The Final Show
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1920
Mesdames et messieurs, bienvenue au Carnaval de Merveille!
Here. It would end here.
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you a man of marvels!
Dozens of introductions from over the years resounded in his head. He'd played everything from traveling sideshows to the Orpheum circuit, and now was on the cusp of fame to rival the greats: Houdini, Kellar, Charles Carter.
Boys and girls, please gather round and prepare to enter a world of mystery and MAGIC!
But of course that would not do. Nor was it something he was sure he wanted.
Still…
In the orchestra pit, one hundred musicians played him on, and the man in the white tie and tails, with the top hat and cape with the dark blue and silver lining, entered from stage left, hand in hand with his comely assistant. Letting go of her hand as the spotlights hit them, he pulled a rose - an actual rose, not a fold-up cloth bouquet - uncrushed from his sleeve and threw it up into the air. With a swing of his arm and a sudden snapping clasp of his hand into a fist, the rose disappeared in a "poof" and changed into a dove in mid-air. Then the man threw his arms wide as if to embrace the audience and from behind his pointed goatee, he flashed his widest, wickedest, most mischievous grin.
"My friends," he laughed wildly, "sit tight! Because you are going to get one Hell of a show tonight!"
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Ironically, the first time Merlin ever enjoyed hiding his true nature was at the exact same time he came closest to revealing the truth. It was a bittersweet enjoyment to be sure, displaying the purest part of him for the purposes of tawdry stage tricks, not to mention that the more he used magic the harder and harder it became to hold himself back, but the point was that he did get to use it. Because it was so hard with his gifts fairly pulsing in his blood every moment of the day, and always hiding it was twisting him inside, poisoning him like a still pond growing stagnant and boggy.
And well, it was also fun to enjoy the secret irony of a real warlock playing a stage magician.
Despite that gift, he had still point a point of learning all the stage craft: producing something from nothing, such as a rabbit from a hat; the simple vanishings; the transformations; the restorations; the teleportations and levitations and the solid through solid penetrations. He even dabbled in hokey escapes and the well-worn prediction routines like guessing the total amount of change in a spectator's pocket.
Oh yes, he learned it all. Then he added flairs of his own.
It was a fine line though. Kellar and Carter and the like had raised the bar; some of their illusions spectacular enough to make Merlin struggle with his rusty magic in the beginning just to equal their magnificent displays, but within a short time he'd also realized the dangers of being too good - that half the audience would scream and faint and think him the devil, and the other half would condemn him as a fake because his tricks were too over the top to possibly be real.
Merlin had to laugh at that: the more real he made things, the more fake he seemed. People in this time had such small imaginations.
But tonight it would end, fittingly enough at the Camelot Theatre, with its fake banners and plaster turrets and completely idiotic murals featuring a blond Guinevere and Lancelot and "Gawaine" as a baby-faced, freckled redhead. A fine place indeed for his last performance. And this, his final show was going to be a spectacle that no one would forget!
Except that everyone would.
-x-
"Oohs" and "ahs" and even a few outright cheers came from the audience as well over a dozen suits of armour were brought to life, but instead of chasing the hapless apprentice sorcerer character (Charlie, one of his assistants, who'd left the show a week ago with his employer's blessing to go to Electrician school) around the stage, this time the "knights" did battle with each other in a furious clash of sparking swords.
To stop them, the master magician (Merlin, quickly transforming from the tuxedoed dandy with the devilish grin to an old man in a flowing blue robe), shot out vine-like tendrils of flame to surround the knights. As the empty suits of armour slowed, the audience squirmed with the start of genuine fear, so the great wizard brought forth an amber-like slab with the picture of a dragon on it, and when he pulled the tiny, oh-so-adorable, white baby dragon made of mist from it, they forgot their discomfort and alarm in the face of the creature's delicate charm.
Oh, my dear Aithusa…
The baby smoke dragon harried the suits of armour until they all collapsed in a pile, Merlin purposely making it them fall the way puppets would whose strings had been cut, and the audience, reassured by this seeming bit of fakery, clapped wildly.
On and on it went as the show progressed. The dresses of lady volunteers were transformed from one colour to another, boys were made to ride bucking chairs, and a little girl had a beautiful miniature tiara appear on her head that she got to keep.
