Forever Shores (15 page)

‘Ah.' Keenoy nodded to him anyway. ‘I was just going to ask you, Tess, we're short one Beggar Maid in the musical. D'you think you could fill in the gap?'

Surprise made me laugh. ‘Hey, I'm not really performing material.'

‘All you have to do is sit in a bunch of Maids and sing a chorus, sway a bit. Nothing too hard.'

‘Sounds very
not
me.'

He made a pleading face that I had to laugh at. ‘Come to rehearsal tomorrow,' he begged. ‘Take a look.'

‘Okay, I'll take a look.'

‘Good
on yo
u
!'

‘I'm not promising anything.'

‘Look, you don't have to.' He backed towards the café. ‘See you then.'

He was gone. And I walked home smiling. Idiot.

I've made them sound really powerful, those ‘absent' ones. But in the end it's the clients who decide how helped, how timid, how lost they'll be. That's why I was so sour on making this thing of mine into a business. Before Dad died—sorry, had his stroke—I never would have dreamed of doing it. All I was doing, I felt, was taking money for telling people what they'd already spent
years
telling themselves—that Grandma was the only one who ever properly loved them, that she must be watching them from above, continuing to wish them well. Or that their dead child still lived somewhere—which it did, inside them—beaming innocence out into the world.

You want certain voices to speak to you—lovingly or sternly or whatever. You want it so badly that you throw them out from yourself, and when I hear them and repeat back to you what they say, it seems like proof. You forget it's your own ventriloquism, your own loss, your own hankering written into the space around you for just about anyone to read. I feel like a thief, charging you my fee, but if you need to hear, but won't listen for yourself, and if we need the money, I'll do it. I won't like doing it, but I'll do it.

I went home smiling and told myself not to get silly. I should have been tired, but I wasn't. Mum had lit a fire in the parlour fireplace, and I sat there with her for a while. In the firelight Dad looked like somebody's dreamy old grandpa, mesmerised by the flames, and Mum and I had a sleepy, bitsy conversation. I almost told her about the musical, but then I thought, No, she'd be too delighted. She'd pin more on it than I want pinned … for now. Instead, I let myself feel the occasional roll of excitement inside me, let Keenoy's face rise in my memory and shine across to me some of its happy light and warmth.

I went to the rehearsal next day. I volunteered straight up, and got parked among the Beggar Maids.

‘Oh hi, Tess,' said Zenardia. ‘I didn't know you were musical.'

‘Oh, I'm not. I'm only doing this as a favour to Keenoy.' It was the first and last time I ever said his name, and it made a funny feeling in my mouth, a kind of embarrassing tang, as if I'd used a special, intimate name I had for him, loosed it in public.

The rehearsal started. It probably seems like nothing to a normal person, but I enjoyed myself. It was a silly, romantic story, interrupted by the soppiest songs, but I got caught up in it anyway. Everyone else was taking it so seriously! When Lexie Nelson, the main girl, was singing her duet with Keenoy, they were both so
excellent
, even standing there in their school uniforms, that I saw Lexie clearly for the first time. Her mother climbed down off her back and her pushy brothers faded away to nothing, and for several minutes she didn't care that Nick Stefanopoulos didn't love her the way she loved him. I sat there with all the other Maids—who had stopped chatting to listen, just as impressed as I was—and I let myself think, Maybe life could be like this.

Right back when I first discovered that other people didn't see what I saw, all I wanted to do was get out, climb down from this kind of princess's tower my knowledge puts me in, mingle, be with other people, act like them—unaware, laughing at my own mistakes. I can see that people's ignorance is blissful—I'd like to turn around and say to some clients, Hey look, you'd be happier not knowing. Really, don't make me tell you.

Because knowing is hard. For my clients, knowing just their own stuff is hard to cope with; for me, knowing everyone's … well, I used
not
to cope; a school assembly used to make me pass out. Nowadays I can block out quite a bit of the noise and bother around people, but it still takes some strength to deal with, say, a half-full train carriage, where there's room for each person's burdens and yearnings to swell out and speak up and compete for attention. Whenever a new passenger climbs in, everyone's yearnings check out the new ones and then go back to their own blabbing and yowling. It gets exhausting. I only really have any peace when I'm on my own, shut away from everyone. The rest is … well, it'll always be hard work, won't it? I just have to face that.

After the rehearsal, Keenoy walked me home. He was exactly the right height, just a bit taller than me. It makes me miserable now to think how perfect he was.

