The Chosen Ones

by Scarlett Thomas

Which had rather made her think.

  Soon after finishing the crossword she excused herself, saying she had to get to bed because it was a school night. She took baby Luna with her and settled her into her cot before getting into bed with the important things she had acquired that day.

  Terrence Deer-Hart had been given a pile of blankets and told that he was welcome to make himself at home on the sofa – but only once the adults had drunk at least another couple of glasses of wine each and made a good start on the époisses. So Effie was safe for a while in her room.

  She had her box back. That was the main thing. It felt heavier, somehow: more solid. Inside were all her precious things. Her half of a walkie-talkie radio set for talking to Lexy, her grandfather’s notebook, her precious calling cards, Wolf’s sword and her gold necklace with the Sword of Light on it. Effie put her necklace back on and promised herself she would never take it off again. She’d needed it in the Edgelands Market and hadn’t had it. Pelham Longfellow had given her something that her grandfather had left for her to protect herself – and she hadn’t even been able to use it. Never again.

  Now Effie had one more special thing, although of course she had only borrowed it. The Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade. Effie knew she couldn’t risk going to the Otherworld as long as her father and Cait were awake, so she started browsing in the big green hardback, looking for something in particular. She needed to know what kharakter had a caduceus as its boon.

  19

  Maximilian ate his supper much more quickly than usual. And he ate less of it too. He’d recently become a bit sick of being the fat kid. Maximilian wanted to be much more like the elegant men he’d met in the Underworld. More like Franz. And something about that dinner he’d had in The Initiation with Lupoldus had in some peculiar way cured him of his love of food. He’d never eat anything in this world as delicious as that, so why even bother to try?

  ‘Are you absolutely sure you don’t want another helping?’ his mother Odile asked. ‘It’s steak and kidney pudding. Your favourite.’

  ‘Can I not have salad occasionally?’ asked Maximilian.

  ‘Salad? You’re a growing boy!’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘I don’t want you turning into one of those vegetarians like Mr Hammer across the road,’ said Odile. ‘Have you seen how weak and pale and pathetic he looks? He can barely carry all those newspapers he has delivered. You need meat at your age. Protein.’

  As Odile carried on talking about the merits of protein, Maximilian began to develop an idea.

  After his pudding of fruit pie and custard – he left the pie and the custard and only ate the fruit – Maximilian told his mother he was popping out for a while.

  ‘You’re always out these days. Where are you going this time?’

  ‘Just to visit one of the neighbours. I want to find out about . . . Oh, never mind. Just something to do with school.’

  Maximilian didn’t need to lie to his mother about his magical activities, but he still wasn’t sure she was ready to find out he was a mage. She knew enough about magic that if he seemed to have developed a sudden interest in classical music she would definitely be suspicious.

  Maximilian let himself out of the bungalow and surveyed the other houses in the small close. What was the name of the opera singer? Mrs Magpie? Mrs Blackbird? Mrs . . . As Maximilian walked along trying to come up with his neighbour’s name, the Cosmic Web went from slight to moderate panic. No one ever usually walked in this close at night. What was going on?

  ‘Hello, Mrs Starling,’ said Maximilian when the neighbour opened the door. She looked down at him with kindly green eyes.

  ‘Hello, young Max,’ said Mrs Starling. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Her house smelled strongly of roses and other pink things.

  ‘I want to talk to you about music,’ said Maximilian. ‘You’re an opera singer, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, strictly amateur,’ said Mrs Starling. ‘But I did sing at the Conrad Theatre with my little group last Christmas. What do you want to know? My Arthur’s a whizz on the piano, if that’s any good.’

  ‘Actually, that might be very good,’ said Maximilian. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who’s that, Elaine?’ came a deep voice from what must have been the living room.

  ‘It’s Maximilian from four doors down, love,’ said Elaine Starling. ‘Odile’s youngest. He wants to know something about music.’

  ‘Ah, well, he has certainly come to the right place! Show him in, show him in.’

