The Grimoire of Kensington Market

by Lauren B. Davis

  So Kyle tried to escape as well, to follow his sister down the elysium road.

  Maggie had wondered how long it would take him to ask her. She would have done the same thing in his position. A good sister would take him in, would trust him not to steal, not to fill the bookshop with every ragged, dagger-eyed, silver-swirled Piper in a five-mile radius. A good sister wouldn’t feel this acid-burn of horror at the idea of having to take responsibility for another human being. She was not a good sister.

  “I was selfish. I shouldn’t have left you and I’ve apologized a thousand times. But you need to be independent, Kyle. You need to stand on your own two feet. Get your own place. I’ll help you find one.”

  He stiffened and pulled away. “So you haven’t changed.”

  She stood. What boiled up in her was like hot tar. It stuck to everything in her gut, in her head; it scalded her lips. “Stop whining, Kyle.” She bent toward him, her pointed finger in his face. Kyle looked startled and drew back. She was probably yelling, but she didn’t care. “If it hadn’t been for Mr. Mustby, I’d have died out there, and nobody gave a flying fart, did they? Did you? And now I should save poor little Kyle? Well, I know you, Kyle, because I know what I was like when I was on the pipe and don’t tell me you’re not using again, because you might not be using now but sure as hell you’re going to be before the week’s out and you know it, so don’t give me that hurt little boy look or I’ll slap you.”

  Kyle stood up now, too, and they stood eye to eye, the same height, the same sharp bones, the only difference was that whereas her hair was the colour of honey, his was dark as November.

  “I’d like to see you try.” His hands were fists at his side.

  She should sit. She wanted to back down. She wanted to say she didn’t mean it, to say they were in this turbulent sea together and she wouldn’t let him drown, but instead she said, “Don’t tempt me. If I’m selfish, so are you, nothing but a selfish little boy, sulking because you don’t get what you want. You stole from Alvin and you’d steal everything I have if I was stupid enough to let you live with me. Goddamn it! You want the pipe so bad I can smell it on you. I’ve been where you are, remember?”

  “Oh, nobody could ever forget how you’ve suffered, and how you’ve overcome, and how much stronger you are than I am, and how you never did the horrible things I’ve done.”

  His eyes shone with what Maggie was horrified to realize were tears. “Kyle, I –”

  He shoved her, and she stumbled back.

  He took off running. The door to the street opened, and then slammed shut. She ran after him, her feet slipping on the gravel. The door stuck, and she wrestled with it, cursing, praying she wouldn’t be trapped inside for the night. The hinge protested, then gave way, and she tumbled into the park. She looked right, and then left, but saw nothing but paths and grass and trees and three bums sharing a bottle. Wherever he’d gone, he was halfway there by now.

  An image rose in her mind: Kyle in his striped flannel pajamas, curled up under her arm, falling asleep as she read to him from his favourite book of magical tales; the powdery, slightly animal scent of him; his weight in her arms; his thick eyelashes … and her chest felt bound by tightening ropes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAGGIE STARED AT THE LETTER. KYLE, HER broken baby brother, was sending her messages from God-knew-where. She didn’t understand how he’d managed to get a message through to her, but in her bones, she knew – Kyle was back on elysium. Lost in the Forest, probably, lost in his own mind and that warren of twisting streets. She wouldn’t risk everything on three cryptic notes. Of course she wouldn’t.

  I’m lost. Sister, follow me

  She almost laughed. What did he expect – that she simply stroll into the Forest and fetch him? Yes, that’s exactly what he expected.

  This day is over, she thought, and climbed the stairs to her room.

  Maggie lay on the bed, Badger at her side, and stared up at the ceiling cracks, longing for Mr. Mustby’s guidance. Long yellowish slivers of light slipped through the drawn shutters and sliced across the dark beams. Light from a setting sun. Although only God knew what time it was in the ever-darker, ever-smaller garden. She was cold. Still fully dressed, she pulled a blanket to her chin.

