by Rucker Moses
My face.
No question.
And I know exactly when it was.
Yesterday. I’m in the trapdoor chamber below the stage at the Mercury Theater. My hand is in the box. The Magician’s Lost and Found, at least that’s what Urma Tan called it, is painted huge. Like the box is falling toward the viewer. I’m behind the box with my hair crazy and my eyes bugging out. I’m stumbling over the box, my wrist disappeared inside.
Too Tall stares at the mural from inches away like he’s just putting it together. “I was there,” he whispers, and points to the corner where his sneaker just makes it into the frame.
There’s a boy sitting at a table in front of the mural. He’s covered in paint, and eating cereal. He’s also bald, and his face is a dead ringer for Sula’s.
“This is my brother, Sol,” says Sula with a hand on his shoulder. “Sol, this is Kingston James. Preston’s son.” Her heavy-lidded eyes land on me. “Kingston, Maestro was our father.”
It takes a good minute for everything that’s happening to sink in.
I’m looking from Sula to Sol, comparing them to my memories of Maestro’s face.
Too Tall is still staring at the mural, paying special attention to the footwear in the background.
Sula is pacing and shaking her head. Worried about something.
Sol is staring at me even harder than I’m staring at him.
I realize it’s weird to just look at another person’s face for whole seconds on end, but in that moment, I don’t care. Sol doesn’t seem to care, either.
Maestro’s children, I think. Does the rivalry pass on from parent to child?
And then I think, But who could understand what I’m going through better than them?
“Man, this mural is, like, good,” says Too Tall. “I mean, really good. Kid even got the stitching right on my Concord 11s.”
“How did you see this?” I ask Sol. “This just happened. Like, yesterday.”
His eyes go wide. His dark pupils glimmer in the light like a pair of blackberries.
“How did you know I was there? When did you paint—” And I realize by his blank look that he’s not going to answer, or say anything. “When did he paint this?” I turn to Sula.
“Yesterday. He was sleeping all day, which he does a lot, and then he woke up about six and he just started painting. Didn’t stop for three hours,” she says.
Veronica asks, “Your brother does all of these murals around the neighborhood?”
Sula glances at Veronica like she’s trying to figure out friend from foe.
“I’m Veronica. Kingston’s cousin. My father isn’t a magician like you guys, though. He’s a trick builder. Which may be the only thing worse than a magician.”
Sula breaks a grin. “Maybe. We’ll have to compare notes sometime. But yes—my brother is Echo City’s little phantom muralist. Where you may just see a wall, he sees a field of flowers.”
I point to the mural. “I was there, yesterday, right when you said he woke up. That happened under the stage at the Mercury. Sula, everything in your brother’s mural happened yesterday, to us.”
Sula nods, taking it in.
“Well, to him everything he paints is really happening, whether it happens here or there,” she says.
“You mean the Realm, don’t you? You know about it?” I say.
“Do I know about the Realm?” Sula paces around the paint cans. “Does a butcher’s kid know about a T-bone?” she asks me.
I shrug. “My dad never told me anything about it.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you know more than you realize.”
“I don’t know. My dad was kinda big on protecting us.”
“Can’t say the same,” says Sula. “But I didn’t get the worst of it. My brother takes that honor.”
I look into the kid’s blackberry eyes, wondering what they’ve seen.
“I’m not sure if you already know this,” Sula says carefully. “I feel I should tell you. You opened a rift to the Realm yesterday. Did you know that?”
“I . . . No,” I say. “I did not know that.”
Veronica shakes her head along with Too Tall.
“Oh,” says Sula. “Yikes. That’s all my brother paints. Scenes he sees in the Realm. So you didn’t mean to do that?”
I look back up at the painting. “Does it look like I know what I’m doing?” I ask.
“To be honest with you, no. Guess I was hoping you did. It can be bad news, to mess with the Realm when you don’t know what you’re doing. Or even when you do know what you’re doing, really. Nothing good ever happens.”
“How does your brother see into the Realm?” asks Veronica.
“He just does. He’s not what you’d call normal.”
“This day is not what I’d call normal,” Too Tall mutters.
“Listen, it’s a long story. I’ve got some chocolate milkshakes in the fridge. I can shut down the store. You got time?”
We all nod. It’s a better offer than we expected.
* * *
“So you know about the two Urmas? Wow,” Sula says, taking a sip of chocolate milkshake. We all sit on empty plaster buckets on the warehouse floor. We’ve spent the last hour or so talking. Turns out Sol and Sula are both thirteen years old, Sol just looks younger. We told her about our trip to Urma’s house on Torrini Boulevard. “That’s going to make this story way easier to tell. Basically, we’re both Maestro’s kids,” Sula says simply. “The real Urma Tan is my mother. The Realm Urma— the one you met earlier today, apparently—that’s Sol’s mother.”
“Wait, what?” I say.
“That’s a new one on me,” says V.
Too Tall examines Sol’s face.
“I don’t know, bud. I think you look like your daddy,” says Tall.
“So your mom and dad are in the Realm, just like my dad?” I say. “Realm Urma said that she can help us make a portal and bring them home.”
