The Children's Crusade

The Books of Magic: An Introduction

Prologue

The year was 1212. The fourth crusade had come to…

Chapter One

I wish I could tell Molly all of what's going…

Chapter Two

A Boy with grimy long blond hair stood beside a…

Chapter Three

Tim stared, trying to grasp the implications of what he…

Chapter Four

Marya cradled the Ballerina statue in her arms as she…

Chapter Five

Tim stood up and looked around. There were more people…

Chapter Six

Tim had left the playground and the strange girl with…

Chapter Seven

Daniel leaped from his raft to the riverbank. He had…

Chapter Eight

Tim gazed around at the extraordinary place he found himself.

Chapter Nine

“They'll be sorry,” Junkin Buckley muttered as he crashed through…

Chapter Ten

Tim panted hard, trying to breathe through Oliver's suffocating clutches.

Chapter Eleven

Tim sat in the corner of the clubhouse. How did…

Chapter Twelve

If that's a mirror, what was it reflecting about me?

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

W
HEN I WAS STILL
a teenager, only a few years older than Tim Hunter is in the book you are holding, I decided it was time to write my first novel. It was to be called
Wild Magic
, and it was to be set in a minor British Public School (which is to say, a private school), like the ones from which I had so recently escaped, only a minor British Public School that taught magic. It had a young hero named Richard Grenville, and a pair of wonderful villains who called themselves Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. It was going to be a mixture of Ursula K. Le Guin's
A Wizard of Earthsea
and T. H. White's
The Sword in the Stone
, and, well, me, I suppose. That was the plan. It seemed to me that learning about magic was the perfect story, and I was sure I could really write convincingly about school.

I wrote about five pages of the book before I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was
doing, and I stopped. (Later, I learned that most books are actually written by people who have no idea what they are doing, but go on to finish writing the books anyway. I wish I'd known that then.)

Years passed. I got married, and had children of my own, and learned how to finish writing the things I'd started.

Then one day in 1988, the telephone rang.

It was an editor in America named Karen Berger. I had recently started writing a monthly comic called
The Sandman
, which Karen was editing, although no issues had yet been published. Karen had noticed that I combined a sort of trainspotterish knowledge of minor and arcane DC Comics characters with a bizarre facility for organizing them into something more or less coherent. And also, she had an idea.

“Would you write a comic,” she asked, “that would be a history of magic in the DC Comics universe, covering the past and the present and the future? Sort of a Who's Who, but with a story? We could call it
The Books of Magic
.”

I said, “No, thank you.” I pointed out to her how silly an idea it was—a Who's Who and a history and a travel guide that was also a story. “Quite a ridiculous idea,” I said, and she apologized for having suggested it.

In bed that night I hovered at the edge of sleep, musing about Karen's call, and what a ridiculous idea it was. I mean…a story that would go from the beginning of time…to the end of time…and have someone meet all these strange people…and learn all about magic….

Perhaps it wasn't so ridiculous….

And then I sighed, certain that if I let myself sleep it would all be gone in the morning. I climbed out of bed and crept through the house back to my office, trying not to wake anyone in my hurry to start scribbling down ideas.

A boy. Yes. There had to be a boy. Someone smart and funny, something of an outsider, who would learn that he had the potential to be the greatest magician the world had ever seen—more powerful than Merlin. And four guides, to take him through the past, the present, through other worlds, through the future, serving the same function as the ghosts who accompany Ebenezer Scrooge through Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol.

I thought for a moment about calling him Richard Grenville, after the hero of my book-I'd-never-written, but that seemed a rather too heroic name (the original Sir Richard Grenville was a seacaptain, adventurer, and explorer, after all). So I called him Tim, possibly because the Monty
Python team had shown that Tim was an unlikely sort of name for an enchanter, or with faint memories of the hero of Margaret Storey's magical children's novel,
Timothy and Two Witches
. I thought perhaps his last name should be Seekings, and it was, in the first outline I sent to Karen—a faint tribute to John Masefield's haunting tale of magic and smugglers,
The Midnight Folk
. But Karen felt this was a bit literal, so he became, in one stroke of the pen, Tim Hunter.

And as Tim Hunter he sat up, blinked, wiped his glasses on his T-shirt, and set off into the world.

(I never actually got to use the minor British Public School that taught only magic in a story, and I suppose now I never will. But I was very pleased when Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar finally showed up in a story about life under London, called
Neverwhere
.)

John Bolton, the first artist to draw Tim, had a son named James who was just the right age and he became John's model for Tim, tousle-haired and bespectacled. And in 1990 the first four volumes of comics that became the first
Books of Magic
graphic novel were published.

Soon enough, it seemed, Tim had a monthly series of comics chronicling his adventures and misadventures, and the slow learning process he
was to undergo, as initially chronicled by author John Ney Reiber, who gave Tim a number of things—most importantly, Molly.

