feel
the light on my skin, as if it was silk, how to tighten my fingers around it and pull it along like a cloak, drag it down to me away from the walls and ceilings until I was on fire with its brightness and everything else around me was smothered in dark, taught me to wear it inside me, as well as over me, a furious burning in the heart. I learnt how to summon the Beggar King, about the legends of the city the Midnight Mayor, Fat Rat, the Seven Sisters, the dragon that guards the old London Wall,
Domine dirige nos
, the old rules and the new magics. He taught me everything I know, was teacher, sponsor, father, friend for nearly ten years. Rich, kind and powerful; things I had never seen or imagined in my childhood.
Sorcerers dont have any textbooks, formal lessons, ritual incantations or spells like the magicians do. Magicians use the wisdom of others, gestures of power, words of binding to do their bidding theirs is a precise, focused magic. Sorcerers bind a different kind of magic: ours is the power of seeing the power in the most ordinary thing, and binding it to our will; it is wild, free, beautiful and dangerous. Teaching control is the most vital lesson, one that is learned at various speeds. Some sorcerers submerge their natures entirely to the rhythms of the city, forget that they do not have wings or that their feet are in Knightsbridge, because their mind is too busy following the route of the number-nine bus up Piccadilly at the same time that their eyes are lost in the senses of a rat somewhere in Enfield. Others establish control ruthlessly, minimise all that they do, everything tight, precise; they revel in what they can do only for themselves, everything for a neat, exacting purpose, rather than the richer enchantments known to some.
Bakker said I could be whatever I wanted, that every sorcerer was unique to their own nature. I studied under him until I was twenty-four, but I could never have the control he had. He was, then, a middle-aged man, who didnt show a day of it: his personality vibrant, powerful, passionate was stamped all over his magic, in extravagant shows of force that you felt he could never contain, and yet which were always, in the most delicate manner possible, well within his control. I have never seen a more powerful, nor a more talented sorcerer; he could breathe the air off the river and, on its smell alone, run a mile. Perhaps that should have warned me. He was so full of the stuff of life, one day it had to burst.
When I was twenty-four, he said I was fine, ready; that my life was my own and I could do what I wished. So I did. I travelled to Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid, New York; in every place I earned money by teaching English or serving as a cleaner or a kitchen dishwasher for a few months, just so I could experience the different magics of those places. In New York the air is so full of static you almost spark when you move; in Madrid the shadows are waiting at every corner to whisper their histories in your ear when you walk at night. In Berlin the power is clean, silken, like walking through an invisible, body-temperature waterfall in a dark cave; in Beijing the sense of it was a prickling heat on the skin, like the wind had been broken down into a thousand pieces, and each part carried some warmth from another place, and brushed against your skin, like a furry cat calling for your attention.
It may not sound much of a life to you travelling, with no real home, no constant friends as such. But for me it was a day-to-day revelation, which Bakker had taught me a sorcerers life should be, even if it stood still. A sorcerer, he said, can walk down the same street, twice a day for the rest of his life, and should be able to spot something new about it every time. Relish what you see, what you have: sounds, sight, touch, smell, thats what keeps you a sorcerer, thats what lets you understand what magic really is. It took me some time to realise what he meant, but he was right. Whatever has happened to him now, I will always remember then he was right.
I will spare you the details of my doings. I was, as you have pointed out, not one of the most interesting sorcerers, I did not seek to change the world, and had no great crusade to fire me. I will jump ahead a little.
I came back to London. Worked a little, lived a little; nothing extraordinary. Then, about two years ago, I got a phone call from Robert Bakkers office. He had had a stroke and was in hospital; he wanted to see me. I didnt understand, at first, how this strong, vibrant man could be a mortal. But everyone gets older, even if its only in the flesh. I visited him, of course I did anyone would have done the same. I was relieved to find his mind was still in one piece he recognised me, spoke to me reasonably, lucidly, didnt seem to have any difficulty with the mundane, automatic skills that strokes sometimes kill, as simple as lifting a fork, or putting on a pair of trousers all that, he remembered well enough. But there had been complications, the doctors werent sure how serious, and all the best consultants were called in to offer placating sounds.
Over the weeks, however, it grew evident how serious it was. He was paralysed from the waist down, and would not walk again.
At first he laughed and said it was an excuse for the lazy lifestyle hed always wanted. But the reality of paralysis is more than just being unable to move it is a loss of dignity. He could not put on his own trousers any more without help, or go to the toilet, or stand in the shower, or climb stairs, or get out of the bath, or reach a book on the shelf, or reach a pot to cook a meal. I think it was the indignity that first started to turn him. I noticed it, in my visits to him, over the weeks at the hospital as he went into physiotherapy, a growing anger at the indignity of it all, the unfairness he, who had never smoked, drunk to excess, travelled to dangerous places or even had any particularly reckless sexual adventures still he was stuck in a wheelchair. He said he was getting old, that life was going to pass him by, and for the first time, he sounded angry.
One evening, his office called me and said I needed to go to the hospital, urgently. I thought something terrible had happened to him; but when I arrived, he was sitting up in bed, quite composed, the phone in his hand. He said,
Matthew, I want to summon the angels.
I remember, because he said it so flatly, so calmly, that I could hardly believe my ears. I spluttered confused noises and eventually said something along the lines of Why? and Its dangerous! and other empty sounds.
