“‘My palace is a little cold,’ said her lover. ‘Bright, but cold. I should warn you of this.’
“‘Then we will warm it together,’ answered the woman. ‘Where did I leave my good shoes?’”
“And in what town, what miserable inn, what hovel, did he finally abandon her?” Schmendrick was on his feet now. “Or did they find her body in some river? On some dungheap?” He was shaking his head, half in anger, half in amusement. “Go ahead — tell me the wretched rest of it.”
“All I can tell you,” came the quiet answer, “is that on that same night there came a total eclipse of the moon, and when it passed, both the woman and the man were gone, and were never seen again. Nor was any trace of them ever found.”
As the magician drew breath to respond, she added, “I am sorry if my story displeases you. I told it for a reason.”
“Of course you did. To make the point that whether or not her lover was actually the Man in the Moon, the real magic was in her belief — it was belief that kept her blissful and shimmering, and what else matters, after all? Understood, but my fairy tale is a little different, and I have already known too many who flourished on the belief of others. Thank you once more for the meal and the delightful children. And so good night and farewell, mistress.”
He turned, tugging the old cloak closer around himself. Mourra could not see her mother’s face clearly, but she heard her begin to speak — then stop herself — then finally say “You are a fool.”
Over his shoulder, the magician answered her, “Oh, I know that.”
Sairey said, “I did not tell you that tale in praise of blind belief. I meant you to understand that it was her faith in herself — not in him, not for a moment — that made whatever magic there was. I’ve no least idea whether or not she ever credited a word that man told her, but what I am sure of is that she knew — not believed, she knew, always — that she was a woman for whom the Man in the Moon would certainly come down to Earth.” Her voice sounded strangely breathless to Mourra’s ears, as though she had been running. She said, “Magic is not what you think it is, magician.”
She had also risen to her feet, and was standing with her back fiercely straight and her hands on her hips. Schmendrick had stopped walking, but had not turned again. “All I know,” he said, “all I have ever known, is that there is just enough magic in me to do me no good.” He drew a deep breath and held himself as erect as she. “Your children found me in a tree, where I was looking for a certain branch, one strong enough to take my weight. I thought I had at last found the right one, but it broke and I fell at their feet. Do you understand me now?”
Mourra heard a strange sound in her mother’s throat: a muffled click, as of a soft lock closing. The magician said, “I had been searching for some while. It is not as simple a matter as one might suppose. Not just any tree or branch will do for a man with my…blessings.”
From her window, Mourra saw her mother’s lips move, but no sound came out. Schmendrick continued, “But then, of course, I was obliged to see your Findros and Mourra safely home — which I accomplished no more skillfully than I had that other. Not my finest showing, all in all.”
Sairey whispered “Why?” more clearly this time, and Mourra’s face was suddenly so cold that she did not even notice that she was crushing her flower against it. She was terribly thirsty, but she could not move from the window, even for a moment, to reach the pitcher of water near Findros’s bed. Sairey said, “Why?” again.
“Your son said it — magicians do tricks. I was weary of tricks before he was born.” His laugh sounded as painful as though his throat and his mouth were full of glass. “Before you were born.”
Sairey’s voice softened, as it had when she spoke of watching her children sleep. “Listen. Listen. You don’t know. That branch breaking when you…what if that were the magic, protecting itself and you? That farm cart coming when you were lost with the children, when you called for help together…”
“Mourra said that.” The magician might have been talking to himself. “But the child was being kind.”
Sairey said, “The woman in my story never thought about whether what she was doing was magic or not. She was no magician at all, she simply opened herself to whatever there might be within her. You must do just the same as she to allow yourself what you wish for.”
Schmendrick stubbornly kept his back to her. “Wishing will not make it so. Believe me, I would know.”
Mourra heard her mother’s breath catch briefly once more before she spoke again. “So would I.”
The magician finally turned. He said nothing for the longest while, his face shadowed, his shoulders pale with the moon. “I expect to go on being a fool. I feel you should know this.”
“You’re alive. It’s much the same thing.”
“No more searching for the perfect branch, you think? Mind, I can’t promise.” He walked slowly toward her as he spoke.
“Oh, you’ll do as you must. People do.”
“But you will hope.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Yes.”
“So, then.” He leaned down, holding his open hands to either side of her own, where they rested in her lap. “Another gift. Palms out, please.”
From the window Mourra saw her mother raise her hands slowly, almost shyly. She wished she could see her face.
The magician laid his own palms gently against Sairey’s, his large, smooth hands completely hiding her small rough ones from view. He stood still for a very long time, murmuring, his head bowed and his hat near tumbling off, before he finally stepped back and said, simply, “There.”
Sairey spread her fingers. “I don’t see anything.”
“No, neither do I. But I don’t think I’m supposed to.” His tone, which might have been expected to be sad or frustrated once more, was in fact curiously pleased. “You might ask Findros in the morning, or Mourra.”
Ask me what? Mourra thought sleepily.
“You are a very strange man…and always welcome. Farewell, friend. Come to us again.”
To Mourra, eyes closing, chin now on her window ledge, it seemed that she heard the magician’s faint answer, “I will,” though later she thought that she might have dreamed that part. He never once looked back; her last glimpse of him was of a silly hat bobbing with determined jauntiness against the rising moon. As young as she was, and no matter what adults told her, she had never convinced herself to see more than a profile of some sort on the moon: now it seemed that she could make out almost the entire figure of a man leaning forward over something that might have been a fishing line. And behind him, over his shoulder…
Maybe that’s Papa. Maybe that’s Papa in the moon.
Sairey looked after the magician for a long time, before she finally patted the arm of the old chair. “Well, you were always my Earth,” she said aloud into the soft night air. “And I would have gone to the moon with you, or anywhere else. Except for the children, I would have gone.”
But Mourra missed the last words, and only noticed the new flower lying next to hers on the window ledge — white as the stars, except for its wine-red center — when the sun turned her pillow golden, and she awoke.
© 2011 by Avicenna Development Corporation.
Originally appeared in Sleight of Hand.
Reprinted from fantasy-magazine.com with no permission of the Avicenna Development Corporation.