by Jaym Gates
He is gone too soon. He’s one of the few I wouldn’t mind seeing again, but I never will. It’s bad for them, they withdraw from the world of realities and dote upon me alone to the point of obsession. And as much as I love the worship, once I have cleansed them of their self-inflicted poison, they have nothing left that will truly sustain me. But there are always more clients, always more heartache, always more opportunities for healing. And love.
I sometimes miss them, though. Especially the ones like Alden, earnest and longing for the salvation only I can bestow.
Once there were temples, but they are all gone now. I only have this little motel room, and soon enough another one almost exactly like it.
Until There is Only Hunger
Michael Matheson
Bones come undone at the Magician’s touch. Wind themselves up like silver and dance into the air. Strung like copper wire. Their fire a shimmering, living thing.
She’s all smiles for the crowd.
And, of course, they are never her bones. That’s not the trick.
The trick is to keep the audience from noticing how much lighter they all feel. They’ll notice a twinge, an emptiness later, deep in the night, when the carnival is done and home and the softness of white-sheeted beds have called. When sweet-souled revenants beckon, and the witching hour is but a memory.
Everyone gives something for the magic. That’s how it works. You are not spectator. You are participant. Always.
The Magician in the too-tall top hat has no assistant. Her great-tailed coat keeps time with her spidery limbs as she sways: limbs and torso too long, wild hair a knotted, tangled halo. Her shadow spans double her height, twelve feet easy. It swallows the stage around it, outstretched arms like wings unfolding up to the star-flecked sky. Hungry. But patient. Always patient.
The bones pinwheel before her. The audience applauds, eyes transfixed on light and colour and fire.
Later, when the last show is done and the carnival an hour from closing, only stragglers wandering the midway, she smokes behind the three-ring tent. Her shadow curled back inside her greatcoat. Drawn tight like the warm arms of a lover, stroking her chest, its chin resting on her shoulder. The Magician draws the cigarette from her lips and lets the smoke billow up to the night sky to coil. She stands outlined in castoff light from the dusky glow of carnival lamps, brown skin glowing gold with the fire. Takes another drag before examining the night’s take.
Rib bones, tiny finger bones, cochlear bones. Always the bones whose loss sneaks up on you. The ones whose lack you doubt, until the absence of them is a pit in you, gnawing. Fingers finding the hole and probing, curious, at new-made rawness.
They are so easily missed. At first.
The Magician examines each carefully. Polishes their slicked surfaces, and stuffs them in the bag at her belt that is not a bag. The Tattooed Lady and the Lizard Woman, hand in hand, nod at her as they pass. She returns a salute and a smile after the couple, the cigarette making a tiny, smoldering arc.
“You look cold,” says the Ringmaster from behind her, slipping through the fabric of the tent as if it weren’t there to lay a lazy arm over her shoulder.
“I’m always cold,” whispers the Magician over her shoulder.
The Ringmaster presses in against the Magician’s back and angles her head up to breathe into the Magician’s ear: “We could go somewhere warmer.”
The Magician’s smile is a mirror of the moon’s sliver.
#
She pins down the Ringmaster’s legs to bury her tongue deep in her lover as the Ringmaster moans. The taste of the Ringmaster salty-sweet, like the sea. The ever-present sea. The endless weight of it crushing down on her. The nudge and graze of deep-diving sharks. The caress of deep-dweller squid, tentacles curious as they shoot past.
And hunger. So much hunger.
The Ringmaster throws back her head as she comes, and the Magician drinks down her bucking and her heat. Drinks it down deep. Lets the heat and weight of it fill the emptiness in her. Lets it fill the hole where her heart should be.
#
Wrapped in a tangle of limbs, the Ringmaster’s head on her chest, the Magician dreams.
Bones wash out of the sea to deposit on the sandy shore — white contours oil-slicked, up-ended. Way markers leading in from the swell and crash. Great sleek bodies drag themselves out of the sea after the charnel — sharks blackened from fire where there should be no fire, oil coating the surface of the sea, lit and burning. They beach and falter in swift measure, gasping for air, gills flapping. Hundreds of them, until the beach is a scour of bloodied foam and effluvia.
Out in the water, the behemoth wades closer to shore. Powerful strokes take her in. Her long arms slicing through the water, legs kicking up long waves. She draws in a lungful of air and dives deep again.
Rises, sluicing water, silent at the beach’s edge. One long hand after the other gripping mud and propelling her up the long, slow incline, every line a perfect angle, every edge scalpel-cut. Kinked black hair drips down her dark chest as she wades through the sharks, cartilage crushing unheeded beneath massive feet.
In her wake there is only thrashing and moon-kissed sharkskin, razor-sharp like teeth.
She turns. Features contorted in sleep. Fingers clasping for something impossibly far.
In her dreaming, the Magician remembers walking the face of the world as cloud and ash cover the sun. Cities burning. Her body a towering monolith, impervious. Or it might be what’s coming.
Time out of joint. Cracked and broken. Always.
#
The Magician wakes with no memory of her dreams. Just fleeting images. And a pain behind her eyes. The same one that’s always there on waking. Too much of her for this skin to contain. Her shadow beats against the cage of her bones. Unheeded.
