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and carry them to hell. (And you thought coal in your stocking was harsh?)
    It’s not uncommon for actors playing the cert to actually scoop small children into their sacks.
    Uh-huh. It happened to me. I couldn’t have been older than four. It may even be my earliest memory. The sack was scratchy and smelled like earth; inside, the darkness was total. I screamed myself hoarse; it probably lasted less than a minute, but I remember the terror as sprawling, unending. The cert was my uncle in coal-face, and my mother was not pleased with him. By way of apology, he gave me my first violin. It was only a toy, but it became my immediate favorite thing in life, and I sawed at it and sawed at it until my father couldn’t take it anymore and bought me a real one, and lessons.
    I have been known to say that the devil gave me my first violin. It’s not even a lie.
    So far, the tap tap is the only hint that this puppet might be my reason for being here, but on closer examination, I see that he has a small note peeking from his jacket pocket like a handkerchief. And on it, more of the tiny writing that is becoming familiar.
    Ca rpe diabolus.
    First, seize the night . Now, seize the devil . It is for me, then, if the creepy tapping had left any real doubt. For a moment, standing there, I feel the full experience of this night wrap around me. The detail of it, the planning. It’s like something out of a fairy tale, and the city looks strange and new and full of secrets, shadows as sharp as if they’re laid down in paint, and light…light like haloes and phosphorescence, fireflies and animals’ eyes.
    I reach up and ‘seize the devil,’ lifting its crossbar off the window frame, and I wonder: What now? I run my eyes over it, turn it around, looking for more writing. Nothing. I even take out the little handkerchief note, but there are no other words on it. There seems to be something in its sack, though, so I ease open the drawstring and look in. I half expect there to be a tiny child curled inside being abducted to hell, but there’s only paper. Of course, when I draw the paper out, it is not ‘only’ paper. Nothing about this night is ‘only’ or ‘just.’ Everything is gilded and strange and ethereal, and so this is an origami butterfly, folded of floral Japanese paper embossed with gold. I turn it over, looking for writing on it and finding none, and have just concluded that I have to unfold it when…
    …it takes flight.
    It takes flight.
    The origami butterfly lifts into the air, and I could almost tell myself the wind has blown it, except that I’m holding it between my fingers and feel a tug of… will …as it disengages. Its wings beat once, sending it into a graceful upward spiral so that I tip my head back to watch it hover there for an instant, looking astonishingly alive…and then it’s apparently released by whatever power lifted it, and it floats back down to me.
    I’m almost afraid to catch it – how, how did it do that? How did she do that? – but I do catch it. It’s a trick, I tell myself, marveling. It’s ‘magic’ – the kind in quotes. Of course. Because that’s the only kind of magic there is.
    There’s a string tied to it or something.
    Some kind of completely invisible string that puppeteers know about, and which has now vanished, leaving no trace. Vanishing puppet string. Is that a thing? I don’t think that’s a thing. I turn the butterfly over and over in my fingers, searching for an explanation, but there’s none to be had. Well. Except one.
    Magic.
    The kind not in quotes.
    A little war commences in my brain, ‘rational self’ versus ‘hopeful self,’ cage match. I’m not religious; I don’t believe in things – not out of any determination not to. It’s more like a default setting: My brain is an inhospitable environment for belief, but I’ve always said – and really meant – that life would be more interesting if those unseen things were real (and dragons, too,