Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 9

Charm 18/22

(start here)

Eaten

While it’s still far from dark outside, the light is getting that heavy late afternoon feel, like it’s pressing down on my shoulders. I’m practically sticking to the car’s fake leather seats as I take the quickest route I can remember towards the art school. Every time I see a bunch of scruffy high school kids with their blazers stuffed in their school bags and their grey school trousers hanging off their arses, shirts untucked, ties hidden, I slow down. Not one of them is my brother.

“So,” I say, not looking in the mirror to get a glimpse of Caleb, instead steeling myself to stare ahead, to scan the streets and the pavements. “This golden art.”

“What about it,” Caleb drawls. “Finally admitting to yourself that this refusal to use it is a childish tantrum that could get your killed?”

I grit my teeth and breathe in sharply through my nose. Do not rise to the bait, Irene. “Actually, I have tried to use it.”

There’s a silence, and I will myself not to twist my head back.

“Have you,” Caleb says, after we’ve turned down another two roads, the Beetle moving as slow as grazing cow. It’s not a question, too flat, too filled with anger. He doesn’t believe me.

“Yeah, seems the old pipes are clogged or something,” I say. “No golden art spurting about, as you can see.”

“You’re trying my patience,” Caleb says. “I know you don’t care what happens to me, but surely you understand what my death would mean.”

“Give it a rest, both of you,” Rain snaps from the passenger seat. “You’re like two cats, spitting and growling at each other.”

The shock of hearing Rain being all snippy—not just at me, but at his dearly beloved—makes me jerk over to look at him, and the car veers with me. Rain isn’t even looking at either of us, he’s staring out the window, his grey eyes focused. “There,” he says. “Look.”

Another motley group of school kids stare at us as I crawl past them, and I thump the steering wheel. Not him.

But between Rain’s attitude and the frustration of looking for my brother, I don’t see any point in trying to rekindle the conversation about magic. There’ll be time enough this evening, once we’re back to Zelda and she’s worked out where her Beau is hiding.

I’ve driven to just about every possible place I can think of in search of my idiot brother. I’ve tried to phone him, useless as it is. He goes through a cell-phone in a week. I think the last one survived two days before Dale lost it.

“Is that him?” Rain points to boy with familiar shaggy hair kicking his board and doing ollies on the pavement.

Caleb is sitting in the back for a change, with Rain up front by me. I know he’s only doing it because Dale’s missing, but it makes me feel a bit better anyway.

“Could be,” I say, and hit the Beetle’s hooter. It makes a sound like a high-pitched fart and the boy looks up at us. Not Dale. He pulls a zap and I flip one back at him.

“How many more hours do you plan to waste?” Caleb says. He’s been quiet all this time, but he’s irritated thanks to our earlier conversation, or nervous about the coming hours and his Grand and Final Confrontation with Evil. It’s kinda hard to tell with him.

“I need to tell my dad.” I pull the Beetle into a parking spot and rummage for my phone. Even though it’s getting late now, he’s probably still at work.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Dad?” I rub one hand on my cheek. “I can’t find him.”

He’s silent.

“Dad?”

“I’m calling the police,” he says, suddenly, decisively.

“He’s not been gone long, they’ll probably just ignore you. You know what the cops are like.”

“I have a bad feeling,” my dad says, and I swallow hard. I don’t want to tell him that I agree with him. Of course, I can hardly explain that there’s some lunatic out there who is trying to catch me, and who apparently knows where I live. A cold thought hits me. How much does Heinrich actually know about my family, and how far would he go to catch me? From the sounds of things, the bastard wouldn’t think twice about doing something like kidnapping my brother in order to draw me out.

“Okay,” I say faintly back into the phone. Something squeezes my knee, and I glance across at Rain. His hand is on my leg. Just friendly, nothing more than that, but it gives me a strength that I hadn’t realised I’d been losing. “Um, I gotta go, but Dad—call me, okay?” We say our goodbyes and I cradle the phone in my lap, not wanting to look up. Shadows are lengthening around us.

“We can’t sit here,” says Caleb. “Drive back to Zelda.” His normally brusque voice is softened a little, enough to make me look back at him. He’s still the same scowling miserable sod, but he catches my eye and nods.

I must look like a wreck if Caleb is attempting, in his own craptacular way, to be nice.

The itch is back under my skin, the flare of eczema and stress. I gun the engine and fight the traffic back to Ponte, and all the while I’m running though places Dale could be, and feeling the chill bite of fear battling with the pins and needles pricking my flesh.

By the time we’re in the elevator I’m feeling even worse. I’m really worried about Dale. My teeth are chattering in my head, and I feel itchy all over, like I’ve been rolling in grass. Caleb keeps giving me funny looks. When I start scratching at my arms hard enough to leave long red nail-streaks down the skin, he holds out his hand like a beggar.

“I should have realised, “he says. “Give it to me.”

“What?”

“Whatever it is that your art is fighting.”

The elevator jerks to a halt. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re eighteen, you should have been feeling your magic come on by now. It worried me that you hadn’t. At first I thought you were playing some foolish game just to taunt me, but now I realise you’re simply not that inventive. You have no skill at concealment, everything you think shows on your face.” He drops his hand and steps out, never taking his eyes from me as he walks. “There were signs that you had the golden art, I can feel it every time I’m near you. So what is it that’s stopping you from knowing how to shape it, how to work with it?”

Zelda is waiting for us at the door to her flat, looking this way and that down the corridor.

Great, so now I’m un-inventive, and transparent, and apparently too stupid to work out the impossible. “I don’t know how to shape it, because you won’t bloody tell me how! It’s all, just use it, like I’m supposed to just know.” I can hear my voice rising, becoming hysterical, and I can’t help it. My body is being ripped apart molecule by molecule, from the marrow out. My skin is on fire the one moment, freezing the next.

“But you are supposed to just know.” Caleb takes off his hat and chucks it on Zelda’s coffee table, then runs one hand through his coarse hair. “No one can explain to you how to use your own power, it comes to us all in different ways.”

“What’s wrong with the girl?” Zelda crosses her arms as she looks at me.

“There’s something blocking the golden art.” He points at my arms. “Her body is fighting it.”

Zelda plucks at my arm, examines the skin. I look like a wreck, my eczema coming up in raised raw patches; huge red areas that weep a thin clear fluid. “What brought it on, why is it trying to rise?” She looks up sharply. “There’s no danger in here.”

I know what brought it on. A connection that even Rain doesn’t have to me, no matter how much I might think I’m in love. Guess blood really is thicker than petrol or whatever. “M—my brother,” I say through my chattering teeth. “He’s gone missing.”

Zelda exchanges a glance with Caleb.

“What?” I say. “What are you not telling me?” I’m about ready to tear my own skin off with just my fingernails.

“How much does Heinrich know about the girl?”

Caleb shrugs. “Enough. He knew where she lived.”

They’re saying exactly what I don’t want to hear; confirming my fears. “You’re saying Heinrich has my brother?” My voice rises in a shriek; it sounds nothing like me.

“I’m not saying anything of the kind,” Caleb snaps. “It’s a possibility….”

“You bastard. Why didn’t you tell me that Heinrich would go after my family, and, and—” Someone hugs me from behind. Rain. I lean back into his arms and feel the shivers dying a little. “Oh god,” I say. The itch is worse, like thousands of pins trying to push their way out of my skin. I bend forward, feeling like I’m going to puke at any minute, and something cold slips free from under my shirt to hang in front of my face.

I feel a presence next to me, dry and papery like old leaves. Not Caleb, but Zelda.

“Oh, Hestia.” Zelda sighs. “You stupid woman.” She reaches forward and lifts the silver chain at my neck, bringing the evil eye out for the others to see. She jerks and the chain breaks.

Magic—the golden art—whatever the hell Caleb calls it, spills out of my skin, tearing through my pores. I can see it, like a slick golden sweat that shimmers as I move. It flashes brightly, then disappears. I hit the ground with a thud, hard enough that my elbow and arm are going to be bruised solid by tomorrow. Rain is dragged down with me, and we lie together on the floor in a crumpled heap. I’m panting. My skin feels like I just got the world’s worst sunburn.

“You okay?” Rain pulls me up, so close that out legs are curled together and I’m practically sitting on him. I can feel his heart hammering against mine. “Was that it?” He looks up at Caleb, although he’s till holding me tightly.

“It was.”

Zelda tosses my mother’s evil eye charm to the floor. It’s so small that it hardly makes a sound as it hits the brown shag carpet. A ring of concentric circles stares up at me. “Hestia should have known better than to tell you to wear it,” she says. “People like us can’t have these against our skin.”

“She didn’t tell me anything,” I say, and close my fingers around the broken chain. It feels cool and slippery. “She’s a little bit dead, or did you forget?” Now that the itch is gone and the magic has burst, I feel empty, light-headed. I can barely think straight and every body part feels like it’s made of hollow lead piping.

“Don’t put it on again,” she says. “You can use it to ward the place you live, but not your body.” Her frown softens. “Come. I made supper.”

Yeah, more cabbage, I can smell.

Rain helps me to my feet, and hugs me again. I almost feel like sticking my tongue out at Caleb. Almost. There are levels of childishness that even I will not stoop to. Although I do consider it seriously for about half a second.

The cabbage actually turns out to be parcels of leaves with minced meat inside. I’m starving, and cold, and eating seems to help counter-act the woozy feeling. Not that I taste much. I’m too busy worrying about Dale and pulling out my phone every two minutes in case it’s somehow ringing and I don’t hear it.

Caleb keeps staring across at me as I eat, and he has this smug, satisfied look on his face that I want to punch right off. I bow my head and ignore him. Which is actually pretty easy, since I keep feeling like I’m going to pass out into my plate. “You were supposed to tell me about wild magic,” I say softly to my plate.

There’s a moment of silence, then Caleb sighs. “I keep expecting you to know all these things because your mother was one of us,” he says. “I pieced most of it together myself, always hearing the fringes of stories.”

“But no-one told me anything.” I look up. “Just…fairy stories about monsters in the dark, and girls who could charm their dead brothers back to life.”

Caleb smiles, and it’s the most real expression I have ever seen on him. The most human. “She was telling you the truth, in her own way. There are things stranger than the little art we have. The life-force of the universe. We call it the wild magic, but that’s not what it is, not really.”

“There are other worlds than this one,” says Zelda.

