by Carl Purcell
With Griffith leading, and in spite of Roland's blurred vision, they dodged the police and crossed the road. Roland must have told the kid to head for the hotel, but he didn't remember saying anything. As they passed under a street light, Roland took the best look he could at his pint sized hero. Best he could tell, through his blurred vision, he'd been dragged out of the chaos by the neat looking kid with a taste for lemonade.
They ducked down empty alleys behind the bar before coming out a good three blocks down the road. They crossed the darkened street in a hurry before doubling back to the hotel and slipping unseen through the parking lot. They stopped at the stairs for a moment. Griffith grunted and hoisted Roland further onto his shoulders before starting the slow ascent. Roland followed Griffith's lead, looking down at his grazed, bleeding knuckles. He made a fist and winced at the pain, then smiled.
“No matter how many times you punch a guy, it still hurts, y'know?”
“Can't say I do.”
“I'm sure that son-of-a-bitch bit me.” Roland counted every place his body hurt: Right knuckles, shoulders, head. One, two, three and his left thigh was cold and stinging - that made four, five if you count both sides of his head.
Roland couldn't be sure but the pain in his leg felt an awful lot like bleeding. Looking down turned his stomach in circles and his eyes wouldn't focus where he wanted them to. All Roland knew for sure was that one leg kept making one hell of a protest about supporting his weight.
“Right now, I think that's the least of your worries.” Griffith stopped, adjusted his grip and then pushed forward up the stairs.
“What do you mean?” Roland asked.
“You might have a concussion.”
“That's true. And we'll pretend I'm not bleeding until we know for sure.”
“I wasn't going to say anything.”
“I may be drunk, but I'm not so drunk I can't tell when I'm bleeding.”
“That's good. Then you're not too drunk to help walk.” Griffith said. Roland thought he was walking, but he redoubled his efforts.
“Those cops sure got there fast. They should get an award or something for their response time.”
“It was just good luck – or maybe bad luck, depending on how you look at it. I saw them when I came in, across the road.”
“Doing what?”
“Getting dinner, I think, from the take-away.”
“While on duty? Never mind that award, then.”
“No offence, but you weigh a tonne and you're almost twice as big as me.” Griffith's words came out as grunts, separated by deep breathes. “I really appreciate all you've done, but this isn't exactly easy. Could you stop talking until we get to the top of the stairs?”
“Whatever you say.” Each step shot pains through Roland's body and talking only made it worse. He couldn't object to a little quiet. And the kid had a good point. A clumsy gymnastic performance down the lime-green, cast iron stairs would be a sudden and embarrassing way to end the evening.
The stairs zigzagged up in sharp turns. Roland couldn't do much than hop awkwardly and hold on tight to his human crutch. He stopped when Griffith stopped and let him adjust his grip, even if he did get awkwardly touchy about the whole process. Roland didn't have a lot of options open to him and he could always beat the shit out of Griffith later if he tried anything funny.
Not that it was likely. Roland was a big man, well past his prime and he could smell his own foul odour – a gut-wrenching mix of sweat, beer, smoke and blood. That smell covered him from his stubble to his boots and you'd have to be all kinds of desperate to want to start feeling him up. No, no doubt Griffith was just a nice guy helping out his fellow man.
“This floor.” Roland said when they reached the third level. “Room 306.”
Griffith grunted an affirmative.
Room 306 was, Roland imagined, identical in almost every way to the other rooms in the hotel. But he'd never seen those rooms and that was enough to give room 306, his room, special significance. He fished the keys out of his pocket and gave them to Griffith, who opened the door, dragged Roland inside and dropped him on the bed. The sheets were a hideous brown and green striped pattern and Roland considered the fresh blood stain an improvement.
“You know,” Roland said. “I think I might need a doctor.”
“Don't worry about that. Just lay still and please try not to make this any more awkward.”
“Make what—”
The kid had started pulling his jeans down.
“Whoa, hey, I think you—”
“I need to do something about this cut.”
“Then call an ambulance or something.” He waved his hand in a useless, grabbing motion but his jeans were already gone. He didn't have the energy left in him to fight.
“Not a good idea. An ambulance will bring police, too. You saved my life back there so just leave this to me.” Griffith let the jeans drop around Roland's ankles and then turned his attention back to the bleeding wound.
“Do you even know what you're doing?” Roland pushed himself up and took a look at his legs. Now that the kid had pulled his pants down, he could make full sense of both the cold wet sensation and the sharp pains. The end of something curved and metallic was poking out of the flesh of his left thigh. Probably a knife. Probably cheap, because it had snapped off at the handle.
“Relax. This is about the only thing I do know how to do.”
“Oh, so you are a doctor?”
“Sure. Let's go with that.”
“That's good to know.” Roland ran his sleeve over his face, wiping the sweat away and then watched Griffith go to work. He blinked a few times and focused on Griffith until he could see with some clarity.
Griffith went quiet and placed his hands around the wound, the edge of his palms resting on Roland's legs. He closed his eyes. Slow and steady, the blade of a butterfly knife pulled itself out of Roland's thigh and into Griffith's hands. All the blood on the bed, on his legs and even soaking his jeans crept back into the open wound, and Roland's flesh knitted back together without leaving so much as a scar.
