Prince of Air

by Ann Hood

  Maisie remembered her own desires to stay with Clara and Alexander. “What happens?” she asked.

  Great-Uncle Thorne looked at her hard.

  “You die. In the present.”

  Felix gasped.

  “Now you understand why I had to do what I did. When we got back to Elm Medona, I took the shard and hid it from her—”

  “She was right!” Maisie said. “You did steal it.”

  “Steal it?” Great-Uncle Thorne roared. “I hid it so she wouldn’t go back. And she kept the handcuffs with the hope of finding an opportunity to return. Without me and the shard, she was stuck. Until you two came along.”

  “Wait a minute,” Felix said. “How did you get back if Harry didn’t keep the handcuffs?”

  “I knew you didn’t know how any of this works,” Great-Uncle Thorne said triumphantly. “Haven’t you had any aborted missions yet?”

  Maisie and Felix both shook their heads.

  “You’re lucky,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “It can happen. Some kind of wrinkle, and you never find your subject—”

  “Subject?” Felix asked.

  “The person who gets the object.”

  “So that can happen?” Maisie said. She’d been afraid of that.

  “Very rare,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “But possible. I had to keep those handcuffs away from Harry and devise a way for Maisie and me to both touch them so that we could get home.” He sighed at the memory. “Of course she’s never forgiven me. And now, if Harry gets those handcuffs—”

  “But he has them,” Felix said. “We gave them to him.”

  “Oh no!” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “If Maisie gets to Harry before we get those handcuffs back, then she’ll stay here with him.”

  “But how will we get home then?” Felix asked.

  He didn’t like this at all. His mind swirled with all the information Great-Uncle Thorne was giving them. Was Great-Aunt Maisie really trying to stay in 1894 with Harry? And if she managed to do that, did that mean in the present, back home in Newport, she would die?

  “The same way we always get back,” Great-Uncle Thorne was saying. “When Harry gives us our lesson, we can’t help but return.”

  Maisie considered what Thorne had just said.

  “Yes, Clara is the one who told us to listen to Great-Aunt Maisie,” she said.

  “And Alexander told us to appreciate our parents,” Felix added.

  “And remember how we were fighting when we were in China with Pearl?” Maisie continued.

  “Then she told us about losing her sisters and brothers and . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish. Maisie was already nodding.

  “We need to get those handcuffs from Harry,” Felix said. “Because we can’t stop Harry from telling us anything.”

  “All he does is tell us stuff,” Maisie said.

  “Where is he now?” Great-Uncle Thorne said.

  “At home, I guess,” Felix said.

  “On East 69th Street?” Thorne said.

  As usual, he didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Come on. Let’s get to the Weisses’ apartment,” he told them.

  “Great-Uncle Thorne?” Maisie asked.

  “We don’t have time to waste,” he growled.

  “Just one quick question,” Maisie said. “I still don’t understand why you’re here and twelve years old.”

  “Adults can’t do it,” he said. “If Maisie had tried to come back with just me, it wouldn’t have worked. We needed to be with you two to even time travel. And I guess we not only traveled back to 1894, but we traveled back to our own younger selves.”

  He smiled wistfully.

  “I have to admit,” he said, “it feels wonderful.”

  Felix’s mind raced with still more questions. But Great-Uncle Thorne didn’t waste any more time in reflection. He started walking uptown, fast. And Maisie and Felix hurried along with him. There was too much at stake to dawdle.

  The Weiss apartment was dark when Maisie, Felix, and Great-Uncle Thorne finally arrived back there. But already in the eastern sky, Felix could see the sun starting to come up. Soon Harry would be awake, doing his push-ups and sit-ups and what he called calisthenics. Harry had told Felix that he believed the thing that would make him famous someday was his self-discipline. “My fingers aren’t mere fingers,” he proclaimed. “They are superfingers! My toes can act like fingers. Why, I have trained myself to eat with my left hand as well as I can with my right.” He practiced holding his breath, adding seconds each day. Then he went outside and ran, timing himself with a big stopwatch. Felix had never seen anyone as disciplined. “Be confident, be disciplined. To be great,” Harry had told him one morning, “youse gotta act great.”

