NOW YOU SEE IT
by Morgan Llywelyn
Weary beyond weariness, Joklyne rubbed his burning eyes for the ninth time. Bed! If only he could tumble into a soft bed and sleep for a week. But to do that he must have a bed, and his most recent landlord had just evicted him for being too far behind in his rent. Right now the only home he had was the Men’s Toilet in the Grand Concourse. He had to have money. The only way he knew to get money was through magic, in a city where almost everyone practiced magic.
No, Joklyne amended ruefully, the others don’t practice. Almost everyone but me can work magic, at least some degree of genuine magic, the manipulation of natural forces through supernatural agency. The smallest child in the street can make toys materialize or pets vanish. I’m the only one who has to practice, rehearsing basic legerdemain that wouldn’t fool any citizen of Constantinople. To the rest of them I’m a fraud. My tricks are only good for earning a few coppers from first-time visitors to the City of Magic, credulous tourists eager for sorcery but not really knowing what it is.
Joklyne knew what sorcery was. And he had long ago accepted the sad fact that his best efforts were only a pale imitation of the genuine abilities of the Magically Gifted.
It was not much of a life.
The Men’s Toilet was not much of a home, either. But at least it was solid, being part of the Grand Concourse, one of the very few solid and permanent structures in Constantinople. Most of the city’s buildings were magicked, dreamed or conjured into being by some denizen of the place to fulfill the desires of the moment, and likely to burst as effortlessly as a soap bubble when they had served their purpose. Magic did not require solidity or permanence. Men who could not work magic did require a substantial setting, however. Joklyne longed with all his weary being for a real wooden bed with a real feather mattress, standing on four firm legs on a solid floor.
The Grand Concourse had to be solid because it was the hub of Constantinople, the terminal that welcomed visitors—and their money—from the mundane world. Built of red marble and rose quartz, it towered dome upon dome above the apparitional city. Amid flux and flow, the Grand Concourse offered newcomers a place to catch their breath upon arrival and adjust themselves to the heady air of illusion . . . and to have their arrival as tourists officially certified so the appropriate fees could be extracted from their assets in the mundane world.
“Meet me at the GC, Jo,” a friend might say, and no matter how the city changed, Joklyne could always find the Concourse and the waiting friend. But friends were pretty thin on the ground. A man with no money had limited social prospects. Life was a matter of struggling to survive, while watching the Magically Gifted effortlessly supply themselves with crystalline palaces or silken pavilions or shimmering sailplanes.
It was enough to make a man bitter.
Joklyne strove not to be bitter, to accept his lack of talent with good grace. He was the first to laugh at himself—a grown man living in the Men’s Toilet.
It was just that this morning his eyes burned and his neck was stiff and he was finding it hard to laugh at anything as he stared into the mirror above the basin, then shuffled out through the varnished oak doors to look for some arriving tourist he could impress with a bit of sleight of hand. Make their shoes appear to turn into silver. Create a shower of rice from empty air.
Or his old standby, the Seven Marble Shuffle. That one was usually good for some coins tossed into his battered hat.
As he stepped out onto the gleaming marble floor of the huge lobby he was digging in one of the countless pockets of his custom-made, but shabby coat, looking for his seven marbles. Nine, really. That was the heart of the trick. Anyone with manual dexterity and a bit of patience could learn to perform it.
Joklyne’s stomach was growling ominously. If he was dizzy from hunger he might not be able to do the Seven Marble Shuffle. Better use the last coppers he had, he decided, and buy something to eat in one of the shops and stalls sure to be found, however briefly, out on the streets of the city.
Noting regretfully that there was no current influx of new arrivals, Joklyne made his way to the broad front entrance and went out beneath the pillared portico at the top of a sweep of imposing stone steps. At once the city assailed him with myriad sounds. Bells, chimes, peals of thunder, the laughter of unicorns, the squeal of clouds being knotted, the tinkling of crystal and clanging of gold. Joklyne turned up the collar of his coat as if he had stepped into a deluge.
