tip.
His trick with the tiki torches was neat, a great icebreaker provoking a few oohs and aahs from the audience—but Penny wasn’t convinced yet.
“Come on, son, at least be a gentleman and let the young lady stay for the show.” Tovar spoke calmly, softly, but his voice carried over them as if amplified.
He pointed his wand at the girl, and she gave a little shriek of surprise, raising her free hand to regard it. A small bouquet seemed to grow and blossom from the loosely clenched fist her hand made: strange tropical-looking flowers with great drooping bells of orange, purple, a shouting bright red, and an almost neon blue.
The girl laughed in surprise, and applause rippled through the crowd.
“She’s a plant,” Penny heard a man mutter from behind, sounding both amused and a little impressed. “It was all planned in advance. Good trick though.”
“I am Tovar The Red,” the magician said. There was no need to speculate about where his title, The Red , came from. His wild red hair waved like flame atop his head in the lazy evening breeze. His eyes, an emerald green as deep as Penny’s, glittered in the torchlight. “Welcome to my show!”
Penny had never been to see a live magic show before, but she had watched a few on television—and those were nothing like the one Tovar put on. His stage was too small for the complex kind of props other magicians used, and Penny couldn’t see how he would have been able to install a trapdoor in the gazebo floor without having to tear it up first. The floor was clearly visible, clearly unchanged, except for the fresh coat of paint. There was no curtain to escape behind, only the cloth he’d hung as a backdrop from the backside of the rounded ceiling. What props he did use, he seemed to conjure from midair, or to pull from one of what must have been a hundred pockets hidden inside his cloak.
Tovar did not produce a saw and cut anyone in half. However, he did hypnotize several audience members in order to assist him with his tricks.
One of the girls he hypnotized, much to Penny’s amusement, was Katie West, the rude girl from the school library. Katie danced a jig (Penny thought it was an Irish River Dance) on the top step of the gazebo. But instead of holding her arms at her side, she’d flapped them briskly up and down like a bird and had levitated off the floor, bobbing in the air for several seconds to wild laughter from the audience.
When she left the stage, her cheeks glowing red with embarrassment in the flickering light of the torches, she spotted Penny in the crowd and shot her a withering look.
The girl who had sprouted a full bouquet of flowers from her clenched fist at the start of the show continued to sprout new flowers throughout. They came from behind her ears, from the pockets of her shorts, from the sleeves of her shirt, and once from her right nostril. Her boyfriend cultivated them with growing amusement, plucking them as they appeared and laying them with the original bouquet, the whole time pestering her to tell him how she was doing it.
She could only shrug, looking equally amused and bewildered.
“And now for a look into the Conjuring Glass,” Tovar announced. He pulled a small mirror from beneath his cloak. It was oval, without a handle, and framed in pewter. It fit nicely in the palm of his hand, and he raised it high for the audience to see. “Is anyone here brave enough to peek into the magic glass?”
All through the gathered crowd hands shot up and voices called out eager willingness. Penny’s was among them, and after a nudge from Penny, Zoe’s hand went up too.
He startled two girls Penny’s age—the one who had sat near them earlier and one Penny recognized from her English class—into near hysterics when he invited them onstage and handed them each a mirror, instructing the girls to look into them.
They looked, frozen in near identical expressions of shock, and shouted in alarm. Instead of seeing their own faces in
His trick with the tiki torches was neat, a great icebreaker provoking a few oohs and aahs from the audience—but Penny wasn’t convinced yet.
“Come on, son, at least be a gentleman and let the young lady stay for the show.” Tovar spoke calmly, softly, but his voice carried over them as if amplified.
He pointed his wand at the girl, and she gave a little shriek of surprise, raising her free hand to regard it. A small bouquet seemed to grow and blossom from the loosely clenched fist her hand made: strange tropical-looking flowers with great drooping bells of orange, purple, a shouting bright red, and an almost neon blue.
The girl laughed in surprise, and applause rippled through the crowd.
“She’s a plant,” Penny heard a man mutter from behind, sounding both amused and a little impressed. “It was all planned in advance. Good trick though.”
“I am Tovar The Red,” the magician said. There was no need to speculate about where his title, The Red , came from. His wild red hair waved like flame atop his head in the lazy evening breeze. His eyes, an emerald green as deep as Penny’s, glittered in the torchlight. “Welcome to my show!”
Penny had never been to see a live magic show before, but she had watched a few on television—and those were nothing like the one Tovar put on. His stage was too small for the complex kind of props other magicians used, and Penny couldn’t see how he would have been able to install a trapdoor in the gazebo floor without having to tear it up first. The floor was clearly visible, clearly unchanged, except for the fresh coat of paint. There was no curtain to escape behind, only the cloth he’d hung as a backdrop from the backside of the rounded ceiling. What props he did use, he seemed to conjure from midair, or to pull from one of what must have been a hundred pockets hidden inside his cloak.
Tovar did not produce a saw and cut anyone in half. However, he did hypnotize several audience members in order to assist him with his tricks.
One of the girls he hypnotized, much to Penny’s amusement, was Katie West, the rude girl from the school library. Katie danced a jig (Penny thought it was an Irish River Dance) on the top step of the gazebo. But instead of holding her arms at her side, she’d flapped them briskly up and down like a bird and had levitated off the floor, bobbing in the air for several seconds to wild laughter from the audience.
When she left the stage, her cheeks glowing red with embarrassment in the flickering light of the torches, she spotted Penny in the crowd and shot her a withering look.
The girl who had sprouted a full bouquet of flowers from her clenched fist at the start of the show continued to sprout new flowers throughout. They came from behind her ears, from the pockets of her shorts, from the sleeves of her shirt, and once from her right nostril. Her boyfriend cultivated them with growing amusement, plucking them as they appeared and laying them with the original bouquet, the whole time pestering her to tell him how she was doing it.
She could only shrug, looking equally amused and bewildered.
“And now for a look into the Conjuring Glass,” Tovar announced. He pulled a small mirror from beneath his cloak. It was oval, without a handle, and framed in pewter. It fit nicely in the palm of his hand, and he raised it high for the audience to see. “Is anyone here brave enough to peek into the magic glass?”
All through the gathered crowd hands shot up and voices called out eager willingness. Penny’s was among them, and after a nudge from Penny, Zoe’s hand went up too.
He startled two girls Penny’s age—the one who had sat near them earlier and one Penny recognized from her English class—into near hysterics when he invited them onstage and handed them each a mirror, instructing the girls to look into them.
They looked, frozen in near identical expressions of shock, and shouted in alarm. Instead of seeing their own faces in
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