Firetale

Firetale

  By Dante E. Graves

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author/publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Text copyright (c) 2015 Dante E. Graves

  All rights reserved

  To Marina.

  Table of contents

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1: The Tower & The Hermit

  Chapter 2: The Magician

  Chapter 3: Death

  Chapter 4: The Magician

  The Beauty & the Goat-man

  Chapter 5: The Star

  Chapter 6: The Hermit & the Devil

  Chapter 7: The Tower

  Chapter 8: The Magician & the Star

  Lost At Sea

  Chapter 9: The Moon

  Chapter 10: The Devil & the Moon

  Chapter 11: Judgment

  Chapter 12: Justice

  Another February

  Chapter 13: The Tower

  Chapter 14: The Hermit & Justice & the Devil

  Chapter 15: The Magician & the Star

  The Roach & the Giants

  Chapter 16: The Magician & the Hermit

  Chapter 17: The Moon & the Devil

  Chapter 18: The Magician & the Hermit

  Chapter 19: The Star, the Moon & Justice

  Chapter 20: The Magician

  Bad Seed

  Chapter 21: The Magician & the Star

  Chapter 22: The Magician & the Tower

  Heart of Stone

  Chapter 23: The Tower

  Chapter 24: The Magician & the Star

  Chapter 1: The Tower & The Hermit

  “And all my friends are skeletons,

  They beat the rhythm with their bones.”

  Soundgarden, “Spoonman”

  The U.S., some town. Present days.

  As the last sound of the charivari died away, the big top arena plunged into darkness. A spotlight flicked on, its beam illuminating a magician standing in the center. He was no glossy TV illusionist type. Short and broad-shouldered, he wore frayed jeans, a simple T-shirt, and worn high boots. The audience murmured its disappointment. On the table next to the magician lay a crystal ball, like one a medium in a movie might use to communicate with ghosts. The table also held a top hat and a candle.

  With his eyes fixed on the audience, the man picked up his top hat and held it out, showing the crowd that it was empty. He put his hand into the hat and pulled out a live dove, which sat on his palm. The bird moved its head, as if the light in the center of the arena blinded it, and tried to fly away, but the magician held it by its feet. Someone in the odeum shouted approval, but a chorus of boos overwhelmed the brief expression of praise. The spectators in the auditorium were people of the tullies, hard workers or unemployed, but certainly not simpletons who would be fooled by a trite trick. The magician smiled and threw his top hat beyond the illuminated circle.

  Holding the bird in his left hand, the magician reached his right hand into his jeans pocket and pulled out a lighter. He raised it above his head, showing the audience, and then lit the candle on the table, indicating that the flame was real. The magician brought his still-flaming lighter toward the dove.

  People in the grandstands were the first to smell the odor of singed feathers. Muttering and shouting rose up, and people jumped from their seats, shouting insults and threats. “Kick the freak’s ass,” someone yelled. Unfazed, the magician held the bird as if the flame couldn’t hurt it. As a trio of hotheads headed from the seats toward the arena, the bird flapped its wings, once, twice, thrice. The dove threw its head back and made a sound, not like a cry of pain, not like the sound one would expect from such a small bird. It was like the cry of a predator, meant to paralyze its prey with fear.

  The magician opened his left hand, and the dove flew to the top of the tent, sixty feet up, under the center pole. The bird began to increase in size. Now it was the size of a child, then an adult, then two adults. The light coming from the bird’s body lit up the whole tent. The roar of the flame, like the sound of a forest fire, deafened people, paralyzed them. The firebird froze for a moment at the highest point under the big top and looked down. People jumped up but couldn’t make a move to the exit in stampede. It was impossible to make out the bird’s features in the fire, but a giant predatory beak and a high caruncle were clearly visible. Its lurid silhouette looked like an unearthly crossbreed between an eagle and a pterodactyl.

  “Calm yourselves,” the magician called out, his voice loud enough for all to hear yet still composed, almost relaxed, and filled with confidence and a hint of mockery. “Hold your seats. You’re safe. It’s just a trick. This dicky will not hurt you. Besides, you haven’t seen the most interesting part.”

  The bird, which no longer looked like a dove, spread its wings and plunged. Halfway down, it made another thunderous cry, momentarily drowning out the roar of the flame and the screams of the crowd, and then began flying in a circle over the auditorium. The audience screamed. Some people fainted. Others recoiled and covered their faces with their arms or sought protection from their companions. A full minute passed. People uncovered their faces and watched the bird fly in its circle. The magician’s words were true. The beast made of fire couldn’t harm people. Its feathers exuded warmth but not heat. The bird slowed its circling and glided lower, so low that the most daring spectators could touch it. The shouting died away, replaced with laughter, and the huge creature continued its flight over the auditorium.

  Once, when the creature flew over a balding middle-aged man, the crystal ball on the magician’s table flashed red, setting the stranger’s face deep in the sphere. The audience, swept along with the performance, did not notice this.

  The magician snapped his fingers, and the bird, uttering a predatory call, darted up again, to the top of the tent. It paused there, hovering, and then exploded into a hundred little lights that slowly dissolved in the air, like snowflakes that melt before they touch the ground. But the biggest spark fell on the magician’s palm, where it continued to glow. The man covered it with his other hand, brought his hands to his mouth, and breathed on the spark. The last flake of fire went out, and only a banjo light remained. The magician opened his palms, and the white dove sprang upward and flew right under the dome of the big top. The auditorium exploded in applause and cheers.

