She grows up traveling with her father from show to show, and her father treats her as "a well-loved small dog", which is pretty good considering how he usually treats her, and later on the same page, there's a prime example of this.
"When he decides she is too tall to be an adorable accessory, he begins abandoning her in dressing rooms or hotels.
She wonders each night if perhaps he will not return, but he always stumbles in at unseemly hours, sometimes petting her gently on the head while she pretends to be asleep, other times ignoring her entirely."
Her lessons are continuing, but are more of tests, decided both randomly and frequently by her father.
Menial tasks like tying her shoes are done by magic, and this is another example of useless magic. I get that the point is to make her skills better, but magically tying your shoes seems like an awfully specific skill that wouldn't help at all in her later life, competition or otherwise.
The only things she knows about the competition are:
1: She has an opponent
2: It's not like chess
The focus then shifts to the young boy.
He is raised in a London townhouse, in near complete solitude. This is only broken when, once a month, a silent man cuts his hair and, once a year, returns to take his measurements for new clothes.
To avoid ending up like Chuck Noland from Castaway, he reads and writes, copying passages and symbols and, over time, he learns other languages.
Very sporadically, he is taken on little field trips to closed libraries and museums.
His only human company is the man in the grey suit, who brings with him books and lectures.This is very different than Celia's upbringing, and yet it still feels like child abuse.
His magic lessons have not yet begun, and when he asks about it, though it is not referred to as magic, the man responds very cryptically:
"'When you are ready' is the only answer he receives.
He is not deemed ready for some time."
We shift back to Celia and Hector now, and things get worse.
Hector's performances include doves, who are kept in cages and are delivered with the luggage to each new theater.
In his dressing room, a cage full of birds topples to the ground and one breaks its wing.
When Celia asks first if he can fix it, he does not respond, and when she asks if she can fix it, he gives it to her.
She tries, but tearfully admits that she cannot, and he promptly kills it.
He kills a bird in front of his daughter because she cannot fix a bird's broken wing.
I don't think anything needs to be said.
After killing the dove and doing something with the body that we don't know, he breaks her porcelain doll and tells her to fix it instead, remaining unimpressed with her when she shows him the repaired doll the next day.
There then is another reason to hate Hector (as if I needed another).
"'You could have fixed the bird,' Celia says.
'Then you wouldn't have learned anything,' Hector says. 'You need to understand your limitations so you can overcome them. You do want to win, don't you?'"
He killed a bird that he could have healed. In front of his daughter. For learning purposes.
I'm not even going to bother with this one.
Celia throws the fixed doll under a chair in the theater and it stays there when they leave.
Then, blissfuly, we switch back to the boy, who apparently hasn't chosen a name yet, and the man in the grey suit.
He killed a bird that he could have healed. In front of his daughter. For learning purposes.
I'm not even going to bother with this one.
Celia throws the fixed doll under a chair in the theater and it stays there when they leave.
Then, blissfuly, we switch back to the boy, who apparently hasn't chosen a name yet, and the man in the grey suit.
The two go on a trip to France that is described as "not precisely a holiday."
The boy is not told previous to their departure about the trip nor does he know its purpose.
But one night, he is sent to a theater to see a magician perform.
Afterward, he is told that it will not be discussed until they return home.
He is brought to another, larger performance, but there is something different about this one. No contraptions are used, no slight of hand or misdirection. The recognizes this as the same things the man in the grey suit sometimes does in his lectures.
Back in London, the man asks the boy (I cannot wait until I can finally start calling them by actual names) what the difference was between the performers.
He answers correctly, and asks if the man knew the performer.
"'I have known that man for a very long time,' his instructor says.
'Does he teach those things as well, the way you teach me?'
His instructor nods, but does not elaborate."
The boy is confused as to why the audience cannot tell the difference between the performers, because to him, it is inexplicably obvious.
And then comes a quote that my Kindle tells me has been highlighted by 2,860 people:
"'People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see."
2,861.
Meanwhile, things with Hector and Celia are only getting worse.
This is where the main reason I hate Hector comes in.
"Prospero the Enchanter uses a pocket knife to slit his daughter's fingertips open, one by one, watching wordlessly as she cries until calm enough to heal them, drips of blood slowly creeping backward."
If there's anyone reading this and/or the novel who has managed not to hate Hector, please tell me. Because I'm not sure it's possible,
And then, as though that wasn't bad enough.
"Her father gives her only moments to rest before slicing each of her newly healed fingers again."
Fortunately, before Hector does something worse to Celia, we switch back to the man in the grey suit and the boy.
The man binds the boy using the ring given to him, and is somewhat vague about why.
"'What am I bound to?' the boy asks, frowning at the scar where the ring had been moments before.
'An obligation you already had, and a person you will not meet for some time. The details are not important at this point. This is merely a technicality.'"
For whatever reason, this explanation suffices for the boy, perhaps because he is used to such cryptic answers, but he lies awake that night, wondering who he is bound to.
This chapter ends with Celia, to whom the boy is now officially bound, curling into a ball in the backstage of the theater where her father is performing and crying.
Chapter Five should be up by next Tuesday. The Of Mice and Men mini-review is on the way.
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