  Lying on the living room floor with Thorne snoring beside him, Felix tried to absorb all the information he’d learned tonight. But as soon as he began to go over what Great-Uncle Thorne had told them, panic overtook him. Great-Aunt Maisie was here somewhere. And if they didn’t stop her, she would stay in 1894 with Harry, and when they got home . . . Here, Felix stopped himself. He didn’t want to think about Great-Aunt Maisie dying or about any of the things that Great-Uncle Thorne had warned about.

  Felix tossed and turned until he heard Harry get up and start moving around the kitchen. First Harry made his usual breakfast of a dozen eggs scrambled with a quart of milk. He believed eggs and milk made a person stronger. Then Felix listened to him begin his calisthenics, the floor shaking slightly with his movements.

  Eventually, Harry came into the living room. Running in place, he stared down at Felix.

  “Want to time me?” he asked.

  Felix did.

  Harry stopped running. After he gave Felix the stopwatch, he stood perfectly still, his eyes set with concentration. He took one deep breath, then another, before nodding at Felix to begin.

  Felix started the stopwatch.

  Harry’s eyes were closed, his barrel chest puffed with air. Felix stared at him, marveling at his focus. Nothing can distract him, Felix thought. Nothing.

  The hands of the stopwatch counted down thirty seconds.

  Harry remained still as a statue.

  One minute.

  Felix thought about swimming at the Carmine Street Pool, how he and Maisie used to take turns trying to stay underwater the longest, eventually one of them popping up, sputtering for air.

  Ninety seconds.

  Ninety-one . . . ninety-two . . .

  Felix saw a muscle in Harry’s cheek twitch.

  Ninety-six . . .

  Harry’s left eyelid quivered.

  Ninety-nine . . .

  Harry’s eyes flew open, and he gulped air.

  “Well?” he asked hopefully.

  “One hundred seconds,” Felix announced.

  Harry’s face drooped with disappointment.

  “Ach!” he said.

  “That’s really good, Harry,” Felix insisted.

  But Harry shook his head. “Not for what I want to do,” he said.

  “What do you want to do, Harry?”

  Harry’s eyes grew dreamy. He looked off at a spot that only he could see.

  “So many things, Felix,” he said finally.

  “Like what?”

  “I am imagining escaping from a chest underwater. Like The Metamorphosis, but in the water. Maybe in the Hudson River.”

  “I don’t know,” Felix said. “That sounds really dangerous.”

  Even though Felix knew Harry would become maybe the best magician who ever lived, he wasn’t sure how he got that fame. Did he escape from a locked chest under the Hudson River? Was that even possible?

  “Not if I practice,” Harry said. “It’s all about discipline. Physical discipli
ne and mental discipline.”

  “To be great,” Felix began.

  Hearing his own words, Harry laughed. “Correct,” he said. “I want to be Prince of Air, King of Handcuffs, Emperor of—”

  “Handcuffs!” Felix blurted.

  Harry looked at him, confused.

  “Harry, you know those handcuffs we gave you back on Coney Island?”

  “Sure,” Harry said.

  “Since you already figured out how to open them, I was thinking maybe I could get them back? You know, so I can practice,” Felix added quickly.

  “No problem,” Harry said.

  Relief washed over Felix. Harry would give him the handcuffs, and they would be back in Newport in no time.

  “Except,” Harry continued, “I don’t know where they are.”

  “What?” Felix said.

  “Do you know how many sets of handcuffs I have?”

  Too upset to speak, Felix just shook his head.

  “I don’t know, either! I’ve been studying every model I can find. There aren’t so many differences,” Harry said as if this fact disappointed him. “Some open with a sharp rap, some need a pin, some—”

  “But I need that set,” Felix interrupted.

