Opening Night Part I: Games

The boy anticipated that he would disappoint his instructor, and himself. He feels almost like a novitiate to some Arcanum of syllabary, as he takes up position by the table and his black notebook, open to the night sky, and the birdcage with the dead dove at the bottom.

His first performance, Eli finds himself watching the crowd’s every reaction, and focusing on the dove more than he needs to. He soon concentrates more on the audience than the raisings.

There is a pattern in the reactions of the audience, revulsion at the dead animal, or its death, confusion, curiousity, and a mixture of horror, disbelief, and wonder when it blinks and breaths and meets their eyes with its own.

But some audiences react more strongly, some are less impressed, some do not beliebe in it and only clap politely as they would for a common street magician. Eli finds their reactions influence his performance, indicating when he should make a flourish, or how long a dramatic pause should be.

Now he finishes his performance and bows lowly as the crowd disperses.

Mr.Marshall informed the company only the day before that the game would commence at midnight precisely. Eli’s performances are scheduled such that his performance nearest to midnight ends five minutes prior. Now, faced with only a few minutes until the beginning of a game he does not know how to play, he feels unsure. His hands shake slightly as he opens his cage and gently puts the dove inside, next to the dove from his interview with Mr.Marshall.

When he is not performing, Eli’s supplies and resurrection paraphernalia is kept in a small tent erected in the shadow between two stalls. It takes only a minute to move his table, his cage, his leather bound book, into the tent, and when he is finished, he stands in the concourse, glancing around at the vendors, each keeping an eye on some timepiece, eyes/gazes flickering to clocks or pocket watches as the hands tick closer to midnight.

“Are you looking for a place to start?” a lady from one of the stalls across the avenue calls to him. Eli startles. He walks closer to her and replies, “I’m not sure how to start.”

“You have to find a starting point. Mr.Marshall has set up hundreds by now,” she says, then pauses. She eyes Eli with an almost amused expression. “This is your first time playing a game like this, isn’t it?”

Eli blinks at her a few times before nodding his head.

“You can start with us,” she offers. “We’ll help you.”

A man, younger than Eli, though the same age as the girl, he guesses, appears from behind the stall.

“I am Alice Fairchild,” the young lady says, holding out a hand covered in a white lace glove. “And this is Michael.”

“Elidor Kells,” Eli says, taking the hand and shaking it. He shakes Michael’s hand too, though the young man takes it reluctantly, and releases his grip shyly. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Fairchild, and Mr.Fairchild.

“I forbid you to call me Miss Fairchild. In fact, refer to neither of us by our surnames. Please, call me Alice,” she says.

Eli hesitates, then nods. “If you will call me Eli.” He pauses and glances at the other stalls, where vendors are glancing at their wrist and pocket watches. “How do we start?”

“We’ll help you,” Alice says again, and grasps his hand. Eli almost steps back in surprise, as Michael comes to stand on Alice’s other side.

“Don’t worry,” Michael says, quietly.

Before Eli can ask why he would worry, and if he should, something begins to happen.

Elements of the market are slipping away. Becoming softer and paler. They appear like ghost images layered overtop on another. They fade until everything is transparent.

When Eli puts his hand up to touch the tender crinkling paper of a swaying lantern, he feels only a slight resistant, like pushing against wind. There is the merest hint of heat as his fingers pass through it.

Then his hand falls away as Eli is overtaken by a sudden wave of dizziness that feels as though he has been thrown, but instead of landing on firm ground continues to fall through the open air.

The world around him shifts between light and darkness, never settling. Dots of colour dance across his vision.

Eli feels lighter, weightless, as he stands. And still slightly dizzy.

Beside him, Alice and Michael are already standing, though they seem disoriented too. Alice turns to him, watching him with concern as he dusts off the knees of his trousers. “Are you alright? The first time is always bothersome.”

Eli nods, slowly. He blinks. “What happened?” he asks, when he finally notices that they are in the market, but it has changed significantly.

Everything in the market is pale, save for themselves. Alice and Michael appear particularly vibrant in comparison, with their bright eyes and colourful outfits. They are the only substantial things.

“Think of it as a diluted state. You’ve been diffused. You’re less concentrated, like wine poured into a jug of water. Only, instead of the jug, it’s a market,” Michael says.

“You’re on another layer of the market,” Alice says, trying to clarify it to Eli.

