Magic at Midnight

by Lyssa Chiavari

“Stop!” the man yelled at her. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  “You can try,” Maribel replied.

  “Maribel,” her father whispered.

  “It’s okay, Papá,” she said. “I’m here now. We’ll get out of here.”

  She looked around his cell and saw only his coat. He was the only prisoner.

  “The only place you’re going is in the cell with your father,” the man said as he came toward her.

  Maribel turned to face him, and the man stopped. Her eyes widened, and she understood why her father had stopped her from hurting him.

  The man lowered his weapon and he asked, “You’re his daughter?”

  Maribel nodded.

  Noticing the man’s hesitation, Maribel’s father spoke up. “Please, let her go. She has done no harm. Let her go back to our home.”

  “That’s impossible,” the man replied automatically. “She cannot be allowed to leave. What if she goes back to your workshop and creates more of those beasts?”

  “Beasts?” Maribel asked. “You mean like the Beast that lives in the woods?”

  The man nodded and pointed his gun toward Maribel’s father. “The Beast he created.”

  Maribel’s eyes widened, but she corrected herself quickly. She let her eyes wander around the room, feigning curiosity. A small rectangular window was located near one of the corners. The man pointed the gun back at Maribel.

  Maribel’s eyes drifted toward the knife on the floor. How could she have dropped it? How could she? Not that it would be of any use now, at least not against this man.

  “Please, just let my father go.”

  The man turned and walked toward the desk and grabbed a set of silver keys. With the weapon still pointed at Maribel, he gestured toward the cell.

  “When I open the door, you’ll join your father.”

  “Am I not allowed to know what he’s being charged with?” Maribel asked. She knew she had to get her father to Valentín. He would take her father to safety.

  The man sighed. “Your father is being charged with illegal manufacture of weapons.”

  Maribel laughed. “It seems to me the only one here with a weapon is you.” She stepped toward him.

  “Maribel,” her father warned, “you have to get out of here. Please”—he turned to the man—“just let her go. She has no part in this.”

  Maribel took another step. “I’m warning you,” the man said.

  “What if I told you I knew where to catch the Beast? Would you let my father go?”

  “Maribel, what are you doing?” Her father’s voice was filled with sadness.

  “It’s okay, Papá. I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.”

  “What do you mean?” the man asked. ​”He’s here? With you?”

  “Yes. And if you let my father go, I will show you. I’m sure the people you work for are anxious to hunt down this creature. And if I’m lying, you’ll have me as a prisoner at least. You won’t lose completely.”

  The man hesitated before opening the door to the cell. Maribel’s father hugged her tightly. “I can’t leave you. I won’t.”

  “It’s okay, Papá. I met Grandmother. I know who he is,” Maribel replied in a whisper. “It will be okay.”

  Maribel’s father stepped away, his eyes dim with sadness. There was a beep and all three turned toward the door.

  “What’s he doing outside of the cell?” a man barked.

  Another voice: “And who is she?”

  “Can’t you do anything right, Andres?” a third yelled.

  Maribel looked at her father for his reaction. The man had somehow managed to keep the name her father had given him.

  “She knows the location of the Beast,” Andres replied.

  For a moment, everyone froze. And in that moment, Maribel pulled out the whistle and blew with all the strength she had. Andres dropped his weapon to cover his ears and it began firing, striking the three men near the doorway. Maribel jumped in front of her father, shielding him from the bullets that penetrated her skin—and the metal underneath. She reached down and grabbed the weapon, reaching for her father.

  “Hurry, Papá, more will be coming,” she said in the eerie silence that followed the shots.

  Her father turned. “We can’t leave him.”

  “Here,” Maribel said, handing her father the weapon. “Go out and meet Valentín. He should be here soon.” Her father looked at Andres, who had crumpled to the ground, holding his ears.

  “I’ll drag him if I have to. I promise,” she said. Her father grabbed the weapon and headed out the door, his steps fading away as the door shut behind him.

