The Printer's Devil

by Chico Kidd

  Except that now they were brown, not blue.

  Kim swallowed, her mouth dry and sore again. ‘Speak,’ she ordered, hoarsely.

  The answer, when it came, was in an unexpectedly reedy voice. There was, however, nothing weak or uncertain about its tones.

  ‘What would you have me say, bane of demons?’ The inflection was mildly amused, almost ironic. ‘I dance to your tune and come at your call, I who never thought to acknowledge a master. You would banish me from this robe of flesh, then?’

  ‘It is not your home, Roger Southwell.’ She found her speech falling involuntarily into an archaic pattern. ‘Yet I am not an uninvited guest.’

  ‘So say those who commit rape,’ retorted Kim.

  Alan’s face looked momentarily puzzled, then cleared, and Southwell nodded.

  ‘Ah, rapine. So the centuries rend us asunder,’ he said, recognising a truth. ‘I must needs leave the maiden be as well, then?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kim. The maiden? she thought.

  ‘What is your intent, magus?’

  ‘I control the glass,’ she said. Barely, her mind pointed out, but she hushed the errant thought. ‘I will give you fair warning, as you never did, with all your tricks and riddles.’

  Southwell interrupted, looking suddenly almost horrified. ‘Do you not know whence comes the power?’ Kim frowned. He continued in a burst of passion.

  ‘Ye be fools, all fools, and you as much as any, an you know it not. More so, in sooth. That power I did give unto Fabian, the which he did refuse, was not wholly mine own; for what was his he did comprehend and yet did gainsay it, fool that he was - ‘

  ‘Yet his name is remembered more than yours.’

  ‘Still, I am quick, and he is dead; dead these three hundred years.’

  ‘No,’ said Kim. ‘You are a trespasser, where you are not welcome. And his is the truer immortality.’ ‘Hold your peace, I do beseech you,’ said Southwell impatiently. ‘Permit me to enquire of a master—whence cometh your power, do you believe?’ A hint of something like sarcasm slipped into his tone.

  ‘From music,’ replied Kim.

  ‘Wrong! Wrong, wrong! The power is in you. It is a talent, like the ability to paint. Music is but your way of working it. Do you understand me?’

  An invisible fist thumped Kim under the heart. More red herrings and riddles. She should have known. Her every move had been circumscribed by Southwell’s deceit. Yet whyever should she have imagined he would cease his deviousness when she had merely solved one problem or penetrated one disguise?

  ‘I can teach you... pilgrim,’ said Southwell slyly. ‘With power such as yours, well-taught, you could be invincible, all-conquering.’

  She recognised the gambit, and managed to laugh. ‘Do you think me such an easy mark?’

  Southwell shrugged. ‘It was worth a try.’ He fell into idiom as easily as had Kim. ‘You overthrew the demon. For a space of time, at least. I acknowledge your mastery in that - but in naught else. Next time we meet, magus, you will not o’erthrow me.’

  Kim stared at him.

  ‘But together...’ he said. ‘Have you no wrongs you wish to see righted? No enemies to confound?’ He reached a hand towards her. ‘I think you have a talent for hatred. Most magi do.’

  Kim was silent, recognising, as Southwell had earlier, a truth. Up until that moment she had been viewing her battle, her war, in terms of black and white, with Southwell and his demon bracketed together and representing the former. Suddenly things were not so clear-cut, were shifting, re-forming. He had, she knew logically, spoken to some shameful part of her which wanted - yearned - to accept his offer.

  Southwell was watching her closely, sensing her uncertainty. ‘’Tis easy,’ he said, ‘to be a master. When I did but comprehend that simple truth, all that passed hitherto seemed but as hollow foolishness.’

  ‘The homunculus?’ asked Kim, curious despite herself.

  Southwell made a dismissive gesture with his fingers.

  ‘Ay, foolishness,’ he said. ‘When there be power here’ - he touched his head - ‘needst no potions nor midnight incantations.’

  ‘But you made Alan work spells, didn’t you?’

  ‘A man doth make use of that which he hath at hand. He had not the talent for power, but he had the desire for it, and that did prove sufficient.’

  ‘Sufficient to bring you here?’

