[JJ06] Quicksand

by Gigi Pandian

  I wanted to go over what we’d learned, but Lane promptly fell asleep. I poked his side when we were a few minutes outside of Nantes.

  “I thought we should talk before we get to Sébastien’s,” I said. “You slept enough.”

  He opened his eyes. “I’m injured. My body needs the rest.”

  “We’ll find you a doctor who makes house calls as soon as we arrive.”

  “Tell me again how you know this guy?”

  “He’s a magician friend of Sanjay’s. He’s not a magician himself exactly. He’s the behind-the-scenes guy. He’s ninety years old, and he helps stage magicians come up with mechanized illusions.”

  “And he knows who you are?”

  “Sanjay has certainly mentioned him to me.” I didn’t want to tell Lane that I’d reached out to Sanjay in code since arriving in France. Instead, I told the truth, except for saying when I learned about Sébastien. “Your invitation to Paris—which I now know was North’s invitation—didn’t give me any way to contact you. I wasn’t sure what was going on. It was too good an opportunity to pass up a trip to France, but I thought I might need more to do. Sanjay said Sébastien was an amazing guy.”

  It was midmorning when the high speed TGV train pulled into Nantes. I hadn’t expected it to be such a big city. We took another taxi to the house. Lane’s cash was running low.

  “You sure this is the right address?” Lane asked after the driver stopped on a dirt road.

  “Oui, monsieur. This is the Renaud circus.”

  We were outside of the central part of the city. Most likely outside of the city limits, based on the look of things. The driver lifted our bags out of the trunk as Lane and I stared at our surroundings.

  We stood at the edge of a scraggly vineyard. We were near the heart of wine country, yet this field looked like it hadn’t been watered or harvested in years. In the distance, two motorcycles kicked up clouds of dust as they sprinted through the vines. Neither the dead vineyard nor the joyriders were what Lane was commenting on. His gaze was fixed elsewhere. Next to the vineyard were two structures, a barn and a house. At least that’s what we had to assume they were. Neither of them looked like a normal house or barn.

  The wooden beams that made up the barn’s structure looked as if they had been put together like pieces in a game of Tetris. Their placement looked haphazard at first glance, as if a large child had constructed the building like a toy built out of dominoes. But the differently-shaped geometric beams fit together perfectly.

  “If you’re sure,” Lane said. I nodded and he paid the driver, who disappeared in a cloud of dust down the dirt road.

  Next to the barn was a two-story house. The underlying structure was a simple French Norman-style house, with a sloping roof that dominated the building. It looked normal except for the added metalwork on the door, windows, and roof.

  I pressed what I hoped was the doorbell. What sounded next wasn’t a bell or buzzer, but a whirring noise, followed by a loud chirping that sounded like a dragon-sized bird was sweeping down on the house.

  “What the—” Lane began.

  I couldn’t help laughing. “I’m certain this is Sanjay’s friend.”

  We watched as a mechanical bird moved along the rain gutter at the side of the house to a spot perched above the door. The bird chirped, and was joined by a second bird that ran along the gutter from the other side of the house. When the second bird reached the first, they chirped a short song together.

  When the sound of chirping ceased, a three-inch peep hole in the front door sprung open. It wasn’t a person who had pulled open the small window. Instead, I stumbled backward as a clawed metal hand squeezed through the small opening in the door. The well-oiled fingers clutched a cloth. Once the hand was all the way through the opening, the fingers opened their grasp. The cloth fluttered to the ground.

  I picked it up. Words had been painted on the white cloth.

  Find me in the studio à

  “Definitely Sanjay’s friend,” I said. “Come on.”

  I dropped our bags in front of the door, picked up the cloth message that had dropped from the door, and walked to the studio. The arrow on the cloth was less than helpful since it had fallen to the ground, but there was only one other structure near the house.

  The converted barn didn’t have a discernible doorway. In between the house and barn sat a beautiful picnic table of solid wood with two benches that looked like sanded tree stumps. Upon closer inspection, that’s exactly what they were.

  “Stay here,” I said to Lane.

  “My pleasure.” He sat on one of the stumps.

  Failing to spot a door, I circled the barn. As I rounded the side, two startlingly large lop-eared rabbits hopped in front of me, one white and one gray. As I walked further, the fuzzy creatures turned and followed me. Confused, I stopped. The braver bunny—the gray one—sniffed my foot. He looked up at me with his black eyes. I could have sworn he scowled at me.

  I continued walking, and a movement in the distance caught my eye. I turned to see a dozen rabbits scampering away. I had to find Sébastien before I went completely insane.

  At the back of the barn was a wooden deck that led to what did not look like a door. However, when I stepped onto the first step, I felt my weight shift ever so slightly. A click sounded. The wooden paneling of the barn began to shift, and within a few seconds, a doorway opened. I climbed the remaining few steps and walked inside. The interior of the barn was as bright as the outside, so it took my eyes no time at all to adjust. I rather wished they had. I was greeted by an eight foot man made entirely of metal.

