The Illusions In Between

by J M Robison

  She doesn’t act triumphant at this big step forward. She knows no one dies in the Fae Realm and so can practice magic without fear of a fatal mistake.

  She presses against my leg. “I don’t want to hurt us.”

  “Ye shan’t. ‘Tis no different than the Fae Realm.”

  We stand for a good minute before she must have conceded we weren’t going to see Great Grandmother Ashdown until she relocates us to the double doors at the end. Then I hear the breath of a whisper, proceeded by a pop, and the door appears inches from my nose. She exhales. So do I.

  “I did it!” she squeals.

  I decide not to slice into her triumph by pointing out she almost put me into the door. I ruffle her hair and pull on the handle. February wind gushes through the gap, damp from the froth tossed up from the river below the bridge. I have her relocate us all the way to the Fae Gate to force her to stop being so scared of doing it.

  Standing in front of the large white slab of Fae Wood pressed into the mountain, I finger the black lines across its face in the complicated pattern which has kept the church from entering and capturing the last wizard. The last they saw of me was the day of my resurrection, famously marked by the arrival of a dragon in Village Centre to chase the Faewraith away.

  The church camped outside the Fae Gate for a full year before they decided I was long gone. Sometimes I still see them check, but those fears of mine are far less than Brynn’s who watched me die and has been fearful of me dying again ever since.

  But I’m double assured the church is not lying in wait on the other side, because they know nothing about the back door that Jaicom, Clarissa, and the Ashdowns all use when they chance a visit.

  The gate opens, and I usher Eudora into the tunnel. We emerge onto the boulder on the other side, and I create an illusion to cloak me so I’ll appear to others as having short red hair beneath my hat. I hate wearing anything on my head, but I agree with Brynn that, though I was born three centuries ago, I need to accept this new society I’ve come into. And all the men wear hats in public and don’t speak Old English…a dead giveaway to the church still hunting me.

  I hold Eudora’s hand and magically transport us off the boulder and into the trees, to the road, all the way to the train station until my magic-using might be noticed. Then we walk. It’s too much to hope someone would just think it an odd, unexplainable trick of the light or shifting shadows, because they all remember the wizard who fell in love with the Silverman’s daughter six years ago and caused enough ruckus to nearly burn down the Whaerin lumber house, summon man-eating Faewraiths, a dragon, die, and come back to life.

  I pay for our tickets, and we wait until the train’s whistle heralds its arrival. Eudora can’t sit still and walks over to bother the pigeons warbling around and trying to get inside the rubbish container.

  The train arrives. I find our booth, locking both of us inside. The train provides refreshments for the two-hour ride, but I don’t intend to answer any knock on the booth door. So being, I hand Eudora a sandwich I packed and a silver flask of water.

  The train whistles and a heavy chug…chug…chug…increases and the platform slides past my window faster and faster, steam belching upon people standing too close. Eudora sticks her head out the window, the bonnet Brynn tied under her chin threatening to dislodge.

  “Eudora, what spell did ye use on the leaf to find me? That is how ye found me, yes?”

  She sits down, bonnet skewed. “I spelled the leaf to touch thy boot.”

  “But ye couldn’t see my boot. For a relocation spell, ye must have the object in sight.”

  She screwed up her face. “I had a picture of thy boot in my mind. I spelled the leaf to find it.”

  That was edging the rule the Fae set on the matter, but apparently, the Fae understood Eudora’s spell clearly enough to answer it for her anyway. Jealous of my own daughter, I spend the rest of the trip figuring out how to communicate that spell myself, until the train’s whistle blares our arrival into Bristol station.

  We disembark, Eudora grumbling about her bonnet because, “Modor doesn’t have to wear one.”

  Modor doesn’t enter society for her protection. Except to visit her parents, and even then, I let her do so with bated breath.

  Thus, my trip to Bristol–to check my growing list of contacts so that maybe magic will be accepted in society again and the Eldenshod family can come out of hiding.

