faded too much to be certain.
“How long have you been here?” the man asks after silently examining the boy’s shabby appearance for a few moments.
“Always,” the boy says.
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be nine in May.”
“You look younger than that.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“I did not mean to suggest that it was.”
The man in the grey suit stares at the boy without comment for some time.
The boy stares back.
“You can read, I presume?” the man asks.
The boy nods.
“I like to read,” he says. “There aren’t enough books here. I’ve read all of them already.”
“Good.”
Without warning, the man in the grey suit tosses his cane at the boy. The boy catches it in one hand easily without flinching, though his eyes narrow in confusion as he looks from the cane to the man and back.
The man nods to himself and reclaims his cane, pulling a pale handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the boy’s fingerprints from the surface.
“Very well,” the man says. “You will be coming to study with me. I assure you I have a great many books. I will make the necessary arrangements, and then we shall be on our way.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Do you wish to remain here?”
The boy considers this for a moment.
“No,” he says.
“Very well.”
“Don’t you want to know my name?” the boy asks.
“Names are not of nearly as much import as people like to suppose,” the man in the grey suit says. “A label assigned to identify you either by this institution or your departed parents is neither of interest nor value to me. If you find you are in need of a name at any point, you may choose one for yourself. For now it will not be necessary.”
The boy is sent to pack his small bag of negligible possessions. The man in the grey suit signs papers and responds to the headmistress’s questions with answers she does not entirely follow, but she does not protest the transaction.
When the boy is ready, the man in the grey suit takes him from the grey stone building, and he does not return.
Magic Lessons
1875–1880
Celia grows up in a series of theaters. Most often in New York, but there are long stretches in other cities. Boston. Chicago. San Francisco. Occasional excursions to Milan or Paris or London. They blend together in a haze of must and velvet and sawdust to the point where she sometimes does not recall what country she is in, not that it matters.
Her father brings her everywhere while she is small, parading her like a well-loved small dog in expensive gowns, for his colleagues and acquaintances to fawn over in pubs after performances.
When he decides she is too tall to be an adorable accessory, he begins abandoning her in dressing rooms or hotels.
She wonders each night if perhaps he will not return, but he always stumbles in at unseemly hours, sometimes petting her gently on the head while she pretends to be asleep, other times ignoring her entirely.
Her lessons have become less formal. When before he would sit her down at marked,
though irregular, times, now he tests her constantly, but never in public.
Even tasks as simple as tying her boots he forbids her to do by hand. She stares at her feet, silently willing the laces to tie and untie in messy bows, scowling when they tangle into knots.
Her father is not forthcoming when she asks questions. She has gathered that the man in the grey suit whom her father called Alexander also has a student, and there will be some sort of game.
“Like chess?” she asks once.
“No,” her father says. “Not like chess.”
*
THE BOY GROWS UP in a town house in London. He sees no one, not even when his meals
are delivered to his rooms, appearing by the door on covered trays and disappearing in the same manner. Once a month, a man who does not speak is brought in to cut his hair. Once a year, the same man takes measurements for new clothing.
The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies down sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that