  A tall, spry man stepped out from behind the contraption. Bright white hair framed a thin, almost bony, face. Even brighter blue eyes looked at me through small round glasses. His movements made him appear younger than ninety, but this must be Sébastien Renaud.

  “Ah!” he said, pulling off thin cloth gloves. “I know who you must be! Sanjay told me I might see you, Mlle. Jones. English is best, yes?”

  “Thank you. We wouldn’t get very far with my French.”

  Sébastien’s knobby hands belied a firm handshake. “I’m delighted you could make it to my humble home. I hoped you would visit, but I did not wish to presume. I was unsure if Sanjay spoke only with his own desires that we should meet, or if you truly wished to see me.”

  “I’m very happy to meet you.”

  His smile turned to a frown as his gaze fell to the object in my left hand.

  “Merde,” he said. “The message did not remain in the hand?”

  “It fell.” I handed him the cloth the doorbell had triggered. “It’s very ingenious.”

  “What good is ingenious if it doesn’t work? Ah well. Please, come inside.”

  “I’m not alone,” I said.

  “No? When I spoke with Sanjay, I believed him to be in the States.”

  “I’m here with another friend.”

  “An invisible one?”

  “He’s outside sitting on a bench. He’s not, uh, feeling well.”

  “We should go to the main house, then! Jeeves will make us tea.”

  He hurried past me, leaving me to wonder why, if he had a butler, the man hadn’t answered the door.

  Before turning back, I couldn’t resist taking another look behind Sébastien, now that he was no longer blocking the view. I could have sworn I’d stepped through a time warp to another century, although oddly, I wasn’t sure if that century was in the past or in the future.

  Mechanized contraptions of all shapes and sizes filled the barn. I’d seen some of them in history books—automatons from the 1800s. And some of them in science fiction movies—a bird with wings of wood that must have stretched at least fifteen feet and hovered close to the ceiling high above. Was the bird’s beak opening and closing? I found myself comp
elled to get a closer look.

  Sébastien popped his head back inside. “Whenever you’re ready, your friend and I will be in the main house.”

  I trotted after Sébastien, stopping one last time to look at the bird. Its head was definitely moving, its eyes following me. I walked more quickly.

  Sébastien and Lane were already seated on the couch. A wheelchair-bound robotic man wheeled its way toward the two men, carrying a tray with teacups and a steaming pot of tea. Ah. This mechanical man must be Jeeves.

  Lane grinned at me.

  “Feeling better?” I asked.

  “A doctor is on the way,” Sébastien said.

  “Was I gone that long?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” Sébastien said. “I am efficient. Unlike the dangerous voyou—the hooligans who ride their motorbikes through the vineyards.”

  “They came out of nowhere,” Lane said. “I was telling Sébastien how I tried to get out of the way in time, but fell.” He avoided meeting my eye, but I knew him well enough to go along with his story. I remembered seeing the two motorcycles weaving between the rows of shriveled grapes, making it a plausible story.

  The doctor arrived before we were done with our tea. The water the robotic Jeeves brought us wasn’t quite steaming, but I forgave him. Chocolate-covered cookies also adorned the tray.

  I was expecting a jovial country doctor approaching Sébastien’s age. The kind of man I’d seen in a black and white movie. He was, after all, making house calls. The only part of my expectation that proved true was the style of the black leather medical bag in the doctor’s hand.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Renaud,” she said, kissing the air next to Sébastien’s cheeks in greeting.

  She looked around my age. In high heels, she was only an inch or so taller than me. She wore a skirt that made it clear she weighed at least ten pounds less than me. It made her appear almost skeletal, like one of the specimens she must have studied in medical school. But balancing out her tiny body was a warm, wide smile.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed as her eyes found Lane. “Sébastien, montrez-moi où je peux examiner le patient.”

  Sébastien and I helped Lane up from the couch.

  “Parlez vous français?” the doctor asked Lane.

  “Oui.”

  “Très bon. Mon anglais n’est pas bon.”

  Sébastien showed the two of them through an arched doorway.

  “Thank you,” I said to Sébastien.

  “Of course.” He smiled and took a bite of cookie. “Jacqueline is a superb doctor. She will see to your friend.”

  Sébastien and I finished our tea and cookies in companionable silence while my eyes wandered around the room. My wide-eyed wonder must have made me look like an eight-year-old child.

  It was as if the laws of physics didn’t apply here in Sébastien Renaud’s house. Stepping inside from the unkempt farmland must have been how Alice felt going down the rabbit hole. The house created the feeling of being at least twice as large as it looked from the outside. It was an illusion, I knew, but that didn’t stop it from feeling real.

  Unlike the shriveled grape plants next to the house, the inside was filled with thriving plants of all kinds. They were all miniature, which helped give the house the appearance of being larger. In between living plants were mechanized contraptions. These weren’t works in progress, like the creations in the barn studio next door, but completed works of art.

  I wanted to ask Sébastien about the items that surrounded us, but I couldn’t decide where to start. Before I could make up my mind, he spoke.

  “Would you like more tea or cookies?”

  “This was enough, thank you.”

