It was the illusion of magic that gave Q comfort. He was bone thin tired of reality. Spell this, spell that, no longer satisfied. Magic had been his salvation, the motivation that kept him alive, until it took the lives of others. Now he was happier embroiled in illusion, not reality.
"Magic does not exist in a magicless world," was his present mantra, said with white face, a painted smile and red, curly wig.
He watched Eliot introduce him without hearing the familiar words: "...funniest clown in the world, greatest clown ever to crawl out of a small car; an elephant's wet dream – Q-Face, clown extraordinaire."
It was hard for Q to tell if the applause was tepid or simply sparse. True, clowns were not as popular as they once had been and attendance was down in one of the last active circuses on earth. Equally true, theirs was a less than lucrative venue, backroads and small towns, but it had turned out to be an ideal hiding place.
He looked up before entering the main arena. There, high above, sans safety net, hung Alice, long blond hair swinging an inch or two before her head caught up, swaying back and forth, arms down, anticipating Julia's next swing, waiting, wondering if this would be the time her fingers slipped and Quinten's oldest friend fell down, down, head first onto the sawdust below.
Ring Master Eliot was motioning to him, stern expression, save for the eyes, the hollow eyes that held no emotion what-so-ever. He might as well be a robot, since the death of Margo. Her death was the reason they hid inside what might as well be an old fashioned snow globe. No real magic was performed here. No residual star sparkle crumbs to lead The Beast to their tent flap. They had agreed. No magic. Not now and not ever or The Beast would find them, kill them, and spread his darkened soul beyond Filory and into Earth's unguarded realm. As guardian of the last magical key to the barriers of protection, only with Q's death would the Earth become The Beast's playground.
And though Quinten's present safety came at a great cost, it was never spoken aloud, even when replayed night after night in his sweat-filled nightmares. It was a gory image shared by everyone, even the street-smart, tough Penny. Even more-so Penny, whose artificial golden hands were a constant reminder of everyone's great loss. Margo – self-centered, hedonistic, gorgeous – sacrificed her life to make them safe. Even the tuxedo wearing Eliot had to admit her noble act, if he ever deemed it necessary to speak or socialize when not in the center ring. He'd not said her name since it happened. And Q could only guess what he did when not fulfilling his Ring Master duties. Penny claimed Margo's former lover spent his time in a whacked out stupor, but Alice adamantly denied this, stating she had come across him seated cross-legged, arms raised in supplicant gesture, hands held tight as though in prayer.
But it was Julia's reaction that surprised Q the most and made him question their decision to hide, not fight. From serious, talented Hedge Witch, to what could only be adequately described as California Surfer Girl banality, Julia giggled, slurred her words as though drunk, and expressed zero cares, not to mention radically insufficient brain cells. It was, "Oh, how cute" this to "I've got to have" that responses to everything. So much so, that Q almost wished Alice would drop her. A good knock on the head might do his friend good. Maybe.
He reached down and tightened the straps on his stilts before taking a tentative step toward the main ring. He hated this bit almost as much as the overcrowded clown car.
Not for the first time, Quinten Coldwater walked out on his long, stilted legs, did his near fall into the crowd routine, dropped a bucket of paper tickets labeled WATER onto the crowd, all the while considering for the nth time his options: leave the circus, return to the ashes where Brakebills College once stood; practice, practice, practice weaponry spells, war spells, and killing spells before The Beast recognized magical residue; or stay here, in hiding, alive, trying to forget Margo's severed head at his feet as The Beast's moths flew into his open mouth while Alice dragged him away, down, down into the rabbit hole they'd created with as much magic bullet-proof lining as was possible, closing it quickly as a hand-less Penny followed he, Alice, Eliot, and Julia down the magic slide they'd created into the tiger's cage of this little known circus far from any gateway to the Neitherlands and Filory.
He strode with long, stilted steps under the trapeze, beneath the most important people in his life, one a reluctant lover and the other a reluctant friend, as their swings brought them closer and closer while even the cell phone, reality-show obsessed crowd held their breath in anticipation. Eliot stood ram rod straight, expressionless, as Penny and Q helped spot the two women swinging above them, knowing how impossible a rescue would be without real magic, should either of them fall.
"Ladies, if there are any left," announced Elliot, "and gentlemen, though we know them to be extinct, look high, in the sky, as they try, to bely, gravitie..."
Alice swung closer, arms outstretched as Julia smiled her current soulless, plastic smile, the brainless look he'd come to hate, to give him pause as to why she had ever been his friend, as Q looked up, higher and higher, past his friends and into the center of the tent, seeing her smile with a Chesire Cat smile, body-less, leering at him. Why had Julia become so brain numbing boring and why did he dislike her current persona?
Because she wasn't. She was not Julia.
Down the rabbit hole, she'd been the last to arrive, right behind a bloodied, handless Penny. She'd stood to one side, that smile on her face, as Alice ripped her blouse to bind Penny's stumps and Q had applied pressure to stop the bleeding. No one used magic, knowing it to be a beacon for The Beast to follow. They'd forged the golden hands ahead of time, keeping them within a survival bag, knowing, as Q seemed to always know, that they would come in handy, as Jane had told him numerous times in his dreams.
What else had Jane told him as she hurried away, toward her Filory fate?
"Your friend is not your friend and you cannot use magic to free her."
Q raised his hands, then lowered them. He was the keeper of the last key, Earth's only protection from The Beast. He could not use magic.
Above him, the women swung closer and closer. A universal intake of breath heralded the slipping, slowly at first, then quickly, as Julia's hands slipped through Alice's fingers.
"No, wait," yelled Q, too late to stop Penny from creating a magic, silver net intricately webbed, below the falling Julia. "It's not her. It's not Julia."
The warning went unheeded as Julia dropped into the net, bounced once, twice, her plastic smile replaced with a malevolent sneer as the net's silver filigrees began to snap, one after the other while Julia's mantle unzipped and fell onto the sawdust floor, replaced with a swarm of moths directed by two six-fingered hands.
"Battle Thirty-two," said a deep voice from inside the moth swarm.
"Psalm 32," said Eliot before swallowing a moth and dropping to the ground.
"When I kept silent," added Alice from above the crowd's screams. "My bones wasted away through my groaning all day looooo..."
Quinto looked up to see her swing's rope ablaze, Alice's sad, hopeless eyes were the last feature consumed by a blue fire.
"Curse religion and curse you," screamed Penny as his golden hands melted. He ran toward the Mothman, perpetual motion carrying him even without legs to propel him forward as they disintegrated.
"Believe in magic," said Q. He raised both hands and pushed hard, managing the death of a million moths, but not The Beast directing them. A laugh, loud and fully engulfing the people, raining down upon the crowd as acid rain, burning and crumpling them before even one could escape the tent.
Quinten looked down in horror as his foot rests and straps disintegrated and the stilts began moving up, up either side of his body until, in one final jolt, the wooden poles shot through his arm pits and into his shoulders and out causing his arms to jolt straight out, parallel with the ground, his legs a giant V as they rested on the earth. His sigh was an exhalation of defeat.
"Ah," said The Beast. "Poor crucified Quinten. That's what you get for believing in magic."
