Mum has been stressed at work recently; I barely got an 'Oh, that's nice, dear,' from her when I told her that I was going to be getting an after-school job and she signed the permission slip that the school required with hardly a glance. My new job is magician's assistant to a guy called Tom, but he uses the stage-name Mr Wonder; we have yet to decide if I will have a stage-name too, be Milly or use my second name Anthea. My preference is Anthea, I think it sounds more exotic.
My little experience of magic at Marie's sleep-over, both helping and being victim/volunteer, almost made me think that Tom could do real magic; except real magic does not exist. I don't know how he did what he did, but I am determined to find out. It was weird being divided into three and weirder still being chopped into lots of little pieces by a fan blade, but both weird feelings were also pleasant and I particularly liked them. Most of the other girls at the sleepover took it all at face value; just a magic show, but I want to find out what really happened.
The only way I could think of to find out what was actually going on was to volunteer to be his assistant; something Marie's aunt, Angela, who chaperoned the sleep-over, let slip he was looking for. As his assistant I could find out how he was doing the stuff he seemed to be doing, maybe earn a bit of money and get out from under the thumbs of the girls in college who expecting me to do their homework for them, not just help with the understanding needed.
So far, Tom has been rehearsing me in how to help with the illusions in his children's shows, which I think I could work out given the time to look up on the net, or if I had the money, purchase from a magic shop. The magic that he has done on me during rehearsals, which I can't explain yet, was when he put a box over my head, telling me to hold it in place, then a couple of minutes later he opened a panel in the box and I could see what looked and acted like my body. He told me that he had vanished my head from the box above my body when he had filled the head box with knives and reappeared it where I could see what happened. When he pulled up the panel on the box where my head should have been, directly over my body, the inside of the box was a mess of knife blades and nothing else. He warned me against putting my hand into the head box, and in reply to my counter argument that he had put them where my head should be, he claimed that he knew what he was doing, but I didn't; he had me there, but I was determined to get to the bottom of how Tom seemed to be able to do magic.
Another thing I learnt was how to handle the animals; he had a rabbit called Mr Snuffles, exactly as you might expect a white rabbit, and several doves, which did not have names. He also had a cat, named Harvey, but he was not part of the magic act and had a knack for disappearing when the magic started. The show animals were docile, but he showed me how to treat them right, because if poorly handled they could injure the handler. I think he was joking when he said that a white rabbit covered in spots of blood was not something you wanted in a kids' magic show.
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Today was going to be special; we were going to rehearse my magic trick for the show we were going to do in about ten days time, which would be my debut. A second thing to look forward to was trying out my costume for the show.
Late during the lunch break, my laptop announced an email. It was from Tom; he sent a list illusions for me to choose from for my debut performance. Looking down the list most of them I had heard of, from my short time looking into magic on the internet; the other few, I planned to look up. I emailed back that I hoped to give some of them a go, but I would probably end up going for a sawing in half, of which there were two. I had seen the Wakeling sawing performed on Marie's aunt at the sleep-over, but think from a performance perspective then other one (labelled 'thin model') would be more impressive, because my head would be visible and I could pretend to be sawn in half.
My concentration that afternoon was less than perfect, but I learnt enough that homework should be nothing to worry about. At the end of school I got on my bicycle and rode straight to Tom's place.
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I went in the back way, so I could leave my bike in the back garden and pet the animals before we got started; I had a feeling that this rehearsal might get a bit bogged down with all the stuff I would need to know for my first big illusion. I scattered a little grain for the doves and allowed them to perch on my finger for a while; Tom told me that getting them used to me was good for the show, because once he had produced them from wherever he stowed them, they would be looking for a familiar person in a room of strangers and excitable kids, so would come to me and allow me to put them back in their transport cages.
Mr Snuffles got a couple of carrot sticks left over from my lunch and a scritch behind the ears; he was getting accustomed to being handled by me and sat quietly in my lap and let me pet him.
I heard the phone in the office ring; there is a repeater in the animal house. This was the ideal time to go into the rehearsal room and have a poke about, and see if I could discover any secrets, while he answered the phone for five minutes.
I crept through outside door to the rehearsal room and saw the usual clutter of cabinets, some of which I had seen in action at the sleep-over and others I had no clue about what they did or how they did it. I had been told the names of the illusions, but many I had no idea about, because the names were cryptic; you tell me what a 'Modern Art' does without having seen it.
