Masks

Chapter I: A Case of Identity

She called herself The Amazing Persephone.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. In the privacy of her own head, she called herself Ashley Cox. That was the name she'd been born with. If there was ever a good reason to call yourself something, it was that. Her parents had known her as Ashley, her friends knew her as Ash, and her employers knew her as Miss Cox. The audience, though, knew her as The Amazing Persephone: sorceress, enchanter, and occasional tap-dancer.

'The audience', in her case, meant the ten or so people who happened to be passing at the time of her show, and who were bored, curious, or drunk enough to give it a try. They weren't much. Nevertheless, she reasoned that if she was able to convince them that she was a real magician, she could convince herself that they were a real audience. It wasn't a perfect solution, or even a good one, but it worked. She was content.

Compared to the multitudes of more prestigious venues in the London area, a third party might see these small groups as a blessing. They would be wrong. Every crowd hid potential trouble-makers; the only difference was that the bigger the crowd, the more they stayed hidden. Amongst a handful of bored drunks, on the nights when the innocently curious stayed at home, they weren't hidden at all. That was when the trouble started.

Tonight, it wasn't so bad: a few people were talking amongst themselves, an elderly tourist had fallen asleep, and a man at the back was half-heartedly waving a sign. Ashley saw that the letters "Perse-phoney!!" had been roughly marked onto the cardboard. She sighed. Her stage was tiny, her props were sixth-hand, and even her critics couldn't be bothered to make the effort.

Only two exclamation marks?

In truth, she deserved better. The Amazing Persephone could just about clear the crockery from a table without disturbing the cloth, could barely force a struggling rabbit into her top hat, and had just managed to make somebody's ring disappear. She'd been trying to make it glow with ethereal flames, but had dropped it, and now it was lost somewhere.

Ashley stumbled around the darkened stage as mysteriously as she could manage.

"Aha!" she announced, falling before the unfortunate volunteer.  "Here it is: behind your ear!"

"That's my earring, dear," the woman replied. However, this brought such a look of dejection that she felt compelled to add "close, though."

The Amazing Persephone wished she could really become invisible. Ashley often wished as much, when angry customers started throwing things, but mostly she just went a bit pale. She wasn't sure if that counted.

Not that she was the least bit magical, of course. It is a film staple that true magicians hide in plain sight, disguising their real talent with a few cheap tricks. If this was true, Ashley was an exception. Magic didn't really exist, of course, but she still somehow managed to be less magical than the average person. She'd passed through normal, and emerged on the other side.

Far from being in any way supernatural, The Amazing Persephone could in fact be described as subnatural. After all, nature still contains fascinating marvels and miracles. Not only could Ashley not tell the future, she didn't get déjà vu. Her brain couldn't trick itself. Chose a random card from a deck, and she would be unable to guess it. Even after fifty-three attempts. For the majority of viewers, her act didn't cut the mustard, and certainly couldn't magic it together again.

Ashley, a woman who couldn't perform the most basic of tricks, certainly couldn't do real magic.

'Real magic'. Not that the term even made sense. What was 'real' magic, when it came down to it?  Magic that nobody could do? Well, yes. Magic that was impossible? It turned out that 'real' magic was the magic that didn't actually exist; the magic that wasn't, in fact, real.