Disappearing Act

Lunen Ryba

The magician lived on a houseboat and only Leah knew how to find them. She liked that they were her little secret. Her parents didn’t care where she went in the golden afternoon hours between the drudgery of school and the dinner table, only that she went away, so away she went to the magician on their houseboat.

Leah didn’t know why the magician lived on a boat instead of a regular house with its bones on the island’s good, solid ground. She’d asked them once, but they only clicked their tongue at her, which meant that she was asking the wrong sort of question.

When it stormed, the magician took shelter in the eastern sea caves. They spent foggy days drifting along the northern coast. But on days like this, when the mid-autumn winds blew westerly and the sun hung honey-bright in the sky, the magician anchored on the island’s south shore. Leah picked her way down the steep stairs that carried the islanders from atop the cliff to the beach. In rain, fog, or sunshine, she could hear the gentle clinking of wind chimes over the waves if she listened hard enough. The bird-shaped whistle in Leah’s pocket burned like an ember. The moment her feet hit the white sand at the bottom of the cliff, or the rocks of the northern beach, or the open mouth of the tunnel between the cliffs and the sea caves, she yanked the whistle out of her pocket and blew into it as hard as she could. At the sound, a driftwood walkway unspooled from the back of the boat. Leah barely worried about its stability now, but the minute give beneath her feet and slight lapping of waves between the sun-bleached boards felt as magical as ever.

“I’m here!” Leah crowed as she bounded onboard.

The only indication the magician gave of hearing her was a twitch of their left shoulder. They stood straight-backed over the small stove, stirring something sweet and sharp with spice. She rarely saw them in the kitchen; they were often in the middle of a book, sitting with their feet planted firmly on the floor as if they feared to be caught relaxing. Leah dropped her school bag beside an old rattan loveseat and kicked off her shoes. On warmer days, she climbed up the short ladder to the bow and waited for the magician to join her in coaxing little fish up from the seabed, which they were so much more successful in doing that Leah wondered aloud if they used magic and received no response but a playful wink.

It was much too windy today to stay outside any longer. The magician’s playing cards were scattered across the tea table where Leah left them the day before, so she set to collecting and shuffling them. They were the only thing out of order in the magician’s little home. Everything else was tidy, from the books shut tightly in their cabinets to the trinkets carefully arranged on their shelves to the magician’s red tailcoat, which never sported so much as a wrinkle. It was as eye-catching in Leah’s peripheral vision as the day she first encountered the magician; it was how she’d known that they would be magical.

If not for their coat, their eyes would have given it away. The magician settled across the table from Leah and slid a steaming blue mug toward her. Mulled cider, fresh from the orchards on the north side of the island. She wasn’t sure how they got their hands on this kind of thing when they never seemed to leave their boat. She just assumed it was one of their tricks.

“For me?” Leah asked in mock surprise.

The magician rolled their third eye as if to say, who else? Leah fanned the cards out on the table and gestured for the magician to choose one. She studied their face, sipping from the mug, as they studied the cards. It had taken her years to get used to it. The magician wore a white mask engraved with strange whorling patterns that eddied around three eyeholes, the third wedged vertically between the usual two. Their gray eyes peered out like polished stones. The mask fit snugly over a tall, thin nose, but where the mouth should have been carved was only a red rosette. Leah had never seen the magician eat or drink, and they never, ever spoke. On their first meeting, when the magician fished her half-drowned from the northwest inlet where her parents had shooed her off to swim, she was so frightened by their silence and their eyes, narrowed in what she now understood to be a look of concern, that she shrieked and begged them not to steal her soul.

Her older brother teased her relentlessly for the rest of the day. Still a scaredy-cat, even though she was in the double digits now, he mocked, and didn’t she know he was joking when he told her magicians could steal your soul? She walked around half the island the next day with a bouquet of tulips before locating the magician’s houseboat in the south.