He said, The doctors tell me that I am dying. I have not had just one stroke, I am at risk of several, they said. They tell me that over the next few days, weeks, months, years, they cant be sure, I will have more minor strokes, one on the other, perhaps so small I dont even notice, perhaps large enough to leave me without feeling in my fingers, and that they will eventually eat away my brain, my mind, my memory, and my feelings until I am just a gibbering shell. I want to summon the angels.
What good will they do? I asked.
Youve heard them, think about it, he replied he was never one for a straight answer, always liked you to work it out for yourself, said if you could understand by yourself why a thing was true, you would believe it more than just having it told to you by a teacher.
Why do you need me? Surely theyre still there, in the dialling tone
I cant hear them. He held up the receiver towards me and, for the first time, looked me straight in the eye. I want you to listen, tell me if theyre there.
I took the receiver I was trained not to disobey him; such things when you are a learning sorcerer are dangerous. I listened.
He hadnt dialled any particular number, but with the angels you dont need to; an open line is what they always enjoyed. And eventually, through the dialling tone, I heard them.
They started with just the
beeeeeep
of the tone. Then, when you listened, it was more than a
beeeeep
it was a voice, saying
beeeeee
at exactly the same pitch and tone as the dialling tone, but still a voice.
It said,
beeeeee meeeeeee
And then, when you realised that those were the words it was saying, it said more.
Beeee meeeee beeeee freeeeee
And by increments, aware that they had an audience, the angels came, and they said at the tone of the telephones,
We be
to see
set free
We be light, we be life, we be fire!
We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven!
Come be me
and be free
we be blue electric angels
Bakker said, Can you hear them?
I said yes.
What do they say?
What they always do.
Tell me!
I told him; I confess, I was hypnotised by their sound. When the angels spoke, it was more than voices, it was with a presence that wormed its way into the mind and filled the senses with burning, fiery blueness. They whispered that they were the creatures of the wire, that their playground was the world, that they danced at the speed of light and rippled faster than sound, spread their wings across every wire, voice, mind, sense, sight in the world and when they had bounced from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again through every telephone and computer and radio transmitter on earth, they would bounce into the radio waves in the sky, and spin away into space, circle the moon and then fly on, to see what sights they could see. They asked you to come be me, to be free to let go of life and join them for ever, playing in the wires.
It was a dangerous song all sorcerers knew of the angels. They had a reputation, that of a young, reckless power that travelled as interference in the system, unexplained spots of static, moved too fast to catch, stop, or begin to understand. They had grown out from the wires only in recent years, but that shouldnt really surprise us. Where life is, there is always magic, and over the years we pour so much of ourselves, of our lives, into the phone lines our hearts, dreams, desires, hopes, friends, enemies, hates and loves, tipped into the wire. The angels started off as just a rogue piece of static but, over the years, fed on all that life being thrown at them telephone conversations, radio broadcasts, internet, email that unique magic altered them, made them growinto the form that you currently understand as blue electric angels.
They relish life, rejoice in it; their whole lives are learning, understanding, a composite of other peoples existences, an idea plucked from Jane merged into a word from Bob and a sigh from Joe; an entire personality can be formed from the throwaway bits of conversation we leave trapped in the wire. They are so proud! So bright and brilliant, the worlds knowledge at their fingertips, the whole of humanity pouring itself into their soul. So beautiful, so bright, they delight in all that is new, feast and feed on it, for it was what made them. They are a child, and a god. All sorcerers love and fear them, for they are very much like the sorcerers are feasting on all things that they see. Life is magic. And as I have said, too much life
too much of too much
mortals cannot sustain it.
They are everywhere at once, thinly spread across the world like flurries of snow; but they can, sometimes, coalesce into one place for a special purpose. In that hospital, that strange night that had been like any other night, Bakker wanted to provoke such an event; he wanted to bring the angels together, and force them out of the phone.
I asked why.
He didnt smile, or sigh, or show any sign of emotion when he answered. He simply said, Because they are alive; because they will not die.
I wanted to know how he thought he could get them out of the phone lines that had spawned them.
He just laughed and said he was sure that they, if he had judged their character right, would be all too willing to come, for the right incentive. He knew how I had first fallen into sorcery. He knew that as a child, I had loved to listen to the phones, and they had loved to talk to me.
What then, I asked? When you have somehow dragged the angels out of the phone line, their natural place, what do you do then?
Life, he said. Just life.
I only understood slowly. Even when he had explained it, I did not wish to comprehend. His plan was to draw the angels out of their natural territory, force them to take a human, physical form with his spells and, once they had achieved such a state, to steal that which made them alive.
You must understand the angels are created from the life that others leave behind in the phones: words thrown out into darkness, ideas left half unsaid. Their whole existence is speed and freedom and wild electric power and magic and life; they feed off humanitys forgotten thoughts. He said, Their blood is life, Matthew. Their souls are fire.
I finally too slowly understood. Bakker didnt just want to summon the angels. He wanted to
become
the angels, to be like them, no longer physical, restrained by the bonds of his own crippled body. He wanted to feast on their bright burning blood, become pure electricity and fire in human form, burning his way across the planet a human consciousness in the form of the angels themselves. But he needed my help.
I asked why.
He said, I cant hear them. Things are different, I cant hear them. I need a sorcerer who can make them come out of the phone lines. I need your help.
I said no. I didnt even know why I said it; I was so appalled, I just spoke on instinct. I said that his plan would make him inhuman, a deity of blue light rather than a sorcerer, that I knew he must be frightened and in pain, but that what he proposed was nothing short of a bond with an electric devil.