  I hire a carriage, and though Eudora wants to see Great Grandmother Ashdown right away, I tell the driver to take us to Castle Park. Eudora fusses the whole way because she wants to feed the pigeon in the square, watch the man performing trick-of-the-eye magic on the side of the street, ride the steamboat she sees when we cross the bridge. She must’ve gotten this desire to see and touch everything from me.

  The carriage stops beside the parish in Castle Park, and I exit, lifting my daughter down the steps, and tuck her amulet into her bodice. She stops grumbling when she spots Gorendwen, an eight-year-old gypsy boy, carving a stick with a knife. Eudora runs toward him, and I already feel sorry for the boys she’ll hoodwink into playing a game with her.

  She doesn’t get play time with other human children, though she does have a few playmates in the Fae Realm when I take her there to practice spells. But growing up with trolls, fleetlings, and mistifieds does not nurture a personality to function in a world where those things don’t exist.

  I leave her to her playmate and search for the camp’s doyenne. This doyenne is new as of four months ago. Gypsies find new ground every year, but they always pass on my request.

  The doyenne is sitting in front of the camp’s fire where lunch bubbles in the cauldron above it. My every arrival to this camp brings back the vivid memory of my ill-advised magic duel with the camp’s Black Magician.

  The Black Magician I dueled is long gone, but every camp has one. He stands off to the side, the most colorful of them all, like all the court jesters I’ve seen.

  “Hello, Zadicayn,” she responds with tired breath, the weight of gypsy hardships wearing on her stooped shoulders and dim smile. “Please join me at our fire.”

  I sit on the log across from her. Holding my bag in my lap, I withdraw a Fae Wood shaft, about the length of a crossbow bolt. I’ll give it to the doyenne so long as the contact she gave me the month prior checks out. The doyenne then gets to sell the Fae Wood shaft to the next person she thinks will be in favor of magic becoming part of society.

  The shaft is white with black script spiraled around it. The black script is a language writing out different spells. You touch the spell you want, and the Fae Wood can morph into something useful. I made this shaft, so it has the ability to turn into an arrow, spoon, dagger, and a coat hook since present-day Englishman find them sophisticated.

  I hand the shaft to her in exchange for two envelopes she hands back.

  “Two?” My list of contacts is only ever a handful of names scrawled on a single sheet. I can’t fathom to hope that over the last month enough names have come up to where one envelope was not big enough to hold them all. Then I see that, while the usual envelope I receive is not sealed, the second one is secured by an elaborate wax stamp.

  “An Italian man asked for you two weeks ago. When we told him you’d be arriving later in the month, he left this envelope.”

  “An Italian?” Valemorren, England, even in the year 1515, never attracted distinguished foreign figures. Even King Henry VIII, who spoke English and lived just ninety-six kilometers away in London, didn’t visit Valemorren.

  But a new thought enters, and I perk. Maybe my efforts to bring about acceptance of magic into society again has been so successful, people in Italy have heard of it. I tear the wax seal and slip the paper out.

  Zadicayn,

  I have a proposal to make. I’d like to discuss it with you at Blackfriars, at 5 o’clock on the day you arrive in Bristol. I’ll be watching for your arrival.

  - Carlo Vizzardelli

  I warm with hope, and
my imagination runs with all the words to be exchanged in this meeting, how I will set up contacts in Italy, and within a year I’ll be able to bring my family out of hiding and live like a normal English family.

  With this exciting new development, I open the second envelope with less enthusiasm, even though there are six names on it.

  I share the gypsies’ lunch and listen to their views on everything from religion to woolen socks, checking my pocket watch every fifteen minutes. I snap it shut for the final time and stand.

  “Thank you, Candelaria, for the contacts and lunch.”

  “See you next month, wizard.”

  I glance at the Black Magician who has not moved from his spot by the tree, arms folded. His body rises and relaxes, as if to inhale for an indignant huff. Black Magicians get their magic from the devil. It’s unstable and only as reliable as the wiles of the demon they’ve commissioned. My Fae magic is far superior but only granted to those the Fae find worthy. Lately, that’s only to me and my daughter.