When Leah finally worked up the courage to look at their face after thrusting the flowers in their direction and thanking them for saving her, the sparkle in their eyes softened the edges of her fear. Half a decade of daily visits banished it entirely. Their mask was a welcome sight at the end of a long day, and she came to develop a fondness for how much their eyes expressed despite their never saying a word.Their long, gloved fingers plucked a card from the table and flipped it face-up.

“The jack of hearts,” Leah read. “For a good friend.”

The magician’s eyes went smilingly crescent-shaped. Leah snagged her own card and tossed it atop the magician’s.

“And the eight of hearts, for a visitor,” she concluded.

If the magician pulled the nine of clubs, for the completion of a project, they would show off the new trick they had mastered while Leah tried in vain to decipher it. If Leah pulled the four of spades, for minor problems, she would rant about her assignments and her classmates while the magician nodded along. But occasionally, the two would pull hearts like these, which indicated each other and little more, and spend the rest of the afternoon reading side by side. The wind chimes danced on the ocean breeze. The gulls laughed overhead. Until the sun dipped below the island's cliffs, everything was as it should be.

The box began to rattle when the western sky glowed in oranges and pinks. It was unassuming-- a black lacquer box with a red songbird painted on the lid, no bigger than a hand. In the day, it easily went unnoticed among the magician’s myriad of knickknacks. Yet in the evening, just before Leah left for home, it rattled on the shelf like something was trying to escape. Leah approached it and ran a finger across the lid and around the sides, searching for a seam or a latch or a keyhole, as if she still might be missing a simple answer to its mystery after all this time.

“Will you open it for me tonight?” Leah asked and knew before it happened that the magician would shake their head.

Leah allowed herself a single glance over her shoulder when she crossed the driftwood walkway toward the beach and home. It was a private moment, what she saw, a moment she could never bear to intrude upon for more than a few seconds. The magician cradled the box like a fragile thing in their hands and pressed it once, delicately, to the rosette where their lips should be.

On the short walk back home, Leah gritted her teeth and kicked at every pebble on the road. Why would the magician never, not even for their only friend, reveal what was inside the box? She felt inexplicably that it was the key to truly knowing the magician. Leah understood the magician’s mannerisms now, their wordless way of communicating, but the complexity of their mind remained hidden behind that impassive mask. It was as though they were still closed off to her. If they opened the box, maybe they would open up as well.

She was so lost in thought upon her arrival home that she walked directly into the person standing on the front doorstep.

“Hello,” said the stranger in the red fox mask. “I’m looking for a place to stay a while.”

* * *

The stranger’s name was Russell; he was a wandering magician. Leah watched the shape of his mouth as he spoke and ate through the open jaws of the fox mask. He seemed in a constant state of mirth, hands fluttering as he described all the places he’d been, the mishaps he’d suffered, the feats he’d accomplished.

“So there I was,” Russell laughed, “strung upside down like a snared rabbit in front of the ambassador and her whole retinue, her loyal guard’s gun aimed right at my head. And just as I’m lamenting what a predicament I’ve gotten myself into, the perfect trick hits me!”

“What did you do?” Leah asked breathlessly.

“Why, what else? One moment I’m hanging there, the next—poof!—there’s nothing

but a scared little rabbit in my place!”

“But… how?”

“Magicians are a secretive bunch, as a general rule, but I’ll tell you this: most everything is hat tricks and quick fingers. Only sometimes it’s not illusion,” Russell winked a golden eye, “it’s magic and nothing less.”

Leah rather liked Russell. In a matter of hours, he’d made magic feel open, immediate, impossible to ignore like a fire crackling right in front of her nose. Different entirely from the distant, silent magician and their locked box. She had a feeling that Russell would answer any question she asked so long as it amused him.

“Would you show me how it’s done?”

Russell leaned back in his chair and crossed his freckled arms across his chest. “Let’s make a deal. If you come to my show in town tomorrow afternoon, I’ll tell you the secret behind one trick. One secret for every show you attend. Sound fair?” It did.

