Prince of Air

by Ann Hood

  “Ehrich Weiss,” Felix said, unable to contain his excitement. “He’s Harry Houdini!”

  The door burst open, and out stepped the man they were looking for. Harry Houdini, all five feet five inches of him, turned his blue-gray eyes onto first Felix and then Maisie.

  “Youse guys need something?” he asked.

  Felix broke into a big smile.

  “In fact, Harry Houdini,” he said, “we do.”

  To Maisie, Harry Houdini acted like a grown-up. Maybe it was his intense eyes that seemed to bore right through a person. Or maybe it was the confidence with which he moved and spoke, like he was already world famous. Even though she had never heard of Houdini, the fact that Felix had made Maisie look at him differently. With Clara and Alexander and Pearl, they didn’t have any idea who they would grow up to be or what things they would do. But here was someone whose future they knew. And somehow, that made Maisie feel differently.

  “Let me ask youse,” Harry said. “Was the trick bad? Did it not amaze you?”

  “The Metamorphosis?” Felix said, surprised. “It was awesome!”

  “We did the switch in three seconds,” Harry continued as if Felix hadn’t spoken. “Do we need to be faster? Can we be faster?”

  He slapped his forehead. “Ach!” he moaned. “Dash is incapable of being faster.”

  Harry sighed and shook his head. “The last time we tried to improve it, he forgot to take the . . .”

  “Forgot to take what?” Felix asked eagerly.

  As if he just remembered Maisie and Felix were standing there, Harry cleared his throat.

  “Never mind about that,” he said dismissively.

  “You almost told us a trade secret,” Maisie said.

  Harry frowned at her. “Did you say you wanted something?”

  “Uh, yes,” Maisie began.

  But Felix stepped forward, whipping the jacket from her shoulders as he did.

  “We have something for you, Harry,” he said.

  “We do?” Maisie asked.

  Felix reached into the jacket pocket and pulled out the handcuffs.

  “You have them?” Maisie said, surprised.

  “They’re yours, I think,” Felix said, handing them to Harry.

  Harry took them and held them up to better examine them, nodding as he did.

  “I’ve studied locks all my life,” he said as he opened and closed the cuffs. “It’s an obsession of mine.”

  He turned those light eyes on Maisie and Felix again. “I have photographic eyes,” he said. “That’s how I can remember how each type of handcuff works. And that’s how I know how they can be opened.”

  “We want you to have these,” Felix said. “For your act.”

  “And what’s in it for you?” Harry said.

  “For me? Nothing,” Felix said, surprised.

  Maisie said. “Actually, we could use a place to stay.”

  Harry narrowed his eyes. “Tonight?”

  Felix nodded.

  “No,” Maisie said. “For maybe a few nights.”

  “Impossible,” Harry said. “We got a job with a circus. In Ohio. We leave the day after tomorrow.”

  He handed the handcuffs back to Felix.

  “That’s okay,” Felix said. “You can keep them.”

  Harry shrugged and put the handcuffs in his pocket. “Thank you,” he said, almost reluctantly.

  The three of them stood in awkward silence.

  “You can come home with me,” Harry finally said. “For tonight.”

  “Thank you,” Felix said.

  “Perhaps you can tell me more about The Metamorphosis,” he said, his head bent as he began to walk toward the runway. “Why didn’t the audience love it?”

  Maisie and Felix fell in behind him.

  “We’ve got to figure out a way to go to Ohio with him,” Maisie said in a low voice.

  “Right,” Felix said, feeling that feeling he got when he didn’t like the way things were going. One minute he was happily riding a carousel, and all of a sudden it looked like he was about to join the circus.

  Maisie woke up early the next morning, just as the sun came through the slats of the Venetian blinds on the living room windows. She stretched and wrinkled her nose. The Weisses’ apartment smelled like the cabbage Mrs. Weiss had given them for dinner the night before. The cabbage tasted bitter, and the meat stuffed inside it didn’t help any. Even though Harry claimed to be from Appleton, Wisconsin, his whole family had those accents like the people in that Polish deli.