I told him everything. Well, he'd seen Dad, so he knew about all that, and he wanted to know more, and he asked about the stroke, and listened, and was sympathetic but not ghoulish about it. ‘That's hard on you and your mum.' His tone of voice, of course, was righter than most people's, with no awkwardness in it. He must have some kind of similar experience behind him, I thought, but where? If it hasn't left a mark on him, what's he done to get over it? What power does he have? What makes him so strong?

I looked up at him occasionally as we walked and talked. His skin was totally spot-free, unmarked by freckles or acne or any other kind of imperfection. Blossom was right; it was a happy face. Happiness was built into it, the mouth always ready to smile if not actually smiling, the eyes kind of smallish but active, taking in everything and having a quick thought to match each taken-in thing. I liked him. For the first time in my life I could see how it was possible to like a boy, even for someone like me.

I didn't feel awkward at all, saying, ‘Would you like a hot drink or something?' when we reached my gate.

‘Sure,' he said.

I held open the gate after me. ‘Where do you live, anyway?'

‘Just a little way along from here, really. Over Oaky Park way.'

‘Really? Why don't you go to Oaky Park High, then, instead of travelling all the way across here?'

‘Oh, well, you know …'

I opened the door. Something went crash, in the kitchen. ‘So clumsy!' came Mum's voice, her really-upset voice. ‘You've turned into a baby—no,
worse
than a baby! You'll
never
grow up! You'll never be more than this clumsy wreck—'

I froze on the doorstep. Another crash. Sobbing.

Keenoy took my shoulders, moved me to one side and went in towards the kitchen. I started after him; I didn't want him to see, didn't want Mum to know he'd heard her losing it.

Dad was there, with food spilled down his shirtfront. Mum was crouched down next to him, trying to scoop the mush on the floor back up into the bowl with a shaking spoon. She looked up and saw Keenoy—and recognised him. (Well, she would, wouldn't she?)

‘I just wanted him to try,' she said desperately. ‘Maybe he
could
feed himself! Maybe something's knitted back together in his head by now. Maybe he's healing in there and none of us can see it yet!' She said it all in a garbled, hiccuping rush, while Keenoy took the bowl and spoon from her, put them in the sink, then turned back to put his arms around her—whoa! She was sobbing against him; she looked very small wrapped up in there, and he felt suddenly very big in the room. It seemed a big thing for a person to do, to comfort someone just because she needed it.

I stood by the door feeling sick. If it had been me, I would have concentrated on the mess: wiped up the mush, told Mum to sit down, made her a cup of tea, cleaned up Dad's shirt, moved around and around her and not touched her once, biting back my irritation. ‘I could have
told you
Dad would drop it! Don't you listen when I tell you?
He's not there
!
' I never would have hugged her. I would have been too angry.

I went away, full of shame. I put my bag in my room, went into the parlour. Twenty minutes and my first client would be here. I'd have to calm down by then.

After a little while Keenoy Ribson came in. He stood in the doorway with a mug of hot chocolate in each hand, smiling.

‘She okay?' I said gracelessly.

‘She's fine. A “momentary lapse”, she said. We all have 'em.' He handed me a drink and sat down in the client chair.

‘She'll never stop missing him. It's almost all she ever does.'

‘But not you?'

I tried to take a sip of my drink, but it gave my lip a warning scald. I blew on it instead. ‘Sure, I miss my dad. But that out there in the wheelchair, that's not him, and it never will be him. There's too much damage. I'm not going to fool myself.'

‘No, you're too clear-eyed for that.' There was no sarcasm in his voice. He looked so singular and baggage-free in that chair, the chair I usually saw through such a fog of ghosts and inhibitions. For once, someone was looking at me to give me something, not to suck a reading out of me, not to be saved. He was looking, he was caring, he was interested. Nobody looks at me like that—and I'm not talking about romance here; this is so much more important than romance. I'm so lonely in my life! I remember thinking. I've got no one! What a sad novelty it was to confide in someone, to tell about just me. Usually people's sympathy locks straight onto Mum, and we all help and console her; I'm so competent and practical, it must seem like I don't need consoling.

‘I've been meaning to ask you,' I said—and it was a wonderful feeling, to be able to say anything I liked and know I wouldn't be laughed at, or revered—‘Have you got a talent like mine?'

‘Which talent's that? Like, of all your talents?' He raised his mug to me and took a sip. ‘I mean, I can sing, you heard me—'

‘The talent of seeing … extra things about people.'

‘Extra things? What, like their potential as Beggar Maids?'

‘Like their hang-ups.'

‘Their hang-ups?' And then he drank down his hot chocolate. In two gulps—I heard them both. He put the mug on the table next to the tissue box. His smile was a little strange, a little fixed.

