by Rose, Rhea
Maisie barely held it together. I felt a little hurt; after all I thought I was pretty good. She stood hands on hips, shaking her head at the two of us and laughing. Then she started to clap out a little beat for us. If anyone was awkward and funny it had to be Emilia. But she was really into her moves and tried to coordinate her steps around mine. The next thing I knew she pulled out her sword and made it part of the routine. I scooted by her, and tried hard to stay out of the way of her sword tip, but Emilia was too swift and cut a string on my outfit! My top popped off! I scrambled to keep my kimono wrapped around me as the top slipped down around my ankles.
“Darkiness!” Maisie yelled. The sound of her sharp voice snapped us out of our dancing reverie.
When Emilia saw what she’d done, she said, “Oopsy.” She stared down at my ankles where my top rested.
“Darkiness, if you weren't death, I'd kill you,” Maisie said. Emilia shrugged like it was no big deal.
I stepped free of the top, and wrapped comfortably in the kimono, I picked up the piece handed the ruined costume back to Maisie, who snatched it from me and threw it at Emilia. It clung to her like silver and jeweled egg yolk.
“You're going to fix this!”
“I can't sew.”
I saw that Maisie was working herself up into some kind of fury and I didn’t feel like being in the middle of it. I was making my way back to the washroom when I remembered something that I thought might help ease the situation.
“Wait. Don't sweat it. I've got something I think might work.” I remembered that I’d left my shopping on the front counter and went back there to search through one of the bags. Emilia and Maisie followed right behind me. I reached deeply into one of the most beautiful shopping bags I’d ever been given and pulled out a bathing suit with the tags still on. It wasn’t any bathing suit it was a glamkini by Galen Takeler. “They've fixed the pool at my condo. Look, only slightly more material here than that thingy.”
Emilia began to chuckle. “That's a swimsuit?” Maisie didn’t say a thing. She snatched the ruined part of the magic costume away from Emi.
“Fine. But Darkiness is going to take this to the tailor and get it repaired,” she said to the two of us.
Maisie snapped her fingers at me to indicate that I should remove the bottom of the skimpy costume. I wriggled and wiggled in Marilyn Monroe-like fashion and the bottom of the dance costume dropped to my ankles. I hooked it onto my big toe and flicked the costume up into Maisie's outstretched hand. Then Maisie slammed both pieces at Emi.
“Both pieces stay together. Take them here.” She gave Emilia a business card. While Emilia studied the card, Maisie turned back to me. I stood there like a mute mannequin holding the glamkini.
“Put that swim suit on the counter.”
I placed it there.
“I'm not so sure about this, so I'm going to give it a little help. Stand back.”
Emilia and I leaped backwards, bumping shelving and nearly tripping on one another. Maisie gave us a look. I suppose we did over react a bit to her direction.
“You might want to see this, Jane.” She indicted that I should move a little closer. I took one baby step toward her.
“Can I watch from here?” I took another baby step back toward Emi.
“We'll watch from here, Emi said, while Maisie adjusted and tweaked the position of the swim suit on the counter. She closed her eyes, and opened them suddenly. I jumped, Emi sniggered.
Maisie looked like she was in a trance. She turned her back to us and spoke as if she was in a distant land.
“The magic -- in the dance costume -- will run out soon.” Emi looked down at the pile of sparkling string in her hand. The costume looked like it had hit its own pumpkin at mid-night moment and was turning back into the fishing line it was probably made from.
Maisie struggled with her words. With her back to us, it was difficult to tell what she said. She reached under the counter and quickly pulled out a brown paper bag. She shoved it toward me. I took the bag, but Emi slipped it from between my fingers and dropped the strings of ruined costume into it.
“It must -- be repaired -- quickly, or -- it will -- not -- work again.”
She paused and looked like she was concentrating as hard as she ever had. She made gestures with her arms, as if she collected something from the air. I guessed it was the power she needed to make my glamkini do what she wanted it to.