  Harry shrugged. “There’s a pile of handcuffs in my room. You’re welcome to find yours.”

  Jogging in place again, Harry wiggled his fingers in a wave, then moved across the floor and out the apartment.

  Beside Felix, Great-Uncle Thorne popped up from his blankets.

  “Well,” he said, “no time to waste.”

  Great-Uncle Thorne pulled Felix to his feet.

  “We’ve got to find those handcuffs. Now,” he said. “Before Maisie finds him.”

  Two hours later, Great-Uncle Thorne and Felix sat bleary-eyed in front of a pile of handcuffs. They had examined each set, trying to determine which one was the set Maisie and Felix had given Harry. But despite minor differences—some were shinier than others, the chains connecting each handcuff came in varying lengths and widths, there were heavier ones and thinner ones—to Great-Uncle Thorne and Felix they all looked pretty much the same.

  Defeated, Felix finally admitted that he had no idea which set was the right set.

  When Maisie wandered in, her eyes still puffy with sleep and her hair a bedhead tangle, Great-Uncle Thorne immediately thrust several sets of handcuffs in her face.

  “Are any of these the ones you gave him?” he demanded.

  Maisie pushed the handcuffs away.

  “You have to remember,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.

  “I didn’t know there were so many kinds until right now,” Maisie said, eyeing the pile. “They all look kind of the same, don’t they?” she said.

  “I think so,” Felix said, his voice catching.

  “There must be a solution,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. He paced the length of the small room, past the piles of ropes twisted into various knots and the trunk and all the various locks and bright costumes.

  “I know!” Great-Uncle Thorne said brightly.

  He walked back to the heap of handcuffs and began to scoop them into his arms, the metal clanking noisily.

  Felix and Maisie watched him, bewildered.

  “Well?” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “What are you waiting for? Help me.”

  “What exactly are you doing?” Maisie asked him.

  “Taking all of them,” he said, exasperated. “Obviously.”

  When Maisie and Felix still didn’t start to pick them up, Great-Uncle Thorne glared at them.

  “Don’t you see?” he said. “For all these years, I endured my sister’s wrath just to protect her. To keep her alive. I can’t lose her now because we can’t find the thing that will save her. I can’t.”

  Without any hesitation, Maisie and Felix gathered the remaining handcuffs.

  “Thank you,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, just as Harry boomed from the doorway.

  “What do you three think you are doing? Put those down! Now!”

  Harry would not budge.

  “I need them for my act,” he answered every time they tried to get him to relinquish the handcuffs.

  “We’ll give them back when we figure out which set is ours,” Maisie said.

  “Look,” Harry told her, “I open at Tony Pastor’s tonight. I need to do my handcuff act. I’m famous for it.”

  Great-Uncle Thorne sniffed. “Famous? Hardly.”

  “And who exactly are you?” Harry demanded. “These two characters I know. But where did you come from?”

  “I am the son of Phinneas Pickworth, grandson of Thaddeus Pickworth of Washington Square,” Great-Uncle Thorne said in his haughtiest voice. Which is pretty haughty, Felix thought.

  “Yeah, well I’m the son of Mayer Weiss, learned man and rabbi, of Appleton, Wisconsin, and I says youse can’t have my handcuffs,” Harry said, pulling himself up to his full five feet five inches.

  Even at twelve years old, Thorne Pickworth towered over Harry.

  “Really?” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “I believe that you are from Pest, Hungary, and not Wisconsin. In fact,” he added, “I believe that you are a liar, Ehrich Weiss.”

  “Get outta here!” Harry yelled, his high voice turning to a screech. “All of youse!”

  But Great-Uncle Thorne didn’t budge. “Prince of Air, my foot,” he said. “You put on a pair of red stockings, hung from a tree, and called yourself the Prince of Air.”

