Rainbow's End - Wizard (45 page)

He
really looked at her then. Edith had on a fresh dress, and looked fresh herself after a shower to get the sand out of her short curls. Proud was the first word that came to mind, Izzy thought. Proud and obviously content with who and what she was.

Edith
reached across the table and took his hand. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Greenbaum.’ She gave him a teary smile, and asked, ‘How can I ever repay you?’

‘You can start by never calling me Mr. Greenbaum again
.’ Izzy gave her a sad smile of his own, and added, I only wish our meeting was under happier circumstances.’ He shook his head. ‘So many of our young people are dying from drugs, Edith…’ asking, ‘It’s all right if I call you Edith?’

She
wiped her eyes again and blew her nose. ‘If you don’t, I will call you Mr. Greenbaum.’ They laughed and it had them feel better.

It was late-afternoon and the dining
room deserted: the only interruptions came from an over-active Arnold, who regularly crashed through the kitchen’s swing door to exasperatedly remove barely touched coffee-mugs and soft-drink glasses; replacing them with fresh steamy or frosty ones.

They both
sipped at their coffee, and then Izzy asked, ‘Are you the sole owner of EC Jewellery, Edith?’

She nodded.
Said, ‘EC as in Edith Carter.’

Izzy nodded
at her reply, and sat back in his chair. He folded one leg over the other, and Edith thought, incongruously, how well-pressed his suit-trousers were after he’d come wading out of the deeper Rainbow Pool earlier. Even his shiny shoes looked new and untouched. The molten look of his extremely expensive wristwatch’s face however, had her glad she heeded Thomas’ advice, and left her own timepiece at home.

The lanky old Traveller
stretched one arm towards the table and picked up his coffee, sipping from it again and peering at Edith over the rim of his mug. ‘Tell me about your business,’ he said then.

Edith’s
shrugged. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything,’ Izzy
replied.

*

‘Her husband died when Maggie’s mother was just four; barely older than Maggie herself is now,’ Izzy said.

They were in Orson’s new lounge
, which was big and airy and light, and everything the gloomy old one hadn’t been. The stainless-steel and glass and leather furniture reminded Izzy of those in the penthouse; and above the very large new flat-screened television, a poster-sized painting of Rose laughed at the room and everyone in it. Three other paintings took up lesser places on the walls: two of them Cezanne’s, one a Picasso.

‘They moved to a bed-sitter in the middle of Edinburgh, and she began manufacturing her first pieces
from jewellery inherited from her mother and grandmother. It must have been terribly difficult,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘To sacrifice one’s memories and sentiments for an as-yet-unknown future.’ Izzy sipped at his whiskey. ‘Also very brave. That woman has guts, Orson.’

Orson grunted
non-committedly, rubbing at his wart and daintily sipping at his wine. It was almost ten, and only his second glass.

Izzy gave him a dirty look before continuing.
‘It took her more than a year to sell her first piece,’ he said. ‘She bought second-hand jewellery from pawn-shops and through the classifieds: used up every cent she had… what was left of the salary she received at the clothing shop she worked at, as well as a small legacy left to her by the same grandmother. She says she went hungry many times, but never lost hope.

‘Her first real break came when her daughter was ten. The jewellery shop she had been working at the last three
years was part of a chain, and they offered her the post of head-designer. The new job would have meant moving to London. A lot more money… prestige, subsidised housing…’ Izzy sipped again. ‘She chose the road less-travelled, instead. Again…

‘
With a loan from the bank - against securities she didn’t have, she opened her own shop. It was in a less-affluent part of Edinburgh, but all she could afford. Fortunately for her, some patrons at her old working-place began asking for her in person, and a good friend still working there - who’s now her Managing Director by the way - told them where to find her. The rest, as they say, is history. She now has twice as many shops as the chain she worked for - bought them out recently, in fact - and had a turnover in excess of thirty million pounds last year.’ Izzy leaned back in his modern recliner. ‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is what I call a success-story.’

He watched the
broody Orson for a silent minute, and then, unable to hold back, asked, exasperatedly, ‘What is
wrong
with you, Frazier? You’re normally a taciturn old goat - I’m used to that - but tonight you’re really outdoing yourself.’ Izzy took a deep breath. ‘And you’re not drinking,’ he accused. ‘Two glasses of wine all evening; and out of
wine
-glasses, yet?’ The last, disdainfully.

Orson gave him a haughty stare. ‘Good wine has to be savoured,’ he said. ‘Like good books
, or good music, or paintings.’ His eyes went to Tessie, who lay on a new blanket, below the new television. ‘Anyway,’ he added scathingly, and she looked the other way, ‘alcohol is not good for Tessa. She’s going to have puppies.’ His wart had turned purple. ‘I knew that girl’s mongrel was trouble when I first set eyes on him in New Zealand,’ he said, bitterly.’           

36

‘No hang-over, Izzy?’

He shook his head, half shamefacedly, and muttered something about “one of Orson’s “phases”, and pregnant dogs”.

Ariana laughed. ‘So he knows,’ she said, and after a small pause,
gleefully: ‘ye gods, I would have loved to see his face when he found out.’ She giggled, and Izzy, imagining the same picture, smiled wryly.

‘I’m going back tomorrow morning,’ he said then. ‘There are some
things I have to follow up on - things I must have investigated. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, and if these…“things” pan out as I think they will, I have a proposition for you. A very interesting proposition.’

‘It doesn’t by any chance involve Maggie’s grandmother?’ Ariana asked, and Izzy was reminded - for the thousandth time - that
almost nothing on Rainbow’s End was hidden from the young goddess.

