Keeper
For Ace, with whom I share all of my secrets.
Jess doesn't need the children at school to tell her that her daddy was a famous magician once. She doesn't need to hear them say that he died. She doesn't need or want to listen to them talk about how he killed that other magician and he got exactly what he deserved. She knows all that. But they say it anyway.
The thing is, Jess also knows that her daddy is still a magician, even if he isn't famous anymore. She knows that he died, but he also came back just for her. And of course he killed that bad magician—he was stealing his secrets and trying to take her away. No daddy in the world would let their Jess be taken away, he'd told her that himself. She's happy to keep these things a secret from the other children; the truth is something that only a few people really want to know and even fewer people than that really get to know it. She can tell that they don't want to know the truth about her daddy. They only want to show off the lies they've been told.
Her daddy says that most of the world is like that, unfortunately. People would rather believe the lie because it's easier and it hurts less. She doesn't think that's a good way to live, but if that's what the world wants it's hardly up to her to stop them. Her daddy laughs when she tells him that and says he doesn't think so, either.
Jess has always been a bright child. That's what her teachers used to tell her mummy and that's what Mr. Cutter tells her daddy all the time. She's old enough now that she can tell when she's watching real magic, which is hardly ever, and when she's being fooled, which is most of the time. Only her daddy can perform real magic, like making her troubles disappear and pulling laughs out of nowhere at all. She's at the point where can tell Mr. Cutter his processes better than he can explain them to her—he says she's a natural. Her daddy says nothing. She can tell that he's unnerved by how quickly she picks up on the illusion, how worried it makes him that her hands are so nimble. She can't tell him that she's worried, too.
Because she knows.
She's always known that she was lucky, from the very moment she was born. She had the best mummy in the world, and she knows that most children think that but it's true for her. She was sweet and kind and she was magic, too, just like daddy, except it was the magic that most people don't even see. Even daddy never really noticed, but that was okay, because mummy's magic wasn't the kind that was meant to be seen. It was the kind that you felt, without even knowing it, the kind that made you warm when she was close and cold when she wasn't there. But Jess had something even more special than a magic mummy, you see. She had two daddies who loved her with all of their hearts.
Their secret was a strange one, but her daddies had taught her that sometimes the best secrets were the ones that no one believed when they were told. She didn't mind keeping it, though they never knew she knew or asked that she keep it for them. It was her own little truth to tuck into her pocket, something to carry with her and hold close when the world tried to sell her its lies. Her daddies were good men, no matter how often mummy shouted at the one who didn't love her, or how the one who did would go cold sometimes when Mr. Cutter came near. (That was how she identified them, you see. The one who loved mummy and the one who didn't really.) It wasn't their fault that the others couldn't see.
She never understood why the bad magician didn't figure it out. He was smart, her daddies said. He was one of the smartest magicians in the world. Surely, he could see what was right in front of his eyes? It wasn't that difficult to tell if he only looked. But he didn't look properly, or he didn't understand what he saw. He wouldn't let them alone, no matter how often Jess prayed he'd just give up. He was smart, but her daddies were smarter. He would never know the truth—he didn't want to know the truth. She could tell just by looking in his cold, dark eyes. He'd long since given up on finding the real truth. He was only looking for another pretty lie.
Forgiveness, she knows, is something that every person must come to in the end. Without forgiveness, the world would be even darker and more horrid than it already is. But she's not sure she'll ever be able to forgive the bad magician for what he took from her. Her mummy is gone now, driven to death by the pressure of loving and being loved by only one of her daddies, and by the constant hunting of the one man who would never understand. The daddy who loved her but not her mummy is gone, because he loved her and her other daddy so much that he would and did give everything to keep them safe. Her daddies lived for one another, and now all her daddy has to live for is her.
She misses her other daddy, the one with the quicker smile and the easier laugh who spun her higher in the air because he wasn't so afraid of hurting her. She misses the way he winked at her when he took her hand, as though he was sharing his secret for just a moment, even if he never suspected how much she knew. She misses sitting outside the door to the room no one ever went in, listening to identical voices laughing over a joke she hadn't heard. She misses looking for her other daddy's face under Fallon's scratchy beard. She misses the days when her mother sighed and pulled her closer and she reached for her other daddy's hand to reassure him that she loved him on all of the days, no matter what.
Mr. Cutter wants to teach her magic. When he finally gets around to offering, she doesn't have any regrets about declining. Magic, like most things, is about lies and secrets and how much the rest of the world is willing to believe what you tell them. She has enough secrets to last her a lifetime, and likes to tell as few lies as she has to. She introduces her father as Mr. Fallon and fakes buckets of tears when people tell her he died.
What she doesn't tell Mr. Cutter is that she knows the fate of the bird in the cage; she knows the sacrifice that comes with a life of lies. Magic is brilliant, a genius craft, but it takes and takes and takes. She is a keeper, she thinks. A keeper of secrets, a keeper of love. She isn't about to let magic take the tiny truths she's collected. Her other daddy taught her that you keep what you find and you hold on to it tight, because you can't be sure when someone will try to take it away.
end