The alchemy must be correct. Not a hair, not a breath can ruin the balance of the moment. The crowd is watching, waiting, each suspended in this millisecond of time. That is where the magic comes from. One might think, uninformed observer, that the magic is the items in my hands; how wrong a person can be and still take time in and let moments out. No, these little bits of fluff and show that wow the unaware crowd are ingredients, not results. A lick of flame, a tossed die before it lands, a well-loved bone, a canary that has breathed poison and warned miners with its silence, a perfect apple, a murdered lover’s bone, an empty house that once had dreams, and a cottage filled with a mother’s baking. Each of these is unique, yes, special in its own way; difficult to collect, nearly impossible to store, and just a shade away from unattainably hard to juggle.
But the most incredible recipes call for the most expensive ingredients.
What else could make a crowd of six hundred freeze, in perfect unison, as my eyebrow lifts above the blindfold’s white line and I tip my head back, and they all sense, each and every one of them, that change is coming. That moment can be locked away, stored and frozen and saved for, and it is the most potent magic there is. The magic of potential. Of possibility. In this second each and every one of them believes in magic. The child, hands sticky from popcorn and cotton candy, eyes wide with the innocent joy of believing; the old man, five o’clock shadow and a furtive look, hoping no one will witness that moment when he wonders, just briefly, if he’s been wrong all these years; the couple, newly in love, hands entwined between their seats, lips caught between teeth as they desperately believe that if the world can hold magic like this, who knows what it can do with their beautiful lives.
I drink it in.
And the moment is mine.
The pieces fall, discarded, as I drop the blindfold and grin at the stunned crowd. The cottage shatters, the apple rolls away. In the silence, I walk off the stage, and listen to the imperceptible sound of dreams dying. That, too, is a kind of magic.
Image by April Milne.