Conjured

I am behind the Magician on the stage.

The box, fully open, is in front of him. He flourishes his cape and then beckons with one finger. It is many-jointed, and it curls like a snake. I know without seeing his face that he is smiling.

The audience stares at me with their unblinking painted eyes.

A boy walks onto the stage, slowly and stiffly, as if he were pulled by puppet strings. He’s young, not yet a man, and he has dark hair and dark skin. He wears an embroidered gold shirt. And I know he is about to die.

I want to warn him. Or stop him. Or force him to run away with me, far, far away until we can’t hear the tinny sound of the carousel or feel the painted eyes of the audience.

But ropes wrap around my body, weaving themselves around my wrists, elbows, legs … tighter, tighter, until I cannot even shudder. I am lifted into the air and watch from above as the boy climbs into the box and lies down. The Magician closes the box.

He lifts a saw over his head. He turns, showing the saw to the front, the left, the right. It is the saw of a woodcutter. Candlelight dances over the blade, caressing it.

The audience is hushed, expectant, excited. I feel it in the air.

The Magician begins to saw the box in half, and blood drips onto the stage and runs in a river that douses the candles. I swing from the rafters as smoke rises. It thickens and curls around me. Obscuring the stage, it shapes itself into a snake and a hand and a cat …

* * *

Eve woke in a hospital bed.

She lifted her hand. She hadn’t been strapped down this time. Spreading her fingers, she didn’t see leaves or bark. Maybe she had only imagined it. Or maybe the doctors had fixed her. She wondered if she looked the same. Her hands went to her face, and she touched the shape of her cheekbones, her chin, her forehead. She wondered how much time had passed.

“Want a mirror?” Aunt Nicki asked.

Eve started. She hadn’t noticed Aunt Nicki was there. Aunt Nicki was curled on a chair next to the hospital bed. She had an array of empty, stained coffee cups next to her and a magazine on her lap. Searching her purse, Aunt Nicki produced a small case. She flipped it open and held the mirror up to Eve’s face.

She didn’t see the antlered girl, or the boy with the leopard tattoos, or anyone from a photo on the bulletin board. She saw only the face she remembered, the girl with green eyes.

“Neat trick you pulled,” Aunt Nicki said. “Don’t do it again. Can’t put a lilac bush—or whatever you were—on the witness stand.”

Eve felt her cheek, and her fingers touched smooth skin. “More surgeries?”

“You changed yourself back. Don’t you remember? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Clearly you don’t, and no, I am not going to play twenty questions with you so you can figure out how much time you lost. You’ll only forget again, so what’s the point?”

Eve turned her face away from the mirror and stared through the bars of the hospital bed at the blank wall. This room did not have windows. Beside her, machines beeped in a steady rhythm. She had an IV attached to her arm. She heard Aunt Nicki’s chair creak, and then rustling, as if Aunt Nicki were searching through her purse again.

“Okay, I need the details,” Aunt Nicki said. Paper crinkled, and a pen clicked.

Eve didn’t turn her head. “It’s real, isn’t it? The people that I see …” Her voice sounded dead to her ears. She felt so very tired, as if all the pain and surprise and fear had been drained out of her, replaced by the saline that dripped into her veins through the needle in her arm.