‘So it’s all just tricking?’ said Roman, looking a bit disappointed. ‘The coin never really vanishes?’
‘Never,’ said Zacky, with an infinitely superior toss of his head. ‘It’s all just pretend.’
‘But it takes a lot of practice,’ said Sage. ‘A stage magician has to be very clever to trick an audience.’
‘Not as clever as a real magician, though.’
‘I guess not.’
Sage thought about Herb. She closed her eyes, and saw his face – his wide mouth and smile, his soft brown eyes. She mentally scolded herself. She was not one of those girls. She didn’t care if he called or not. She thought about the phone in her underwear drawer.
‘Come on,’ she said to the boys. ‘We’ll make cupcakes, and you can decorate them like golden snitches.’
She played with the boys until Roman had to go to his grandmother’s house for lunch, then she and Zacky watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the fifty millionth time, while Zacky slowly drifted into a cupcake-induced sugar coma. Sage pulled the coin she’d been using to teach the boys the French Drop from her pocket and toyed with it.
Herb had shown her a few different coin tricks and techniques, besides the French Drop. In this latest one, Sage placed the coin on her palm, and curled her fingers around it into a fist. Then she turned her fist over and started to rub it with her free hand, pinching and pulling at the skin.
On the TV, Harry, Ron and Hermione had taken polyjuice potion and were transforming into Slytherin students.
Sage pinched and pulled until she revealed the coin on top of her still-closed fist, as if she had pulled it through the flesh of her hand.
‘Do that again.’ Zacky was awake and watching her, open-mouthed.
Sage remembered something Herb had said, and shook her head. ‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Once is enough.’
Maybe that was why Herb hadn’t kissed her again. Maybe he knew how impressed she was by the first kiss, and didn’t want to give away his secrets. Maybe he’d just been trying to show off his skills.
‘Show. Me.’ Zacky’s face darkened, and Sage could sense a tantrum approaching like a heavy thundercloud.
‘Maybe later,’ she said. ‘After dinner when Dad’s home.’
The thundercloud wavered. ‘Promise?’
Sage nodded. ‘I promise.’
Zacky held Sage to her word. As soon as Dad’s key turned in the front lock, he dragged Sage into the living room, where Mum was curled on the couch with her laptop.
‘Do it,’ he said with an imperious wave of his hand. ‘You promised.’
Dad slipped off his coat and exchanged a look with Mum, who shrugged and looked at Sage.
‘It’s just a coin trick,’ said Sage. ‘It’s pretty crappy.’
‘Do. It.’ Zacky’s teeth clenched.
Dad perched on the arm of the sofa. ‘Go on, then,’ he said with a smile.
Sage did the trick again, making a fist around the coin and pinching and pulling the back of her hand until the coin magically passed through her skin.
‘It’s still in your fist,’ said Dad. ‘There’re two coins.’
Sage opened her clenched fist. There was no second coin.
Zacky punched the air. ‘That is so cool,’ he said. ‘Will you teach me how?’
Sage looked over at Mum and Dad. They were both grinning at her, their eyes alight. ‘That was great,’ said Mum. ‘Did you learn that at the theatre?’
‘It’s a trick coin, right?’ asked Dad. ‘I bet you won’t let me look at it.’
Sage felt a surge of triumph. She’d tricked them. They were completely fooled. She handed the coin to Dad, who examined it suspiciously.
‘It’s just an ordinary dollar coin,’ she said.
Dad squinted at her. ‘Then the second coin is up your sleeve.’
Sage removed her cardigan and shook it to prove there were no coins hidden inside, and passed that to Dad as well. Dad looked up at her, baffled.
‘So how did you do it?’ he asked.
Never, ever reveal your secrets, said Herb inside her head. Sage smiled enigmatically at them. ‘I think I hear my phone ringing,’ she said innocently. ‘I’d better go check.’
She swept from the room, feeling like the greatest magician who had ever lived. The feeling lasted until she got to her room and peered into her underwear drawer.
He hadn’t called.
