The Magic Touch

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Oh, this isn’t our whole beat,” Rose said. “Don’t be silly, Raymond. This in particular has nothing to do with your clothes. I was staying in a familiar area for you, so you could learn the ropes.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Raymond said, kicking a stone across the street. It skittered to a halt on the asphalt and a car ran over it. “It’s so I can run into the people whose wishes I screw up.” He pretended to wave to someone. “‘Hey, Ray, how you doing? Yeah, the plant’s still blooming upside down, but that’s okay. So long as you showed up, bro.’” Rose tut-tutted, which made Ray even more angry, “And by the way, I thought fairy godmothers could fly. I’m tired of walking everywhere.” Rose turned to gaze obviously at his half-tied shoes. He seemed to be waiting for one of her comments, but she just met his eyes and answered his question.

  “Well, we can fly, but only when it’s necessary. You’ve only been on the job two days, Raymond,” Rose said. “You’ve hardly had time to see a representative sample of the kinds of calls a fairy godparent goes on.”

  “Maybe not,” Ray said, hearing reason come through, but he wasn’t quite prepared to listen yet. “But how come we’ve got to stroll in everywhere? I thought we’d be able to like, you know, pop in and out, like in the movies.”

  “Because, one, we can only do what magic is necessary for the job,” Rose said, counting off the reasons on her fingertips with the star of her wand. “And two, I like walking around. I like to say hello to people. You’re just being impatient because you want to do the magic. Fair enough! It’s new to you, and it’s very exciting. But there’s a reason we don’t just hop around. If you went from client to client to client, bing bing bing, the way that you’re talking about, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish one child from another in your mind when you got home that night, and each of them should be as special to you as you are to each of them. You ought to be able to remember them by name, and what the problem was, and how you solved it, and of course”—she ended by tapping her forefinger in the center of his chest once for every syllable—“how you felt about it.”

  Ray was silent for a long time. “I guess I didn’t think about it that way.”

  “You have to give yourself a rest in between,” Rose said. “Being clever and creative takes a lot out of you.”

  In a few blocks, Ray had managed to calm down a lot. He did like what he was doing, even if he didn’t exactly understand the whys and wherefores. He’d had plenty of time to wonder over the course of five days’ worth of pruning City of Chicago rhododendrons.

  “Hey, Rose? Can anybody tell when we’re doing magic? Does it show up on the radar screens or anything?”

  “My, we are busy with the questions today,” Rose said, with a little smile.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking?” Ray asked.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Rose said. “Of course you should ask me things you want to know. It’s good that you’re relaxing enough to ask me questions. Keep going! You can ask me anything. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. If it’s none of your business I’ll say so, but I’ll always tell you the truth as far as I know it.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ray grinned suddenly. “How’s your sex life?”

  Rose didn’t turn a hair. “Mr. Feinstein died five years ago, sonny. It’s been a little slow since then.”

  Ray was ashamed of himself. He dropped a few paces behind her and pulled his ego up out of his shoes, where it had suddenly fallen. “I’m really sorry. I just felt like I made a fool of myself in front of Jorgito, and I’m sore.”

  “Thank you, Ray,” Rose said, stopping and patting him on the arm. “I’m sorry, too. I know how it feels when what you try to do falls apart. In this case, literally. But it won’t happen again. You’ll see.”

  “Okay.” They walked for a half a block more. Wasn’t Rose going to answer his question? “So, can they?”

  “Can they what?” She had forgotten what he had asked.

  “Can anybody detect us doing magic?” he said very patiently.

  “In a way,” Rose said. “You can sometimes sense when magic is going on around you, and with care, I’m sure you could work out who was doing it. You can definitely feel whether it’s being used for good or bad purposes, though. Bad magic stinks. It smells like”—she wrinkled her nose—“ozone, or burning oil. A sharp stench.”

  Ray was fascinated. “What’s good magic smell like?”

  “You tell me,” Rose said, with another shrug. “I’ve become so accustomed to doing things over the years, who knows?”