  Maximilian entered the rose-scented hallway. Almost everything in the bungalow was pink. What wasn’t pink was gold. The wallpaper was pink with gold pears on it. The hallway curtain was gold with a silky pink tie-back. There was a crystal chandelier that didn’t look quite right in a bungalow, but didn’t look completely wrong either. The pale carpet was very deep and very soft, and exactly the colour of low cloud at sunrise.

  Maximilian followed Mrs Starling into the front room, which smelled of scented candles and paper. Two walls were covered with framed prints of musicians and the other two were lined with what seemed like hundreds of books and music scores, some of which had fallen on the floor and not been picked up. Mr Starling was sitting on the sofa reading a book called Improve your Piano Technique in just 40 days. On the spine was the familiar logo of a matchstick propping open an eye that meant the book was published by the Matchstick Press.

  ‘Oh, Arthur. You’re always reading these complicated books nowadays,’ said Mrs Starling. ‘What about just playing?’

  ‘I have to completely relearn everything I know,’ he said, slightly sadly. ‘I have no time for playing. Playing is for beginners. That’s what it says here.’ He went back to his reading, instantly absorbed in it.

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into him lately,’ Mrs Starling said to Maximilian. ‘Would you like a cup of cocoa? The electric’s still on.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Maximilian. ‘I just wanted to ask you something. Does this word mean anything to you?’

  Maximilian got out a piece of paper onto which he’d written the word Pathétique. He didn’t want to risk showing anyone his actual boon. He passed the piece of paper to Mrs Starling. She shook her head and handed it to Mr Starling. She had to prod him to get his attention away from the book.

  ‘What’s all this?’ he said, taking the paper note. ‘Have you taken to communicating with me like this, Elaine? And in French, too!’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The boy brought it. He wants to know what it is.’

  ‘It’s a French word, of course, meaning “pathetic”.’

  ‘I guessed that,’ said Maximilian. ‘But musically, what is it?’

  ‘Aha,’ said Mr Starling. ‘Well, it’s either a symphony by Tchaikovsky or a piano sonata by Beethoven. They’re both up on the wall, there.’ Mr Starling pointed at one of the walls that was covered in framed images of musicians. ‘That’s Tchaikovsky, with the white beard. The one with the wild hair and messy piano is Beethoven.’

  Maximilian recognised him instantly. The artist had not quite made the hands hairy enough, and had left the bits of wool out of his ears, but . . .

  ‘Beethoven,’ said Maximilian.

  ‘Good choice,’ said Mr Starling. ‘Beautiful, beautiful.’ But then he didn’t say anything else. His eyes drifted back to his book, almost as if they had been enchanted into doing so.

  ‘When did Beethoven write it?’ Maximilian asked.

  Mr Starling looked up again and seemed to shake off the enchantment of his book. He put the bookmark back in it, closed it and put it on the table at a slight angle. Mrs Starling immediately straightened it, but Mr Starling didn’t appear to notice.

  ‘Eighteen-something, I expect. Early eighteen-something. I’ll get down the Musical Encyclopaedia.’ Arthur Starling got up from the sofa and pulled a large, well-loved book from one of the sagging shelves. He flicked to the B section and muttered to himself for a while.

  ‘Almost right,’ h
e said. ‘Seventeen ninety-eight. Beethoven was twenty-seven. He was already beginning to go quite deaf. Did you know Beethoven went deaf? Tragic, tragic. It’s his eighth sonata. It’s . . .’

  ‘Can you play it?’ Maximilian asked.

  ‘Play it?’ Mr Starling said, as if Maximilian had asked him to eat next door’s cat, or go outside in his underwear. ‘Play it?’ he repeated. ‘Of course I can’t play it.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Maximilian.

  ‘It’s far too difficult, that’s why not. Play it, indeed.’ He shook his head. ‘Now, if I had a record . . . But I don’t think I’ve got it any more. I think I lent it to—’

  ‘I actually want to hear it played live,’ said Maximilian, sensing correctly that his technique wouldn’t work on a recording. ‘Would you happen to know anyone who can play it?’