  ‘How lightly you do phrase it, to be sure. Ay, to call me back after three centuries. Hearken to me now! I am here and not lightly to be banished again, howso you may believe. Yet you need not involve yourself in such a trial. I can retreat back into the sleeping part of this mind so that you will not know me to be here, and there remain but an observer of this strange and wondrous world... I would fain not miss sight of all the prodigies it doth hold. And in return - teach you all the uses on your power.’

  ‘I—’ began Kim. The word ‘no’ somehow would not pass her lips. The magus smiled.

  ‘Just so,’ he said, ‘think on’t. I withdraw - thus.’

  Alan blinked, and his eyes were his own again. ‘Kim,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Did I doze off?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she replied. Outside, remote thunder rumbled.

  ‘Are you all right now?’

  ‘Fine. I’m fine. Will you show me what you’ve been learning?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The magic. The spells. I’m curious.’ Come on, she encouraged him silently. If it’s only a matter of willpower -

  Alan’s shoulders sagged. ‘Come on, then,’ he said.

  As easy as that, thought Kim, exhilarated. It was like learning the use of a new muscle. The more you exercised it, the easier it became. There was a curious hint of sexual pleasure, too - the way music felt sometimes. She was aware, now, of the power moving in her, somewhere even deeper than her deepest veins, nearer her core, and almost expected some visual sign of it - light fizzing from her fingertips, perhaps. Distantly, too, she felt the storm growing nearer

  ‘To Confound Ones Enemys,’ she read. Aloud, she asked, ‘John Simpson?’

  Alan nodded.

  ‘So who is the maiden?’

  ‘The maiden... ‘twas Ann...’

  ‘No!’ Kim said sharply. ‘Not Ann Pakeman. Now, not then. Who?’

  ‘I beheld her in church - I...Debbie, that’s her name. Ay. She knows me as - my name is Steve...’ He looked bemused, and Kim’s memory unearthed a dream she recognised. Connections slipped into place. Blood. A corpse in a sack. And the diary.

  ‘Listen to me, Alan. Listen! Leave her alone. Otherwise she’ll die. Do you understand?’

  ‘No,’ said Alan, absently.

  ‘You remember Ann, don’t you? You just said “Ann”.’

  ‘Ann, yes. Poor Ann.’

  ‘Ann died. Like Gilda in Rigoletto. You’ll make history repeat itself. You have to stop.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can,’ he observed, quite clearly. Then, abruptly, he seemed to shake himself. ‘What - what were the flies? Where did they come from? Where did they go?’

  ‘What flies?’

  ‘Outside. It was like a wall of flies, all round the house.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Looking in the scrying-glass,’ replied Kim, her back prickling as she recalled the soul-shrivelling presence of the demon. She stuck her hands in her pockets, fingers reassuring themselves of the hard outline of the Victoria Cross. And I have to do it again, she thought, and soon. She shivered anew.

  ‘Only demons in the glass,’ said Alan, shuddering.

  ‘No,’ Kim told him. ‘Not any more.’ Even as she said it, she knew it was presumptuous, while knowing it for putative truth. How had she, Kim Sotheran, thirty-something, photographer, gained power over spirits of earth and air? ‘Spirits from the vasty deep,’ she muttered.

  The doorbell rang then, making them both jump.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Alan. 129

  Kim followed him down t
he stairs to see him open the door to a bewildered-looking Debbie Griffiths, trailing a footsore Blondie, who was wagging her stump of a tail hopefully. As she watched, fat drops of rain began to fall.

  ‘Shit,’ breathed Kim, suddenly short of breath.

  ‘Debbie!’ said Alan in surprise. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I... I’m not sure,’ the girl faltered. ‘I sort of - found myself here.’ Her white face peered past Alan.

  Kim pushed him to one side and grabbed Debbie by the elbow.

  ‘Come in, for God’s sake, you look dreadful,’ she said, repelling the dog, who had seized hold of her leg. ‘Alan, go and make some tea.’

  ‘Oh - all right,’ Alan agreed.

  Debbie allowed herself to be led indoors and seated on a sofa.

  ‘I feel weird,’ she said.

  ‘Put your head between your knees if you feel faint.’

