by Ian Richards
‘Why, though?’ Mr. Krook kicked at an empty Coke can; it rattle-tat-rattled its way down the street. ‘Why not just keep them in his own stinking shop?’
‘Oh, Mr. Krook, that’s far too risky. What if there was a fire? Or a break-in? Much better to hide them somewhere he knew he could get them back if he needed.’ Kepler led the way down into the station. ‘I suspect these antiques are magical and that Mr. Martell hopes they can protect him from our red-haired friend.’ The barriers opened for them without the need for tickets. They descended another staircase, this time down towards the platform.
‘He’s having a laugh if he thinks a handful of magical tat is going to do anything against Firefox or the Rag-and-Bone men. The silly old sod will be in Marshwood before he knows it.’
‘Oh yes,’ Kepler said. ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment. What intrigues me, Mr. Krook, is what this means for us.’
‘The boy, you mean.’
‘No. Not the boy. Don’t worry about him, he’ll still meet a grisly end, I promise you that. But for the moment, old friend, I’m more interested in something else. I’m more interested in a collection of magical items that will soon be left all alone in an empty shop.’
He smiled. When they reached the platform their train had already arrived.
*
They drifted through the city like ghosts, a haunting chorus line that moved silently, skin unnaturally pale in the moonlight, faces dull and expressionless. They stuck to the shadows, travelled down alleyways and across allotments, never once stopping or looking back.
London. The name meant nothing to them. It was simply the setting for the hunt—the background to what would follow.
On they walked, deeper into the heart of the city, past petrol forecourts, locked-up schools, empty graveyards, row after row of characterless suburban housing. In the distance, tower blocks loomed like tombstones. The blinking light of an airplane cut a slow path across the stars.
They pressed on, drawn towards their target like sharks chasing spilt blood.
They could sense their quarry— feel it as a spider feels the twitch of an insect in its web.
It would not be long now. They were almost there.
Closer they came.
Closer.
Closer …
15 - Magic Lessons
News of Mr. Simons’ unfortunate death spread quickly through the antiques community. He had been a well-liked man, and his passing inspired many a heartfelt tribute about his years in the business and how well-run his shop had always been. The rumor being passed around was that he had been the victim of a bungled robbery. Martell didn’t believe this for a second. He knew Mr. Simons. Knew him better than most. This was a message. An antiques salesman with his throat slashed meant only one thing, and that was that Mr. Krook and Mr. Kepler were in town.
On the same morning that he heard the news about Mr. Simons’ passing, he paid a visit to Victor’s Victorian Valhalla on the Caledonian Road and purchased an old oil lamp that he himself had sold to the proprietor thirteen years earlier. This time there wasn’t any haggling over the price. The lamp was sold for the forty pounds he offered and much of the time in the shop was spent discussing plans for Mr. Simons’ upcoming funeral. When Martell returned to his shop he took the lamp down to his office and locked it away with the other items he had collected that week: the pocket-watch, the boots, and the rest. Having them here made him feel more secure, especially knowing that Krook and Kepler were in the area, but he couldn’t deny that their presence in the shop disturbed him, too. Piece by piece he was reconstructing his glory days, the Black Magician rides again. Yet it felt forced and unnatural. Antiques he had once cherished were now sinister, frightening things. He found no satisfaction in their presence, only a sickly sense of desperation.
Back upstairs the shop was empty save for Pushkin and the children, who were playing a game of chess on one of his antique boards. Several pieces were missing and had been replaced by colored buttons and coins.
Martell watched them for a while, enjoying the game as a spectator and resisting the urge to point out possible openings when they presented themselves. Something about the game warmed him, and he wondered if it was the fairness of it all, the fact there were rules both Tony and Vanessa had to adhere to. The game was a tight one. In the end Vanessa won by moving a button-bishop and trapping Tony’s king.
‘That’s us tied,’ Tony said. ‘Six wins each.’
