Order of the Majestic Page 9

  “Him?” Shazad asked, incredulous.

  “Hoboken?” Leanora said, equally disbelieving.

  “That’s correct.” Redondo stepped aside to give Joey the floor. “Say hello.”

  Joey gave an awkward wave. “Nice to meet you.” Shazad and Leanora greeted him with standoffish, unfriendly looks.

  “Thanks for that intro, Redondo. That was awesome.”

  “It’s true. Before tonight I was going to destroy the wand rather than let the Invisible Hand get it. Young Kopecky here reminded me that people like him can still find magic in this world, and that means someone has to carry on the fight once I shuffle off this mortal coil. It’s going to be one of you.”

  “Why only one?” Joey asked. “I don’t mind sharing.”

  “This wand does,” Redondo replied. “It obeys only one master at a time, forging a special bond between wand and magician. As long as I’m alive, this is just a piece of wood to you.… But once I’m gone, it will become a wish engine of infinite possibility. One of you will wield it. May the best magician win.”

  The three children looked at one another as the weight of Redondo’s words sank in. Joey thought the others took the news remarkably well considering they’d had no time to prepare for it. Redondo aimed the wand at the rear of the stage.

  “Now, if there are no more questions… let’s make some magic.”

  A rumbling noise erupted inside the theater. Joey looked up. It sounded like thunder, but he saw no rain coming in through the holes in the ceiling. There was no lightning outside either, just the pitch-black sky.

  Boom!

  The noise grew louder. It was coming from behind the walls.

  Boom! Boom!

  Something large and heavy was banging around backstage. If the jump in volume was any indication, it was getting closer. It sounded like a raging bull had been let loose deep inside the Majestic. Maybe more than one.

  Joey looked to the others, trying to read from their reactions some sense of what was happening. They seemed remarkably unaffected. Do they know what’s coming? Joey wondered. Is this kind of thing normal for them? It probably was. Their parents were both magicians. For all he knew, they had been studying magic since kindergarten. Maybe earlier.

  Joey turned back to Redondo. He was no help, with his eyes fixed firmly on the backstage wall, waving his free hand as if directing the movements of something only he could see. The thunderous noise grew louder and closer until it was just backstage, and then suddenly it arrived.

  Two large boxes the size of coffins flew out from behind the musty old stage curtain. Joey and the others ducked down as they zoomed by, narrowly missing them.

  “Watch your heads,” Redondo said after the boxes had already passed. He swept the wand out in a wide arc, and the boxes went soaring over the empty seats in the audience. Redondo turned with them and brought the wand back around. The boxes mirrored his movements and lapped the theater before returning to the stage. Rather than set the boxes down, Redondo twirled the wand and they swirled around, ten feet in the air. Up close, Joey saw they were crafted from smooth, polished black wood. Each box had three handles on its front panel. Soon after spotting that detail, Joey found out why. The two boxes were actually six.

  Redondo flared the fingertips on his empty hand, and each coffin split in three. Six wooden cubes floated in the air above everyone’s heads, rotating in place. Joey clapped his hands, an action he regretted almost immediately, as he was the only one applauding. Leanora and Shazad stood motionless, tracking the boxes with their eyes. This was nothing to them. They looked at Joey like he was a farm boy gawking at tall buildings his first time in the big city. Joey dropped his hands to his sides and fell in line with them, resolving to play it cool from that point on. Act like you’ve been here before, he told himself. Act like you belong.

  Fortunately, Joey’s lack of cool went unnoticed by Redondo, whose only concern was the heavy wooden boxes that were held aloft by his wand and magical willpower. They must have weighed a hundred pounds each. Working with intense focus, he waved the boxes away from the space over Joey and the others and lowered them gently toward the stage. As they neared the ground, more dust billowed up and Redondo was seized by another violent coughing episode. The boxes all came crashing down in a heap.