  I fetch Eudora, who’s smudged dirt on her nice dress. She’s lost her bonnet. Grandmother Ashdown will have another one, along with a new dress. Grandmother Ashdown relishes Eudora’s visit as much as Eudora does. Her other grandchildren live in America and Wales.

  We walk out of Castle Park, and I wave down a carriage. We arrive at house number three ninety-six on Wickham Street. Eudora somehow manages to wait for the carriage to stop before she throws herself out of it and runs toward the house. I pay the driver and remove the illusioned red hair once he snaps the reins and the carriage rolls down the street. The door to the house opens to an aged woman whose dress sweeps around her great granddaughter as they embrace.

  I come onto the porch, and she reaches for me next, kissing both of my cheeks.

  “How’s my granddaughter?” She looks me up and down as if I’ve changed over the last month.

  “She’s well. And you?” I don’t understand this small talk, but present-day England loves it.

  “Still alive, though I fear poor Charles’s spirit haunts the house. The buffoons carried his body out head-first!” She grabs my sleeve and Eudora’s hand and pulls us through the foyer and into the drawing room. I murmur the spell and remove my illusioned hat, treating it like the real thing although it’s only colored air. Eudora scurries to her usual corner where Grandmother has baited her with various toys. Grandmother orders us tea. I look up to the daguerreotype clinging to the flowered wallpaper. The daguerreotype was taken six years ago, of me and Brynn. I’m sitting in a chair at a desk with Brynn standing behind me, hand on my shoulder.

  The daguerreotype was taken under the guise that I was Jaicom Whaerin, and I was to marry Brynn. I did marry Brynn, but we didn’t know how to tell Grandmother that I lied about my name. Hoping she’d die in a few years, we’ve kept up the ruse. Which also meant I’ve had to make friends with the real Jaicom Whaerin, so I can keep Grandmother up to date about a family that’s supposed to be mine. The Whaerins often appear in the newspaper.

  Our tea and biscuits arrive. Grandmother sips at hers daintily. “What’s the status on the queen granting you Lordship?”

  “Granted three weeks ago.” I lean back with my tiny cup. In my youth, social calls meant roaring bonfires in the Grand Hall, and goblets smashed together in jolly companionship. Now England’s been whittled down to speaking softly so as not to offend and having three different forks to eat with.

  Grandmother wiggles her shoulders. “I’m certain your wicked father is seething.”

  Aklen Whaerin is doing more than that in his prison cell in London. Jaicom broke the news to him last week. Wrote it in a letter instead of honoring his father with a visit. If my father murdered an entire family and a few random others, shot to kill my wife instead and hit me, I may not be inclined to visit him either, particularly not to tell him the Lordship granted him shifted to his son instead.

  “I am, too. I wrote a letter, and it’s too soon to tell if he’s replied.”

  We small talk other things, the growing revolts spreading across Europe from unhappy middle and working-class people to the rubber band patented three years ago.

  I check the clock hanging on the wall. “I have a social affair at Blackfriars in half an hour. Don’t wait on me for dinner.”

  She acknowledges, and I hustle out of the room. I’m almost out of the foyer when I remember my hat. No one’s watching, so I cause the illusioned hat hanging on the wall to disappear and reappear on my head. I call for a coach.

  I’m driven to a restaurant along the river, fashioned with black pillars spiraled with kudzu. The inside of Blackfriars is kept warm by a snapping fire in the hearth to my left. I’m soon to be further warmed by a hot goblet of cider. I’m early, so I choose a table near the fire and order my drink. To think, six years of constant, almost useless effort to bring about society’s acceptance of my magic again, and now a man from Italy has heard of me and come all this way to speak to me. Italy is where the pope resides; he’s the one who commissioned the manhunt on me. Maybe this meeting is my saving grace to making the church stop its hunt if the Pope hears how harmless I am.

  I contain my zeal as best I can and hide my grin behind the newspaper. Watching the clock, as soon as the second hand snaps to the twelve position, the door chimes open. A man steps in. His clothes are at odds with the rest of England. His long-tailed coat is open in the front where a white ruffled tunic pushes out of it. His white pantaloons only reach his knees, where tall white socks further cover his legs.

