The Glass Magician Read online

  Nutall gave Thalia a meaningful look and tugged at his right earlobe. On that signal, Thalia started for the front door, Nutall just behind her.

  When they rang, the door opened immediately. “Mr. David Nutall, I presume?” said the bright-eyed old white man standing there. He was dressed in tweeds and sported a magnificent snow-white beard that curled into ringlets on his chest. His nose was redder than the rest of his face. “This will be Miss Cutler, I trust. Please come in. I am Philander Evans, professor emeritus of the Strawbridge Chair of Trader Literature. Do follow me.”

  Thalia followed the old man from the foyer into a study abounding in books and papers. The room smelled of pipe tobacco and hair pomade. Professor Evans cleared two chairs of approximately twelve pounds of accumulated paper and motioned for them to be seated. When Thalia had seated herself, Professor Evans sank into his own chair behind the oaken desk and set about filling his pipe. “How may I help you?”

  Thalia cleared her throat. “Last night I Traded. I think.”

  Professor Evans dropped his pipe. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I changed shape. My hand turned white.” Thalia faltered and fell silent at the expression of astonishment on the professor’s face.

  “Perhaps it will be helpful to put this in context.” Nutall told Professor Evans the story as Thalia had told it to him. “I can feel nothing but gratitude for whatever this phenomenon may be, as it spared Miss Cutler severe injury if not something much worse.”

  Professor Evans had regained his composure during Nutall’s explanation. Now he lit his pipe and puffed on it in silence as he stared at Thalia. When he spoke at last, it was with far less friendliness. “May I see the afflicted member? Show me your hands, Miss Cutler.”

  Thalia removed her gloves and held out both hands. The left wrist was bruised and scraped, swollen visibly in comparison with the right.

  Professor Evans peered at her for another three puffs of the pipe. “Your parents.”

  It took Thalia a moment to realize that Professor Evans was asking her a question. “Dead, sir.”

  Professor Evans gave her a thin little smile. “You have my sympathy for your loss. Tell me all about them.”

  “My father was Jack Cutler, a stage magician like me. He died three years ago. That’s when I took over his act.”

  “Was he a Trader?” It was clear that Professor Evans expected the answer to be no. When Thalia had identified her father’s profession, his face had fallen in disappointment.

  “He was a Solitaire,” Thalia replied.

  “What of his parents?”

  “I don’t know.” Thalia looked to Nutall for help. “He was an orphan.”

  “That’s right,” said Nutall. “Jack Cutler knew nothing of any family. He was my dearest friend for many years. He was a widower when we met and never spoke of any relations, alive or dead.”

  “Did he ever display signs of Trader behavior?” Professor Evans asked.

  “He wasn’t as rich as Croesus, if that’s what you mean,” answered Nutall.

  “I mean nothing of the sort. Was he adept at some particular field of business or study? Was he musical? Did he have a singularly mercurial temper?”

  Thalia looked blankly at Nutall, who looked back with eyebrows raised. Thalia met Professor Evans’ inquiring stare. “My father was a very fine stage magician.”

  “He was not musical, nor was his temper at all out of the ordinary. He earned his money. It didn’t come to him from any trust fund.” Nutall added, “He was as fine a Solitaire as I have ever met.”

  “Your mother, Miss Cutler, who was she? Was she a Trader?”

  “She died when I was just a child,” Thalia replied. “Her name was Margaret Cutler.”

  “Margarete, actually,” said Nutall. “Before she married, her surname was Gruenewald. She came from Vienna.”

  “And you?” Professor Evans turned his full attention to Nutall. “You are an uncle, perhaps?”

  “I am no relation to Miss Cutler at all. As I said, her father was my closest friend. Anything I know of Miss Cutler’s mother’s antecedents comes from stories her father told me. Before he died, he asked me to watch out for Thalia. So I have.” Nutall gave Thalia a smile, but it did not warm his grave expression.

  Professor Evans turned back to Thalia. “So as far as you know, both your parents were Solitaires.”