“I've -- paid a great -- price -- for the costume,” she said. Her eyes were still closed and I swear I heard her say Sia! I looked at Emilia with my eyes wide. Did she say Sia was the price she paid?
But in the next moment it was all forgotten as Emilia and I were distracted when Maisie’s magic materialized in the air as old fashioned tinsel, the kind you’d find hanging off a Christmas tree. The tinsel magic came to life and moved like a school of fish into the swimsuit, when she snapped her fingers over the bathing suit, first the top then the bottom half. I swear I saw the magic tinsel worm its way into the suit which lifted slightly and swirled on the counter as if a wind lifted and shifted it. When she was done, Maisie looked exhausted. She had dark circles under eyes. Her beautiful dark hair was streaked with white. Dark spots appeared on her skin and her mouth trembled a little. She gave Emilia the darkest and most distant look ever, as Maisie’s power faltered, Emi’s death dealing power surged as it filled the void left by Maisie’s lack. Emilia looked stronger, even bigger, but it was a mirage, I’m certain because in the next minute Emilia looked like her regular martial arts nerd-self.
In that moment, the older woman’s eyes were one solid dark color with colorful pinpricks of light dancing inside them, her lips a dark, straight line.
“Darkiness, get that one repaired,” she said, her voice hoarse and croaky. And even though Emi was now the most powerful person in the room, probably on the whole block, she shrank from Maisie. She put her sword away and stepped behind me.
“Why can't you magic this costume back together? Then I don't have to waste my time, trying to get it fixed,” Emi said, in a childlike tone. I was too late to put my hand over Emilia’s mouth. Someone had to teach that woman not to speak her mind and especially not to Maisie whose face began to bulge and distort as if something alive lived beneath her skin and wanted out. Her pretty looks had turned monstrous for a minute or two. I had to remember to breathe. Maisie pointed a very long, witchy looking finger at the costume in Emilia's hand. Maisie’s point frightened Emi so much that she tossed the paper bag with the ruined costume at me and I tossed it back to Emi as if we played a game of hot potato.
“I can't repair it! That's not my magic!” Maisie informed us. When I looked at Emilia she looked terrified, and I know I looked the same because I felt the terror. If Maisie’s magic wasn’t in that costume then whose magic was in there?
Chapter 8
The Fool: Tinkering Tailor
I really needed to find William Tell and Sia. I was getting a bad feeling about those two. Emilia had no choice but to go and get the costume fixed. And I had to go dance at the Swan.
Maisie also made her carry the magic costume in a brown paper bag because brown paper grocery bags don’t leak magic, or so Emi told me. Emi also told me that Maisie sent her to an old tailor who worked in the back room of a drycleaner in town.
She described the place as decrepit with no customers while she was there, and it looked like it hadn’t seen a customer in a few decades. Clothes hung covered in plastic from an automatic dispensing rack, but the protective bags that covered the dry-cleaned clothing were covered in dust because no one had picked them up. Well, Emilia exaggerates things, I know that now. And she doesn’t get out much because she’d never before seen a line of coin operated washers and dryers, a place where regular people take their laundry on the weekend to wash. According to Emilia, the dry-cleaner-laundry-mat place seemed deserted, as well as tired and out of date.
When she got there, she heard something in the backroom and she said she guessed that it was
a large steam press that hissed in the back, presumably because someone was working on taking the wrinkles out of clothing; but no one came out to the front counter to see what she wanted, which meant she was going to have to go back there, and she really didn’t want to.
The place gave her the creeps.
“Hey, yo, magic man. Maisie sent me. Where are you?” Emilia called out. An old guy wearing a name tag that said Joseph Seer slowly shuffled out of the back area. He had what appeared to be fresh wine stains on his shirt. When he finally made it to the counter where Emilia waited, she couldn’t ignore the fact that he reeked of wine.
“Whoa, you smell, like a winery. I hope I didn't interrupt your grape crushing.”