He disliked being abroad in Constantinople. The environment of the City at the Center of the World was hostile to its few unmagical citizens. Although he had been born and bred in the city, Joklyne had always thought of himself—or been forced to think of himself—as an outsider. He was different; he was handicapped by his lack of magical talent. He could only deal in tangible realities, which were frequently painful and did not cushion his way through life. “Why don’t you go where you belong?” some of the more cruel inhabitants of the city occasionally taunted him. “Why don’t you go out in the mundane world where they’re used to your kind.”
How could he answer? The truth was, Constantinople was home, the only home he knew. Uncomfortable as it might be for him, he found the idea of the mundane world even more uncomfortable. At least here he knew the rules.
The rules, as the Emperor Dagus enforced them, were that the Magically Gifted were pampered and privileged, and much less likely to incur one of Dagus’ savage and arbitrary persecutions. The Thirteen Families, those most in the Emperor’s favor, were the people most likely to tyrannize the less gifted. Those Who Could, Joklyne thought to himself, trampling without a care on Those Who Could Not. But it was probably the same in the mundane world, he reasoned. The strong always stood on the backs of the weak. Being one of a tiny and oppressed minority had made Joklyne philosophical. It had also made him wary, and now, as he stepped out onto the streets of the city, he braced himself out of long habit.
Anything might happen. In Constantinople the unexpected was everyday fare and a man’s only protection was a quick wit, if he had no sorceries at his fingertips.
Joklyne descended toward street level. A beggar near the foot of the steps glanced up at him. Joklyne knew the man by sight as another of the ungifted who made a precarious living by soliciting alms from tourists. His clothing was even shabbier than Joklyne’s threadbare garments. “Is there a train in?” the beggar enquired hopefully. Joklyne shook his head. “Not yet. Quiet as a tomb in there. Give it a few more minutes.”
“A few minutes real time, or a few minutes Constantinople time?”
Joklyne forced a smile. “There is no time in the Magic City,” he replied. The ancient saying tasted dusty and shopworn in his mouth. The Magically Gifted could avoid aging, but he was aware that his hair was turning gray and his face was seaming.
The beggar shrugged and turned away. Joklyne watched with casual interest as the man made his way down the Central Avenue in the general direction of the Cathedral. Perhaps the begging would be better elsewhere.
Joklyne stopped watching him and glanced up and down the street instead, trying to decide whether to go to the left or the right. Eventually he ambled off to the left, but the only eating places he found were glittering and costly restaurants that had sprung up overnight to satisfy the whim of the inhabitants for some new exotic food. They would be gone tomorrow. And Joklyne knew he could not afford them anyway.
He turned, listening to his stomach growl, and made his way back toward the Grand Concourse, intending to search for some affordable shop on the other side—if one existed today.
He had just spotted a little booth with a striped awning that looked promising when the sun went out.
To be precise, there was no sun, as the Magic City did not depend on solar illumination. Someone had once magicked a great golden globe in the sky above the GC, which shed glittering rays of gold dust that fell like rain and sparkled in rivulets in the streets. It had been such a success that it had been allowed to remain there for as long as anyone could remember, kept in place almost unconsciously by the collective desire of the Magically Gifted.
But on this day it went out. Ceased. Vanished.
Joklyne rubbed his eyes, fearing for a moment that he had gone blind.
Then he perceived, dimly, through an unfamiliar twilight, the outlines of the shops and stalls along the street.
One moment they were there.
The next moment they were gone.
In itself this was not unusual, as structures were continually being refashioned in the twinkling of an eye. But no eyes twinkled. The buildings were not replaced. Joklyne heard the sound of something very heavy collapsing with a great crash in the next street over. At the same time, a sailship fell out of the sky just in front of him. The sorcerer’s wind that propelled the craft had ceased abruptly. With a rending of silken sails and a splintering of ebony planks, the vessel disintegrated before Joklyne’s astonished eyes.
Its occupants, two women and a man who belonged to the Thirteen Families, sat dazed amid the wreckage. The man pulled himself together enough to wave his hands and make passes through the air, but nothing happened. One of the women said something contemptuous to him and began trying to extricate herself from the wreck, which was rapidly fading into nothingness.
Only light streaming through the great glass doors of the Grand Concourse illuminated the scene. Throughout the city, buildings that owed their tensile strength to magic were simply falling apart. Pleasure pavilions perished. Trees of emeralds shrank into brittle weeds devoid of leaf. Roses of rubies withered and died. Dead vegetable matter made blotches on lawns suddenly sere and brown.