The interesting stuff was what was in the practice area or pushed off to the side. There was the steel and glass box that Tom says he keeps for a special client and tells me not to touch, because the client likes the box to be pristine and he does not want to spend the time cleaning my fingerprints off it. Then there was the Origami Box sitting open at the edge of the area alongside a wringer.
The most interesting thing was the sawing in half boxes sitting there, separated with the blades in. From the end I could see stuck a pair of feet. 'I thought as much, fake feet.' They looked real, perhaps more real than necessary. Why would Tom need such real looking feet? I was suppose to be wearing ballet type dancing slippers for the show, so that I could move about quietly without having to worry about stepping in something nasty or on something sharp. My brain supplied, he'll take off a slipper and tickle one of the feet and I'll get some cue for when to giggle, so it looks like I can feel what he is doing to the fakes.
Then the feet moved. It was a small twitch that I nearly missed, but they definitely moved. Realistic feet I might have expected, but animatronic feet seemed over the top; we were only trying to fool a bunch of six- to eight-year-olds. When the feet moved again, I guessed that Tom had finished with his phone call, spotted I was already here and was using some remote control to mess with me.
“Is there someone there? Tom?” a slightly strained voice called. It was quiet, but the speech was just long enough that I could isolate that it came from the far end of the other section of the sawing in half box. It also sounded a little familiar, although I could to immediately place it, due to the odd acoustics of the room and the strain in the voice. Was someone else rehearsing the sawing in half trick? Was there now competition for my place as Tom's assistant?
At that moment Tom returned to the rehearsal room from the office. He was in the middle of an apology to the person in the other end of the sawing box, when he saw me. “Sorry that took so long, but I have another booking, and have arranged to call them back to arrange the details, so I could get back to release you. ... Oh, Hi, Milly. I wasn't expecting you quite so early. If you could visit with the animals for about five minutes, I can get Hannah back together and on her way, so we can rehearse your special bit in the show, weekend after next.”
At this point I put together why the voice was familiar and connected it to the name Tom had used. I took several quick steps to the side, so that I could get a glimpse of the head resting on the piece of table the extended beyond the half box. “Mum?!?!”
She countered with, “Milly! What are you doing here?” Tom seemed stunned that we knew each other.
“I've come to rehearse my feature illusion for a show that I'll be performing with Mr Wonder. You should know that; you signed the forms from school so that I could have a job. What are you doing here?”
Mum looked as though she was thinking about how to word her reply; she sometimes forgets that I am old enough to not need to be told things coated in sugar and euphemism. “You know how I've been under a lot of stress lately?” I nodded that I did. “Well, Tom has been helping me cope with it.”
“So, he's your new boyfriend or lover?” She looked shocked that I was being so direct. I followed up with, “I didn't know you were into magic; I thought that getting inside boxes and cupboards and other stuff was your weird thing, but I guess it kind of makes sense.”
“I didn't know I was in to magic until I tried it. Angela recommended it to me.”
“I know that she's into magic (and a bit, Tom), because he was doing magic with her at that sleepover I came back early from a month or so back. How many times have you been sawn in half?”
Mum looked a little embarrassed. “Well, actually, you caught me in the middle of my first time.”
“I've come to rehearse being sawn in half for the first time.” I spotted the glances that Mum and Tom exchanged when I used the word 'rehearse'. “But Tom did seem cut me into three pieces at the sleep-over and then I got cut into a lot of gory pieces by a spinning fan blade; it felt oddly pleasant.”
Tom interrupted. “Maybe I should get Hannah back together, while you go to the changing area and try on your new costume.”
“No need to hurry on my account,” said mum; I guess she was enjoying being curled up in the top part of the sawing in half box and controlling those too realistic fake feet.
“I do have another box that we could use to rehearse Milly in; it'll work; I just haven't finished repainting it. That way you get to enjoy being in a pair of boxes for a while longer and to see what I plan to do to your daughter Saturday after next.” He turned to talk to me. “You know where the changing area is. I've already put out your costume; if you think there are any problems with it, it will give me some time to sort them out before your first gig.”
I turned to go and find out what Tom thought was suitable costume for a magician's assistant in a kid's show; I bet it is different from what school rumour had it the assistant in one of his adult shows wore; nothing more than a pair of high-heeled shoes and a blindfold.