  Joey let out a yelp, but this time, at least, he wasn’t alone. Everyone reacted with their own startled cry. Even Redondo cringed when he saw the result of his momentary lapse in concentration. The boxes had all been broken into pieces, their splintered, ruined remains spread out across the stage. Shazad, Leanora, and Joey surveyed the wreckage, and Redondo, with dubious looks.

  “You should know I let them drop on purpose,” Redondo said, straightening out his tuxedo jacket and composing himself. “Just trying to see what the lot of you are made of. For the record, every one of you flinched.”

  So did you, Joey thought.

  “No harm done,” Redondo said. He flicked his wand, and the boxes started putting themselves back together. It was a neat trick, but Joey wasn’t ready to believe it was all part of the show. He had seen Redondo’s face after he had dropped the boxes. Even as the boxes repaired themselves in miraculous fashion, Joey wondered how rusty the old man was after twenty years out of the spotlight.

  Once every chip and crack was mended and the boxes had been reassembled good as new, Redondo arranged two stacks of three, side by side, in the center of the stage. A light swish with the wand was all it took to move them into place.

  “Does anyone know what these are?” Everyone raised their hand except Joey, but Redondo wasn’t really looking for an answer. He just liked to hear himself talk. The hands went back down as Redondo pontificated. “What you see before you are Waywayandan Separating Boxes. Some of the first magic I ever learned involved these wondrous devices, handcrafted from wood grown in an ancient forest long since paved over. This trick is a simple but powerful statement on the impermanence of all things, not to mention a fine place to start taking the measure of your abilities.” He patted one of the boxes. “Who wants to go first?”

  Shazad and Leanora’s hands shot back up like lightning.

  “Good. Step forward, both of you.”

  Joey felt the pang of a missed opportunity. He should have been ready to volunteer. That would have shown some initiative. Then again, he didn’t know what Leanora and Shazad had just volunteered for, so it was probably for the best that he didn’t go first. He had a better chance of doing whatever he had to do properly if he knew what he was supposed to do going in.

  Watch and learn, young Kopecky. Watch and learn.

  Redondo opened up the doors on all the boxes. Each stack of three was tall enough for a child to fit inside while standing upright. Redondo motioned to the open doors. “In you go.” Leanora and Shazad faced off like two boxers tapping gloves before a fight and got into position. “Any questions?” Redondo asked as they entered.

  “Not from me,” Leanora replied.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Shazad.

  The boy nodded. “Whenever you are.”

  Redondo nodded. “Good answer.”

  He closed the boxes and began to move them around, starting with the ones on top that contained Shazad’s and Leanora’s heads. Using his wand, he pulled them up and away from the stack and held them there, suspended in midair. Next he did the same with the other boxes. They parted from one another with a light, airy motion—feathers on a breeze. Redondo shuffled them around and put them back together in order. Or so Joey thought. Redondo opened the top-left box and Shazad’s feet were inside. Redondo took a step back, examined the stacks, and opened the middle box on the right-hand side. Leanora’s head was there, in the place where her stomach was supposed to be.

  “Still with us, my dear?” Redondo asked.

  Leanora nodded. “I’m fi—”

  Redondo closed the door in Leanora’s face, cutting her off. He knelt down to the bottom-left box and knocked on the door. “Yes?” Shazad’s
voice asked from the other side. Redondo opened the door and there Shazad was. Part of him, anyway. Redondo checked the top-right box, the one over Leanora’s head, and found Shazad’s torso. With three box doors now open, his full body was present and accounted for, albeit completely out of order. Joey was more than impressed, but he managed to keep his poker face intact. Redondo didn’t ask Shazad how he felt. Instead, he gave him a sharp jab in the ribs with the end of his wand. Down on the floor, Shazad’s head let out a painful, surprised cough. Redondo gave a satisfied nod and shut the door in his face too.

  Waiting in the on-deck circle, Joey watched as Shazad massaged his side. As far as he could tell, Redondo hadn’t poked him in the stomach to be mean. It was more like the magical equivalent of a doctor testing someone’s reflexes by hitting their knee with a little hammer. Redondo just didn’t have any bedside manner, that was his problem. Doing the impossible, however, that was no problem at all.

