The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The Metaphysics of Magic

"SO YOU WANT TO HELP YOUR FRIEND," Blackwell says. "An admirable sentiment. How?"

"I dunno. With some of that ... well, with that money you've been making."

He looks surprised. "You think that would work?"

"Well, I dunno. It seems to have worked with me."

"Then the Molester and the others have stopped attacking you?" Your employer claps his hands in delight. "My God! Who'd have thought that old gypsy curse would actually work!"

You blink. "It's a gypsy curse?"

"Most certainly. Slightly modified to the circumstances. So you think that's what it was?"

"Well—" You scratch your cheek. "Caleb thinks it's a trick on their part. But I saw what I saw. And I remember what you said about making them afraid." You suck on your lip. "I don't know how it works, but ... Yeah, I think that was it."

Blackwell's eyes glint. "You know what happened. But you don't know how. You believe the what, though you don't know the how. Hang on to that thought. The whats and the hows."

"Why?"

"This is not a vaudeville routine," he warns you sharply.

It is Saturday afternoon, and it a surprisingly warm one for the last week of September. The sun is streaming strongly through the library window. Perhaps that is why it seems a little less creepy than usual. The statues in their niches still glitter malignly, but their malice seems balked, bent toward deflecting the sun's rays rather than bullying the imaginations of any unfortunates caught in their gaze. Even the ticking of the clocks sounds more like a complex syncopation than the mad clicking that chased you that first evening in the house.

Blackwell rises from the other side of the desk. He has taken to sitting with you while you work: you on more designs, the most intricate yet, while he pores through books whose connections to each other are entirely obscure: What does a history of some old tapestry have to do with a book about the mechanics of wine presses? But as both of you work you have talked, of this and that, mostly about you and your circumstances. But this sounds like the start of a lecture:

"What is science, but the study of how things work?" the professor asks as he paces. "But scientists are a close-minded bunch. The most superstitious priest in the blackest Basque valley is more open-minded than they are. If they don't understand the hows, they deny the whats. If they can't explain how it happened, they say it didn't happen at all! If they don't see the chicken lay the egg, they deny the existence of the chicken they ate for supper and the egg they had for breakfast!"

"Uh ... Yeah."

"Here," he says, leaning across the desk and holding up a coin. His fingers flash. "Where did it go?" He reaches up to your ear. "Here it is!" He twirls it playfully. "What did I do, and how did I do it?"

"You pulled a coin from my ear. And you used, uh, sleight of hand."

"You're so smart," he sneers, and flips the coin to you. "You try it."

"I don't know the trick."

"The 'trick'," he snorts. "You're as bad as the scientists. Did I really pull the coin from your ear, or didn't I?"

"Of course you didn't," you sputter. "Everyone knows ... It's just an illusion."

"But you don't know how it works?"

"No."

He throws up his hands. "You won't believe what happened—that I pulled a coin from your ear—because you don't know how that works. And yet you will believe a different what—that I practiced an 'illusion' on you—even though you don't know how that works either. You are much smarter than I am in that case!"

You turn red. There must be a mistake in his reasoning.

"Try this now. That design you have not yet finished." He looks at it carefully. "Yes. Put your hand on top of it. Now pat your chest three times like this." He slowly but powerfully drums his chest.

You mimic his actions. "Okay, so what am I— Shit!" You pull your hand back. Blood drips from your index finger.

A slow smile crosses his face. "Why Will, what happened?"

"It— I—" You take a sharp breath. "It bit me!" you gabble. "Something bit me!"

"How?" His word is like the blow of a hammer. "How did a piece of paper bite you?"

You lick your lips. "I don't know."

"What happened, did you say?"

"Something bit me," you repeat.

"How?"

"I don't know."

"Pray don't spill any blood on any of your work," he murmurs. "You will need a bandage. You will need more than that. Do not suck on it, either."

You hold your hand—which is burning as though from a vicious wasp sting—over the carpet as he goes to fetch a kit. He returns with a spray bottle and a bandage very much like the one wrapped around his own index finger. He squirts a fine mist on your hand and then binds the wound. As he does so he resumes his talk.

"What did you say you want to do for your friend?"

"I want to help him."

"What?"

"I want to help him."

"How?" The word is again heavy.

"I don't know."

"Good. You see? Like the coin 'illusion'. And the gypsy curse. You have a what, even though you haven't a how. But do you need one?"

"Well, I need to know how I'm going to help him. Jesus, that hurts!"

"It will yet for a few days. This isn't as simple as a blow from the Molester's fist." He pulls the bandage even tighter. "But just now, that's not a how question you asked. No, it's a what question. What precisely will 'helping your friend' look like?"

You take a deep breath.

"Don't answer yet," he says. "Think about it, long and hard." He ties off the end of the bandage and snips away the excess. "That's the difference between scientists, Will, and people like you and me."

"You and me?" You're not thrilled to find yourself in the same category as Blackwell.

A faint smile crosses his face. "Scientists are very careful to ask the correct 'how' questions. And by doing so they've given us many great things. But magicians are careful to ask the correct 'what' questions.

"Tell me, Will," he says. "What do you want to happen to you next?"