  Ray tried to think if he had been aware of anything while the magic was going on.

  “Air freshener,” he said at last. “But not perfumey. The way the sky smells after a rainstorm.”

  “Hmm,” Rose said. “That sounds nice. We should ask some of the others about their experiences.”

  “How many fairy godmothers are there? I mean, if it’s like the motto says, ‘every child deserves one miracle,’ there must be thousands of FGU members in Chicago alone.”

  She seemed delighted and relieved he still wanted to talk. “Oh, there are thousands worldwide. There’s more than a hundred of us in the Chicago chapter, but we’re stretched pretty thin, which is why we’re recruiting vigorous young people like you. The union needs to expand.”

  “Well, how come there aren’t more? How come you aren’t out there, running a membership drive?”

  “We’re working on it, honey,” Rose said. “You see why it takes so long to bring on an apprentice? We spend all our time talking when we should be doing.” She whisked her wand in an arc, making sure that lead was still there. “Come on. Your next client is waiting.”

  O O O

  “Up there?” Ray asked, staring up the height of the Scott Arms Apartment Tower.

  “Up there. Thirty-seventh floor. You wanted to fly, didn’t you?” Rose asked.

  “Yeah! How?”

  “You tell the magic you’ve just got to.” Rose pulled him to the glass wall beside the door under the green-and-white awning. She pointed to the uniformed security man sitting at the high desk just inside. Further in, next to three bronze elevator doors, another man was visible.

  “You see? It’s so much trouble,” Rose said in a singsong voice, shaking her head. “There are security cameras everywhere. Tch! And a doorman, too. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to do this. I guess we’ll just have to find another way in.”

  As she spoke, Ray watched the glow around her star. The light increased a little bit at a time, but wearily, as if it had heard the excuse before and was just tolerating it.

  “You know, I’m training Ray,” Rose continued. “And he really needs to come with me, because maybe he’s the fairy godparent for this child, and I’m not.” Ray’s small blue star lit up, but more brightly, as if eager to try out this new adventure. Ray felt himself being lifted from the shoulder blades. He snapped his head around to look at his back. By the time he glanced back at the ground, he was already two stories up.

  “Whoa!” he cried. Rose floated in the air beside him, grinning.

  “You see? So it’s bending the rules a little. But it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah!” Ray said. He flapped his arms, and found the movement spun him around in a circle. “This is great! Hey, how come you didn’t sprout little frilly wings when the magic touched our backs?”

  “Well, neither did you,” Rose said. “I never do. Wings are not necessarily part of the tradition. In all the re-tellings about Cinderella’s fairy godmother they don’t once mention wings. She’s always just described as a woman in a hood. That’s because she wasn’t a fairy. There’s a difference. You’ll see.” They were fifteen stories up, and still climbing. The magic swept them closer to the building. Ray could peek through the curtains of flat after flat. Pigeons, nesting on the top of ornamental brickwork, squawked with surprise as they passed. “Now, you see,” Rose continued, “that was traditional wear for the times. You don’t have to wear a hood, but neither do you have
to wear the clown pants.”

  “Rose?” Ray said, crawling up the white brick wall like a fly.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “I got the message.”

  Chapter 10

  “What do you want, O my mother?” chorused from seven junior djinn’s throats as they flashed into being in puffs of smoke in the Enlightenment showroom early the following evening. Froister and the other senior members gestured them over to join the growing crowd of young men who stood staring straight ahead of them with folded arms aloft, waiting for their first instruction.

  “I wish they’d always stay like that,” DeNovo said, glancing at the silent throng. He reached for the next lamp and rubbed the brass surface. A black-clad youth appeared almost on top of him. DeNovo had to stumble out of the way. “Hey!”

  “What wouldst thou, O my mother?” the boy asked.

  “Oh, this one’s had an education! Stand over there while I deliberate my will,” DeNovo said. “Maybe you’ll be the lucky kid who helps me out of my troubles with the IRS. How about it, Al?”

