Magic Sucks

a fantasy novel? in progress? maybe?

I apologize in advance, but during the pandemic I started writing a fantasy novel. I’d just finished The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox, and I’d been thinking about faeryland—the woods of Arcady, you know, the silver apples of the moon. It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to work out why I might have been thinking about some imaginary otherworld in those days. And as I had a lot of time on my hands, I began to write. I started calling the thing “Magic Sucks” in my head and I suppose that’s its tentative title, though I know fantasy novels are supposed to be called, like, The Swords of Peregrine or The Moonfall Runes. John Crowley’s Little, Big is one of my favorite novels, and he plays loose with the genre, as does Knox, one of whose fairies has read a Jack Reacher novel. Anyway, this opening chapter is free of fantasy elements, but the fae are coming. I’m posting this with trepidation, to ask the chat if I should keep going and also how does one write a novel. (N.B. Why can’t you indent paragraphs on this platform?)

chapter one

The boys rode down Acacia Ave., mottled by leaf shade. Cicadas revved up and powered down, a counterpoint to the skateboard wheels’ constant whir. It was the kind of summer afternoon you remember in middle age, wondering what happened to the idiot you were then. It was about to get weird.

“Do not say fuck in front of my mom this time,” said Pike.

“That was an accident! Your sister shouldn’t walk into the kitchen naked.” Brad attempted an ollie, which didn’t take.

“She wasn’t naked. She was wearing a towel.”

“She was naked under the towel.”

“You’re a moron.”

They glided into Pike’s street, for some reason called Sunnybrook Lane though there was no brook, sunny or shaded, to be found for miles, and into the driveway of the modest two-story house Pike had lived in since he was born. Pike opened the front door, and the boys stepped into the trajectory of what appeared to be a golden lasso. It bounced off Pike’s elbow and collapsed in loops on the floor.

“Jesus, Mom.”

“Don’t take our neighbors’ Lord’s name in vain,” Elsbeth Schwarz said amiably, reeling the lasso in.

“What’s with the Wonder Woman act, Ms. S?”

“Bradley, darling, you have assessed the situation accurately for once. I am to play Princess Diana of the Amazons in the Half-Baked Community Theater’s production of Justice League.”

“The Snyder cut?” asked Brad.

“The what?”

“Mom,” said Pike, “there’s no way the community theater licensed the rights to Justice League. That would cost, like, a trillion dollars.”

“Well, honey, as Mr. Davenport always says in rehearsal, ‘Fake it till it’s real.’”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“Did you know,” Elsbeth continued, “that the creator of Wonder Woman, William Marston, also invented the polygraph?”

“Yes,” said Brad at the same time that Pike said, “No.”

“So you see the lie-detecting lasso continues a theme. I wonder what secrets he thought people were keeping from him.”

“Mom, Brad’s staying for dinner.”

“Well of course Bradley is always welcome at my table.” She gestured with the lasso in the direction of the adjacent dining room. “Which your sister should be setting now.”

“She’s not,” said Pike, looking into the room.

“Maggie! Set the table!”

A muffled shout came from the back of the house. “Is that little shit Brad Morrell here?”

“No,” shouted Brad.

“I know that’s you, Brad,” Maggie distantly replied.

“We’ll set the table, Mom,” said Pike, dragging Brad to the kitchen.

“Thank you, dear.” Elsbeth began to twirl the golden lasso above her head.

Maggie yelled from her room, “What are we having?”

“You can come in here if you would like to converse in a normal register,” her mother said mildly.

“What?” Maggie shouted.

Elsbeth sighed and regarded her lasso as the tinkling of silverware floated from the next room. “A single mother looks at midlife,” she informed the lasso.

Pike poked his head into the room. “Table’s set.”

“Maggie, dinner!” Elsbeth called. Her daughter’s shouted “Coming!” was followed by the slam of a door. Elsbeth sighed again and tossed the lasso on the sofa. “Carry the salad to the table, and I’ll get the chicken,” she said as Maggie brushed by in torn t-shirt and leggings.

“Yes, Mom,” Maggie replied, pivoting into the kitchen, “we must serve our male superiors.”

“Our male superiors set the table, which I vaguely recall asking someone else to do.”

“I was in the middle of something important.”

They set the dishes on the table. Brad smiled up at Maggie. “Ah, Mags, you’re as lovely as ever.”

“I hate you,” she said without looking at him, then, sitting down, turned to her mother. “Can I have 30 bucks for the Dire Goat show?”