“And Heinrich is trying to reach them. He wants to use all the stolen magic to push our worlds together.” Caleb shoves some cabbage around his plate. “He thinks if he can find a way through, he will have control over that force.”

“Will he?”

Caleb shrugs, and begins to chew at another mouthful.

“I need a little space to process,” I say. What I mean is, I want a cigarette and a chance to think about all this crap. To set my thoughts in order. No-one stops me from getting up from the table and heading outside. It doesn’t help, all I can do is worry about Dale, what might have happened to him, and how useless everything is.

When I come back, shivery and no less confused than when I left, Zelda is telling a story as the others eat. Her voice is the voice from my mother’s book. It’s as if I’ve stepped into the tale itself, or that Zelda is reading from a copy.

It gives me a sick feeling deep in my stomach. I can’t even blame it on the cabbage.

She’s telling Caleb the story of his magic. I stand there, frozen, listening as her voice sweeps over me like memories and dreams.

“So,” Zelda says, her eyes closed as though she’s reciting something learned as a child. “Heinrich had finally killed all the rats in Hemel, and was returning, triumphant, to the Mayor to collect his chest. All around him the village people were singing and clapping, rejoicing.”

However, while the village celebrated, the village elders were looking at their empty coffers, and they’d come to one conclusion. With Heinrich taking all their money, and the winter fast approaching, few of the people would live to see spring. They whispered among themselves, how they would have to beg mercy of the strange piper, and keep at least half the ransom he’d asked.”

When they told him this, the piper flew into a black rage and told them to keep their cursed coin, that there were better things to take. The villagers, not understanding, but grateful that he’d let them keep the money, were not expecting what came next.”

What Heinrich did, of course, was play a tune on his pipe, a tune not unlike the one that had led the rats to their death. However, this one affected only children. It was now the village children who danced through the streets of Hemel, up to the cliff where the rats had plunged down to their end.

The village people tried to stop him, but no flung stone, no blow from a weapon would touch the piper, cloaked in his magic. And so the children danced and danced and danced, until their feet were bleeding, and still they danced on, and were gone. The parents watched and wept where they fell.”

He came back to the mayor to tell him one thing: now there will be coin enough to feed the remaining. And with that he left.”

Only one child had not been taken. A crippled boy unable to run and dance like the others, and so he was left behind. The only child in a village full of hatred and old age. His name was Johannes Dunn, and as soon as he was old enough to leave Hemel he did. He travelled to distant lands, where he met his wife, and eventually settled on the white isle, where his name became Dunning.”

Caleb looks up from his closed fists. “An ancestor.”

Zelda nods. “Yes, and one who vowed that whatever became of him, that one day his family would strike down the magician Heinrich, as vengeance for the stolen children, the children that Heinrich turned into his slaves.”

Caleb has a distant look on his face. “I remember it,” he says. “That train ride. Heinrich. I remember feeling empty when we arrived in Johannesburg, and not understanding why.” He closes his eyes. “It took me a long time before I learned about magic, about what he had stolen from me. All I had was that scrap he left.” His eyes flick open and he stares at Zelda. “And you think that’s why he stole my magic? That he knew who I was?”

She taps one finger against the table, thoughtful. “You would have been a magician powerful enough to shape the world, had you not been unfortunate enough to meet Heinrich on a train when you were still a boy. But no, I think if Heinrich had known who you were, he wouldn’t have left you with even the little bit of magic that he did.” She’s staring at Caleb with a frank open look and she says nothing when Caleb leans back on his chair.

The room is silent, then: “Tell me how you plan to destroy Heinrich,” she says.

“No.”

“I must know,” Zelda says. “There is no-one who was as close to Heinrich as I was, and I can tell you if it will work or not.”

“It will work.” Caleb sounds very sure of himself. “Now, more than ever, it will work. Especially if you help us catch him by surprise.”

Next to Caleb, Rain is pushing his food around his plate, head bowed. I can tell he’s listening from the way he keeps sneaking looks at Caleb through the white-blond tangle of his hair.

Zelda’s voice fills the room. It has a cadence, a magic like my mother’s had. A singer’s voice. “Who told you Heinrich was trying to access the wild magic?”

“More than one person,” Caleb says. “Why—you don’t think he would try?”

Zelda nods, slowly. “Oh, I believe he would. He would love the idea of having all the world’s magic at his fingers, limitless and strange.” She snorts. “And only Heinrich would be so filled with hubris as to think he could wrest charm from the wild people themselves.” She folds her hands before her on the table, like she’s praying. “Caleb, for that reason alone, I will find him for you. I pray that you know what you’re doing.”

“And if I do kill him, you know you’ll get your magic back.” He grins; it’s not pretty or friendly. Something about it reminds me of the red magician’s wolf. Feral, dangerous. It’s pretty easy to picture Caleb tearing someone’s throat out, really.

“I don’t want it back,” she says.

Caleb smirks. “That’s what the Mother said, but she changed her mind in the end. We all of us want our magic back.” He flexes his long musician’s fingers and I feel the faint ripple of magic as he does. “I know what it feels like to ache. Everyday, I lose a little more of the scraps I have left. I’ve seen the looks on the faces of all those who Heinrich has stolen from. Of course you want it back.”

“No, Caleb Dunning,” she shakes her head, “I don’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There are worse aches.” Zelda stands and starts gathering the empty dishes. Rain looks up in surprise as she snatches his plate away. “I’m old, Caleb. It’s time for me to fade, to let Lilith or another take my place.”

“You’re a fool if you believe that.”

“We all have our sacrifices to make.” Zelda looks back at him from the kitchen arch. “I’ve lived my life. Fallen in love, watched myself get old and wrinkled. I’ve been spurned and cheated and lost everything. No.” She shakes her head. “Set my magic free, I don’t want it back.”

“Maybe he’s already used it,” Caleb says. “Maybe there’s nothing for you to get back.”

God, the man can be such a bitch sometimes.

Zelda doesn’t seem to care. She laughs—a loud horsey sound. “I would have felt it if he had. As would you if he’d used up all your stolen art.”

Caleb says nothing back to her, but his eyes flicker and one hand clenches on the table top, pulling the embroidered table-cloth skew.

 

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Till Wednesday!

* You can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo. *

Synopsis Hell

(this is mainly to cheer on the lovely Tallulah Habib, who is stuck in Synopsis Hell)

No one in the whole of publishing likes a synopsis. NO ONE.

Not the writers, not the agents who request them, not the editors who must force themselves to read them to see if you have a basic grasp of plot. They are awful, terrible things, and the first of you to raise your hand and say, “But Cat, I love-” is gonna get stomped so hard with a Stompy Boot of Doom you won’t be able to write another synopsis ever.

We clear?

Mmmyes.

Sadly, synopses are as necessary as they are loathsome. Editors and agents want them because while your sample pages/chapters will let them know if you can string words together and make them sound good, a synopsis lets them know if you can string related actions together and make them sound like a story.

A synopsis doesn’t and shouldn’t read like a novel, or dwell excessively on subplots and subtleties – it is the high points, the beats of your story. It’s the way you would outline the plot of that film you just watched to the poor guy at the bar who can’t escape you. It gives an overview of characters (who the reader is meant to give a shit about) and plot (what the reader is meant to give a shit about.) It is not where you show off your lyrical prose and startling use of hyperlinks. It MUST give the ending/resolution of the story. This is not a query where you are trying to pique the reader’s interest, but a complete view of the novel in brief.

So as much as you hate them, you’ll probably need one. (Some agents and editors don’t ask to see them, quite a few do, it’s best to have one ready to go.) Everyone asks for different things, so always check exactly what that particular agent or editor wants, but in general this is how I do it.

First thing is I would write a one or two sentence overview, something like, “Jim Bob the raccoon has always felt that he was born into the wrong family, but when his raccoon tribe is killed and he is rescued by a haughty Siamese, he is shocked to discover that he is actually Mercutio, the missing heir to the cat throne, and it is up to him to lead the Cat Army against a pack of rabid pup-, sorry,  weasels.”

I then scribble down a very rough line by line of what happens in each chapter.

Chapter 1 – we meet Jim Bob at his drudge job, raiding bins with his half-brother Jeb, it becomes clear that Jim-Bob is a loser, and is mocked by the other raccoons for being so odd-looking and having stupid hands that don’t work properly.

Chapter 2 – All of Jim-Bob’s family is killed when a they hide from him in an old refrigerator, knowing he can’t open the door with his useless hands.

etc.

Once I have that kind of overview, I have a better idea of what the story looks like as a whole (useful…) and I can write out a 2-5 page single spaced synopsis. I write them in direct plain sentences, in third-person present: “Once he arrives in London, Dick is upset to discover that the streets are not paved with gold.”

I usually get a writer friend to look over it and tell me what’s not working. With that roughed out, I can look at the general requirements, and edit it down or up accordingly.

While it’s not the greatest example, since I wrote it in ten minutes for my agent after she needed a short synop, it’s the only example I can really share. This is for Beastkeeper, just to give you an idea of a very rough one page synopsis. As you can see it gives only the biggest plot points. A longer synopsis would have more plot details. I should also have bolded and included the names of all the major characters. Some synopses I’ve seen give a brief character sheet in the beginning (just the main characters, frex : SARAH – a lonely young girl, about to turn thirteen; ALAN – an ageless boy/man from a magical forest who could be either a beast or a beastkeeper, etc etc.)

 

We all know the story about the vain prince who was cursed to be a beast until someone fell in love with him. We all know that someone did, and that she was beautiful. We all know they lived happily ever after.

The thing with curses is that they’re never that simple, and the thing with people…well, they’re never that simple either. Especially families, who bring with them the most twisted of all curses – love and jealousy.

SARAH has always been on the move. Her mother hates the cold and every few months her father and mother pack their bags and drag her off after the sun. Now, as her class-mates are starting to talk boys, and make those first steps into the world of teenagers, Sarah is still clinging to childhood. She’s grown up lonely and longing for magic. She doesn’t know that it’s magic her parents are running from.

Because the truth is the fairy story never ends just because someone says so. People fall out of love and new curses are laid over the old, and when Sarah’s mother walks out on their family, all the strange old magic they have tried to hide from comes rising into their mundane world. Her father begins to change into something wild and beastly, but before his transformation is complete, he takes Sarah to her grandparents – people she has never met, didn’t even know were still alive.

