Conjured

by Sarah Beth Durst

  He pointed to a bucket in the corner. “Clean and dress yourself. You’ve accumulated filth from the road.” After untying the yarn that bound her, he yanked her to her feet. Her cotton-stuffed legs shook, and she caught herself on the wall of the wagon as the world tilted. It had been many hours since she had last stood, not since their last practice session. She stumbled to the corner of the room with the bucket.

  The Magician paced through the wagon while the doll slowly peeled off the clothes that she had worn for days and days. She hadn’t sweat into them, of course—she couldn’t—but dust and dirt had seeped into the wagon and onto her. She found a sponge in the bucket, and she rubbed it over her cloth body. The fabric that was her skin soaked up the water. She scrubbed her green marble eyes, and she wet her yarn hair. The water in the bucket grayed, and a puddle formed around her fabric feet. She tried to dry herself with a towel, dabbing her body as best she could, and then she pulled on the dress. The feathers scraped and poked into her cotton. She fastened the buttons hidden within the feathers and jewels. For her yarn hair, the Magician presented a comb inlaid with clusters of the same starlight jewels, and for her feet, he had golden shoes.

  “Lovely,” the Magician said. “You will enchant them.”

  The boy was watching her. She wondered if she enchanted or repulsed him, and then she reminded herself not to think about him.

  “Spin,” the Magician ordered.

  Cloth legs wobbling, the doll turned in a circle. The skirt whispered around her, rising lightly into the air as if it would lift her higher and higher until she flew. She remembered she had flown … with the boy who laid bound across the tent.

  Looking at him, she faltered.

  The boy began to talk again, “He may call himself the Magician, but he’s a fraud. He has no magic of his own. He’s a parasite.”

  The Magician plucked an empty box from the ribbon, and he clicked it open.

  The boy shrank back, but he didn’t stop talking. “You’re the magic one, Eve. He has no magic. He steals it all from you. You’re the special one. You have to believe that.”

  The Magician pressed the clasp to the boy’s skin, and the boy vanished into the box. The Magician shut the lid. “You may hold the magic, but you can’t use it, not without dropping into dreamland. We built that ‘quirk’ into you. A sensible precaution, as it turns out.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “Obey me in all things, and we will all three return here unharmed after the show. Disobey me, and you and I return alone.”

  He held out his arm, bent at the elbow, as if to escort a lady. “Our audience awaits.”

  Inside the tent, the acrobats were performing. Rings dangled from the rafters of the tent, and three men and two women dangled from them by one hand or one foot or one knee. They spun in sync, five pinwheels in the wind. In unison, they unfurled ribbons from their sleeves. It looked as though their shirts were unraveling. The ribbons plummeted into the audience, and the acrobats shimmied onto the ribbons. Dancing in the air, they wrapped the ribbons around their bodies and swooped and soared with them. The ribbons twisted together in midair above the audience, and then they released from the rings and fluttered down on the crowd. The acrobats hung in midair, suspended by seemingly nothing, as the audience applauded, and then they somersaulted down, bowed, and exited.

  “Come,” the Magician said to the doll. He hauled her through a silver mirror at the back of the tent. He kept a grip on her arm tight enough to bruise if she’d had human skin, and they stepped out of a second mirror onto the stage—a dramatic entrance. At his signal, a stagehand wheeled away the silver mirror.

  The audience clapped politely. They had seen portals before. In most worlds, they were ubiquitous. A few patrons fidgeted and rustled their bags, gathering their belongings as if preparing the leave. But they quieted when she walked forward on her shaky cloth legs—a living doll. Somewhere in the tent, a baby cried.

  “My beautiful assistant!” the Magician said.

  The audience laughed at her thread face, her yarn hair, her wobbling legs.

  And the Magician began the show.

  He started with sleight of hand, magicless tricks with cards, balls, and scarves. But then he added real magic: he tossed the scarves into the air, and they didn’t fall. Over his head, the scarves twisted slowly as if they were underwater. And then the scarves burst into flame.

  The audience gasped, their attention rapt.