“No need to hurry. I'll need a bit of time to arrange your mum so she can watch and then get the substitute box from over there.” He waved in the general direction of where the cabinets and other stuff were packed most closely. “I'm sorry, but, unless you take more than half an hour, I won't have time to warm the blades for your first time, because your mum got the set I had warmed. I just thought a bit of warning ahead of time might be appropriate.”
In the changing room was a dark blue leotard with a matching skirt that probably reached mid-thigh. On top were a pair of slippers that nearly matched in colour, but were a bit shinier, and a packet of white tights. I quickly removed my school uniform and put on the tights and the slippers, before turning my attention to the leotard. The first discovery was that the cups were slightly padded, which was probably something to do with mentioning that I felt I was lagging behind the other girls with breasts that did not quite fill an A-cup, but also practical as they would provide support, because the shoulder straps were too thin for me to wear my bra without the straps showing. The second thing that I noticed was how the middle section, from under my bust down to the top of the skirt, which was level with the top of my hips, was tighter, so it pulled in my belly and made me look thinner than in anything I had ever worn.
I paused to look in the mirror. I looked like me as I imagined myself as a magician's assistant, except I lacked something to wear on my head, which I felt was necessary; I don't know why.
I returned to the rehearsal room to find mum's upper half parked by the props table and the part they were pretending held her lower half was positioned by the door with the feet facing into the room. In the centre of the practise area was another sawing in half box that looked like it was the same as the combined halves of the other, except it was a dull metallic grey.
As I stepped through the door, Tom whistled. “You look as good as I had hoped. It might be lost on the kids, but the parents will appreciate it.”
Mum added, “You look gorgeous, love.”
“Let's see if we can spread that beauty further,” Tom invited, as he opened to the lids on top of the boxes. “In you get and we'll take this new box for a spin.”
I walked over to the box, happy that the slippers made my footsteps quieter than I thought possible. The inside of the box was pretty much as I expected; dull black. I spotted a small gathering of dust in a corner; this showed me that Tom had not had any time to prepare the box to withstand my inspection. I went over to the props table to fetch a cloth to remove the dust. While I shepherded the dust from the apparatus, I was also feeling for hidden catches and compartments where, probably less convincing, fake feet might be hidden. No luck! Maybe he had them hidden somewhere else and he would put them in while he was pretending to lock my feet in the foot stocks.
A step away and a step back allowed me to deposit the dust-laden cloth on the edge of the origami table. Time to get in the box. It was not obvious to me which end of the box was which, because the boxes only consisted of a pair of walls, each with opening flaps in, and a lid. “Which end is which?” I asked.
“Yeah, I forgot about that; this one is a bit of an oddity. That's part of the reason I wasn't in a hurry to do the full renovation. It does not matter which end you choose as the head-end or foot-end, because the stocks are fitted to the assistant and then slotted into the ends of the box; so unless I do something, like paint a person-shaped outline on the sides, it does not matter which way you get into the box.”
This partially confirmed my theory about the fake feet being hidden somewhere other than inside the box, because it would be redundant to have two sets of feet to account for which way round an assistant chose to enter the box. I decided that I would sit in the end I was closest to; it was easier and there was no point in letting Tom know that I was on to what was going on. He stopped me before I began to scoot back to get into position. “Wait a moment, while I fit these.” He held up a set of stocks with two holes in and hinged at one end, making it look a bit like a damaged Hollywood clapper-board. He opened it up and then knelt down to close it around my ankles. I felt him touching my shins to adjust them so that the first contact with the stock was when the holes closed around both my shins. I did not see any of the action, because the table I was sitting on was in the way; suspicious that. I pointed my toes to see if the stocks would fall off; the answer was no.
Scooting back in the box was less easy, because of the combined weight and restriction caused by the stocks. Tom tried to help by supporting some of the weight and when I was back far enough, he guided the stocks into slots in the side walls of the box. He had clipped them in place before I thought to try raising them. I leaned forward to look at them. They looked exactly as they felt, the narrow holes pressed the felt lining in the holes around the base of my shins. I did not get much time to look, because Tom was closing the lower lid over my legs and I had to lean back again to avoid being clonked by it. It felt like my ankles were there to stay until they were released, but I knew that with an illusionist that what you think you are feeling is not necessarily what you are feeling; Tom had shown me how he did the 'disappearing ring under the hankie' trick.
He bent down and lifted into view another clapper-board stock, but this time it had three holes, the centre one being larger and having a deeper felt lining. He had me raise my arms to the side of my neck then closed it around my neck and wrists. 'Clever!' I thought, 'that will stop me feeling around inside the box to find out what's happening.'