Deep in the forest, in a crumbling ruin of a castle, Sarah discovers that her paternal grandmother and grandfather are the original Beauty and the Beast, and that her grandmother has long ago fallen out of love with the vain prince of her youth. Now he is nothing more than a beast kept in a cage and she his sour, resentful beastkeeper. Guided by a magic white raven and a boy from the woods, Sarah begins to untangle the layers of curses affecting her family bloodlines, until she discovers that the curse has carried over to her too. The day she falls in love for the first time, Sarah begins her transformation into a beast. Believing that if she can somehow make her mother come back to her father, he will at least be saved from his own curse, she helps Alan, a boy who was once the beastkeeper of a powerful witch, to track down her mother.

Her mother has been transformed by the terms of her own curse and is now a wren, just as Sarah’s father is a beast. The cruelty of the curse states that the two can never be together again, for the beast while drawn to the bird, will always want to kill it. Alan has his own reasons for wanting to track the wren down. He wants to break another curse – the one set on the white raven of the castle, who is trapped in that form as along as her daughter lives. The white raven is the witch who first cursed the vain prince, and who was finally cursed in turn, after her own daughter fell in love with the prince’s son.

Sarah’s maternal grandmother is freed at the cost of the wren’s life, and Sarah realises that she will be trapped as a beast forever. She refuses to give in to her animal-nature, and her final act is to take her mother’s corpse to the witch’s glade where was born, and lay the corpse at her grandmother’s feet.

She understands now that the curses were driven by human jealousy and pettiness, and there is no way now to escape their web. Sarah tells her grandmother that she knows that only one sacrifice can end all the curses, and that she understands that her grandmother is not yet ready to do what needs to be done. She returns to the forest with Alan – blinded by the witch for his part in her freedom – to live out the last of her days as a beast.

The story ends (here) when her grandmother finally acknowledges that the only way for all the layers of curses to be erased, is to give up her witch-power and die. She does this, and Sarah is finally freed from her animal form.

 

You’ll notice I left out any subplots, any extra named characters. If I didn’t need to name someone, I didn’t – too many names in a synopsis is just confusing.

I gave a basic outline of events, highlighting ONLY the main ones. It helps to show what the character is going to lose if they don’t come right, what they’re fighting for. This is, after all, the heart of your story.

I gave how the story starts, what the big personal changes are for the main character, and how the story is resolved. There is a tendency to want to cram in all the cool things from your novel, and you have to resist. A 5 page synopsis is never going to have the space to show off all the complexity of a 120k novel. You have to learn to leave stuff out, to streamline. Don’t look at it as condensing your novel, because you’ll only end up feeling frustrated.

So, grit teeth and grrrrr. You can do it. I promise. And you can have the wine when it’s done and not before.

 

 

Charm 17/22

(start here)

Dale

The door slams behind me, cutting off their low voices and dampening the smell of cabbage. I sit down on the corridor floor and lean back against the wall outside Zelda’s flat. The bricks are cool on my back, and that tight feeling that’s been building in my chest loosens a little as I light up a cig. Smoke curls around my fingers, and I can almost see tiny serpents weaving in the silvers and greys. Wild magic, changing the face of the world, and waiting for someone to harness it. I can almost understand why Heinrich wants it. If all this was mine…. I flex my fingers, rippling them through the smoke. Under the ground, the world shifts, half-dreaming. Immense with power.

But I’m not Heinrich, and I don’t want to rip a hole in the word so I can get more magic I can’t control. All I want is for the people I love to be safe. To stay alive. For that alone, I need to understand how to use my own power. I snort. Power I don’t even know how to access. God. I have no idea what I’m doing.

I sniff and pinch the bridge of my nose. Damn Caleb. And Rain, for being so stupid. I dig my mother’s book out of my bag. It feels safe and familiar in my hands, and I trace my finger down the thin page, looking for my place. There, they’d just found out how much money the piper wanted.

My mother’s voice rises in my head.

#

The price the Mayor quoted might have been enough to buy the village food all through the winter, but the people thought it a fair enough amount to pay the piper. Men took their wages, women their savings, and the children turned their coins out of their pockets. They filled a large teak chest inlaid with brass and heavy as granite. The strongest of the village men carried the kist of gold through the streets of Hemel, puffing all the way, bent-backed under their load. The people of the village stopped what they were doing, peered out from the nibbled curtains and watched from the archways of doors to see the Mayor walking and smiling and triumphant ahead of the chest.

“Oh good people,” he said, in his loudest voice. “Today comes an end to all your troubles, for I have found us a ratcatcher, and he will free us from this terrible plague. By midnight, not a rat will live in Hemel.”

The crowds cheered weakly, for they were starved, and even good news does not a meal make.

The Mayor led the kist-bearers into his office, had them set the great thing down on the flagstones, and then bid them leave.

The ratcatcher, Heinrich, watched all this while he leaned against the wall and smoked a long pipe filled with finely milled tobacco. When the Mayor unlocked and opened the kist with a flourish, Heinrich drew the pipe from his wide thin lips, and blew two great puffs of smoke from his prodigious nose, and for an instant, he looked like a fire drake wreathed in billows of grey smoke.

“Well,” said the Mayor, waving his hand over the gold. “A thousand coins, as we agreed.”

Heinrich did not speak, he stooped, and ran his bony fingers through the coins, and nodded in satisfaction at the dull soft sound of gold against gold. “As soon as the Silver Prince has risen in the night sky,” said Heinrich as he straightened. “I will stand in the square, and make the rats dance.”

“Good, good,” said the Mayor. He rubbed his hands together. “The day cannot come to a close soon enough.” He shifted, lifting one foot to let a rat run under it, and slammed the lid down. He locked it quickly, and slipped the key onto a chain around his neck “for safe keeping.”

Heinrich only grunted in amusement. He left the mayor’s rooms, and made his way down to the cobbled plaza that stood before the ancient church, which had been built over another place of worship, which had been built over still another, for that is the way history goes—

“Does it?” asked young Caleb. “Why?”

“Because,” Mr Henry said as he caught all but the last threads of the boy’s magic, and began weaving them into a small tight ball, tugging to make sure the knots were tight. “All religion, all magic, is just about trying to trample down the others, and take the most for yourself.”

“It seems rather silly.”

“Oh, it is,” agreed Mr Henry. “But, as you shall see, when you grow up, adults are rather silly creatures.”

Caleb nodded, because this dove-tailed rather well with his world view of old people already. “I’m not growing up,” he said.

Mr Henry shrugged. “Well, there’s some that don’t. Mayhap you’ll be one of them, drifting from one place to another like a branch in the tide. Who can say?”

Caleb frowned, digesting this information. “Go on,” he said. “Please.” For manners had been beaten into the young master Dunning from a very early age. But that was hardly unusual back then, and indeed, the world might be a sight better off were we to go back to the practice.

Heinrich waited in the town square, one eye on the sky, and the other on the gathering crowd of rats and townspeople. When the young crescent moon finally showed his face, Heinrich smiled and lifted his pipe to his lips. A hush fell over the square as the first notes flowed sweet and clear as a mountain stream over sharp rocks.

The rats all stood upright, straight as stocks, the only movement was the twitching of their whiskers. The tune changed, and as one, all the rats turned to a partner, bowed, and linked their arms.

A slow and stately dance began. The rats bowed and twirled and exchanged partners with a courtly flourish.

Heinrich played a little faster, and the rats changed to a dance more in keeping with this new tempo. And so it went, Heinrich played faster, and wilder, and the dancers echoed his tune, little rat feet stamping the dusty cobbles. So many of them were there that they made enough noise with their stamping and leaping to drown out all conversation. The only thing that rose louder was the melody that sprang from Heinrich’s gleaming pipe.

When all the rats were leaping and dancing and to-and-fro-ing, the Mayor took the opportunity to slip away from the crowd, and secret away the extra two hundred gold pieces. He returned to the square just in time to see the piper leading the rats a merry dance through Hemel’s narrow streets, under the thatched eaves.

The crowd was following, clapping a beat for the dance, and the piper twirled and played as if his very life depended on it.

The dance left the village, and went past the orchards empty of fruit and leaves, past the bare fields where even the oat stubble had been chewed down to the very sod. They danced down the brick road, until the brick gave way to dry mud. Over hill, over dale.

Eventually the town’s people could go no further, their feet aching, their sides tight.

And still the piper played. He played the rats high up the sides of the mountain that overlooked Hemel, and the rats leapt and fell, their bodies twisting as they realised their doom.

Fur and blood plastered the rocks below the cliff, and the snap of bones and the high squeals of the dying almost drowned out the piper.

#

My cigarette has long since burned to a drooping cylinder of ash. I sigh and flick the ash away and put the butt in my key chain ashtray just as my phone rings.

Thanks to the broken screen I’ve no idea who’s calling. I wonder if I should even bother answering then again, it could be David calling to beg me to come back to work. Unlikely, but I flick the phone open anyway. “Ja?”

“Irene?” My dad always mangles my name. I don’t know how my mother put up with him. Everyone else can say I-ree-nee, but not my dad. He’s incapable of that and somehow he always makes it sound like a statement: “I, Reen.”

“What?” Then I remember I’m probably going to be begging for my room back pretty soon. “Something wrong?”

“Have you seen Dale today?”

“Uh, no? I mean, I don’t really see all that much of Dale. It’s not like we hang out. Why?”

“He had a drum lesson this afternoon. His teacher called to say he didn’t make it. When I called his school to find out if he was still there, they said he hadn’t been in class today.”

I sit up. Dale loves the drums about as much as he loves his collection of dagga plants. That is, a whole freaking lot. “Did you go check the skate park?” Much as I’m breaking the unwritten rule that you do not bust your sibling for bunking school, I’m worried. “Cause, uh, sometimes, he doesn’t quite go, um, to school, you know.”

“Irene.” He’s shuffling paper on his desk, the soft crackle blanketing his words. “You’ll have to go see if he’s there. I’m on deadline with this damn campaign. You’re not at work are you?”

Not quite. No Dad, actually I’m busy running around Joburg with some random old guy who thinks I’m going to help him kill some other random old guy.

With magic.

Oh, and did you know Mom was a magician, ’cause no-one exactly informed me of this little skeleton in the family closet.

I clear my throat. “Uh, work? No, no not today.” Damn. I close my eyes and lean my head back against the bricks, snagging my hair on the rough surface. I love my brother, but why on top of everything does he have to pull a stunt like this now? “Sure. Yeah. I’ll go look for him.”

