Tales of Mist and Magic

Fantasy and Science Fiction (Free) Short Story Collection

Note: I have written more stories than I can count. For this book I have collected thirty stories, some already published in magazines and others taking their time about finding their place… I am posting a few of these over the next three weeks, mainly to get responses for whether the story engages readers or not (a daring action on my part…:-) Because I have so many other stories I can use if necessary, no comment is unwelcome.

The first short story I am posting is “A Magician’s Wish.” I am not sure if it is fantasy or science fiction…after all, magic is both…

Magician’s Wish

“It is a dark and stormy night. You don’t believe me? Watch, and learn!”

I started to laugh. The words were a cliché. But not for what happened next. In an instant the room was transformed as clouds raced over the heads of the audience and the walls became transparent, revealing trees swaying wildly in the wind and lightning striking in brilliant flashes into the mountains beyond. Thunder sounded and rain fell with a fury, almost drowning out the voice of the red-headed man on stage. Shrieks of surprise and shouts of protest did nothing to stop him as he made patterns in the air, each one a swirling color surrounding him like a veil. With one sudden flourish he spun around in a circle and stood still and held his hands before his eyes, shading them. In the same moment the storm ceased and the room became a theater once more, the stage now empty of anything but a glittering backdrop in blue and silver.

A collective sigh of satisfaction ran through those assembled before they broke into rousing applause. The man onstage took a bow and snapped his fingers and was gone.

I looked down at the flyer in my hand. “Harold — Magician Extraordinare.” So he was, by my vote. I brushed my hand against my jacket, and for a moment was taken aback to realize it was dry. Of course it would be. That was his power. I had been as convinced as anyone that the storm was real, for a little while, even though I knew better. He was a charlatan, but no question, one of the best I’d come across. Hard to find, and he could do with a name change, though, if he really wanted to sell the show. Lucky for him, that was something I could help him do. I pushed my way through the departing crowd toward the stage. He’d be back there somewhere.

So he was, sitting in a pale green wingback chair with a drink in one hand, his silver sequined jacket catching the stage lights. A woman I assumed was his assistant was talking to him in a voice too soft for me to hear, but he seemed impatient with whatever she was saying. Behind him waves of color danced in midair. I approached them and they both looked up, startled.

“Your performance was very convincing,” I said.

“Who’s this?” the woman asked Harold, who stared at me as if I had appeared like one of his magic tricks.

“Who am I? I like to think of myself as an entrepreneur. I help people get known in wide circles, featured in the right places. I’m a — ”

“He’s a nobody, Harry, a scam artist, that’s what he is. Tell him to go away,” the woman insisted.

“No, Marnie. Just hold on.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “You’re Ena’s boy, aren’t you.” He made it a statement, not a question.

“Was. She’s been gone over a year now. Harry — I can call you Harry, right? — she told me all about you.”

“So?”

The waves of color behind him disappeared, replaced by an empty city street filled with shadows. It seemed so real I almost wanted to step into it, follow the alleyways that curved off it here and there. Somewhere in the distance I heard a siren, a faint sound like a cry in the night. A nice touch. Of course it was all illusion, but even knowing that, Harry’s skill was obvious. Only, I knew where it came from, and how tenuous his hold on it was.

“Harry, cut out the magic. Your schedule, remember? We’re leaving in less than an hour! We don’t have time for this chit chat.” The woman shoved a card into my hand. “You want to talk, call him tomorrow. We have to be in Ohio by morning.”

“Marnie, it’s okay. We can leave later. We got time. Get me another drink and one for him while you’re at it.”

“I am remiss. My name is Rafael. Bourbon, a little water,” I said, and gave Marnie a sweet smile. She turned her back on me and disappeared around the curtain.

“Why’d you come?” he asked, his voice low, as if he was worried Marnie would hear. His hands twitched and I knew the drink had something to do with it. It had to take a lot of will power to perform like a magician if that was his problem. But I knew that wasn’t all that troubled him.

“I promised myself I’d find you. Call it a personal quest.”

“You’re not mine.”