  “This is the last,” Froister said. He palmed the final lamp, a hand-painted china base with a silk shade, one of the best in the store. When the apple-cheeked young black man appeared, he pointed to the others. The youth strode, blank-eyed, to join them.

  “Forty-three,” Carson said. “Do you think that will be enough?”

  “No, of course not. I think our young friends here will need to help continue the recruiting movement,” Froister said. “It’ll be enough to start with, though, if we can get everyone involved in granting wishes and bringing in prospects. Every time one of them does a deed, we accrue another morsel of power into the master kitty. That way, even if the merger between our organization and the FGU fails, we will still be building to release ourselves.”

  “And bolstering our position, so we will take control at the end,” Timbulo said. “First, Chicago, then …”

  “Tomorrow the Midwest,” Bannion said sourly. “These kids will be running rampant in the meanwhile. We need to control them more. Did you hear about the rash of liquor store raids? I think that one there”—he pointed at a Riverside Jackal named Vaughan Matthews—“has stolen nearly the city’s entire supply of tequila.”

  Gurgin smiled nastily. “Eating the worms is the only way he’s ever going to see God now,” he said.

  Froister dismissed their argument with a wave of his hand. “I see our friends here not only as a source of those precious morsels that will someday set us free of our vows, but as a necessary diversion to the transfer of absolute authority. When we are our own masters, it won’t take long before we’re everyone else’s, too,” he said. The others grinned. He did not overestimate their rapaciousness. The assumption that one day there would be seven sharing absolute power kept his associates in line, too. “Something will be needed to keep the people who are currently in power busy while they are being tossed out of office. Everyone!” He clapped his hands, and the teenaged statues came to life.

  “Hey, what happened?” asked Louis Fry, a huge, pale, and pimply youth who called himself Razorback, probably to coordinate with his scalloped, almost certainly self-inflicted haircut.

  “It’s time for our meeting, gentlemen,” Froister said, smiling pleasantly. “I told you you’d all be called. We called you.”

  “Hey, I was on a date,” Speed Guthrie protested. Nervously, he straightened out his jacket collar and yanked the waistband of his baggy trousers up to his rib cage.

  “She’ll still be there when you get back,” Froister said, tapping his watch. “It’s seven o’clock, so everybody is on time. Admirably punctual.”

  “We didn’t come here. You called us!” asked the chief Backyard Wolf, who was called Federico Morales. He pushed forward through the crowd. “You summoned us up by magic, man?”

  “You didn’t walk, did you?” Froister returned. “Isn’t that a more efficient way to assemble? No one knows where you went, or how you got here. Being able to vanish without a trace adds to your mystique.” He waited while the gang members discussed it among themselves. They decided that it was pretty cool after all, though some were still upset that the transfer hadn’t been their idea at the time. The independent recruits just stared in silence.

  “Hey, I don’t like you messing me around like that,” Razorback spoke up, the first of the gangbangers to challenge the new status quo. He clenched his big hands into fists, stepping close enough to Froister to threaten him. The guild chairman wasn’t impressed. One spotty youth could not possibly match his long experience, nor his ruthlessness. It was time these hoodlums learned that, if they had any aptitude at all for survival. The others watched, tension showing in their stance. The old members waited, their mouths twisted in amusement. None of them rushed to help Froister. None of them needed to. He’d rubbed this young rascal’s lamp himself.

  Razorback closed in. Up close, the young man’s face was a study in acne and neglected dental work. He probably used his appearance on the street to add to his fearsomeness. As he loomed over the guild chairman and drew back his fist, Froister nonchalantly waved a hand. How dull, he thought. Every one of them did this, once.

  “You swear to obey the mother of the lamp?” he asked, almost casually.

  At the sound of the words of the oath, the young man stopped short and straightened up. His eyes glazed over, and he folded his arms across his chest. The others gasped. “I swear to obey.”

  Froister pursed his lips, looking over Razorback’s shoulder at the others. “Then, my lad, dance on the ceiling.”