‘It's almost a psychic thing,' I said, frowning from the empty mug to him. And despite that look in his eyes, which said clearly, Don't go down this road, I told him all about it, about my work, the things I see, and how he didn't fit into the system. Boy, did I blather on. ‘You don't even seem to have any parental pressure, which is crazy for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. Every other boy I know carries his father around on his back like a sack of cement—sometimes his mum's there too, trying to heave off a bit of the dad's weight, trying to make life a bit easier. You don't seem to have anyone. Nothing gets to you; nothing pushes you out of your own shape. I don't see how that's possible. Are you some kind of strange non-grieving orphan? Have you got some kind of religious belief that clears all your gremlins away?' Blah, blah, blah.

When I finally shut up, he laughed gently. ‘You don't want to know, Tess.'

‘But I do! I'm
busting
to know! Because whatever you've got, I want it too!' And I blah-ed on about that, too—clarity and self-assurance and kindness.

He was still laughing. He was at his best-looking, laughing—maybe he was hoping that'd distract me.

But it didn't, and he laughed on, too long, too watchfully.

And then he slipped. His gaze flicked to the floor just for a second, and when he looked back to me his laughter had definitely turned nervous.

I looked down. I was trying to hide it from myself and see it at the same time, so the tether was very fine, disguising itself by following the pattern in the Turkish rug. But I knew that pattern; I could see where the line had to cross from one motif to another, wriggling through the pile like a snake through stubble. A thread of darkness ran from one side of the rug to the other, joining Keenoy's foot to mine.

‘You idiot,' I heard myself say.

Keenoy's smile was feebly apologetic now. His eyes wobbled, and then began to widen down his collapsing face, dragging the smile down with them.

‘I
thought
you were too good to be true,' I said, trying to save face.

Keenoy's head was a melted heap on his chest. His torso deflated with a wet pop!, his arms shrinking into his shoulders.

‘You twit.' I hit my head with my fist, over and over. ‘You sappy, cloth-brained,
stupid
—'

He shrivelled to a tiny black blob on the end of the line, whipping back across the rug into the toe of my shoe. I hadn't noticed him leave, but now I felt him come back into me, like water-balloons bursting in my chest and throat. Then I was brim-full of my own self again, unhappy but unstretched, not yearning, not fooling myself.

I sat there for a bit, recovering. I could hear Mum humming along to the radio in the kitchen. Keenoy's empty mug sent up a last lazy curl of steam. I felt like a complete fool. But at least it was over now; I didn't have to wonder any more.

And then the front gate clicked open, letting my first client in. Taking a deep breath, I got up and went to the door.

A Spell at the End of the World
Alexander James

His mission was this; to board the ocean liner on a three-month passage to Melbourne, on very short notice, with three packages. He was to guard them with his life. Someone would meet him at the hotel at the other end, and know what to do from there. The packages were given to him the night before the ship sailed, as was his ticket and boarding pass, along with an envelope filled with Australian money and another envelope with his accommodation details. They had told him that there might be incidents along the way. People or things might attempt to take the packages from him. Perhaps even kill him for them. He was to protect himself and the packages with his knowledge of the arts. Customs had been attended to.

Barker had taken their words with a nod, with the uneasy knowledge that choosing him had been a mistake.

He was a sorcerer, to be sure, and they had wanted a sorcerer for the mission. But there were greater in London than he, wiser, more powerful, better experienced. Certainly half a dozen he could name better versed in covert activities, less vulnerable to attack and more suited to fighting off assassins.

But he suspected, if not knew, that he had been chosen because he was not a ranking sorcerer. So far as mastery of the arts went, he was nondescript. He'd achieved reliable status amongst the occult underworld and as a white sorcerer had taken part in the fight against the darker elements. He had calmed restless spirits for troubled folk, and sent demons back from whence they'd been summoned. He'd brought those responsible to justice. He had even been part of portal creation not once but three times, and thus witnessed conversations with beings not of this Earthly dimension. But he'd never been asked by the Supernatural Council to do anything other than help with those portal spells, until the night they had summoned him and given him this mission.

The spells he knew and had mastered were all protective or benign, apart from the general spells of exorcism that every sorcerer knew. He had known at an early age, relative to the discovery of his heightened will, that he did not possess the stamina nor disposition to become a warrior sorcerer, that his niche was more likely within those ranks who chose to defend, correct and ease rather than seek out, advance and attack. He dealt with the consequences of what the practitioners of the black arts did, he did not seek them out before they could do it.

But he had shown bravery, more than once. A willingness to place himself and his will, his confidence in the mastery of the arts, between demons and those they sought to harm. Between evil men and their victims. And he had come through unscathed.