In this new series of novels-without-pictures, Carla Jablonski has set herself a challenging task: not only adapting Tim's stories, but also telling new ones, and through it all illuminating the saga of a young man who might just grow up to be the most powerful magician in the world. If, of course, he manages to live that long….

Neil Gaiman
May 2002

T
HE YEAR WAS 1212.
The fourth crusade had come to a bloody end. The result had been every bit as successful as the previous three, which is to say it had been a complete and utter failure. For over a hundred years, armies had marched on the holy city, but Jerusalem was still in the hands of the Saracens.

Then a man in the garb of a holy monk rose up among the people of France and Germany. He preached a dark gospel to them all.

“Why have all the crusades failed?” he demanded. “Even with the might and love and power of God on our side, why do our armies always fall to the heathens? Why?”

His dark eyes flashed at the stunned and silent crowd. “Because we are not pure!” he answered for them. His voice thundered with the timbre of the righteous. “Because our soldiers are already soiled and stained with sin. How can we sinners win for ourselves the Holy Land?” He paused, letting the sinners
before him contemplate the question. “How? I tell you how! We must raise an army of innocents. An army of children. And when they reach Jerusalem, with God and innocence on their side, our victory shall be assured. This will be the greatest of all of the holy wars. This will be the Children's Crusade!”

The crowd murmured and mumbled and slowly dispersed. He had held them enthralled until he pronounced his solution; after that they dismissed him. But they spoke of him and his mad plan.

The words of the monk were transmitted across Europe. Adults scoffed, but the children heard—and believed. Throughout the continent children huddled together, whispering, planning, thinking, yearning. They flocked to the crusade. Some left their parents and their comfortable homes. Others left alleys, farms, and forests.

Over fifty thousand boys and girls traveled to Marseilles, where one hundred ships waited for them. None of the children knew where Jerusalem was, nor what would happen when they got there, but their faith sustained them. The man dressed as the monk stood at the docks and watched the children board the ships. And he smiled.

The ships set sail in January 1213. Over the next few months, children continued to arrive in Marseilles, hoping to join the crusade. But once those one hundred ships had set sail, none were to follow.
The late arrivals wept at the shore, heartbroken that they could not be part of the army of God.

They were the lucky ones.

A great storm came up and destroyed ninety-eight of the hundred ships. Forty-nine thousand children drowned that night. It could be argued that they, too, were the lucky ones. For the hundred ships were not bound for Jerusalem but for the port of Anfa in Morocco. And the children were not to be the champions of a holy war but chattel in a thriving slave trade.

The remaining two ships arrived in Morocco and were met by a smiling man who was no longer dressed as a monk. Eight hundred children (two hundred had died during passage) were unloaded and sold in the port marketplace. Word of the children's fate slowly trickled back to Europe. The identity of the monk who began the affair was never discovered.

Fifty thousand children departed for the crusade. None of them ever returned home.

 

Aiken Drum and his sister, Mwyfany, marched across the burning sands. They had survived the storms, but they were now in a strange land. They had traveled so far for so long; Aiken could no longer remember how long. First there had been the excitement of joining the Crusade. They were to do great things! They were going to
become important, a part of something so much larger than themselves. This excitement and purpose propelled them to Marseilles, and their faith was what sustained them once on board the ship.

Aiken and his sister knew no fear at first. And even as the great ship lurched and rolled, even as they shivered together, imagining the horrors that the war they were about to join might bring, they remained brave, for they knew they were on the side of all that was good and right and true. Their God would protect them. After all, it was for Him and His glory that they had undertaken this great journey. If their treatment by the crew was rough, or indifferent at best, the eager children thought nothing of it. Taking care of the ship was far more important than taking care of them, they reasoned.

That was before the others drowned. And before their own arrival in Morocco.

The sun parched Aiken's throat. His lips were cracked, and his skin was tight and burned. He glanced down the line, where his sister stumbled, dragged along by the larger children in front of her. His sister was worse off than he. She was such a little thing, and they'd had nothing to eat for such a long time. He saw a shadow in the sand and forced himself to face forward again, avoiding another crack of the whip.

They had been sold, like the rest of the remaining survivors of the voyage, in the clamor of the marketplace. Mwyfany had cowered against him, frightened by the words shouted at them in strange languages, the pungent aromas, and peculiar wares. At first, Aiken counted himself lucky that he and Mwyfany had not been separated. But now he wondered if she would have been better off sold to a different master. Aiken had no idea where they were going, and he wasn't sure if they would survive getting there. Maybe someone else would have put her to work in a kitchen or a laundry. Too late now.

How long would this forced march go on?
he wondered again and again as the sand scraped the bottom of his feet and the sun made his eyes burn.

The journey seemed endless. The nights were bitter cold, and the limited amount of drinking water was foul. And, yet, none of the thirteen children trudging across the desert turned their burned and peeling faces from their faith. They still believed in miracles.

“Aiken!” Mwyfany called.