‘Yes, Ariana,’ he sighed
, and stood. ‘It involves Mrs. Carter, or Edith, as she prefers to be called.’

‘Have you spoken to Thomas?’ she asked as
Izzy was leaving, and when he raised one eyebrow, ‘I don’t monitor him, remember?’

Izzy nodded. ‘Thomas and Orson will be
coming to England in a few days-time.’

*****

Thomas gave a long-suffering sigh and looked around the room. Heaps and stacks of atlases and other map-and information books covered the floor and overflowed the shelves of the room; in one corner, racks and racks of huge, hanging maps; on the large desk - a couple of feet in front of him - the huge globe of the earth. Not as much as even a small window to look out of.

Keeping a
secret eye on Orson, who was engrossed in an ancient copy of Mad Magazine, Thomas used one finger to turn the plastic globe, which squealed loudly on its dry axis. He waited a few seconds, but there was no discernable response, and spun it again - harder. This time its screech was akin to a long fingernail being slowly drawn across the length of a blackboard… and once again.

Orson
frowned from behind his magazine, and Thomas sent him a withering look as the spinning orb went abruptly quiet, and yellow oil covered his fingers as he was about to give it another spin. The old Traveller went back to his reading, and a minute later - for the umpteenth time - gave a strangled cackle.

Thomas glared. The frequent cackles, often preceded by an explosive guffaw, and ending with a snort and a giggle, were distracting in the extreme, to say the least.

‘Orson?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Are we wizards, you and I?’

The magazine lowered a couple of inches
, revealing another frown. ‘Why do you ask me that?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘Joshi says we are.’

The magazine went down another few inches. ‘When did you see him?’

‘Last night,’ Thomas said. ‘I see him almost every night
- since I woke up, that is.’

‘Why?’ Orson
queried, folding the magazine. ‘And what do you do? Play snakes and ladders?’ Gave a snort and cackled at his own wit, but it tailed off under his grandson’s level stare.

‘He
tells me things I ought to know,’ the boy said. ‘Things about Rainbow’s End.’

‘Such as?’ Orson’s lazy eyebrow lifted.

‘Such as we’re wizards, you and I,’ was the reply.

Orson grunted and the magazine began lifting
again.

Thomas s
topped him with an exasperated - ‘Well, are we or are we not?’

‘Course we are,’ Orson said, and then, ‘What else could we be?’

Thomas shrugged, ‘I don’t know… Sorcerers, maybe? Aren’t they the same thing?’

The magazine
flopped into Orson’s lap. ‘Never!’ he gasped, aghast. ‘Sorcerers brew and boil unspeakables into smelly potions; they mutter and mumble gibberish which they call “spells”, and practice deceit and hypnotism. People fear them because they claim - most of them rightly - links with the “Dark Side”… what most’d call “Black Magic”. He stuck out his jaw and his nose in the air. ‘
We
don’t bother with that sort of nonsense,’ he sniffed. ‘It’s below us.’

‘
So they
can
do magic?’

Orson
grimaced. ‘A little, yes.’ It was said reluctantly. ‘But not like wizards,’ he hastened to add - ‘not like us.’ He pushed out his chest a little. ‘Anybody can train to be a sorcerer, Thomas, but wizards are born that way. It is a gift. A very rare, and very special gift.’ He gave another haughty sniff, and changed the subject.

‘Know that, do you?’
He waved at the open atlas on the desk.

Thomas nodded. ‘
For ages,’ he said, ‘judging by what you and Izzy claim. You
did
give me your memories, remember?’

‘Yes,’ the look in Orson’s eyes were sly, ‘but we might have missed something.’

Thomas snorted derisively, and Orson stood.

‘Let’s go outside,’
he said, ‘I’m hungry.’

*

Dinner had been cold-cuts and salad, and the two Travellers sat on the veranda, contentedly sipping from large glasses of juice. Night was falling fast, as is normal at Rainbow’s End, and they watched it happen from two deep, comfortable chairs. A light breeze wafted along the length of the veranda, and under it, some crickets started their eternal “kri-kri, kri-kri”. One of Orson’s resident owls hooted.

The old Traveller took another drink from his glass and stole a look at his grandson.
The boy was staring at the star-strewn sky, and his dejection was almost palpable. He gave it time, and another minute later, the question came.

‘Where is Desolation, Orson?’

Understanding dawned, and the shadowy planes of Orson’s face softened. ‘You’re thinking of the boy?’ he asked.

Thomas nodded. ‘Eamon, yes.’

Orson turned to the now completely darkened forest, above the tree-tops of which the white wheel of the moon was rolling slowly into the sky.

‘Desolation’s on the other side of the moon, Thomas,’ he said
, ‘and it stays there: a frigid, frozen piece of rock where the sun never shines.
Never
.’

‘Can we Travel there?’ Tentatively.

‘No.’ Orson shook his head, and then shrugged. ‘No sun - no Rainbow - no Travel,’ he said, adding, ‘It’s a good thing too. We’ve no business there.’

They were both silent for a minute
then, lost in their own thoughts and listening to the night.

‘
They can Travel during the day, can’t they - the Night Walkers?’ Thomas asked then, staring at the moon.

Ors
on nodded. ‘They can land, yes - anywhere the moon is visible. Remember when I fetched you from Broken Hill?’ Thomas nodded in turn. ‘What they can’t do,’ Orson continued, ‘is leave again. Not until night-time, when it is dark.’

‘Why not?’ Thomas frowned in the half-light
coming from inside the cottage.

‘Two reasons.’ Orson held up a finger. ‘One,’ he said, ‘they are not Travellers. And two,’ another finger joined the first, ‘the
ir Crystals only work at night - in the dark.’