Return (The Magician – Chapter Four)

This is the fourth chapter of the serialization novel I am working on, The Magician – < click there to read the other chapters if you missed them.

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Return

Everyone who was involved in Malatesta’s Traveling Show dynamically accepted the news that they were ending their shows in the old country.  After the final cities of the current tour, they would be returning to the new country. The entourage had spent nearly twenty years touring around the regions that made up the old world that rejected magical kind many generations ago.  Lorenzo Malatesta decided finally that the show was ready to set its sights on the new world.

Ignace took a deep breath when he heard the news, trying to still his nerves. He had hoped they would never go back to the country he had once called home. He could not bear to show those who knew him long ago how far he had stooped. He did not want them to see what he had become. He did not wish to show them their predictions had come true.

But he knew, given that Lorenzo had ensnared him long ago because of who he was and where he had come from, that the director was apt to want to make sure the tour made a stop in Allium. He was the star performer. A stop in his hometown would be promoted far and wide. He just knew that to be true.

Though he kept his face calm, the emotions within him were running rampant, twisting his stomach into knots. He clenched his hands into fists to keep the magic from churning into his famous colors. He knew better than to let Lorenzo see his displeasure and pain. It would feed the director’s power even more.

Ignace breathed deeply again. He resolved that whatever came of it, he would deal with it. He had over twenty-five years of experience of being in the spotlight. He could learn to be the curiosity of Allium once more.

Besides, it wasn’t as if his family was looking for him anyway. His actions had ensured he was cast off from them for good. They had turned their backs on him just as much as he had turned his back on them. The magical edifices of his ancestor had ensured that. But another magic within the family also made them remember him, even if they wished to forget.

He just wondered how much they had forgotten and what, if anything, they had remembered.

The tour crossed the ocean by chartered flight, flying in the middle of the night though many in the old country said that would bring a bad omen. But the grueling schedule Malatesta had initiated deemed it so, for they had a great many cities planned for this one-of-a-kind tour. It had cost him more funds than he had been willing to part with, but it was projected that he would gain a fortune from this tour. That made the risks worth it in Malatesta’s eyes.

Ignace sat in his window seat, staring out at the endless expanse of night. The interior lights and the windows of the plane made it difficult to see any of the stars, but Ignace knew they were out there. The moon was also full. Even though Ignace was on the opposite side of the plane from where the moon shone in its splendor, he still watched the light bathe the waves beneath him in the silvery glow.

Some of his tour mates chatted as the motors droned on endlessly. Most of the show crew, however, were sleeping. They were exhausted from what had been an arduous last leg of their old country tour and the late hour with which they had to make this flight.

But Ignace did not slumber. Instead, he contemplated the life he was living, as he usually did when he had more than a few moments of silence. For the past quarter of a century, he had been forced to travel and perform. He wondered how many more years he would have to endure this kind of life.

Since the plane was almost completely full, Vittorio was in the seat next to him, stretched out and passed out. The small man had been snoring, which was a bit grating on Ignace’s ears, but he ignored it as best he could. The man got angry if he was awakened without just cause, which made it impossible to nudge him. And to Vittorio, his snoring was not a just cause.

Even though Ignace had known the man for all of the years that he had been a part of this show, Ignace realized he knew next to nothing about the man’s past. He did not know why Vittorio Ancillato was indebted to Lorenzo, though most in the show knew his own tale and even a bit of his ancestor’s folly. That perplexed Ignace, for he knew why almost all of the others were trapped into this way of life. He turned to look at the man who slept beside him as the plane continued to drone on.

Vitto was a quiet man, obdurate and stoic. He worked hard at his job as Lorenzo’s second-in-command, never grumbling or complaining. In fact, he often said extraordinarily little. He was known to talk to the others on occasion, but the small man seemed to take pains to do as little in the ways of socializing with the rest of the crew just as Ignace had.

He was one of those men who just seemed to be withdrawn and quiet. The only person the majordomo spoke to at length with and showed any emotion around was Lorenzo. Some surmised that it had something to do with the scars that covered the right side of the man’s face, long healed yet visible nevertheless. No one knew how he received such an injury, but the disfigurement gave him an aura of inaccessibility. Like everything else, the man was reluctant to talk about them.