The splendor of Constantinople was . . . gone.
In its place was a sprawl of ancient, noisome tenements that had been given no upkeep for centuries. Walls had crumbled, roofs rotted, paint peeled away like flesh from a dead skull. Alabaster streets faded to reveal muddy trackways beneath their illusion, where open sewage ran.
Compared to the real Constantinople, Joklyne realized, the Men’s Toilet in the Grand Concourse was a palace. He stood thunderstruck, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. This was the place in which he had been born and spent all his days! This slum. Was it possible?
Yet he knew it was. The bone-deep intuition of a native told him that he was seeing his true birthplace, his real habitat. This slum . . . was the Magic City. As it really was.
Then he heard the rumble of a train beneath his feet, approaching the terminal through one of the railway tunnels leading into the city. Within minutes a crowd of tourists would be swirling through the lobby and twittering with anticipation, eager for their first glimpse of magic.
Joklyne took a long look at the destination that awaited them. The magic had failed. He did not know why; having no understanding of true magic he could not begin to speculate either on its motive force or the loss of same.
But he was no fool. He knew opportunity when he saw it. Joklyne spun on his heel and ran toward the Grand Concourse. He took the steps three at a time. As he ran he fumbled with his clothing, bringing up his full bag of tricks from the capacious pockets he had once designed. As he hurried into the light he felt the darkness of the city behind him as if it were tangible. He could hear the first screams of the citizens of Constantinople as nightmare descended on them. Their world had fallen apart and they were helpless, more helpless than any wild animal, for they had no survival skills apart from their magic. They did not know how to heal the wounds they were suddenly suffering as buildings fell on them before dissolving. The buildings vanished, but the wounds remained, bleeding. Hundreds were dying in the shockingly altered streets. Their voices rose into one mighty wail of terror.
“Serves you right,” Joklyne whispered to himself. “Thought you were gods, didn’t you? Thought you were better than anybody. Hah!”
He felt pity, but sternly thrust it aside. He would not allow himself to be tormented by sympathy for people who had shown no sympathy to him.
At least, not now. Maybe later. He knew he would grieve for them later, because he had a tender heart.
But now he was going to do something for himself, because he knew that if he failed to do so he would regret it for the rest of his days.
Joklyne strode briskly across the marble lobby just as the double doors that led to Platform C swung open. An influx of tourists poured through. They wore expensive clothing and had the sleek, well-fed look of businessmen and their wives. Some sort of convention, perhaps. Constantinople was the ultimate convention site. Visitors were willing to pay a fortune to riot amid mansions of amber and chalcedony and lapis lazuli.
But those mansions were gone now. Suddenly, incredibly, gone.
Joklyne wondered briefly if the great gold and jade palace that was home to Emperor Dagus had also disappeared. Or was it real, substantial enough to withstand whatever had just happened? As the lowest of the low, he had never got close enough to the royal palace to find out. Joklyne shook his head. No time to think of such things now, not with a fresh tide of visitors flowing toward him. Habit took over and he moved forward to intercept them, wondering how to comport himself in the changed circumstances. The Magic City they were expecting had gone, but surely there was still some way for a clever man to make money from gullible strangers.
With a practiced eye, Joklyne selected the most likely target. A portly man with a florid face was just patting his coat to be certain he still had his wallet in an inside pocket. That sort of nervousness was a dead giveaway; the fellow was unsure of himself. Joklyne adopted his customary expression for such occasions, a humble, hopeful smile, the offering of a man who has learned to expect rejection. He walked forward with his hand outstretched. “Welcome to Constantinople, good sir!”
“Don’t need a guide,” the portly man said dismissively. “We know what we want to see.”
At this, a dumpy woman in a costly but unflattering print dress came forward to stand beside him, brushing a wisp of graying hair out of her eyes. She gave Joklyne a diffident smile. “It’s our first holiday together in years, really,” she said in a rather plaintive voice. “I’ve been so looking forward to this.”
“Ah.” Joklyne filled his voice with sympathy, as if the loss were his. “What a pity.”
The couple hesitated as other visitors brushed past them, heading toward the doors.
