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Want to sample before you buy? Read on:
Bones come undone at the Magician’s touch. Wind themselves up like silver and dance into the air. Strung like copper wire. Their fire a shimmering, living thing.
She’s all smiles for the crowd.
And, of course, they are never her bones. That’s not the trick.
The trick is to keep the audience from noticing how much lighter they all feel. She takes only the bones whose loss sneaks up on you. The ones whose lack you doubt, until the absence of them is a pit in you, gnawing. Fingers finding the hole and probing, curious, at new-made rawness.
They are so easily missed. At first.
The audience will only notice the twinge, the emptiness, deep in the night, when the carnival is done and home and the softness of white-sheeted beds have called. When sweet-souled revenants beckon, and the witching hour is but a memory.
Everyone gives something for the magic. That’s how it works. You are not spectator. You are participant. Always.
The Magician in the too-tall top hat has no assistant. Her great-tailed coat keeps time with her spidery limbs as she sways: the whole of her too long, stretched thin, and her wild hair a tangled halo peeking from beneath her topper. Her shadow spans double her height, twelve feet easy. It swallows the stage around it, outstretched arms like wings unfolding up to the star-flecked sky. Hungry. But patient. Always patient.
The bones pinwheel before her. The audience applauds, eyes transfixed on light and colour and fire.
Later, when the last show is done and the carnival an hour from closing, only stragglers left wandering the midway, she smokes behind the three-ring tent. Her shadow curled back inside her greatcoat, drawn tight like the warm arms of a lover, stroking her chest, its chin resting on her shoulder. The Magician pulls the cigarette from her lips and lets the smoke coil and billow up to the night sky. She stands outlined in castoff light from the dusky glow of carnival lamps, brown skin glowing gold. And takes another drag before looking over the night’s take.
Rib bones, tiny finger bones, cochlear bones.
The Magician examines each carefully. Polishes their slicked surfaces, and stuffs them in the bag at her belt that is not a bag. The Tattooed Lady and the Lizard Woman, hand in hand, nod at her as they pass. She returns a salute and a smile after the couple, the cigarette making a tiny, smoldering arc.
“You look cold,” says the Ringmaster from behind her. She slips through the fabric of the tent as if it weren’t there to lay a lazy arm over the Magician’s shoulder.
“I’m always cold,” the Magician answers.
The Ringmaster presses in against the Magician’s back and angles her head up to breathe into the Magician’s ear: “We could go somewhere warmer.”
The Magician’s smile is a mirror of the moon’s sliver.
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