Leah buzzed through school the next day, full of anticipation and devastatingly bored. Her teachers droned on and on about arithmetic and geography while her mind conjured up images of foxes turning into rabbits. When the final bell rang, she tripped over herself racing out the door. Her parents might’ve scolded her for not caring about her studies, but they were too busy being proud of her older brother at his fancy college on the mainland, so Leah was off the hook as far as she was concerned.

The town hummed with excitement for once. Russell was setting up on the little platform at the center of town that was usually reserved for dull speeches and traveling musicians. He had about him, besides an array of cloth-covered objects, an air of mystery that the folk of this unchanging town couldn’t help but be drawn to. Children clamored at the foot of the stage. Leah squeezed her way to the middle of the crowd, where Russell could easily spot her.

He adjusted an object, then another, and when he seemed satisfied with his arrangement, he came to stand at the center of the stage with his gaze downcast. Silence spread over the crowd like a thick fog. Ears pricked for a whisper of sound, eyes strained to avoid blinking for even a second longer. The whole town held its breath.

“Good people,” said a voice that danced from ear to ear. Leah shivered as it passed.

“Welcome to the show that will change your lives!”

The stage erupted in a riot of color. Vivid streamers burst in a halo around Russell’s feet with a loud pop that set the children shrieking with excitement. Around the stage, the cloths lifted from the objects as if pulled by invisible strings, revealing a phonograph playing a lively tune, a rectangular box with ominous round holes in all sides, an engraved silver teapot with four matching cups, and a set of lanterns whose flames burned foxfire blue.

“Let’s begin with some refreshments.” Russell reached into one of the lanterns, barehanded, and drew back with its flame flickering over his fingers. He gave an underhand toss and the foxfire leapt into the crowd to hover over four heads. Leah felt the gentle pressure of it on the crown of her head, cold as snow. “Come forward, if you please.”

Leah stepped up to the stage behind an elderly woman, her husband, and a little girl in a frilly pink dress. They each received a silver teacup.

“Now,” Russell said, holding the teapot like a waiter, “what would you like to drink?”

“Darjeeling, please,” said the old woman.

Russell laid a hand atop the lid and poured, an unmistakable muscatel scent rising with the steam. Darjeeling.

“Brandy,” groused the old man. The golden-brown liquid that flowed from the pot could be nothing else, and his eyebrows flicked upward in surprise.

“Hot chocolate!” the little girl giggled. She could hardly contain her glee as the sweet drink filled her cup. Russell stepped in front of Leah. “And for you, miss?”

“Apple cider.”

Blue flames glinted off his sharp-toothed grin. “The taste of fall.”

And it was, crisp and biting.

“Thank you for partaking, my friends. If you’ll return to the crowd—wait!” Russell caught the little girl by the shoulder and crouched down to her eye level. “Little lady, do you wash behind your ears?”

“Yes…”

“Then what’s this?” He reached behind her ear and pulled back with a single copper coin. She gasped in delight. He pressed it into her hand, covered it with his own, and leaned close conspiratorially. “Now, let me guess. your favorite candy is…butterscotch.” She nodded shyly.

“Here you are, then.” When he removed his hand, a cellophane wrapper crinkled in her open palm.

The girl threw her arms around Russell’s neck. “Thank you, Mr. Magician!” His wild laugh echoed through the crowd.

“Who else wants candy?”

The show went on in a mad rush of flame and spangle. Russell conjured coins and candy from the children’s ears, hair, and noses. He chased an unruly ball of foxfire around the stage, gulped it down when he caught it, and blew it, dragon-like, into the sky. The phonograph switched his voice with the record, so that music came out every time he opened his mouth. As the sky began to go warm with the sunset, Russell brought a boy onstage and wheeled the tall box to the center.

“For my last trick of the night, I’ll be taking on the Vampire’s Coffin.” From the box, he withdrew a set of sharp wooden stakes. “Each of these stakes is long enough to impale the coffin through to the other side. Take them for me, young man—thank you. I’m going to step inside the box and close the door, and my assistant here is going to insert the stakes. Then, on the count of three, the box will open and you’ll all see my fate! Ready?”