8. Exposure: a magician’s secrets are revealed.
Sage struggled to fall asleep that night. The scene outside the station after Saturday night’s show kept playing over and over in her mind.
Why hadn’t Herb kissed her? Why hadn’t he called? Why did she care?
Sage was disgusted with herself. She told herself she was overcompensating because she was in a big new city and Herb was the first friend she’d made here. She told herself that she was really worried about Armand, and that the whole Herb thing was to distract her from Bianca’s unsettling stories of curses and ghostly magicians.
But the fact was, she liked Herb.
And it had seemed as if he liked her back.
Maybe she needed something. Warm milk. People in books always drank warm milk when they couldn’t sleep. Sage climbed out of bed and slipped from her room, making her way down the stairs.
She stopped halfway down when she heard voices.
Light spilled from the half-closed living-room door. Mum and Dad were still up, talking in low voices. She sank down on the stairs and leaned her head against the peeling wallpaper. She didn’t really want to talk to them, but it was comforting to hear the murmur of their voices.
‘I just don’t know,’ Mum was saying. ‘We’ve been together from the beginning. Do we really have to split up?’
Sage felt her blood turn to ice. She leaned forward, trying to make out the words.
‘… Just doesn’t work,’ said Dad. ‘… go back …’ Go back? Did Dad want Mum to go back to Queensland? Were her parents splitting up? Sage remembered the conversation she’d overheard. What if they hadn’t been talking about one of Dad’s clients? She heard Mum sigh.
‘It’d be easier if we could stay together,’ Dad said. ‘It’s much more economical.’
Economical? Sage felt sick. He wanted them to stay together because it was economical? What about family and togetherness? What about love?
‘Then it’s settled,’ he said. ‘Sage will stay with you. I’ll call tomorrow.’
Call who?
‘And Zacky?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Sage heard movement, and she scampered back up the stairs and dived under her doona and extra blanket, still shivering with cold. Mum wanted to take her back to Queensland. Back home, where it was warm all year round, and Sage’s friends would be waiting.
But what about Zacky? What had Mum meant when she said we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it? Surely if Mum and Sage were moving home, Zacky would come too.
But not Dad. Dad would stay here, in this big cold house, all alone.
Did Mum and Dad not love each other anymore?
And what about her job? What about the magic show? The Yoshi Lear photography course started on Tuesday – would she have to miss that?
And what about Herb?
Sage felt like she was in the cabinet for the Zigzag Effect, her head in one place and her heart being pushed in a different direction. She was freezing. She slipped out of bed and found some thick woollen socks and a cardigan. Then she climbed under the doona again and waited for sleep to come.
Next morning, Sage arrived in the kitchen feeling sick with fear.
What would her parents say? Would they tell her and Zacky together, or separately? Would it be a temporary separation, or were they getting divorced?
Dad had already left for work, and Mum was reading the paper, hands wrapped around a mug of tea.
‘Morning, darling,’ said Mum. ‘Did you sleep well?’
Sage stared a
t her. She looked fine. Not upset. Not like her marriage was falling apart. What was wrong with people?
‘Fine,’ she replied, and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl.
‘Any plans for today?’ asked Mum, taking a sip of her tea.
Sage made a noncommittal noise. Clearly Mum had moved on already. Like Herb had.
Well, fine, Sage thought. I can move on too.
She wasn’t going to think about her parents, or going back to Queensland, or the theatre, or stupid Herb anymore. She wasn’t going to be all twisted in zigzags. She was moving on.
Tomorrow was her very first Yoshi Lear masterclass, and she had lots of preparation to do. What was the point in stressing about everything when she had a Yoshi Lear masterclass to look forward to?
There were about nine other people in the seminar room, and Sage was the only one under forty. She picked a seat in the middle – she didn’t want to seem too eager, or too apathetic. She wanted Yoshi Lear to know that even though she was young, she was just as determined, dedicated and talented as everyone else.