Griffith carried the cold blade over to the rubbish bin and dropped it in. “You'll be fine,” he assured him. “When you're sober, I'll answer all your questions.”
“I don't think it can wait that long.”
“Why not?”
“Because I'm not convinced you're real or that you'll still be here when I'm sober.”
“I will. I don't have anywhere else I can go tonight so if you let me stay, I'll give you answers in the morning.” Roland wanted to argue with his possible-hallucination but couldn't find the strength to push the matter. His adrenaline had run out once they’d left the bar. Roland also wanted to ask Griffith to bring him a drink but he wasn't sure if the kid would get it from the tap or just make it appear out of thin air. He couldn't deal with another trick like that. All he could do was accept sleep's call and let himself plummet into the depths of unconsciousness. He closed his eyes and muttered something that could scarcely be called English.
“What's that?” Griffith asked.
“I said you sleep on the floor,” he forced out, a little louder. Then he passed out.
Chapter 2
Roland rarely had exactly the same dream twice, but the dreams he had never varied much. They always began with feeling of warmth, a body lying close to him. Then he saw the sterile, white walls of a doctor's clinic and that one sunflower painting hanging on the wall in the waiting room. The dreams always ended in the dark, listening to the sound of distant sobbing and an unending, paralysing sense of shame. The most he could hope for was to not dream at all.
Roland woke and immediately regretted it. He dragged himself to the bathroom sink, shedding himself of his unbuckled jeans somewhere between the bed and the bathroom door. He drank deep, straight from the bathroom tap, letting the cool water soak his face. Then he turned around and threw it all up into the toilet bowl, along with the yellowish-brown remains of the previous night�
��s beer and chips. When he was sure he'd finished, Roland got another drink from the sink and sluggishly crawled back onto the bed.
Then memories of the night before began flashing in his mind like a broken light. Roland sat up and scanned the room. Except for him, the room was empty, clear of any evidence that it had happened. Mustering all the strength he could, Roland stood up, pulled his jeans on and checked the rubbish bin. A solitary, shining steel blade sat before him. He wanted to write off his memories of the night as a drunken hallucination or a concussion-induced dream. That would have been easier. He could make sense of that. But the damned knife ruined that hope. The realisation that last night's episode was real wasn't easy to swallow. It made him sweat – But then again, that might have been the hangover. He wasn't sure. Either way it demanded a cigarette.
Roland opened the door and stepped out onto the walk-way outside his room. He lit up the moment his two feet were on the other side of the door. He'd taken two drags before he noticed the mop of brown hair and uneven eyebrows attached to the stranger sitting against the wall outside his door. No, not a stranger. He was the kid from the bar, the lemonade drinker. He'd dragged Roland out of the bar and back to the hotel. Roland struggled to imagine a light weight like this kid holding him up, and yet there he was.
Roland leaned over the railings and took an uninterested look around the car-park below him. Nicotine had started doing the job of calming his nerves. Though his brain was being uncooperative, Roland carefully considered what to say.
“Who are you?” That was the best he could come up with.
“Griffith. My name is Griffith.” The stringy-haired kid answered.
“Griffith. Right.” Roland turned around, blinked a few times to clear the crust from his eyes and sized him up. He was small and unimposing but, now that he looked, Roland could see an athlete's muscle tone. The kid was petite, but no push over. His thick hair hung in a fringe just above his bright blue eyes. The kid wore the unfortunate, baby-faced expression of an optimist. He obviously needed a few more years of thankless toil under his belt before the cynicism kicked in and really started to age him. “But who are you?”
“I told you. I'm Griffith.”
“No, I mean...”
“I know what you mean.” Griffith looked up and down the walkway. “But that's a more difficult question. Do you mind if we go inside?”
“Yes.” Roland answered. He hadn't even finished his first cigarette and he planned on having several more before the end of this conversation.
“All right.” Griffith paused and took another look up and down the walk-way.
Roland raised an eye-brow at him. He wondered what the kid expected to find on an empty walkway at this time of morning.
Griffith continued in a low voice: “Tell me, Roland, have you ever—”
“No. No questions. No stories. No bullshit. Just tell me who or what you are.”
“Um...” Griffith took a moment for his derailed train of thought to get moving again. “You might call me a magician.”
“Can't hear you.”
Griffith stepped closer. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “We - that is, people like me – call ourselves sorcerers. Lucky for you, my magical speciality is healing.”
“Hold on.” Roland raised his hand to silence Griffith. He exhaled the smoke from his lungs and peered at Griffith through the haze. When the smoke dissipated, he reached out and prodded the self-proclaimed sorcerer. “Yep. You're real.”
Griffith nodded slowly. “Yes. I'm real.”
“Damn.” Roland put the cigarette back in his mouth and breathed deep. It was unbelievable. It was insane. And yet, he couldn't just ignore what had happened the night before. As drunk as he was, the images were imprinted clear in his mind. Griffith was there in front of him. It wasn't a hallucination. The only explanation was magic. Wasn't it? There was nothing else.