He was a good sorcerer. But not the best.

The best would have known what had saved his life twice on the ocean liner. He did not.

The first attack had come during the first week of the voyage, the first time he had vacated his cabin at length. Upon boarding, Barker had cast a protective spell on his cabin which would not allow anyone to enter without his permission. Such a spell was strong, but the more he used the door, the weaker the spell would become. So he remained in the cabin and read some of the books he'd brought with him. Although he had packed a broadly themed collection of novels in anticipation of a quiet, solitary cruise, he had quickly exhausted his patience with them. He was on a holiday ship after all, designed for comfort, if not luxury, and there were other diversions and entertainments he didn't have the discipline to completely avoid, despite the covert nature of his mission. There was even a stage magician amongst the lounge singers and vaudevillian comedians, to entertain the shipbound travellers. This had piqued his curiosity enough to risk leaving the packages unattended.

Barker had quickly seen through the magician's sleight of hand and diversionary tactics, even from the back of the packed audience. Occasionally a true sorcerer practised stage magic, but this one had been nothing more than a master of illusion.

Nothing more? Barker caught himself.

Could he perform magic?

Could he do anything the Great Majesto had done without the aid of sorcery? He doubted it. Majesto must have practised diligently for years to gain the level of skill he'd exhibited on stage. It was just that parallel, the one between illusion and sorcery, which brought about his mild snobbery toward stage magic. He imagined briefly that he might know how astronomers felt when compared to astrologers. Same subject, both skilled, but diametrically opposed.

It had been on that night, when he had decided to gauge whether or not he might have a comrade in arts for the long journey, that he'd first been attacked. Gazing out to sea after Majesto's encore, watching the mothers assess him as they guided their virgin daughters past him in the hope he might be a potential suitor, he let his guard down. How, he wondered, might a young woman ‘see the world', at least as it truly was, with her mother constantly at her side? Still, it was tradition. The world was made of that. He suspected that many of the young women would return to England unattached, then marry the first man they set eyes upon to get away from their omnipresent maternal shadow. Perhaps that was the idea?

The decks of the liner were crowded during the day, but at night after dinner and entertainment, the decks were all but empty. He had always enjoyed the sea, at least the feeling of gazing out at it from the safe vantage point of a stretch of British coastline. The ocean made some people feel small, insignificant, but it had always made him feel profoundly connected to life. Had he not answered the call of sorcery, he might have been one of those young men who set sail for a military life. But then again, he'd always been predominantly of artistic temperament. If he was being honest with himself, he would not have lasted long in the navy. A mere child during the war against the Nazis, he'd been evacuated to Coventry for the duration, where his gifts had started to reveal themselves and flourish. The children's war stories he'd heard at the time, as opposed to the terrors that had surfaced and been told and retold long after, even to this day, might just as well have attracted him to the air force or conventional service. But as a child he'd always seen the military in whatever form as a kind of noble dream, a romantic fantasy that was meant for others. Of course, as a child he'd not seen the war in such terms, only now, fourteen years after the end of the war, did he reflect and gain clarity upon his childhood perspective.

He was made for something else. Another kind of war.

He supposed though, had he been born a decade earlier, or if the war had lasted a decade longer, that he would have stepped forward. Fought. The call to the art of sorcery had not stopped others of his kind signing up, had not stopped them being killed or even making careers. Sorcerers were in many ways just like other men. Other women. They answered many calls, individually or as a whole through their Supernatural Council, and had throughout the centuries. They had lives outside the calling; butchers, bakers, and particularly candlestick makers.

He was a bookseller.

Ordinary books, most of the time. Works of fiction. But he had dealt with grimoires and spell books and magical items on the side, and the combination made for a diverse and curious clientele. He wondered how the store was keeping in his absence, if he'd chosen correctly to leave it in the hands of his nephew. The store ran itself, if you knew how to let it, and he suspected his nephew, until then an apprentice projectionist at the local motion picture theatre, possessed the correct temperament for such work. A caretaker. A watcher and imaginer. A sorcerer, no, but one who might appreciate tales of such things.

Tales were becoming more popular these days, as it had been designed. The great work of fiction had been completed, released and embraced by the people of the United Kingdom, and would spawn many and varied writers to emulate the tale for better or worse. He'd been told this through the underworld rumour mill and had come to believe it.

‘Those books,' they would say, ‘those three books are our cover as the world progresses. It will cement the sorcerer's art as fantasy, enter culture and divert ordinary people from our reality.'

Yes, be believed that the great tale of the elves and dwarves and other fanciful beings had been engineered as a cover for sorcerers in the age to come. But the rest of it … the other reason?