  “Merci beaucoup, Jeeves,” Sébastien said, carefully enunciating the words. “C’est tout.”

  The robot bowed its head. The wheelchair backed up, its wheels squeaking ever so softly.

  “Brilliant,” I whispered. “Jeeves—and all this—it’s absolutely brilliant.”

  “You are friends with The Hindi Houdini, I presumed you would appreciate this. I am confused about two things, though.”

  “Yes?”

  “From the way Sanjay spoke of you, I assumed the two of you were...what is the English expression? I thought you two were ‘an item.’ But this man here, Lane. The two of you have feelings for each other. This much is clear.”

  I felt my face flush. I still didn’t know what to make of the brief moment Sanjay and I had shared, but the more time I spent with Lane, the more certain I was about where my passion lay.

  “Sanjay and I aren’t romantically involved,” I answered quickly. “He’s my best friend, and he feels the same about me. You must have misunderstood the nature of his affection.”

  “As you say,” Sébastien said, but he didn’t look like he believed it.

  “What was your second question?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.

  “Ah, yes. About the nature of your visit, and your friend’s injury. Why don’t you tell me the truth about what has happened and why you are really here?”

  CHAPTER 32

  “We shouldn’t have intruded,” I said, standing up. “As soon as the doctor is done with Lane, we’ll be on our way. We’ll take care of paying her.”

  “Sit down, sit down.” He motioned with such emphasis that I could hardly refuse. “I am very happy you have come, and I would be even happier if you would tell me the truth. I can see something is happening. No, no, do not worry. Mlle. Jacqueline will not notice anything is amiss. She is a very good doctor, but only observant in the ways of the body. I see more.”

  “Magicians,” I mumbled.

  “Yes, we magicians notice details,” he said. His hearing was better than mine. “How do you think it is possible for me to bring these mechanized wonders back to life and to create new ones? Precision requires paying attention to the details. All things are revealed in the details.”

  “Lane was injured in an embarrassing way,” I ad-libbed. “We thought it was easier to tell you it was something straightforward. I apologize for the deception. You’ve been so hospitable—”

  “I will continue to be so. Sanjay is one of my favorites, you know. He has both the mind and the heart for stage magic. He cares for you. Therefore I know you’re worthy of help. You have no need to hold up this pretense.”

  I didn’t know if I was holding onto the pretense for Sébastien or for myself. North would have discovered the wrecked scaffolding by now. I wanted to believe he’d think it was a natural landslide, as was common on the Mont, but was I fooling myself?

  Before I could decide how to respond, the doctor emerged from the other room, with her medical bag in hand but without Lane. She spoke a few words of French to Sébastien, gave me a bony-but-firm handshake accompanied by a genial smile, and departed. She chuckled as she stepped through the door with the metal hand still sticking out. The poor thing looked like it was hanging on for dear life.

  “Your friend sleeps,” Sébastien said. “He will recover. We will wake him in a few hours.”

  “Thank you.”

  “C’est rien. Now, about the truth.”

  Sanjay trusted Sébastien. Should I?

  It wasn’t only Sébastien I didn’t know if I could trust. I didn’t trust myself. Part of me wanted to call a cab and run to the airport. I could be safely home in my apartment in less than a day, have a drink with Nadia or Tamarind that night, and go back to teaching classes and playing tabla with Sanjay the following day. I didn’t want to think about what Naveen was teaching to my students. Probably about how my whole approach to history was wrong.

  But at the same time, the thought of leaving to return to my comfortable life left me feeling empty. How could I leave Lane? How could I live with myself knowing his friend might have been murdered and the kill
er not apprehended? How could I be complicit in a huge treasure being stolen? And most of all, how could I go back to my sheltered, normal life, when I was in the middle of France inside a magical artist’s studio on a treasure hunt?

  Sébastien saw the hesitation on my face. “Why don’t I give you a proper tour first? I can see you’re interested in my creations.”

  “That might be the understatement of the century.”

  He laughed. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  I stopped in front of a framed black and white photograph behind a tree made of metal. The trunk of the tree was a combination of intertwined metals that had been curled over one another like roots, and its branches stretched five feet wide. A solitary copper bird sat atop one of the highest branches.

  I looked more closely at the photograph on the wall. “Is that you?”

  “You recognize me?”

  “Your eyes,” I said, “and the shape of your face. It hasn’t changed. But I didn’t realize you were a magician. Sanjay said you were a behind-the-scenes guy.”

  “For as long as Sanjay has known me, yes. That photograph was taken in London, more than sixty years ago, during my brief career as a stage magician. I began as a clockmaker.”

  I looked more closely at the handsome young man in the photograph. Even then, he didn’t look like someone who would be contented to sit behind a desk.

  “I see your surprise,” Sébastien continued. “It is a similar occupation, if you look at the mechanics. Many famous magicians got their start as clockmakers. It is a natural progression. After seeing magic shows as a boy, I was not satisfied with my clockmaking business. It was interesting, yet I felt pulled toward something more.”

  “You performed at the Lyceum,” I said. “So you were good. But you gave it up?”