“You're taking this well,” Griffith said to break the silence.
“Have you ever been stabbed in the leg?” Roland asked
“No.”
“Neither have I.” Roland lifted his leg and bent it backwards and forwards. He could see the hole in his jeans where he'd been stabbed. “But I'm sure it doesn't just get better overnight.”
“It gets better faster with magic.” Griffith shrugged. “That's one of the benefits.”
“So you're, like, a magical doctor?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Keep going.”
“Sorry?”
“You were telling me about magic.” Roland almost choked on the word magic. It was unacceptable. Magic didn't exist. Except now it did. He hoped this wasn't how his whole day way going to be. It probably would be, but he still hoped.
“Uh... Okay. There's more sorcerers out there than you'd think, but still not many. Some of us do a little bit of everything with our magic; I mostly use mine to help people who are hurt.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, I can do some of the basic stuff that everyone learns but mostly I do the healing thing.”
“Why?”
“Because it's the right thing to do. What else is life for, if not for helping others?” Griffith answered without pausing.
Roland raised his brow at the kid. “I don't believe this.”
“It's true.”
“Prove it.”
“Sorry?”
“Prove it.” Roland clenched the cigarette between his lips and stretched his arms. It felt and sounded like every bone cracked in his body. He stared out towards the road while he spoke. “Do something magical.”
“I'd rather not.” Griffith checked the walkway again.
“So how can I be sure it's not some kind of con? Maybe you drugged me last night. Maybe it was a trick and I was never really hurt.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don't know.” Roland smothered his cigarette on the railing and lit another one. “But it makes more sense than magic.”
“Proof, huh?” Griffith muttered. Roland shot a glance at him and then looked back down at the car park. The so-called sorcerer looked thoughtful.
“Or you can admit you made it up. I imagined the whole thing and we can never talk about it again.” Roland shrugged and more bones cracked. He took another quick look at Griffith from the corner of his eyes. He hoped the kid would agree and just walk away. He didn't need any of this crap.
“All right.” Griffith nodded and looked towards the door. Roland followed his gaze. For a while nothing happened and then the numbers 306 on his door started bending. Roland's jaw went weak and the cigarette fell to the ground. The numbers on the door folded like paper, smaller and smaller. He counted them fold seven times and then drop to the ground.
“Well...” Roland stuttered. He breathed deep and sighed.
“Happy?” Griffith smiled. He looked more pleased with himself than anybody should after breaking the laws of physics.
Roland lit another cigarette. He got half-way through it before he spoke again.
“So you're a sorcerer. What the hell are you doing in Armidale?”
“I'm just passing through.”
“To where?”
“Salem.”
“Why?”
“I heard there's a sorcerer of legendary power living there. They're like me. They specialise in healing magic, I mean. I'm going to ask him to take me as their student.”
“And this place, this...”
“Salem.”
“Right. Is Salem near here?”
“No. This is just the closest I could get by train. Salem is on the Queensland border. From here I have to make my own way.”
“So how do you get from here to Salem?”
“Walk.”
“Walk?” Roland asked, waiting for the punchline. He flicked the butt of his cigarette down into the parking lot.
“That's right.” Griffith nodded. He was still smiling the whole time he explained.
“No offence, Griffith, but t
hat's stupid.”
“It might sound reckless but it's all part of the plan. I walk there and, while I'm at it, if I meet anybody who I can help, I do. In doing so, prove I'm willing to undergo any hardship as his student. That way he'll have to accept me as his apprentice.”
“How do you figure?” Roland watched the smoke leave his mouth and waft up. It pooled at the roof before overflowing past the gutter and towards the sky.
“It's like a test. I'm proving my worth to learn from him. And why not? Helping people is the right thing to do.”
“So, what, you're on some kind of sorcerer pilgrimage? Your own sorcerer spiritual journey. You do something stupid and, what, a good deed a day to prove your worth?” Roland asked. It was sounding stupider as Griffith went on and Roland wasn't sure whether to remain sceptical or feel bad for him.
“A pilgrimage? Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”
“Uh-huh.” Roland lit up another cigarette and mulled over everything he'd been told. A pilgrimage? Helping people just because it's right? Bullshit. Nobody does something just because it's the right thing to do. The kid's magic may have been the real deal, but he was either angling for something or he was deluded.
“Now it's your turn.” Griffith added before Roland was done thinking.
“The name is Roland. I'm unemployed and I live in a hotel. That's it.”
“That's it?”
“That's it.” Roland shrugged. That ended the conversation again and Roland went back to thinking. This time Griffith didn't interrupt and when Roland's mind forced out the most clear and rational thing it could force out through the throbbing ache of his hangover, Roland spoke again.
“Salem. Now that I think about it, it sounds familiar. It's on the Barwon river, isn't it?”
“Yeah, that's the place.” Griffith answered.
“If it's the place I'm thinking of, it's really out of the way. There couldn't be more than a handful of towns between here and there that are worth mentioning, depending on what roads you take. Not many places to stay or eat.”
“Are you trying to dissuade me from going on?”