The Wonder Brothers, page 11
‘We were so near,’ wailed Middy. ‘We were nearly in the same room as him.’
But that’s not the point. The point is at the exact moment we were nearly caught, who comes along to rescue us? Only King Arthur in a boat, that’s all.
See what I mean?
Trust. The. Dream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IT’S A DANGEROUS PLACE, KIDDO
CAPTAIN JIMENEZ:
If you think leaving a theatre by means of the back door is magic, I can assure you it’s not. Yeah, you kids did vamoose from the Camelot Casino Hotel, but you certainly did not vanish.
Thanks to the good work of Sergeant Jamie we, here at Operation Tower, have in our possession CCTV footage of you riding around on the Loop. I will now show this for the purposes of identification.
For the record, the boy Nathan said, ‘It’s us! On TV!!’
The girl, Middy, said, ‘That Loop bus was so cool. I mean literally. It had air conditioning.’
The other boy, Brodie, said, ‘And it was free! I thought we could ride around on that all night, but the driver spotted Queenie and said no animals allowed. We had to get off in Freedom.’
‘Freedom?’
‘It’s a place with loads of arcades and cafes and . . .’ Brodie replied.
‘Fremont. Not Freedom.’
I explained that the place was called Fremont, and that it has more than its fair share of highly spiced characters.
I also explained that despite its reputation for lawbreakers and misfits, the people there were alarmed and horrified to see three children walking around the place without any apparent adult supervision. One concerned citizen uploaded this film to our social media feed, where Sergeant Jamie here found it.
I will now play the film so as to remove all doubt and insinuation.
‘Why did they do that?’ asked the boy Brodie. ‘Why did they give the film to the police?’
‘The lady was worried about you,’ said Sergeant Jamie. ‘It’s a dangerous place, kiddo.’
The girl Middy said, ‘She fed Queenie the salad from her burger.’
‘Missy,’ I said, ‘I’ve interviewed enough frauds and tricksters in my life to know when I’m being led away from the river and into the trees. I will not be distracted by rabbit chit-chat.’
As for ‘Trusting the Dream’, look at where you are. You are in police custody. No one is going to let you leave here in order to gatecrash a one-night-only world-exclusive farewell performance of probably the finest magician in Vegas. So that part of your dream isn’t happening. Plus you don’t have a magic trick of your own since Zenith confiscated your lunchbox trick.
I may have made this point too forcefully. The girl Middy began to cry.
‘We are not living Nathan’s dream at all,’ she said. ‘We’ll never get to the show. We’ve got no money. Everything seemed to be going so well. We thought we were going to see him. We thought we were going to fix everything. And now . . .’
Sergeant Jamie was now crying also.
I told him to shape up.
‘Sergeant,’ I said. ‘They are in the country without the proper papers. They have stowed away illegally on an aircraft. They have stolen food, swimming costumes, flip-flops and a valuable timepiece belonging to . . .’
Then the boy Nathan stood up and said, ‘These are just details. Middy DOES have a great trick. A new one. It just came to her in Fremont.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
ZOMBIE WEDDING
MIDDY:
You don’t make magic. You find it.
Karabas the Modest, My Secrets Revealed
This is so true. That trick just dropped into my hands like prize money dropping out of a slot machine.
All the time I’d been trying to think of ways to impress Perplexion, I’d been thinking of tricks that were like Perplexion tricks. Big illusion tricks with special props, like ancient sarcophaguses and amazing music and lights. Silvery-pants type tricks.
I had nothing. Zenith had repossessed my De Kolta lunchbox.
But I found magic in Fremont.
Or maybe it found me.
This is how it happened.
We got off the Loop bus outside a building that looked like one big tombstone. I don’t think it was made of real stone. Carved on the front in tall, serious-looking letters, it said, Till Death Doth Us Part.
