I. The Magician

A smiling clown in a top hat sits in a casket, holding a magic wand in one hand and sawing himself in half with the other hand.

The Magician is a shameless trickster. Both you and he know that he’s taking you for a ride, but everyone enjoys the show. His magic is so obviously fake that it is potentially real. Part of the clown’s appeal is that one never knows who’s under the makeup. Could it be a creature who can cut itself in half and regenerate? Why not?

Image Description

A smiling clown in a top hat sits in a casket, seeming to saw himself in half. He works the saw with his right hand and holds up a black and white magic wand in his left hand.

The casket stands on three trapezoidal blue legs. The floor beneath it is a patchwork of different colors in triangles and quadrilaterals: red, green, blue, yellow, gold, and peach. The front panel of the casket is decorated with leaves and flowers. One side panel of the casket has a picture of three dice. Each die has three faces visible. The top face is a 4, the left face is a 1, and the right face is a 2. The other side panel of the casket shows a goblet, a knife with a curved blade, and a curled serpent-like shape.

The clown’s torso sticks up through a hole in the rear end of the casket. He has a white face and a red-painted nose and smile. He has curly yellow hair with eight orange dots in it. His top hat is green and has a four-petaled red flower stuck in a blue ribbon around it. He wears a suit jacket that is half red and half blue, with a yellow and green vest and a white ruffled shirt underneath. He has another red flower pinned to his jacket. He also wears white glove with red and green leaf decorations that resemble those of the casket. A pair of legs sticks out from two holes in the front panel of the casket. They wear fishnet stockings and yellow pointy-toed pumps.