  “That’s right,” said Thalia.

  Nutall cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly? What does that mean?” said Professor Evans.

  To Thalia, Nutall said, “Your father told me about your mother. He said they met in Vienna in 1873.”

  Thalia had heard that story from her father many times. “He was performing at the Vienna World’s Fair, yes.”

  “They married and your father brought her with him when he returned to the States. Your father told me that your mother’s family had been most unhappy about her decision to marry and leave them behind.”

  Thalia frowned. “I never knew that.”

  “He also told me that both your mother’s parents were Traders.”

  Thalia gazed at Nutall, thunderstruck. “Traders?”

  Professor Evans said, “That means your mother was a Trader as well. That’s most interesting.”

  “Mother was a Trader.” Said aloud, the words sounded quite normal. Which was absurd.

  “That’s right.” Nutall smiled encouragingly. “I’m glad you’re taking this so calmly.”

  “I am not calm.” Thalia stood up and paced across the cluttered room to the door and back. “My mother was a Trader.”

  “Precisely so,” Professor Evans stated. “She was a Trader. It is not surprising that you believe you Traded.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Nutall said. “She didn’t know about her mother until just now.”

  “Really? I wonder.” Professor Evans rubbed his chin. “Children can be very perceptive. But let that go. Miss Cutler, your injury is very interesting, but I believe it to be consistent with pulling your hand through the locked cuff. In emergencies, we are sometimes spurred to do what cold reason tells us we cannot hope to accomplish.”

  Thalia crossed to the professor’s desk and leaned over it to stare at him. “My father knew nothing of the family he came from. Isn’t it possible he could have come from Traders too? Then I would have Trader blood on both sides.”

  “It is not impossible,” Professor Evans admitted. “Merely highly unlikely. As it is highly unlikely you actually Traded.”

  “You honestly find it easier to believe that I pulled my hand through a locked cuff than that I Traded?” Thalia kept her voice low and steady. It required effort.

  “Honestly? Yes. Looking up at you like this is hurting my neck. Please resume your seat. It’s a question of age, you see. You’re what, eighteen years old, Miss Cutler?”

  Thalia sat. “I’m twenty-one.” This was not strictly true, but she had been twenty for three months, which was nearly twenty-one.

  “Forgive my error. You are twenty-one years old. Have you ever in your life before experienced anything remotely similar to your difficulty last night?”

  This, Thalia had to be honest about. “No.”

  “Yet if you were truly a Trader, your experiences with Trading from one form to the other would have begun soon after your menarche. When Trader children begin to mature, that is when their poorly controlled Trades begin. You can imagine how closely their parents watch their progress.”

  Thalia nodded, but Professor Evans went on without giving her a chance to speak. “Once a Trader child learns to control the urge to Trade, once they can resist it or change at will, they are given an ordeal to prove their proficiency. There are poems and novels, even plays about these ordeals. Perhaps you’ve seen the Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis? It’s better known as The Golden Ass, but delicacy demanded it be renamed when one of the Latin professors here adapted it for the stage. Selections from it are sometimes performed by th
e graduating classics students.”

  Nutall scoffed. “You have a quaint notion of entertainment. Although she has grown up in theaters, you may safely assume that Thalia has never seen a classical play of any kind, Trader, Sylvestri, or Solitaire.”

  “Really? What a pity.” Professor Evans turned his attention back to Thalia. “Only if the Trader child succeeds in performing that ordeal, only then are they deemed complete Traders, fully adult, and safe to travel the world freely. By the time a Trader reaches the age of twenty-one, they are long past the kind of experience you described.” Professor Evans paused for breath. “You are much too old to have Traded for the first time.”

  Nutall folded his arms and frowned. “What if you’re wrong?”

