By Maddison Scott

Every audience reacted with the same fervour though not always in the same way. Some cooed, some clapped or cried or became frenzied. The Magician — a name he bestowed upon himself — basked in it all. The steady anticipation of a curious crowd, the glory and adoration, the epiphany of the singular detractor whose wariness and scepticism couldn’t refute the magic before their eyes.

On the day of his last show, the Magician sifted through his desk, deciding and undeciding on a dozen different items. He landed on a small cylindrical speaker system. It had been an age since he’d presented music to the Bygones and the promise of primitive dancing and melodic euphoria made him giddy.

Perhaps he’d even join in the revelry?

Donning his flamboyant purple robe, the Magician straightened his top hat and ensured his suitcase was packed with enough provisions for three days. Though he’d never himself become trapped out of time he’d heard enough horror stories to know that a Time Recovery Team could take several days to find him if his device failed. He checked his trip log and set the time/space dial on his Expediator.

It took little persuasion to gather the townsfolk in the hamlet. There were only a dozen families to source and his translator made it simple to converse in Middle English. Curious but captivated by the man in luxurious fabrics with an aristocratic lilt to his voice, they formed a circle around the firepit. The Magician danced about the flames, weaving stories about the stars and the gods and the wondrous thing called music. He held his speaker to the sky as if summoning something from the dusky ether. Classical notes boomed into the night; strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion.

At first the Bygones were startled; a woman squawked and fell to her knees, a baby babbled and tugged at the Magician’s trousers and a young couple embraced tearfully. The symphony built into a crescendo, the embers rose higher and higher, the crowd began moving their bodies in unexplored rhythms. Their hips swayed, their feet hopped, their arms gesticulated wildly.

Their rapture was immediate. Seductive.

“‘Tis heaven in my ear,” bellowed one of the young boys.

“Never such a sound there was,” whimpered an older woman.

The town’s leader — a tall man with greying hair — stood rigid, his transition from cautious to captivated slower than usual. His pretty wife tried to grab his hand but he jerked away.

The song morphed into a 21st century pop hit. The Magician laughed, sashaying round and round, soaking in the reverence the townsfolk lauded upon him.

The Magician whirled and didn’t notice the leader was gone. He shimmied and didn’t notice the laughing had ceased. He waved his arms and didn’t notice the axe swinging.

The speaker tumbled and smashed. The hamlet fell violently silent. Hushed, everyone gathered around the Magician as his seeping blood drained his ego. Pleasure became pain but he couldn’t distinguish the two. Looking up at the stars, the once-transcendent man wondered if they were the same constellations he gazed upon in his own time.

The leader poked at the nearly-there-corpse and waved his people back with an authoritative snarl. “You are no god,” he exclaimed in the modern tongue, pulling his own Expediator from his tunic.

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