  Joey’s poker face cracked, and he watched in wide-eyed wonder as Redondo went about his business. Redondo made the boxes fly as he rearranged them again, putting Shazad’s head on Leanora’s body and vice versa. It was an amazing spectacle, but Joey couldn’t help feeling that something was missing. There was no heart. No style or panache. No master showman. He was running a routine with preset moves, and Shazad and Leanora might as well have been mannequins in those boxes. Redondo didn’t speak to either of them again until it was time to let them out.

  “Next!” he called, beckoning Joey to come forth without bothering to turn his head and look at him.

  Joey passed Leanora and Shazad on his way to the boxes. They were both working out kinks in their necks. Joey wanted to ask them if it felt weird being taken apart like that, but the competitive atmosphere got in the way. “Child’s play,” Shazad said to Leanora as they went by.

  “At best,” she replied.

  Joey was thrown off by the exchange. What were they bragging about? Shazad and Leanora hadn’t done anything except stand inside their respective boxes. Redondo was the one who had done all the work.

  Joey’s heart sped up as he neared the box. Was there more to this than he realized? There was so much he didn’t know, but only one way to learn. Joey told himself Shazad and Leanora were just trying to psych him out. He had seen this trick already. There was nothing to it. But as soon as Joey turned his back to get in the box, he heard a sound like a sword being drawn across a whetstone.

  Shing!

  He spun around to see Redondo holding two blades—large, flat razors with sharp, slanted edges. “What are those?” he blurted out.

  Redondo scraped one blade against the other, making the noise again. “Spare blades from the guillotine you saw backstage,” he said lazily. “You’d be surprised what I have lying around this place.”

  “What are they for?”

  “My next trick. What else?” Redondo paused his sharpening and looked up. “Is there a problem?”

  “These boxes are magic boxes, right?” Joey asked, his voice cracking a little. “They count as relics?”

  Redondo answered with a condescending smile and nod that made Joey feel foolish for having asked the question. He forced out a smile of his own as Redondo closed the door, leaving him completely in the dark. Blindly, Joey ran his fingers along the smooth wooden interior, not knowing what to do next. Did he have to do something special, or was he just supposed to stand there and wait for Redondo to chop him up? He wanted to ask, but his throat tightened up on him. His mouth went dry. He couldn’t seem to form a sentence. Joey’s heart, which was already beating fast, kicked into overdrive as a creepy sense of déjà vu took hold of him. He had been here before—in his “dream.” The man in the scarf had shut him up in a box and set it on fire. All of a sudden questions filled Joey’s head. Alarms went off in his brain. What had happened to the kid who went missing after the theater fire? What had gone wrong in this place twenty years ago? What was so bad that it had caused Redondo to go into hiding? Joey thought about Redondo coughing and dropping the boxes. What if it happened again? What about the dust? There was so much dust!

  There was a rustling sound on the side of the box, and Redondo pushed the blade in. Joey felt a pain in his side and that was it. He bailed. He didn’t mean to do it, but instinct took over and he flew out the door. Just like in his bedroom, he kicked his way out of the box and fell forward. Only this time he didn’t land in his bed. He dropped five feet out of the air and landed hard on the floorboards of the stage. Everything came to a crashing halt.

  Joey rolled over painfully on his side, trying to get his bearings. He hadn’t even felt Redondo raise the box into the air. He’d had no idea he was up there. “What was that?” Redondo asked, positively aghast. Joey caught a glimpse of his face and had to turn away. His expression was pure, weaponized disappointment. Leanora looked at Joey like someone who had crashed a wedding and thrown up on the bride.

  “So much for the boy who changed everything,” Shazad said quietly to Leanora.

  “Someone might want to go back to Hoboken,” she agreed.

  * * *

  Joey’s fortunes did not improve as the evening wore on. Redondo trotted out relic after relic, testing the group’s magical acumen, but for a child who normally ate tests for breakfast, Joey came up short at every turn. Redondo challenged the children to walk through a freestanding wall of rocks that had been taken from the foundation of an ancient castle. They were mortared together with hard cement, but Leanora and Shazad passed through them without a care. Meanwhile, Joey succeeded only in flattening his nose against the stones.