But Vitto was bound, just as they all were, by the colored beads about his neck. He was forced to mete out the punishments the director demanded on those who crossed him. Ignace knew from the man’s expression every time he held the whip that Vitto hated what he had to do. Perhaps that was why he only showed emotion to Lorenzo. He was too ashamed of his own position to become close to anyone, just as Ignace had.

Malatesta had made them both wary.

Ignace looked up at the front of the plane, where the director was sitting. As usual, the man had both seats to himself, and likely had some paperwork sprawled out in the seat beside him. From the tilt of his head, Lorenzo probably had dozed off as well.

Ignace sighed as he went back to staring out the window again, stifling his emotions as best as he could. He pressed his cheek against the cold surface of the window, longing once again to be away from this life.

He closed his eyes and began to mentally play a performance, moving his fingers in time to the music within his head. He was careful not to emit any emotions or magic, for fear of repercussions. But he mentally went through the colors of what had once been his favorite performance. 

It had been the performance that had caused Lorenzo to notice him in the first place.

Despite the warnings of his dearest cousin and a few older friends, he had fallen in with the wrong crowd in college. He had taken to gambling at the track and played in games in the back rooms of well-known clubs and bars across the city he had grown up in. As his gambling addiction grew in the years that followed, so did the amount of money that he lost. 

Eventually, he began to get in over his head and needed to make some quick cash, especially after his grandfather had cut him off from the family fortune and his mother began to do the same. While his dearest cousin had tried to help him out, it wasn’t enough and soon he found himself cut off from her as well.

His closest friends were also soon forced to cut ties with him as well because of his habits.

He had taken to playing with his magical light shows in clubs to make some cash, a simple melody played via piano by an acquaintance as his only accompaniment and a plain sheet tacked to the walls as his canvas. His magic then was not as fine-tuned as it had become, so his pictures were not as elegant as they could have been. But the earnings they garnered helped him to put a small dent in the debts he owed.

Lorenzo had seen him play at one of these clubs, pouring his heart and soul into a simple masterpiece as his magic painted beautiful and muted colors for all to see. The director was putting together a show and envisioned the magician as his star act. He came to Ignace with a proposition that Ignace could not reject.

In return for the money to pay off his debtors, some of whom were close allies and even backers of the director, Ignace would work for Lorenzo for free until the debt was cleared. All travel, room, and board would be paid for him as long as he was a member of the cast. He simply had to sign the binding contract. As a member of the tour, he would also need to wear the beaded necklace that served as a marker that he was part of Malatesta’s cast.

Ignace agreed, promising the man a decade. More than twice that had come and gone since and he was still subject to the bindings in the contract. He also had never played the act he had started with again, for Malatesta had loftier goals than just a silly little abstract piece to a simple piano melody.

But the song was one his mother had composed. The show that he performed was the very essence of his magic and his story. It was his favorite piece, but he wouldn’t performed it in front of an audience again. He was forced to create and perform far more ambitious acts, ones that would draw in crowds from all over the old country and beyond. And due to the magic that was bound in the contract, the strong magic Lorenzo was able to ply because he had bound Ignace to it in the first place, he did as he was ordered.

It did not stop him from reliving the memory of his first performance over and over again in his head when he had the chance. As the first flutters of the keys began to play in his mind, he took in a deep breath. As the music of the two-minute song played over and over again in his head, he imagined every single color that swirled from his fingertips. He felt every emotion over and over again. His fingers danced in time to this imagining, though he never let his magic fly loose.

That was something he dared never do on his own. He tried to keep as low a profile as he could these days, waiting and watching for his chance to escape. He waited for the time he could be free. He merely just waited.

So as the plane droned on, he let the music and magic within his memories play as he watched the never-ending darkness out the window.

Click here for the next chapter – Laundromat

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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction written by K. S. Wood, and thus is copyrighted 2023. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.  No part of this work 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.  All rights reserved.

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