“I know that. I came along later.”

“You look the spitting image of her. Same black hair, and you have her green eyes. Only she was small-boned. You look like a footballer.”

“Which I am. Lucky for me. People never guess what I can do when I set my mind to it. They have no idea what I am capable of, outside of the game.”

“What do you want?”

“I came to see if you were as good as you claimed to be. You almost are. Audiences love you but you’re not selling yourself very well, are you?”

“Marnie handles that stuff.”

“I bet she does. The thing is, I can do you one better, so here I am. Let’s call it part of my promise to my mother.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mom was a great believer in justice, remember? She told me about your wish.”

The stage lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Blinding beams of light moved back and forth across the space. The next moment they disappeared and I was gazing into the corona of a massive sun. The heat of it shot out at us. It took a moment for me to get my breath back when it disappeared and there was just Harry in his pale green wingback chair. He was good, better than I’d believed, or thought he could be. He could go far, with the right incentive.

He leaned back and smiled. “So that’s why you’re here. You want your share.”

“My mother made it possible for you to do what you do, agreed?”

“She showed me how to create that sun, now, didn’t she? That was her favorite trick. Her skill was great, I have to admit. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Really? Then give me fifty percent of your take and I’ll be a very silent partner. Send Marnie away. We’ll work together. I’ll triple your income and put your name front and center — up in lights, as they say.”

“You’re nuts. I do all the work and you get half? I don’t think so.”

“Refuse me on this and I can make things difficult for you, even compromise your work as a magician. How does that sound?”

“Is that why you’re here? You can’t do any such thing.” He smiled again. “It’s a part of me, in my bloodstream, remember? No way to separate it now. Your mother, bless her soul, assured me I had the power forever. My tricks are embedded.” He chuckled at that.

“You don’t have all of it.”

Suddenly he was three feet above me, suspended on a dark red velvet chair, its gold filigree edges shining in light.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he said. He leaned over to a high table next to him and tapped on it. A gold crown embedded with rubies and emeralds and sapphires appeared. In its center was a huge diamond. With care he placed it on his head and looked down at me and smiled.

“There is nothing you can do,” he repeated. “Your mother gave me full rights.”

The next moment he was sitting in front of me again without the crown, accepting the drink Marnie handed to him as she came on stage. She grudgingly handed one to me.

“Ah, well, I think there is.” I smiled back at him and lifted my hand just a little, a small, quick gesture, like a beckoning. He didn’t notice. Marnie had already left again, disgusted that Harry was giving me the time of day, so she didn’t see the volcano that suddenly surrounded us, the molten lava spilling over in red-hot rivers, the fires climbing up the sides of the crater, their searing heat. But he did.

“My mother instructed me in her skills. She was a good woman, a detail that I believe escaped you. She ‘embedded’ them for me, as well. Blood will out, so to speak. Did you think she gave it only to you? Hubris, my friend — never a good thing.”

Harry put down his glass and gripped the arms of the chair, glaring at me. “We’re not friends. I’m not afraid of you.”

“No? Perhaps you should be.”

He was silent a moment and then laughed and relaxed. “You’re too young to threaten someone like me. What, do you plan on setting up in some kind of competition? You have no flare. Look at you. Plain Joe even with your bulk. No charisma.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to perform for a crowd. I said I wanted a fifty percent take when you did your shows.”

“What could I get out of a setup like that? Sorry. No deal.”

He was right, I hadn’t scared him. Just knowing the tricks wasn’t enough. I would have to take a different path, though not by choice. I had hoped for an amicable, friendly agreement. Maybe my powers of persuasion needed more work.

“Watch, Harry,” I said in a whisper.

I made the same, slight gesture I had used before. This time he caught it and I saw a flicker of concern in his eyes, but he still looked at me with disdain, the way people do when they don’t know how to see the truth.

The room filled with the sound of rapids. The next moment we were looking at a wild river filled with sharp, jutting rocks around which the water coursed in white plumes of spray. Off to the left was the roar of a waterfall. I brought the river’s edge to the foot of the stage, filling the orchestra pit. We could see the trees on the far side, giant pines against a backdrop of granite cliffs. No escape that way.

