I can’t say I know who you are. What possible business have you with me?” Alistair Rook leaned forward and steepled his fingers in front of his face like a comic book villain.
I almost laughed if I didn’t think he’d have me thrown out. Or worse.
I gave the Magician a dark glance. “You can go.”
He snorted and crossed his arms. “Nice try, but that’s not going to happen, love.”
Rook nodded. “You told my ticket master that you had an invitation. That’s a lie because I don’t know you and therefore could not have sent you one. You’ve got five seconds to tell me what you want. One.”
“I want a job.”
Alistair didn’t look surprised, but I could hear the Magician’s disdain when he laughed. I folded my hands politely in front of me and waited for the carnival director to speak next. My mother was here. Her past was here. I’d find answers here that I never would out there in the so called real world. I’d work for the carnival. It was the simplest, best answer to all of my problems. No more Maurie or Elma. No more waiting.
