by Finn, K. C.
Novel did not disappoint them. A shock of lightning appeared from nowhere at all and in the split-second that it flashed he appeared for the waiting patrons to see. It seemed as though the contents of the theatre gasped as a single being, even those who must have seen him before were transfixed in shock. His eyes were cast into black, shadowy sockets by the bright white spotlight pouring down from above. Skin pale as a spectre’s was exaggerated by the darkly drawn eyebrows arching into points above those gloomy hollows. His lips too were black as coal, a superb effort in stage makeup that reminded Lily of a haunting cross between a French mime and a black-and-white movie serial killer. She didn’t know which to be more afraid of.
Perhaps more astonishing still was Monsieur Novel’s hair. It was long enough to be combed behind his ears, though it did not grace his neck, and in the dusty spotlight it appeared to be totally white. It was a strange whiteness, for even through his make-up, Lily thought that the gentlemen couldn’t be more than ten years her senior. The illusionist’s black mouth stretched into a serious sneer as he surveyed the awestruck crowd. He held out one pale hand with a slow and deliberate grace. Tiny blue sparks grew in his palm as he swept the hand from left to right in welcome.
“Good evening,” he purred in the darkest of tones.
And this time the lightning came straight from his palm when it exploded into life.
The dumbstruck crowd suddenly applauded in a blast of appreciation, but Lily’s hands remained still, clutching the sides of her chair. Novel stalked the very edge of the stage like a patient predator, the invisible orchestra striking up as the beams of lightning shot about the cavernous space in time to the music. He appeared to be controlling them, but his thin frame and well-fitted suit left no space in which to hide any apparatus on his body. Occasionally, he seemed to lose control of the larger forks of electricity which shot out towards the audience in frighteningly loud snaps. The patrons flinched as the whip of energy crackled above them.
All the while Monsieur Novel’s expression remained dark and thoughtful. Not once did his lips rise into a smile. They simply sneered continually at the power he was controlling, parting for him to suck in precisely choreographed breaths when he turned in his display of perfect grace, avoiding every spot the forks could hit. A few patrons in the front row, perhaps those who had never seen him before, were starting to panic at the multitude of power growing rapidly on the stage before them, with no reasonable explanation in sight. It looked like a major fire hazard for sure. One of them tried to get up.
“I would kindly recommend you stay in your seat for this performance, good sir,” Novel said loudly over the buzz of the lightning strikes. “It could be rather nasty for you, if you don’t.”
There was something foreign lurking in the shadows of his accent. Perhaps he had been living in England a long time, but he definitely wasn’t from around these parts. His voice had an amused kind of youth in it that didn’t suit his skeletal pre-modern look, and though he gazed upon the terrified patron as he sat back down in his chair, he still didn’t let the mirth in his warning show on his face.
All at once the lightning stopped. Novel stood in the dead centre of the stage, looking down at his feet with his shadowed eyes. Lily caught her breath as the flicker of hot white energy grew beneath his feet, sparking and growing into a ball of buzzing power. He thrust out his pale hands, raising them upwards as he slowly began to levitate into the air. Lily could see no wires to hoist him, and his clothes didn’t move as though they were under any strain. He simply rose up in a slow, straight line as the lightning ball grew larger and larger in the space where he’d been standing. In his ascent, his face was lit from under his chin and Lily finally saw a pair of pale blue eyes glowing out of the black sockets on his face.
And they glowed directly at her.
She started in her seat, shocked to find his gaze so blatantly fixed. She would have sworn the floating man had raised one of his black eyebrows at her, but a moment later the lightning ball exploded with a deafening crack that made the entire contents of the theatre sink down into their seats and clutch their heads in wild panic. When Lily looked up again, Monsieur Novel was gone. Someone behind Lily broke the shocked silence of the audience by starting to applaud. Gasps erupted as some of them looked beyond her to the source of the clap, then suddenly everyone was giving an ovation.
