A reason to be alarmed
My local library was like a shoebox. It was rectangular and white and smelled of feet.
It wasn’t even a proper building. The library was just a big flimsy container that sat on a slab of concrete in an empty lot between our local supermarket and the indoor swimming pool. It had one door on the side and a handful of tiny windows up high on the walls. There were tangled bushes growing on either side of the steps leading up to the door but, apart from that, the rest of the lot was covered in thick grass and weeds.
Mum shoved the library’s heavy glass door open. The librarian was sitting behind his little counter, stacking books.
‘Do you think HE knows where the fart books are?’ I asked.
‘NICHOLAS!’ Mum snapped at me, way too loudly for a library. ‘ENOUGH WITH THE FART TALK!’
‘SHHHH!’ the librarian hissed at my mother, giving her a look that suggested she probably should have known better, being a librarian herself. Mum looked mortified. Like a dentist with bad teeth or a bald barber, there are few things more embarrassing for a professional librarian than being shushed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘My son is looking for books on magic.’
‘Seven nine three point eight,’ I mouthed, and the librarian nodded his little bald head, looked over his glasses at me and pointed to the far side of the library.
My eyes fell on a small but glorious collection of magic books: more than I could possibly read in one go. I walked over and ran my finger gingerly across the spines, carefully pulling out the ones that caught my eye. Mum had disappeared. The whole world disappeared.
There were picture books for little kids, showing them how to make their own props out of cardboard boxes and glitter and glue. There were also books that were clearly meant for real magicians. Those were filled with words and diagrams I could barely understand.
Each book was filled with secrets just waiting to be uncovered. I felt like I shouldn’t be here, like these secrets were meant for someone else, someone more important.
And that’s when I found it.
A thick paperback buried between Mark Wilson’s Complete Course in Magic and The Royal Road to Card Magic. The spine was cracked and broken but I could still make out the title.
Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic by J. Mesno.
I turned the paperback over and over in my hands. The cover was black and the title was written in big red capital letters. In the centre, a black and white photo showed an old-fashioned-looking magician with a thin black moustache and an even thinner smile. The rest of the cover was plastered with words. MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED DETAILED ILLUSTRATIONS! NEWLY REVISED AND EXPANDED!
I flipped open the book to what looked like the instructions for hypnotising someone.
‘One always finds it inspiriting to chance upon a disquisitive mind amongst this humble bibliotheca of prestidigitation.’
I looked up from the book to see an old man standing in front of me, his arms outstretched. He wore a brown tweed suit covered in tiny checks. A bright patterned handkerchief stuck out so far from his breast pocket it looked like a colourful bird trying to escape. His hair was white with specks of black, a hair colour you sometimes hear called ‘salt and pepper’, but always makes me think of a mouldy bathroom ceiling.
‘I’m sorry?’ I said, not having understood a single word the man with the mouldy-bathroom-ceiling hair had just said.
‘This athenaeum of thaumaturgy?’ the old man said. ‘This chrestomathy of conjuring?’
If you’re feeling a bit thick about now, you really shouldn’t.
The man I was talking to was kind of up himself. He liked to use long words to make himself look smart.
Never trust people who use unnecessarily long words. They are just a bunch of stultiloquent jobbernowls.
What the old man was actually trying to say was: ‘It is always nice to see a young person exploring the magic section of the library.’
‘I’m a magician,’ I said as the man plucked the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic from my hands and turned it over. ‘At least, I’m trying to be.’
‘Well then,’ the old man said. ‘You must perform for me. Do you have an effect to hand?’
I wasn’t sure. Mum and Dad had looked kind of impressed by my vanishing cornflake over the breakfast table but I hadn’t tried entertaining a stranger. This felt like a step up. And since I’d only been practising since that morning, it felt like way too much too soon.4
‘I know one trick . . .’ I admitted. ‘You get a coin and then . . .’
The man held up a finger to silence me.
‘Show, don’t tell,’ he said.
I fumbled in my pocket for a coin before remembering I didn’t have one.
‘Do you have a coin?’
He reached into his pocket and took out a handful of loose change. I took a coin and placed it on my index finger. My fingers were shaking as I snapped them. In an incredible stroke of luck, the coin shot up my sleeve first try. The old man, his eyes fixed on my hand, didn’t seem to notice where the coin had gone. If anything, he seemed vaguely impressed. Had I just fooled a magician?
