A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic by Lisa Papademetriou Read Free Book Online

exception of the first sentence, the pages flowed with beautiful, old-fashioned handwriting. This was no gruesome mystery-romance; it was clearly someone’s treasure.
    Leila opened the window for a moment to let out some of the stale over-conditioned air. The city smelled of smoke, but she still breathed easier with the window open. She looked out, thinking how lucky she was to have a room on the second floor. The house was large, and was surrounded by a garden that would have been quite lush if the sun weren’t so harsh and if the wind didn’t deposit dust on every leaf. That very morning, while she stood at that very window, Leila had spotted a green parrot perched on a tree. She had assumed it was an escaped pet, like the parakeets she sometimes saw back home. But Rabeea had explained to her that, no, these were wild, and they were everywhere.
    But I’m getting off the track again!
    Across the street, the dark dome of a mosque blotted out a section of sky. She felt the largeness of the room behind her, the empty space. And, just as she was about to pull the curtains, something fluttered up and over thewindowsill and floated toward her bedside lamp. The moth was lovely, silver green and blue, and it perched for a moment on the lip of the shade, perfectly still. But the light was too intoxicating; the moth fluttered again, circling and circling the light, dipping toward the bulb.
    â€œI know it’s pretty, but that’s not going to end well for you,” Leila told the moth. She walked over to the lamp and shut it off. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim room, but when they did, Leila saw that the moth was luminous—phosphorescent in the fading light. It fluttered around the room for a while, and then turned toward the open window, where it slipped out, seeking light elsewhere.
    â€œYou’re going to burn yourself up!” Leila called after the moth, but it didn’t come back. The moth didn’t understand English—just Urdu.
    She shut the window, and then headed back to the bed. She reached for the book and flipped through the pages, not bothering to read the strange story about Ralph Flabbergast again, just looking at the handwriting. When she reached the end of the handwriting, she stopped.
    Wasn’t that beautiful?
    A new line of elegant script flowed at the bottom of the page: Wasn’t that beautiful?
    Like it was talking to her. Like it had seen the moth.
    She didn’t remember reading that earlier and wondered if she might have missed it. But she didn’t see how. This morning she had begun reading a handwritten story about Ralph Flabbergast, fool, believer in magic. And now there was a sentence: Wasn’t that beautiful?
    It gave her a strange feeling—as if those too-far-away walls around her had dropped away completely. Like her bed was a raft floating in space. It wasn’t a happy, fun, Elizabeth-Dear-discovers-a-spooky-mystery feeling. It was a creepy this-is-scary-and-where-am-I? feeling.
    But when she looked at the page again, the sentence had disappeared. She found that reassuring, although she really shouldn’t have. When you think about it.
    There was a pen on the side table. Leila picked it up.
    The last line of the story was now, He had seen magic .
    Did I see magic? she asked herself. No. You imagined the new writing. You’re still jet lagged. It wasn’t real. . . .
    She stared at the page.
    Don’t do it, she told herself. But the book was likethe light. She was like the moth. Suddenly, she was compelled to write in the space left by the sentence that had disappeared. Maybe she wanted to be sure that it wouldn’t come back.
    In the book she wrote, But the magic Ralph loved was fake. It wasn’t real.
    Then she put down the pen, slammed the book shut, and put it on the side table. She turned out the light and sat, perfectly still, in the shadows.
    It wasn’t real.
    She felt those words, pulsing in the