"Now we come, I am sad to say, to the end of the performance."

The audience made a sad sound, and chuckled. The Magician grinned.

"I know, I know. I've wowed and amazed you. I suppose you're all still wondering how I did all of the tricks. Is that right?"

A few of the audience nodded. The Magician nodded a knowing smile. "Yes, of course. It's only natural! To wonder. Do I have something up my sleeves?"

He went to the lectern, and pulled from it a red velvet sheet. It was the size of a large beach-towel, but had a dark sheen to it, and the light shimmered on its surface.

"I'll be making my exit piece by piece. By the time I'm finished, I'll be gone. But if you'll excuse me, indulge me a bit, I'd like to draw it out. Make it go a bit slower. Maybe if you watch very, very carefully, maybe you'll see how I do it."

The Magician stooped down and laid the cloth on the ground, draping it over itself, so that it lay in a neat, long pile. Then he held two corner of it, pulling it taught between his hands, and began to stand up, pulling the cloth up with him, pulling the cloth up with him, pulling the cloth up with him, so that the audience could not see his feet, then his ankles, then his legs. By the time he was standing up straight, he was holding the cloth so that the top was at his waist. From there down the audience could not see his legs. The bottom of the cloth bunched up a bit on the ground.

"This is a little tricky. Just watch."

There was a pause and the Magician seemed to be concentrating on something. Then a strange thing began to happen -- something began pushing into the cloth. It might have been one of his knees, but it seemed to move down and to the side, then back again. The Magician swayed left and right a bit, as if trying to keep his balance. He stuck his tongue out and looked down, down at his legs behind the cloth, as something else swiped past the cloth, making it ripple. It almost looked like there was someone else down there doing something to his legs, but nobody had entered or left the stage.

"Ah. There, done. Voilá!"

He whipped the cloth away, and the audience gasped in shock as they saw that the lower half of his body had changed -- his pants were gone, simply vanished -- and he had women's legs. And he wore fishnet stockings over a pair of black lacy panties. His butt was larger, and his hips were wider, and it was clear that it wasn't just padding. He took a step towards the audience, swinging his hips in a very feminine way, side to side, his hands on his waist. On his feet were high heels, but he hadn't gotten any taller.

The stunned audience began slowly to clap. Hesitantly at first, then enthusiastically.

"Thank you! I know a lot of you prefer these legs to my other ones. But you see, my legs are gone. These are my assistant's legs. Half of me has already left the room. But I think my assistant's legs are much nicer, aren't they?" He leaned down and caressed his legs.

"Now to make a little more of me vanish."

He picked up the velvet cloth in his hands again, and pulled the hem of it taught. It was long enough that when he raised it up to his neck, so that only his head was visible, the rest of it hung down to the floor, obscuring the view of his whole body from the audience. All they could see were his hands and his face, which had a curious smile.

"This will take me a little longer."

The Magician seemed to wriggle a bit, side to side, behind the cloth. Just as before, things swiped at the cloth from behind, shapes and motions that seemed impossible to have been just his own arms or body. And yet the audience was certain, without a doubt, that nobody was behind the curtain except the Magician. He looked down at himself behind the cloth he held, as if trying to shimmy into or out of something. After a few moments of this he smiled, and looked up.

"There. And, voilá!"

He whipped away the towel and the audience gasped again.

From the neck down, his body had completely changed. He had a woman's body -- breasts, a narrow waist, thinner arms. He wore a kind of jacket that ended just above his feminine legs, and a blouse that showed off cleavage.

Slow, shocked clapping came from the seats of the small theater.  

He dropped the sheet on the ground, daintily, then straightened up, and put his hands on his girlish hips. "It's only natural to wonder, are these real?" He reached up and held his breasts. "Have I had these the whole night? Did I have them bound down flat against my chest, and I just released them?  Or are they some prosthetic, something made of rubber that I just attached to myself?" The audience looked at them, and couldn't tell which was true.

"I suppose," the Magician said, "It depends on whether this is real." He pointed with his hands, which had also become very feminine, with long nails painted red, at his face. "This is certainly a man's face. A man's head. Is this really my face? Or a mask?" He slowly turned around, so that this back faced the audience. From behind, with his hands on his hips, just below his narrow waist, he looked like a woman with narrow hair. Then he looked over his shoulder and the illusion was broken. He grinned. He leaned down, giving the audience a great view of his womanly ass. He picked up the edge of the velvet cloth and spun around to face the audience one last time.

He folded the cloth, which somehow seemed to have shrunk. He wrapped his head in it, as if he had long hair and it was wet from a shower. Before long, his entire head was covered, every trace of his masculine features obscured, and the audience saw simply a woman -- a woman with a very shapely, sexy body -- on the stage with her head wrapped in a cloth. After a moment, the figure stood up straight. The Magician began to unwrap the cloth. At the second-to-last wrap, locks of long, blonde hair fell from within the wrapping. And with the turn, the cloth fell away, onto the floor, and the new face of the Magician was revealed: a beautiful, female face, completely unlike the one he'd had just a moment ago. Once the figure spoke, it no longer made any sense to use the word 'he' to describe her, she was utterly and completely a woman.

"Well," she said. "Are you impressed?"

The audience was. They applauded loudly, fiercely. None knew whether this was the form the Magician really had, that he'd been a woman disguised as a man the entire time, or whether the woman was really a man who'd donned a disguise behind the cloth.

She slowly turned in a circle, her arms out from her sides, hands held parallel to the floor, so the audience could take in her appearance -- the illusion, or the reality, they were still trying to see. She moved with the grace of a dancer.

"Well, that concludes the show! I'll be happy to mingle and talk with you in the lobby." She did a final, modest bow, and the crowd rose to their feet and applauded. None had every seen anything like this.