Russell climbed into the box and pulled the door closed. The boy picked out one of the stakes, considered it for a moment, then plunged it forcefully through one of the holes. Gasps rang through the crowd. Leah chewed her thumbnail to the quick. She didn’t want to watch her new friend get run through, but she couldn’t bear to look away. When the final stake was forced in, the boy stepped back and crossed his arms.

“One!” he shouted. “Two! Three!”

The box flew open. A cloud of bats poured out over the crowd and spilled up into the sky.

“Thank you all!” whooped that disembodied voice. “Thank you, and goodnight!”

Cheers and applause filled the air. Leah craned her head back, watching the last of the bats dart away. A hand landed on her shoulder.

“How was it?” Russell asked.

Leah shook her head in disbelief, but she was grinning, so he had to know she was amazed.

“Come on.” He took her hand. “I promised to teach you a trick.”

Red flashed in the corner of her eye. Leah whipped around, expecting to catch coattails vanishing into the crowd or a three-eyed mask watching her among the people, but there was nothing. A trick of the light, maybe.

“Leah?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. Lead the way.”

With the autumn harvest complete, the apple orchards to the north were unoccupied, save for birds and squirrels. They were the only witnesses besides Leah to Russell’s explanation of the teapot trick. He produced it out of nowhere—Leah was certain he hadn’t carried it from the stage to the orchard—and handed it to her to inspect. Its intricate engravings disguised the seam that split it perfectly in half. Leah wedged a nail between the two hemispheres, and it popped open to reveal a hidden four-chambered lower compartment. Twisting the lid rotated which chamber faced the spout.

“But how did you know what everyone would ask for?” Leah examined the empty chambers.

Russell’s eyes narrowed impishly. “Magic.”

Shadows stretched tall across the grass as the afternoon waned. Leah shivered with the strange excitement of it all.

* * *

Russell was like a cyclone, drawing everything in and leaving it out of place in his wake. His afternoon magic shows were the talk of the town, the few short hours where everyone came together for the joy of never knowing what would happen next. He was an enigma to them, a fox-faced illusionist, a charming entertainer. Leah felt privileged to call him a friend.

The orchard became their private schoolroom, where magic drew nearer to reality. Tricks became less grand, though never less magical, explained away by subtle tools and sleight of hand. Russell was pleased to reveal his tricks to Leah. She could see it in the upward curl of his lips when she called him clever. There was nothing he reveled in more, though, than fueling his shows on the audience’s desires.

Before Leah knew it, it had been weeks of afternoons at Russell’s shows, away from the magician’s houseboat. She kept catching red in her periphery—at shows, in school, at shops—but it was never the magician that she’d seen. The missing grew in her like an ache, barely noticeable at first, but the longer she went without treating it, the sharper it became.

She did her best to shove the feeling down. In Russell, she’d finally found someone to answer her questions about magic, and she was loath to abandon that for secrets and silence.

That afternoon, Russell taught her the technique behind making one’s voice boom like a thunderclap, or lending it to a puppet, or throwing it across a room.

“You have to be careful, though,” he warned. “If you throw it too far, you may never get it back.” Leah couldn’t tell if he was joking.

They lay in the grass, soaking in the pale sun. Russell’s mask matched the burning amber of the last falling leaves that blanketed the ground. Leah traced the carved wooden fur, which looked so soft that she could barely tell where the mask ended and Russell’s red curls began.

“Why a fox?” she wondered aloud.

Russell turned his head slightly to fix her with his golden gaze. “Doesn’t it suit me?”

“You know it does.”

“An animal’s face is the easiest mask for a magician to wear. People have expectations of animals—that a dog will be loyal, a bull will be stubborn, a fox will be playful and mischievous.” His sharp-toothed grin showed between the mask’s teeth. “So, most magicians take on an animal’s face, and then people know what to expect of them. It’s the abstract masks that you have to watch out for.”

