Abracadabra Street

Roland Langdale Mark

Description

What do you do if the family business is magic and you're all fingers and thumbs? If your family are magicians and builders of tricks and illusions for other magicians and you can't even pull a rabbit from a hat, do you turn your back on magic and walk away as far away from Abracadabra Street as you can...or do you try and overcome the hand you're dealt?This is the question on Benjamin Blackstone's mind. He has hope, however, in the form of a book his great grandfather bought about magic, a Victorian popup book of a street on which a long line of magic shops sat. This is called Abracadabra Street. The book is said to be truly magical in some way - and young Benjamin wants to get his hands on it. But this book is no toy to be played with which Benjamin soon finds out as he discovers the book after a long search locked in a trunk and discovers a living, breathing magical street! And that's before a mysterious magician appears seemingly from inside the book.Benjamin knows it must be all smoke and mirrors, but he finds his own magic unlocked inside his head as he becomes obsessed to know how the book works and where the magician is really coming from. Because real magic isn't realright?

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 06 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781803133584
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2022 Mark Roland Langdale

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


Matador
Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,
Harrison Road, Market Harborough,
Leicestershire. LE16 7UL
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks


ISBN 978 1803133 584

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd





To Vern (Langdale) my brother and my best friend and to all the girls and boys at Troubador. Special thanks to Andrea and Fern. Also to Briony and Esther Harvey and finally to Davenport Magic Shop the oldest magic shop in the world.

In memory of my dear friend Gilly (Norwood)
– The spirit lives on.


Contents
Prologue
1
Attic Magic
2
Hey Presto!
3
The Magic Word
4
Abracadabra Street
5
The Tarot Card Conjurer
6
A Wizard in Name Only
7
Mind Magic
8
Madam Matilda
9
No Escape
10
Merlin Magician or Tin Pot Wizard?
11
The Wheel of Misfortune
12
Black Magic
13
Blackstone Magic
14
The Shadow Caster
15
The Mirror Magician
16
The Magic of the Attic
17
The Trick to Magic is?
18
Popup Magic
19
Ghost of a Chance
20
Abracadabra!
21
Small-Time Magic
22
Trick or Treat?
23
The Attic Theatre
24
Street Magic
25
The Maharaja of Magic
26
Bringing the House (of Cards) Down!
27
A Dirty Trick
The Finale
The Magic Trunk of the Mind
The End…
Other Titles by Mark Roland Langdale


Prologue
What do you do if the family business is magic – being magicians and builders of tricks and illusions for other magicians – and you’re all fingers and thumbs? Do you turn your back on magic and walk away, as far away from Abracadabra Street as you can? Or do you try to overcome the hand you’re dealt, a hand of jokers, so one day you can become an ace magician like Merlin the Magician, Robert Houdin, the King of Conjurers, Harry Houdini, Illusionist and Escapologist Extraordinaire, or Blackstone, the Master Magician – no relation to the boy in this story, Benjamin Blackstone, I hasten to add.
This was the question Benjamin Blackstone was now asking himself, hiding away in the attic of his mind. Benjamin wished he lived in a house with a magical attic for he was sure if this was the case he would, as if by magic, be transformed into the greatest magician of all time. Unfortunately for Benjamin, this was wishful thinking on a grand scale. Captain Hook, a man who most certainly did not have the magic touch, had more chance than Benjamin Blackstone of earning a living as a magician
‘If only I could do magic,’ sighed Benjamin, staring wistfully out of the skylight window, the one his father had put into the loft space, a poor man’s – poor boy’s – attic in Benjamin’s mind. Still, it was nice of his parents to try and give him the magical space he had always dreamt of. The family magic business had taken a turn for the worse, dark magic, in no small way brought on by Benjamin’s great-grandfather Atticus Blackstone, the black sheep of the family. The family story went that Atticus turned bad after he found out to his cost that, like Benjamin, he wasn’t cut out for the magic trade. Atticus Blackstone, desperate and one step from the poorhouse, sold the family secrets – a cardinal sin in all magic circles and one that got the Blackstones thrown out of the famed Magic Circle in London. Being thrown out of the Magic Circle virtually ruined the family business. Unable to perform on the magic circuit, all that was left was to sell their illusions and magic tricks, mostly in Europe, for no magician or conjurer in their right mind who was a member of the esteemed Magic Circle in London wanted to be associated with the Blackstone family name, blackened as it was.
Over time, the Blackstone name blackened to charcoal black, bone black, some said. But Atticus Blackstone began to become a lighter shade of black, almost grey, as in the grey areas of life, although very little is ever black and white in the theatre of life. There was even talk of the Magic Circle, who once upon a time had blackballed the Blackstone family, inviting them back into their famed circle of magic.
Benjamin had heard a family story, and a most magical one, of his great-grandfather buying a book on the subject of magic in an antiquarian bookstore in the backstreets of Budapest in Hungary. You see, one of Atticus Blackstone’s heroes was the magician Erich Weiss, aka Harry Houdini. The book, a Victorian popup book of a street on which a long line of magic shops sat, was named Abracadabra Street . This street certainly had a magical ring to it, as magic rings (otherwise known as miracle rings) had when you rubbed them together, like music to the ears, as a stage act in the music-hall days of Vaudeville London might have performed back in the times of the Victorians and Edwardians.
The Victorian popup book was said to be magical in some way, or so the antiquarian wizened owner of the bookshop had told Atticus, after which he issued his great-grandfather a note of caution: ‘Be careful…’ To which Atticus was said to have jumped in with the well-worn magical line, ‘What you wish for.’
‘If you would do me the courtesy of allowing me to finish my sentence,’ scowled the wizened old man, ‘be careful you don’t get trapped in any illusion you cannot escape from as I can see you are no Harry Houdini,’ the man added, appearing to see right through Atticus Blackstone as if he were a ghost.
The more likely story was that Atticus Blackstone was so shallow that the man instantly saw through him, saw him for what he was: a scoundrel. However, the owner of the magic shop, Magica’s Magic Box, had fallen upon hard times and as Atticus had given him three gold sovereigns, three being the magic number, he felt he had no choice but to sell the book. The only reason Atticus Blackstone found himself on East St was because he had picked a pocket or three in the city of Budapest on his way to the magic shop.
Atticus didn’t quite know what to make of this warning but brushed it off as the ramblings of an old man, so he bought the book and walked out of the shop as if he were a giant and one carrying a street under his arm: Abracadabra Street. If this book was indeed magical in some way, Atticus Blackstone may one day become one of the giants of magic, right up there with Harry Houdin and Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin.
The old book must have been magical in some way for it turned Benjamin’s great-grandfather into a household name in Europe, a giant in the circles in which magicians circulated. That was until, once again, for the second time, his great-grandfather turned bad, ending up on the dark end of Magic Street. The book was said to have possessed Atticus, or perhaps it was the spirit that haunted the book that had possessed Atticus Blackstone. Either way, Atticus ended up almost losing his mind until finally he came to his senses and threw the book on the open fire. Later, Atticus became a recluse in an old ramshackle mansion house in the country.
When Atticus Blackstone died, he bequeathed the house to the Blackstone family in his last will and testament but the Blackstone family wanted nothing to do with the old mansion house, feeling Atticus had bought it with money earned on the black market, blood money in some cases. Benjamin, being a curious sort of boy, wanted to see where his great-grandfather –as bad as a magician as himself – lived, so one day, against his parents’ wishes, Benjamin set out to find the house.


1
Attic Magic