“What do you mean?” the portly man demanded to know.
“The Magic City is, alas, no more,” Joklyne replied.
The man gave him an incredulous stare. “You’re joking.”
Joklyne sighed. “Would that I were. But I’m telling you for your own sake, the city you came to see isn’t out there anymore.”
“No magic?” the woman asked plaintively, beginning to fuss with the string of pearls she wore around her plump neck.
“Pay no attention to this . . . this person,” her husband ordered. “Come on, Hazel, we’ll see for ourselves what this is all about.” He caught her by the arm and pulled her toward the doors.
Joklyne swiftly interposed his body between them and the exit. “If you once go through those doors,” he advised, “the electronic eye buried in the doorway will scan the ticket fixed to the bracelet on your arm and report back to your travel agent that you have indeed visited Constantinople. Once that happens, as you were surely told, the full sum charged for your trip will be deducted from your credit account back home. There will be nothing you can do about it then, even if you are totally disappointed with your trip.”
“How do you know that?” the man asked suspiciously.
“We in the Magic City know a great deal about our visitors,” Joklyne replied, his smile reflecting genuine concern. “It is our business to know about them, and to make them happy. We are here for their pleasure. Or rather, we were here for their pleasure. Now that the magic has gone, I cannot imagine that tourists will be flocking into Constantinople to see what remains. It isn’t very prepossessing, I’m afraid.”
The portly man was watching him with a dubious expression. But his wife was increasingly distressed. “Oh, Herbert, if it’s as this man says, we should turn around and go home, you know? We don’t want to be charged for magic if there isn’t any.”
“We only have his word for that,” Herbert replied. Just at that moment, however, the first of the tourists who had gone out into the city came back through the doors of the Grand Concourse. They looked dazed and frightened.
“It’s chaos out there!” one cried. “No lights, no buildings, people running everywhere screaming . . .”
Joklyne nodded. “I told you,” he said to Herbert.
“So you did,” the portly man agreed reluctantly. “Well, friend, I guess I owe you one. At least we won’t be charged.”
“But I did so want to see some magic,” his wife murmured, almost to herself. “Something to remember and tell the children about.”
Joklyne turned toward her. “We hate to have our visitors disappointed,” he said in a kindly tone. Any mention of children always touched him, he who lived alone with neither wife nor child, and hated his loneliness. Though how could a man with no talent offer a wife anything? “If you want to see magic, of course you shall,” he promised. “The best we have to offer. Oh, it may not be quite what you expected, but you won’t be charged thousands of credits for it, and at least you can go back home and tell your children that you saw, ah . . . the Dancing Scarves!”
He promptly wriggled his fingers in the direction of his chest, then closed his hands into fists. When he opened them a rainbow of silk scarves fluttered around his head and shoulders. The dumpy little woman gave a squeak of pleasure.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hazel,” her husband snapped at her. “That’s a parlor trick, nothing like what we came here for.”
“Ah, but that’s only the beginning,” Joklyne assured them, warming to his performance. He flicked his wrists and tossed his head and the scarves began to writhe with a life of their own, bowing and dancing on an invisible wind. At his apparently magical behest they formed themselves into flower shapes, tulips and irises and great full-blown roses. Hazel clapped her hands together like a child. “It is magic,” she breathed, determined to believe.
Joklyne smiled modestly. “In a small way,” he replied. “Now watch this.” He tossed the scarves into the air, caught the end of one, and snapped it. At once they disappeared, and in their place Joklyne was holding a silver chain. He offered it to the woman. “Put your fingers through this loop,” he instructed.
“Should I?” she asked her husband.
Joklyne frowned in momentary annoyance. The poor creature was obviously very much under Herbert’s fat red thumb. The spurious magician knew how it felt to be a nonentity. Without waiting for Herbert to give his permission, Joklyne twisted the chain and it suddenly knotted itself around the woman’s wrist. There it sparkled like diamonds. A snap of Joklyne’s fingers and it doubled and trebled itself, paving her entire arm with glittering silver. Her eyes opened wide in wonderment.