  Silent on the stage, the doll watched the audience through glass eyes. Children. Men. Women. Most had painted faces: leopard spots, zebra stripes, fish scales, feathers. Their clothes were fashioned out of fur, feathers, and scales to match their faces. A few held caramel popcorn in a red-and-white-striped bag, forgotten as the Magician performed. One child sucked endlessly on a lollipop.

  Near the center of the audience, one face was unpainted: a perfect face with blond tousled hair and bright-blue eyes. He watched the Magician as intently as a hawk watches a mouse.

  The doll watched this boy as she took the Magician’s cloak and waved it with a flourish, the perfect assistant. The Magician pretended to kiss her cheek in thanks and instead stole her breath. She kept watching as he tossed card after card into the air. Each card stopped in midair until at last he had a ladder of cards leading up to the scarves.

  The Magician climbed the card ladder up to where the fiery scarves spun and sparked. On one foot, he stood on the top card, and he juggled the silken balls of fire. As the scarves dissolved into ash, the applause was thunderous.

  The boy in the audience didn’t clap.

  The doll knew his name. Aidan. She fought against the memories that rose inside her, and she fixed her eyes instead on the Magician.

  Coming down from the ladder of cards, the Magician held his hand out toward the audience. A girl in the front row leaped to her feet and scrambled onto the stage.

  No, the doll thought.

  The girl looked so innocent. Her face was painted like a swan. She wore white feathers in a skirt. She was smiling as if she’d won a prize. With broad gestures, the Magician invited her to climb the ladder. Laughing, the girl climbed, and he stood beneath her. On the tenth card, her foot slipped. She grabbed at the card above, but it slid out of her hand. Screaming, she fell.

  He turned her into a bird before she hit the ground.

  The Magician scooped his hat from the doll’s hands. He laid it over the bird that fluttered on the stage. Slowly, he raised the hat up, and the girl stood under it, wearing his hat. She laughed and clapped her hands. The Magician bowed. The girl curtsied before scurrying back to her seat, and her parents hugged her with proud smiles on their painted faces.

  The girl wasn’t his next victim. The doll wished her cold, dry eyes could cry. She wished she were more than cotton inside so she could feel relief in her heart, her stomach, and her breath. Perhaps no one would die today.

  The show continued. Soon, other carnival people gathered at the back of the tent. The Magician’s shows never went so long. But the Magician didn’t slow or tire. Between tricks, he’d kiss his doll assistant on the cheek, secretly filling his lungs each time. He drew a cloud into the tent and caused it to rain on the stage. He transformed the raindrops into butterflies, and then he forced the butterflies to fly in patterns against the roof of the tent—and then he changed them back into rain that fell toward the audience, transforming at the last second to paper confetti that melted into nothingness.

  He then caused the seats to sprout, as if watered by the vanished confetti. Vines spread over the arms and legs of the audience. Roses blossomed on the vine, and then just as quickly, they wilted. The vines blackened and crumbled. Each audience member was left with a rose on his or her lap.

  The applause was thunderous.

  The Magician bowed. “And now for my final trick …”

  Plucking the cards from the air, the Magician displayed them, showing that each card had a drawing of a figure: an old woman, a young girl, a harlequin, a queen, a reaper …
He blew on the cards, tapped them, and the figures detached from the card faces. The paper figures lurched across the stage. He sent them into the audience. They crawled over the audience members, their eyes flat and their progress unslowed. They climbed onto the shoulders or heads of different audience members, whose smiles faltered as the paper feet and hands touched them.

  “This time, the cards choose you,” the Magician said.

  A few of the audience members tried to remove the paper creatures and people. They clung fast. Some pulled harder, and the paper bodies tore.

  The Magician shuffled the blank Tarot cards.

  As one, the paper figures turned their heads toward the center of the audience. They climbed over people faster with a single-minded determination, converging on the boy Aidan. They climbed up his legs and over his body, laying against his clothes as if glued to him.

  “Remember him,” the Magician said softly to the doll. The boy Aidan didn’t move as the paper figures stuck to his shirt and hair and skin. “He has magic.”

  The doll met Aidan’s eyes.

  And Aidan vanished with a soft pop.

