In Dreams Wake

He led her and Zayne through the swirling crowds of visitors to the fair grounds and out to the open lawn of the commons. It was easy to forget that they were in the middle of a metropolis when she spent all her days around the caravan, so it was almost a surprise when buildings and roads spread out in front of them. Beck led them to a waiting vehicle, one with a flowing body and a shiny emerald sheen.

“This is a rather fancy taxi,” she said.

“My uncle insists on using a more personal form of transportation.”

The man opened the door for them, and they slid onto the back seat. Inside it was plush, just as luxurious as the outside. Beck took a seat next to Florence, which confused her until she realized they weren’t the only ones in the vehicle.

“Well hello miss!” Her brother called to the lady in the driver’s seat.

The woman turned back to them. “You must be Mister Zayne and Miss Florence. I’m Amelia, one of the Barclays’ assistants.”

Even though in the dim light of the cabin she couldn’t make out much of the lady’s features or expressions, Florence immediately felt tense in her presence. She wasn’t sure if it was her piercing green eyes or the tone of her voice, but Amelia gave off the impression of a repressed storm. Regardless, she did not let what she felt slip past the mask she presented to her clients. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Amelia.”

Without another word the driver turned back to the wheel and guided the vehicle into the Boston traffic. For someone who had never ridden in an automobile before, it was a strange sensation. Florence simultaneously felt anxiety at the illusion of nothing controlling their movements, but also a rush of excitement from the same idea. She had to suppress the urge to laugh in giddiness, realizing that this experience alone was worth the trip.

She turned to Zayne. He was gazing out the window, resting his head in his palm, boredom across his face. Florence found it hard to believe he didn’t seem even the least bit thrilled by the journey, but she didn’t let that take away from her own elation.

“So where is it that your uncle lives?” she asked Beckham.

The man peered out the front. “Looks like we’ve already arrived. I could have sworn the estate was further out from the commons.”

An estate? For a moment Florence thought she had misheard, but then the vehicle passed through the gates of a fenced off property. Gardens lined the avenue as they traveled upwards, a large structure rising above the crest of the hill.

“Beckham, why didn’t you ever mention your family owned a mansion?” she said, her excitement growing. Florence thought that this was going to be a regular house visit, but the opulence she saw around her was like what Nan described in her excursions. This trip was turning out to be something only her matron normally did.

He rubbed at his temple. “Ah, well, I didn’t want to give the impression I was from the upper class. My uncle’s holdings were just as much of a surprise to me when I first arrived in America.”

The automobile glided to a stop in front of the entrance. Beckham let them out of the vehicle while Amelia held the front door open for them. Florence’s heart soared as she walked into the grand hall, a space so vast she was certain the entire caravan could fit inside.

Zayne whistled, the tone amplified by the room. “Now this is a lifestyle I could get used to.”

As the siblings spun around and took in the manor, Amelia pulled Beckham aside and spoke to him quietly. When Florence turned back, the woman was walking off into the depths of the building.

“Well, let me show you around!” he said with a half smile

He guided them upstairs to the balcony overlooking the main hall. From above it looked like what Florence imagined a high-end hotel lobby looked like. From Beckham’s implications, his stay here had felt like that, too.

Their tour began in the manor’s library. Having only a stack of books in her wagon at any one time, this was more books in one place than she had seen in her entire life. While Zayne poked around at the odd memorabilia that littered the shelves, she perused the volumes. All of the ones she picked up were encyclopedic in nature. If that’s what all of the shelves contained, she could understand where the Barclays got their serious demeanor from. Reading dime novels was what kept her adventurous spirit alive, but she doubted that mere stories were what had caused Beckham’s revelation.

They were shown the music room, an impractically empty room save for a grand piano taking center stage. After Zayne prodded Beckham about his musical prowess, he convinced him to sit and play a song. The man was quite good. Perhaps not talented enough to be an act, but the notes still resonated with her in an indescribable way.

Beckham took them outside to the gardens that took up the front of the property. While the topiaries and foliage was as elegant as the interior, the paths snaked in a way that could easily get someone lost. Florence supposed that tracked with the rest of the impractical use of space she’d seen at the manor. From what Nan had told her of her experiences with the elite, it sounded like the more money one had, the more illogical their dwellings became.

She looked over to the extensive face of the building. “What does your uncle do with all of the extra rooms, anyways?” Florence asked. “We must have only scratched the surface of them.”

A hint of concern appeared on the man’s brow before it quickly fled. “He runs his company out of the East Wing. I haven’t actually been there, but I’d imagine it’s full of bureaucracy.”

“No, no, that can’t be the case at all.” A cheeky grin creeped up Zayne’s face. “Knowing the nobility, they’d put as little as possible inside. That room we visited with the piano? Maybe the entire wing contains rooms filled with a single instrument. You know, a fiddle room, a flute room, and so on.”

Beckham let out an amused chuckle. “If that’s the case, then my uncle spends all day beating his own drum.”

“Perhaps it’s where he does all of his magic,” Florence said.