  After dinner, Harry had done magic tricks for everyone. Maisie winced remembering the sight of him swallowing a handful of needles and some bright-red thread, then pulling it all out of his mouth with every needle threaded. He’d stood there looking like he’d really accomplished something, but Maisie thought it was gross.

  On the other hand, Felix looked like his eyes might literally pop out of his head. He’d stammered and stuttered praise, which Harry gobbled up. Harry Houdini was a total show-off, and even though Felix couldn’t get enough of him and his gross tricks, Maisie was already completely sick of him.

  That was why she had to figure out how to get back. Soon. But how could she make Harry give them a lesson?

  She stared up at the cracks in the ceiling as if they might give her some clues. One looked vaguely like a rooster. But mostly they were just cracks in a ceiling that needed painting. Maisie sighed and began a mental list of all the problems she and Felix had.

  Number one: They had time traveled three months later than when they left.

  Number two: They had time traveled from the school auditorium instead of The Treasure Chest, something she hadn’t realized they could do.

  Here she added a note to herself to explore this further when—if!—they got back home.

  Number three: They had possibly lost Great-Aunt Maisie and Great-Uncle Thorne.

  Only three items on her list, but to Maisie they seemed huge. Just when she thought she might be figuring out how this time travel thing worked, everything got turned upside down.

  Maisie realized that Felix was awake, too, staring up at her from the mound of blankets on the floor where he’d slept. His cowlick was standing at attention, and he had crease marks on his face.

  “Maisie,” he whispered, his cabbagey morning breath hitting her in the face, “I just realized something.”

  She waited.

  “We left from school,” Felix said, looking worried. “I thought we had to be in The Treasure Chest. But we were just standing in the auditorium and—”

  “No kidding,” Maisie said, rolling her eyes. “I figured that out a long time ago.”

  “I mean, we could take an object with us and just go, any time we want,” he continued.

  “Irrelevant,” Maisie muttered. “What we need to figure out now is how to get back.”

  “Well, we gave him the handcuffs,” Felix said.

  “Obviously,” Maisie said.

  Felix yawned.

  “You need to brush your teeth,” Maisie said crabbily.

  “That cabbage was disgusting,” Felix said. He opened his mouth and blew a blast of bad breath at Maisie.

  “Ugh!” she groaned, pulling the blanket up over her mouth and nose.

  Felix suppressed a giggle.

  “You are so not funny,” Maisie told him.

  “Maisie?” he said. “Actually, I’m not in such a hurry to get back. I mean, his magic tricks are so great. Can you imagine if I could learn that needle and thread one?”

  “Mom is not going to let you swallow needles,” Maisie said. “No way.”

  “I don’t think he really swallows them,” Felix said, growing thoughtful. “He just makes us think he swallowed them. Magic
is all about perception, you know. So he made us think he swallowed those needles, but how did he thread them like that?”

  “I don’t care how he did it,” Maisie said. “Can you stop trying to figure out how he did that stupid trick and use your brainpower to figure out how to get home?”

  “Do you know what he told me?” Felix asked, ignoring her question. “He told me that he can hang upside down from a trapeze and pick up needles with his eyelids.”

  “That,” Maisie said, “is ridiculous.”

  “With his eyelids!” Felix said again as if she hadn’t heard it the first time.

  Maisie rolled her eyes again. What an idiot Harry Houdini is, she thought.

  No sooner did she have that thought than Harry himself strode into the living room, mumbling to himself. He was carrying a bunch of ropes and frowning at them.

  Excited, Felix sat up.

  “Morning, Harry!” he said.

  Harry either didn’t hear him or pretended not to hear him. He just kept mumbling and playing with those ropes.

  “Working on a rope trick?” Felix asked.

  He sounds like an eager puppy, Maisie thought.

