Free The Hawley Book of the Dead by Chrysler Szarlan Page A

the images in her mind. Another person looks at those marks, weeks or months or a hundred years later, and similar images appear in
that
person’s mind. Magic. Plays and choreography hold yet another level of magic and meaning: The marks on the page leap to action in another person’s body, to be seen by thousands of others. The ability to weave that kind of magic paid well in Las Vegas. Stage magicians were a dime a dozen there, but a show that would run for years—that was gold.
    I planned to write them in the third-floor attic of the Sears house, my choice for an office from the photos Carl had e-mailed. It wasn’t anythinglike my old office, a tiny closetlike room in our magic workshop, a warehouse outside of Las Vegas, where Dan and Jeremy and our engineering crew planned and constructed new illusions. My office there was usually crammed with bits and pieces from tricks that were in the works or abandoned. Casts of heads and arms, boxes of discarded wigs or masks. The junk that magic produces. It was also filled with sound drifting in from the warehouse, including the occasional explosion. It was dear to me, the place where I plotted the story lines of our shows. My office in Hawley could never be the same, so I wanted it to be as different as possible. But it held its own magic—the view from the widow’s walk.
    The way out to it had been sealed for some long-forgotten reason. Perhaps so children like my young self wouldn’t climb out and fall three stories. I’d asked Carl to have the French doors stripped of the plywood that had covered them, so I could throw them open and walk out in fine weather. My refuge in the trees, my sanctuary from the real world, which no longer contained any magic for me.
    I climbed the wide flight of stairs. What had once been the attic seemed like an attic still; no Ikea desk and chair could change that. But I could polish the chestnut beams so they’d glow in the afternoon light. My desk was set up at the far window, with a view of the treetops. If ever I could write anything, this was a fine place to do it.
    The small dish that would give us satellite TV and Internet access was just visible, just the edge of it, from my window. The girls assumed that there was Internet and cell access everywhere in the world. But there was none in the forest, without satellite to bring it.
    I set my laptop down, booted it. While I waited for the screen to come up, I went to the antique French doors that looked out to the formerly forbidden widow’s walk. I opened one side, and saw myself reflected in the waves and bubbles of old glass, a small woman with wild red hair and a pale face. A widow, walking.
    Then I startled. There was another face next to mine in the glass. I gasped and spun around. Across the room from me was a portrait of a woman in nineteenth-century dress. She was young, lovely, her upswept auburn hair framed a pale oval face. A straight nose, classical in its lines.Hazel eyes, calm but with a glint of irony. A slight smile played on her lips. Her gaze revealed culture, intelligence. She was seated in a carved chair, her arm resting on a table covered in a crimson cloth, her finger pointing at the floor. Frothy lace adorned her wrists and slender neck. A delicate pink rose and trailing vine grew by her chair. I walked closer. Her ring—was it a wedding ring?—sparkled, as did her eyes, and the gold chain she wore that pooled at her waist. She had been a wealthy woman. Her dress was black silk. Perhaps she was a young widow. Like me.
    I thought that maybe the painting had been marooned in the house, a relic of the past, as the mural downstairs had been. But as I examined it more closely, that seemed less probable. In spite of a patina of fine lines, the painting glowed, shone, as if it had been well cared for. The frame was delicate, richly gold-leafed wood. No dust bloomed on it. I looked into the woman’s eyes. She compelled me. She seemed to be watching me, appraising