  She bent down and pulled at Andres’s hands. “My head,” he said. “What was that? Did you call the Beast to us?” He pushed himself up slowly as Maribel wondered how many of his past memories were still stored somewhere inside of him.

  “No. The Beast is already here.” She reached down and picked up her knife, using it to peel away the skin on her hand where one of the bullets had struck her. The shiny metal underneath glistened.

  “No, the Beast is a large creature, with brown fur and sharp teeth and angry eyes. That’s what they said. That it would kill you if it got the chance. And that your father created hundreds of them, all mechanical and even more dangerous than any animal.” Andres spoke more to himself than to Maribel. “But you, you don’t look like that at all.”

  Andres stepped back. He shook his head. “You should never have come here. Do you know what they’ll do to you?”

  “Probably the same thing they’ll do to you when they find out what you are,” Maribel replied softly.

  “What?”

  “That whistle I just used, my father made it. It was meant to be used on our mechanical animals, to call them back to us.”

  “And?”

  “Humans can’t hear it,” she said sadly.

  Andres backed away from her. Maribel could see his eyes coming in and out of focus, trying to register what he’d heard.

  “No. You’re lying.”

  “We don’t have much time,” said Maribel. “But if you come with me, my father will explain everything. He knows... a lot more about you than I do.”

  Andres shook his head.

  “Do you dream? When you’re asleep, do you dream?” Maribel asked.

  “Why do you ask that?” Andres asked her.

  “Because I don’t. I have memories and feelings, I love, and I am happy. But wish as I might, I don’t have the ability to dream. Not yet. I think it’s a little more difficult for robots to dream.”

  Andres looked at her with wide eyes. “Just go,” he said to her. “I’ll tell them I don’t know where you went.”

  Maribel handed him her knife. “Make a small cut. When you see the metal, if you would like to come with us, we’ll be waiting near the edge of the woods.”

  As he grabbed the knife, their fingers touched and a small spark ignited. Maribel smiled, then turned and ran out of the room. Andres looked over his own fingers. Outside, he could hear a horse galloping away.

  ♛

  Maribel and her father watched as the flashing lights in the city finally died down. Her father’s voice broke through the silence.

  “I loved all my inventions,” he said quietly. “Andres was the first of the robots that started to feel. When people began to realize how advanced they were becoming, they were seized and destroyed. The only one Marina and I managed to save was Andres.”

  “The only one?” Maribel asked.

  Her father looked over at her, his eyes glimmering in the darkness. “I created you after Marina and I had sent Andres back.”

  “But why did you sent him back at all?”

  “There was no harm. I made sure to create a new set of memories for him, positive memories of the city. No one would ever know.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Maribel said.

  Her father sighed. “I couldn’t bear to destroy him and, at the time, it was much too dangerous to ke
ep him with us. We weren’t sure the woods would be safe. We decided to hide him in plain sight.”

  The wind began to pick up, the rustling of the trees breaking the silence.

  Maribel opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again.

  “Then why did I create you?” her father spoke her unspoken question. “Marina had always wanted a daughter. It made her so happy to have you.”

  Maribel closed her eyes, scanning through her memories. She saw her mother standing behind her, teaching Maribel to braid her long dark hair. “My Beauty,” her mother would always say, looking at Maribel in the mirror.

  There was a crack behind them.

  As Maribel’s eyes scanned the trees, she thought of all the people she had seen in the city earlier that evening. “Why tell me there was a beast in the woods, if there wasn’t one?” she asked.

  Her father was quiet a few moments before answering.

  “That idea I borrowed from the leaders of this city. It seemed the best way to keep you from wandering too far.”

  “From being captured,” Maribel said, finishing her father’s thoughts.

  Maribel’s father coughed gently, and Maribel removed her cloak, placing it on her father’s back.