‘Play again?’ Vanessa asked.
And that was the moment when Martell knew he had to do the unthinkable. He couldn’t leave the two of them playing endless games of chess while Mr. Krook and Mr. Kepler were circling. Vanessa was right, all they were doing was wasting time, counting down to Firefox’s inevitable move against them. He didn’t say anything then—he gave himself the rest of the day to think it through and make sure that what he was contemplating would absolutely be the right decision. But when the evening newspaper dropped through the letterbox, carrying a photograph of Mr. Simons’ shop trussed up with police tape on the cover, he knew he had no choice.
‘All right,’ he said to them. ‘Vanessa, you can teach Tony magic.’
The response was not what he had hoped for. The boy was delighted.
‘But,’ he continued, pre-empting their celebrations, ‘there are a few conditions. Firstly, everything you study must be done with a mind to defending yourselves. I don’t want you learning tricks because you find them aesthetically appealing. We must be practical here.’ He waited to see if there were any objections. There weren’t. ‘Secondly, you are only to use magic when it is absolutely necessary. Usually when I’m teaching you about something, Tony—the Boer war, for example—or the history of China—I tell you to ask questions. I tell you to cherish being curious and follow up your interest as much as possible. On this occasion, I’m afraid, you must not. Magic is a vast ocean and I’m only giving you permission to paddle in the shallows. If you venture out any further you might find yourself sucked under. You might never make your way back to shore. As such your magical training is to be done as a matter of necessity, not as an exploration. Agreed?’
Again there were no interruptions. He tried to ignore the fact that Tony was still smiling.
‘Finally, if you’re going to learn magic then you need a solid understanding of what you’re getting yourself into. To continue with the ocean analogy, when you start to swim you need armbands. You also need a good teacher. That’s why I’m going to speak to Ebenezer and Trina about grounding your learning with some solid theory.’
Though Vanessa had reservations about sharing her experience with amateurs like the Snouts, she recognized a breakthrough when she saw one and readily agreed. Tony did the same. And so the following morning he found himself ready to begin his initiation into the world of magic amongst the looming bookshelves of the Gnarled Wand. Martell remained absent, seemingly unwilling to give the situation any more blessing than he already had.
To begin with, Trina and Ebenezer scoured the shelves for books while Tony and Vanessa sat at a table by the wall and waited. When they were ready to begin the Snouts set the books on the table and gave a brief introduction to each one. Tony tried to remain interested, but compared to the excitement of watching Vanessa perform tricks, listening to Ebenezer and Trina discuss the merits and failings of authors he had never heard of proved dreadfully boring. Vanessa seemed to share his cynicism. She picked through the books with contempt, evidently unimpressed that her idea for teaching Tony magic had somehow become a neighborhood book group.
‘I can’t see anything about summoning fire demons in here,’ she shouted at Ebenezer, who was halfway up a ladder and in the process of retrieving another ominous hardback. ‘Just a lot of nonsense about sigils and breathing exercises.’
‘We have to start with the basics,’ Ebenezer called back. ‘Tony needs a solid foundation.’ He found the book he wanted—Magick Ritual: A Beginner’s Guide—and brought it back to the table. Tony i
nspected the first couple of pages. The book had been printed in a tiny, almost unreadable font, and vast swathes of it appeared to have been written in Latin.
‘To begin,’ Ebenezer said, cracking his knuckles. ‘The first rule of magic is that you have to be sure that this is the path for you. There can’t be any turning back. If you want to do this, Tony, you have to do so willingly and with both eyes open. Magic is like any other discipline. It requires patience and devotion. But it’s also dangerous. There have been plenty of people who have gone looking for magical knowledge and never found their way back again. Well-meaning souls who walked the midnight path and lost everything in doing so.’