Leah thought of the magician’s whorling white mask with its red rosette mouth.

“Why’s that?”

“Because there’s no telling what they’ll do.”

“I know someone with a mask like that,” Leah blurted before she could think better of it.

Russell’s grin grew impossibly sharper. “You do?”

“Yes.” And then, as if she hadn’t said enough already: “Do you want to meet them?”

* * *

It was the kind of day where the magician’s houseboat would be anchored in the northwest inlet, but Leah didn’t tell Russell that. She liked that saying, “they’ll be this way,” and marching off in the right direction made her look a bit mysterious herself. Besides, she felt an odd sense of regret, as though something secret and precious was spoiled now that someone else knew of the magician’s existence. So she didn’t tell Russell how to find the magician and just let him follow happily behind her.

Excitement made him somehow more energetic than usual. He chattered the whole way, bombarding Leah with questions so quickly that she had no time to answer. She was grateful for that, strangely, because she had no answer for most of his questions. She knew so little about the magician. Almost nothing at all.

The familiar sight of the houseboat bobbing on the waves warmed her heart nonetheless. As she crossed the driftwood walkway, Russell exclaiming in delight behind her, she realized that the houseboat was dark. The lanterns that hung from the corners of the roof were unlit. Inside, the lamps were all switched off. Leah searched under the lampshades and along the walls for a switch while Russell poked at the trinkets lining the shelves.

“What’s this?” he gasped, sticking his face so close to the black lacquer box that the nose of his mask knocked a few other items aside.

Leah gave up fumbling along the walls and joined him by the shelf. “It’s a box.”

Russell rolled his eyes. “Obviously. What’s inside, though?”

“I don’t know. The magician never—”

With a barely audible click, all the lights in the houseboat came on. Leah turned and startled. The magician was standing in the center of the room, coat slightly rumpled.

“There you are,” Leah laughed. “Where on earth were you hiding?”

The magician gave an absent little half-shrug. Their eyes were trained on Russell, who was poking the box like it might spring open and bite him. Leah smacked his shoulder.

“Russell, this is my friend, the magician. This is Russell, he’s been staying in town and performing magic shows for the past couple of weeks.”

The magician inclined their head in greeting. Russell bounded up to them and grasped them familiarly by the shoulders. It was strange to see them face to face; they were both tall and slight, but Russell seemed bigger somehow, as if his presence filled the room while the magician was self-contained.

“Nice to meet you!” Russell exclaimed. “Hey, this place is great! Where did you even get all this stuff? It must’ve taken ages to collect, and cost a fortune, too—is that a starsilver mirror? There are only five in the whole world, how did you get that?”

Leah didn’t think so many words had been spoken at once in this place since she’d met the magician. They looked a bit dazed, third eye shut tight as the other two blinked slowly. Their shoulders were tense under Russell’s hands.

“Why don’t we sit down and give the magician some space.” Leah took Russell by the elbow and dragged him over to the loveseat. The magician rolled their shoulders back, shook their head, and turned toward the kitchen area.

“Don’t you want to know what’s inside that box?” Russell whispered, a dangerous glint in his eye.

“What? Yeah, but they won’t open it for me. It’s been years and I’ve never been able to figure out how it opens.”

“But you want to see what’s inside, right?”

“Of course I do,” Leah hissed. “Every night it rattles like something’s trying to get out. But I’ve asked a thousand times and the magician will never open it, and there really isn’t a latch or lock or seam where it might open. It’s completely sealed.”

The magician returned with two glasses of water, which they set before Leah and Russell. They produced the deck of cards from their coat’s inner pocket and began shuffling them intently. Their eyes never left the cards. A voice whispered in Leah’s ear—Russell’s voice, the dancing voice he used at each magic show.

“I can open it for you,” it beguiled. “You’ll get the answers you want.” Leah shuddered.