  ‘No, not faint. We went out for a walk and ended up here! How could I do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Kim. ‘What were you thinking about? Were you “miles away”?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was singing a bit, I think - singing to myself - I’m really not at all sure.’ She looked up. Kim saw tears leaking from her eyes.

  ‘Hey, come on, it’s all right. Don’t cry.’

  ‘I feel so stupid,’ snuffled Debbie.

  Kim patted her knee awkwardly, and handed her a paper tissue. ‘It happens to us all,’ she told the girl. ‘I do it all the time. Never know where the day goes. Come on now, mop up.’

  ‘Tea,’ said Alan, coming in. Debbie wiped her eyes and wrapped her hands round the hot mug, bending her head into the steam for a second.

  ‘Do you want to call your mum?’ asked Kim.

  ‘Yes - no. I mean, I feel such an idiot.’

  ‘I’ll drive you home,’ offered Alan.

  ‘No, I will,’ said Kim. ‘I’ll drop you at the end of your road, if you’re embarrassed. Are you all right, though?’

  ‘I think so,’ replied Debbie, with a weak grin.

  Ahead, loud as the guns in the battle of the Somme which people had said could be heard in England, thunder burst, and lightning carved the sky. The air sparked with electricity. Blondie whimpered nervously. Without conscious thought Kim stood up and sang,

  ‘Come un bel di di maggio, che con bacio di vento e carezza di raggio, si spegne in firmamento...’

  ‘...a beautiful May day, kissed by the breeze

  and caressed by the sun, fades from the evening sky...’

  And the roiling clouds calmed their seething, the charge seeped out of the air leaving not a whiff of ozone; the rain petered out sulkily. The frilled edge of a cloud glowed briefly, and then slid away from the sun.

  Alan and Debbie gaped at Kim in astonishment. 130

  ‘This has to stop,’ she said, anger surging up. ‘Now!’

  ‘Kim—’ Alan began.

  ‘Wait—’ said Debbie in the same instant, her eyes wide and frightened.

  ‘Do you believe in magic?’ asked Kim, rounding on them.

  Neither replied.

  ‘Believe it! It’s real!’

  ‘You did that to the rain?’ Debbie said in a very small voice. ‘How? With the music?’

  ‘Near enough. Debbie, I can’t explain... or rather, I could, but it’s a long story. Have you got time to read something?’

  Mystified, the girl nodded.

  ‘Wait there,’ said Kim.

  Debbie looked uncertainly at Alan, but his eyes were distant, as though he had been switched off. She started to get up, but at that moment Kim returned and pushed a battered block of paper into the girl’s hands. ‘You only need to read as far as the marker,’ Kim told her.

  The journal crackled as Debbie turned a page cautiously.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Alan, but without much interest.

  ‘Just a journal,’ said Kim. ‘About Roger and Ann; and other things.’

  ‘Ann,’ repeated Alan musingly.

  Debbie started to read, and silence filled the room. Kim let her thoughts wander. Music intruded, as it always did, but gradually a kind of peace descended. There was no imminent demon, but her unfocused mind yielded nothing in its place.

  She drifted.

  After a time - whether minutes or hours she could not tell - the air in the room began to take on a peculiar dead quality, as though muffled from the world outside. Kim noted it only in passing, for now visions were forming in her mind’s eye: another storm, far greater than that one she had just quelled, as the ocean is greater than a tarn.

  Thunderheads, black and tremendous, whirled on a wind like a hurricane. Ancient oaks whipped, bent and snapped. Rivers and seas lashed out of their proper beds, overwhelmed the land. Lightning blazed.

  Kim gasped, as though it were her whom the gale buffeted; as if she flew, like an arrow, through the tempest. She tossed her hand over her brow as if to clear it of rain. Blood thundered in her head, and the world went into flux around her. She struggled like a diver in rough seas as it seemed to curdle, and then coalesce; and though she remained aware of her surroundings, she could see, clear in her mind’s eye, scenes which flew by, or which she flew by:

  ...a golden landscape, the rolling arable land of England’s southern counties (What fields and hedges and farms were those?) lit by a winter sun and chased with the shadows of clouds, laid out beneath her as though she stood upon a high hill. Leafless trees stuck up into the air like black scrubbing-brushes laid on their backs. As she watched, the cloud-shadows turned to blemishes, like ink poured over a watercolour drawing...