“Thanks.” There’s a pause. I wait for my dad to work out what it is he’s supposed to say next. No need to wonder where I got my amazing social skills from. “Right. Good. You’re a good girl, Irene. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” My dad might be a daft bastard, but he’s family.

I snap the phone closed and pack my stuff back into my bag. Guess there’s no time like the present to inform His Royal Highness Caleb that we’ll be taking a little detour. Probably not too far. My brother goes to Parktown Boys, so if he skipped school, I’ve a pretty good idea of where he is. Probably smoking it up with his friends from art school.

#

The three of them look up when I come inside.

“We were wondering if we needed to send a search party after you,” Rain says. Then he notices the look on my face. “What? What happened?”

“My dad called. Dale’s kinda missing.”

“He’s probably toked one too many spliffs and fallen asleep somewhere. You know what Dale’s like.”

“He missed drum practise.”

“Oh.” Rain looks down and twists his fingers.

“Anyway,” I force some cheerfulness into my voice. “We’re just going to go check if he’s by the skate park, or near the art school, or, or something.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Caleb says. He stands, looming over us like some kind of fright night monster.

“Let the girl go,” says Zelda. “I need to pin-point where Heinrich is. You have time enough before I have him tracked.”

“There’s soup in the kitchen,” Rain says. “We really were about to come call you, so you could have some lunch.”

I eat quickly, drinking my soup down from a large mug. It’s watery and cabbagey, but it’s better than nothing.

#

“Where are you going?” Caleb snaps as Rain and I head to the door.

“I already told you—”

“Not you,” says Caleb.

Rain narrows his eyes, “I’m not leaving Irene to drive all over Joburg,” he says and it makes my heart brighten a little, that he would come with me even if it means annoying Caleb. Perhaps the bonds are weakening on their own and it’ll just take a little shove to snap them completely. It’s almost like old times, though I’m not so stupid as to think Caleb hasn’t changed Rain in some way. A good way, even if I’m not keen to admit it. Rain’s like something that’s been dragged out of its shell, only instead of curling up and dying, he’s unfolding, growing bigger. My heart jumps, and I feel strangely fearful and hopeful all at the same time. I’ll forgive Caleb a lot if he’s the reason Rain snaps out of his fragile cocoon and starts actually living.

Caleb is frowning, glaring first at me, then Rain. “I’m coming with,” he announces. “It’s safer that way.”

And I’m not going to argue. I’m not stupid enough to think that if I meet up with a Hunter alone, I’ll be much good. We’ve already seen I’m not. I’ll save taking on the demonic forces of witchcraft for when I’ve worked out my power. In fact, having Caleb along means I can ask him some questions.

I’m getting nowhere on my own, and for all my mother’s book has told me, it’s not exactly brimming with actual information I can use. Maybe there’s an instruction manual hidden among the rest of my mother’s stuff: SO YOU FOUND OUT YOU’RE A MAGICIAN! One Hundred And One Tips For The Magically Impaired.

The sounds of our feet echo through the corridor and the entrance, and everything takes on an eerie emptiness, like we’re travellers from another world going through the ruins of a dead city. Except for the occasional flurry of wild magic at the edge of my vision, everything is still. It makes me nervous. I’m itching to get into my dad’s car, fold my hands around familiar leather and listen to music made by real people who have nothing to do with Caleb’s world. We pass into the parking garage, and the echoes sound shriller and weaker. My heart goes cold. I hate this place. A few cars are parked here and there, but mostly it just feels like a ghost world

Luckily, my dad’s car is still where we left it in the parking lot, so that’s one good thing.

The bad? A rat is sitting on the bonnet. It sees us coming and leaps down.

Caleb moves faster than I believed possible, catching the rat with his bare hands. There’s a sickening snap, and he drops the limp body to the ground.

 

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Charm 16/22

(start here)

Cabbage and Tea and Love

“Wild magic is,” Rain glances at Caleb, “it’s like, everything.” He waves one hand at the scenery.

“That’s wonderfully evocative and I am now suitably enlightened. Thank you.”

“God, Irene.” He shakes his head. “It’s life, it’s what came before us.”

“I said I’d tell her,” Caleb says drily. “Once we are safe. I keep my word.”

I want to laugh at that particular lie, but Rain’s stopped saying anything and his explanation wasn’t helping anyway. “So where are we going?” I start walking back to the car. ‘Cause I really don’t want to stand here with the storm just about ready to break, and three very mangled bodies at our feet. They’re already disintegrating. At least that’s one less thing to worry about. The cops might be an incompetent bunch of tits, but I still don’t want to be on the wrong side of one.

“Ponte City,” says Caleb when we reach the Beetle.

Ponte. The eyesore of the Joburg skyline. Great. I risk a glance to see how Rain’s taking it. Not well. “It’s not exactly Hillbrow,” I lie. “Closer to Doornfontein.”

“And the difference is what, exactly?” says Rain. He’s getting all snippy; learning from his charming boyfriend. “I know where it is, Irene. I’m not a complete idiot.”

“Let me see this addy then.” There’s nothing I can say to Rain that’s going to make him feel better about this, and anyway, when it comes to making people feel better, I fail at life.

Caleb hands me the paper scrap. “Would you rather we take you back home?” he asks Rain softly.

I turn away from them and check the address. The red woman’s handwriting is spiky and childish, but the address is clear. Ponte City, for sure. Zelda Sachs. Must be one of those old Jewish ladies who bought property in Hillbrow in the seventies when the place was on the up and up, and now can’t afford to leave. I crumple the paper and stuff it in my jeans’ pocket. She’s probably a million years old and feeble as a moth. Another powerless magician for Caleb to rub in my face. I draw myself up. Maybe this one won’t be powerless, and I can explain to her exactly what Caleb’s done to my friend, and how I don’t have a cooking clue what’s going on, not really, and even though Caleb is sure I’m magical, I’m actually not, and it’s starting to get, not annoying.

It’s starting to get scary. We could have died now. Because I am not Caleb’s secret weapon. Whatever he thinks. “So,” I say, looking round at the terrible twosome. “We should….” get moving.

Caleb and Rain are standing very close, Caleb’s head is bowed over Rain’s as they talk. Rain’s hands flutter up and down, they way they always do when he’s trying to convince himself to do something.

“I’ll be in the car,” I say over my shoulder. “When this little love-fest is over, feel free to join me.” It’s like I can’t stop myself. Foot-in-mouth disease; Irene’s speciality.

I don’t have to wait long before Caleb storms over and slams open the passenger door. Rain follows him and clambers into the back. He’s red-eyed, like he’s about to cry or something.

My throat goes rough and I have to swallow several times before it feels like I can talk in anything like my normal voice. Even if I’d prefer Rain to be away from Caleb, I don’t want him crying over it. Awkward. “So,” I say. “Uh, where am I going then? Back to Lily…?”

“Ponte,” Caleb answers me. He buckles the seatbelt and stares straight ahead. I crane around to get a better look at Rain. “You sure?”

He nods.

“Sure-sure?”

“Irene.” Rain shakes his head. “Just,” he flutters his hands again, “just shut-up and drive.” He sounds tired, not bitchy.

“Alrighty then.” My attempt at light-heartedness falls flat. We aren’t too far from Hillbrow here. The flying saucer of the Hillbrow tower is just visible, and I aim for that while keeping an eye open for a familiar road. Soon the area takes on a distinctly grimy feel, and I have to slow the car to a crawl because the streets are packed with pedestrians who can’t walk on the pavements because of the street vendors. The gutters overflow with rubbish and the heat and the rotting garbage that hasn’t been picked up in weeks combine to make a stench straight out of hell’s bowels. No nice air-conditioning to blast this stink away.

Unfortunately for us, the Beetle just has air vents that blow the smell straight into the car. Joy.

We don’t exactly need to keep an eye open for rats any more. They’re everywhere. Even at its worst though, Hillbrow’s rats don’t normally just sit on the garbage in broad daylight, or steal the tomatoes straight off the vendors’ plastic plates.

The rats all still as our car comes closer to them, and they watch us with their round black eyes, bright as drops of oil. They stay frozen until we’re past them, and then they go back to their garbage-digging. There’s an evil greasy feel to the hot air blasting into the car, and I shudder.

“Heinrich,” says Caleb.

“What?”

“He’s using the rats to watch for us,” Caleb explains.

“Can he do that?” I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. Damn, the rats are actually looking straight at me. That’s just wrong on so many levels.

Caleb shrugs. “It uses a lot of magic to charm so many. He’s wasting it.” He grins suddenly. “He’s scared,” Caleb says. “We’ve killed four of his Hunters now. He didn’t expect that.”

So what? Heinrich’s not the only one who’s scared. My bag is by Caleb’s feet and I lean across quickly to grab it and toss it back toward Rain. “Cigs are in there somewhere,” I say. A peace offering. And something for him to do so he’s not sitting in the back twisting his fingers in knots and freaking out about driving into Hillbrow. “Light me one too?”

There’s the click of a lighter and a few seconds later, Rain passes me a lit cig. One hand on the steering wheel, I drag in deep, letting the smoke fill my lungs. I’m calm, I tell myself. I’m calm. I wonder how much magic Caleb has left. He seemed pretty certain that as long as I was with him we could take Heinrich on, and if he’s right, and Heinrich is scared and wasting magic, that can only be a good thing. Right?

Only one small flaw in this little plan that I can really see. I still have no clue about how I’m supposed to use the magic. The golden art, or whatever Caleb calls it. We’re going to need have to have a little chat, him and I. Pretty damn soon.

This is ridiculous. I should be at home now, painting. Not out in the middle of town with the Ancient Goth, chasing down some poor old biddy who, if the reaction of Lily and the Red Magician are anything to go by, really doesn’t want to see us.

Damn Caleb for complicating my life and for stealing my best friend.

I laugh. Looking at it that way, it’s pretty dumb. Things could be worse. Some psychotic magic thief could be trying to find me and swallow my hidden power so he can let loose the magical apocalypse or whatever. Oh wait.

“Something funny?” Caleb mutters. He’s also got a cigarette, because Rain has obviously decided that I’m a closet socialist and is handing out my stuff like there’s no tomorrow.

“Nothing.” I pull out the ancient stuck ashtray and stub out my cig. My dad is going to have a hernia when he gets this car back. “Keep an eye peeled for a street called Lily. (.”) Oh, irony. We’ve moved away from the clutter of flats and little packed shops that lead off from Louis Botha, and while it’s still pretty filthy, there are trees growing here and the streets are wider, a little less cluttered.