“A … goat show?”

“They’re a band. Kind of like the Cure.”

“Dire Goat sound nothing like the Cure,” Pike interjected.

“I’m trying to put it in terms she would understand,” said Maggie.

“Hey,” said Elsbeth. “I am still with it. I listen to Taylor Swift.”

“Exactly,” Maggie replied.

“I like Taylor too, Ms. S,” said Brad.

“Of course you do, Bradley. When is this goat show?”

As Maggie opened her mouth to respond the glasses on the table began to vibrate and the faux chandelier to clink. Maggie changed her response to “What—” and the entire house shook as if a giant hand had lifted it a couple of feet into the air and dropped it. A thunderous boom clapped over the roof, followed by a smaller one.

Maggie and Brad shrieked in unison. Elsbeth cried, “Earthquake! Get under the table!”

Pike wrinkled his brow, watching the furniture dance. “We’re in New Jersey.”

Maggie looked up at the ceiling. Above the house a sizzling or crackling sound was growing louder. “Something is—”

A deafening metallic crash from the front of the house sent pictures flying from walls. Everyone yelled, falling and jumping back, knocking over chairs and glasses in a welter of chaos.

“Get in the bathroom!” Elsbeth shouted, grabbing Maggie’s arm and pulling. Brad stood staring, mouth agape, at the front window, beyond which a dust cloud was blossoming. “Pike! Get Bradley.”

Pike nodded, ran behind his friend, and pushed him into motion. “Move! Bathroom!” Brad mechanically obeyed, following the two women into the bathroom. Pike entered last and closed the door.

The four of them stood in front of the large mirror, staring at each other in fear and confusion. Pike realized he had been holding his breath, waiting for whatever crazy shit was going to happen next. After several seconds had elapsed in silence, his mom said, “I think—”

Brad spoke at the same time: “What the fuck.”

Pike gave him a look. “We discussed this.”

“That’s what you’re choosing to focus on right now?”

“Boys, hush, we need to figure out what’s going on,” said Elsbeth, patting her pockets. “Crap, I left my phone in the other room.”

“I have mine,” said Maggie, handing it to her mother.

“Of course you do,” Pike muttered.

Brad stared at him. “How are you calm enough to, like, quip?”

Pike said, “It sounded like something crashed out front.”

“Like a plane?” Maggie asked, while Elsbeth’s thumbs stabbed at the phone.

“Was that what it was?” Brad said.

“That’s what I’m asking!”

“OK, here it is!” Elsbeth began to read from the phone: “‘Central Jersey, did you just see a fireball in the sky?’ That’s from Reddit. There’s a bunch. Hold on, I’m gonna search ‘fireball.’ Oh yeah, a lot of people in the area are reporting a fireball.”

Brad said, “The hell is a fireball?”

“Like a meteor, maybe?” Elsbeth said, eyes saccadic upon the phone. “Some people are saying meteor.”

“So a meteor landed in the driveway?” Brad asked.

“Meteorite,” Maggie said. “If it lands it’s called a meteorite. Meteors burn up in the atmosphere.”

Brad said, “How do you know that?”

Maggie gave him a look. “I read. You should try it sometime.”

“I’m googling meteorites,” Elsbeth said.

Pike ran his fingers along the shower curtain. “Mom, why are we in the bathroom?”

“I don’t know, I read it somewhere.”

“I think that’s tornadoes.”

“I am doing the best I can!”

“You’re doing a fine job, Ms. S.”

Pike opened the door and peeked out. There was a general quietness occasionally breached by shouts from outside. “I’m gonna check it out.”

“Wait, Pike, don’t—Pike!” Elsbeth followed him into the hallway. “It says it could be radioactive!”

“I won’t touch anything.”

Elsbeth hovered with her phone. “Pike, be careful, please.”

Brad and Maggie followed as far as the foyer then stopped together as if by mutual agreement. “We’re, uh, right behind you, Pikester,” said Brad.

Pike opened the front door, peered out, and muttered, “Holy shit.” He turned to Maggie and said, “Uh, Mags—”

She pushed past him and looked into the driveway. She wailed, “My car!”

A gigantic, smoking rock—a meteorite, Pike supposed—rested on a pile of jagged metal that only a few minutes before had been Maggie’s 2011 Hyundai Accent.

Brad peered over Maggie’s shoulder. “I wonder if insurance covers that.”