“Does he teach those things as well, the way you teach me?”
His instructor nods, but does not elaborate.
“How can the people watching not see the difference?” the boy asks. To him it is clear, though he cannot properly articulate why. It was something he felt in the air as much as observed with his eyes.
“People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.”
They do not discuss the matter further.
While there are other not-quite holidays, though they are rare, the boy is not taken to see any other magicians.
*
PROSPERO THE ENCHANTER uses a pocket knife to slit his daughter’s fingertips open, one by one, watching wordlessly as she cries until calm enough to heal them, drips of blood slowly creeping backward.
The skin melds together, swirls of fingerprint ridges finding one another again, closing solidly once more.
Celia’s shoulders fall, releasing the tension that has knotted in them, her relief palpable as she draws herself safely together.
Her father gives her only moments to rest before slicing each of her newly healed fingers again.
*
THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT takes a handkerchief from his pocket and drops it on the table, where it lands with a muffled thump, something heavier than silk hidden in the folds. He pulls the square of silk upward, letting the contents, a solitary gold ring, roll out onto the table. It is slightly tarnished and engraved with something that the boy thinks might be words in Latin, but the script is looping and flourished and he cannot make them out.
The man in the grey suit replaces the now empty handkerchief in his pocket.
“Today we are going to learn about binding,” he says.
When they reach the point of the lesson that includes the practical demonstration, he instructs the boy to place the ring on his own hand. He never touches the boy, regardless of the circumstances.
The boy tries in vain to pry the ring from his finger as it dissolves into his skin.
“Bindings are permanent, my boy,” the man in the grey suit says.
“What am I bound to?” the boy asks, frowning at the scar where the ring had been moments before.
“An obligation you already had, and a person you will not meet for some time. The details are not important at this point. This is merely a necessary technicality.”
The boy only nods and does not question further, but that night, when he is alone again and unable to sleep, he spends hours staring at his hand in the moonlight, wondering who the person he is bound to might be.
*
THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY, in a crowded theater that thunders with applause for the man onstage, hidden in the shadows formed between disused pieces of scenery backstage, Celia Bowen curls herself into a ball and cries.
Le Bateleur
LONDON, MAY–JUNE 1884
Just before the boy turns nineteen, the man in the grey suit removes him from the town house without notice, setting him up in a modestly sized flat with a view of the British Museum.
At first he assumes that it is only a temporary matter. There have been, of late, journeys of weeks or even months, to France and Germany and Greece, filled with more studying than sightseeing. But this is not one of those not-quite holidays spent in luxurious hotels.
It is a modest flat with basic furnishings, so similar to his former rooms that he finds it difficult to feel anything resembling homesickness, save for the library, though he still possesses an impressive number of books.
There is a wardrobe full of well-cut but nondescript black suits. Crisp white shirts. A row of custom-fitted bowler hats.
He inquires as to when what is referred to only as his challenge will begin. The man in the grey suit will not say, though the move clearly marks the end of formal lessons.