The Magician

Unexpected Company

London, England, November 1888

Unexpected Company

 Ella Reid is always told she is different. When she is a small girl, she wears oddly colored gowns and twirls her hair in odd assortments. However, now she is beginning to think that maybe it’s because she attends magic shows almost every day, seemingly religious.

            The small red ticket is ten quid at the door, an exortionate fee, which surprises her, being that most shows in town are a modest three pounds. However, the famed Magician has not performed in England, or anywhere in far too long a time for memory.

            He had grown in fame throughout his long years on the stage, performing all through Europe and even into America. The Magician was most famous for completed acts of magic so realistic that one couldn’t tell how I was done or if it really was just a trick. This reputation followed the man wherever he traveled, performing to the people in a kind of dream-like atmosphere. Yet, almost as sudden as he had appeared, he had vanished. Not a single soul knew what had happened to him or even why he left. It was like lighting out of a clear sky.

            The Magician’s return excites the city of London into an unfamiliar frenzy at the gates before the show begins. Hundreds of people, bedecked in their opulent fabrics and wool jackets and canes queue up, waiting for their money to be exchanged for tickets. It is a grey, rainy day as the stand along the street corner, waiting. One that should dampen the spirits and suffocate the mood, however, that is not the case today. Nothing could mar the return of the Magician.    

            Ella purchases the ticket with a smile across her face, handing the money over to the register and entering through a pair of large glass doors. They are tinted a deep black so that you cannot see inside, only out. She finds that odd.

            Ella makes her way through the long, narrow entrance, alit with small iron braziers that spark yellow and red. From the entrance hall, she wends through a series of velvet railings and up a steep flight of stairs to a balcony. She checks the numbers on her ticket and proceeds down a serpentine staircase to her seat: first row, seventh seat. A black and white flower waits for her on the seat cushion.

            Ella twirls the memento through her fingers as she takes her seat with the other spectators, the theatre buzzing with a dull drone of voices. She stares up at the closed red curtains, whereon giant letters stretch across, reading THE MAGICIAN. It is his show, just as the flower is his.

            The crowd continues to file into their seats when a pair of lights flash upon the curtains and all the chatter vanishes into silence. Ella places the flower in her pocket and sits forward eagerly. There is a complete and utter quiet that engulfs the theatre, from the balcony down to the black wood stage, then, the curtains part with the hush of rain, revealing a tall man in a black suit with a top hat and a cane. He is alone. He is the Magician.

            Ella watches intensely as the Magician stands there, frozen in stone and time. The braziers at the rim of the stage suddenly ignite with an umbrella of smoke. The show has begun.

            “Welcome,” chants the Magician to a rousing applause. “Welcome all!” He swings his cane about and strides forth, footsteps echoing. “I am deeply sorry for my recent absence from the stage and from this brilliant city of London.” Applause rumbles down the theatre like an avalanche. “I know it has been a painfully been long and interminable absence, one that is lingering upon the mind, heavy and oppressive. It has haunted me incessantly for these past years as well.” He pauses. “I am therefore profoundly indebted to all who attend this evening.” He stops talking, bowing and taking his top hat from his head.