No Great Magic

"No Great Magic" fits into author Fritz Leiber's dizzying view of history as a battlefield in constant change. He explores the idea in his "Change War" novel, "The Big Time, " and this novella is part of the action. It works by itself as the tale of poor Greta, a girl taken in "like a pet" by a company of Shakespearean actors. She lives in the dressing room of their little theater in New York's Central Park. Leiber -- an actor's son -- brings an insider's eye to life behind the curtain. But Greta begins to doubt the curtain is real. She has physical and mental wounds to mend, and her mind plays tricks on her, but nothing accounts for the strange things she sees -- the shifts in time she senses. Is she caught up in a costumed staging of "MacBeth," or has she gone back to Shakespeare's time? And why? The answer comes only, as Shakespeare said, "When the hurlyburly's done, / When the battle's lost and won."