Joseph chuckled and she saw that most of his teeth had turned brown, but his smile was still somehow friendly and strangely inviting. Emilia pulled out the costume and slid it over to Joseph. When he touched it his hand hastily recoiled, as if he’d been bitten by a snake. “This is magic!” His voice was hoarse and dry as summer grass.
Emilia nodded yes and then Joseph noticed Emi’s sword. He looked frightened and said, “Death?” Emi nodded yes as if it was no big deal that a death dealer was walking around town and needed some dry-cleaning done.
Joseph began muttering, maybe chanting something to keep Emi from leaping across the counter and taking his life, she wasn’t really sure exactly what he was saying, but he grabbed the costume and stuffed it back into the brown paper bag. He shuffled off to the backroom. He turned back to Emi and from a distance he said, “Wait right here.”
Emilia said she waited a few minutes and when he didn’t return right away, she went into the public washroom there. When she was done she was disappointed not to see the costume ready, or even the little Mr. Seer, whom she thought would be right back. She figured he wouldn’t be too much longer and decided to get a little sword practice in.
I asked Emilia if she behaved herself and she insists that she didn’t do anything untoward. She started with a few stretches and tested out her sword length to be sure that she wasn’t going to knock anything, or cut or bump into a washer or anything like that and at first it all seemed fine.
*
Emilia got frustrated when five minutes later she still practiced her patterns and, for some reason, Seer hadn’t shown up. When she finally got those first patterns completed, and another ten minutes passed, and Seer still hadn’t returned, Emilia got annoyed. She’d worked herself into a sweat and when a full fifteen minutes later there was still no sign of the strange little man, Emi was all fired up to do some sparing and began her practice with the clothes hanging on the dispenser rack.
She swears she was gentle, only sliding her sword between each covered outfit, pretending they were lines of soldiers, but she does a have a great imagination and admitted that a few of the suits in the back had some extra breast pockets after she got done with them. At first she was afraid Seer might notice that she’d cut up some of those hanging clothes and she went around the counter and kicked away the fallen debris, pushing it under the counter. But after another fifteen minutes, when she still hadn’t heard a sound, no hissing steamer, no sewing machine, she decided she needed to go into the back and find out what was taking so damn long.
She admitted that she was afraid.
He seemed like a strange little man and the fact that he did business with Maisie made Emilia cautious. I congratulated her for being in touch with her feelings and acting on them for once. When Emi finally found the courage to peek into the backroom, she saw no one.
An old, stained dress dummy stood idle. On the floor she saw a ripped and rumpled sleeping bag, empty wine bottles, scattered food containers and some empty cat food tins.
No sign of Joseph Seer or the brown paper bag.
When I asked Emi what she did next she said the only thing she could. In frustration she stabbed the bare dress dummy with her sword.
Chapter 9
Devils and Fools: Magic Hands
While I waited at the Curio shop for Emi to return with the fixed costume, I stared out the window. The old train yards in Meadowvale are still there. They run behind the town in the backlands and the areas that were settled over a hundred years ago, a time when the first settlers from the south and the east made their fortunes in gold. They came to scratch a living out of the ground and built the rails over a community which existed before their arrival, the native community which was Maisie’s community. Her family’s heritage went back at least five hundred years, maybe more.
The tracks can never be removed because they belong to the federal government; a group of evil spirits that negotiate in boardrooms no one else is privy to except those that can do favors and line the governors’ pockets with the tricks and traps that help them practice their sleight of hand.
On a sunny day the train yard backdrop was gorgeous with the low distant mountains that promise friendly nature hikes and picnics. In cold, dark November evenings it makes the perfect backdrop for intrigue, crime and even murder. In this mechanical and rusty part of town hoards of rats party and get squashed by metal wheels. It’s also called home by some of the sketchier members of the community, a favorite place for teenagers to make out on Friday and Saturday night. I didn’t know it at the time, but a few of Maisie’s tarot servants liked to hang out there, too.