  “What?” Morales demanded, lowering his brows. Razorback was one of his men. “Don’t listen to him.” The big youth paid no attention. Instead, he jumped straight up into the air, did a half flip upside down, and landed on his toes, fifteen feet up. He glanced up at the ceiling, then down at Froister and the others, his mind astounded at what his body had done.

  “Now, dance!”

  His cheeks glowing with embarrassment, Razorback lurched into a clumsy version of a cowboy line dance. He promenaded, slid, and tush-pushed silently around the chains of the hanging chandeliers. Not one of the other teens made a sound.

  “Juggle!” Froister ordered. He took three light bulbs out of a fixture and tossed them up in a bunch to his captive performer. They stayed together and arrowed toward Razorback in a triangle pattern. The bulbs rather than the boy seemed to control the action as his hands tossed, caught, tossed, caught, all defiant of the force of gravity. “And keep dancing! Now, do a back spin!” Razorback’s body obligingly lay down on the ceiling and did a break dance whirl, his hands still juggling the three light bulbs. “Flatten out. Now, kiss your toes.”

  Though Razorback’s eyes begged for mercy, he was helpless to disobey even the most impossible-sounding order. He bent over, trying to reach his toes with his lips. The light bulbs continued to whirl over his head in their braided dance, without his hands touching them. One at a time, he grabbed each foot to bring it to his mouth, but he was not flexible enough. He groaned in pain. Then, suddenly, strangely, his body elongated until his torso had stretched enough to bring his face level with his feet. Face contorted with hatred, he kissed the toes of his unspeakably dirty sneakers one by one. At once, his body snapped back to normal. The others stared up at him, stupefied.

  “That’s what happens if you don’t cooperate with us,” Froister told them in a terrible voice cultivated for moments such as this. “You retain your free will so long as you don’t presume to question our orders.” He pointed up at Razorback. “And that happened because you have forced us to show you who is in charge here. Out on the street you may have other chains of command, but in here I, the guildmaster, am the sole authority. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand,” Morales said. “I understand you just fine.” He cast around, searching the display floor for something. Froister watched him, a little smile on his lips. The gang leader went from one floor lamp to another, casting a measuring eye ba
ck at the warehouse owner. He grabbed one and rubbed it. Nothing happened. He pushed it aside and seized the next one.

  “Are you looking for mine?” Froister asked, and had the satisfaction of seeing Morales jump and twitch. The gang leader tried to ignore the smooth voice behind his back, and went to the next floor lamp. This time one of the Jackals pushed him away. Morales slid away to face Froister, angry because he had been thwarted. “I’m not stupid. You won’t find it because it’s not here anymore. Do you think I’d risk one of you rubbing my lamp? And don’t bother to try and attack me physically. I’ll just vanish.” He snapped his fingers. “Gentlemen, my associates and I are old hands at this business. You wouldn’t believe how old. Cooperate, and you will share infinite power with us. Screw around, and you’ll never stop paying. The lesson isn’t over yet.”

  He looked up at Razorback, still whirling in dizzy circles. “Come down here.”

  Razorback kicked loose from the ceiling. With another half flip, the big youth stood on the floor with his arms folded on his chest. The three light bulbs stopped their spinning and floated lazily to the floor, their part in the demonstration done. Froister pointed a forefinger at the youth’s nose.

  “The first wish: go get the files the IRS has on Mr. DeNovo’s business.”

  “The mother commands, and it shall be done,” Razorback said. He put his wrists together and vanished in a cloud of black smoke.

  No one spoke during the twelve minutes that Razorback was gone. Morales retreated to the side of the showroom with the rest of the Backyard Wolves, watching Froister and the other old members suspiciously. The Jackals were on the other side, similarly wary. They all knew now that the seven men at the front of the room indisputably held the upper hand. They might have been plotting revenge against Froister and the others, but they were also scared to pieces that a fate similar to Razorback’s public humiliation might befall one of them. Froister knew at that moment that he and the others had nothing more to fear. He might just chance bringing their lamps back, but why risk it? They were safe in their hiding place.