by Kate Griffin
“Sorry. My mistake.”
She was eating cod, I had plaice. She had opened the tip of her ketchup and dipped each chip delicately in the end of the foil wrapping. I sprayed all of my ketchup loosely into the paper bundle of fish and chips and shook vigorously before eating. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-eight,” I replied honestly.
“You look, like, older. Sorcery do that for a guy?”
“No, this is just my lived-in face,” I retorted. “Besides, sorry to hit you with the bad news, but you’ve got the sorcerous vibe bouncing off you like you could play pinball with it.”
“I figured,” she said.
“You did?”
“Somewhere between me being a pigeon, and reading the future in the way the litter blew outside my mum’s café, I guessed something had to be up. Sorcery sounds… about right. Is it fatal?”
“What?”
“Like a medical condition?”
“No, not at all! There’s nothing medical about it.”
“What about my mum? Is she…”
“Doubt it.”
“But if she’s…”
“It’s not a genetic thing. Forget X-men, The X-Files or anything else really at the latter end of the alphabet. It’s just… a point of view.”
She nearly dropped her fork. “A point of view? Is that what made me spend three weeks listening to the rats complaining about the butchers in the meat market and the nurse on ward three? Fuck that!”
“You’re not exactly trained,” I pointed out.
“Harry Potter? Three-week courses at Hogwarts, how to be a sorcerer?”
“Not like Harry Potter, no. Besides, magicians do the spells thing. Sorcery is more about… seeing magic where most people don’t, and using it. Does that make sense?”
“No. Bugger it,” she added, and took a large slurp from the carton of Ribena at her side. “Bugger it. Am I going to start hearing voices again?”
“Sure.”
“Shit.”
“The river was just a temporary thing. You go in at the changing of the tide and it just… washes it all away. But like all good launderettes, it’s up to you not to spill the tomato sauce on the whites after washing, right?”
“I think I get it.”
“Anyway, the whole sorcery thing, it’s not that bad.”
“I couldn’t remember my name.” There wasn’t any feeling in her voice, just a flat statement of fact. When I looked at her, her eyes were lost on the river. “I was everywhere. My fingers were the streets, my toes were the wires dug into the earth, my breath was the exhaust of the cars, my…”
“You were in a trance,” I said. “It’s always a risk. Sorcerers draw their magic from the city around them. So much magic in one place – it’s easy to get lost – to forget that you’re you, and just… sort of drift off. That’s what was happening to you. Your body was breaking down, your mind was just becoming absorbed. Eventually your consciousness would have become spread so thin across the city you’d probably have just popped out of existence. Something you might want to keep an eye out for, by the way.”
“Oh, crap. And this happens to all sorcerers?”
“Just badly trained ones.”
She gave me a thoughtful look. “So how come you’re doing the sane bit?”
“I’m well trained.”
“Who trained you?”
“A very good sorcerer. Very kind, very powerful.”
“He dunk you in a river too?”
“No, he found me a bit earlier than that. I was about fifteen, I’d run off into the night and just run and run because I could; loved it, became lost in the streets but always found my way home. Blisters, memory loss, daydreaming, the roof practically bleached white with the pigeon shit by the time he found me. He saved my life.”
“And you mine?” she asked quietly.
“Best not to think about it like that.”
“How should I think about it, then?”
“Good luck and the eternal interlinked cycle of life crap.”
“Cycle of life crap?”
“Ever watched The Lion King?”
“Sure.”
“Well, think that kind of vibe, but with a fifteen certificate.”
“I see.” Her eyebrows were drawn together in concern. “So… I’m a sorcerer.”
“Right now you’re just a teen… a young woman… who happens to have tendencies.”
“OK. Can I make it stop?”
“You could move to the countryside,” I suggested.
“Is that it?”
“Probably not. Sorcerers tend to pick up on the magical thing wherever they are. It’s very different outside the cities, the tone of it, the quality of the magic. But even the most stubborn sorcerers tend to adapt.”
“So I’m stuck.”
“Pretty much.”
“How’d this happen?”
“There was probably a moment.”
“A ‘moment’?” she echoed. “What does that mean?”
I put my fish and chips to one side. “It goes something like this. You’re walking along minding your own business, or you’re on the underground or you’re on a bus or something, but generally you’re not paying much attention. And suddenly you look around and see all these other people and think, ‘Hey, they can look at me and see me and I can see in my mind what I think they see, and when I’m gone they’re going to keep on walking and they’re going to go and live their lives, and their thoughts are going to be just like mine, but different, but real and solid and alive and full of feeling and confusion and colour just like life, and, hey, isn’t that cool!’ And it is.