The tourists who had ventured out into Constantinople and returned in shock were milling around the lobby, trying to decide what to do next and talking among themselves in anxious or angry voices, depending upon their various characters. A few of them wandered over toward Joklyne and watched, curiously, as he ran through his repertoire for Herbert and his wife. They saw the Shower of Rice trick, the Disappearing Ball, Three Pieces of Cloth, and Joklyne’s pièce de résistance, the Seven Marble Shuffle.
With this one he won Herbert over. It had always been Joklyne’s best trick, and he had never done it so well as today.
Soon a crowd was gathered, watching. Herbert became quite proprietary, explaining, “This man kept us from going out there. Instead he’s been working magic in here for us, and it isn’t costing us anything, either.” He clapped a meaty hand on Joklyne’s shoulder.
Joklyne had never had such a large and appreciative audience. A few of the tourists, feeling cheated, had made their way back to the trains, but most of them stayed to watch, determined to see at least a few small wonders after having come so far. And strangely enough, the tricks were not as insubstantial as Joklyne considered them to be. Warmed by his audience, he found himself taking more chances, enlarging his repertoire as variations occurred to him. What he was doing was not magic, not magic as the gifted of the City would have performed it, yet there was a certain feel about it, a tingle, a rush, as if somehow a fragment of the sorcerer’s gift had entered Joklyne’s fingers after all. He found himself enlarging the Seven Marble Shuffle to Nine and never missing a beat. The Shower of Rice was transmogrified into a Shower of Apples. It was as if he could think the magic into being.
And it was magic. At some point he could never remember afterwards, Joklyne’s tricks ceased being tricks, and became the manipulation of natural forces by supernatural agency. For the first time in his life, Joklyne began to experience what the Magically Gifted had enjoyed, the sense of power. His heart sang in him. Outside in the city there was no magic, but within the rosy walls of the Grand Concourse one small and humble fraud had become a true practitioner. Best of all, his abilities were appreciated.
“You’ve saved me a lot of money,” Herbert conceded. “I think it’s only fair that you have, ah, some small percentage of what this trip would have cost me if you hadn’t stopped me from going out through those doors.” He pressed a sheaf of credit notes into Joklyne’s astonished hands.
Meanwhile, others in the impromptu audience were digging into their own wallets and pocketbooks and taking out, not coppers, but similar notes which they bestowed on the delighted Joklyne.
They had come for magic and he was giving it to them, even if it was not the magic they had expected. But they were not thieves, these visitors. They were prepared to pay for value received. And Joklyne was giving them considerable value. He essayed, and to his own astonishment achieved, the Vanishing Tiger Trick. And the Clouds of Flame. And materialized a fountain of perfume in the center of the lobby of the Grand Concourse. Twittering like birds, a bevy of women rushed to dip their fingers in the fragrant scent and splash it on their temples and wrists.
Joklyne felt as if he were flying.
Another train arrived. A fresh influx of visitors elbowed aside the first, and to these newcomers Joklyne repeated his warning. Some ignored him and ventured outside the GC, only to return a few minutes later, as angered and disappointed as the first group, and satisfy themselves with gathering around Joklyne and watching his performance. By now he had set his hat on a stair rail and people were stuffing money into it. When the hat would hold no more, someone produced a shopping bag and gave it to him. Or perhaps Joklyne materialized the shopping bag for himself.
Meanwhile, as confusion gripped the city outside no one was paying any attention to what was happening within the Grand Concourse. Constantinople was like a giant animal in its death throes. Tourists were the last thing on its mind. Nor was Joklyne any longer concerned about the fate of the city beyond the walls. He occupied a magical sphere of his own, a world he had never thought to inhabit. His wildest fantasies had become reality.
A tiny blond girl with bouncing ringlets tugged shyly at Joklyne’s arm. “Please sir,” she said, “I was promised trees covered with jewels. And unicorns. Can you make unicorns?”
Joklyne gazed down at her earnest little face. “I can’t make anything as wonderful as a unicorn,” he started to tell her, but then he found himself falling helplessly into the stars in her eyes, and heard his voice say, “I shall do my best, sweetheart.”
He waved his hands. He closed his eyes in a moment of intense concentration. He . . . clenched . . . his mind in a way he had never known he could. And suddenly, in the distance, he heard a distinct rumble of inhuman laughter.