“Cute. Clever. Very realistic,” Harry said. “It’s been fun, but I’m bored. Like Marnie said, we have to get to Ohio.” He started to get out of the chair but stopped at my next words.

“My mother didn’t teach you everything. She held her best secret back. See what I mean?”

The steps leading up to the stage were submerged now, and then part of the stage itself. Harry watched intently as the fast-flowing river and the turbulent whitewater rose higher, the towers of spray crashing against the velvet curtains.

“Wait a minute! I felt that! What are you doing?”

“Realistic, isn’t that what you called it? Here’s a clue. It is. Real, I mean. For you, anyway.”

The sound of the waterfall was louder as the river flowed close to him and reached his chair. He stood up. The water was at his knees.

“Stop it!” he shouted, his voice rising.

The river widened even more, filling the entire stage.

He shouted at me frantically. “Why isn’t it going after you?”

A good question. I was pretty close to him, but stayed high and dry. The flowing river went around me the way it did around the rocks in the rapids.

“Fifty-fifty, Harry, and I make it go away.” The water was up to his waist. He climbed up on the chair.

“I can’t swim!”

“I know. My mother mentioned that.”

“Stop it!” The river swirled around him, rising above the chair. His panic was real enough. My work was almost done.

“You told her your wish was to learn all her tricks and become famous at any cost. Isn’t that right?”

“No, I didn’t. I never did!”

“And then you fooled her, and my mother wasn’t someone easily fooled. In fact, she never was, except with you. She loved you, Harry, so she told you what you wanted. She granted your wish. Except for one small detail. She mentioned it to me just before she died of a broken heart, one secret she kept when you took your bag of tricks — her bag of tricks — and left her.”

“I’m going to drown!”

I lifted my hand and the river quieted, flowing gently past. It was chest-level for Harry. He looked around, bewildered. The sound of the waterfall had faded.

I let the water recede until it only touched his feet. He sat down on the chair and stared at me. His clothing and the chair were soaking wet. He brushed his hand in a futile gesture over his sequined jacket, its shine now dimmed.

“You were going to let me drown. You were going to kill me.”

“Well, I’m not done yet — there’s still time if that’s what I want to do. As you can see, I can make things a lot more real than you can. It felt real, right? It was real, Harry. Not a trick. My mother’s secret remedy for boredom, that’s what she called it. She didn’t give you that power. She gave it to me. Which is why I can make you a very rich man. A magician the world wants to see! I just stay in the wings and help you do your shows, add my own secret skill. You’ll scare people and they’ll love it — as long as they survive. Like you will. If you agree to go fifty-fifty. Small cost for your life, don’t you think? Small cost for breaking my mother’s heart. She didn’t have the strength to go after you. I can do that for her now.”

Harry laughed. “She granted my wish. That’s on her. What I have is all I need.”

The river appeared again, its turbulence racing toward us, reaching his neck in an instant. He looked around wildly, his mouth open to scream. “All right! Make it stop!”

“*What’s that, Harry? I couldn’t hear you.”

“All right!” he shouted. “A deal. I’ll make the deal.

“Good. That’s good. Think of it as a kind of absolution, Harry.”

The rapids disappeared and we were on an empty, dry stage.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said.

I sighed. He was not a quick study. “Not so long as you cooperate, Harry. That’s a promise. So, let’s have Marnie bring us another round and we can discuss your future and mine.”

“You going to tell me how you did that trick?”

“No, Harry, I don’t think so.” I leaned close to him and smiled. “It’s not a trick. And my advice to you is, cliché though it is, be careful what you wish for.”

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Regina Clarke is a writer of mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. The Shawangunk Mountains she can see as she writes are part of the Appalachians, the oldest on earth. She’s on Twitter @ReginaClarke1 and is the author of cozy mystery Hidden In Stone, sci-fi thriller Gene Pool, and fantasy novels Guardians of the Field, and MARI. Her website blog frequently explores the ideas of hope and inspiration.