Haley Tanner - Vaclav & Lena

Vaclav & Lena is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Haley Tanner

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D IAL P RESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Tanner, Haley.
Vaclav & Lena: a novel / Haley Tanner.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60387-0
1. MagiciansFiction. 2. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)Fiction.
3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.A68655V33 2011
813.6dc22 2010023907

www.dialpress.com

Jacket design and illustration: Lynn Buckley

v3.1

Gavin, my partner in crime, my lovely assistant,
my comrade, and the very best husband a girl could have,
you are still my rising sun.
You fill my life with wonder and joy and
possibility every day.
You were always on every page of this book,
and now youre part of the big, wild, gorgeous universe, too.
I know youre having fun out there, I can feel it.
I love you.

H ere, I practice, and you practice. Ahem. AH-em. I am Vaclav the Magnificent, with birthday on the sixth of May, the famous day for the generations to celebrate and rejoice, a day in the future years eclipsing Christmas and Hanukkah and Ramadan and all pagan festivals, born in a land far, far, far, far, far, far, far distance from here, a land of ancient and magnificent secrets, a land of enchanted knowledge passed down from the ages and from the ancients, a land of illusion (Russia!), born there in Russia and reappearing here, in America, in New York, in Brooklyn (which is a Borough), near Coney Island, which is a famous place of magic in the great land of opportunity (which is, of course, America), where anyone can become anything, where a hobo today is tomorrow a businessman in a three-pieces-suit, and a businessman yesterday is later this afternoon a hobo, Vaclav the Magnificent, who shall, without no doubt, be ask to perform his mighty feats of enchantment for dukes and presidents and czars and ayatollahs, uniting them all in awestruck and dumbstrucks, and thus, one day in the future years, be heralding a new era (which is a piece of time) of peace on earth. Ladies and gentlemans, I give you, I present to you, I warn you in advance of his arrival, so that you may close your eyes or put your hands on your face if you are afraid, Vaclav the Magnificent, Boy-Magician.

Eh, Lena says in a grumbly voice.

Lena, what we are having here is perfect introduction to the act. It is long and perfect and made of only the best and longest thesaurus words, says Vaclav.

After third sentence, say, Magic is art of control events using supernatural powers, says Lena. This sentence is a favorite of Lenasshe memorized it from The Magicians Almanac, which is a big old black book with gold around the edges of the pages, all about magic and tricks and illusions. Vaclav kept checking the almanac out of the library, so last year for his birthday she put it in her backpack and took it home with her, so that she could give it to him for a birthday present, and it could be theirs forever.

That sounds good, but is not belonging in the act. I already told you. This is the introduction, complete. Seal it now with the magic birthday candle. Vaclav folds the notebook paper on which the introduction to the act is written, and he holds it out to Lena. Lena does not take it from him. Lena holds the magic birthday candle in her left hand and rubs its spiraled ridges with her thumb. In her right hand, she holds the lighter with which she is to light the candle. The wax-dripping paper-sealing is an important part of anything Vaclav and Lena write, and it is Lenas job, exclusively Lenas, to light the magic birthday candle, to hold it high, and to then let the wax drip onto the folded paper, sealing it for all of time.

Under Vaclavs bed, next to a forgotten sock, among many gatherings of fuzzy, dusty things, is a shoe box full of pieces of notebook paper folded and sealed with Lenas wax drips. The things written on them are important declarations, pacts, lists, and other artifacts of the lives of the young magicians.

We write and finish now, Lena, and tonight I will ask permission to have a show.

Impossible, Lena says.

Possible. I can make this happen. Maybe not tonight but soon. And so we seal the introduction, which means we can begin on the act. Once we have permission, we perform. Light. Melt. It is done.

Unfold. Write. Magic is art of control events using supernatural powers.

I will not, Lena, no. This is not part of the introduction of the act; this does not belong. It is very good English, but it does not belong. This is the introduction, which we must seal, so that it will be, and so that we begin work on practice the act.

Lena looks at the lighter she stole from the pocket of the Aunts robe. Lena knows it is not right to steal unless you need something really badly, and the person is not home, and wont even realize the thing is missing. Stealing the lighter felt scary, and it felt good, and brave. Lena feels very brave with the lighter in her hand, very grown-up.

Why you are the boss always? Lena asks.

For one thing, I am magician and you are assistant. Assistant is second to magician. There is no assistant without magician, says Vaclav.

Without assistant, no magician, says Lena.

I am one year older than you, says Vaclav.

Ten is only little more than nine and eleven months, says Lena.

Magician is more important than assistant, because says Vaclav, getting ready to say one more thing to prove that he should have authority over Lena. He wants to win this argument, even though he knows they will have this argument again. This fight is a fight they have over and over again. It is like the famous argument between the chicken and the egg, about which came first, and which one is more important and better than the other. This fight is never resolved, because it is impossible to prove which came first or which is better when actually both things are the same thing.

There is a knock on the door. Lena and Vaclav look at the door with wide, terrified eyes. There are three loud knocks, and then the doorknob jiggles but does not open, because the door is locked.

Vaclav is filled with regret. Locking the door was a terrible idea. A locked door indicates to Vaclavs mother that something illicit may be happening in the bedroom of the young magician.

Vaclav! Open the door right now or Ill open it for you! You wanndo this hard way or the easy way?

Lena and Vaclav shove their magic things under the bed, hide them behind the eyelet-perforated dust ruffles of the bed skirt.

Coming, coming! says Vaclav, scrambling to his feet. As soon as Vaclav unlocks the door, it bursts open, pushing him backward.

Rasias eyes search the room. Rasia doesnt know what she is looking for, but all the time she is worried. Every day at ten-past-five she rushes home as fast as she can, because her son is growing and changing every second and she has only so many hours to mold him like clay. She has only so many hours to show him that it is important to do homework, to have dinner like a family, to not do drugs or to steal or to be a lazy person or a cheat. She must protect him from pedophiles, from strangers, from bullies, from guns, and from carbon monoxide poisoning. She is worried, because he comes home to an empty house after school; he is what they call the latch-key kid, and she is a working mother, and they live in an urban area, and Vaclav attends a crowded public school, and all these things are the ingredients of disaster, if you are listening to the news, which she is, carefully, vigilantly, always to see what next to be afraid of.