A Magician Never Tells His Secrets

Daw led the way back to the car. Taking perfect aim she lobbed one of the bottles at Peter, who was leaning against the trailer, suspiciously close to Tori. The bottle struck the back of his head and he turned around angrily.
“You owe me two bucks Prescott,” Daw said, her voice trying to cover a giggle.
“I feel bad for you Meg,” Peter said, rubbing his skull as he sauntered over to the passenger door. “Sitting up in the front with Dahkling.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said uncomfortably.
“Maybe you and Tori should swap,” he continued. “Get equal time with the barb-wire fence.”
I glanced at Tori, who had widened her eyes to send me a secret message. ‘SAY NO! It seemed to scream.
I almost laughed, but held it back. “Okay then.”
I watched Tori scowl and stopped myself sticking my tongue out at her. Just because I wasn’t mad anymore didn’t mean I wasn’t still sour. She was just so obnoxious sometimes.
Peter opened the door for me, waving me in with a flamboyant gesture of his hands. I have to admit, Peter was charming. In a sort of half sarcastic, cheeky way.
Back on the freeway I leant my head against the window, staring at the scenery and feeling pensive. I didn’t understand what Daw had talked about before, the divisions in the carnival. It all seemed to complex, and so fickle. I sighed. Would it kill people to just get along?
We drove for most of that morning, arriving just before noon. I woke up against Peter’s narrow, bony shoulder as the car jumbled over the pebbled road of a new fairground. Peter was smiling mischievously at me and wiggling his eyebrows.
“Fancy another nap?” He said, appraising eyes sweeping over my body underneath high eyebrows. “Your caravan or mine?”
“You don’t have a caravan,” I stated flatly, sitting up and stretching as I recalled the detail from before.
“Then the choice is easy,” he laughed. I found myself shaking my head, rolling my eyes, yet grinning. I had to admit, the idiot was growing on me.
We parked at the edge of the grounds, where a collection of other employees were gathering, all stretching their limbs and cracking their joints. Some lighting up cigarettes and others unhinging their caravans.
“I should probably introduce you guys to everyone,” Daw said as she cranked the handbrake and unbuckled her seatbelt.
“I’ll do that Dahkling,” Peter said, his tone thick with superiority. “They’ll become social outcasts if they’re seen with you.”
Daw laughed once, a harsh sound. “And if they’re seen with you people will just assume they’re pricks.” She turned to me, touching my hand. “I’ll talk to you later.”
As she turned around and walked to her van, I noticed a pained, apprehensive expression on her pierced face. She was worried. About what? I wondered.
“Come on,” Peter said, taking both me and Tori by the hands and leading us to the small crowd which was congregating. But as we neared I noticed the group was really fractioned by distance into three.
We walked towards the largest cluster, a pack of teenagers, all with dark hair, dark eyes and skin in varying tones of tan. None of them seemed to be standing still. A group of girls were floating around like birds. Practising their dancing for the parade, I guessed. Other boys were tossing crazy amounts of balls between them. They moved so fast I could barely count them, but there was over a dozen passed between their hands.
A girl was twirling a baton, a boy tumbling summersaults another playing a small flute.
Peter walked around the performers, and though none of them stopped their activities, I noticed some eyes narrow in suspicion as they flicked to Peter, and then to Tori and myself. I self-consciously held my left forearm with my right hand, looking at the pebbled ground.
He led us to a small shadowed area in-between a few wagons, where the sun was hidden behind a large oak. In the shadows I recognised Anton and my breath caught. The heat had reduced him to wear nothing but a ragged red vest over his bare chest, a pair of black harem pants hanging from his hips. He was sitting, cross legged on the sparse grass against the oak, and in his hands, as usual, was the constantly shuffled playing cards.
Next to him, leaning on the tree, her arms folded and looking around condescendingly, was a beautiful woman.
There was a tough, harsh side to her beauty. Her sharp, square jaw. Her thick, strong brows. Her narrowed green eyes, set deeply into faintly tanned skin.