  Mr. Lazarus Bernardius watched the spectators channeling off. He stood in the shadow of a cage with a wyvern in thirty feet away from the big top entrance. After half a century of life in a cave, the old lizard was not accustomed to light, and when performances ended, lights went out around its cage. Mr. Bernardius loved to come here to watch the audience unnoticed. He had been the circus tentmaster for many years but never got used to the crowd. The way he looked gave evidence of how uncomfortable he felt there. Spectators took his appearance for an artificial image that suited the circus’s freaks and monsters. He wore a black frockcoat with a red collar and long flaps, which gave his figure a lanky look, and a worn vest that was once the color of emerald. The vest was almost invisible because of a long and thick gray beard descending to his waist. Mr. Bernardius didn’t only dress like this when his circus came to another city; these were his regular clothes. The only elements of his dress that conformed to his image were a top hat and a cane with a handle in the shape of the head of the devil. The audience, of course, didn’t know that.

  The performance went well and the audience liked it. This was evident by the way peopl
e discussed it as they left the arena. Mr. Bernardius was so satisfied with this that he almost smiled. But this did not happen. He hadn’t smiled for one hundred and forty years, since his second death. Twice he had seen only darkness, which would discourage anyone from smiling, even those less inclined to melancholy than he was.

  The only thing that bothered Bernardius was Greg’s disturbing trick with a dove. The tentmaster did not like the magician’s willfulness—the man constantly repeated the trick despite all prohibitions. Lazarus was watching Greg’s performance and caught sight of the crystal ball turning red when the fiery bird flew across the odeum. This alarmed the tentmaster. Every night the ball turned red, and every night the conjurer disappeared mysteriously. This had almost never happened during Greg’s first year with the circus, but over the next couple of years, when he did the trick with the bird, the magician vanished until the next day.

  Greg didn’t need the crystal ball for the trick with the bird of fire, and Bernardius assumed that the magician used it to catch some kind of signal. Greg was looking for something he could not share with anyone, and for this he was ready to break the rules of the circus.

  The magician was one of the few inhabitants of the circus with normal human appearance, which allowed him to leave the camp freely, unlike the others. Greg never explained where he was when he was gone, and over time, Mr. Bernardius stopped questioning him.

  But, even if the magic of fire made Greg one of the most dangerous of Bernardius’s fosterlings, and even if all his tricks were pure, real magic, there were old, proven ways to find out where the illusionist spent his nights.

  Lazarus turned and headed for the yard behind the big top, where props, animals, and performers were readied for a circus and where trailers were parked away from public view. The grounds were dark; the lights in the trailers and campers would flash on when the last spectator left the circus. Only the spot near the entrance to the site was lighted.

  Brothers Blanche and Black were playing cards, sitting on hay bales and using an upside-down barrel as their card table. An oil lamp sat in the middle of the makeshift table. In their huge green and gray paws, the cards seemed like small scraps of paper. Hearing footsteps, the brothers grunted and stood up, but, seeing Lazarus, sat back down and doffed their bowlers in greeting. Bernardius nodded to them and went to the outermost trailer on the site, which stood apart from the others. The encampment behind the big top was almost silent, and by the time Bernardius reached the trailer, even Blanche’s and Black's grumbles and wrangles were barely audible. The tentmaster sighed and knocked on the door of the trailer. From inside came the sounds of breaking glass or mirrors, hurried steps, mumbling, and cursing. Footsteps approached the door.

  Lazarus tried not to look at the person who opened the door and was glad it was so dark. "Master?" The person looked puzzled. He did not invite Lazarus in, and Bernardius never expressed a desire to enter, although it was the tentmaster’s right to enter any premises of the circus.

  "I asked you not to call me that, Zinno," said Lazarus.

  "Yes, yes, Mr. Bernardius, sorry," the creature replied. His voice was pleasant, as if he sang every word. Lazarus stifled the urge to glance at him.

  "Are you alone, Zinno?" asked the tentmaster.

  "Yes, mas … Mr. Bernardius."

  "You're telling the truth? You know you must be alone, Zinnober," Lazarus said gently.

  "Yes, yes, Mr. Bernardius. I am alone. There is no one but me in the trailer." Zinnober's voice was so bashful and plaintive, that Lazarus, once again, had to suppress a desire to look into the eyes of the creature.

  "Good. I need your help, Zinno."

  "Mine, sir?" The creature's voice was full of genuine surprise.

  "I want you to follow Greg. I think he's going to leave the circus tonight."

  "Leave, sir?" Lazarus heard a barely concealed joy in Zinno's voice, but he chose to ignore it.

  "He's not going to run. He'll be back. But I need to know where he goes and what he does. I want to know everything about his every move, Zinnober. Do you understand me? I do not want him to endanger us all. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir. You can count on me."

  "Good," said Bernardius. He sighed and went straight to the backyard without saying goodbye.

  Only four people from the circus, including Lazarus, could sneak away to follow Greg, wherever he went. All the other inhabitants looked far too frightening to laymen. Of the four, the archivist would never leave his books and scrolls, Lazarus was needed to supervise the dismantling of the big top, and as for Martha, Bernardius just could not send her after Greg. That left only Zinnober. No one who saw him would remember his face. More to the point, they would remember too many faces …