“Now, lean back gently and I will guide you back into place.” One of Tom's hands supported my head, while the other held onto the stock. With a little adjustment, the stock was slotted into the head end and clipped in place.
It dawned on me that I was stuck here until I was released and that I had no means of telling what was going on inside the box. I did not feel unsafe in my predicament, despite Tom's stated intention to saw me in half. Firstly, mum was watching from her half box beside the table, but probably more convincing to me was that Tom had invested a lot of time in training me to assist in his magic show and to injure me now would be a waste of those efforts.
Tom lifted a pair of blades from the shelves under the table and clashed them near my head. I flinched, but who wouldn't. He set one down on the lower lid of the box and then raised the other one ready to insert it into the box.
“Hey, wait a moment,” I called, “Aren't you supposed to be SAWING me in half?”
“Yes and no,” he replied. “The sawing in half illusion, in its many forms is probably the most inaccurately named trick in the magician's repertoire. A lot of the time we dispense with the actual sawing, either for reasons of pacing, or to avoid offending the audiences sensibilities. Because we'll be performing this for children, we will be doing the simpler and less violent cutting in half, unless we are getting close to Halloween, when I might saw you, if the parent requests it. And there is the matter of whether the two parts you'll cut into are halves; a lot of magical boxes have a shorter end and a longer end to allow for different proportions of assistant and cutting where the magician prefers, usually the waist or the top of the thighs.” This was something that I had already noticed in my research into the illusions I might be performing in.
“Please bear in mind that I have not had the chance to warm these blades, so it might be a little more uncomfortable than when we perform this for an audience.” I felt the light taps as the blade was slotted into place, then there was a cold shock in my belly, I guess about where my belly button is, which would make sense as that lined up with the slot where the separation between the halves of the table was. The second blade was picked up and lined up with the box only slightly less quickly; while the shock was less, the cold was the same.
“Did you just put in the blades that quickly? You didn't give me a chance to move out of the way, so they must be tricked somehow.” I saw him nod. “What happened to the pull on the head thing, that I've seen on so many videos?”
“I definitely plan to include that; the kids love that kind of stuff. I was going to leave rehearsing that until Saturday morning, when we start putting some polish on the performance. This evening was going to be for getting the mechanics of the illusion sorted. Are you ready to be divided into two different parts?”
“I don't think so; I can still feel my feet and the padding of the foot stocks around my shins. But you were right those blades were cold, not that I really believe that they went through me.”
“Oh, they went through you alright,” mum commented from over by the props table.
“Ok, Molly, if they aren't through you and dividing you in two, then how can I do this?” I heard catches being fiddled with and then a feeling of movement as my viewpoint changed, as if the table was being moved. I turned my head to try to see the mirror; after all it was there so that we could see some of what the audience is seeing. What I saw, once I had moved my hand out of the way as best I could, was the usual climax of a sawing in half, where the table sections are parted by a short distance with the magician standing between the halves in a presentation pose. “How does that feel?” he asked.
“I don't know. Apart from the cold in my belly and some odd movement feelings that didn't last long enough to work out what they were, what am I supposed to feel?”
“I don't really know either,” Tom admitted. “The times I did this before, the people I sawed in half rushed off afterwards and didn't want to talk about it. But Hannah seems to enjoy it; I think that having the warmed blades helped. If it wasn't for the cold blades, would you be ok with staying like this for a while, while I get some of the kids up to have a closer look at you in two parts?”
“I guess so, but I don't want to be tickled on the feet, because I'll twitch about terrible and maybe damage something.” Hearing myself say 'twitch' gave me the idea to twitch my feet and see if the feet I could barely see in the wall mirror moved the same. When I moved my feet, the feet I could see moved, but I could not tell if they were moving in exactly in the same way that I was intending.
“How about if I run a finger up the sole of your shoes and you can react to that?” He moved from between the boxes to the end of the far box from which the feet stuck out. With deliberate care he ran his thumb up the sole of the slipper on view from heel to toes. I cannot explain how I felt what I was seeing, but I felt some pressure under my foot. I twitched my feet in an attempt to dislodge the sensation that I felt that was perilously close to the feel of being tickled. I tried to frown my disapproval of the action from my limited position. “That's perfect. If you can stand that and maybe let out a giggle at the same time, that'll let the kids know that you're not having a bad time.”
