“You see, the problem is that for some reason, you are attracting Fire Elementals to you to help you without your asking for any to come,” he explained.
“Well, you did say that they won’t always come even if I ask,” she pointed out. “That is why we have the electric sparker to set off the flash powder in case the salamanders are bored.”
“But you already asked them,” said Jack, finishing the last of his chips and folding the paper neatly into a perfect square. “These sprites came without you asking, and they did exactly as you would have wanted. Now . . . think about this, Miss Kate. What if someone made you angry? On your own, of course, I am certain you would never ask a Fire Elemental to attack the person you were angry with. But what if they did it because they felt your anger? Fire Elementals are emotional and respond to strong emotion. Many of them don’t think as we understand thinking. You saw how the firebirds responded when we were in danger from the firework rocket. They simply acted. My fear is that if you are angered by something . . . some other Fire Elemental will simply act on your behalf.”
She looked at him quizzically. “What harm could they do?” she asked. “No one can see them but us. They can barely set off the flashpots . . .”
“They could find a pile of old papers, or a tinder-dry attic, or a heap of oily rags,” Jack replied, sternly. “And then someone’s house could be on fire.”
She stared at him, stricken.
“But—you said that if I—”
“I said that if you yourself deliberately caused Fire Elementals to harm someone, the good ones would abandon you,” Jack corrected. “But if it was their decision, out of anger, and not yours . . .”
She felt numb; some of that must have shown in her face, for Jack’s expression softened.
“This is why I need to give you lessons, so that sort of thing never happens,” he said. “It is something that can be taught. It will just take time.” And now he smiled. “One of the reasons why I’m the doorman here is that I have an understanding with the Fire Elementals. You have seen how easy it would be for a fire to start here in the theater. They will come and tell me if one does.”
Well, she didn’t see that she had any other choice. “When?” she asked with resignation.
“Whenever we can squeeze in a moment. Between the matinee and the evening performance. On dark days.” Lionel smiled at her with encouragement. “You have been so apt at all of this that I am certain it will not take long.”
Well, she was glad that he was certain.
Because she was anything but.
• • •
Jack went back to his post in a state of bemusement. Normally this sort of thing only happened to children. Elementals were attracted to the innocent, and innocent, young mages, who were not yet conditioned by the parents into disbelief in the wondrous were very attractive indeed. So the lesser Elementals were drawn to them; in fact, in the case of a Fire Mage, salamanders sometimes turned up in the dead of winter to warm their beds or dance in the fires of their nursery.
Fire sprites though—those were shy. In fact, he had never personally seen any. For them to not only turn up, but to make themselves visible to ordinary humans, said something; he just wasn’t sure what it was.
At least Katie wasn’t fighting this. He hoped he would be able to make it enjoyable for her, as it had been for him as a child.
His father was a Fire mage; his mother a country farmwife. She was a happy and incurious creature, and he and his father loved her very much. If she even noticed that he and his father sometimes did odd things together, she must simply have put it down to the mysterious ways of fathers teaching their sons, and it simply did not concern her.
His sisters were exactly like her; he wouldn’t call them stolid, for they certainly weren’t that. All of them were very much alive to the ordinary beauties of the farm. They reveled in lambing time, tended the flowers around the cottage with tender care, and often stood side by side in the doorway, admiring a particularly wonderful sunset. They just couldn’t see past those things, and didn’t care to.
Jack wasn’t certain if the way he had been taught was typical for a Fire Mage or not; it certainly was a method that suited him, and, he hoped, was going to suit Kate.
It relied on patience.
As part of his training, his father had taught him how to bring wild birds to eat out of his hand—this was shortly after he had prattled about the things he had seen dancing in the hearth, his mother had laughed at his childish imagination, and his father had known that his son had inherited the family talent. It had been winter, which was the best possible time to make the trick work—and knowing how much mother loved birds, his father had included her in it as well.
They began by making up a straw-man, dressed in clothing destined for the rag-bag and draped conspicuously in a cheap, bright-colored shawl that had been given to his mother, and that she had always disliked as “gaudy.” One hand was outstretched, and every day they put grain in it. At first, of course, the birds were wary and avoided the straw man, but gradually their hunger overcame them, and they ventured near, and began to eat from the hand. This was when Jack’s father took the place of the straw man. He had an uncanny ability to sit perfectly still, and the birds didn’t notice the substitution. But the taming was not complete—for the idea was to get any of them accepted. So Jack’s father had left off the shawl, but brought back the straw man. The wariness didn’t last for more than half a day. Then he took the place of the straw man again, but this time, instead of staying completely still, he began talking to the birds. They scattered at the first word, of course, but soon came back.
Eventually, all it took was for anyone in the household to come out of the house and hold out a handful of grain, and the little birds would swarm them the way tame pigeons in a big city would swarm people with bags of bread-crumbs. Of course, none of them had ever been to a city, so having wild birds so tame was a wonder and a joy to Jack’s mother, and then his sisters.