The huge Vodacom sign rises above us.

“Thar she blows,” I say. “Ponte City, in all her glory.”

She’s huge. A cylindrical monster 50-odd stories high, with a thousand window panes bouncing the summer sun back at us.

We pull up into the parking garage with its convenient bilingual signs pointing us to the lifts. Light washes in from the open walls, doing nothing to hide the general air of decay. A group of loitering kids pauses from an impromptu soccer game and stares at us, a single multi-eyed mass. The biggest one kicks the can they’ve been using as a ball towards the car, and it skitters over the concrete.

They’re dead-eyed old men in children’s bodies. One of them is huddled against one of the blue and white pillars, sucking from an empty plastic Sterie-Stumpie bottle. Glue. Wonderful. We’ll be lucky if we come back to a car. I click the gorilla-lock on, for what it’s worth.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go pay a visit to dear Ms Sachs, before she’s torn to pieces by some semi-human monster.”

“You’re not amusing,” Caleb says.

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

#

Inside, Ponte feels like a ghost building. I’d heard rumours that they were going to renovate and they’ve been kicking out tenants like it’s nobody’s business, but it’s still creepy. Our voices echo off the walls. The whole place is painted a god-awful shade of orange and the lobby has these bizarre orange arches overhead that make the ceiling look like a train station. I can’t believe this was the height of interior design back then. Or maybe I can. The lift looks new enough though—part of the great inner-city project boom.

According to the address the red magician gave us, Zelda Sachs is apparently on floor thirty eight. We pick our way past empty apartments; the doors of some of them are ripped off, others have their locks drilled out. Above one of these destroyed locks someone has painted a sign. Dont brek the loks. Like that was going to help.

We stop outside a door still unbroken, though there are the fading marks of scribbled graffiti, scrubbed at until they are just shadows of cocks and balls, names that have no meaning. The corridor outside her flat smells like cabbage and piss, but except for those old marks, the door to Zelda Sachs’ apartment is untouched. And, unlike the others, has its locks. Actually it has three, and I’m betting she’s got another three deadbolts and chains on the other side. I would too.

Caleb presses the buzzer, and we wait.

“Yes?” The voice isn’t quavery and old like I expected. Instead, she sounds like a cantankerous hag straight from the Caleb School of Winning Personalities. I have this sudden horrible image of myself, fifty years down the line, trying to mow kids down with my zimmer-frame. Ugh.

“Zelda Sachs?”

“Who is this?” Don’t really blame her for being suspicious. If I lived here, I’d be the same. She’s probably loading a shotgun as we speak, or whatever it is old magicians do. And we know her full name, which means we have some power over her.

“Caleb Dunning.” Ah. I wonder if this is a way magicians hold their hands up in surrender. I know your name, but it’s okay, now you know mine. Or maybe, if you have no magic left, it hardly matters.

The intercom buzzes, crackling static.

“Hello?” Caleb presses the button again. “Hello?”

After a long wait, Sachs comes back on. “How did you get this address?”

“The Wolf Maiden,” Caleb replies.

Zelda Sachs mutters something in Yiddish. I’ve lived in Norwood long enough to know what it sounds like. Don’t have a clue what she’s saying. Probably cursing us all to some terrible death.

“Come in,” she says. “And don’t you let anyone see you.”

We look around the deserted passage. It’s a narrow brick-walled corridor with a major creep-factor, but most definitely empty. “Do they all go mad eventually?” I say. “Or does the magic just pick the weirdos?”

Caleb gives me a black look as we wait for Zelda to unlock her thousand and one bolts. Metal scrapes on metal, and the door is pulled open.

Zelda Sachs is a raw-boned woman with her grey hair cut in a sharp, almost military style that makes her angular features pop out. Around her is the now-familiar smudgy look of someone who’s lost their magic. Other than that, she looks pretty normal, even if she is wearing a slacks and blouse combo that she’s probably owned since 1950. “Get in,” she hisses.

The walls in her apartment are carpeted straight from the seventies and all the bad taste contained therein. She’s tacked pictures up to hide where the shaggy carpet has been stained with mildew. They’re old sepia prints of someone I soon realise is Ms Zelda Sachs, once young and beautiful in the way that strong-boned handsome women are beautiful.

“Caleb Dunning,” she sniffs. “We heard of you. Didn’t think we’d ever meet.”

“I suppose not,” he says. “I had no intention of returning to Johannesburg.”

“So why did you?”

“One of the Egyptian magi heard Heinrich had come back here.”

“Ah.” Zelda nods. “For Hestia’s girl, of course.” She clicks her bony fingers at me. They’re knobby and warped with arthritis. “You’ve come into your power, then? Heinrich must have felt it.”

I shrug, fiddle with the strap of my bag. I hate hearing these people—people I’ve never met or heard of—talking about my mother like they knew her. Because they did.

And I didn’t.

Not really.

Against my chest, the tiny blue eye feels cold, steadying. I concentrate on that.

At my silence, Zelda grunts, an irritated noise. “Sit down, all of you. I’ve nothing but soup to offer.”

Cabbage soup, by the smell of it. Then again, all I’ve had so far today is that crappy garage-shop pie and coffee. I’d eat pretty much anything.

Zelda leads us into a lounge with old floral couches patterned with dog-roses. The smell of cabbage competes with Chanel No 5. I really hope this isn’t turning into a vision of my future. One whole wall is a window, but the curtains are drawn and the air is heavy and cloying. On one wall is one of those hamsa things—the hand with eye. It’s a dark blue ceramic, glazed shiny and it catches the faint light in the room. I step closer, ’cause I’ve always loved this kind of thing. There are tiny stylized fish on the fingers and I want to trace the designs, find a way to incorporate it into my own art.

“Sit,” Zelda commands, and I leave off staring at her décor and obediently take a seat. The others obey her with the same alacrity, so I guess there’s something to be said for the power of age.

She makes us weak rooibos tea with no milk. As far as I’m concerned rooibos tastes like dishwater with delusions of grandeur but I sip at it anyway.

“Now,” she says, and balances her little white porcelain cup on her knees. “You think you can take on Heinrich, more fool you. So what do you want me for? There’s no help I can give you. You know that much.”

Caleb, who hasn’t touched his tea, leans back and eyes her warily. “You were once one of the most powerful magi in the Southern Hemisphere, you were at the height of your power when Heinrich came back the last time,” he says. “So how did Heinrich trick your magic away?”

There’s an awkward silence. Tact is not exactly Caleb’s strong point.

“He was a very handsome man,” she says, eventually.

I groan and put down my tea. “You gave him your magic because you thought he was hot? Are you people for real?”

Caleb kicks my shin under the little coffee table. “So you knew him well?” he continues, as if I hadn’t just opened my fat mouth and shoved my foot in it. Again.

“Well enough.” Her eyes narrow.

“I just need to know if you’ll help us find him.” Caleb says. “I had heard the rumours about you and Heinrich, of course, but I’d never believed them.” He shakes his head. “Such weakness.”

“People do stupid things for love, and I won’t deny I was a fool.” I know she’s talking to Caleb, but somehow it feels like the words are meant for me too. “We are not all of us immune to the twist of a knife in the heart. Least of all you.”

I catch the quick look Caleb gives Rain before he scowls.

“I need a cig.” I stand and grab my bag. “Is there somewhere here I can smoke?” It’s not like she has a balcony.

“Outside,” Zelda says, and waves me away with her bony hands.

“Rain?” I incline my head. “You want to come join me?” I need to talk to him, find out what exactly is going on between him and Caleb so I can make my plans and work out exactly how to approach Zelda for help. A smoke break is as good an opportunity as any. Rain never turns down freebies.

“I’m just going to chill here,” he says, raising his tea cup for emphasis. Except Rain hates rooibos even more than I do.

“Fine,” I say. “Whatever.”

 

—

previous/next

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Till Wednesday!

* You can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo. *

Charm 15/22

And I’m back! Internet woes have been sorted out, and I shall quickly update the backlog of Charm posts.

Signing Stuff.

I’m not sure which strikes more terror into the heart of a writer – editor’s letters or book signings.

So far, my only experience has been with the former. I shall now be donning my Stompy Boots of Doom, and heading out into the real world where humans live, and finding out what the other is like. It’s all in the name of science.

Cavendish Exclusive Books is hosting moi at a book signing. Obviously, you want to be there because there is nothing more hilarious than a writer out of its element, staring wide-eyed with fear at shoppers. This is how you will get your kicks on Saturday the 29th of August. After which you will go have lunch and wonder if it would have been kinder to shoot me.

I’m kidding.

Charm 14/22

(start here)

The Ratcatcher

The letters shift and settle, and I let the rumble of the engine, the hot sweaty stink of the air fall away. I follow the words, fast as rats, my finger tracing their tails:

This little boy—let’s call him Caleb Dunning, for that was indeed his name—was born in a storm, two weeks before he was due to come screaming into the world. Perhaps the thunder and lightning, the infernal rocking, they frightened him early from the womb. Or perhaps, Caleb just knew that he had to arrive on that exact date and no other.

It was in September, just as the ship was coming in to the Cape of Storms, that Caleb opened eyes like slate and saw the world around him. Born on water, a space made of potential. His parents hurried him ashore, swaddled in sea-salt cloth and trailing magic like smoke. Unaware, of course, just what it was they cradled to themselves.

He lived first in a Victorian house in Green Point, a house shared by several families. His father was an engineer and decided that he would better support his family working on the gold fields of Johannesburg, so when Caleb was three years old, his father packed up his wife and his sullen dark child and bundled them onto the train.

Caleb doesn’t remember that train journey that took him from his cradle, but there are others who do.

It was the middle of a war and people were blinded to magic.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that magic couldn’t still see people.

In 1943, Caleb Dunning was pure magic, although no-one normal would have noticed.

Unfortunately for our hero, the man who was travelling in the compartment next to the Dunnings was far from normal. He was grey and old, having lived through more wars than he cared to remember, and he was going to Johannesburg to die. Because that was fitting for a man who had been alive for longer than he should have and whose magic had grown thin and dusty. He had spent years stealing and eating magic and he couldn’t even remember what it was like to use magic that was actually his. Now the last of his stolen magic was fading, and he was tired.