“I guess I can withstand that much, but don't expect me to do more than smile; I can fake a smile, but I don't know if I'm up to giggling a giggle that won't sound fake.”
“Ok, we can work on that on Saturday.” He paused for a little while, then asked, “So, what shall we do now?”
I suggested that we could carry on with whatever he had already planned, thinking that mum could stay and watch or go home; whichever she chose.
“I had a plan, but that only involved you, Milly.” He continued, as if there was some additional meaning to it, “But, now, I have two lovely ladies sawn in two, perhaps that might change what I have the chance to do.”
My thought was that there was little point in doing anything different to what was planned. If mum stayed, she might make a useful audience stand-in, or be able to critique the stuff we were practising. Two assistant illusions would be a waste of time, because Tom and I were going to be a magician-and-assistant show and having mum tag along to be a second assistant would not make it that much better and commit her to being at rehearsals; which would probably be too much with the stress of her job.
“No, you're not doing that!” mum said in a very definite tone. Her intonation modified to appear more conciliatory, “Well, maybe sometime, perhaps, but definitely not now.” She had obviously picked up on some subtext that I had missed.
Rather than come to the wrong conclusion I asked, “What are you talking about?”
“He's thinking of swapping our legs and hips,” Mum clarified.
Why hadn't I thought of that!? I know! Because I don't believe in magic. Tom has shown me how a lot of things that look like magic are really clever illusions, so it's obvious that the stuff that he hasn't explained are also illusions, because there is no such thing as real magic; just a trick that I don't understand yet. I told them that I thought that the double sawing in half was a 'costume trick'.
Tom reminded me that he had appeared to mix up Andrea and Heather, at the sleepover, in a double mismade type of illusion, that I had helped with; without detecting how he had done it. As further 'evidence' he cited his bodyswap with Angela, Maria's Aunt; which I had also helped with. In my head I put these down to not knowing what I was looking for, because it is easier to pull the wool over someone's eyes if they don't know what to expect.
I admitted that I didn't know how he had done those illusions, but insisted that the costume I was in was not rigged to change bottom half to whatever mum was wearing.
Tom backed down and pretended that he had been pulling our legs, saying that the boxes we were in were not 'compatible', being different heights. Mum looked at Tom as if she had fallen for the prank and did not appreciate it.
Tom dragged the box with the over-real feet over to beside the box containing mum, then came to reconnect the leg box to the box containing me and then released me. He told me to change back into my normal clothes while he 'restored' mum.
I changed back into my school clothes and spend a few minutes double checking that the costume I had been wearing did not have any detachable parts or an extra skirt hidden somewhere; no luck.
When I returned to the rehearsal room, I peeked through the door to to see if the coast was clear; I didn't want to catch mum and Tom snogging. Seeing only Tom, I asked, “Is mum gone?”
Tom told me that mum had gone back to her office, because she had left her laptop there. She had decided that she would stay there for the evening to work some more and would be home late. Then he offered me an extended practice session and my choice of Chinese or pizza. I opted for pizza.
We ran through most of the illusions I had been trained to help with, except for a break when the pizza arrived. He seemed satisfied that everything was running smoothly enough and said that the few stumbles we could work on on Saturday. Then he showed me how that trick with the pom-poms on strings at the ends of a pair of connected sticks worked; I guess I could have worked it out myself, given enough time.
At the end of the evening we ran through the cutting in two illusion again. It felt mostly the same except that with the blades warmed while we were rehearsing the other stuff, there wasn't the chill in my belly, but a warmer feeling, which while still odd, was pleasanter.
At the end of the evening he handed me a set of the pom-pom sticks, but instead of pom-poms the things at the ends of the strings were coloured ping-pong balls. He said that I should practice with them and work out my own routine. He said that from the audience point of view, it would show that I was a partner in the magic, rather than just a girl who brings him stuff and then gets sawn in two. From his perspective, it would allow him to get backstage to prepare a few things that I had not been trained in; meaning, preserve some of his secrets.
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When mum got home she found me researching performances of the pom-pom sticks, to see if there were any ideas I could adapt, or even steal completely. She asked I had eaten (she seems to think I don't eat enough), so I told her that I had had pizza at Tom's place.
I asked how her evening at work had gone. She seemed to think that her break from work to be with Tom had helped a lot and that she had made some kind of breakthrough; she seemed less stressed than I had seen her for several weeks.