Yoshi Lear was a slight, quiet man with thinning dark hair and trendy black-rimmed glasses. He had a way of smiling where his eyebrows curled upwards, so they seemed like some kind of obscure musical notation. He insisted immediately that everyone call him Yoshi, and told them to ask questions at any time. Sage decided that she liked him.
She had thought that the masterclass would be highly technical. She’d spent all day reading up on apertures and shutter speeds and white balancing. But instead, Yoshi Lear clicked on a projector, and an image leapt to life on the interactive whiteboard.
Sage didn’t recognise it. It was in black-and-white, and feathered around the edges. She made out the corners and contrasts of roofs and buildings.
‘This is the oldest known photograph,’ said Yoshi. ‘It was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. It was the view from a window. In a letter to a friend, Niépce described his discovery as “downright magical”.’ Yoshi’s eyebrow-curling smile surveyed them. He clicked the remote in his hand, and the photo vanished, replaced by six white words on a black background.
A PICTURE TELLS A THOUSAND WORDS
Yoshi then took them through some famous photographs – images of wars, famine and tragedy. The bizarre photos of Philippe Halsman and the beautiful soft images by Man Ray. Sage had seen all the photos before. Usually, she would relish the opportunity to drink them in again, in the company of the great Yoshi Lear.
But she couldn’t help herself.
Her mind kept wandering to her parents, Zacky, the theatre, Armand, Herb.
What if Bianca was right? What if there really was a ghost in the theatre? What if they had made it angry, and it had somehow spirited Armand away?
Yoshi Lear clicked to a slide presenting a line of white words against black.
THE CAMERA DOESN’T LIE
Of course there was no ghost. There was no such thing. Nobody had ever captured a photo of a ghost, had they? Surely if ghosts were real, there would be some hard evidence.
‘Photos have made people believe in magic.’
Sage snapped to attention.
‘There are photos of the Loch Ness monster,’ Yoshi was saying. ‘And of Bigfoot. There was a craze in the early twentieth century for Kirlian photography, which could allegedly capture the aura of a living creature. Were any of these things genuine?’ He smiled a slow, knowing smile. ‘Let me tell you a story about some little girls who took photos of the fairies that lived in the bottom of their garden.’
Sage had a sudden flashback to being small, putting out a saucer of bread and milk for the fairies that she just knew lived somewhere in her garden.
‘Two English girls, Elsie and Frances, borrowed Elsie’s dad’s camera in 1917, and took three photos.’
Yoshi Lear clicked through to his next slide. It was a black-and-white photo of a girl, her chin in her hands and a crown of flowers perched on top of her loose dark ringlets. She gazed sleepily at the camera, while in front of her four tiny, elegant ladies danced barefoot on a mossy log. Three of the creatures had patterned wings, like butterflies, and the fourth played a pipe or flute. Sage smiled dreamily. They were exactly how she’d imagined fairies would look when she was little – wild, beautiful and exquisite.
‘Elsie and Frances’s parents were unimpressed – they assumed the girls were just mucking around. But word got out about the fairy pictures, and reached the eager ears of Arthur Conan Doyle, best known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Conan Doyle was a spiritualist, and desperately wanted to believe in the supernatural. He believed he’d finally found evidence in these photos. He sent them to Kodak, Ilford and a photography expert named Howard Snelling to be verified. All reported back with the same information. There was no photographic trickery going on here. The negatives had not been tampered with. Conan Doyle pounced on this response with glee. The photos were genuine! Fairies were real. But he overlooked something. Snelling, in his response, said “these are straightforward photographs of whatever was in front of the camera at the time”.’ Yoshi paused for a moment, considering the photos.
They were mesmerising. The languid eyes and soft faces of the little girls added to the dusky romance of the photos. Compared to the slightly fuzzy lines of the girls, the fairies seemed sharp and solid, as if they were somehow more real, or existed in a world that was somehow more in focus, more bright and defined. Sage imagined that in order to really see a fairy, you had to slide your vision sideways a little, until the lines around the everyday things became indistinct and allowed you to see all the other things. The things that were there all along, unnoticed. Such as fairies.