“But we’re still in the market?” Eli says, as he focuses on the sensations around him. He has the impression that he is not within the market, but overlapping it.

“Of course. Where else would the game take place?” Alice says, laughing.

Michael smiles at the expression on Eli’s face. “This is what we use the starting point for,” he says.

Alice turns to Eli as she smoothes her skirts. “Supposedly, people used to be able to dilute themselves without a starting point. Now you have to find a spot to…”

“To step from one layer of a place to another,” Michael finishes for her.

As his vision/sight sharpens and focuses, Eli realizes that he and the Fairchild siblings are not alone. Other members of the market company are just as vibrant, and they are walking among their transparent surroundings with a purpose.

They pass through stalls as though passing through water, moving from avenue to avenue without the need for turns or intersections. Eli can see someone dressed in bright scarlet from six avenues away, appearing like a red dot in mist.

“You’ll get used to it,” Alice reassures him, looking at his discombobulated expression. “And you’ll be able to dilute yourself on your own.”

“So long as you are in the market,” Michael appends.

“But we should really start looking,” Alice remarks.

Michael hesitates before saying, “If you would like to start this game with us-“

“Oh, yes. Please do. Games are always much more fun with company,” Alice says.

Eli glances around, unsure even where to begin looking. “Yes. That sounds great.”

As they begin to traverse the pathways of the market, Eli learns more about his companions and their roles in the market.

The Fairchild siblings, while adopted, look deceptively similar. Both have the same fine cheekbones and pale complexions, and the set of the mouth that makes them look mischievous and childlike, though one of them is more reserved in person, and his eyes are often solemn compared to his foster sister’s. Alice is more outgoing and capricious than her brother, but Michael is perceptive and thoughtful. While she is the more imaginative of the two, and thinks up most of their endeavors, Michael is pragmatic about details, and catches his foster sister’s oversights when they occur. Together, they compliment each other well, and those that do not know them well enough would swear that they are brother and sister.

They have many talents, but the majority of their skill lies in the design of miniature buildings, which they carve from all manner of materials, and sell when the market opens. Alice draws out their concepts, sketches of balconies and doors and ornate stairs, and Michael calculates measurements and angles. The results are ornate and painstakingly detailed palaces and mansions no bigger than a shoebox.

Their current project involves carving a palace from ice, with turrets to hold small flames. Alice insists the fire is essential for that aesthetic quality, but they have only succeeded so far in one tower out of many staying solid in the presence of their body heat, let alone a small flame.

Alice walks beside Eli, speaking for most of their journey. After a time, Eli feels perhaps they are talking and walking more than they are actually searching. The Fairchild siblings appear to be paying more attention to him than the game.

“I’ve heard that his is the first game he’s held,” Alice whispers conspiratorially as she leans in.

“The first game?” Eli repeats.

“I know,” she says, eyes glittering as Michael nods gravely. “I’m not sure how he’s going to do it. It’ll be very difficult to manage something so big. For a first time. But,” she lowers her voice further. “I’ve also heard he hosts wonderful parties.”

“I did not know people played games like this,” Eli says, ducking his head in embarrassment. “I knew nothing of other sorts of manipulations and… magics, before I came here. I did not know others could do what I have been taught in secret.”

Alice looks at him in surprise, and Michael offers a small smile of sympathy.

“Where did you learn it all?” Eli asks.

“Our instructor taught us, of course,” Alice says.

“You were taught, too?”

“Everyone here was tutored,” Alice continues. “Our teacher once mentioned that students weren’t always privately tutored. They learned in schools. Large universities or academies hidden from the rest of the world-“ Michael begins, before his sister cuts him off.

“It isn’t hard to hide things from the rest of the world. They don’t look very hard,” Alice remarks.

“-and the only students in the academies who were tutored were the special ones. The gifted ones. But those ended a long time ago. The last academy was in Vienna, before it fell,” he says.

Eli is silent, pondering the existence of an entire community of others who were perhaps trained like him. He wonders why, with brief annoyance, his instructor did not mention it.

“You get to perform in the middle of the concourse. Mr.Marshall must think you’re very special. It’s quite a privilege,” Alice says, suddenly.

“I’m… sorry?” Eli says.

“Don’t be,” Michael says as Alice waves his apology away.

“I don’t care, so long as the game is played fair,” Alice says.

Text by Lucie MacAulay