In the magician’s hands, the cards bridged and snapped uniformly into place. They fanned the deck and offered it first to Russell, who drew a card from the center without hesitation. He flipped it over to reveal the nine of diamonds.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“You read it. The nine of diamonds is for restlessness, travel.” Leah frowned. “Are you going away soon?”

“I’m always restless and always traveling. It’s probably related more to my person than to the near future. Take one, Leah, I want to see what you get.”

Leah reached over the deck and ran a finger across the cards, trying to get a sense of which one was meant for her. Russell’s voice breathed suddenly in her ear—“The box, Leah, what are they hiding in the box?”—and she startled, knocking a card from the fanned deck to the table. It fell face up. The five of clubs: time for change. When Russell asked her what it meant, she told him as much. She didn’t need to see his face to know the kind of look he was giving her. She crossed her arms and frowned at the magician, who stared at the fallen card.

“I want you to open the box for me.”

As if on cue, the box began to rattle. The magician collapsed the fanned cards back together, placed them on the table, and drew the top one without turning it over. They finally made eye contact with Leah and shook their head.

“Will you ever open it for me?”

They shrugged, shook their head again. Probably not.

“Why not?”

This time, they clicked their tongue. Wrong question. The rush of anger to Leah’s head made her dizzy.

“I’m tired of this, this… one-way street of a relationship. I learned to find you, to learn what you meant without saying anything, and for what? You never leave this place, you hardly do anything new, you never explain yourself. You’re impossible; you’re just like this!”

Leah stalked over to the shelves and snatched the box from its place. The magician stilled completely. “A locked box of a person. You don’t open up for anything, not even to eat or drink. I barely know a thing about you after all these years. I don’t know your name, of all things! Do you even have a name?”

The magician’s eyes glittered with hurt, but Leah had struck a wellspring of cruelty that she didn’t know how to stem.

“I used to think you were wonderful. Now, I just think you’re sad.”

Russell stood and edged backwards, toward the door, as Leah rounded the table to crouch in front of the magician. She plucked the card from their fingers and turned it over. The ace of spades. Endings. Loss.

She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the red rosette where the magician’s mouth should be.

“I’m taking this with me. I’ll open it for myself.”

The magician didn’t move. A silver tear welled in the corner of their third eye.

Leah turned, ready to tell Russell that they were getting out of there, and caught the white end of a red fox tail vanishing over the slope behind the rocky beach. Panic lanced through her chest. She tore after him, footfalls punching the walkway so heavily that the seawater splashed over and into her shoes.

“Russell!” she shouted as she crested the hill. “Russell!”

Her only answer was the wind rustling the fallen leaves. She screamed in frustration. Whatever was in the box stopped rattling and gave a final, weak knock against the bottom. Fine. She didn’t need Russell to open the box. She’d do it herself.

Leah turned the box over and felt along the bottom. Still, there was nothing. She knocked gently on the center with a knuckle. A perfect circle, barely the size of a fingertip, depressed ever so slightly. Under her palm, the red bird popped out of the top. She flipped the box back over and nudged the bird with her finger. It turned a fraction. The box cracked along the corners. When she turned it a full rotation, the sides of the box opened like doors.

Music spilled out of it-- a lovely, low singing in a language Leah didn’t understand. She lifted the box to hear it better and finally saw what was inside: a miniature of the magician, mouth open in song.

“No,” Leah whispered.

She scrambled back over the slope. The magician’s houseboat had weighed anchor and was drifting off, not around the island but away from it. In her hands, the magician’s sweet voice kept singing its lullaby.

“I’m sorry!” Leah cried. “Come back!”

She tore the bird-shaped whistle from her pocket and blew frantically into it, hoping in vain that the magician would hear it, that they would turn around. She threw her voice like Russell had taught her, flung it repeatedly over the waves until it started coming back hoarse, and she feared losing it. The music box reached the end of its song and faded into silence, closing its doors protectively around the miniature magician. The houseboat didn’t stop or turn. Leah watched it fade farther and farther until it flinched over the horizon and was gone.