  Professor Evans sat back in his big chair. “Then Miss Cutler is a Trader with no training, no family support of any kind, let alone the usual Trader family financial trusts, and a future I can only call grim. Until they are able to control their Trades, young Traders can be prey to attacks by manticores. Manticores, although rare, still live by feeding off the magic of Traders who cannot control their powers. Should a young Trader survive unscathed by a manticore, know that most Traders have lost their mental acuity by the time they are seventy. Many Traders choose to spend their declining years in their animal form. If I am wrong about you, Miss Cutler, not only do you have my sincerest apology, you have my profound sympathy.”

  There was silence while Thalia and Nutall absorbed this information. When Professor Evans spoke again, it was with a bright, false smile. “You have one Trader parent, it seems. You are not a Trader. I have one Trader parent myself, and believe me, you will never meet anyone more Solitaire than I am. Congratulations, Miss Cutler. You are safe. You are in no danger of attracting the attentions of a manticore.”

  Thalia frowned. “Then what happened to me last night?”

  “I don’t know.” Professor Evans gave his beard a thoughtful tug. “I am a professor of literature. I don’t have a scientific explanation. If you force me to opine, then I think the danger you were in overwhelmed your ordinary perceptions. You experienced something very like a visual hallucination.”

  “I wasn’t hallucinating.” Nor was it merely visual, Thalia did not say aloud. There was a limit to how much of her time and energy Professor Evans was worth, and she had reached it.

  “Something like a hallucination,” Professor Evans repeated. “The mind is a powerful thing and extreme conditions produce extreme responses, particularly in the weaker sex.”

  “Right.” Thalia put her gloves back on, careful with the bruising on her wrist despite her irritation with Professor Evans and his opinions on women. “But if things were different, if I had Traded last night, what would happen now?”

  Professor Evans took his time thinking that over. “Probably one of two things, with one being much more likely than the other. You would experience similar episodes. Even if you are able to master your condition, you will find yourself in a difficult situation, given that you have neither family nor fortune. Or, and this is much more likely, you would be attacked by a manticore, which would consume whatever magic dwells within you, and you would die.”

  Thalia flinched.

  Professor Evans grew gentle. “Solitaire children often dream of being Traders. I did myself, can you believe it? But it is better this way, isn’t it?”

  “Where do manticores come from?” Thalia had heard of manticores. She knew they preyed on young Traders. She knew they were cunning and relentless. “How will I know one when I see it?”

  “If you see it,” Professor Evans said. “I told you they are rare. A manticore is the fruit of Trader intermarriage. Given the emphasis Trader families put on the dangers of inbreeding, it is considered more desirable to have a child with a Solitaire, or even a Sylvestri, than to risk giving birth to a manticore by binding family lines too tightly.”

  “Inbreeding,” Thalia echoed faintly. That sounded disgusting.

  Professor Evans continued. “A Trader takes two shapes, their human form and the form of the animal to which they Trade. A manticore has two shapes, their own dreadful form and the imitation of a human to which they shift.”

  “So a manticore is really a Trader,” said Thalia.

  “Never say that to a Trader unless you wish to offend them,” said Professor Evans, “but in a sense, you’re right. Solitaires and Sylvestri dislike the manticore, but they have almost nothing to fear from them. Traders, on the other hand, loathe the manticore. The manticore returns the sentiment. Traders wish to destroy all manticores forever. A manticore preys on the magic found in Traders too young to control their transformation. Once the Trader can control the Trades, the manticore cannot feed upon them any longer.”

  “So manticores eat young Traders,” Thalia repeated.

  Professor Evans shook his head. “They consume their magic. The body remains, almost untouched. They eat the intangible. Where a manticore has fully fed, what remains cannot sustain life any longer.”

  Thalia cleared her throat. “That’s horrible.”

  “To us, it is. To Traders, it is unspeakable. They go to great lengths to protect their young from the risk of a manticore attack. All the larger cities employ a Skinner specifically to deal with any manticore that dares to venture into civilization. Freelance Skinners work more remote places. All are promised reward.”

  “What are Skinners?” Thalia had seen the term in newspapers, but the dismissive way the professor pronounced the term made it clear he thought there were better jobs to have.