Maisie makes each of us report in great detail the goings on of our days, if she asks. It’s interesting to me that we can each recall our days in such detail, but there’s no doubt in my mind there’s magic involved. Of course Emilia asks her why she doesn’t use a crystal ball and have a look at what’s going on anytime she wants. Maisie says it’s not accurate and she prefers the permanence of writing in a book. She keeps a journal called the Knowitall Journal in the front area of the shop, and it’s full of hand written notes. I watched one day as Devon filled out pages of activity, most of it boring, stupid stuff that he does.
On the day that I spied on him, he appeared possessed especially his writing hand because his fountain pen went at break neck speed. When Devon was done, he put the journal back under the front counter and left the store. I went there to pull the journal out and couldn’t find it. Since that time I have found it, but there are times when it seems to completely disappear into the shadows and hoards of boxes and paraphernalia Maisie keeps on the shelves under there. I discovered that if I touched the page embossed with the ink, I didn’t have to read. I only had to watch the scenes unfold in my mind’s eye and I saw everything Devon did or said, as if I were right there, a bug on the wall, spying on him.
Devon walked into the train yard with his hoodie up, and underneath it he wore a toque. On his back was his trashed-out camo-backpack. It was a descent twilight evening, and he looked like he’d come to relax and maybe think about things, if Devon ever really thought about anything. Perhaps being a conjured minor demon made him feel out of time because instead of using a pod and headphones, he carried a big old fashioned boom box he’d lifted from one of the local vintage stores, and he walked with it hoisted up on his shoulder. He approached a parked freight train and when he got close enough, he put down the boom box and turned it up loud, flooding the yard with heavy metal, head banger noise.
He flipped off his pack and let it fall to the ground. Where he pulled it open and from it he grabbed three cans of spray paint and wasted no time getting to work on the train car in front of him. He began with an elaborate outline of a cartoon character I didn’t recognize and then he used a variety of colors to fill it in and give it dimension. It was a joy to watch him at work. He was a real artist if anyone ever bothered to watch.
All this I got from the Knowitall Journals. I’d forgotten I was reading back at the shop.
Sleeping beneath the train car that Devon had chosen to adorn with his art was old Joseph Seer from the dry cleaner shop. It seems the space beneath the car was his bedroom; a rumpled sleeping bag and a sealed wine bottle were evidence that Joseph lived, at least part of the time, under that
train car. The wine bottle that stuck out of a brown paper bag was a bottle of red wine. Sleeping Joseph was suddenly roused by Devon’s noise.
The old guy crawled out from under the train and attempted to turn off the boom box’s screaming noise. Devon whipped around and caught Joseph messing with his boom box.
“What the eff-- hey, get away from that.”
“You get away.”
“I'm creating art, you old farting fool. Get the hell outta here, or I will hurt you.”
“Oh, a poet too, I guess.” Joseph picked up the boom box and threw it against the train. It shattered but kept playing.
This infuriated Devon and he snorted over and over like a bull and kicked at the dirt under his feel, he gulped air as if to inflate himself. His demon powers started to heat up the can of spray paint he held. It turned red hot and he tossed it at Joseph and the can blew up like a bomb, blinding poor old Joseph as well as dousing him in pumpkin orange paint.
Devon chuckled like a demon, which actually sounds like the cry of a cat with intermittent owl screeches – a sound I wished he stopped making.
“Aaaaahhh.” Joseph stumbled about for a moment, and then began to keel over.
The train started to shunt and that was when Devon showed his real demon roots. He grabbed the blinded Joseph and tossed him beneath the train's wheels. But old Joseph Seer had a thing or two up his tattered sleeves. He blew a big hot breath (Devon wrote in the journal that it was hot) at Devon and it was full of sand, and now Devon was momentarily blinded while Joseph turned into a puff of smoke and disappeared from the scene. He seemed to go under the train but before he succumbed to those metal wheels, Devon was left holding only an old jacket. The train stopped moving. It was pretty clear to me from this report that Devon had revealed Joseph’s identity as an escapee from the tarot deck.
“Crap! F#%king fool of a tarot creature!” Devon yelled at the jacket which he threw to the ground and stomped on.