  Badger’s legs twitched, and he huffed, his jowls flapping. Maggie stroked his head and he started, yelped and then looked sheepish. “What were you dreaming?” His tail thumped.

  She remembered nights after her parents’ death when Kyle had such terrible nightmares, and she would comfort him, or try to. He screamed and screamed, saying machines were eating him, and talked of blades and saws and small steel rooms that contracted until he was crushed. She put her arms around him and told him he was safe, but he pushed her away, crying for their mother. He’d been all eyes and elbows and knees, prone to bumps and bruises on the jagged things of the world. One day he’d brought home a tiny, featherless, baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. He’d cupped it in his hands, and walked a mile home from the ravine, talking to it all the while. He put it in a little shoebox lined with handkerchiefs. Maggie warned him it probably wouldn’t live, but he looked at her with that stubborn, frowning look and said, “No. I will save it. I’ll feed it and keep it warm and teach it to fly.” He found an eyedropper, and filled it with water, and when the little bird opened its beak he squeezed it in. The poor wee thing convulsed once, and fell over, dead. Kyle shrieked and screamed he’d killed it, and then cried for hours and hours, utterly inconsolable, until at last he fell asleep clutching the shoebox. The next day, it took Maggie until nearly nightfall to persuade him the bird needed to be buried. She told a story about how it would grow new, special wings, the way a plant grew leaves, and fly away to be with the bird-fairies. He hadn’t believed a word of it, she didn’t think, but at last he let her take the box, and stood beside her at the little grave, crying huge, silent, oily tears. She used to call him Little Brother of the Sparrow.

  Oh, Kyle. My Little Brother of the Sparrow.

  Maggie sobbed, and stuffed her mouth with the blanket to stop from screaming. Badger whined and licked her face, and she hugged him as she buried her face in the pillow. Follow me … follow me … follow me … the words echoed. She finally fell asleep when the burden of being awake simply became too much.

  * * *

  MAGGIE DREAMS …

  Kyle is a small boy, sitting by a window, looking out onto a field of moonlit snow. A single flake drifts down from the night sky and lands on the windowsill. It grows larger and larger until it turns into a woman, dressed in the finest white silk, shimmering like a thousand stars. Her long hair is the colour of the inside of a prism when the light strikes it just so, full of fire. She is delicate as an icicle, and her eyes are all that is dark about her. They are bottomless, full of nothing but hunger. Kyle stands transfixed, and Maggie tries to call out to him, to tell him to beware the beautiful woman, for surely she is evil, but Kyle either can’t hear her or else he ignores her. The ice woman bids him to open the window. As soon as he does the woman reaches inside the snow-swept folds of her gown and when she lifts her hand something sharp flashes. A shard of ice … lethal as steel. Maggie is behind the glass now, while the ice woman stands inside next to Kyle. Maggie pounds on the glass, trying to warn her brother, but he pays her no mind. The woman will stab her brother in the heart, and there is nothing Maggie can do to stop it. Harder and harder she pounds on the window. And then, in a great explosion, the glass shatters and fragments fly everywhere … one of them to the centre of Kyle’s chest, where it disappears deep beneath the skin and his white nightshirt blooms with a red rose as he falls to the ground … and the ice woman laughs and laughs.

  * * *

  IT WAS STILL DARK WHEN MAGGIE WOKE IN DAMP, twisted sheets. Badger sat at the end of the bed, whining. The dream hung in the air – the metallic smell of the cold, the grate of the woman’s laugh
ter. It was Maggie’s heart that was pierced, shot through with slivers of ice. She cried out and sobbed again. It was impossible. The guilt would kill her; crush her beneath its frigid heel.

  The room seemed smaller. Sharp talons of fear gripped her throat. Yes, the window, the door frame, everything slightly tighter, more compact. Whatever was happening in the streets, and outside in her garden, was happening now in the Grimoire. Not only was the shape altering, but she was sure there were fewer lights flicking on in the shop below, and more flames turning books to ash. At first she hadn’t really noticed, but the last few days she was sure of it. More stories were dying than being born.