‘That was a fair attempt, I suppose,’ he said finally. ‘If not a tad clumsy in the execution.’
‘I’m still practising,’ I said, trying not to look too pleased with myself.
‘Then what you require,’ he said, ‘is a confederation of conjurers with whom to discuss legerdemain and share the secrets of our enigmatic art form.’
‘A what?’
‘An alliance of illusionists.’
‘You mean like a magic club?’ I said, reaching for the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic in his hands.
‘Exactly,’ he said, pulling the book away from my grasp and tucking it under his arm. ‘We are gathering this very evening.’
Then the old man opened his wallet and it burst into flames.
This story is filled with moments like this where you will stop, set this book to one side and say to yourself, ‘Well, clearly he’s making that up.’ But, as I’ve already told you, this story is completely true. And it’s only going to get more incredible. So if a simple burning wallet is too unbelievable for you, I’d suggest you just put this book down and go read something from the non-fiction section. I’d suggest something around five three zero point one one.5
The old man smiled smugly at the shocked expression on my face and then reached into the flaming wallet. Before the fire had a chance to burn him, he plucked out a crisp, white business card. Then he scribbled something on the back of it with a stub of pencil he produced from his jacket pocket and handed the card to me while somehow managing to also hold on to the flaming wallet and the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic. I looked closely at the card. It was completely unburnt; there wasn’t even a whiff of smoke.
Printed on the front were the words:
On the back he’d written:
I looked at the business card and then at the burning wallet. Thick, oily smoke was rising towards the ceiling. I went to speak but the man interrupted me.
‘Mr E,’ he said, giving a theatrical bow while waving the wallet in front of him and almost setting fire to my fringe. ‘At your service.’
I didn’t say anything. I was distracted by the fact that I was standing in a room filled entirely with paper while this guy waved a ball of fire around like a cheerleader with a pompom. Also, what kind of name was Mr E?
‘Maybe you should put that out?’ I said.
‘This?’ he said, pushing the wallet towards me, black smoke billowing into my face. ‘It’s just a little chicanery to amuse the hoi polloi.’
‘Sure, but don’t you think . . .’
‘A library is an excellent place to begin your journey to magicianhood,’ he said, taking the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic out from under his arm and holding it aloft. ‘But to truly master the art you must become a member of the Brotherhood of United Magicians.’
‘And I can just show up?’
‘Of course!’ he replied, clapping his hands together, obviously forgetting that he was holding a totally flammable object in one hand and a burning wallet in the other. Before I could react, the Encyclopedia of Amateur Magic caught alight. Mr E didn’t even seem to notice, instead bringing his hands back apart. I watched, frozen, as the tiny yellow flame on the edge of the book’s cover started to creep from page to page until even the old man couldn’t ignore it.
Startled, Mr E dropped the wallet on the floor. It landed open and face down on the carpet. I thought for a moment the fire had gone out, but I soon saw flames curling out around the worn leather. I took a step forward to try to stamp them out but was stopped by a strange feeling in my stomach. It was almost as if my insides were weightless and had started to rise up into my chest. For a second, I thought that I might faint, but instead I just stood there.
The old magician’s attention was now fully on the flaming book. He waved it back and forth in the air, trying to extinguish the flames. Instead of putting out the fire, this action just fanned the flames even more, and now the book was well and truly ablaze.
I looked back down at the wallet. Unfortunately, the fire had spread to the floor and was melting a large hole in the thick green carpet.
Mr E let out a yelp as the flames reached his fingers and I looked up just as he flung the book across the room, where it hit a bookshelf, wedging itself between two shelves.
I watched in horror as the fire started to spread to the books above and below. Some of them must have been covered in plastic because black, smelly smoke curled up towards the ceiling where the fire alarm sat waiting.
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP
The sound of the alarm shook me out of whatever trance was keeping me fixed to the spot and I sprang into action.
I ran away.
At the end of the aisle I collided with the bald-headed librarian, who was racing towards the flames holding a fire extinguisher in both hands. He knocked me flat on my backside as he shoved past me.
I scrambled to my feet and turned around to see the librarian covering the wallet, the carpet and the bookshelf in thick white foam from the fire extinguisher.
Mr E was trying to say something to the librarian but I couldn’t hear him over the alarm. I turned around and there, standing behind me holding a stack of crime novels, was my mum. Both the books and her jaw dropped as she took in the scene in front of her.
This was not good.