“And roughly around this time you’re going to notice that you can feel trains under your feet or pipes bubbling, and you can hear the sound of traffic and voices and stuff; and then you’ll probably look up at the things around you and think, ‘Those buildings with the lights on look almost alive, like giant trees lit up with their own constellation of stars in every window,’ or maybe not if you’re underground; and you’ll realise that you can see the city all around, and it’s so full of lives and life, and they’re all buzzing around you, and every single individual is real and alive and passionate and full of mystery, and it’s not just Joe Bloggs walking by who’s like this, but that every part of the city is crawling with life. And you’ll think, ‘Hey, that’s pretty damn sweet, everywhere I look there’s life,’ and roughly around that point you’ll realise you can hear rats and pigeons and thoughts and spells and colours and electricity, and that’s probably when you started going a bit mad. Am I close?”
She thought about it. Then, “They said you were coming.”
“Who said?”
“Them. In the phones.”
“I’m still curious about who ‘them’ is.”
“They said life wasn’t worth living unless you lived it to the full, that it was all right to catch fire and burn for ever, and that all I had to do to be free was to light up the sky. Forget the laws, forget what people tell you you should or should not be able to achieve. They said, ‘We be light, we be life, we be fire – come be me and be free.’ You still think I’m not mad?”
“Oh. Them. They’re not worth paying much attention.”
“What are they?”
“They live in the telephone lines. Bits of life that got left behind. They’re just after kicks.”
“They said you were coming.”
“They’re good at spooking people. Don’t pay any attention.”
“What did they mean?”
“They want to know what it’s like to be human. Some people say that they’ll eat up your dying breath, your soul, gobble you up in order to find out what it is that makes you tick. Theory also goes the other way, though. If they breathed, that is. I used to… but it’s not safe.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Best not to think about it.”
“I should just ignore it?”
“
Yup.”
“Why?”
“They’re dangerous.”
“Is this a sorcery thing?”
“What do you think?”
She grunted. We sat in silence for a while longer, the grease from the fish-and-chip paper congealing on my fingers. Finally she added, “They said they were angels.”
“They lied.”
“You’ve heard them?”
“Yes. All sorcery is, is about spotting life in unusual places. Not to wax metaphysical about things, but it’s not just the sky, sea, mountains and so on; it’s the light from the street lamps and the buzz in the telephone. You can spot these things where others don’t. The blue electric angels sing a very seductive song. ‘Forget the confines of your own world, forget your flesh, your feelings, your friends, your laws. You are a sorcerer – you could blaze so brightly if only you thought you could.’ They want that, freedom and fire and bright lives; it’s all they’re about. Keep away from them.”
“Are there more things like that?”
“Sure. Demons and monsters and all that palaver. Easy enough to avoid though, if you’re careful.”
“Right.” She let out a long, shuddering breath. “My mum’s going to do her nut over this.”
“I think she’s so chuffed that you’re not currently exhaling lead, she won’t really care.”
“But it’ll happen again, right?” I looked up to find her eyes fixed on me. “You said – all this stuff, it’ll happen again.”
I shrugged.
“Why’d you get involved?” she asked sharply.
“Happened to be passing.”
“Coincidence?”
“Dodgy word, but short of a discussion on the merits of higher powers and the uncomfortable prospect of fate, destiny and so forth, yes. Coincidence.”
“Don’t suppose the guy who taught you wants another student?”
“Maybe.”
“You got his number?”
“Sure.”
She waited. When I didn’t move she said, “Well, can I have it?”
I hesitated. “There is…”
“Yes?”
“… the way it usually works is…”
“You teach me?”
“Pretty much.”
She nodded slowly then said, “There’s no nudity or blood, right?”
“What? No!”
“Good. How about living sacrifices and ceremonial dancing?”
“I don’t know if you’re really taking this seriously enough…”
“I am,” she said quickly. “Believe me, I just want to know what it is I’m getting into.”
“You’re already there,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. I guess so.” She looked up at the sky then back down at the river. “Are you a psychopathic murdering bastard?” she asked casually, no tone of offence in her voice or on her face.
“No,” I answered with a sigh.
“Well then,” she said. “Maybe we should talk.”
—
I left Mrs Mikeda in Smithfield around the time that the local clubs were starting to build up their queues of barely clad trendy young things ready to dance until the buzz in their heads had worn itself away. I didn’t know what the lady made of me or my story – her face had shut down to an impassive wall almost before I’d begun. But it was something that I felt had needed to be done.
I packed my bag, paid my hotel bill and, feeling there wasn’t much else left to do, caught the first bus I could find to Willesden.
Blackjack was at home, but only at the third time of knocking on the door to his shed. He was jumpy. No lights went on, no sounds were made from inside the wobbly, lopsided stack of iron that he called home, but he opened the door with a single tug and, the instant the door was wide enough, swung a double-barrelled shotgun up into my face that would have made the Metropolitan Police swoon on the spot.
On seeing my expression, he hesitated a moment too long before swinging it down to his hip and muttering, “You any idea what time it is?”
“Witching hour of night?” I suggested.