  “Oh, Badger.” She drew the dog to her. She buried her face in his soft fur, smelled the good clean doggy smell of him. Were these things connected? The messages, the slippery shrink of space, the dimming light, the elysium, the Forest? It was just a gut feeling, but the connection sat solidly inside her.

  There was only one thing for it. She’d go into the Forest, a sort of reconnaissance. She’d get through the day, and at twilight, when the Pipers came out to play … She rose and went to the desk, sure it took her a step less than it should. She stared at the photo of Mr. Mustby, pleading for a sign.

  * * *

  THE FOREST, WHERE PIPERS CONGREGATED, WAS AN AREA located in Old Toronto, bound by Shuter Street to the south, Gerrard to the north, Parliament to the west and River Street to the east. In the mid-1800s it had been called Cabbagetown, because of the vegetables people grew in their front yards, although that quaint name now referred to the wealthier area to the north. By the time the Second World War rolled around, it was the worst of Toronto’s slums and in 1947 the whole place was razed and Regent Park, the “garden city,” was built. With abundant green space, paths and walkways instead of streets, it was largely inaccessible to traffic. It should have been a haven, but from the beginning, people who didn’t live in Regent Park had no reason to go there. As it grew evermore isolated and neglected by the rest of the city, gangs took hold. It was the perfect place for a thriving trade in elysium. Ten years ago the drug first appeared, and since then it had taken over.

  Maggie stood in the doorway of an abandoned storefront on Queen Street. Across the street was the laneway Fee Place, one of the ways into the Forest. All along the walk here she’d passed gaggles of police in their dark blue uniforms and combat boots, with their nightsticks and guns in their belts. They loitered on street corners, urging the occasional pedestrian along, and not, Maggie noticed, answering questions. The police were never terribly good at answering questions but, judging from the tension on their faces, they had no more idea what was causing the spatial shifts than anyone else.

  It was hard to explain what was wrong. The roads themselves hadn’t changed – it wasn’t as though the Forest was creeping into the city by taking over more streets, but still, it seemed closer, and the roads leading to it smaller, even though there were the same number of streets, the same number of buildings. Nothing was actually missing; it was just that everything outside the Forest felt diminished.

  A group of police stood down the road, but they weren’t bothering, it seemed, with Fee Place. Maggie remembered it as a small lane, but now it seemed little more than a crevice between closed up brick buildings, the one to the east five or six storeys, the one to the west an old Victorian. All the Pipers knew Fee Place and made dark jokes about how everyone had their price. The twilight hadn’t yet darkened into night and light still ventured a few yards into the opening, beyond which the Forest spread, a sort of unmapped non-space.

  A man, skinny as a ferret, slouched toward her, his shoulders hunched against the wind, a cap pulled low over his features. The police ignored him and as he neared her he dashed across to the Forest side. He took his hand from his pocket and held the collar of his jacket closed as a gust shook him. His skin was practically radiant with silver swirls. He glanced her way and she bent down, fussing with Badger. When she looked up again the man was disappearing into the lane. She waited a few minutes as the light dimmed.

  “I guess it’s time,” she said. Badger tilted his head and whined.

  She crossed the street, Badger at her heels, and stepped into the laneway. The sickly sweet stench from garbage piles created a barricade of odour. She wrinkled her nose. City workers didn’t bother to collect the rubbish here. No one complained. The buildings were derelict, the windows long broken. Some boot-scarred doors still existed, but many simply had boards nailed over openings.

  Badger sniffed and sneezed. He pressed against Maggie’s leg. “It’s okay, boy.”

  She turned left. Had she really lived here? And was it really in a broken-down, tilting and treacherous shack like that, held together with rope and tar, that she’d slept through all those freezing nights?

  Badger’s hackles rose, he rumbled. “Easy, Badger.”