  Outside the wagon, after the performance, Aidan waited on the steps. He still had the paper figures from the Tarot cards on him. One sat on his shoulder, swinging his paper legs. Another clung to the pocket of Aidan’s shirt. Others were stuck to him like magnets.

  “I believe these are yours.” Aidan flashed a dazzling smile at the Magician.

  The doll felt unable to move, as if she were on strings but no one had tugged them to make her walk or talk. A part of her wanted to scream at Aidan to run. A part of her wanted to run to him. The rest of her did not move or speak.

  The Magician smiled. “Did you like the performance?” He fanned the blank cards, and the paper figures clambered down Aidan’s body and crawled up the Magician and onto the cards.

  “Very impressive.” Aidan stood up lazily, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He hadn’t looked at her yet, the doll noted. She stared at him with her green marble eyes that couldn’t blink. “But I am here on business.” Aidan drew a wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open. A badge with a ring of circles was inside.

  The Magician’s smile did not waver. “Oh, it’s show and tell!” He drew out a box from the pocket of his robe. “Have you ever seen one of these?” He turned the box over in his hands, sliding it over the backs of his hands and around in a figure-eight. “Marvelous device. Impervious to strength or weapons or magic. Yet if you twist it in a particular way and squeeze, you can crush it and its contents with one hand. A trade secret.” He fixed his eyes on the doll as he said this. “Now, how can I help you, officer?”

  “I’m looking for this girl.” Aidan held up a photograph. It was a photo she’d seen before—a girl with yellow hair and green eyes with this boy in a pizza parlor. In the photo, his arm was draped around her.

  “I haven’t seen her,” the Magician said.

  Aidan turned to the doll. “And you?”

  The doll stared at the box. The boy was inside it. Zach, she thought. The Magician held the box in one hand, fingers curled around it, about to tighten. “She isn’t here,” the doll lied.

  “But you’ve seen her?” Aidan asked.

  “Come inside and we’ll talk,” the Magician said. His smile was frozen on his face. Don’t hurt him, the doll thought.

  Smiling broadly, Aidan said, “I’d be delighted.” He followed the Magician up the cherry-red steps to the door of the wagon. The doll wanted to scream at him to run, to hurl magic at him to stop him, to scream for help with every bit of air trapped in her cotton body.

  But she didn’t.

  Instead, she followed Aidan and the Magician with Zach’s box inside. By the time she stepped over the threshold, there were two boxes in the Magician’s hands, and Aidan was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The magician drew chalk circles on the floor of the wagon. He hummed to himself as he added symbols and runes. Dully, the doll watched.

  He rocked back on his heels and studied his work.

  The doll looked away. She counted the mirrors inlaid in the wall. Each button-size mirror reflected a part of a bird skull or a corner of a box, or a piece of the Magician himself—an elbow in one, a swirl of cloak in another, a bit of his beard in a third.

  She heard the click of a clasp and looked back at the Magician. He held one box in his hand. The lid popped open, and the sides fell apart. Zach tumbled out onto the floor. He moaned as the Magician trussed him in bloodstained yarn.

  “Eve, that was …” Zach stopped as he saw the chalk circle. His eyes widened, and he struggled against the yarn. “No! Are you going to kill me? Eve, is it me next?”

  The Magician dragged him to his usual cot and tied him to it. Zach twisted and flopped. “Hush,” the Magician said. “I don’t harvest the powerless.”

  Zach exhaled, and then his breath caught. “But it is someone. You’re going to kill someone. Here. Now. I can’t be here. I can’t watch this. Please, put me back in the box!” His voice rose higher, panic-infused. The Magician tightened the yarn. “Eve … you have to stop this!” Zach said. “Make him stop.”

  The doll looked away. Strands of her yarn hair fell over her face, and she wished it could hide her, block her sight. She wished her eyes would close.

  “She cannot,” the Magician said. “She must breathe in the last dying breath. There is no other way to harvest the power. If I do it, the magic will fade and be wasted. If she does it, the magic lasts. It’s simply a fact.” He placed another box in the center of the circle. He unhooked the clasp, and the sides fell open. Aidan huddled on the floor, curled into a ball, holding his knees to his chest.