This old man—and we shall call him Mr Henry, because we don’t know his true name and Mr Henry is as good a name as any—could feel the tug of the magic that came from the Dunning’s compartment, and he positioned himself outside the door, that he might catch a glimpse of the powerful magician who was travelling with him. It had been a long time since he had eaten magic such as this, and the tiredness lifted from him as he plotted, and slow aching hunger woke again in his belly, reminding him of all he had been, could be again. He would have to be careful, he told himself, going head to head with a magician as powerful as the one behind the train door. He would need to use charm and trickery, pretend subservience. He knocked, and was allowed to enter.

Mr Henry was stunned when he realised that the power concentrated in the tiny cabin came not from the moustachioed and stern Mr Dunning Snr or his sallow and tired-looking wife, but from the little child who sat with his pale legs sticking straight out, and who sucked his thumb, despite his age, and who had a wild and woolly look in his eyes.

Like an obstinate sheep, Mr Henry had thought at the time. He had introduced himself as an artist and writer, which the Dunnings had rather sniffed at, and then pointed out that it was only now that he was retired that he wasted time on such fripperies. Before that, he said, he’d been a scientist; a biologist, in fact.

Which was not a lie. Magic is alive, and Mr Henry had studied it all his life.

At this, the Dunnings were mollified, and invited him to share their tea.

“Good day, young man,” Mr Henry had said to the unsmiling child. The golden art radiated off him, an aura so bright that Mr Henry could only look at him sidelong for fear of burning out his retinas.

Magic sucked at him, pulled at him, called to him.

And Mr Henry smiled.

He offered to tell the boy a tale, and the Dunnings, who were good parents, were still somewhat relieved because nothing is quite as annoying as being cooped up on a train with a small and sulky child.

So Mr Henry told Caleb Dunning a story, or rather he told it to him as best he remembered it, and he had to weave very little magic into it, because, as we all know, stories have their own magic.

Many years ago, he said, in a little town called Hemel, in Germany, there was a great invasion of rats.

#

I drop the book to pull a cigarette from my pack.

At the thump, Caleb turns and glares at me. “I thought you were looking out for rats?”

“I am.” The flame flickers, and I breathe deep. Now that I have my mother’s sight, it’s pretty clear that Caleb is far from a glowing beacon of magicness swathed in bright gold; I guess Heinrich helped himself. So Caleb thinks he can get his magic back too, and use me to do it. I wonder just how much magic he has left. Certainly, he had enough to keep himself alive when that taxi should have killed him, enough to freeze me in place when he needed to. Enough to cast a spell over my best friend.

“I thought we were all looking for rats,” I say. “Or were you two so wrapped up in each other you forgot?”

Rain shakes his head and laughs, the fingers of his one hand curled even deeper into Caleb’s dark hair. “Never mind,” he says. “Irene’s eyesight is crap anyway.”

I stick my tongue out at him, then shift my attention back to Caleb. Maybe it’s not really him, maybe this story is about some other Caleb Dunning, and this one’s got all his magic and he’s heading after Heinrich out of the goodness of his heart, to help his fellow magicians.

Oh, who am I kidding.

I need to ask anyway. “Were you—” I pause, wondering how to phrase this. “How old were you when you moved from Cape Town to Johannesburg?”

“Around three, I suspect, maybe four.” He doesn’t turn to look at me again, just watches the road. “I never mentioned that I came from Cape Town,” he says.

“Um. No, but—”

“I’m trying to drive.”

“Fine.” Whatever. I slump in my seat and relight my cig. “Rain?” I offer the pack and he takes one. He has to disentangle himself from the ageing goth in order to light his, which can only be a good thing. If Caleb is as weak as I suspect he might be, I wonder just how long he can hold that charm for anyway. As soon as I work out how to detect it, I’ll snap it.

I try not to think about how exactly Caleb’s planning on using my magic to take out his old buddy Heinrich. No point stressing about more crap than I have to. I take a deep drag, and let the smoke calm me. I lean forward so I can ash out the front window, and pick up the book again.

#

Many years ago in a little town called Hemel, in Germany, there was a great invasion of rats.

The rats were as big as terriers, and first they ate all the dogs that the townspeople sent down the rat holes, and then they ate the cats that waited in the kitchens.

They bred in dark corners and no poison the people put down seemed to make any difference to their numbers. The rats were bold as new brass, running down the street even during the day, eating the grain in the stores, the sausages hung to cure. They ate the vegetables straight out of the earth and suckled at the udders of the goats.

It didn’t take long before the townspeople were starving, and the rats too.

With all the food gone, the rats first ate the dead; the old people turned out of their houses, the poor who had no money to import expensive food from the surrounding towns. Then, when all the dead had been chewed down to their bones, and even those bones had been plundered of any scrap of marrow, the rats turned to the babies.

It was a terrible time, Mr Henry said to his wide-eyed charge, as he wove a subtle hook of enchantment into the shining skein of the boy’s golden art. A terrible time.

Starving men sat by their children’s cribs with their muskets loaded, and did what they could to fight off these rat demons. The mothers kept their brooms ready, their pans ready, their rolling pins ready. The village girls learned to shoot stones from slingshots.

The townspeople were at their wits’ end.

At just the worst moment in the history of Hemel, a man walked down the broad main street, and with the man came magic.

Now, this man was a strange fellow dressed in a coat of rags, and he wore a wide-brimmed hat that he pulled low over his eyes. At first glance, his coat was a patched affair of duns and rusts and ditch-water dirt, but when he moved, the poor starved folk of Hemel swore they saw flashes of colour shining through the filth. Red and gold and coppers, polished and gleaming in the last rays of the setting sun.

Mr Henry, having caught the tail end of the boy’s magic, began to carefully wind it between his fingers, like a woman will unspin a cocoon, gentle and deadly. The gossamer thread was reeled in to grow a ball of magic. Mr Henry had to make his movements very small, almost unnoticeable.

The boy, if he ever realised what he was, could have turned him to dust with a word. But, of course, being so small, so very very young and alone, with no witchery to guide him, Caleb Dunning hadn’t yet realised how different he was from most people. Mr. Henry kept talking, his voice pitched low, keeping the boy’s attention only on his words.

The strange man with his coat of colours walked straight to the mayor’s office, stepping over the backs of the rats as nimble as you please, and the people watched him in a hush.

“Sir Mayor,” he said to the man who had once been fat and oily as a dumpling, but whose skin now hung in grey folds on his withered frame. “I do believe that you and your fine town are experiencing something of a rat problem.”

Since the rats where everywhere, eating the papers in their files, and the last stumps of wax out of the candelabra, there wasn’t much the Mayor could do at this but nod.

“I,” and here the man flourished his ragged cloak, “have the solution.”

Hard as it was for the Mayor of Hemel to believe that this rag-tag man could be of any help, he was ready to grasp at any straw, no matter how weak and yellow. “Is that so?” he said. “And how would you go about doing this?”

The magician pulled a long golden pipe from under his cloak, and trilled a few high notes. The rats in the mayor’s office stilled. Slowly, as one, they turned to him, standing on their hind legs, their noses twitching, whiskers vibrating. “I will make them dance,” he said. “And I will dance them away.”

Now, it was very obviously magic that the strange man was using. The magician, whose name was Heinrich, although he never told the mayor that—

“Why not?” asked the child, who had removed his thumb just long enough to question.

“Because a magician never tells people his full name.”

The boy considered this, then nodded for Mr Henry to continue. Already the aura about him had begun to thin, pale, and the knot of magic in Mr Henry’s hands had grown fatter and brighter. Caleb Dunning, if he noticed this new phenomenon, said nothing of it. Perhaps he was still young enough to think it was a normal sight. Perhaps he knew that pointing out odd things to his parents, to any adults, would lead only to a leather strap across his legs. It was better to not see some things, even at such a young age Caleb Dunning had learned that.

#

Did Heinrich take all of Caleb’s magic? I pause to look up. This time I squint and concentrate, willing to see the golden halo of his magical aura.

Nothing. There’s a faint smudging to the air around him, like he’s a charcoal sketch that someone’s gone and ran their finger down, that’s all. I look down at my own hands and for a minute, I see an echo-image of myself, like there’s two of me, or I’ve drunk so much that I’m seeing double. I wave my hand in front of my eyes, and watch the flickering gold of the after-image chase my fingers.

I stop concentrating and the image fades. Caleb Dunning. It’s his full name, I know that like I know my own name, and I say it softly, rolling the syllables over my tongue like small pebbles. Does this mean I have power over him? Or that he has power over me? After all, he knows my full name, too. It seems strange, that power could rest in such a small stupid thing as knowing the right order of a bunch of sounds. That names can do that. And if we know Heinrich’s first name, does that mean we have a little power over him too—or does it have to be all his names? “Caleb Dunning,” I whisper it so softly I can’t even hear it. He doesn’t flinch or flicker, but I think that maybe the smudgy aura about him does. Or maybe I just blinked.

Caleb and Rain are so engrossed in each other and in watching the road that they don’t notice me staring.

I breathe deep, try sort through the facts I think I have. Caleb has magic, it’s true. I’ve seen him use it. But just how much does he have left? Maybe I’m important to him not because together our magic will defeat Heinrich, but because he basically has none, and I’m the one here with the power. Caleb seems to think I’m some kind of magician. Dammit, even Lily thinks so.

I swallow. Please, let me be wrong. I don’t have any idea how to use whatever magic is inside me, and if Caleb’s counting on me, well, we’re screwed. My mother, lying on her bed like a sacrifice on an altar. The memory flickers through my conscious like a fish in deep water, and I swallow hard. My mother was powerful once, that much at least I know. She knew she was a magician and she knew what she was doing. And look what it got her. I don’t even have a fucking clue about anything and I’m supposed to do better than her? Caleb’s got a shock coming his way if he thinks my magic is the answer.

Unless he’s planning on having me beat the guy to death with my mother’s book. Which is always an option, I suppose. I flick my fingers along the edge of the thin book. It could take a while.

Maybe I should just invest in a gas cannister to haul around with me.

But the story is still waiting, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance I’ll read that Caleb pulled all his magic back, that the little boy on the train knew what was going on and in the end, everyone gets what’s coming to them.

I look down at the words swimming on the page.

#

Even though the mayor didn’t want much to do with magic, he also knew that within a week the rats would turn on the few people left in Hemel and eat them alive. “How much do you want for this?” he asked, because Mayors are generally rather concerned with what this and that is going to cost them, and just how much they can skim off for themselves.