“Anton!” Peter called when we were only a few yards away. His eyes didn’t move from his hands as we neared.
“Good trip?” Peter asked, plunging his hands into his pockets.
Anton nodded absentmindedly. “Quite, though Vera had a headache.”
The girl next to him shook back her mane of curly black locks. So this was Vera? Daw had said she was the physic, the daughter of the man who looked after the Europeans, Prokhor.
“Anton, you know Meg and Tori,” Peter said, gesturing to us.
“Yes,” Anton affirmed, for the first time looking up. His eyes were a distant dark grey-blue as they met mine. “Vera said our fates would cross again.”
I looked at the silent Vera, for a moment curious.
“Right,” I said in a flat voice. “That’s . . . err . . . good to know.”
Tori laughed from beside me.
“I bet she didn’t predict I would be your assistant from now on,” she said, her voice only carrying a slight edge under the eagerness of her words. Something in her tone told me my best friend didn’t like the fortune teller. I guessed the reason was jealousy. Even though they stood apart, it didn’t take a physic to see that these two were very close. There was an aura to them, as if they were on the same wave length. Which was something I, nor Tori, could never penetrate.
“Actually I did,” Vera said, her drawling voice sharp around a Russian accent as she looked at Tori for the first time. “You should call home when you charge your cell phone, your step mother wants to know where you left her pearl earrings.”
I laughed, a shocked sound. I knew that Tori had lost those earrings, and that we were waiting for her step-mom to find out and skin her alive.
I could tell Tori was stunned, but she hid it well, smiling stiffy.
“Cute party trick,” she snipped.
“Well, we’d better go,” Peter intercepted as the atmosphere grew icy. “We’ve still got a tonne more people who want to be introduced to these girls.”
“Megan, Victoria, always a pleasure,” Anton said, his stormy ocean eyes peering into mine once more before resting on his ever-twisting hands and the cards between them.
We walked away from the shadowy little corner and Peter wrapped his arm around my back.
“They’re great, those two, but always have their heads in the future or in magic.”
I nodded understandingly. “They seem pretty intense.”
“Oh totally,” Peter agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Vera smile, and Anton is just as serious. But they’re good people, just not ones for a party.”
“Are they going out?” Tori interjected fiercely.
“That is the rumour going around,” Peter answered vaguely. “Mind, they might just like sharing a caravan. I know I wouldn’t mind sharing a caravan with Ve– ”
“Are you sure you want to finish that sentence Prescott?” A deep, Russian accented voice spoke from behind us. “Keeping in mind she is my daughter.”
Prokhor, I concluded upon clasping eyes on him. He was a tall man, with a slim build and broad shoulders. His skin was a tanned by hours in the sun. His old, thin shirt had it’s sleeves rolled up, exposing strong looking forearms with pale scars lining the flesh. He had a black moustache and thick, sharp eyebrows he’d passed onto his daughter. His face was strong and powerful though it had an undercurrent of dark mischief.
“No sir,” Peter said, standing erect like a soldier. “I wasn’t even talking about Vera. I was about to say, Ve – ictoria. Victoria.”
Prokhor raised his heavy brows, a smile twisting his lips.
“Hop along now, who’re your friends?” he asked, nodding to Tori and I.
“This is Tori and Meg. They’re joining us for the summer.”
“How lovely to meet both of you,” he said, taking our hands and kissing them in turn. I felt the prickle of his moustache and held back a giggle.
“Your Vera’s father?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
“Yes, though she is not my only child.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really? You have more children?”
“I count every single young person in the carnival my child, especially the ones I have had a hand in raising.”
I looked over his shoulder at the collection of Europeans; sure it was them he was referring to.
“They must feel privileged,” I said graciously. Prokhor seemed like a very striking person, almost alluring in a strange, mysterious way. His mild manner seemed at odds with the harsh standoffishness of his daughter.
Prokhor laughed. “You flatter me miss. I hope your stay at our carnival will be most enlightening. The fates are in your favour.”
I smiled nervously at his mysterious man. What was with these Russians and the fates?