  ‘Isn’t it on in town?’ said Mrs Starling, picking up a printed programme and running her finger down one of its pages. ‘Yes, here it is. Well, young Max, if you want to hear the sonata, you’re in luck. Tomorrow night, in the Oddfellows Hall. Arthur’ll take you, won’t you, Arthur? We get free tickets because of our musical connections, you see,’ added Mrs Starling.

  ‘But—’ began Arthur and Maximilian together.

  ‘And I won’t hear any arguments,’ Mrs Starling said.

  Effie could hear laughter coming from the front room. Would the adults never go to bed? Now that she had her precious calling card back, she was desperate to go to the Otherworld and see her cousins and Cosmo. Still, it wasn’t as if she was bored waiting. The Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade was one of the most interesting books she had ever read. It contained two different tests to find out your kharakter and your art, as well as charts, diagrams and lengthy descriptions and discussion of each kharakter type.

  The longer test was the same one Effie had already taken in the Edgelands Market. It gave her an odd, sad feeling when she looked at it. But she was determined not to let those Edgelands crooks ruin her discovery of her art, and the pleasant experience of looking through this wonderful book, so she mentally removed the association from her memory. From now on, this book would only make her think of Festus, and Raven, and the Otherworld. Was this what Maximilian had referred to as ordering one’s mind? It felt quite cleansing.

  Effie wanted to find out about the caduceus, but it wasn’t that easy. The book had no index. Well, not exactly. There was an index of the symptoms one might use to find one’s kharakter or art. Some of them were quite straightforward, like ‘Dreams of flying’. But others were quite outlandish. ‘Desires to eat frogs’ was one. ‘Compelled to dance wildly upon dreaming of the colour red’ was another. Each of these was followed by a letter or combination of letters that Effie quickly learned were abbreviations for the kharakters. Witch was signified by the letter ‘w’, and ‘warrior’ was ‘wa’, for example.

  It seemed that the only way of finding out which boons went with which kharakter was to flick through them all one by one. Effie soon found herself memorising the attributes of the major kharakters. There was the witch, who loves luxury and beauty and believes the whole universe is profoundly connected; the hunter, who refuses to stop seeking; the explorer, who also seeks, but focuses on the journey rather than the object of the journey. Effie learned about the druid, who is the most connected to nature of all the kharakters, and the cleric, who is good at praying and meditation.

  Then she found it. Caduceus. It was listed as one of the boons used by the interpreter. As soon as Effie saw the entry for interpreter a sort of thrill went through her. Yes, this was her. Every word, almost!

  The interpreter is the kharakter who is most skilled at reading and can, if they choose, speak many languages. Interpreters can see what is often called the ‘hidden’ meaning in things, and can usually crack codes and solve puzzles. Interpreters are often great sportsmen and women, favouring those games that rely on interpretation and hand– eye coordination. Interpreters excel at any ball game. They make particularly good tennis players. They can also make excellent natural scientists and historians. Carl Linnaeus, that great botanist of yore, must surely have been a composer interpreter, one who creates something entirely new through the reading of something already in existence.

  Their patron is the Roman god Mercury, and the Greek god Hermes, the great travelling communicator. Interpreters often carry the caduceus, as Hermes did. They are themselves mercurial, and can get angry more easily than other kharakters. On the other hand, theirs can also be an extremely conciliatory nature, as they understand a great many things.

  The entry went on, listing abilities and boons. There were lots of both. As an interpreter Effie could use any magical dictionary, atlas or field guide. She could use objects of divination, like tarot cards or runes. She could even cast some spells! Effie felt happy for the first time in days. Warm feelings flowed through her. So she was a true hero and an interpreter too. Her grandfather must have known that. Almost the first thing he’d taught her had been how to solve puzzles. And then there were the languages, Rosian and Old Bastard English, both spoken in the Otherworld, that had come so easily to Effie. As she looked at the page in front of her it felt as if a whole world of possibility was opening up.

  She was just about to flick to the entry for hero to find out what other new skills she could develop when a welcome sound drifted through from the front room. The adults had been quiet for a while now, and Effie had heard the slow creak-creak-click that meant her father and Cait were going up to bed. Now she could hear something that could only be the sound of Terrence Deer-Hart snoring. It was a heavy baritone rumble: very loud, and very prolonged. Would it wake baby Luna? Effie wondered if there was a spell that she could use to muffle it. There probably was, somewhere. She’d have to find a book, and practise, and . . .