  Something flitted at the corner of Maggie’s vision. She swung her head around but saw nothing in the shadowy alley but rubbish bins, an old mattress, a busted television. Rats probably, or cats … although whatever it was seemed larger. She prayed no feral dogs scavenged, but Badger wasn’t reacting as though other dogs were about. He was, however, nearly electric with odour overload. “Heel,” she said. “Heel.” But he was already plastered to her leg, his hackles up. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe there was another animal in the alley. “Leave it,” she said.

  She kept her pace brisk. She turned onto one of the unnamed laneways, only to stop in her tracks. Dead end. But she was so sure this was the way. And maybe it was, once, but now a makeshift hovel barred the path, part tent, part tin, several timbers, planks and boards; a thin trail of smoke seeped through a hole in what might be considered a roof. A trollish bulk hunkered in the shadowed entrance, past a glowing brazier. Something metal glinted. She muttered, “Sorry, friend,” and began to back out. The bulk shifted. Badger growled.

  “That dog comes at me, I’ll snap its neck.”

  “Stay, Badger. No worries, he won’t attack unless I give the word.”

  The mass shifted again, swelled up and moved forward.

  “We’re on our way; just a wrong turn is all.” Her heart scattered everywhere in her chest at once.

  “I’ll be damned. That you, Mags?”

  Maggie squinted, trying to make out the form as it stepped from the opening. Huge. Arms too long for the body, legs bandy, head bald as an egg. It clamped a hand on top of its head, and then the other on top of that. It was a gesture she knew.

  “Is that you, Lumpy?”

  “None other. What are you doing back here? I thought you were gone for good.” He lurched toward her on those ridiculous, nearly circular legs. His army-surplus coat was a little too small and a wide belt around his formidable middle held it shut.

  Although he wasn’t as tall as he was round, Maggie still had to look up. Lumpy had once been a boxer but, unlike Alvin, he wasn’t a very good one, and the resultant facial bone structure was the source of his nickname. The skin was covered in so many swirls it was almost a solid shade of silver. His eyes – the whites not white at all, but bleary red – were sinister in contrast.

  He put his hands on her shoulders. “You weren’t supposed to come back. I bet on you.”

  She shrugged, or tried to, under the weight of his hands. “Stuff happens.”

  “It does.” A tremor shot through Lumpy’s limbs and he jerked his hands back. “Do you hear that?” He spun around. “Goddamn weasels! Get away, ya bastards!”

  He picked up a brick from a pile and threw it onto the tin part of his roof. It made a terrible racket and Badger barked. Lumpy picked up another brick and for a moment Maggie feared he might throw it at Badger. She clamped her hands around the dog’s muzzle and quieted him. Lumpy dropped the brick and put his hands back on his head, a look of anguish on his face.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,
Lumpy. You have the visions?”

  “Weasels, of all things.” He looked abashed and began to tell a story about when he was a boy walking home from school, in a northern suburb, where the fields began. “This weasel darts across the road in front of me. I picked up a stone and threw it. Knocked the thing over. Grabbed another rock and was going to brain it, right? Dunno why. Just did it.” He hunkered down and held his hand out for Badger to sniff. When the dog’s tail wagged Lumpy scratched him under the chin. “I got close enough to kill it and it sprang up and ran right up my clothes to my throat. Teeth and claws everywhere. I threw it to the ground and stunned it, but another sprang from the side of the road, I guess it was the first one’s mate, and it came at me. Then they were both on me and I was the one fighting for my life. They were like razors in fur, and I can still smell ’em.” Lumpy stood and crossed his arms over his chest. He recalled how he finally knocked one out while the other ran into a hole in the stone wall skirting the road, how he killed the wounded animal with a stone, then went home and got his father’s rifle. “I came back and shot the other one. It was easy enough to find, for there it was, sitting next to the body of the first, like it was mourning.” His eyes met Maggie’s. “I guess I felt guilty. They looked small, you know.”