Nathan's Birthday Bash

Not the best day for a birthday party. It was cloudy, mostly, and humid. There had been on and off showers throughout the morning but it was dry then. Well, mostly dry. A blond haired woman stood at the refreshment table wiping up a juice spill. “Here, let me help you with that,” a dark haired woman came over and said. She grabbed a trash can and brought it over.  “Are the kids all settled down now?” she asked. They both looked over to the children sitting in a circle. “Yeah, you could say that. If they got off their phones for a second they might even start enjoying themselves.” 

“Well, can you blame them?” the dark haired woman asked, gesturing toward the man sitting in the middle of the circle. 

“What?” the blond haired woman asked. “Having a magician at your birthday party is like the coolest thing you could have.” 

“Yeah, maybe in the eighties.” 

“Whatever.” the blond haired woman said. “Mark over there is the best of the best. You know, he was the magician at my twelfth birthday party. I’ll never forget it.”

“What?” the dark haired woman said, looking back again. “He looks younger than you do.” 

“Ouch,” the blond haired woman said. They both laughed. 

“I’m sorry but that man doesn’t look a day over forty.” 

The blond haired woman shrugged her shoulders and said, “It must be all the magic. Hey, have you seen Nathan?”

The magician, Mark, as he was called, didn’t look a day over forty. At the risk of sounding absurd I would say he didn’t look a day over thirty five. He was dressed more like a car salesman than a man of the trade in creased slacks and a dress shirt, no tie. He sat among the children juggling a small set of red balls. It was a lazy trick, not even magic, he knew, but it wasn’t like they would appreciate real magic. Couldn’t. “Why put myself out?” Mark thought to himself. He had given up on marksmanship long ago.

To say the kids looked bored would be a lie. They would have had to be paying attention to be bored. Mark didn’t appear to be bothered by this. He was getting paid either way. Besides the soft pit-pat of the rubber balls hitting Mark’s palm and the dinging of the music coming from the children’s phones, it was quiet. The parents had started to gather at the table covered in gifts at the other end of the yard and were talking amongst themselves. That’s the only reason that I heard the soft creak of the screen door as it opened. A large boy with a small crown emerged. He was wearing a sash held together with a safety pin as the sash was made for ten year olds who weren’t nearly two hundred pounds. He didn’t join the children in the circle but stood on the outside looking in. He walked first one way and then another. Mark watched him out of the corner of his eye but managed to keep the balls in the air. I could feel the edge of his words before they were spoken. 

“We’re not babies. Show us some real magic.” 

The magician caught the balls mid air while laughing. “Real magic?” He looked around. It was a minor disruption. There was always at least one. 

“You want to see some real magic? All right then.” His tone was lighthearted and he didn’t feel threatened. He leaned over to a small, black briefcase set at his feet and pulled out a deck of cards. He fancily shuffled the cards before spreading them out before the boy. 

“Pick a card but don’t show me.”

The boy picked a card. 

“Now show the others.” 

He did. 

“Okay, now put it back where you found it.” 

The boy looked indignant but did exactly as he was told.  

The magician shuffled the cards and then ran his finger along the outside of the deck. He looked up into the trees and I thought he might have seen me but he was only pretending to be deep in thought. Finally, he pulled a card from out of the deck and showed the boy. “Is this your card?”

The boy leaned forward and furrowed his brow. “Nope.”

The magician flinched and then frowned. “What do you mean no?”

“That’s not my card.” 

The boy was obviously lying but Mark, as he was called, had never been very perceptive.

He looked at the card for a minute. “But… it has to be.” 

“Not my card.” the boy said, with a little grin. 

The magician shuffled through the cards once again. “Well, what card did you have?”

“I don’t remember exactly but I know it wasn’t red.”

“Is that so? All right then, my mistake.” He was blinking rapidly as he looked at the faces of the children. “What do you say we just get rid of this one then?” He flipped the card into the air and it burst into flowers of flame. The children in the circle clapped but the boy pressed both his hands down repeatedly, telling them to settle down. 

“That’s like Magic 101. I learned that trick at magic camp when I was six years old.”

“Magic camp.” The magician chuckled to himself as he threw the pile of cards back into the briefcase. “Well, let’s see if you learned this at magic camp.” 