  His eyes scan the room, finally making eye contact with me. My illusioned red hair has become my identifier among my contacts.

  He sits opposite at my table with a refined air granted those who are used to being obeyed. “Ciao. I am Carlo Vizzardelli. You must be Zadicayn?” Carlo’s accent is thick, though he uses English words in their proper use and order. Clearly well learned in the language but does not use it often.

  “I am. How can I help ye?”

  His eyes scan me up and down, focusing on the lump beneath my tunic and coat. My amulet. All my contacts know of it, but Carlo’s eyes linger too long, hinting at something I cannot place, and it unnerves me. Could be I’m not familiar with Italian expressions.

  “I’ve been waiting for you for two weeks,” he says. “You are a Fae Wizard.”

  “I am.”

  “Prove it.”

  Most of my contacts ask this question. Dogma is reserved for God and the devil. I adjust my newspaper to block the top of our table from view from the rest of the room, and illusion a massive gold blossom to grow and bloom out of the wood, glittering like starlight. A single word from me and it vanishes.

  Carlo grins. “It is true.”

  “’Tis.”

  “I thought all Fae Wizards were killed some three hundred years ago.”

  “I’m the last one. Been in hiding this whole time.”

  He leans back, right arm hooking the back of his chair. “You are valuable.”

  Pleasant heat rises in my cheeks. I begin working in my head how to ask him to say such things to the pope when he returns to Italy.

  His gaze flicks down to the amulet hidden beneath my tunic and then back at me. “I’d like for you to come to Italy with me.”

  “Italy?” As much as it looks like I can establish contacts closer to the pope, I’m not about to travel across the continent with a stranger. I’m aware my contacts might also be spies for the church to undo me. “Whatever for?”

  He leans closer, stretching his neck toward me as far as he can. I lean back. “I’m with the Illuminati. We want to offer you a job.”

  The first and last time I heard the word Illuminati was six years ago, during a conversation I had with a Black Magician gypsy. The gypsy said I could find employment with them if I wanted because the Illuminati dealt with Black Magicians. He couldn’t elaborate on what the Illuminati were, only that they were involved in the church, and politics are dealt in secret.

  My hope sinks. This
wasn’t to develop contacts in Italy at all.

  I try maintaining my cheerful disposition. I clear my throat. “I’m sorry ye came all this way and waited for so long to meet with me, but I cannot work for the Illuminati.”

  The man sighs, not in disappointment, I feel, but as if I just made something much harder on him. “Even though you’ll be paid a generous ten thousand florins, which equals sixty thousand English pounds a year?”

  I’m tempted. Still, for reasons above me, I decline again.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?”

  I want to tell him it’s due to his travel to England and time spent waiting for me that fails to outwardly display any regret for the waste of efforts in his expression. “The Fae employ me, and I’ve been dis-advised from getting my magic involved with either religion or politics.”

  “You assume we have dealings in those areas?”

  “Do ye not?”

  “Our focus is to oppose those who would force religious influence over the public and stop the abuse of state power. So sometimes we must involve ourselves with religion and politics to accomplish those goals.”

  “So why the secrecy?”

  “Those in power don’t like to be opposed. Zadicayn, you’d do well accepting my offer. Name your price. We will pay you whatever you want.”

  “I’m sorry, Carlo. I won’t work for the Illuminati.”

  His jaw clenches, and he slams a fist on the table. I flinch in shock, and all eyes in the room turn toward us. Carlo slides his hand off the table and reclines back. It’s not until the other patrons go back to their own business that his gaze darkens on me. I have a spell in mind for my defense if he chooses to use his demon on me.

  “This is not an option,” he snarls. “Our needs for your magic supersede your refusal.”

  Dangerous heat flares through me, and I don’t need to see his ulterior motives to defend myself. I rise from my chair, a spell on the tip of my tongue. “Are ye forcing me?”