Lily craned her head around, almost jumping out of her skin when she realised it was Monsieur Novel sitting in the seat directly behind her. He had started his own applause. He sat with a casual grace, an elegant hand accepting the praise as he slowly got back to his feet and straightened out his beautiful clothes. Once more his frosty blue eyes snapped to Lily. She wanted to look away, but it just didn’t happen. Novel inclined his head to the rapt audience without breaking his stare, then swiftly retreated up the theatre aisle, his long coat billowing in another invisible gust of air.
OCTOBER
How to Win Friends
The Illustrious Minds didn’t only occupy their time with visits to the Theatre Imaginique. They quite often did normal things, like nights out at Guttersnipes and visits to the cinema, which so far Lily had managed to avoid by virtue of the first massive assignment for Professor Havers being due on October 13th. She got acquainted with the library, in which the research computers were even more temperamental than her fuzzy-screened laptop, and printed herself a huge pile of junk to read that kept her busy as she crafted a careful appraisal of Georgian crime and punishment, both aiming and praying for a decent starting grade in the module.
Jazzy’s degree path was a double-stranded English Language and Literature and, though she had no assignments due until December, she did have a reading list that had probably destroyed an acre of Brazilian rainforest to print and bind. She wasn’t a big fan of e-books, so said reading list was taking up space under both hers and Lily’s beds until she’d got through it all. Michael called them boring for wanting to study, but Molly was a great comfort when she explained that all second year students tended to erase from their memory the ‘Nerdy First Term’ where they gave it their best shot at doing well in class. Lily was sure that she’d be able to settle better into the social side of Pike U once this first paper was out of the way. And once she knew for sure that she was up to standard with Professor Havers and not likely to be kicked out on her ear come Christmas break.
On the hand-in day for the paper, Jazzy waited outside the lecture hall for Lily as planned. After Jazzy had changed her mind at least fifty times, she had finally agreed to meet Lawrence, provided that Lily could sort-of bump into him casually after class. It wasn’t as though they didn’t have anything to talk about, what with him being a sleepwalking, knife-juggling acrobat and all. Lawrence was still in the hall getting his paper signed off when Lily came out and stood nonchalantly with Jazzy at the door.
“He’s coming, he’s coming!” she whispered excitedly. Lily shushed her quickly, stepping forward again into the doorway.
“Oh, hi Lawrence!” She said the words as though she hadn’t just been in the room with him and ignored him a moment ago. “Bet you’re glad to get that paper out of the way.”
“Yeah,” he said shyly, his big eyes slipping to glance at Jazzy now and then. “I’m not really a book guy. Research is harder than I thought actually.”
“Well you should meet my friend Jazzy here,” Lily said, pulling her forward when she didn’t come on her own, “she’s an expert at book stuff.”
Jazzy wasn’t really an expert, but more of an avid fan of research. Her haphazard approach wasn’t always productive, but it was probably better than Lawrence’s, so technically that made Lily’s words true.
“Cool,” Lawrence said, nodding to Jazzy. She smiled at him but still didn’t speak. “It’s nice to meet you,” he added awkwardly.
“We saw you at the theatre you know,” Lily said to break the tension. “You should have said you were into all that cool stuff.”
He looked a little emba
rrassed at that, rubbing the back of his neck with a grin. “Oh, uh, did you like the show?”
“You were totally amazing!” Jazzy suddenly blurted out, all nerves and pink cheeks. “I mean, it all was really. You know, everything… but also you.”
Lily could see the silent prayer escaping her friend, that the earth might oblige by opening and swallowing her up right about then, but Lawrence seemed to relax at her words. He gave her a much more earnest smile, his eyes shining at her.
“You know if you liked it so much, I could maybe show you around the theatre one afternoon?” He let one sandaled foot scratch the back of his other leg, looking up at the wall nervously whilst he asked the girls the question.
Lily flashed Jazzy a grin. “We would so love to do that,” she replied. “What day’s good for you?”
