The Magician

I was the magician. For Bess, I could create worlds for her to walk in. I could create lives for her to live. I could create a universe and set it turning around her. I could weave my spells out of nothing and carve shapes out of the empty air and do it all just for her.

We would lie together in that old bed of hers, the lumpy mattress on the old iron frame Bess had cleaned of rust and painted black; with golden highlights on its various knobs and flourishes. The warm summer breezes would blow in from the sea while the afternoons passed outside her window with the distant cries of gulls and the mutterings of holidaymakers passing by below on their way to the beach.

We lay there, her naked body next to mine, as I drew the shape of a new world for her in the empty air above the bed. Then, kissing me and laughing Bess would step out of this world and into the new world I’d created for her.

She would become a princess, a pauper, an adventurer, a thief, a healer or even a magician and I would create the clothes for her and set her down in this new world for her to explore and to win over.

Bess would come back later, many days having passed while I dozed for minutes, to tell me what she had found and who she had met: kings, princes, rogues, killers and thieves, who she had loved, who she had hated who she had bested and who she had killed. She would snuggle back down beside me, saying how no-one there, in that other kingdom, could match up to the life she lived here, in this house on the cliff with me.

One day, though, I made the mistake of making the perfect world for her. Bess stepped off the plane of this world, dressed as a highwaywoman, ready to rob and run wild. That was the last I saw of her, as Bess rode off on the black horse I made for her, and out of my love for her.

I never saw her again.