  It will be some time before people can accept that I am not a beast, Maribel thought, looking into her father’s eyes.

  ♛

  It was almost dawn and Maribel’s father was asleep on Valentín’s back. If Maribel had had a heart, she knew it would have felt broken. ​​She’d been so sure he would come. As she turned and walked toward Valentín, she heard footsteps on the fallen leaves.

  She stiffened, ready to attack anyone who tried to take her father.

  It was Andres.

  He had a small cut on his hand as he handed the knife back to her.

  Maribel raised her eyebrows and smiled. “You came.”

  “Of course. I couldn’t miss the opportunity of meeting the infamous Beast of the woods.”

  They turned and began to walk in step next to Valentín. As they went deeper into the quiet of the woods, it seemed that, if they could dream, this would be what it felt like.

  About the Author

  Selenia Paz spends a lot of her time working at a library surrounded by awesome books, and uses the rest of her time to read, write, and run with her dogs. She finds inspiration in everything from history to science and especially loves magical realism. Her manuscript “Broken English” was selected as a 2012 New Voices Honor winner by Lee and Low Books. She is also the author of Life and Death, Book One of the Leyendas Trilogy, and “Lisbeth,” a retelling of Macbeth published in the anthology Perchance to Dream. You can find her online at seleniapaz.com.

  Books by Selenia Paz:

  Life and Death (Leyendas, Book 1)

  Gods and Demons (Leyendas, Book 2)

  Shadows and Light (Leyendas, Book 3) (Coming soon!)

  A Brackish Shore

  a retelling of The Little Mermaid

  ♛

  LEIGH HELLMAN

  The sun set sooner these days, streaking itself copper and gold across the bay before the barker’s voice began to crack with last calls. The machines wheezed—tinkled and ground against themselves—as the lights flickered out string by string, chasing the drifters to the gates at the end of the pier. Children squealed and squawked and raced each other across the wooden planks. Their footsteps echoed between the waves.

  It was Tuesday; she always came on Tuesday. Sella tied off a little burlap satchel and waited.

  ♛

  A fistful of years ago, Sella had stuffed two carpet bags full of overstitched skirts and darned socks and the sooty, brittle books that she’d hidden under her winter coats as she rustled in and out of the bookstores wedged crooked-cramped into the corners of her neighborhood, and stood, defiant, in the parlor of her crumbling family home.

  “I’m joining the circus,” she’d said, steady and clear and without blinking against the seeping afternoon light.

  There had been no answer. Or rather, no one left to answer.

  The house and all its estate trappings had gone into the care of the law firm her grand-uncle had kept on retainer until he wheezed out his last dusty breath, and beyond that she didn’t know. Didn’t check, didn’t care.

  She’d followed after the technicolor pop-flash of the biggest, most established troupe she could find—sob-storied her way into being a waitress in the food tent, then knocked the second-best ciggie girl, white like porcelain and just as fragile, down and took her place weaving through the late show crowds.

  After a while—as the crowds got rougher and the hands got grabbier—Sella noticed that the fairy-shine had started to go dull around the edges. Litter piled up against the midway stalls and spiderwebs collected under the awnings and the air caught the same tacky-mildew taste that had been soaked into the walls of her childhood.

  Sometimes, if she inhaled too quickly, it would lodge in her throat and not even a coughing fit could get it out.

  ♛

  It’d been in her third troupe—after the thick-tarnished glamour of the one she ran away for, then the sterile-dull cheeriness of the one she ran away to—that she met Miss Janus. Mummy-wrapped in scarves and scraps of fur and bangles that clattered along her wrists, Miss Janus kept herself propped against a pile of cushions under a tilting stall near the cluster of animal wagons, crystal ball and tarot deck always within reach. She kept her hours from after breakfast to lunch and then late stretches once the afternoon shows had run; it was how most midway acts operated, since almost all of them doubled bit parts in the big show.