The Ringmaster stirs beside her. Throws a long-fingered, ebony hand across the Magician’s stomach. For a moment she can’t tell which limbs belong to whom. Takes comfort in it. “Whass wrong?” the Ringmaster slurs, still half-asleep.
“Nothing,” says the Magician. Kisses the Ringmaster’s lips. Morning breath mingling. Leans in to breathe the shea butter scent of her lover’s plaited hair, and slips from the bed. Dresses and rises while the Ringmaster wraps herself deeper under the covers against the morning chill.
The Magician glances back at her lover, tent flap raised, before slipping quietly out into the midway.
Pale sky shadows her steps. The roar of nightfires slowly extinguished. Ghostly memories of children, unfleshed, testing the borders of their guard fires by the dark of the moon. They get closer every night.
Come a few more nights even the Ringmaster’s magic may not be enough to keep them at bay.
They need to move on. Soon.
The smell of baking bread and a soup pot pulls her to the makeshift cookhouse, open to the air. White-bellied sand much-scuffled under the pale sun at the centre of the tiny tent city hidden behind colourful tents and concession stands.
The Twins are the first to greet her, bending at their shared hip. She returns their bow with a flourish, setting the young girls giggling. Her shadow lingers a moment too long after them, and she snaps it taut again with a crook of her finger. She’s learned not to feed on her fellows. It never goes well.
And this isn’t the first carnival that’s hidden her.
She finds her usual place with the Lizard Woman and the Tattooed Lady. Drinks in the scent of their breakfast, but takes none for herself. Just draws her coat tighter around her shoulders.
“Aren’t you going to at least pretend to eat something?” asks the Lizard Woman, her scales glittering like black lotus petals in the sun. The Tattooed Lady nudges her, and shakes her head at her lover. Laughter dancing at the edges of their lips.
They don’t know her secret. But the Magician’s sure they’ll guess it eventually. Some of it, perhaps.
“They’re getting closer,” says the Magician. Gaze drifting to the banked fires.
&nb
sp; “A day, two days, we’ll be ready to move on,” shrugs the Tattooed Lady. “Ringmaster’s not done here yet.”
“This one should know,” says the Lizard Woman into her bowl. Licks her grinning lips with her forked tongue. The motion lascivious. Slow.
The Magician smiles. Ignores their play. Other things on her mind this morning. “I’ve never seen this many at once. It doesn’t take many to overrun a city. Or us.”
The Tattooed Lady shrugs. “They’re shadows. Disorganized. The fires will hold.”
“Will they?”
“You afraid of them?” asks the Lizard Woman, putting down her bowl.
The Magician shakes her head. Stands up and stretches. Filling more space than her slender body should. Turns to leave and stops. “I’ll probably be missing breakfast tomorrow.”
#
There are ages. There are days. There are tides. All burning down from an empty sky. All beating like the thing in place of her heart. The weight there. The one that doesn’t go away.
She coils her hand around it. Hand buried deep in her ribcage, slipped like twine between her bones. Squeezes and lets the liquid darkness there seep between her crushing fingers.
“Excuse me,” calls a young woman, a townie, from the edge of her tent. It pulls her from her reverie.
The Magician pinches the bridge of her nose against the pain. “Can I help you?”
“You’re the Magician?”
She nods. Waiting. The townie hesitates, and the woman with her lays a hand on her shoulder, matching rings on their hands. Wives then.
“The barkers told me you find things?”
The Magician draws up to her full height. Lets her raised eyebrow answer for her.
“My daughter …”
The Magician shakes her head. Turns away. “No.”
“Please. I can feel her. Every night. Little hands beating at the walls of our house. Begging to be let in.” Her wife takes her hand. Clasps it tight.
The Magician doesn’t fail to notice. Sighs and crumples in. Her shadow tries to warn her. Reminds her what happens when she helps. But they both know she will anyway. She always does.
“How old is she?”
Both women look up. So much hope in their eyes. The Magician steels herself against it. “Eight. So little when we lost her.”
“You live in town?”
Both women nod.
“How deep do your roots go?”
“Back to the founding, and further still,” says the other woman, breaking her silence. Squeezes her wife’s hand. “Our foremothers came across the sea. Built the boats that brought us here. They fled the burning and the end of the world.”
The Magician stares at their hands. Intertwined like unbroken roots, rich and brown as watered earth. She aches, remembering. Longs for the touch of the Ringmaster’s skin to quiet memory. Her shadow shakes its head at the Magician’s weakness. Whispers words she doesn’t listen to.
“How long ago did your daughter disappear?”
“A year. We thought her gone. Until the noises started — the scratching at our door; the tiny beating at the walls. Please. Can you bring her back to us?”
“You’re sure you want her back?”
“Of course.”
“You know what she’s become.” It’s not a question. The Magician sure they know. And they don’t disappoint.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s our daughter.”
The Magician swallows. Doesn’t even bother trying to dissuade them. A conversation she’s had so many times before. No one ever listens. “Yes. I can bring her back.”
Both women draw in sharp breaths. The townie who first made their request buries her face in her wife’s chest, tears streaming down her face. Her wife holding back her own.