  “You!” Zach said.

  Instantly, Aidan vanished.

  The Magician laughed. “Splendid!”

  Aidan reappeared by the door.

  He vanished again and reappeared next to Zach. Aidan’s hand clapped on Zach’s arm. He disappeared with him, and then reappeared in the same spot. The doll heard the air pop and felt it whoosh through the wagon.

  He tried again. And again.

  The Magician’s eyes were alight. “We don’t have this in our repertoire. Such strength! Oh my dear …” His eyes dimmed as if he’d suddenly remembered that the Storyteller was gone. With a sigh, he leaned in toward the doll and sucked in a breath. When Aidan charged at him, he deflected him with a wave of his hand. The Storyteller’s leftover yarn then wrapped around Aidan’s body. “She would have found you to be an exquisite addition. In fact … you do look familiar. You aren’t from this world, are you, boy? We hunted you once before.”

  “Talk to me, library boy,” Aidan said. “Why can’t I pop out of here?”

  “I’m guessing the wagon functions like the boxes. Probably made of the same material. Magic can’t penetrate it—which means no teleporting out. Or blasting out. Or walking through walls. Please tell me you brought the cavalry.”

  “Very observant,” the Magician said to Zach. To Aidan he said, “I’m sorry to tell you, but escape won’t be possible. Please know that your magic will be put to good use.”

  “A fleet of marshals and law enforcement from multiple worlds is waiting to descend on this wagon,” Aidan said. “Surrender yourself, and it’s possible they’ll show you some leniency. If not … you’re surrounded. Escape won’t be possible for you either.”

  “It will be, once I have your magic.” The Magician spoke gently, as if to a child.

  “If I can’t teleport from within this box, then neither can you,” Aidan said. “You’ll be arrested as soon as you step outside. Do yourself a favor, and turn yourself in.”

  The Magician sucked in another breath from the doll’s mouth, and then he transformed himself into an identical match to Aidan, right down to the cocky smile. “They won’t arrest you.” He then transformed himself back.

  Aidan vanished and reappeared again, still bound in yarn. He struggled at the yarn, straining against it
. But the threads did not even stretch. The doll leaned her head against the wall and wished she could change into stone and never feel again … but it wouldn’t work. She’d still feel. She didn’t think it would even help to die. The Magician could still use an inert doll, and besides, she wasn’t truly alive to begin with.

  “Where’s Eve?” Aidan asked.

  The Magician didn’t answer. He was absorbed in preparing the chalk symbols.

  “Behind you,” Zach said.

  “The freaky doll?” He twisted to look at the doll, and he struggled harder. “He changed her into that? Eve? Eve, is that you?”

  “He changed me back to who … what … I am,” the doll said. “Eve doesn’t exist. She never existed. I’m not her. I’m not real.” Silently, she added, I don’t deserve to be real.

  “You are Eve,” Zach said. “You may have started like this, but you became Eve!” The doll shook her head, lolling it on her limp neck. That had been a dream, a delusion. This was her reality. “Remember the day we first met? I made a bad apple joke. I told you I wanted to kiss you. You sat in the lobby and read books I picked out for you. Remember the everything bagel?”

  The Magician flicked his hand, and Aidan was knocked off his feet. The yarn wrapped tighter, shackling him to the floor in the center of the chalk circle. He vanished and reappeared again.

  “Tell her memories,” Zach told him. “Remind her that she’s real. First time you kissed. The moment when you knew she was perfect for you, when you knew you didn’t ever want to be anywhere else but with her, when you knew she was your escape and your salvation and your chance at something more.”

  “I don’t …,” Aidan said. “I can’t …”

  “She’s the one with the magic. Your life depends on her,” Zach said. “This is not the time to be squeamish about … what did you call it? Oh, yes … ‘sappy maudlin mush.’ Help her remember she matters!”

  Aidan disappeared and reappeared behind the Magician. He tried to knock into him, but the Magician was prepared. Sidestepping Aidan, the Magician levitated the ritual knife to Aidan’s throat.