He wondered if it were true. Had there truly once been intelligent creatures other than men on the Earth? Had all record of their existence been systematically removed, in order to hide what remained of them?

‘It could be done,' his friend had sworn, ‘it could be done easily within two generations, with the right people in the right places. Look at Hitler. They say he would have done it with the Jews, had he won the war. Simply wiped them off the face of the Earth and out of history books as though they never existed. Two generations. That's all it takes to forget. The way the world is moving now, perhaps one generation is all it would take. Imagine how quickly information will travel in years to come, Barker. Why, important messages can cross the world in a minute … in fifty years who's to say it won't be a matter of seconds? For the really important messages, that is.'

Barker didn't know. He only knew how long it took for the ocean liner to get to Melbourne, how long it took for his books to be sent to collectors in various parts of the world. Anything crossing the globe in less than three months seemed absurd.

The man had seemed to come out of the sea at him. He was shoved hard, backward across the deck into the long window that separated the shuffle board deck from the walkway. Not out of the sea, he realised. The man must have been hanging or perched somehow over the edge of the ship. Barker had been standing at the portside railing, watching the ocean and thinking about war for some time, so the assailant must have made his way across the portside edge of the ship somehow and crawled up to him, rather than hiding in wait for Barker to move toward him.

The man had whispered a guttural, ‘H'ro'shoh.'

Paralysing spell, Barker recognised. One of those prehistoric utterances that resided still within man's collective unconscious. A series of harsh syllables that would stop a man in his tracks. The name of a beast, perhaps? That when uttered had frozen early homosapiens in primal fear? The title of a devilish totem?

‘H'karal,' Barker hissed in return, before his throat seized up, drawing energy from his gut and repelling the man with a wave of white heat, simultaneously defrosting his own stiff frame. The man had a dagger and he rebounded before Barker could properly move to counter anything more and then, as the dagger's tip was at his throat, the assailant flew backward over the edge of the ship and was gone. It had been like a strong wind, a freak gust, had caught and taken him.

Over the edge, gone.

Dead as soon as he hit the water, if not drowned … how long would it take a man alone to drown at sea? The dread thought hit Barker as he returned to the edge, looked down into the black night water and started to call, before he knew it, that there was a man overboard.

Conscience.

But then there was a hand … at least, he felt that it had fingers, skin and joint, gently over his mouth from behind, and a voice in his mind that spoke a language he didn't recognise. But the words made sense. The words said:

‘He would have killed you, he would try again. My grip snapped his neck, he is no more …'

The hand was removed and Barker turned about but there was no one there. An empty deck, a darkened shuffle board enclosure behind broad glass.

But in the reflection of the glass … the moon was not full, but she and the stars cast a bright glow nevertheless, he saw something. And a scent, like cut grass. It took him back to his school days, of summer recesses on the school oval.

He thought he'd seen bark.

But how? Bark, in his mind …

Think, sorcerer.

What you saw made an association of bark in your mind, but that was because what you saw was something outside of your comprehension … outside of
human
comprehension?

Barker shivered for all sorts of reasons and hurried back to his cabin.

When the ocean liner had docked three months later and Barker had descended the gangplank, catching sight of the crane that dangled his luggage and his packages, twirling high above the ship, it was without a clue as to where he really was or who he was supposed to meet.

The voyage had concluded and here he was, alone on the dock surrounded by hundreds of tourists and the people who'd come out this morning to greet them. He did not linger.

He read the directions to the hotel, which had been written by hand and attached to his accommodation details, and decided to go directly there, which was in the middle of the city, via taxi cab. He paused only briefly, before making his way, to pay the dockside workers for their help in transferring his luggage and the packages into the cab.

Once at the hotel he had tried to pay the concierge in advance for his room, but discovered that everything was in order, indefinitely. He had to assume that the Australian dollars he'd been given were simply for getting by.

In the lobby, as he waited for the porter to show him to his room, he saw and sensed immediately that the hotel was large and plush, and that the well dressed and perfectly groomed occupants conducted themselves as though they deserved to be there. Wealth and status. Feeling almost directly at odds with this, he made an immediate decision to keep to himself, to get by with room service and the radio. He made a mental note to purchase a few more novels.

The three months on the liner had not been enjoyable. At the parts of the world where the ship had docked and the passengers disembarked, he'd seen only the limited view from portside each time. Parts of the world he'd never expected to see, nor weeks before ever believed he would. But just a glimpse.

And now, it appeared, he was stuck in one of them without a clue as to where he really was or who he was supposed to meet.