  ...a seascape glowing like liquid fire, its seas and inlets, islands and darkling shores, more like a cloud-

  scape seen at evening, when the setting sun transformed the skies into a country you could sail to and yearn for, with all your heart. Twilight overtook it, overwhelmed it, blackened and polluted its fiery seas, quenched its light...

  ...soaring mountains, steep and high and cold, airless and perilous to humans. Slow-creeping, ominously cracking glaciers in their valleys went unimaginably deep, covering the secrets of thousand of years. Snows, here and there loosened by the unimaginable action of sun and thaw and wind, plummeted from pinnacles too sheer to climb, but the avalanches they began changed to deadly effect as they thundered downwards...

  ...The great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, thought Kim, and suddenly she saw it as a whole, as something complete and entire in itself, as an orchestra is more than a collection of instruments: something which could work magic. For an instant of epiphany, she saw not only how it was, but also why it was, and she understood everything.

  Music took over, took her over entirely. To many people, music is an emotional experience. For Kim it was, as it had always been, physical. She took the music which was in her and flung it outwards, and felt it tingling all over her body: every hair stood on end, and tears came into her eyes, and the power which rose within her - or was channelled through her - was both greater and more controllable than anything that she had ever known. The hills spoke like horns; the fields’ voices were like flutes; the sea thundered like a mighty church organ; and Kim laughed out loud with the certainty of it, and the joy, and wiped out the stain on the landscape, the darkening of the skies, and the cold death of avalanche, with a sweep of glory which was music.

  The storms subsided, and Kim saw a face - a face she had seen before. Not Southwell: a younger man, grey-eyed. Now, however, there were white threads in his untidy brown hair (ones which matched her own), and shadows beneath his eyes.

  Who this was struck her now, as it could not before; but now she knew a part of his life - a portion of his grief. And she shared some of his troubled thought - born, as he had been, into an alien age. Perhaps it was sorrow which had aged him, for he was not so much older now than the last time she had seen him.

  ‘I think I understand,’ said Debbie’s voice.

  Kim jerked back to her own living-room, but somehow did not lose contac
t: she had retained an anchor. ‘I’m - Ann, in some strange way,’ Debbie went on, ‘aren’t I? But who is Roger/Walter?’ She followed Kim’s eyes to Alan, whose gaze was still abstracted. Her face reddened. ‘Steve?’ she whispered.

  Alan looked at her, and to Kim his features seemed to fuzz momentarily, as if a lens through which she was observing him had gone out of focus. Debbie clutched at her hand, unexpectedly.

  Kim felt for the Victoria Cross in her pocket with the other hand, and squeezed it.

  ‘Roger,’ she called softly.

  Have a care, whispered a thought in her mind. Ever remember this with our Roger: he seeks to bend you to his will. An you be certain that it is your own will and not his that you follow, you may thwart his desires. Every secret withheld from him is a weapon you may use.

  There was no interim, this time. Alan simply stared across the room with alien eyes. Debbie gave a little gasp, and her grip tightened on Kim’s hand.

  ‘So, magus,’ said the high and hateful voice. ‘Have you decided?’

  ‘I have,’ said Kim.

  The air seemed to tighten in the room, almost to hum.

  He thinks you are avaricious for power, even as he is. He does not believe a man can deny it, once offered, though it mean that man must acknowledge a master.

  ‘And?’ said Southwell greedily.

  ‘Teach me the use of the power.’

  Southwell rose, and Kim stifled a gasp. Now Alan was changed indeed. Changed before her eyes. Grew taller, darker. He laughed, and the laughter was like the grating of a rusty hinge. He held out a hand to Kim, a hand which was broad, black-haired, and broken-nailed.

  ‘My hand on’t, magus; tell me now your name.’

  Tell him not, names are power.

  Knowledge exploded in Kim now. Il mio nome non sai... she thought, you do not know my name! And a name she had read came into her mind.

  She faced up to Southwell.

  ‘No, I will not tell you my name,’ she said, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears. ‘But I call the name of your nemesis.’ She saw uncertainty creep into the other’s eyes.