When the townies have paid her — a meagre collection of coins; not that she needs them, but there are proprieties to be maintained; and the tiny bones they don’t yet know they’re missing — and plans have been made, the women leave. The Magician watches them go from the edge of her tent, shadow coiling around her arms and slipping home into the hole where her heart should be.
“You won’t want what comes back,” the Magician whispers after them. They don’t hear her. No one ever does.
#
The Ringmaster finds her while she’s packing her bags. “Are you leaving us?”
“No.”
The Ringmaster lays a hand on her arm. “Another request?” The Magician doesn’t look at her. Just keeps stuffing what she’ll need into the weathered bags. “You can’t make them whole again.”
“No, I can’t.” The Magician’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. She kisses her lover, hand on the back of The Ringmaster’s neck to draw her in. Rests her forehead against her lover’s. “That’s not what they want.”
“You’ll be back tomorrow?”
“Yes. Keep the fires banked high after sundown. There are more of them every night.”
“We’ll be fine. Just another day or two and we can move on. I need to finish laying the groundwork or it won’t hold when we leave.”
The Magician nods. Thinking. “Don’t let the others exorcise any of them. It’ll set the rest of them off.”
“You’d think I was new to this the way you worry.” The Ringmaster cups the Magician’s cheek. “Don’t make me leave without you.”
The Magician hoists her bags over her shoulder. “Not yet, no.”
#
The Geek, the Twins, and the other carnies lingering at the edge of the makeshift midway cleaning up the damage done to their defences in the night watch her go. Watch her head past the banked train, coal-stained engine cool and quiet in the early morning sun, iron tracks gleaming off into the distance.
Out across the sea of waving grass, trampled by hundreds of tiny feet. Across the path made smooth by larger feet, booted and shod carnival customers coming to see the attractions: the freak show, the thrill acts, and the ten-in-ones. Or to watch the concession women conjure food from thin air. The kind that leaves a customer emptier than before; the lie of it the need. And the thrill of the big top and the high wire acts. The iron jaw their greatest draw, her dagger teeth necessitating a new bar every night.
It’s not a long walk to the town. They’ve set up as close as the town council will allow. The Magician doesn’t know the exact deal the Ringmaster made with the councilwomen, but she can feel their welcome wearing thin. It’s in the eyes of the guardswomen at the edge of town. In the looks of the women coming off shift at the foundries, black skin coated grey from the ash and coal dust powering the furnaces. It’s in the wide berth the merchants give her as she makes her way through narrow, cobbled lanes. The black stone of the town, its high towers and sloped, gabling roofs and crooked sprawl at odds with the soft, waving grass just beyond their borders. The rail station rising dug out of the earth beyond the town’s edge a concession to both worlds, the stockyards at its edge straddling the wall half-in, half-out. The smell of the abattoirs drowned out by the soot from the foundry district. The town a small city, walled off from the world falling apart around it.
The Magician doesn’t know its name. Doesn’t care to know. They’re all alike to her. And she never lingers long.
The only reason she can see that this town hasn’t been overrun yet is the height of its walls, and the stone of it heavy gates. But it’s just a matter of time.
#
She shares a midday meal with the wives who’ve contracted her services. Eats though it does her no good. The weight of it settled in her stomach like iron.
They ask her so many questions. Her answers are short. Easy lies, rolling off her tongue with the weight of long practice.
The Magician tells them she needs the entire day to prepare. The only truth she’s spoken since she crossed their threshold. And they leave her to it. Trying so hard not to let their excitement, their hope, show.
They leave her in the daughter’s room. Untouched since the night she disappeared. Her mother’s cle
aning it, keeping it woodshine bright, but it’s a shrine. As if they expect her to return with the break of every dawn.
The Magician sits down on the floor in the middle of the girl’s room and closes her eyes, getting the scent of her. She lays out her tools. Empties her bags. And begins arranging the bones she’s scattered before her. All the things she’ll need to call their daughter back from spirit to flesh.
When the circles are arranged around her, sanctified with her own blood, she closes her eyes and seeks the emptiness where her heart should be. And waits, asleep in the arms of her cradling shadow as it rocks her softly.
#
It comes in the long, slow hours after midnight. When the night is deepest, and the moon hidden by passing cloud.
The thing that was once the girl.
The Magician can hear it long before the scratching at the door begins. Long before a small child’s hand knocks against wood. Plaintive. Quiet. So soft you’d swear it wasn’t there if you weren’t already listening for it.
She opens her eyes at the sound. Drawn up from dreams of depth, and water, and hunger. From dreams of stalking through fire and blood.
The wives linger at the edge of their daughter’s bedroom. Waiting for the Magician to guide them.
“Answer it,” says the Magician.
She’s not sure which woman answers the door, her back to them as she rises to her feet. The latch unlocks and the Magician draws her coat tighter around her against the sudden cold that fills the house.
“Child, is that you?” asks the mother further from the door, her voice choked with need. Tiny feet enter, and the door shuts behind them. The Magician closes her ears to what follows. The sound of bones breaking. Of bodies flung against wood and rent open by tiny hands. The screaming. It takes forever for the screaming to stop.