  Finally, Harry glanced up.

  Felix grinned at him.

  “Mebbe,” Harry said.

  “May. Be,” Maisie said. “Maybe. Not mebbe. Your English is atrocious.”

  She thought this would make him angry, but instead he nodded.

  “I’m working on sounding better,” he said. “Mebbe . . . maybe you can help me?”

  “We’re not sticking around long enough for that,” Maisie said.

  But Harry wasn’t listening to her. He had started to run in place, moving his arms up and down in rhythm with his feet.

  “Time for me to go exercise,” he said. “We can discuss when I get back.”

  “I didn’t say I would—” Maisie began.

  Harry hardly noticed her as he jogged past her and Felix and out the apartment door.

  “Discipline,” Felix said. “That’s how he does it. He even works out his toes.”

  “Oh, please,” Maisie said.

  Felix stared at the closed door, shaking his head.

  “The Prince of Air,” he said. “That’s what they call him.”

  “That’s what he calls himself,” Maisie said. “Harry Houdini is nothing great, Felix. He’s the Prince of Hot Air,” she added. “Mebbe.”

  “How can a circus not have any animals?” Maisie demanded.

  She stood in a muddy field somewhere in Ohio, her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing with anger as she glared at Harry Houdini. Faded circus tents littered the field. In the gray afternoon light, Maisie could see how patched and frayed the tents were.

  “This is the saddest-looking circus I’ve ever seen,” she continued.

  Harry smirked at her.

  “You ain’t no circus expert,” he told her.

  “Don’t say ain’t!” Maisie reprimanded.

  Harry had only agreed to let Maisie and Felix accompany him and Dash to Ohio if Maisie promised to work on his grammar and pronunciation with him. They had fought the entire trip from New York to Columbus, sitting on uncomfortable wooden benches in the cheapest train car available.

  Now that they had finally arrived, Maisie was even more miserable. The circus was really a group of performers that Harry called geeks and another group that he casually called freaks—a fat lady, a giant, a legless woman, and someone who Harry called the ossified woman.

  “Ossified?” Maisie had asked him. “What is ossified?”

  Harry had just shrugged. “Ya know, the skeleton woman.”

  “No,” Maisie said. “I don’t know.”

  “I think,” Felix had offered, “ossified means something that has turned to bone.”

  “Right,” Harry said smugly. “Emma Schiller is the Ossified Woman. She’s like a skeleton.”

  “That is impossible,” Maisie had said in disgust.

  But now that they were actually here, she was afraid that there really might be a skeleton woman among all the other oddities in the show. She had already seen a woman covered with tattoos—more tattoos than Maisie had ever seen on one person—walking past with a woman with a beard. “That there’s the Tattooed Lady and the Bearded Woman,” Harry had pointed out.

  Maisie narrowed her eyes.

  “Harry,” she said. “That sign says this is a museum.”

  “A dime museum,” Harry said. “Right.”

  “A circus without animals and a museum without art,” Maisie said.

  “You ever heard of P. T. Barnum?” Harry asked.

  “No.”

  “Yes, you have,” Felix said. “Barnum and Bailey. The circus.”

  Maisie didn’t realize the Barnum in Barnum and Bailey was a person. But she didn’t want Harry to know that, so she nodded, pretending to remember that of course she knew all about P. T. Barnum.

  “Oh, that P. T. Barnum,” Maisie said. “What about him?”

  “He started all this. The dime museums. In New York. The sideshow and the geeks, all for a dime,” Harry explained. “People are calling it a circus these days, that’s all.”

  Felix gasped and pointed to a figure walking toward them. Well, not exactly walking, Felix thought, staring harder. The woman had a normal head and body, but instead of legs, her feet were attached to her hips. She had no legs at all. Realizing that he was pointing, he quickly dropped his hand. But he couldn’t stop gaping.

  “What in the world . . . ?” Maisie said under her breath.