His body looked insectile as he scurried to the top of his stool. He closed his eyes and made a mudra with his thumb and forefinger. There was a slight humming sound that emanated from his body rather than his mouth. The phones of the remaining children went silent as did the birds in the trees. The magician’s feet hovered off of the stool for a solid six seconds before softly landing again. The children gasped. The magician kept his eyes closed and grinned. His smile dropped, though, when he opened his eyes and saw the face of the boy.

“That’s worse than the card trick!” he yelled over the applause. The adults had made their way over to see the spectacle and stood clapping in amazement with the children. “It’s an illusion!” he shouted into the crowd. “It’s just a trick of the eye.” 

“Nathan, don’t be rude.” the blond haired woman said. 

At this the magician’s lighthearted attitude wore thin and snapped. “It is an illusion, yes, there are many things in this world, I imagine, that are illusive to you, but it is not a trick!” 

“What is it then, magic?” the boy scoffed. “Please, I could do that in my sleep.”

“No need for sleep. Try it now.”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t feel like it.” 

“You don’t feel like it?”

“No, I don’t feel like it. It’s my birthday. Why should I have to do anything on my birthday?”

“Fine, I’ll come by tomorrow and you can show me.” 

“That’s stupid, I’m not doing that.”

“See! See! Exactly.” The magician was starting to become frantic. “Admit that you can’t do it. The thought of trying it scares you because you know that you can’t. Look at you.” 

The boy stood with his eyes at half mast. 

“Yes, you’re afraid. I was afraid too when I was first sent to the Count for training. I could barely see straight, I was so afraid because magic, true magic, can kill you if you let it but I didn’t let it. I trained, and I fought, and I sacrificed solstice after solstice in order to appease and make use of the Dark Art. Alchemy, conjuring, divination, incantation, everything! I’ve learned everything, I’ve been everywhere and now you, a child, with no training, no knowledge, say that you can do what I’ve done?!” He was panting, he was so out of breath. The boy just looked at him. “If you’re so good then why are you here, at a kids birthday party?” 

“That's…things aren’t what they used to be.”

“Yeah? Try, because magic isn’t real.”

His face remained unchanged but I felt something in his spirit slacken.

“Is that so?” he asked. “Well, then explain this.”

He started to chant. It was the same thing over and over with a few variables every so often. The words had no intelligible meaning to anyone listening but they made the hair on the back of their necks stand up nonetheless. He opened his eyes and everyone else who didn’t even realize that their eyes had closed did the same. His eyes flitted around the large group before landing on the blond haired woman. A flash of lightning split the sky exactly in two and its afterglow lingered for some time. Everyone was looking up at

the image when she started to scream. She screamed for a while with everyone just standing there looking at her. Then, the skin of her flesh started to raise and rimple and coarse blond hair shot out of her pores. After a while, the screaming stopped and a sound like the grinding of stone took its place. She began to grunt roughly as her bones liquified and then solidified into different shapes. As you may have guessed the spell was not done properly and the creature that was produced was more grotesque than usual. For one, her human spine could still be seen under the thick skin. Her thin legs stuck out in between the teats so that she couldn’t stand or lay properly. The only thing that was anatomically correct was her face which had stretched into a sniveling snout, topped with two beady eyes. I forgot to mention that the people were screaming as well but they stopped once they began to run. The boy tried to run too but the magician grabbed him and turned him to face his sow mother. “Explain that one. You can't, can you?” he turned the boy to face him. The child was very pale. He had vomit down the front of his shirt and he began to cry. The magician let the boy go and looked around at the overturned chairs. The yard had been deserted. He looked down at the boy who was curled into a ball at his feet and then at the pig who was silently staring at him. He grabbed his briefcase, his wand and top hat and fled into the woods. 

The crow shifted back and forth on his feet now that the story had been told. The Count stroked his beard. He sighed. “Do you have eyes on him now?” 

“He was last spotted on the northern east coast. He’s no longer performing magic but we feel as if he might still be a threat.” 

The Count stroked his beard again. “I agree. What about the woman?” 

“Unfortunately she has been eliminated. They were going to run tests. We felt that it would be problematic for the guild and for you considering that he was your apprentice.”

“Yes, yes. I’m afraid this time he’s gone too far. See if you can’t bring him in.” 

“Of course.” 

The crow lowered his beak before taking off out of the open window.