The other two didn’t like the look of it, but I showed them the bit on page forty seven of My Secrets Revealed where Karabas says, ‘Magic is a campfire. Light it and people will be drawn to its glow.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Brodie, ‘that I want to share a campfire with those people.’ He nodded to the queue.
They did look a bit unusual. Being honest, they mostly looked like zombies. The woman at the front had a chalk-white face, a bone-white dress, and thick tresses of lustrous black hair tumbling down her back. I’m not sure all that hair was entirely hers. I’m also not sure that the red stuff dribbling from one corner of her mouth was her real blood either. It did look convincing though.
She was with a man in a top hat and tailcoat. But the coat looked like it had been slashed with a knife and the top hat looked like it had been hit with a hammer. They were arguing about a ring. As they argued, they jabbed their fingers at each other. A really loud bell bonged once, then twice, slowly. When we looked up there was a man – dressed all in black – saying, ‘Please will the bride-and-groom-to-be enter the Gloom.’
That’s when we found out it was a wedding.
Brodie said, ‘People come to Las Vegas to get married in a hurry. It’s called ‘Sign and Go’. They just go in, sign a piece of paper, then they’re married and off they go. This is someone’s happy day. We should leave.’
Obviously, Nathan had different ideas.
Nathan followed the bride and groom through the tombstone doorway with his head bowed down like a pageboy. I tried my best to look like a bridesmaid.
Brodie said, ‘I’m not sure about this.’ But he followed us in anyway.
The inside of the Till Death Doth Us Part wedding chapel did NOT look wedding-y. In the glow of a thousand tiny bone-shaped fairy lights, little glass skeleton ornaments twinkled, dancing in and out of spiky cactuses.
We were slightly conspicuous, to be honest. Especially as we were children, not zombies. But that didn’t matter because the bride and groom only had eyes for each other. Screwed up, angry eyes. They were still jabbing fingers at each other and arguing. It seemed the groom had lost the ring.
A door opened and a man in a long black cape swept into the room in a cloud of smoke. ‘My dear, dear children of the night,’ he boomed, ‘you have come here to vow your unDYING love before the law and me – Count Love. Allow me to WARN you that you have only paid for the ten-minute service. If your argument continues, you may have to pay another one hundred dollars. Bring forth your witnesses.’
‘Witnesses?’ snarled the bride. ‘He hasn’t even brought the ring.’
‘I did bring the ring,’ said the groom. ‘I’ve just dropped it somewhere. That’s all.’
Count Love pointed at us and beckoned, saying, ‘Witnesses, advance.’
‘They’re not our witnesses,’ snapped the bride. ‘They’re nothing to do with us. If you think we’re paying extra to have . . . Is that a rabbit? That can’t be a rabbit.’
‘She is a rabbit. She’s just a bit large. She came second in the Massive Rabbits class at the Lancashire show.’
‘I didn’t ask for a rabbit at my wedding.’ The bride looked us up and down as if she’d never seen children before. ‘What even are you?’ she said. ‘Hobbits, or what?’
Nathan took this as cue to start a show.
‘Good question,’ he said. ‘What do you think of –’ he strolled up to the bride, with a Hobbity roll to his stroll ‘– when you think of Hobbits?’
Count Love and the groom started to list off all kinds of Hobbit features – hairy feet, smoking pipes, and so on.
The bride snapped, ‘If you keep talking, we’re going to have to pay another one hundred dollars. Just shut up and let’s get married. Forget the rings.’
‘Rings!’ said Nathan. ‘Exactly. When it comes to rings, you can always trust a Hobbit. So. Give me your hands . . .’
They didn’t know Nathan from a bat in a barn, but they still did what he asked. That’s part of a magician’s skill set – getting people to do what you ask. He joined their hands, closed his eyes, and said, ‘Now look at your hands.’
The bride looked at her hand, amazed. The missing wedding ring was on her finger. ‘How . . . ?’ she gasped. ‘How did you do that? Are you actually magic?! Look! He’s actually magic.’
