They Do the Same Things Different There (21 page)

In the morning, the magicians left. The woman gave them some bread for their journey. The little girl gave Lucy a hug, and Lucy didn’t quite know what to do with it, but the girl didn’t seem to mind she wasn’t hugged back.

They never saw the innkeeper or her daughter again. In the weeks to come, as the blackness overtook them, the man would suppose they were dead.

For there was little magic left to those times, since the demons and angels had gone to war. No one had seen a demon and lived. And yet some said they were monsters, giants, dreadful to look upon, so terrible that if you so much as glimpsed one your heart would stop in terror. And others said they looked just like us. They looked just like us, except if you got close you’d find out their eyes were sharper than ours, and redder too, maybe; and they had little bumps on their head, just small, not quite horns, but maybe, no, horns, small—they could be hidden beneath hair, or a big hat; and when they spoke sometimes fire and brimstone would come out their mouths. But they looked just like us. No one had seen an angel either, but they were just as deadly, and they looked just like us too, like every stranger coming into town, like everyone you do not recognize. There were no wings, nothing so easy or giveaway, no holy trumpets playing to herald their arrival. Some had halos, but they were very ordinary halos, a little grey, a little rusted. The angels and the demons, they could be everywhere, anywhere, all about us. And yet no one had ever seen one. Not seen one, at any rate, and lived.

No one could guess why the demons and angels were at war. But it wasn’t about us. They didn’t care about us. And wherever they met in battle a blackness would descend, and it would engulf everything, and nothing could escape it, and it was spreading across the land.

The world seemed cracked, somehow, too weak for any magic to hold; or happiness; or faith; or love.

Still, he pulled his cart onwards, and sometimes he faltered, and Lucy never faltered.

One week away they found a road sign directing them toward the town, and it wasn’t even damaged, it was in one piece, and the man felt his spirits lift.

Four days away they found the old road itself, and there were some holes in it, and it wasn’t strictly straight, but it was still easier going for the cart.

One day they arrived at the town. There were bridges and churches and statues and shops. The road was choked with old discarded vehicles. There was litter. There was a theatre. They went into the theatre. It was big and imposing and the roof was still on.

The man took Lucy’s hands, and he made her look at him, directly, into his eyes. And he said, “Listen. We don’t have to stop. We can keep going. We can just outrun the blackness. We can keep going.”

And Lucy didn’t even shake her head. She pulled free, began to unpack the cart.

It was all in good condition, considering. The Sword of a Thousand Cuts had rusted, but that could be put right with a good dose of varnish. A trick mirror had fractured, but just a little, it needn’t spoil the illusion too much. The Cabinet of Vanishments was soaked with rainwater, and one of the doors had warped slightly with the wet, and they sat it upside-down on the stage to let it dry out. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter, they didn’t use the Cabinet anymore. They only kept the Cabinet for show.

The man unrolled the pack of posters. He walked over the town, stuck his posters up against the sides of buildings, walls, the disused telegraph poles that stuck out of the ground like dead tree stumps. Really, he stuck them up against anything that was still standing. He didn’t see anyone, but they saw him, he knew; he knew that once he’d moved away the people would come out from their hiding places and see what he had to sell. They were old posters, he’d stuck them up and pulled them down from any number of towns upon his tours—he looked younger in them, photographed in his full costume, in days when he filled out his clothes better and his smile was more fluent—“The Great Zinkiewicz Entertains!” it said, and beneath, “With His Glamorous Assistant, Lucy!”—but this was the
old
Lucy, the Lucy from before, buxom and beaming, almost as tall as he was, standing proud in her sequined gown and her feather headdress, gesturing toward him in the picture in a display of pride and awe. His assistant, his best friend, his wife, back before he’d lost her, and the blackness had swallowed her soul. How he missed her.

By the time he got back to the theatre the sun was already starting to set, and he could sense that the townsfolk were on the move; in spite of themselves they wanted to be dazzled and entertained. Little Lucy was already in her dress. He put on his white shirt, black trousers, white gloves, black hat. He stood with Lucy in the wings as he heard the auditorium fill, and he felt a sudden sickness in his stomach, performer’s nerves. And he wanted to run away, and he wanted too to do what he was born for, and stand in front of the crowd, with all those eyes on him, all expectant, all hungry, all making him the centre of their diminished worlds for a couple of brief hours.

“Break a leg,” he muttered to Lucy, and together they stepped out into the lights.

The lights shone in his eyes, he couldn’t see his audience, couldn’t see how large they were, how apprehensive. He gave his smoothest smile and hoped it passed as confident. He spread his arms out wide, as if inviting everybody in for a special hug.

“I am the Great Zinkiewicz,” he cried, as if challenging anyone out there to deny it. No one did.

The patter went well. He felt he had a real rapport with Lucy that night; their little rehearsal at the inn those weeks ago had sharpened them both. He was garrulous, the bigger the tricks he performed the more grandiose the metaphors he used to describe them, he’d never use one syllable when five would do. And beside him Lucy in all her blessed muteness struck such a comic contrast; she’d never open her mouth, she’d talk to the audience in her own way, she’d roll her eyes, she’d shrug, she’d flop her arms once in a while as if to demonstrate the physical heaviness of having to work with such a braggart. The audience began to chuckle. This was one way in which little Lucy always scored over her glamorous original; his wife had often tried to top his jokes, and she’d never been a funny woman, it had never worked.