Vanessa rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, yes, very interesting. People go mad, people meet grisly ends … But we’ve already agreed that Tony needs to learn magic so what good is talking about lunatics and madmen going to do us?’ She turned to Tony. ‘By the way, as I already told you, the first rule of magic is that names are power. This ‘choose your path wisely’ nonsense is strictly for amateurs.’
‘Madam,’ Ebenezer snapped, ‘I am no amateur.’
Vanessa flashed him a look but this time held her tongue. There was no sense in arguing. The sooner they got through this, the sooner she could start teaching Tony real magic. Practical magic. Magic that might actually save his life.
To begin with, Ebenezer provided a lengthy discussion on the different schools of magic and their relative merits and failings. This was followed with a reading from one of the books he had gathered, a speech from Trina about hatha yoga, and then more reading, this time from a different book. As much as Tony liked Ebenezer he found it hard to maintain his concentration. It was only when they moved onto misdirection techniques that his interest finally began to pick up. According to Ebenezer, misdirection was the last remaining link between real magic and its theatrical counterpart. The principle was the same as performing a card trick or making a coin disappear.
‘Take shimmering, for example’ he explained. ‘By concentrating on your breathing and feigning body movement in a particular direction you can momentarily disappear. Watch.’
He stood up and cleared a space for himself. Then, after a series of deep, rhythmical breaths, he sidestepped to the right. For a split-second he was gone, disappeared into the air. When he reappeared he was standing several paces away on the left.
‘The trick is to really throw yourself into it,’ he explained, retaking his seat. ‘Every part of your body has to believe that it’s going one way, even though it ends up going in the other.’
‘Did you actually just disappear?’ Tony asked.
‘Of course he didn’t,’ Vanessa said. ‘Shimmering isn’t magic, it’s a glorified parlor trick. Because we think he’s going one way our brains expect to follow him there. When he doesn’t appear there’s a momentary gap in our minds before we figure it out. It’s like those awful card tricks you like. The ones where Queens turn into aces and aces turn into Queens. There’s no magic involved at all.’
Nevertheless when Ebenezer offered to teach Tony the fundamentals of the trick Vanessa was curious to learn, too. They spent almost two hours referring to Ebenezer’s books and practicing their shimmers. By the end of it Vanessa could vanish as skillfully as a shadow. Lacking her natural finesse, the best Tony could do was a clumsy sidestep.
‘Don’t forget to use your eyes,’ Trina said. ‘You have to really convince us of where you’re going.’
‘And remember your breathing,’ Ebenezer added. ‘Count the seconds between your breaths. One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.’
By the end of the afternoon he was thoroughly exhausted and had come no closer to pulling off the trick.
‘It’s no use. I don’t think I’m cut out for this magic lark after all.’
‘What a shame,’ Vanessa replied. ‘Because now that we’ve finished discussing the book of the week and lurching around like imbeciles it’s time for my lesson to begin. And believe me, what I’m going to teach you will be far more useful than a sidestep.’
She rapped her knuckles against the table and stood up.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take you back to the beginning.’
*
The rain fell in heavy curtains as Martell sat alone in his shop, nursing Pushkin on his lap. The sign in the window read ‘OPEN’ but few customers would be out on an afternoon as miserable as this. Those who had called in to look at the antiques had left quickly without buying anything, seeming to sense the dread that hung in the dusty, polish-smelling air.
Martell sensed it, too.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Red hair. Green eyes.
The face of the girl who had sold him the doll remained stuck in his mind, her true nature so obvious now in retrospect. The pale skin. The ever-so-slight accent. What did her employer want with him, though? Advice about an antique, Kepler had said, as if that made it any clearer. What antique? Why him? Why now, some thirteen years after he had retired from all that nonsense?
This Firefox character would be one of them too, he had no doubt about that. Red haired, green eyed. He had stayed up late every night since the auction reading stories about their kind in history books. Fairies were tricksters, villains, their lives were steeped in magic and mischief.
It was five o’clock. One by one the clocks in the shop started chiming.