Aiken twisted to see his sister, the ropes chafing at his wrists. She had fallen and was struggling to stand up. Her efforts were dragging down the children around her. The captors released her from the ropes that tied her to the
others. She still could not stand. The captors cracked a whip to keep the line moving. They left her where she was, digging at the sand, trying to get up.

“No!” Aiken cried. He dug in his heels and stopped. One of the men whipped him, and for good measure whipped the boy in front of him and the girl behind, making sure they kept picking up their feet.

“Mwyfany!” Aiken cried. “Mwyfany!”

The stinging whip, the searing sand, and his own weakened body betrayed him. All conspired to keep him from stopping for her, from fighting. He could not even say a prayer—or good-bye.

Her voice was so faint, like the patter of autumn leaves drifting across the ground. Aiken felt like he would murder their captors, were it not for the ropes that tied him to his fellow child slaves.

The tears he cried for his sister trickled down his dirty cheeks, but he made no sound. His body shuddered as he struggled to keep the racking sobs from exploding out of him.

He felt a soft touch on his back, and his head whipped around. Gazing into the dark eyes of the girl behind him, Aiken saw sympathy and sorrow. She touched him again, letting him know she understood his pain and then jerked her head,
indicating he should look forward again or face the whip.

On and on. On and on. They traveled across the desert and then by water, then across a forest. Late one starless night, they came to a city and were led through dark streets into a huge building. Once inside, they were pushed down into a cellar and were left there in the dark.

There were twelve of them now: twelve exhausted, filthy, frightened, starving children. None was over the age of fourteen.

Slowly, they edged their way into understanding one another—a few words of French, English, Italian, or Spanish here and there. Some of the boys spoke a little Latin. Eventually, with this strange amalgam of languages they created a new one of their own design. They whispered together, offering comfort, and wondered about their fate.

Aiken learned that the dark-eyed girl was named Yolande and that she had come from Spain with her sister. She didn't tell him why she was alone now; she didn't have to. Her braids were matted, and her face was thin and haggard from the journey. He guessed her to be about ten years old—just midway between his age and Mwyfany's—but their ordeal had given her the look of a wizened old creature. He supposed he must look far older than his own fourteen years.

It was impossible to tell what was day and what was night in the pit. From time to time the trapdoor opened and someone threw down rotten meat or spoiled fruit. Water was lowered in a bucket once a day. And as time passed, the smell in the pit grew worse and worse. They lived in the dark, and never knew how much time was passing.

Then one day some men came down and took Yolande away.

Aiken sat in the pit, his back against the slimy wall, and listened with the others. Yolande's screams sent chills along his spine. And then came sudden silence, which was even worse. The children looked at one another in the little bit of light that made its way into the cellar, acknowledging with growing horror that they now knew their futures.

Somehow, maybe in response to his terror, Aiken fell asleep. He hadn't even begun to dream when he awoke with a start. Yolande stood before him, speaking in his own language, though she had never learned more than a few words of it. “There is a way out,” she told him. “There is a place to go, where you will always be safe.” And then she showed him how.

He blinked, and she was gone. He peered into the darkness and saw shining wide-awake eyes
all around him. Yolande had appeared to them all and had spoken to each in his native tongue.

“A gate,” she had promised them. And now they knew how to open it.

“We'll do it now,” Aiken said in the language they had created. Nods went around the circle.

“We should have a leader,” someone said.

How to choose? This was not a time for making speeches or taking votes. The simplest methods are always the best. Around the circle they went, playing rock, paper, scissor, eliminating a player with each turn. Paper covers rock; scissor cuts paper, rock crushes scissor. Finally it came down to Aiken and the boy named Kerwyn. He was the oldest, a little older than Aiken.

Aiken looked into the tall boy's eyes and knew his own mind. He did not want to win the round. He was too afraid and too weary to be a leader. First his sister, then Yolande. He had lost too much to be responsible for the safety of others. On a hunch, behind his back, he formed his fingers into the scissor shape.

“One, two, three, shoot,” someone called out, and the two boys held out their hands. Aiken displayed his scissor.

Kerwyn's hand was balled into a fist: He had chosen rock. Kerwyn was the leader.

They settled into a circle, and Kerwyn took
his knife and cut each child's finger. They used this blood to draw the special pattern Yolande had described on the floor. Sometimes Kerwyn had to cut the children more than once in order to have enough blood. Creating this door to freedom had its cost. They were the first; they had to give of themselves to break through. And the ritual bound them together as blood brothers and sisters.

Finally, they were ready. Kerwyn was the first to dance the pattern. The hopscotch grid glowed crimson red—and he vanished! It had worked!

Aiken thought of his sister. If only…He shook his head. It was too late now for wishing. One by one, the children hopped the pattern and disappeared. Aiken approached the hopscotch grid. He took a deep breath and jumped…

 

…into Free Country. Where nothing could ever hurt them again.