  Next Redondo borrowed Shazad’s cape of transfiguration and shook it out until it was the size of a picnic blanket. He threw the magic cloth over Shazad and proceeded to fold it up until both the blanket and the boy inside were small enough to fit inside his pocket. When he shook it out again, the cape unfurled like a sail. Shazad tumbled out, flying across the floorboards, turning handsprings, and launching himself into a flip. He stuck the landing at the lip of the stage, finishing strong like an Olympic gymnast. Even Leanora looked impressed.

  When Joey’s turn came, he had a twist of his own, but one that was far less elegant. After Redondo had finished folding him up inside the blanket, he dumped him out onto the floor. Joey landed in an ungraceful heap and stood up looking like Quasimodo. He was hunched over, unable to straighten out. His elbows bent back the wrong way, and his neck was crooked to the side. Joey hobbled around like a human question mark until Redondo straightened him out, and that wasn’t even the freakiest thing that happened to him that night.

  When it came to messing with Joey’s mind, nothing beat the Russian nesting doll trick. Redondo had a life-size matryoshka doll large enough for a person to fit inside. He said it was originally the property of the first Russian czar. Redondo closed Leanora inside the doll, and when he reopened it, there was a smaller version of the doll there in her place. Inside of that doll was another smaller doll, followed by another and another, until Redondo reached the smallest doll in the center, which did not open. Redondo reassembled everything in order, and when he opened the outermost doll shell a second time, Leanora emerged unharmed.

  Approaching the task with some trepidation, Joey crouched down inside the bottom half of the doll. Redondo lowered the top half over him, and when he opened it up again, Joey had found a new and exciting way to fail. He was still there, but he had been transformed into a living matryoshka doll, pear-shaped and made of wood. Joey’s likeness was captured perfectly, painted on the outside of the doll in his precise image, right down to the pajamas he was wearing. He had no way of knowing what was happening at the time, but after Redondo changed him back again, Leanora told him how he had sat there in doll form… his eyes blinking… a look of terror frozen on his face. She had to be the one to tell him, because for thirty minutes after the trick, Joey was incapable of speaking anything but Russian.

  When it was time to go home, Joey was afraid he had failed to make it past
the first cut, and rightfully so. He asked Redondo if he could come back and try again tomorrow, but the old man shook his head and said he’d have to think about it. Joey asked how he would know when Redondo made up his mind.

  “A little bird will tell you,” Redondo replied.

  Joey hoped his wasn’t a vulture.

  8 Exemplary Students

  The next morning Joey was back in the city for a tour of Exemplar Academy. This time his mom and dad both came with him. Everybody was excited to get a look at Joey’s new school. Everybody but Joey, of course. Everything that had happened the night before only made him dread Exemplar Academy even more. How could he possibly be expected to handle school—especially that school—now that he knew the world was full of magic? How was he supposed to spend his days locked up in a classroom when he could be out there learning so much more? Doing so much more? Joey’s mind ran around in circles as he struggled with everything he had learned in the last twenty-four hours, while trying to pretend that anything else mattered.

  When Joey returned home from the theater, he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned all night, still processing the fact that any of this was real and reliving each failure, wondering why the tricks didn’t work for him the way they had for the other children. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. After all, hadn’t Redondo told him the relics alone weren’t enough? That magic required focus? Clarity of thought? Absence of fear? He didn’t have any of that. Not the way the other kids did. He kicked himself for not getting his head right and cursed Redondo for rigging the game against him. The other kids had all grown up with magic. Joey had learned about it only that day. How could he keep up with them? Was he even going to get the opportunity to try? He hoped he hadn’t already ruined his chances.

  “We’ll get out here,” Joey heard his father tell the cabdriver. They were stuck at a red light behind a long line of cars, and the school was up on the next block.