To quote Karabas the Modest, ‘Ninety per cent of magic is noticing the things that other people don’t notice.’ The groom didn’t notice he’d dropped the ring in the street earlier, but Nathan did. He took a bow and said, ‘Give me a ring sometime. Ha ha!’
The groom looked grumpy and suspicious. ‘Does this mean we’re married now?’ he said.
‘Of course it means we’re married!’ said the bride. ‘Married by an actual magic person. What did you think it meant?! Don’t you WANT to be married?’
The moment she said that, all the lights went out. The floor began to shake.
And it felt like the end of the world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
HALF A WORLD AWAY
BRODIE:
Animals can predict earthquakes and tsunamis. Everyone says so. All the mice and lizards left Pompeii days before the volcano blew up. If people had just paid attention to the mice and lizards, they would have been OK.
I paid attention to Queenie when she jumped out of my arms and ran out of the wedding while the bride and groom were still arguing about being married. So I was already outside when the ground began to move.
MIDDY:
Count Love said it wasn’t an earthquake, just a light second-wave tremor. ‘Earth tremors are best enjoyed outdoors,’ he said. ‘Please leave by the tomb exit.’
The fairy lights swayed from the ceiling. The little glass skeletons rang like tiny bells as they shivered on their shelves. A biro rolled out from under one of the chairs and then rolled back under again. I caught a cactus as it bounced off a shelf.
Nathan grabbed my arm and we ran. Then we were outside. No one in the queue seemed that fussed about the possibility of the ground opening up and swallowing everyone. The ground shakes so often in Las Vegas that they have What to Do in an Earthquake lessons in school. So everyone just stood around chatting.
Then the lights went out.
The lights in Fremont, Las Vegas are not like Blackpool Illuminations. They’re not pretty little twinkly sea creatures. They’re nearly all words. Words that flash on and off; words that flicker and flare; words that spin round.
HOT DOGS! COLD DRINKS! STARTING NOW! COMING SOON! ENTER! ENTERTAINMENT! EXIT! EXCITEMENT! COME IN! KEEP OUT!
It’s like being shouted at by light.
So when they all – pop – went out, it wasn’t the dark that hit us. It was the quiet.
It was so quiet.
The ground had stopped wobbling. The tremor was over. But the lights had not come back on.
So there I was standing, lost, in the dark, in a city on the wrong side of the world, with no tricks to show, and no chance of getting to see Perplexion.
I was thinking we should have just let the police catch us back at the hotel. The worst that could happen was not as bad as this. I was wishing the ground really would open and swallow me up. I was wishing I never listened to a word our Nathan said about anything, especially his dream.
That’s when Nathan nudged me and said, ‘Do they have a different moon in America, or what?’
And I looked up at the sky.
And – oh.
Just like at home in Blackpool, when the lights for miles around were switched off, the sky was switched on. There was one big difference here though. At home, by the sea, we’d seen thick clouds of stars. But here, tonight, the most amazing thing was the moon. It really did look like a different moon. Not light and silvery like back home. This was a big, fat, juicy-looking moon. It looked heavy, like it might fall out of the sky and splat like a ripe orange. Because it was orange. Not silver or white like at home.
I said, ‘No, Nathan, it’s the same old moon. It just looks more wonderful than usual, that’s all.’
‘It’s pollution from the cars that make it look a different colour,’ said Brodie.
‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but I think you’re missing the point.’
I was thinking about the moon and the stars and how they’re always there and always amazing as long as you remember to look up.
I was thinking about something Karabas had said . . .
Everything – even the most ordinary everyday object – has magic in it. A playing card, a shell, a pea, a pencil, a paper clip, a pen – they are all full of magic. Your job is to wake that magic up! To make it shine out. To remind the audience that they live among wonders.
Karabas the Modest, My Secrets Revealed
I looked down at my hands. I didn’t have a pack of cards, or a set of shells and peas. But I was holding that cactus. The cactus that had just dropped into my hands as if by magic.