And in the meantime, Jack had learned the patience it was going to take to coax the Fire Elementals to come out and communicate with him, not just dance for him to see. As volatile as Fire was—and given father’s patient skill—it took a lot less time than it had to teach the birds to come.
He had the feeling that Kate had the patience. She certainly had the persistence. It took a very long time to learn the sorts of acrobatics she could do—time, and the willingness to put up with pain until muscles were properly stretched and trained.
Until now she had accepted her gift for magic, but she had not embraced it. That was what concerned him the most. If she was going to properly control her ability, and herself, then she would have to do more than come to terms with it. She would have to find joy in it; without the joy, there would be no true control.
• • •
Katie hoped with all her heart that Lionel and Jack were not expecting her to turn up for some sort of lesson after the evening performance. She went through her dances in a state of nervous, heightened awareness, and sure enough, she caught sight during the Fire Dance of tiny sparks dancing along the edges of the fabric, moving too fast for her to get a good look at them.
The audience was receptive, and enthusiastic, but not wildly so—they didn’t throw their hats onstage, stand on the tables, or even stand up to applaud. Certainly it was enough to make Charlie happy, and to count as a success. She was as wrung-out as an old dishrag, however. This was much, much harder than acting as Lionel’s assistant and dancing in the chorus. Still if she hadn’t had those “lessons” hanging over her head, she would have been extremely happy. Not only would Charlie keep her act on for the summer, he would probably keep her on as a regular, just like Lionel. The same act would probably do until next summer, and by then, she’d have figured out how to make a new act out of contortion, the ribbon and the dress.
&nbs
p; He’s probably going to make me pay him for the dress out of my salary, though . . . Well, she couldn’t blame him; it had been shockingly expensive for all those yard and yards of silk. Enough to make ten regular dancing dresses, for Mrs. Littleton had underestimated the yardage the first time she had brought it out! And she couldn’t blame Mrs. Littleton for insisting on being paid for the gown before she allowed it to be used onstage. In her place, Katie would have done the same, and Katie had noted a distinct improvement in the Wardrobe Mistress’s attitude since Charlie had paid her for the thing.
I want a good wash-up at least, she thought, as she cleaned the makeup from the performance from her face. She thought longingly of a bathtub full of cool water, and cold fruit soup. Was it so wrong that all she wanted to do was bask in success, and settle in for a well-earned sleep?
She steeled herself for the inevitable, waited until she could hear that most of the others had cleared out of the dressing rooms, then went out to see Jack at the door.
But Jack took one look at her, and shook his head. “You’re in no state for a lesson,” he said, “And by the time you get your mind wrapped around the idea, it’ll be well past midnight. Go home, Miss Kate. Get some supper and some rest. I’ll let Lionel know.”
It sounded as if he was disappointed in her, but she didn’t care right now. She just thanked him and made her escape.
She could not have been happier to reach the boarding house. One cool bath and an equally refreshing supper of the cold fruit soup that she had fantasized about, her window open to the ocean breeze, and she was more than ready to sleep.
And then . . . sleep eluded her. Her mind buzzed, and she tossed and turned, trying to find a cooler spot in her bed. Finally she just took the counterpane and laid it down on the floor; the floor would at least be cooler than her mattress.
Her thoughts wouldn’t stay put. She went from reliving her mistakes in her routines, to reliving the moment of triumph at the end of each one when the crowd applauded, to Lionel’s little lecture.
She just couldn’t understand why it was he and Jack seemed so very urgent about her learning to control this “magic.” Wasn’t it like acrobatics? If you didn’t know how to do a backflip, well, obviously you wouldn’t be able to actually do one, would you? So why all the fuss?
But wait . . . they’d said the point wasn’t that she did things, it was that the Elementals might do things, reacting to her emotions. They had said that was why the Fire sprites had turned up.
But would that be so bad? She wasn’t angry with anyone; she’d always been excellent at keeping her temper. She’d taken after her father that way, not her mother, who had what her father called a “short fuse.” And when it came to Dick. . . .
She suddenly felt cold all over, not hot anymore, because even the thought of Dick was enough to chill her and paralyze her with fear. She had to remind herself that Dick didn’t know where she was, didn’t know where to look, and by the time he found out, she would have her divorce and if he so much as put a finger on her, she could have him arrested.
It didn’t help much.
She felt as if her thoughts were skittering around in her head like so many frightened mice. It was a lot easier exercising physical discipline than it was mental discipline.
There were just too many things she had to do, and people seemed to want her to do all of them at once.
And now that she was chilled the floor was horribly hard. She moved back to her bed, and curled up. There had to be something good she could focus on . . .
Of the three dances, she liked the Fire Dance the best. She was a little ashamed of that because it really was the easiest of the three, but she loved the way the fabric just flowed around her, flickering red to yellow and back again as she moved through the light from the magic lanterns. She concentrated on that, putting herself through every step, every movement, every note of the music in her mind. And that, finally, let her sleep.
