Split

Chapter 3 - The Final Bow

We're back at the circus, where the last act has just begun and the crowd is still smiling, eyes focused on the stage and hearts pounding as if they've been among the performers. They have witnessed countless acts of fire and feats of strength and all else in the name of what would be insanity had it not been a circus. This circus in particular. And none of them- None of them are aware of the bomb, none of them thought the noise was anything was anything more than a sound effect to the show. None of them knew one of the greatest works of architecture in the United States now lay in a smoldering pile of debris only about 6 miles away.

I watch, still on the hidden side-stage, as a cloud of smoke puffs up from the center of the stage and Ammon the magician appears, conjuring a handkerchief from his hat. He throws props the hat back on his head and slips one end of the handkerchief between his middle and index finger. He presses a quick finger to his lips and lets the cloth fly into the air, only it isn't made from cloth anymore. Instead, it has sprouted wings and feathers and taken the form of a snow-white dove that flies around the inside of the circus tent and lands back on Ammon's tasseled shoulder after pecking a few kernels of popcorn from the audience, which causes laughter and cheers to bubble up to the surface like balloons being popped.

I've tried getting Ammon to teach me when I was younger, but all he said was that I had to be born with it and a magician never revealed his secrets and other mysterious-sounding nonsense of the sort.

A burst of cards, all aces as far as the eye can see, slay out behind him and sly-eyed, brown-haired Robin, who's Ammon's daughter, turns out and into view behind her father. 

She pinches a card out of thin air and shows it to the audience. Another ace, just like the rest. She winks and flips it around. The dove flies off Ammon's shoulder and onto Robin's arm, where Robin strokes it with the side of the card on which the ace was visible.

As soon as she does so, the bird's feathers molt from white to jet black and the reddish-orange of its eyes merge into a pale yellow.

A gasp is withdrawn from the crowd when she pulls the card away from the bird and reveals it to the audience.

It's gone completely white. No symbol, no color. It's the same white as the bird's feathers, and the bird is jet black.

Even I feel lost for breath.

Robin takes the bird and lets it go, watching it fly up to the rafters. A small black feather falls from it and lands in the palm of Ammon's hand. 

Robin smartly hands the card over to him behind her back, where the audience can't see it, and steps back behind Ammon.

Ammon holds the blank card in one hand, tilts it over the other, which handles the feather, and claps the two together. He displays the back of the card in one hand and pinches the fingers of his other hand to show that he no longer has the feather. 

He flicks it over his shoulder to Robin, who catches it with ease and turns it around to face the audience. There are earsplitting cheers.

Now a feather as dark as night is printed onto the card. 

I will never understand how the two of them do it.

Ammon takes the other edge of the card and they tear it in two, then into fourths.

Robin picks out only one square of the card and shows it to the crowd while Ammon does the same with the other three. 

They both fold the squares in half and cup them in a fist.

Robin turns her fist downward over her the flat side of her other hand. A six-sided dice rolls out, and the audience goes wild once again, and this time they seem to have no intention of keeping quiet, because Ammon has flipped over his squares of the card, and they've formed a solid cube made from transparent plastic, a few inches larger than the dice.

He sets it down on the little table beside him and Robin places the dice directly in front of it. Ammon presses down on the edge of the dice and for a moment I think it's disappeared but then I see it. 

It's inside the little clear cube.

There are roars of admiration as Amber and I swing down onto the stage from our posts. Amber and I and Kimberly the lion tamer and Will and all of us; All of us take the stage and give the final bows of the night.

6 miles away a group of police cars and investigators leave the scene of the ruined Art Museum.