“Oh, a coin for every rat, I should think, will be more than sufficient.”

“Five hundred—”

“A thousand.”

“A thousand copper—”

“Gold.”

The mayor puffed up what little of his flabby leftover body he could. “Oh come now, my good man,” he said. “A thousand gold coins! That’s a steep price indeed.”

Heinrich only raised one bushy brow, and stared at the mayor down his long and somewhat beaky nose.

The Mayor deflated. “It will be done,” he said. “When can you start?”

“Tonight,” said Heinrich as he glanced out at the sun setting red behind the distant mountains. “I shall begin tonight.”

The pompous mayor gave Heinrich a dry piece of black bread, with the edges well-gnawed, and a cup of water, then thanked him and left to go and gather the money from the townspeople.

In the meeting of elders, the Mayor called for attention. He clapped his hands together, and the town leaders stopped from stamping their feet at the creeping rats, and flicking them with lashes and thin branches.

When all eyes, including, he noticed, the beady eyes of the rats, were on him, the mayor announced that he had found them a saviour who would get rid of every last rat and ratlet in Hemel, and all for the low price of only one thousand and two hundred pieces of gold.

The extra two hundred, he failed to point out, was to line his own coffers.

First everyone gasped in shock and then, nodding sagely, agreed that even that ridiculous sum was worth it to be free from the plague of rats. After all, one does not quibble over the cost of your life, or your child’s.

—

previous/next

—

Till Wednesday!

* You can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo. *

SSDA flows on

There is one week left to submit your story to one of Africa’s premier short fiction anthologies – Short Story Day Africa.

Along with Rachel Zadok and Nick Mulgrew, Tiah Beautement is one of the three people at SSDA , and we spoke a little about the project.

Thank you to Tiah for taking the time out to have a chat.

Rejected? Take It Personally.

I mean, if an editor rejects your story out of the thousands in the queue, and probably also the other 998, then it’s gotta be a personal vendetta, amirite?

Plus you were so nice to them on Twitter, which just goes to show that all those hundreds of faves didn’t even count because editors only buy stories and novels from their buddies and then they get together at cons and all laugh about YOU PERSONALLY while getting drunk on the money you should have made.

Actually, what you should do right now is go pen a nasty response to that form rejection letting them know exactly what you think of them and their shitty mag and the shitty stories they publish:

Or, yanno, not so much.

There are many reasons why a story or novel gets rejected. Making Light have a post outlining the many reasons novels don’t make it through the slush, and I think it’s a good place to get an idea of what’s going on behind those form responses.

Here’s a sample of the thinking, but the whole post (and comments) are well worth the read:

Manuscripts are unwieldy, but the real reason for that time ratio is that most of them are a fast reject. Herewith, the rough breakdown of manuscript characteristics, from most to least obvious rejections:

Author is functionally illiterate.
Author has submitted some variety of literature we don’t publish: poetry, religious revelation, political rant, illustrated fanfic, etc.
Author has a serious neurochemical disorder, puts all important words into capital letters, and would type out to the margins if MSWord would let him.
Author is on bad terms with the Muse of Language. Parts of speech are not what they should be. Confusion-of-motion problems inadvertently generate hideous images. Words are supplanted by their similar-sounding cousins: towed the line, deep-seeded, dire straights, nearly penultimate, incentiary, reeking havoc, hare’s breath escape, plaintiff melody, viscous/vicious, causal/casual, clamoured to her feet, a shutter went through her body, his body went ridged, empirical storm troopers, ex-patriot Englishmen, et cetera.
Author can write basic sentences, but not string them together in any way that adds up to paragraphs.
Author has a moderate neurochemical disorder and can’t tell when he or she has changed the subject. This greatly facilitates composition, but is hard on comprehension.
Author can write passable paragraphs, and has a sufficiently functional plot that readers would notice if you shuffled the chapters into a different order. However, the story and the manner of its telling are alike hackneyed, dull, and pointless.

(At this point, you have eliminated 60-75% of your submissions. Almost all the reading-and-thinking time will be spent on the remaining fraction.)

It’s nice that the author is working on his/her problems, but the process would be better served by seeing a shrink than by writing novels.
Nobody but the author is ever going to care about this dull, flaccid, underperforming book.
The book has an engaging plot. Trouble is, it’s not the author’s, and everybody’s already seen that movie/read that book/collected that comic.

(You have now eliminated 95-99% of the submissions.)

Someone could publish this book, but we don’t see why it should be us.
Author is talented, but has written the wrong book.
It’s a good book, but the house isn’t going to get behind it, so if you buy it, it’ll just get lost in the shuffle.
Buy this book.

Obviously the Tor editors here were talking about novel manuscripts, but much the same holds for short stories, and it’s up to you to be honest with yourself and decide what the real problem is. If it’s a matter of grammar and basic literacy – fix it; if it’s hackneyed plots – READ MORE, and so on.

When you get to the point where you know (and people who are not related to you have confirmed it :P) you’re good, then in an odd twist, yes, your rejections do become personal and yet they hurt less. Sometimes, you get happy about personal rejections. Sure, it wasn’t a sale, but the editor was interested enough to make suggestions, or ask to see more work. No one has time for this, so it’s always a damn good sign.

Once you reach this point you have a better understanding of market, of how the industry works, and how a good story can be the wrong fit for an editor or magazine. This is a beautiful place to reach because the anger is gone. You can simply resubmit your story to another market. And another and another, until it finds its home. Sometimes you come to a realisation that a story you thought was good is perhaps…not so much, and you shelve it. But by this time, you’re writing steadily. You always have several stories in circulation, and new one on the boil.

So take rejection personally. Rejection is a path to growth.  It’s a way to reconsider how your work looks when it reaches editors, if you need to do better research on markets, if you need to work harder on the bones and the scales, if you need beta readers who are more critical.

Don’t take rejection as an excuse to bitch online about editors or markets, or send snotty little responses. It makes you look clueless, petulant, and more trouble than it’s worth to publish you when you do write a decent story.

 

Charm 13/22

(start here)

The Book of All Things

Lily is not the only one who looks different. Outside in the sunshine, I squint at Caleb, and see the same blackness around him. It’s very faint, but it pulls at me like a vacuum. I drag my gaze off him and look around. The ointment hasn’t just opened my eyes to the magic in people, but to the power flowing through the world. Everything seems so much more real and there—the colours brighter, deeper, the life moving through the plants, the grey-black tar sluggish as a river. It reminds me of being high, but also not. There’s no way for me to clearly articulate, but there’s none of the slow-headed confusion that comes with tripping. Things are different. I see their real reality, but I’m still in control. A feral pigeon wing-claps across the sky and the iron plumage shimmers with plum and emerald highlights, iridescent auras. Even the sound of its wings is different and new, and I can see the air eddy around each stroke, as though the whole universe has slowed down just for me.

I stumble, caught out in a world that is mine and not-mine. A beautiful glorious universe that is flowing with magic. It’s like stepping into a Monet, and I hold up my hands, watching colours blur gently around them as I move my fingers through the air. “What the hell?”

“Wild magic,” says Caleb. “Different to ours. Limitless.”

“Trippy,” says Rain, wide-eyed.

“You can see it too?” I glance across at Rain, then back at Caleb, who is frowning. “Is he supposed to be able to see this?” I ask, soft enough that Rain can’t hear me. His bitch of a mother seemed to think it would be a waste, that Rain had no ability in him.

Caleb shakes his head slowly. “Not really,” he says as the lines on his brow deepen. “Only those with the golden art should be able to see what your mother hid, but I took the chance that he had some small trace of his mother’s gift.”

“So he has the—the golden art?” I stumble over the name, like saying it out loud confirms that yes, Irene, there is a Father Christmas.

Rain looks like he’s on ‘shrooms, waving his fingers in slow dancing twirls.

Caleb shakes his head. “No. But he has something.” The frown doesn’t fall away. “He probably wouldn’t have been able to see this without your mother’s power.”

I have a sudden startling memory of Mom on her knees, her skirt pulled tight around her legs as she knelt next to me and held my hand as we drew letters with a fat purple crayon. She sang songs to me, I know. Made-up songs, and she read to me from her book when I grew tired and bored. I thought it was just stories, but now I know that all those things she said, all those strange tales, were her truth. I shiver, even though it has to be thirty-eight degrees out and the tar is practically melting. I can’t run from any of it any more. The thought deflates me. I had all these ideas of pretending to help Caleb and then getting revenge on him for—for what? Taking Rain from me? I laugh. He was never mine. But here’s the truth of what even the stupid Watchers and Hunters couldn’t drum into me. My mother was magic. Lily is. And so am I. Somewhere. Somehow. I press my hand to the little charm under my top and try breathe slower. I have never felt so terrified. Even before, it was anger that drove me. The whole world has just been rolled out for me like a Persian carpet and what I’m seeing is beyond scary. I hear my breath coming in panicked gasps.

“Irene?” Rain puts his hand on my arm, the fingers just brushing my skin. “It’s amazing.” There’s wonder in his voice. “All my life I’ve wanted things to be different, to be interesting, and now they are. I don’t understand why you’re frightened.”

“Don’t you?” I shake his hand off me. “My mother died because of this.” I jab a finger toward the trees, the houses—all of it new and strange. “Your own mother went completely up the freaking wall and put you in hospital, mine died, and you think it’s amazing?”

Rain pales. And it hits me that alone out of all of us, Rain’s the one with nothing. I can see the want in his eyes.

It should have been Rain that was born with magic, not me. He would have loved it, and Lily might even have loved him. “Sorry,” I mumble. “I’m having a kak day.” Understatement of the century.

“If you’re finished?” Caleb drawls. “Perhaps you’d be so kind as to open the book.”

The Book. Everyone’s so obsessed with it and I can’t even bring myself to do more than peek at the front page for one measly second. What am I scared of finding there? The truth? “What do you need it for anyway?” I ask as I unbuckle the straps on my bag and pull out the small book, its pages tissue-fine with gilt edges. The leather feels warmly intimate under my palm, and I imagine I can feel a pulse, small and slow. I move my hand, and the feeling fades.

“I’m hoping that it will lead us to whatever bolt-hole Heinrich’s using here in your city. There are others in this city who are of the art, and the book should be able to find them.”

There’s a clasp on the cover, long since broken, and a small spur of metal catches at my finger, pricks it deep.