Even in sleep, however, she was not left alone. Fire creatures moved through her dreams; the salamanders and firebirds that she knew, and other things she didn’t. Bigger birds, with long, twinned tails. Tiny things no bigger than her thumbnail that looked, when she peered closely at them, like miniature versions of Lionel’s sylphs, only made entirely of something that glowed, though it seemed to give off no heat. There were things that flew about, balls of fire with long tails, and women seemingly made of fire. All these creatures moved through her dreams, and she could sense their curiosity and interest in her. They didn’t frighten her in her dreaming state, although if she had been awake, that might not have been true.
She woke at the usual time, and although dreaming so much at night often had left her feeling more tired than when she had gone to bed, this morning she felt good; rested and energized.
She thought over her dreams, and what Lionel and Jack had told her last night, and the more she thought things over, the more determined she became that she was no longer going to be told what she must or must not do in these matters. She would decide for herself just how much time she would devote to these magic lessons. She was the one who had not one, but two jobs in the show now. She was the one having to perfect the dancing part in a ridiculously short period of time. And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t grateful—she was. But they were asking too much of her. If they kept on like this, she’d have no time to eat or sleep.
She trotted off to the music hall in a new state of determination, planning to arrive early so that she could speak openly with Jack.
And in fact, she literally caught him as he was unlocking the stage door. There was no one else about, and he looked surprised and pleased to see her, and opened his mouth to say something.
But she interrupted him before he could start.
“No,” she said firmly. “No, it’s too much to ask. I’m sorry, but I am not going to spend every waking moment in these lessons of yours. Dark day, fine. The break between matinee and evening, fine—but only if you’ll feed me since you’ll not be letting me get my own tea. But not after hours, and not in the morning. I’ve rehearsals to do, and I need to sleep! And you who have cooks and the like to look after you, did you even think about the fact that Mrs. Baird only serves supper for a little while, and that staying behind for these lessons will make me go to bed supperless?”
The peculiar look on Jack’s face told her she had hit the mark squarely. “Well then. Don’t think I’m not grateful, for I am. But these creatures have existed around me for all of my life without me getting them so worked up they’re dangerous; I expect they can continue to do so for a few weeks more. Meanwhile, I don’t think it’s going to do anyone any good if you work me so hard I can’t think. So you just tell Lionel that, Jack. I need to go practice.”
And with that, she held her head and her chin high, and marched right past him and down to her dressing room. She had the feeling that he wasn’t in the least convinced, but with her walking away, there wasn’t much he could do or say about it right now.
Charlie had brought in a gramophone and records of the music for her three numbers about a week ago, muttering that it was cheaper to have the gramophone than pay a pianist. She changed into her rehearsal dress, warmed up her limbs, and ran through her dances as many times as she could until Lionel arrived for the magic act run-through. The only thing she didn’t do more than once or twice was to go up on her toes in the ribbon dance. That part was still hard for her, though she hoped that with more practice it would be a bit less painful.
When Lionel arrived she almost expected to get something of a scold out of him—after all, she had been damned cheeky, leaving word with Jack of what she, who was nothing more than his assistant, would and would not be doing. But instead, he just shook his head ruefully at her.
“You’re right, I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted, after they’d finished their first run-through. “I’ve arranged for lu
ncheon and tea to be brought here, and if you’re feeling up to the lessons, we can have brief ones before and after the matinee. Asking you to add night lessons to that would be absolutely cruel.”
That was so completely unexpected—the best she had anticipated was that she would have to stage a battle of wit and persuasion to convince the magician—that she just gaped at him.
“I’m not a complete monster, you know,” he murmured defensively.
That awoke something in her that hadn’t stirred since the death of her parents. “Not completely, no,” she said, dryly, a smile playing about her mouth.
“Cheeky wench,” he muttered, and made her go into the basket again.
To her surprise, it was not Lionel and Jack that met her in the workroom at luncheon—which was, as she had half suspected it would be, pub sandwiches and bottles of lemonade. It was just Jack alone. “Lionel is taking the door for me while you and I have our lesson, Miss Kate,” Jack said, politely handing over a bottle of lemonade. “Then between the matinee and the evening performance, we’re paying one of the stagehands. We told Charlie it’s because Lionel needs both of us to help work up the fall and winter acts.”
“Does he believe you?” she asked, taking a cheese-and-Bramston-pickle sandwich from him.
He shrugged. “Does it matter? Honestly, I more than half suspect that he knows about our magic, and he’d let us get away with just about anything so long as we protect the hall. I’ve suspected that all along; my job came at the recommendation of the White Lodge in London, and I fairly well just walked in and Charlie said ‘You’re hired,’ without anything else.”
Her eyes widened. “Ordinary people know about us?” she said in surprise.
“Not many.” He shrugged. “But aye. Ordinary folk do. That can be right helpful many times. But that’s not why we’re here.” He pointed a finger at her. “You, Miss Kate, have the most dangerous magic of the four. And you can’t just shrug your shoulders and say ‘Well, I’ve had it all my life and nothing bad happened, so why should I worry about it now?’ because that won’t do. That just won’t do at all.”
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