The voice of a unicorn.
The beast came trotting toward them across the gleaming marble floor, its golden hooves clattering metallically. When it reached the little girl it stopped, dipped its gleaming single horn to her in salute, and knelt before her, pressing its great head against her small bosom while a beatific expression stole across its face.
The watching crowd cried out in wonder.
In that moment, Joklyne the humble, Joklyne the insignificant, owned the world and all its treasures. Standing at the center of what seemed a vast and bedazzled audience, he performed feats of magic beyond his wildest dreams. He could do anything. Whatever he attempted, succeeded. It was as if the sum total of magic that had been subtracted from the substance of Constantinople had been conferred upon one man, who now flung it into the air like a shower of stars and brought forth wonders on demand. People shouted out the names of magical accomplishments they had only read about, and Joklyne obliged. The Swimming Salmon, the Levitating Lady, the Guillotine—he did them all. Effortlessly. Feeling confidence rich as marrow in his bones.
Sometimes the balance shifts, he thought to himself. And even the weak may stand on the backs of the strong.
He grinned at his audience. With a single wide sweep of his arm he produced, for their delight and delectation, a genie almost as tall as the great dome of the Concourse, an exotic figure with gleaming green skin and gleaming white teeth and a pair of voluminous pantaloons made of crimson silk, tied at the waist with ropes of pearls.
It had occurred to Joklyne that having the genie grant each member of his audience three wishes would make an unforgettable climax for his performance. He wanted to give these people something special; their admiration was giving him so much.
“Now you see it!” Joklyne cried gaily, gazing up at his masterpiece, “and now . . .”
In that moment, the balance shifted again.
Joklyne felt sorcery drain from him as if someone had opened his veins. The tingling flowed out of him, leaving him exhausted and slightly nauseous. As it faded, the genie faded, becoming as translucent as his silken pantaloons and then disappearing with a loud pop.
“What happened?” cried one of the tourists, aware of an unsettling change in the atmosphere.
“Listen,” said another. They listened. The screams and death cries from beyond the walls of the Grand Concourse had ceased. In their place was a startled silence. Then something like a faint, uncertain cheer.
The visitors stared at one another, unable to interpret the sounds reaching them. But Joklyne could. Born in Constantinople, he knew the city thoroughly, knew its moods. As surely as if he had gone to the great front doors and gazed out, he knew the magic had returned.
Whatever the Magic City had lost, she had, in one blinding flash, regained.
Joklyne drew a shaky breath. He could not tell how much time had passed; while reveling in his power, he had lost any sense of time. It might have been an hour, it might have been a day that he held his audience in the palm of his hand.
But whatever time of sorcery had been vouchsafed to him, he realized with a wrench of pain that it was not enough. He had tasted the magic now, had shared the incomparable feeling of being able to create with the simple force of his mind and his concentration. No matter what happened outside, how could he ever go back? How could he ever be content, knowing so clearly what he lacked?
His brief period of magic had been, not a gift, but a curse that would make him thoroughly miserable for the rest of his life. He saw it so clearly, with eyes that could look beyond illusion.
Pain welled up in him like a pool of tears.
The tourists were no longer thronging around him as densely as they had been. Already they were beginning to drift away; some wandered toward the doors to peer out cautiously. Joklyne knew what they must see: the crystal towers returning, the golden globe shedding its gold dust on the alabaster streets.
In a moment they would abandon Joklyne altogether and rush outside to experience the real thing.
Joklyne sighed very softly to himself.
A small hand seized his large one and tugged, hard. He looked down. It was the tiny girl with golden ringlets.
“Oh please,” she said to him, “won’t you make the unicorn come back? Just for a moment, just to tell me good-bye.”
“I cannot,” he told her. If he spoke even one word more he thought the pool of pain inside himself would brim over and spill out.
The child shook her sunny head. “Of course you can,” she said with the assurance of total belief. “You just did it. Do it again.”
In her voice was the command of an empress.
Expecting defeat, but unable to deny her, Joklyne waved his hands; closed his eyes; clenched his mind.
And even as the magic returned, without reason or explanation, to the Magic City, the man who had once lacked the sorcerer’s skill heard the clatter of metallic hooves dancing across the marble floor.