He glared at her, but Zayne’s eyes lit up. “Oh?”

“The forbidden kind,” she sighed. “It’s apparently what Mr. Barclay is involved in.”

“I can assure you, it is nothing of the sort,” Beckham said, scowling. “Your matron assumed as such, but it’s simply a theoretical field of science.”

“Whatever the case, Nan’s concern still applies, and your family would do well to heed the warning.”

Beckham opened his mouth to argue, but her brother spoke up. “What is your uncle getting from the deal?”

“What do you mean?” he said, shooting Zayne a questioning look.

“Well, when I was yea high,” Zayne motioned with his hand, “Back before the troupe, I lived in the bayous along the Louisiana, and voodoo was the king of the river. Those that practiced it always had a reason, be it love, power, revenge — If your uncle is doin’ a similar trade, findin’ the reason why lets you know what to watch out for.”

“Look, my family isn’t doing any magic, it’s just —” Beckham held up his hands, closed his eyes and breathed in. “My uncle’s doing his research for the sake of protection, so while we don’t necessarily get along, I trust his goal.” He waved his hand. “No matter, I remembered another room that I think would strike your fancy.”

He led them back inside and to a room on the first floor. It was dark, no windows letting any natural light in. Only a dim light shone, illuminating a peculiar device that stood in the center of the space. Curious, Florence approached it. The machine sat on a tall platform, a telescopic lens pointed towards the far wall. A couple spindles protruded from it, although she wasn’t sure what their purpose was.

Someone in the darkness cleared their throat. With a sharp intake of breath she whipped around to see who had startled her. An older gentleman was standing in the shadows, holding up a strip of film.

“Hello uncle, what are you doing here?” Beckham asked, who didn’t seem surprised in the least.

“It’s my house, I don’t need a reason to be anywhere,” the man said flatly. He didn’t turn his gaze to them, focused intently on the strip held between his fingers. He slowly pulled at it, looking at each dark frame in the film as it passed by his vision. It was a strange ritual to Florence, who wasn’t really sure what the man was trying to accomplish.

“We have guests,” Beckham said, “These are Mister Zayne and Miss Florence, siblings from the circus down at the commons.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mister Barclay.” She gracefully bowed in a practiced curtsy.

Beckham’s uncle finally averted his gaze from the film and briefly scrutinized the two of them. “You don’t look like brother and sister.”

His nephew looked mortified. “Uncle!”

Zayne couldn’t help but laugh and put on one of his wide, goofy smiles. “I like this one already, he’s a riot! I could say the same between you and Beckham, if I wanted.”

The man didn’t seem to know how to react to Zayne, so Florence spoke up. “In the traditional sense, we aren’t siblings,” she explained. “The familial terminology might seem strange to those outside our traveling community, but despite our lack of blood relation we still treat each other as such. We were all orphans at one point, but being picked up out of squalor and living life together on the road creates unbreakable bonds.”

His expression softened, melting into an attempt at a grin. “Those with similar experiences tend towards stronger connections with each other.” Rowan cast his attention to Beckham. “Was there something you were looking for?”

“I was hoping to set up the moviegraph for our guests,” he tilted his chin towards the contraption in the center.

“Of course. Here, let me do that for you, Zayne and Florence can take a seat.” The man walked towards the machine with the film reel he’d been fiddling with and started threading it through the spindles.

“Come on,” Florence said softly to her brother, who was absent-mindedly staring at the machine. She tugged at his hand, and guided them to the row of seats at the far side of the room that were peeking out of the dark.

Upon taking her place, she turned back to the two Barclays as they fussed over the device. Now that the older one was in the light, she was able to read him. Rowan was tall and slim like Beckham, but the former wore a short beard that was starting to speckle with gray. With his appearance and the way he operated the machine with an awkward smile, Florence could see where the image Beckham had of him as an eccentric intellectual came from.

It was the man’s deep, blue eyes that told a different story. Whole universes could fit inside them. While she could stare at them all day to unravel the secrets within, she doubted he would sit still long enough to let that happen. However, the fragments on the surface she glimpsed all conveyed a consistent narrative, a sorrow like that of a sailboat on the sea when the winds were silent.

Before Florence could consider more of the man’s inner being, a click sounded from the device and a beam of light shot from the lens, casting a rectangle of light into the wall in front of them. Beckham took a seat next to them as the light turned dark. Text faded onto the pane of light: “Treasure Island.” She had read the Stevenson novel, so was this a slideshow of the illustrations depicting it?

To her amazement, when the title went away and the light now displayed the Admiral Benbow Inn, it wasn’t a still image. It was moving. Somehow, the mechanical box had captured a window into the imagination, allowing the three of them to be privy to a fantasy that before had been trapped in paper and ink.

Florence couldn’t help but smile as on the far side of the light Jim Hawkins journeyed away from everything he had known. For the duration of the spectacle, the room she was sitting in ceased to exist. Nan was correct, the Barclay’s were harnessing magic. And if this was a hint of what they had to offer, Florence wasn’t sure she could resist its charm.