‘Years later, the girls admitted that the photos were faked,’ said Yoshi. ‘Elsie had copied pictures from a book of fairies, and cut them out. They supported the cutouts with hat pins, and then dumped the evidence in the creek when they were done taking photos.’
Sage felt oddly disappointed, just like when she’d discovered the possum eating her fairy bread. Of course the fairies weren’t real. She had never really believed that they were. But still … fake cardboard cutouts was such a mundane explanation. How on earth had everyone been taken in by it? How had Arthur Conan Doyle fallen for it?
‘Except there was one last mystery. Frances insisted that the last photo they took was genuine.’
He clicked through to a new slide. It was a close-up photo of grass and wildflowers, with a blown-out white sky behind and above. In among the flowers were three translucent figures with delicate wings, and silkily draped robes. Sage found herself holding her breath. The photo was beautiful – artless and poorly framed, but capturing an impossibly magical moment.
‘These fairies differ from the others, because of their transparency. The others are, to a cynical modern eye, clearly cardboard cutouts. But these ones are barely visible, blending so completely into the grass and flowers that, if you unfocus your eyes, they vanish entirely.’
Sage squinted, blurring her vision. It was true, the fairies really did disappear into the tangled grasses.
‘Frances claimed she took this photograph, and that the fairies in it were genuine,’ said Yoshi. ‘Even after she confessed to faking the others, she stood firm on this one. The funny thing? Elsie also claimed to have taken this photo.’ He paused again. ‘Photography is not the truth. Pictures lie. But everyone believes them. Even poor Frances Griffiths believed in them. She knew she never saw any real fairies. She helped make those cardboard cutouts, and pin them to trees and grasses. But because a photo exists that she couldn’t explain, she assumed that it must be the genuine article. She took a photo of some flowers, with no fairies. But the developed photo shows fairies. Therefore fairies must exist.’ Yoshi shook his head.
‘Was she lying?’ asked one of the other students.
‘She wasn’t lying,’ said Yoshi. ‘But they also weren’t really fairies. I’ll leave it to you to puzzle it out.’
Sage wondered how someone
like Arthur Conan Doyle could believe in fairies, when Sherlock Holmes was so analytical and logical. She thought about Bianca, and her certainty that the Lyric Theatre was haunted. Herb would have said that people like that were illogical, and unable to look at things objectively. Sage wondered if they were just good at believing in stuff.
‘The fairy hoax would have been much easier to pull off if the girls had had access to Photoshop,’ said Yoshi, and a murmur of laughter rippled through the classroom. ‘But photographic manipulation has been going on for as long as photos have existed. Early last century, it was common practice to assemble a family portrait out of several photos, if the family members were unable to be in the same place at the same time. Historical figures like Mussolini, Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler all had images doctored to remove certain undesired individuals or elements. One of the most famous portraits of Abraham Lincoln is faked, where Lincoln’s face is pasted on top of the body of another politician named John C. Calhoun.’
Sage’s mind wandered again. She remembered getting a family portrait taken with Mum and Dad and Zacky, a few Christmases ago. It had been in one of those cheesy shopping-centre studios, and it had taken forever. The photographer had a pink bunny to wave to make three-year-old Zacky look at the camera. The bunny had been old and threadbare, and it had terrified Zacky. He’d burst into tears, and in every photo he had his eyes screwed up, and his mouth a long, wailing O. Sage had hated the whole experience, and Mum had sworn they’d never do it again. A waste of money, she said. But now Sage felt a pang of longing for that tacky photography studio with its soft-focus glamour shots and oversaturated photos of babies in flower pots. What if that was the last family photo they’d ever take together?
‘Today it’s almost impossible to see an undoctored photo in the media. Bulges are slimmed, teeth are whitened. People are added and removed. In the original British version of the famous photo of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road, Paul is holding a cigarette. On the American album cover, he isn’t. Photography is a kind of magic, and nowadays nothing is beyond the scope of our manipulations.
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