  Sella herself did simple sleight-of-hand tricks, distractions for the audience while the aerialists secured their safety harnesses. She tried to shuffle through the clowns, chorus dancers, assistant trainers, and the like to match faces across the different midway booths, but it still took her the better part of a season to realize that the chubby, sweat-sheened stagehand for the seal show and The Mysterious Miss Janus were one and the same.

  The stagehand wore the same muted gray overalls that all crew members were given so they didn’t draw attention away from the real performers; Miss Janus draped herself in vibrant, shocking colors and outrageous cut-glass jewels. The stagehand’s palms were rough and marred from bites and burns; Miss Janus always wore lace gloves and kept her hands folded gently in her lap between sessions. The stagehand’s wiry black hair was close-cropped, cutting a clean line along dark skin; Miss Janus kept her head covered with gold lamé turbans and sequined headpieces that Sella could see glinting from the other end of the midway.

  The stagehand was a quiet, hunched sort of man, but Miss Janus luxuriated in her femininity. It bewitched Sella like the shimmer of the first night at a circus once had. So she went to Miss Janus’ stall one night and paid for her fortune.

  Miss Janus took her hand firmly, held Sella’s brown palm against her own, and traced out its lines with her fingertip. “Now, why’s a talent like you out here playing with cards?”

  Sella shrugged, closed her fingers into a loose fist. “Nothing else they’d let me do, I guess.”

  “Let you do?” Miss Janus swooped forward like a hawk in dive, then paused, considering. “Ten months working this show and this is the first time we meet—why?”

  A lie pooled on Sella’s tongue, something polite and innocuous that Miss Janus would cut through like butter. “I recognized you tonight.”

  “And which face did you recognize?” She rapped her blunt nails against the table. “Miss Janus has many.”

  “I recognized… my face.” Sella tripped over the words, let them tumble out before she really heard them.

  Miss Janus held her gaze for a sticky moment, then leaned back into her pillows.

  “You have talent, but not skill. Not yet.” Miss Janus smiled, kept her teeth behind her wide lips. “Did you come here for a teacher?”

  Sella bit at the inside of her cheek, gnawed at it until it was puckered and gummy. There hadn’t
been a reason for coming. Or it’d been nothing more than curiosity and brash courage. Or perhaps there was a question behind glass—garbled in refraction—that she’d needed to see.

  “Yes.” Sella’s voice fell quiet like moth wings into the night.

  Miss Janus nodded like she’d known that the answer would satisfy her. “I accept. And here’s your first lesson, free of charge: nobody lets dark girls do anything in life—everything we do we gotta take for ourselves. But dark girls like me and you—full of magic and power? Well, I’m gonna teach you how to make sure you ain’t waiting on lettin’ ever again.”

  ♛

  They met for lessons twice a week on whichever days had the smallest crowds and the least chance of losing good money by shuttering up the stall for an hour or two. Miss Janus ran through the basics of the craft—gazing, tea leaves, palms, tarot—and brought in odd crew members for Sella to practice on.

  Sella would stare at them, try to file away at their greasy smirks and the grime that cracked along the wrinkles in their hands. She imagined hoisting them up by their ankles and shaking them until all their secrets seeped out at her feet. She’d catch their eyes—wouldn’t blink—and after a prickly stretch of silence they would start to squirm like maybe they almost believed that she could pry them open with her mind.

  Then she would say something—something about fortune’s windfall or the forking roads of change—and they’d scoff, go loose and cocky in their chair, and the spell was shattered.

  If you can’t sell it to us, how d’you expect to sell it to the rest of ’em?

  Miss Janus set her to preparing ingredients after one particularly humiliating session when the firebreather had strung her along for several minutes, nodded and leaned in eagerly, and she’d felt like perhaps she was finally grasping the wispy tendrils of magic that Miss Janus claimed she had. But then—just as she’d started to feel something cold and bright building behind her eyes—he’d cut in with a slow, smug no.