“You alone?” he asked, peering past me into the darkened scrapyard. Even though it was late, he still wore his leather jacket and big black boots, with a red spotty scarf tied around his neck; he’d pulled a thick pair of gloves up over his hands, so that his finger barely fitted into the trigger guard of the gun.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
He indicated that I should, and turned up a paraffin lamp as I stepped into the gloom of the shed. “You want coffee?” he asked, turning towards the low stove and slotting the shotgun down by a shelf full of spray-paint.
“Thanks, that’d be good.”
He put the kettle onto the stove, turned the nozzle on a cylinder of camping gas and struck a match to the hob, which belched its way into low blue life.
“Haven’t seen you for a while, what’ve you been doing, sorcerer?” he asked in a single breath as I settled down on a pile of least suspiciously stained blankets.
“Not a great deal,” I admitted.
“Heard you got hurt at the Exchange.”
“I’m fine.”
“Shit, like you’re ever really fine.” At the humourless chuckle in his voice, we looked up. He flapped a hand. “Never mind. Times are changing, you know, like the bard said?”
“The bard?”
“Jesus Christ, you need to get a life.”
“That’s the whole point of the exercise,” we replied. “You doing anything in the next few hours?”
“You want my guide to healthy living?”
“I want a lift.”
“Take the fucking train!”
“The lord of the lonely travellers probably isn’t my friend right now.”
“The what?”
“You should probably rethink your place in the grand picture sometime soon,” I said. “Can I have that lift, please?”
Blackjack grinned. “You’ve gotta get somewhere in a hurry?”
This is the biker’s magic. It is the melding of places into one. In every city, on every road, there is always a loose spot where things seem transient, where for a moment north doesn’t seem to make sense to be in the north, where in the instant before recognition that pub on the corner seems to be exactly like another which you visited some years back, in a different place. There are streets where you wake after sleeping in the back of a car and for a second, no matter how many years you’ve lived here or worked here or travelled this way, you have no idea where you are. In those places, if you know what you’re doing, it’s sometimes possible to slip through the gaps and cover, in a very short time, very large distances.
We were curious to see the biker’s magic at work, and found the thrill of the ride on the back of his bike an excitement that made our heart race as he spun through the empty streets. Nevertheless, inside the confines of the biker’s spare helmet, passing from light to shadow in an endless dazzle under the street lights, the whole thing made us feel rather motion-sick.
A flickering of anonymous streets. He didn’t take us south, despite the fact that this was where we needed to go, but drove north, until the streets faded into one long blur of semi-detached mock-Tudor houses that in my imagination defined so much of outer London suburbia. The roar of his bike’s engine was the loudest thing on the streets, startling the foxes as they rummaged in the bins, and echoing off the sleeping houses. I watched the names run by: Harlesden, Dollis Hill, Neasden, Queensbury, Stanmore; and then, out of nowhere, we turned left and roared into a housing estate, swinging round into an area of locked garages graffitoed over by a mixture of kids and the odd magician, one of whom had covered a whole wall with the image of flowing white horses. Blackjack took us off the road, over a patch of grass that spattered soggy mud and limp grass up around our ankles, and through an alleyway surrounded by dumpsters.
There was a moment of sickness, a tightening in our stomach, and all we could see was an endless dark alley, illuminated by the succession of white
, stuttering long-life lamps.
Then we emerged at the other end, and swung into a street that looked exactly like all the others we’d passed through so far on our journey north. But now, when we reached the end of it and Blackjack passed straight through the red traffic light onto the empty curving road beyond, the signs were no longer for the M1, the Midlands and the North, but offered to show the way to Dover, Folkestone and the south-east. In a single cut through a council estate we’d covered over twenty miles of urban sprawl, and were on the other side of the river.
More cuts. Blackheath turned into the green belt with a sickening twist between a pair of trees; a service station’s endless winding internal roundabouts just before Rochester led out into the endless winding roundabouts of an equally depressing service station near Faversham; the monotonous street lights overhead seemed to dissolve into each other faster than a mere failure of eyesight to keep track would have suggested. When we reached the ring road above Dover’s white cliffs, I guessed that no more than forty-five minutes had passed between us leaving Willesden and arriving at the English Channel.
Blackjack took things easily down the long, steep road cut into the cliff’s edge below the castle. Dover sat below all that chalk like a stubborn stain on a perfect white tablecloth, caught between cliff and sea, a thin beady line of orange glow that mixed a history longer than the sea wall around the ferry port with 1950s lumps pretending to be architecture, from when much of the town had been levelled during the war.
Blackjack parked the bike in the ferry terminal’s car park. I staggered off the rear seat, back aching, knees wobbling, and legs hot from being so close to the engine, and sniffed the air. I smelled oil, diesel, seagull and the salt of the sea, whose cleansing rhythm washed against the buzz and flow of magic in the air. We tasted strange, thin magic that hinted at layers beneath it, but which were too unfamiliar to touch. I imagined that a druid would feel as uneasy as I did in that place, where so many different kinds of magic – traditional sea sorcery, the natural magic of the countryside around, the weighty history of the place and lastly the imposed bustle of life and business around the port – collided.
Blackjack said, “You been here before?”