Ta-dah.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CONJURING BY CANDLELIGHT
NATHAN:
I knew what Middy was thinking. I always know what she’s thinking. When she looked up at the moon and down at the cactus, I knew a trick was coming.
I followed her down the street, and so did Brodie and Queenie. The lights were still off.
A few minutes before, we’d thought we were going to see the whole city fall into a hole in the ground. Now it was just dark and hushed. But we still had the feeling that something was going to happen.
We followed Middy round the corner.
Up ahead, warm yellow light was pouring out of an open doorway onto the street.
‘How have they got light?’ said Brodie. ‘There’s no electricity.’
As we got closer to the building, we saw that it was candles, hundreds of them, all blazing away in the nooks and crannies on candlesticks, casting their glow onto statues of men and women.
‘It’s a church,’ said Brodie.
‘Bienvenidos a Santa Brígida,’ said a tiny woman in a headscarf as we peeped in. ‘Bienvenidos a todos. Come in. Come in. When the electricity goes, we open the doors. Like a very small lighthouse. See?’
But as soon as we were properly in the light, she stepped back. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Madre de Dios. You’re just children.’
Brodie pointed out that we were not just children. We were children plus a rabbit.
‘Little children,’ said the headscarf woman, ‘and a big rabbit. But where are your parents?’
We didn’t bother mentioning that they were on the other side of the world. We just smiled. She flapped around us.
‘We have some biscuits,’ she said, opening a tin. And then she went, ‘Oh, look! From the fiesta.’ She gave us Oreos, some squeaky tinselly things, and a fistful of party poppers and balloons. She seemed to think we were hungry toddlers and it was our birthday.
Anyway, she must’ve thought that biscuits and balloons were all the help we’d ever need, because she went back to a little crowd of people around the door and they said a prayer together. Even though it was in a language I couldn’t understand, I could tell it was the ‘Our Father’.
I said to Middy, ‘The prayers are the same as the ones at home. Even if the moon is different.’
Middy said, ‘I told you, the moon is not different here. And of course the prayers are the same. Jesus didn’t only come to Blackpool, you know.’
The little crowd of people went back to chatting, probably about when the electricity was going to come back on. Every now and then one of them would look out into the street, as if they thought the electricity might come and knock at the door. I was thinking, These people have nothing to do; maybe we could entertain them.
So I gave them a bit of magic.
There was a woman cradling a little girl in her arms, just next to the statue of Saint Brígida. I offered the little girl an Oreo. She took it and then I mimed that she should eat it. But when she looked in her hand – no Oreo. Her little face drooped with disappointment. I didn’t want her to start crying, so I offered her another Oreo right away. She took it with her right hand. I pointed to her left hand. She opened her hand and there was another Oreo. Her face completely glowed with surprise at the unexpected extra biscuit. She said some things in Spanish. I didn’t understand the words, but it didn’t matter. Magic speaks wonder. Everyone was laughing and chatting. A minute before, they had been just a bunch of people waiting for the electricity to come back on. Now they were a kind of party.
Then Middy decided to do her trick.
It was probably not a good decision.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MILLION DOLLAR MIRACLE
MIDDY:
Magic doesn’t come when you’re trying, but it does come by trying. If you keep thinking and practising, the magic idea will come when you’re not looking. The magician’s brain likes to do its own special misdirection.
Karabas the Modest, My Secrets Revealed
Honestly, when I got the idea for how to make my trick work, it seemed like magic. I was looking up at the statue in the back of the church. It was a woman holding a box that looked just like my lunchbox trick. Apparently she’s Saint Brígida.
Anyway, I was standing there, wishing an ingenious idea would materialize, when the woman in the headscarf put those balloons and party poppers in my hand with a big smile.
‘Regalo. Present.’ And she winked at me.
I looked at the balloons and at the cactus, and that was it. I knew exactly how to make it work. The idea came to me like a present. And just like a present it needed a cardboard box. Luckily there was one there in the corner with a few candles left in it.