“Ow. Fuck.” I suck the blood drop away and peel back the cover, the leather soft under my fingers. A caress. The first page is blank except for a title. A Tale of Tails, and Other Stories. No author name is listed and I turn the page as carefully as I can so as not tear the thin paper. I’ve only opened it once since I got it back—to a picture of a man in red and yellow rags, dancing ahead of a plague of rats.

There’s a single line of writing on the next page: For the children who will follow, it says. A prickling sense of unease spider-walks up my spine, spreads into my skin.

The first story is one I know, sort of. I remember a version of it from my childhood. My mother’s voice with its faint accent reading aloud to me.

Once upon a time the world was ruled by rats.

The words rewrite themselves as I watch.

No.

Many years ago, in a little town called Hemel.

The words flicker, the blocky calligraphy dancing into new shapes. Finally they still.

Where do the children go when the rats are gone?

There are illustrations picked out along the margins. I flick through the book; more illustrations than writing, anyway. And just one story, told again and again, in every variation you can imagine. And always the same images. The rat-catcher in his gaudy robes, red and bronze and glittering, his horn to his mouth, while behind him stream the rats, then the children, then nothing. How the hell is this supposed to help us with Heinrich?

“What do you know about the Pied Piper of Hamelin?” I ask, shutting the book.

Caleb shrugs one shoulder. “Next to nothing,” he admits. “I was never one for stories. I remember being frightened by it, as a child.”

“Frightened?” The thought almost amuses me. So there’s something that the ancient one is scared of. Fairy tales, go figure.

He flushes, and I can’t tell if it’s anger or embarrassment. “I used to have nightmares,” Caleb says, “that I was that crippled child, the one he left behind. I wanted to be with the others, it felt safer.”

“Safer to go into the unknown with a madman who can control rats, than stay at home?”

“Sometimes.” His face is shuttered. “I grew out of it.”

It’s hard for me to picture Caleb as a child. He must have been an odd-looking kid, what with that nose. “Did you know you were magical when you were younger?”

“Read the damn book,” he says. “And tell me what it says.”

I flick it open again. The words are different. I recognise my mother’s looping handwriting, the way her F is a jagged mark that looks more like a T. The writing is bold, a little jumpy, like an old projection. “Follow the rats,” I read out loud. Over my shoulder, Rain is peering at the book, I can feel his breath tickling my neck.

“But it’s blank.” Rain says.

“Blast those damn magicians,” Caleb says. “They can never give you a straight and simple answer.”

“Dunno, looks simple enough to me,” I say. I close the book and shove it into my bag.

“What rats, I’d like to know.” Caleb stamps about, cutting Rain off. The dead grass rasps against his leather boots.

“There’s plenty about,” I say. “I guess you magic-types don’t read the paper or ever bother to look around you. Maybe your crystal ball is on the fritz.” I point. A black shape—hunch-backed, as big as a tom-cat—bounds through the scraggly undergrowth at the bottom of Lily’s garden. It’s darting between the bushes out onto the tarred road, towards the black rubbish bags that are waiting for collection. The bags are torn and the rubbish is strewn about the pavement and in the gutter. The strike is still on.

The rat, made bold by the low wall between us, scrambles up onto the top bag and sits with its nose twitching. After a moment, it leaps down again and scuttles down along the gutter into a storm drain. Another rat scuffles behind the bag, rustling the plastic.

Caleb turns and grimaces.

“Car or walk?” I ask.

Caleb takes another look at the rats by the garbage. “Car,” he says. The rats skitter away as we walk to the yellow Beetle. They’re running uphill, in the direction of the ridge.

We take our places in the car; me up front and alone, while Caleb and Rain sit together in the back. Yay, I’m a taxi driver!

So I do exactly what my mother’s book tells me. I follow the rats until we’re back on Louis Botha, stuck in the most god-awful traffic. There are more rats on the pavements, and now that I’m paying attention, I see they’re all headed in one direction. Straight toward the CBD. They run through the flicker of the world, like black holes burned into a painting. They are so real that they hurt to look at.

Around us the traffic seethes; everyone hooting and shouting. We keep driving, past Houghton, past Bellevue, although we don’t quite make it all the way to Hillbrow before Rain spots a pack of brown rats loping in the gutters down toward Yeoville.

I think he’s relieved actually. I’ve been watching Rain’s face in the rear-view mirror, getting whiter and whiter as we wove our way through the mess of traffic towards town. I know bad shit happened to him there. Stuff he’s never even told me. And I know whatever happened was enough to have him put away for two long and horrible years. Under the long sleeves of his jersey is a line on his left arm from elbow to wrist, still that raw pink that scars stay in the first few years.

He sighs as we turn down Bedford Road, and lets go of Caleb’s hand. A taxi screams past me, blaring, and I realise I’ve drifted over the line. Shit, Irene. Watch the road, don’t watch them. It’s safer for everybody.

“Are you trying to kill us all?” Caleb grumbles

I pull the car into a driveway. My hands are shaking on the steering wheel. “Fuck,” I say. That taxi just about took off my mirror.

“I’ll drive,” says Caleb. “Get out.”

“And do you have any idea where you’re going?”

“No. Do you?”

Point. All we’re doing is driving aimlessly around and slowing down every time we see a movement in the uncut grass on the pavements, or by the uncollected rubbish. The hawkers are trying to keep their ramshackle stalls rodent-free, and every now and again, we get a glimpse of where a rat might be when a hawker starts screaming and whacking at the junk around them. The weird real-realness is wearing off, or I’m starting to get used to it, because here, everything just looks dead-normal.

“Fine.” I unbuckle and step out the car to take Caleb’s place in the back seat. Rain shifts so that he’s sitting behind Caleb, one hand curled forward around the headrest. Caleb’s taken off his stupid hat and his thick black hair is curling over the top of the seat. Rain twists his fingers so the hair falls over them.

He’s leaned his body close to the back of Caleb’s seat, as if somehow, if he just kept pressing, he’d push through the seat and meld himself to Caleb. Rain’s never stayed with anyone for long—a night here, a night there, and then he’s off again, running as far from a committed relationship as he possibly can. I can’t figure any reason for Rain to be this deep, except for Caleb’s stupid spell. Those gold threads he wove around Rain back in the Red Room. I saw then, I know now. They were real as shit. And they must still be there, wrapping him close to Caleb. He’s a spider’s feast, trapped in the web.

I stare at Rain’s face, trying to pick up the threads of magic, see if I can break them, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. Caleb promised he’d end the binding, swore on my mother’s book, on magic.

But can I trust him? I doubt it.

“Are there others?” I ask abruptly.

Caleb twists in his seat to glare at me, before scowling and looking back to the road. “What others?” he snaps.

“Magicians, like Lily?” Like my mother. Like me. The question has been bugging me since I found out.

Caleb snorts. “Some. You could barely call them that. They’re weak and stupid, and it’s only cowardice that’s kept them alive.”

Unlike my mother. “Do you know where they are, and could they help us?”

“Shut up and look for rats,” says Caleb.

I shake my head. This is ridiculous, we’re running around on our own when we should be finding everyone who could be on our side. Then I wonder if maybe they’re all like Lily, mad and twisted and powerless. Maybe it’s better not to find out. Is that what’s going to happen to me too? Heinrich’s going to come take whatever small magic I might have and leave me all empty and bitter like her? “Give me some names?” I say, surprising myself. Maybe if I can get away from Caleb I can go to these mysterious others for help. I could find out from them how to break the charm binding Rain to Caleb. Determination hardens in my chest, weighing me down. All around me, the wild magic of the world stirs, like circles in a pond after a stone is thrown. I wonder f I could reach out and manipulate it. Drag it to me. “Caleb—do these other magicians have names?” I repeat.

He doesn’t answer me. For a moment, I wish I could wipe the last few weeks away, just backtrack to the beginning, stay in Rain’s room getting drunk on sherry, listening to Joy Division. Or better, stay home and paint. That’s what my future is supposed to be about—art. Not golden art, but a real one that smells of linseed and purity. But the world around me has shifted, turned into a kind of painting itself, the colours fluid and malleable. The whole world is art now, I guess, and I can never go back. There is no past to cling to. I frown. Maybe this is what growing up feels like. When you just accept the world is shit and try and make the best of it instead of wishing for a new world. I press back against the seat, trying to ground myself. I want to reach out and touch Rain, almost as though I can convince myself that I haven’t lost everything, that some things are still there for me like a raft on an ocean. I shift, turn to him, and pause. I might as well not eve be here.

Rain says something softly for only Caleb to hear, and Caleb replies. I might not be able to hear the words, but the tone is enough—all lovey-dovey sickening crap. Rain’s fingers are still twined in Caleb’s hair.

Dammit. I’m not watching this. Rain can play look-out for the rats. Instead I swing my bag onto my lap and I dig for my pack of cigs. My hand brushes against soft leather instead and I pull out the book. Well that’s something. I suppose I could read it. Anything to keep me from watching those two. Perhaps this time it will tell me something more useful than instructions to follow rodents all around Joburg. I flick past the dedication, to the first story.

There’s an illustration on the facing page. It’s the piper again, dancing, one foot held high in a graceful point while all around him the rats seethe. He’s playing on something that looks rather like a recorder, a bit longer and thinner though.

On the opposite page is the title of the story, done in a curly script completely different from the dense blackletter of the rest of the writing. I recognise my mother’s writing and my heart lurches. She wrote in this, and while I know it’s not a message just for me, I want so badly for there to be some sign that she meant me to know the truth. That she was killed before she got the chance.

Killed.

There. Not suicide. Lily said she set a trap. My eyes start to burn and I blink rapidly. Enough of this crap. Read, Irene. Read.

The Ratcatcher. And underneath that: Being a tale of magic and music.

I put my finger to the first line.

#

Once upon a time there lived a boy. Now, he was no ordinary boy, having been born on an Atlantic crossing while all around him the world was falling to bombs and madmen. It was a special enough time to be born, and children of war will always have a stronger grasp on the lines that bind us between life and death, but being born on water, now that was really something special.

This little boy, lets call him Caleb Dunning—

#

No. I close the book and take a deep breath.

“There,” says Rain, and points. Caleb swings the car down a side street. I have no idea where we are exactly. Caleb and Rain are paying me no attention, just talking to each other in low soft voices. After a few minutes, I flip the pages back to where my finger has held the place. As I read, my mother’s voice fills my head, thick and warm as cat’s fur, the faint burr of her accent the only roughness.

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Till Wednesday!

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