  “That’s Unthan,” Harry said. “The Legless Wonder. She’s one of the freaks,” he added.

  Maisie whipped around to face him. “Stop saying that!” she said angrily.

  “Saying what?” Harry asked, surprised.

  “Freaks,” Felix said. “That’s mean.”

  “But that’s what they are,” Harry said, his face washed with confusion.

  “She has a birth defect,” Maisie said. “She can’t help how she looks.”

  Harry shrugged. “Who said it was her fault? She’s a freak of nature. Good thing there’s circuses so she can work, ya know? Make a living for herself.”

  Maisie shook her head. “Harry, people pay to stare at her. They probably make fun of her. That’s wrong.”

  “No, Maisie,” Harry said, growing frustrated. “You’re wrong. People are amazed by what she can do. And you should see the Armless Wonder! She shuffles cards and deals them with her feet. She even holds a pen with her toes and—”

  “Stop!” Maisie said. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  Felix, trying to make peace, quickly said, “It’s okay, Harry. We just don’t use the word freaks.”

  Harry looked at him, bewildered.

  “We?” Harry asked.

  “Uh . . . Maisie and me, I mean.”

  Harry laughed. “Then what do you call that?” he said, indicating the woman who had joined Unthan, the two of them talking together in the near distance.

  Maisie blinked hard. Was she really seeing what she thought she was seeing?

  “That’s right,” Harry said, folding his arms across his barrel chest. “Myrtle has four legs. She has half of another person growing out of—”

  “Enough!” Maisie said, looking away from the poor woman.

  “If you’re going to travel this circuit with me,” Harry said, “you’re going to have to get used to the freaks, ’cause they ain’t going nowheres.”

  With that, he headed off to the small train car that would be his and Dash’s home for the next week.

  “They aren’t going anywhere!” Maisie called after him.

  Harry turned around, grinning. “That’s what I said!”

  �
��Oooohhh,” Maisie said through gritted teeth. “Harry Houdini drives me crazy.”

  All the performers lived in old train cars parked at the edge of the field. Each car had been divided into thirds, leaving a small, cramped, dark area for a living space. It just fit two narrow cots covered with scratchy gray blankets and yellowed sheets, and one flat, square pillow. The floor was covered with sawdust. Maisie and Felix slept on the other side of Harry and Dash’s room, and they could hear Harry grunting as he did his push-ups and sit-ups early every morning.

  Everyone ate together in a tent they called The Dining Room. Long wooden tables with benches filled the tent. One of them held the food: vats of scrambled eggs for breakfast, soup and bread for lunch, meat and potatoes for dinner. Felix liked mealtime. He liked the camaraderie of the performers, the easy way they spoke to one another, joking and teasing. After the evening shows, everyone gathered in The Dining Room, passing around a bottle of whiskey and telling stories until late at night.

  Maisie quickly became friends with Felicity LaSalle. Felicity and her mother and little brother Francois had albinism, a condition that gave them chalk-white skin and chalk-white hair and pale-pink eyes. When Maisie had first seen them at dinner, she’d had to look away. But Felicity LaSalle came up to her afterward and asked if Maisie and Felix wanted to play pick-up sticks with her and Francois.

  “It’s so good to have other kids here,” Felicity said. Her pink eyes sparkled with hope as she added, “We could be friends, you and me.”

  It had been so long since Maisie had had a friend that Felicity’s offer almost brought her to tears. Back in Newport, she had tried to become part of any of the groups of girls. But they had all known one another since preschool, and no one seemed interested in this odd kid from New York City. When her mother suggested she make friends with just one girl because that might be easier, Maisie had invited Hannah McGraw over after school. Like Maisie, Hannah was often alone. She didn’t look weird or do anything strange, but she didn’t really belong anywhere. Surely she would like a best friend, too, Maisie had thought.

  Hannah McGraw came over one afternoon after school before Maisie and her family had officially moved into Elm Medona.