Chapter 2

“You need a distraction until Sanjay calls you back,” Tamarind said. “That’s why I’m here, after all.”

“It is?”

“No, not really. I’m delivering a message from Miles that he was too scared to give you himself. He’s not going to get caught up before you leave for Japan.”

I’d recently hired my underemployed poet neighbor, Miles, as my part-time assistant. I hadn’t been able to keep up with the email messages and letters people had been sending me since I’d helped find treasures from India that had been lost for centuries. After missing an important message over the summer, I knew I needed help. Tamarind was dating Miles after they met through me, and she’d suggested the idea.

“I’m behind too.” I pointed to the stack of papers I’d just spilled coffee on. Several of the people who got in touch with me had serious ideas that merited a personal response from me, not simply a polite form letter from Miles.

“You’re replying to all these yourself?”

“An academic in south India thinks he may have stumbled across a temple cache like the Padmanabhaswamy temple in Trivandrum.” It was easy enough to refer to Bombay as its reclaimed name Mumbai, Madras as Chennai, and Calcutta as Kolkata, but the south Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram was a mouthful in casual conversation. “And a retired businessman found a buried hoard of coins in his backyard in Texas when he began gardening.”

“Since when did you become that kind of treasure hunter, Jaya?”

“The coins had Sanskrit writing on them.”

“Oh.”

“Obviously neither one is my kind of thing. But I need to figure out who to put them in touch with. And then there are people like Dr. Nakamura, a professor I met at a history conference a few years ago. He has some questions about my work on East India Company trade routes in Europe and Asia. It’s my specialty, so I can’t punt him to someone else.”

“You’re too responsible for your own good.”

“Says the person who trekked across campus in the rain. You didn’t have to give me Miles’s message in person.”

“The real reason I wanted to come,” she said, “is because I found this.” She reached into her plaid backpack and held up a hardback book with library markings in the corner.

She opened the book to a full-page reproduction of a magic poster from the early 1900s. “Ta-da. May I present the most magical illusion the world has ever known: The Indian Rope Trick.”

The illustrated poster was filled with vivid reds and bright yellows. Framing the poster was the arch of a Mughal palace, and the Taj Mahal was visible in the distance. In the center, a young Indian boy climbed a rope that stretched to the sky from a woven basket. At the bottom of the poster, a conjuror waved his hands in the air, directing the magical feat.

“Pretty cool, huh?” she said. “This is one of the oldest posters advertising the trick. I couldn’t resist looking it up when you told me where you were going. I also found an eye-witness account.”

“There aren’t any real eye-witness accounts. Since the Indian Rope Trick is impossible and hasn’t been performed in its true form.”

“You doubt me, Jaya?” Tamarind asked with a grin. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them and spoke, her voice was that of a different person. One with a faux British accent.

“The most famous illusion in the world, and I saw it with my own eyes, I did. There I was in a dusty open field outside New Delhi, the stifling sun beating down on us.” She glanced down at the book in her hands before resuming the story. “A wisp of a boy gathered us Westerners together. He explained we were about to witness the most amazing things we’d ever beheld. My friend and I crept closer. It was then we saw the old man with a white beard that reached his heart. But Jaya, what a black heart it was.”

Her kohl-lined eyes grew wide with mock horror. It was a superb performance, and I found myself successfully distracted from my worries.

Her voice fell to a stage whisper. “This was the great magician to whom the boy was enslaved. Once a dozen of us were gathered around the two of them, the black-hearted magician showed us a wicker basket, about two feet high, empty except for a coil of thick rope. The magician lifted the rope from the basket and tossed it into the air. To my surprise, the rope stayed there, hovering in the air.” Tamarind glanced again at the book. My gaze followed hers, and I noticed for the first time how modern the book was. I found myself disappointed it wasn’t a centuries-old book containing a real eye-witness account.

“We weren’t near any buildings, Jaya,” she continued. “It was an open field. You can imagine how much my heart raced. It nearly popped out of my chest at what happened next.” She picked up one of the figurines that cluttered half my desk, small tokens of appreciation from people I’d helped or who hoped I’d help them. Tamarind selected the palm-sized Leprechaun. “The small boy climbed up the rope suspended in midair. My friend is an artist, so he began to sketch the amazing scene before us. I took a photograph. I was glad I did, because a moment later, two of the most unimaginable things occurred.” She paused, meeting my gaze, as if daring me to ask her to continue.

“I’ll bite. What happened?”

“The boy disappeared. Into. Thin. Air. As soon as he reached the top of the rope, high above us, he simply vanished.” She unsurreptitiously flung the Leprechaun into the plaid backpack at her feet. “The magician became angered at this, so he climbed up the rope after the boy—with a machete in his hand.” She stepped forward, brandishing a Swiss army knife. “The magician climbed higher and higher, then disappeared at the top of the rope as well, along with his machete. But from the ground below, we could hear them arguing. I didn’t understand the language they were speaking, but it was clear they were fighting.”

She shivered, as if she were reliving the moment she’d never experienced. “Before we could ask any of our fellow onlookers what they were saying, an arm fell from the sky. Then a foot. I took another photograph, because I knew nobody would believe what I’d witnessed. The black-hearted magician was killing the boy with magic that tore him apart without any blood. I was too shocked to act as the magician climbed down the rope. Other members of the crowd drew closer, rage in their eyes, looking as though they were about to attack the murderous old magician. He must have seen the look in their eyes. As soon as he jumped to the earth, he lifted his hands in a placating gesture and raised the lid from the wicker basket. The boy was inside. The ‘limbs’ we’d seen falling from the sky were nowhere to be seen. The boy bounded from the basket, unharmed.”

“I’ve seen many astounding feats by the magicians of India,” Tamarind concluded, “but none as amazing as the Indian Rope Trick.”

“Weren’t magicians in India called jugglers at the time?” I asked. “If you’re being historically accurate.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You broke the illusion, Jaya.”

“I especially loved the bit about the magician’s black heart. I didn’t remember that detail from what Sanjay told me or any of the articles I read.”

“You like that bit? Creative license on my part.” She tapped on her phone and frowned. “You’re right. Performers who did magic tricks in India in the 1800s and earlier centuries were called jugglers. And mystical magicians were known as fakirs. I’m losing my librarian superpowers.”

“You’re not losing your edge. I liked the formal language as well. It was really like you were telling the story from 1890.”

“I’ve been binging on the History Channel at night. Their actors read a lot of original documents. But you’re distracting me. That’s not the end of the story.”

She cleared her throat and resumed the fake accent. “The most interesting thing happened when my friend and I returned from the British Raj to the States. I developed my film, and imagine my surprise when I beheld there was nothing there. The old magician and the young boy were simply seated next to the wicker basket. My mouth hung agape for several minutes, I can tell you. We’d been hypnotized. There was no rope trick, only mass hypnosis.” She paused and curtseyed, lifting the sides of the fuchsia skirt she wore over black leggings and silver combat boots. “Okay. Now I’m done. No, I lied. I have questions. I know Akira doesn’t possess real magical powers. Or at least I’m pretty sure. So is he a mesmerist who’s actually going to pull off hypnotizing hundreds of people?”

“I doubt it,” I said, “since there will also be tens of thousands of people watching on television. Maybe millions. Even if it were possible, the camera can’t be hypnotized.”

“Then how is he going to pull it off?”

“I wish I knew.” And I wished I knew where Sanjay was.