  “I was in a traveling circus,” Harry insisted. “I was a trapeze artist, and I picked up needles with my eyelids, you . . . you . . .”

  “You fraud!”

  “You snob!”

  “You prevaricator!”

  At this, Harry balked. He blinked several times.

  Then he pointed his finger toward the door.

  “Out,” he said. “Now.”

  “Harry,” Felix began.

  But Harry shot him a look that made Felix shiver.

  “Harry,” Maisie tried, “if we could just keep the handcuffs for one night . . .”

  The look on his face made her give up.

  Great-Uncle Thorne, Felix, and Maisie left the apartment with Harry on their heels making sure they went down those stairs and out the door. From behind them, they heard the Weisses’ apartment door slam shut, hard.

  “Great,” Felix said as they stood on the sidewalk in front of 305 East 69th Street. “Now we don’t have any of the handcuffs, no place to stay, and Harry is so mad at us he’ll probably never talk to us again.”

  “I don’t care about Harry Houdini,” Great-Uncle Thorne roared. “We need to find my sister and keep her away from him.”

  Great-Uncle Thorne turned an icy stare on Maisie and Felix.

  “It’s a matter of life and death,” he intoned.

  “Then let’s stop standing around and find her,” Maisie said.

  “I thought she would come here,” Great-Uncle Thorne admitted. “She knows he lives here, after all.”

  “But she knows you know that,” Maisie said. “She’s going to try to outsmart you.”

  “Maybe she’s on Coney Island,” Felix said, warming to the idea of spending another day there in the sunshine, riding a slow roller coaster and letting the waves wash around his feet. Yes, he decided. That was much better than being here with Great-Uncle Thorne.

  Great-Uncle Thorne considered this.

  “We could split up?” Felix said hopefully. “Maisie and I could go to Coney Island to look for her and you could stake out the apartment.”

  “Hmm,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “Maybe.”

  “Actually,” Maisie said, “isn’t she safe as long as Harry doesn’t teach us something?”

  Great-Uncle Thorne’s eyebrows
bobbed. They were remarkable eyebrows for a twelve-year-old, bushy and expressive.

  “That’s how we get back, right?” Maisie said. “We give the item, and they give us a lesson.”

  “Oh no,” Felix said, remembering all the advice Harry had given him already: Be confident, be disciplined. To be great, youse gotta act great.

  “What?” Maisie demanded. “What did he tell you?”

  “I don’t know,” Felix said. “Lots of stuff.”

  “Magic tricks don’t count, do they?” Maisie asked Great-Uncle Thorne.

  But Great-Uncle Thorne seemed to be already thinking of something else.

  “No, no,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “How about tips on how to succeed?” Felix asked miserably.

  “He would of course have to give them to both of you,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, still disinterested.

  “Well,” Felix began.

  “Did that charlatan say he was opening at Tony Pastor’s tonight?” Great-Uncle Thorne said.

  “Tony Pastor’s New Fourteenth Street Theater,” Maisie said.

  “Oh, I know it well. That is the scene of all the unpleasantness. Dash had left the show, and Maisie and Harry decided to run off together after he did his act at Tony Pastor’s. That’s when Maisie and I had the fight, and I orchestrated our return.” Great-Uncle Thorne’s whole demeanor seemed to wilt with sadness at the memory.

  Aha! Maisie thought. Now she understood why they’d traveled back to June instead of March.

  “We’re redoing your time travel here, aren’t we?” she said.

  Great-Uncle Thorne suddenly brightened. “Why, yes, I believe we are.”

  “Huh?” Felix said.

  “My sister and I landed on Coney Island on June 18 the first time. And that’s when we landed this time as well,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, nodding as he spoke.

  “I get it!” Felix said. “Since Great-Aunt Maisie and you held the handcuffs with us, we somehow went on your trip.”

  “And if that’s the case,” Maisie said, “then I know exactly where to find Great-Aunt Maisie.”