There’s a look of fear in Sula’s eye as she shakes her head. “You can’t trust her,” she says.
“Right.” Too Tall and V agree with Sula on that one.
“No, you don’t understand. She isn’t human.” Sula turns to Veronica. “She only seems like a real person.”
“You mean how she’s some kinda Realm zombie?” asks Too Tall. “No offense,” he says to Sol.
“Call her what you like. Trust me, he’s not offended. I’m more of a mom to him than she ever was,” says Sula. “She uses the power in those crystals to control and drain the children around her. It’s how she stays looking like herself. Without feeding off their youth, she’d look as gray as those kids.”
“I wondered what was happening to them,” says Veronica, understanding.
“Mint and the rest of them all think they’re learning some ancient magic, meanwhile she’s just feeding off them. But she’s running out of time, her Realm energy is depleted. It’s been four years since anyone’s opened the Realm, started a new echo. That is, until you showed up,” she says, cutting her eyes at me.
“Why kids?” asks V.
“It’s their youth, I think, that sustains her. Most of the kids come off the street around here, no family. She teaches them about crystals and shows off her ‘powers.’ Those crystals are the only thing keeping her alive. Somehow, they hold energy longer with the kids around. She has this thirst, like a vampire from another reality. She, like, drinks your life force. And you don’t even know it’s happening,” says Sula.
“It happened to you?” asks V.
“And Sol. Look, I know you guys probably think you had a weird childhood, with magicians and trick builders and everything. But imagine there’s two of your mom, and you have to pretend one doesn’t exist.”
“Okay,” I say. “You win.”
“We always wondered why Sol was sick
a lot, and he had that gray look, you know, how the boys around her now look. That’s how Sol used to look, too.”
Sol flashes a healthy grin and pinches his own cheek, like, Look how hearty I am these days. He gets a smile out of me, V, and Tall.
“Just before the night of the Mercury, I told my father that Realm Urma was draining Sol,” says Sula. “He didn’t believe me, at first. But I think he was trying to return her to the Realm, before everything went wrong.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“Maestro—my father—I think made that portal that night to send Realm Urma back to the Realm, where she belongs. But somehow it was my mom that went through the Mirror. The rest is history. I think she pushed my mom through with her magic, somehow,” says Sula. There’s no doubt who she refers to.
“She hypnotized me to get me to steal from my father for her,” says V. “Or, she tried to. Still not sure if it worked.” She shrugs.
“I’m so sorry. She’s hurt a lot of people, especially her own son. Sol was born with a gift and a curse. Sol gets these visions, and they’re so intense they only go away if he paints them. It’s like he needs to obsess over the image, and spend days with it, then it leaves him alone.”
“You think it’s because his mother is a Realm echo of the real Urma?”
“I think so,” says Sula. “Kid’s lucky to be here, whatever that means. It’s like his body is here, but his mind is in the Realm. Like he’s in two places at once.”
Sol startles me for a second. He’s pulled his headphones off and he’s tugging at the white glove on my left hand.
I think I get it. He wants me to take the glove off.
He was listening the whole time. He knows about my hand, without even seeing it. Maybe he does see it.
Maybe I shouldn’t, I think. But what have I really got to lose?
I yank off the glove, and watch as their mouths drop in awe.
“Think I know how your brother feels. I’m sorta in two places at once, myself. Except my mind is here, and my hand, I guess, is in the Realm.”
“Okay . . . ,” says Sula. “How did this happen exactly?”
“It’s all in that mural up there.”
I explain yesterday’s mission to the Mercury, and how I found that box—the Magician’s Lost and Found—and how my hand slipped inside.
As I talk, her eyes seem to see three times more than what I’m saying. I’m distracted by how pretty she is. Eyebrows thick like two perfect caterpillars, eyes round and big with eyelids heavy like a set of curtains in front of the whole universe, like if she opens them all the way you’ll be lost in space.
“So you went to the theater looking for your dad?” Sula asks.
“Well, not exactly. Just hoping I’d find some clue about how to get him back.”
“But King, you made a new breach. Remember, the Realm is echoes of our world, copies made the moment there’s a breach. The last breach before yesterday was four years ago, at the Mercury.”
“How do you know that?” asks V.
“Because I see the Realm all the time, I know each echo pretty well by now. My brother is always painting them. This is the first new echo in four years.” She points back up at the mural. That moment is looming over us in more ways than one.
“Okay,” I say. “And that’s a problem?”
“Don’t you know how the Realm works?” she asks.
“I don’t. Don’t know what I’m doing. Feels like we covered this.”
“Look, the Realm is made of echoes of our world, right? When you cause a rift, open a portal, whatever you want to call it, you start a new echo. But the old echoes are pushed back as soon as a new one is created. And eventually, you can’t get back to those old echoes. They’re out of reach from our reality. You follow me?”
“So you’re saying . . .”
“That this place your dad’s in—this echo, he may be stuck there forever soon. When you opened the Lost and Found, you put your dad’s echo on the clock. Your dad—and my dad and mom—are in that echo that’s fading further away from our reality. It’s only a matter of time. His echo could be lost in the Realm.”