  Never mind that now. She had to go to the Otherworld while she could. And she was taking no chances with any of her precious things ever again. She put The Repertory of Kharakter, Art & Shade into her box and carried it with her as she silently climbed out of the window, just as her mother had done five years before. In the dark sky Effie saw a meteor bursting like a tiny silver fruit, and it reminded her of something, she just wasn’t sure exactly what.

  Maximilian had a theory. It was such a good theory that the scholar part of him immediately began fantasising about writing a book about it. What would he call his first great work? The Network of People. No. The Knowledge of Crowds. No. Something snappier. Anyway, the theory, briefly, was this. In these days of unreliable technology, one had to find information in new places. Maximilian had realised that one of these places was the insides of the minds of old people. For Maximilian, an ‘old person’ was anyone over the age of about twenty-six.

  Even the mage part of Maximilian was interested in this theory. It meant the chance to read minds and possibly steal information from them! But Maximilian politely told the mage part of himself to keep quiet as he left the Starlings’ house and walked through the cold, dark close, further distressing the Cosmic Web.

  What did Maximilian want now? Why was he still wandering around in the dark? He wanted facts. Facts about Albion Freake. And he had decided that the best way of getting these facts was to find an adult who read a lot of newspapers and go and quiz them What was the name of that small man who read three newspapers from cover to cover every day and then made a big show of recycling them every Thursday? Oh yes. Mr Hammer. The vegetarian.

  The only problem with Maximilian’s theory was that information from humans came with a lot of other stuff you didn’t want: pink wafers with fluff on them, for example, like the ones Mrs Starling had insisted on giving him before sending him out into the night. And in order to extract from Mr Hammer’s brain all the things he knew about Albion Freake, it turned out that Maximilian had to eat a large bowl of quinoa and then admire Mr Hammer’s wormery. He had to follow him through his echoey house, which did smell pleasantly of wood, spices and herbs, and admire his barometer, his dream-catcher
and his half-finished knitted blanket that he had apparently been working on for the last three years.

  Still, Mr Hammer certainly had a good brain for facts and figures. From him, Maximilian learned that Albion Freake was the second-richest man in the world. Everyone knew that Albion Freake controlled all the electricity on Earth. But no one knew in great detail (nor, thought Maximilian, would want to) about his involvement in the worldwide trade in palm oil (a subject, it turned out, close to Mr Hammer’s heart), factory-farmed pigs and a particularly lethal kind of hand grenade.

  None of which was that unusual for your average entrepreneur these days. Of course, what Maximilian really wanted to know was . . . In fact, he was quite tempted to . . . He let his mind drift into Mr Hammer’s like a bad pickpocket, whistling innocently, unlikely to be noticed, until—

  Mr Hammer blocked him. Interesting.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Hammer, staring at Maximilian with his small, raisin-like eyes. ‘I see the quinoa has worked.’

  ‘What?’ said Maximilian.

  ‘Young mage, you have a lot to learn.’

  ‘How do you know that I’m a—’

  ‘Particularly about entering the minds of hedgewitches. My advice to you? Don’t try it. But particularly not after they have obviously, and in full view of you, eaten a bowl of anything earthy or grounding, and especially not if you have eaten some too. Quinoa is an anti-magic agent. You must know that. Same goes for buckwheat, amaranth, parsnips, horseradish and garlic. Of course, if you want to enhance magical flow you might use nutmeg, saffron, lime, ginger, cacao or—’

  Maximilian’s eyes had grown wide. ‘You’re actually a—’

  Mr Hammer gave Maximilian a stern look.

  ‘Why are you really here?’

  Maximilian sighed. ‘I do want to know about Albion Freake,’ he said. ‘But I mainly want to know if he is a Diberi.’

  Mr Hammer winced when Maximilian said the word ‘Diberi’.

  ‘No, he is not a Diberi,’ he said. ‘What made you think he was?’