With a sigh, Martell walked to the door and slipped across the bolt. He flipped the sign to ‘CLOSED’ and peered out at the street beyond. Rain fell in steady curtains, chiming against the pavement and freckling in the oily puddles. Already the daylight had begun to disappear. An autumnal dimness filled everything, accentuated by the rain and the emptiness of the street.
How were the boy’s lessons progressing? He didn’t dare think about it. By allowing Tony to practice magic he had opened up a world of new dangers, and no matter what happened in the future, Martell knew that he would never be able to forgive himself for that.
He checked the locks were secure and made his way back through the shop. With the lights off there was something unsettling about being alone in a room full of antiques. Things seemed to be watching him. Puppets with shiny glass eyes, rag dolls, statues, figurines. He felt strangely vulnerable, aware for the first time that the volume of the rain made it hard to hear anything else. He found himself walking briskly, his heart pumping, afraid in a way that he couldn’t articulate.
It’s thinking of them, he told himself. Firefox and his gang. Your mind is playing tricks on you, that’s all.
When he reached the staircase out back, which was thankfully bright with artificial light, he paused for a moment on the landing, unsure whether to go up or down. Up had been his intention, but down was where the antiques he had recently acquired were stored. Did he need them yet? All alone in an empty building, the doors firmly locked?
For a long moment he paused, unsure which way to go. Eventually, with a sigh and a shake of his head, he came to a decision.
He headed up. There’s no-one here but you, you old fool. Stop being paranoid. Save your panicking for when you’ve really got something to worry about.
All the same, when he reached his bedroom he made sure to inspect the wardrobe and under the bed before he felt safe enough to close the door and turn the lock.
Like the rest of the rooms in the shop, Martell’s bedroom was a small, cramped affair. He had a bookcase in the corner overflowing with his favorite books, a looming wardrobe, and a modest camp-bed adorned in cat hairs. The springs creaked when he sat on it.
To begin with there was a long moment in which Martell did nothing more than sit there. He was afraid, not just for himself, but for the boy, too. Had allowing him to learn magic been the right thing to do? He wanted to believe so, it made sense on an intellectual level, but emotionally? No, the thought of it turned his stomach, even now.
He looked over to the framed photograph of Emily resting on the table next to his bed. His little sister. She had stayed twenty-sev
en and he had turned into an old man. How does that happen, my darling? he thought. How does it all go past so quickly?
She looked back at him with the same frozen-in-time smile as always. He smiled back, although the heaviness in his heart stopped it from being convincing.
He missed her. He missed her every day. It hadn’t been easy, bringing up a child on his own, especially one that reminded him so much of her. She and Tony had the same deep brown eyes. They both muttered things under their breath when they were annoyed. It was funny, the thousand tiny little ways the boy carried his mother with him without ever realizing.
‘Did I do the right thing, Ems?’ he said softly. ‘Because I’ve got a horrible feeling that this could be Thomas all over again.’
There was no answer from the photograph but for his sister’s smile.
Martell remained locked in his room for a long time. In an attempt to make himself feel better he wrote Tony a letter that he hoped the boy would never have to read.
When he had finished he sealed it in an envelope and left it next to Emily’s photograph.
‘Just a precaution, sweetheart. In case something bad happens.’
And almost exactly on cue he heard a sound from the street outside. The clatter of bins being tipped over. Foxes, he thought, his heart already racing. Probably just looking for scraps.
But when he peered through the window he could see nothing but the rain.
And when the next sound came it did so from downstairs, inside the shop.
*
They arrived at the British Museum thirty minutes before closing time. Most of the visitors were on the way out already and as Vanessa led them through the hall, beneath the looming dinosaur skeletons and replica spitfires, Tony realized that there were only a handful of other people around. He noted a portly guard standing by the fire exit. A pair of tourists in hats and scarves inspecting a glass cabinet stacked with handwritten documents from centuries ago.