“Oh no,” I say. “How long? How long do we have?”
Sol goes and digs through some piles of boards and canvas and comes back with a small dry-erase board attached to a chain, and a marker.
He writes on the board the number 13.
“Thirteen what?” I ask. “Thirteen hours? Thirteen days? What?”
He keeps on writing, another 13 below that.
“Look forward and backward, it’s all the same,” says Sula. “The Realm cycles in hours of thirteen. After two cycles”—she snaps her fingers—“time’s up.”
“What time was it?” I realize that’s the most important question. “What time was it when I found the box?”
I look from Too Tall to Veronica as if they might know the answer immediately.
They just shrug.
“I don’t know, cuz,” says V.
“Quick! We’ve got to figure it out!”
“Um, wait!” says Tall. “Why do we need to know that, exactly?”
I press my palms into my forehead.
“Because,” Veronica says patiently. “When Kingston put his hand in the box, he made something happen in the Realm. From that moment, we’ve got twenty-six hours—two cycles of thirteen—before his dad’s echo is gone for good. At least, that’s what I got.”
I nod to her. “That’s what I got, too.”
We look to Sula. She nods. “Yes. I think that’s right.”
“Ah,” says Tall. “Okay, let me think. What time was it? Phones keep time. And phones keep track of everything. Did we use any phones? Send any texts?”
I snap my fingers. “You made a note on your notepad, about the code.”
“Yes!” Too Tall says, and thumbs through his phone. “That note was made . . . yesterday at 6:18 p.m.”
“Okay, and then we wandered around that old theater for a while. Say I found the box, I don’t know, twenty minutes later?”
“Call it 6:30, to be safe,” says Veronica.
“Okay, so 6:30 p.m. yesterday plus twenty-six hours is—”
“It’s 8:30 p.m. this evening,” says V.
“Right. And the time now?” I ask.
“It’s 5:03 p.m.,” Tall reads from his phone.
Three hours . . .
“Hey, not so bad! Three whole hours!” says Too Tall.
I can’t even tell if he’s trying to be supportive or if he really thinks that’s plenty of time. I just groan.
Three hours.
The thought makes me dizzy.
“So. What now?” he says.
“What now? I don’t have the slightest idea! I don’t have a clue how to make a portal or pull Dad through or even find Dad—I don’t know!”
“Okay, big guy,” says Tall. “I’m with ya. Take it easy now, I’m one of the good guys.”
V puts a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Right. Sorry,” I say.
Sol writes something on the board where he’d written 13 twice. Only now, there’s just one 13 written there. He takes the marker between the 1 and the 3 and draws a simple + sign.
“One plus three,” says Veronica.
“Four,” says Too Tall. “Right. Four.”
“What’s he mean?” I ask.
Sula shrugs.
“Great,” says Too Tall. “More riddles and numbers. My favorite.”
“Can you help us?” I ask Sula.
“Listen, I wish you good luck and all. But nothing good happens when you mess with the Realm.” Sol suddenly gives his sister a look. She reads his expression and nods. “Sol wants to help you, Kingston. But I don’t know how to open a portal in the next three hours. I don’t know how to op
en a portal at all, to tell you the truth. I know it’s not easy, which is why no one has pulled it off in the last four years. I think there was some reason that my father had to open the portal when your dad was onstage. But to be completely honest, I’d rather Sol didn’t go near the Realm, Urma, or anything having to do with any of it.”
I nod when she’s done talking. But my mind feels like the dome of the Mercury right now. Like there’s a gaping hole in my skull and pigeons are flying in and out. I don’t know what to do. Usually if I feel like this, I go to Mom. And if Mom’s not there, I go to Dad. Well, not the real Dad, but the Dad Voice in my head. Even though Dad’s been gone for years, I still can remember his voice so well that sometimes I can hear what he would say, even though he’s not around to say it. Dad Voice would say something like, Kid, you better look after that muralist, or, You better be nice to your mom and tell her the truth.
It was always you better. But not like you better do this or else, it was more like you better be a better you. Pop was there to help me see how I could be better at being me.
But now I’m trying to hear what he would tell me to do, only it’s not there. No Dad Voice. I close my eyes and listen, but there’s nothing.
Like what will happen when his reality fades and he’s gone for good.
“Whoa, King,” says Veronica, seeing the dead look in my eyes. “Don’t go too dark, now. Hang in there.”
“What do we do, V?”
“Forgive me for suggesting this again, but don’t you think it’s time we talk to my dad?”
“You sure?”
“What’s the worst he could do?”
“He could stop us,” I say.
“Stop us from doing what?”
She’s got me there.
Veronica goes on: “I’m just saying, we don’t know what we’re doing. And maybe my dad doesn’t know about the fading echo. Maybe if we tell him, he’ll want to help.”
The walk back home takes exactly twelve minutes. Along the way, I think about how to tell Uncle Long Fingers everything we’ve been up to, from Urma Tan’s hypnosis to Sol’s painting of me. I wonder how much he already knows.