Theatre ghost
It’s showtime, but the Great Magician Quilin is running into some unexpected troubles. Will magic be the answer to his problems?
The orange tom, with its one milky eye, coughed out a single damp feather. It had to leap sideways to dodge a half-hearted kick from the Great Magician Quilin, which elicited a hiss from the cat and a disproving tut from old Due, who was sitting on his canvas sling chair and sucking on a eucalyptus mint. He always smelled like freshly cleaned library books, or a mucus-y head cold.
“Dun be chasing off Mistopholese, boy. Be right sorry when the theatre ghost gets ya.”
“Mm,” Quilin muttered. “Sure.”
Making sure his top hat was settled securely atop his slicked back auburn hair, the magician strode further backstage. The older thespians were a superstitious bunch, always mumbling about ghosts and hauntings. Every theatre has a ghost, they said, which was part of the reason his mam had never had no truck with that kind of nonsense, as she called it. Well, when she was feeling polite. She called a lot of things by a lot of names, and sometimes Quilin missed being her Lil’ Big Tony Boy, but he liked being a Great Magician more. Not that his mam would call him that, of course.
“You doing okay, Ivana?” His assistant was leaning against the vanishing cabinet, nails tapping on the brightly painted wood and a scowl pasted across her face. She was another thing that went by many names; Ivana, hailing from distant lands, beautiful assistant on the stage. Once, after a few post-show rums, she had told him her da still called her Morag and her mum down Chippenden way was working on a quilt that had been in her family for decades. He’d been a bit jealous, all things considered – his family weren’t what you might have called close. Steeped in tradition, and a few words or six might have been slung about when he’d taken up the mantle of magician. Something something witchcraft, consorting with the Devil, blah blah blah bride of Satan. The usual.
“Could be worse, boss. Could be worse.”
He grinned. “Ghost gotcha?”
“Pfft, hardly. Spilt coffee down the front of my bleeding leotard is what I did. Absolute mess. But nary a ghost ta be seen.” She grinned at him, and tossed him a small cardboard box, big enough to fit in his palm. “You’ll not be wanting to forget these.”
“You still look like a mill, even with coffee down your front. Can’t even see it.”
“Cause I’m wearing my back-up leotard, you dolt.”
Quilin gave a short bark of laughter, tossing his deck of cards from one hand to the other and back again. “Fair ‘nuff.”
Coffee sounded like a great idea, he figured as he left Ivana fiddling with the saw-box and muttering unkind words to the sliding panels. Just the kind of thing to calm some pre-show jitters and he could sort his cards while he was at it. The butterflies in his belly revolted at the idea, fluttering fit to burst him wide open, and it didn’t get any better when a stage-hand jostled him and his cards went plop into his mug. In went beautifully weighted, elegant cards he’d been working with for years, and out came a pile of caffeinated slop. Cardboard and coffee. A doomed romance, and a terrible sight for sore eyes and a headache that said he really should have gone easier on the booze last night. Or perhaps he should be drinking more water. His mam would have said it was the Devil calling in his dues, but aside from a small loan owed to the Nationwide Quilin couldn’t think he owed anybody much of anything. Not anything big anyway, and he certainly wasn’t making no deals with demons or such. Everyone knew magic like that didn’t really exist, and magicians knew it better than most. If he’d have had magic, he thought, he’d have dried those cards off in a jiffy. Maybe painted the widow frames, too, since that needed doing. Lots he could do with that sort of magic, but what he had instead was coins, a string of knotted scarves, quick fingers and a quicker tongue.
Tossing the ruined cards into the bin with a wet splat sound, he drew a deep breath and prepared to take the stage. No birds up his sleeves, no cards, a dodgy set of boxes that he wouldn’t be able to use for this evening. That kind of magic sure would make some things easier.
But as he stepped out and the light fell on him, the quiet murmur of the crowd faded into expectant silence. Bright eyes watched him from the darkness, kids and adults alike, all waiting to see what he’d do, waiting to see something they couldn’t believe. Waiting to see magic. Well, they wouldn’t get to see that tonight, or any night. Magic wasn’t real, and he certainly couldn’t do what they thought he could – disappearing Ivana or sawing her in half, producing non-masticated pigeons from his silky top hat, coins from ears and scarves from sleeves. All tricks, but they’d still call it magic.
No, he couldn’t do that sort of magic.
The Great Magician Quilin smiled and bowed, then produced a spray of flowers he’d hidden up his sleeve. It wasn’t magic, just sleight of hand, but the way the crowd lit up, the way they believed and smiled and were happier because they’d seen him do things they thought were impossible – well, that he might just have called magic. And that, he could do.