So they chuckled, then they laughed outright. At some of the tricks there were even admiring gasps, and there was lots and lots of applause.

There was no real magic. Not tonight, it seemed. But that didn’t matter.

And at some point the mood shifted. The applause seemed thicker somehow, not crisp like clapping should be, but thick like syrup; the laughter . . . what, more ironic? Crueller, even? He didn’t know what had caused it. Had it been him? It might have been him. Because the fear was back. Everything had been going so well, and he couldn’t believe the signs as the fear first stole over him—a coldness in his heart, a slight loosening in his bowels—no, he thought to himself, why now? He heard his jokes for what they were, and they were just words, pointless words; he felt how forced his smile was, could feel just how far it stretched across his face and no further; he began to shake, and sweat. He could see himself, one man caught in the lights, pretending that there was still something magical to the world when all about him was darkness.

The darkness, the darkness had come. The proper darkness, solid, weighty, and it lumbered across the theatre toward him. And he could hear his audience die, every one of them, and the demons came in, or was it the angels, or was it
both
, were they both here together, had they put aside their differences and stopped their war and come to see the show? His audience were lost; the angels and demons were in their seats now, crushing down their corpses. And the darkness, all the darkness, all about, unyielding, and pure, and the only light left in the world shone down upon him and Lucy.

His patter dried. He stumbled over his words. Stumbled over his feet. He panted, he licked his lips.

From the void came a voice, a single voice, and it was sharp like gravel, and he didn’t think there was anything human in it at all.

“Give us a good trick, magic man. And maybe we’ll spare your life.”

It was in just such a theatre that the Great Zinkiewicz had first seen the darkness. It had not been a good show. The audience weren’t attentive, he thought some of them were drunk. And Lucy was talking too much again, in spite of what he’d said to her the night before: it was all in the rhythm, he kept explaining to her, gently, the act could work only in a very exact
rhythm
. “I just feel there’s more I can offer,” she’d said. “I just stand about looking decorative, and getting sawn in half, and stuff. I’m worth more than that.” And he had promised he’d try to find a better way to include her in the show, and they’d kissed, and then made love. And, do you know, he thought he’d probably even meant it.

As they’d trudged toward the grand finale, he’d given her the signal, and she’d nodded, gone into the wings. And out she had wheeled the Cabinet of Vanishments.

“Behold,” said Zinkiewicz. “The Cabinet of Vanishments! Now, my wife will vanish before your eyes. When she gets locked up in my special box, and I tap upon the door, and say the magic word—yes, you all know it, abracadabra! I don’t know what it means, no one knows what it means, if we knew it wouldn’t be magic—I’ll say the word, and my wife will be gone!”

He’d felt at last a flutter of interest from the audience.

His wife had said, perkily, whilst wagging her finger at him, “And just you make sure I get back in time for tea!” Audience death once more. Jesus.

He closed the door on her, and he felt a relief that she was out of sight. And a sense of something else, deep inside, some new confidence. Or power.

He tapped on the door three times with his wand. “Abracadabra,” he said.

He opened the door. She’d gone. There was some half-hearted applause.

He closed the door again. “Now to bring her back,” he said. “I suppose!” And there was some laughter at that, and he thought to himself, you see, Lucy, one
can
improvise comedy, but only if one’s a professional.

“Abracadabra,” he said. He opened the door. The cabinet was empty.

He closed the door. He turned to the audience, smiled, but he felt it was a sick smile, and he could feel himself beginning to sweat.

“I’ll try again,” he promised them. “Abracadabra!”

Still nothing—but no, really
nothing
—and this time it seemed to Zinkiewicz the cabinet was not merely empty, it somehow seemed to have no inside at all. Black, just black, a darkness. That would spill out into the world unless. Unless he slammed the door shut.

He did. He held the door closed. He felt it, he felt something beat against it, thrum against his fingers. He didn’t dare let go. He didn’t dare hold on either, he didn’t dare stand so close, because he knew that for all its fancy design and name the cabinet was just a bit of plywood a few inches thick, it wouldn’t be enough to contain what was growing within. And at the thought of it he pulled away, as if he had been burned—and for a moment he thought he had, and he stared down at his fingers, expecting them to be charred and black. They weren’t. They weren’t, but he stared at them anyway—and for too long, he could hear behind his back the audience stir from stultified silence and begin to heckle.

He turned back to them. He didn’t know what to say. His tongue felt heavy, sick, and yes, his fingers, they still
burned
. “I’m sorry,” is what he came out with. “I’m sorry.”

And behind him he heard it, and he knew now he wasn’t imagining it: there was a knocking from within the cabinet, something impatient to be released. And then there was a voice to it—“Hey!” Muffled, but still sounding perky, so annoyingly perky. “Hey, let me out! Is it time for my tea yet?”

There was some polite laughter, they thought it was part of the act. He opened the door. There was Lucy. He took her hand to help her out, she had to bow so her feather headdress wouldn’t get caught, and her sequins sparkled as they came out from the dark. They made their bows together. They went for two bows, although the applause didn’t really warrant it.