The Summoner

Wendy looked around her. Her house, with all its sky blue furnishings, its beautiful ocean view, and its Victorian furniture, used to be a pleasure to go home to each day. Now, it all seemed like a joke. She felt like a fool, like she had been fooled through her fifteen years of marriage.

Thomas looked down sadly. He had not wished for this. All his life, he had only wanted to please her.

"I know you were different all along. I knew you had special talents, that you used to make me happy. But I didn't think you would lie to me in this way." Wendy was almost in tears now.

"I'm sorry..." was all he could offer in response.

"I should have expected this, marrying a magician." Wendy sat down firmly on a sturdy wooden chair, which looked like it had been crafted in the early 19th century.

"If I had not asked you to let me see Sharon again, I never would have found out." she continued, adopting an accusatory tone.

"Maybe I should have said no. But she was your best friend before you met me. I had to." Thomas said regretfully.

"Then? You would have me continue living this lie?"

"We were happy." Thomas offered, the tone of melancholy apparent in his voice.

"Yes. We were." Wendy said now. She heaved a great sigh. Her past fifteen years had been the most wonderful time of her life. Though they did not have children, they had spent every moment bathing in each other's love and concern. Hardly a moment passed when she wasn't thinking of the next time she would see Thomas, of what they would do together next. Yet, she hadn't realized that her life as of now had been a construct, bent solely by Thomas' will and imagination.

For she had known all along that Thomas had the gift of magic. Powers one would call other-worldly. She had seen him produce flowers from thin air. She had been taken on flights through the air on nothing but a wisp of cloud. He was special in that sense. And he loved her more than anything else.

But what she did not know, until recently, was that Thomas was not a magician in an ordinary sense of the word. Through history there have been many different types of magicians. Mentalists, who could cause things to move with the power of their mind. Illusionists, who could conjure images of things and people and create stunning visual effects, and psychics, who could read minds and find out one's deepest emotions and dreams. Thomas, on the other hand, was a Summoner. He did not summon things, nor creatures, but worlds.

And it was with this talent that he attempted to create the perfect world for their union. He created a world around the both of them, a world free of dangers and sorrow, a world filled only with warmth and joy. He had never let Wendy out of this world once it had formed around them. Slowly, she had lost contact with all her former friends, and had made new ones within his creation.

"But I still cannot come to terms with this... " Wendy said, a tear escaping her right eye. She raised a hand to wipe it off. "My job, all my friends at work. All your friends at your supposed IT firm. They're all figments of your imagination?"

Thomas nodded sadly. It was no easy task, of course, creating this world for his beloved wife to live in. But he had no choice but to do this to protect her. Magicians never had an easy time in society. There were those who hated his kind and hunted them and their loved ones to the end of the earth.

Thomas had thus painstakingly crafted this world for both of them. He had covered every aspect, like the job at the clothing designer's store for Wendy, her boss, colleagues and even clients were all his constructs. Daily he would plan the next surprise for Wendy at work, be it designing clothes for princes, to clothes for orphans in Third World countries. (What third world? Wendy thought.) And he enjoyed seeing her ideas and products very much. In fact, in the guise of his IT firm job, he actually spent a lot of time simply admiring his wife's work. Such were the lengths of his devotion.

In a way, Wendy's artistic talent had drawn Thomas so closely to her. They were both artists, and in their ideas they had found a similarity from which their love blossomed. Thomas appreciated Wendy's creations, and too felt happy when Wendy praised the world she lived in: his creation. That, was when she was still living in blissful ignorance.

"Thomas," she demanded, "why did you do this?"

"To protect you," he replied.

"But why did you have to create all this? Did you think that I would not have been able to handle the world on my own?"

"Dear, you do not understand. A magician has many enemies, some of which would not think twice about destroying you. I loved you so much that I had to do this."

"Its all a lie. Its all fake." Wendy moaned, cupping her face with her hands. Tears still trailing from her eyes, she swiped out with her left hand, and the wooden chair toppled over with a crash.

They stood together, just four feet apart, but in a very uncomfortable silence.

"Its all fake." she whispered softly again.

Thomas stepped towards her.

"No. Its not."

"We're real." He put his arms around her. "We're real, dear, our love is real. I love you. I always will." She gazed back at him, speechless for a moment.

"I love you too, Tom," Wendy said, unable to hold back the tears as she buried her face in his chest.

Slowly, the world begun to melt away around them as Thomas and Wendy stood locked in a fierce embrace. The house and its furnishings dissolved into dust. The wooden furniture, beautifully crafted in Thomas' mind, vanished into a thousand specks of virtual ash. The beautiful sea which used to lap on the rocks of the beach through the night dried up in seconds. Slowly, their surroundings became visible to them. They were in a bare, off-white room, cobwebs being the only decorations on the grubby walls, as they had been the past fifteen years of their life.

But it didn't matter anymore, for once again, while Wendy's eyes were still closed tightly and her head rested firmly on Thomas' chest, the world formed around them once more. The Eiffel Tower rose in front of them, and all of them the dark sky began filling with Paris' evening lights.

"Look where we are, dear."

"Paris. Where we had our honeymoon." Wendy smiled happily, her anguish entirely forgotten.

"Yes, dear. Shall we go up the Eiffel Tower?"

Together, they stepped into the laden elevator, filled with fellow tourists from all over the world, and once again, the world, and everything, seemed right once more.