The Great Vanishing Act (closed)
@prostatis
“Okay, okay, I got this! It’s all in the pronunciation, folks!”
The Great Prospero was in his element, as he reached into his hat and pulled out — a box of Trix cereal. The magician frowned, staring at the red cardboard in open confusion for a moment before focusing on the rabbit image on it and holding up a finger. “Ahh, well, let this be a lesson for you all — beer is for grownups, but tricks are for kids.”
He handed off the box to the eager hands of a small child, who darted off to the play area to share with her friends.
It wasn’t a bad crowd, either for the time of day or week. Most of them were local regulars at the Märchenstraße Biergarten, and they understood enough English that his own, very rusty grasp of the German language wasn’t necessary to make his performances work. Peter reached into his jacket and unearthed a deck of cards, tapped it with his wand, then held it out to one of the regulars. “You, Schöne Frau, would you be so kind as to — oh, there they go—” the cards sprayed out of his hands and into the air, spinning around and landing in a scattered mass on the ground. All except one Ace of Hearts, which landed directly on her empty bread plate, face up. “….Good choice, good choice, that was exactly the card I was hoping you’d pick. Now, while I just grab another deck—”
To an untrained eye, it was the act of an oaf, trying desperately to recreate the tricks he’d seen on TV and failing miserably. The magician would frequently return to his “master’s book”, an old, leather-bound tome that went with him on every act, claiming each time he knew exactly what he’d done wrong and would definitely get it right this time. The act would get progressively more bizarre and full of pratfalls, with cards turning up when coins were supposed to be involved, birds appearing in a bouquet, much to the delight of the children who’d been growing bored while their parents socialized and now had someone silly doing real magic very badly for their entertainment.
Someone a bit more versed in the world of the sleight of hand, and even some of the more sober adults present, saw the real skill involved. The Great and Klutzy Prospero was deliberately turning known tricks into entirely different ones; every slip-up and mistake was a cover to lead into the real trick, and even as people laughed at his foolishness, they were left delighted by the unexpected outcomes.
Peter was quite proud of his act, in fact. Even with the recent training in the Real Thing™, he hadn’t used a single drop of actual Magick to make the ‘accidents’ happen. Sure, a little extra flare here and there, but he only really pulled out the hedge wizardry when his crowd included loud-mouthed skeptics. The nice thing about Germans, give them beer and a social gathering area and they ate up any form of entertainment you gave them. It was incredibly refreshing, compared to what he’d had to deal with in American crowds.
It didn’t necessarily pay well, but he didn’t need the money. Prospero was an outlet for Peter, something to keep his hands and mind occupied when he wasn’t working for Nadav. It didn’t hurt that, today, there were a few new faces, including a very handsome fellow he felt obliged to turn the act up a notch for.
“Alright, for this next trick, I need a volunteer, and by volunteer I mean tall, dark and handsome — no, sorry, not you, I’m looking for someone in the six foot range — that’s One Point Eight-ish for you weird metric users. You, sir—” He pointed his wand at the newcomer, spinning it with a bit of dramatic flare. “Care to join me on the… err.. end of the tables?”