Magic cabinet tricks appeared - a volunteer disappeared and when the door was re-opened, the cabinet was filled with sand from the Sahara. Rabbits were transformed into tiger cubs, and then back again. Multiple silver balls danced around scarves winding their way up to the ceiling as floating musical instruments played Ravel's "Bolero". Death-defying dagger tricks made the audience scream with terror and then with appreciation. A matronly woman, to her amazement and almost comical shock, found herself moved from a seat in the balcony to one up front in an instant. Swords were swung through Merlin's arm and then thrown through a solid brick wall.
All wonderful tricks, but hardly anything more fantastical than the audience could have seen somewhere else.
But the third act - "The Witch and the Warlock" - was where Merlin really got started.
The act was usually played as a competition, a battle royale between dueling sorcerers, both vying in a magical joust to win the position of Court Magician for some mythical sultan or Oriental potentate. Tonight, though, it was a real battle - witch and warlock fighting to the death to save or vanquish King Arthur's Court.
It was only a bit of re-staging for the location, not to mention his idea in the first place, but oh my, how it did hurt.
But the show must go on, as they say.
And so, for that one brief hour nearly fifteen hundred years after he'd entered the world, Merlin used his magic the way he'd always been meant to - openly and to the fullest (well, nearly) extent of his powers.
The audience sat wide-eyed and stunned as fireballs shot back and forth between Merlin - who was playing the Great Mysterioso who, in turn, was ironically playing "Merlin" - and his panicking assistant Elena who was playing "Morgan le Fay" - and was shocked and ready to scream in fright herself at the things she found herself doing.
Frozen strands of ice shot from Merlin's hands to encase "Morgan" like the bars of a cell, but green balls of flame shot back from her hands (Merlin's work too) and melted them. A shock wave rocked the theatre and the audience murmured dangerously. The circled each other, making attack after attack - water this way, rocks that, a tornado here, a bolt of lightning there. Knives shot at Merlin, who jumped on a rope and stood, balancing on it, as it flew away over the audience's heads. "Morgan" followed on a flying carpet and with a thrust of a sword she impaled Merlin in the stomach. Shrieks caught in the audience's throats as a white-as-a-sheet Elena could not keep herself from hacking Merlin into pieces and feeding them to the lion that had suddenly materialized on stage.
But Merlin was not done. With "Excalibur" he cut his way out of the lion's belly and went to make a final attack on "Morgan". The witch fled with a scream but Merlin chased her, the walls around the theatre dissolving to reveal the audience's teleportation to a snow-covered mountain top. The orchestra stopped playing as the musicians fumbled to their feet in terrified astonishment, only to find that, like the hysterical audience, their feet were glued to the floor.
The chase continued. Everyone in the theatre-that-was-no-longer-there watched Merlin pursue "Morgan" down the mountain, through a jungle, across a desert and even under the ocean. It was unconscionable to make so many innocents afraid, so as the grand finale approached, Merlin's magic expanded and a change came over the audience and orchestra and the back-stage hands.
Merlin was sharing the joy he felt as he let his magic loose, more loose than it had been in centuries, perhaps more loose than it had ever been before. Their hearts leaped with his as true, honest to goodness magic flowed all around them. Never had they felt so free, so light-hearted, so alive and flying!
And when, in a heart-stopping moment just when it looked like the witch might triumph, Merlin caught "Morgan" and the evil villainess disappeared in a geyser of blue fire, every throat cheered fit enough to bring the walls down!
Merlin, laughing and panting, stood straight and tall on the now restored stage and basked in the adulation for a long moment. His body glowed with the warmth of finally, finally coming close to being the wizard he was supposed to have been for Arthur, the wizard from fairy tales.
But tears pricked at his eyes as he gave those gathered the last gift of a dancing candlelight display and then the shower of "pixie" dust that washed their memories clean of all but the most explainable parts of his act.
If only…
One newspaper review several months before had gushed and pronounced him "a veritable Merlin".
A veritable Merlin.
Ah yes, sometimes there was nothing like a good bit of irony. The universe knew that too, it appeared.
He was the last to leave the theatre that night. His smile might have been brittle and his eyes red as he did, but he didn't forget one last thing.
The next day a number of cleaning ladies couldn't help but stare at the mural and wondered who on Earth had stayed up all night re-painting all the figures.
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I know I don't say it enough, but thank you all so much for your reviews! And again, hope you enjoyed!