When everything had been arranged, Jazzy was practically bouncing on the heels of her converse all the way back to the dorm. For her part, Lily was pleased that she’d been able to do something nice for her friend, but the prospect of peeking around a real Victorian theatre also held its own selfish temptations. There would surely be catacombs and secret passages to find and explore, plus all the usual areas that people who weren’t performers never got to see.
And I can poke around in the magic props to find out how Monsieur Novel does his tricks.
‘Lightning and Levitation’ had been bothering Lily for quite some time, and she had found it hard to push the wonderings to the back of her mind whilst she was writing her Modern History paper. On a few of her tea breaks from studying, she had tried to google how magicians fly on stage, but none of the methods she found seemed to match with what she had seen. The especially impossible part being the speed at which Novel had gotten into the seat behind her, from being ten feet above the stage a moment before. Jazzy told her it ruined the mystery if you went snooping online, but Lily carried on searching until she ran out of possibilities all the same.
Dinner and a Show
“I’m sorry about this, but my father has invited you both to dinner before I show you around,” Lawrence said as the three young people walked down Old Mill Lane towards the theatre. “He’s kind of the boss of me. I can’t really say no, and he’s so excited that I have new friends…”
“Aww, that’s really sweet,” Jazzy said. Lawrence gave her a bashful grin.
“We don’t mind a free meal,” Lily added, thinking rather selfishly of her dwindling bank balance. “Where’s your place?”
“In the theatre,” Lawrence replied simply.
“What?” Lily began with a frown. “You live here? Inside the theatre?”
“Of course,” he answered. “We all do.”
“That’s amazing,” Jazzy added, following him eagerly as he went up and knocked on the main doors.
Lily realised that it might not be quite so amazing, as she remembered the host of other weird and wonderful performers who would also be living within those walls. It was the weird variety that troubled her more than the wonderful ones, and she was not to be disappointed on that score. The most hideous man she had ever seen in her life opened the door to let them in. Worst fears confirmed. He was little and hunched with a wrinkly face and dirty, matted hair. When Lawrence greeted him, he said nothing, snorting loudly and clearly enough that Lily could practically hear the snot shooting back up the canal of his nose. Then, to her horror, he appeared to hock it into his throat and swallow it. Her stomach flipped, just the once, as she hurried down through the foyer after her friends.
“Try to ignore Belnerg,” Lawrence guided once they were out of earshot, “the rest of us do.”
“I can see why,” Lily scoffed.
“Who is he?” Jazzy asked, her own nerves making her squirm as they followed Lawrence down a corridor marked ‘Private: No Entry’.
“The theatre caretaker,” Lawrence answered, “but he also sells the tickets.”
Lily thought it was a wonder that anyone bought them if they had to look at that creepy, crinkled face in order to do so. She was about ready to call the whole thing off when the sound of bright, happy laughter suddenly invaded her ears. The private corridor broke out into a large but cosy kitchen and dining space where a big man with skin as dark as Lawrence’s was tittering like a schoolgirl. A woman in an apron was frying up something that smelled delicious as she too enjoyed the joke, and it was a moment before Lily recognised her as Lady Eva, the Gypsy Madame. She was much softer and wholesome here than on the stage, festooned in her flowery dress and the hairnet that kept control of her dark, wayward locks.
“Hey, Lawrie’s home!” The big man was far too similar to Lawrence to be anyone but Mr Seward. He clapped his son on the shoulder and beamed with bright white teeth at Lily and Jazzy. “And these are your friends huh? You call me Poppa, kids, everyone does.”
Everyone was introduced as Lady Eva gave them a similar welcome. They sat down at a beautiful mahogany table as the inviting aroma of dinner made Lily’s stomach give a grumble. It was only five o’clock, but her hunger had awoken from the sheer prospect of a real home-cooked meal after seven weeks away from home. Lily’s mother may not have done much in terms of conversation at the dinner table, but her cooking had always been worth the tension. Now, it looked as though she would get both good food and a warm atmosphere to eat it in. Poppa Seward took it upon himself to interrogate Jazzy first, gently pushing her to tell him about what she was studying and what she thought of the previous month’s show.