  “Just people. They can come from any background, but most often a Skinner will be a Solitaire who has the senses of a hunter and no other honest way to earn money.” Professor Evans added, “Any further questions?”

  “Just one,” said Nutall. “Are there any members of the faculty we could speak to who are actually Traders themselves?”

  Professor Evans chuckled. “Very wise to seek a second opinion. Unfortunately, Traders in academia are rare. There are none on the faculty here. It is an unusual Trader who loves learning so much they will spend their limited time finding it. They know it will be the first thing they lose when their days of clarity come to an end.”

  “Thank you for your honesty, Professor Evans.” Thalia had endured about as much honesty as she could stomach for now. She rose and held out her hand.

  Professor Evans rose as Nutall did and leaned across his desk to shake hands with them in turn. “Thank you for consulting me. I hope you will keep me advised of further developments. I may decide to write a paper on the theme of Solitaire children with one Trader parent.”

  Thalia was glad to leave the professor’s house behind. On the street outside, she drew a few deep breaths to banish her anger and the smell of pipe tobacco. “What now?”

  Nutall gave her a crooked smile. “Now we catch a train. No more Siege Perilous for you. Tonight, we’ll make do with the snake transformation.”

  “No!” Thalia caught his sleeve and shook Nutall’s arm in her excitement. “Tonight we’ll try the Bullet Catch!”

  “Too dangerous,” Nutall replied instantly.

  “Nonsense! The snake transformation isn’t going to be enough for an audience of New Yorkers. We need the big gun.” Thalia held Nutall’s gaze until her enthusiasm melted his restraint.

  Nutall conceded defeat in their staring contest. “Oh, very well. The Bullet Catch it is. You will be careful.”

  Delighted, Thalia pulled him onward. “I always am.”

  Nutall gave her an old-fashioned look. “You never are.”

  “I will be from now on, I promise.” Thalia set aside her fear of the night before. Stage magic was what she knew. Stage magic was her livelihood. She was a professional. She would give her performance every ounce of skill and determination she possessed. The audience would witness the kind of magic only a Solitaire could make.

  Chapter Three

  Although the Majestic Theater had just as many seats as the theater Thalia h
ad played in Philadelphia, the performance that evening was much better attended. It had been six months since Thalia had last played New York City, but some of the stagehands remembered her.

  “Hey, Lady of the Lake,” one called when he saw her. “Welcome back to the big time.”

  “Oh, Ed, I’ve seen bigger,” Thalia replied sweetly.

  Ed the stagehand rolled his eyes. “You’re too young for that kind of talk, Miss Cutler.”

  Thalia left Ed behind as she made her way toward the dressing rooms. Although the Majestic Theater was in the Cadwallader Syndicate, not the Keith Syndicate, backstage was no different. It was full of shadows and smells—sweet greasepaint, stale sweat, cheap perfume, and even wet dog hair from one of the animal acts.

  The dressing rooms at the Majestic, unlike those at some theaters, were worth the argument it took to get one. Thalia wasn’t the headliner, so there was no designated room with a star on the door for her. The rest of the cast shared the two bigger rooms, one for men and one for women. The women’s dressing room had mirrors on one wall and a screen to dress behind. It wasn’t perfect privacy, but Thalia had experienced much worse. There were theaters out on the circuit with so little thought given to the performers that Thalia had to change in her room at the boardinghouse before the show.

  Behind the screen, Thalia buckled herself into the pigeon squeezer, which fitted over her corset and chemise. Once she had the doves safely stowed, she donned the white Lady of the Lake gown with its hanging sleeves. The extra fabric made it easy to produce the doves on cue without giving away their point of origin. Thalia unpinned her fair hair and combed it to fall smoothly over her shoulders and down her back. The gilt circlet of the Lady of the Lake’s crown was the finishing touch. Thalia made sure she had it on straight and pinned firmly in place before she shook out her voluminous skirts and stepped forth. A black Solitaire clog dancer in a blue dress immediately took her place behind the screen.