“You have a very talented son, sir,” she said at the end of her interview. Lawrence shot her another shy smile from his place beside his father.
“Oh no,” he added quickly, “it’s all Poppa. The arrangement, the ideas, the music. He does everything.”
Poppa waved his hand at his boy. “It’s all in the body!” he exclaimed, slapping Lawrence hard in his abs. The boy didn’t so much as flinch whilst the impact echoed in the room. “If you don’t keep the vessel primed, then the whole act goes up in smoke.”
Lady Eva made everyone jump as she suddenly rang a big brass bell, which hung by the door from which they had entered.
“Dinner!” she shouted in a shrill tone.
The sound of feet overhead was instant. The Slovakian twins were the first to arrive and pull up a space beside Poppa Seward. They nodded and smiled politely at the new dinner guests, but they were clearly far more occupied with getting their food down their necks than making dinner conversation, and soon got into a squabble about whose dinner knife was bigger. Lily tried not to think about the ferocity she had seen when they’d used much larger blades on the stage.
“Good afternoon,” said an ethereal voice at the door. “It is so very nice to have new company for dinner.”
The voice belonged to the bony dancer who had worn one of the green leotards in the September show. She gave a graceful bow and came to sit beside Lily, her gown of expensive silk and velvet floating around as she settled ready to eat.
“Zita Bosko,” she said, extending one thin, pale hand to Lily, “ballet, dance, contortion.”
Lily introduced herself and Jazzy in return, adding: “You were very good at the last show.”
“Ah, so nice to have fans to talk to,” Zita said with an affected grasp of the beaded necklace at her chest. “You will enjoy Eva’s cooking very much, I think. She is the mistress of good taste.”
It was true. Lady Eva served a braised slab of pork that was both salty and sweet, with spiced potatoes and a gravy that had a different flavour every time you put a lashing to your lips. Rasmus and Erasmus were on their second helping of the meat before Lily had even managed to taste the ginger-boiled carrots that accompanied the veritable feast. As the table settled into the meal, Lily started to feel an awkward silence rising. She wondered if the theatre troupe always ate in the quiet, or if it was the presence of two strangers that was preventing the little tableful from conversing. It felt like they were all waiting for something to happen, for someone to initiate a topic.
A door slammed somewhere nearby, followed closely by the click of large, heavy heels.
“You might have told me sooner, you know!” snapped a feminine voice. It cut the air like a whip-crack as the voice’s owner entered the kitchen, but then became a sudden, soft purr as it added “Oh look, we have guests.”
This was the other dancer, the dark, flirtatious one. To Lily’s mind she was a cross between Nicole Scherzinger and Dita Von Teese, all curves and exotic beauty wrapped up in a weird shiny catsuit that didn’t look very practical for eating your dinner. She stopped in the doorway to flash a catlike smile at Lily and Jazzy, only to be pushed through it by whoever she had been arguing with some moments before.
“It would help, Dharma, if you would be so kind as to consult me about your acts before you arrange them in future.”
Everyone at the table stood up at the sound of the second voice. Jazzy did too, but it took Lily a moment to decide whether she wanted to or not. Dharma stumbled out of the way to reveal the vicious sneer on the face of Monsieur Novel. He went straight to a seat at the very end of the table, right next to Lady Eva and the oven, after which everyone sat down again and resumed their dinner. Who is he? The King? Lily had not stood up, and now she was glad she hadn’t.
Novel looked different without his stage make-up, though his high cheekbones and thin face were much the same. He was actually quite young to behold, perhaps in his late twenties, except for the shock of white hair that was still carefully arranged atop his head, save for one unruly curl that was creeping down his brow. Without the coal-black lines to mask them, his lips were a rosy shade and his eyebrows were so fair that they were almost non-existent. He was pale, but not the ghostly white hue that he had been during his turn on the stage. He looked a little softer, a little more human under the yellow glow of the kitchen lights.