Manx

by Greg Curtis

  His family name was Smythe. And he had to think that either they had come from somewhere with a similar name, possibly Smyte to the west. Or else they had originally been smiths. The name had undoubtedly changed a little over the centuries. The “of” or the “the” had been dropped and the spelling had changed. But it gave him a place to start looking for his family history.

  So he put his pack down on a table, pulled out his place holder, and began at the beginning. First the historic ballads. They were very popular and the library had an extensive collection of them. But unfortunately he knew without even having to check the card catalogue that none of them would have the name Smythe in their title. Because every book they had was a collection of ballads. He would have to go through them all.

  So one by one he pulled down one book after another and began reading through their chapters and indexes, and their appendices if they had any, looking for anything that struck a chord. Mostly he was looking for any ballad that had the name Smyte or Smythe or even Smith in it, ar any that related to thefts.

  It was a slow business. It was lunchtime before he moved on from the section on ballads to the next section which was the history of the province of Smyte. But he did find some interesting snippets. One of the ballads had a piece about the cutpurse of Smyte who could disappear into the shadows with all a man's gold in the blink of an eye. Another talked about a wizard thief who climbed walls like a cat in the night. Peth had said his family could do that. He wasn't sure that either book was a lot of use to him, but he grabbed them anyway, along with half a dozen others. He would go through them in more detail at home.

  Afternoon didn't bring him very much success at all, save for two books on the classification of spell-casters. He was surprised that the library even had the books, but less surprised when he read through them to discover that what information they had within them didn't match at all with what he'd seen thus far. But he should have expected that he supposed. He was almost ready to give up by then.

  But before he did he went to the autobiographies and started running through the names. And there he finally had some joy. In less than an hour he found the life histories of three Smytes, all of whom claimed to have magic. He grabbed them all. Manx didn't know how accurate any of them would be – they were all between five hundred and a thousand years old and were in fact copies of the original works – but for the first time he thought he had something that connected him to his distant ancestors. To a time before all the spell-casters had been locked away. Maybe something that would actually help him understand what he was. Maybe even teach him to cast a spell – if he could actually do such a thing.

  He was actually feeling quite good by the time he was packing the books away in his bag. And then the cat showed up. Apparently she'd had enough sleep.

  “Are you done? Because I've been very patient.”

  “You've been asleep,” he accused her. “And besides, you didn't have to come. You could have stayed at home.”

  “But then you might not have come back.” She jumped up onto the table in front of him. “And I can't lose two lots of talking monkeys so quickly! The others would laugh at me!”

  “You mean you'd miss me?” It almost sounded as though that was what she was saying.

  “Of course. Who'd feed me if you weren't there?!”

  Manx wasn't completely fooled though. There was something in her voice that said she wasn't quite so heartless as she pretended to be. Maybe even something a little bit vulnerable. As if when she'd lost her family before, it had hurt her more than she'd admitted. And then when he had refused to feed her and do as she said, that had wounded her a little more.

  “Your old family, when they left you it hurt? You miss them?” He reached out and petted her, finally understanding a little of what made her purr. And it surprised him. He hadn't thought she cared about anyone but herself.

  “A bit,” she admitted. “They were good to me. They always fed me properly. And the little girl, Ella, she let me sleep in her bed.”

  “And then the hell beasts came and drove them away.” That must have hurt, Manx realised. Even someone as seemingly callous and selfish as Whitey. Hurt her enough that she had to follow him around the city just to make sure he didn't run away too.

  “I thought she liked me! But she didn't come back.”

  “I'm sure she wanted to. But she's just a little girl. Maybe she can't come back.” Now he was offering words of comfort to the cat?! Manx couldn't quite believe the words coming out of his mouth. She was a truly horrible creature. And that was even when he allowed for the fact that she was a cat! The most terrible creatures there were!

  “But you won't leave me, will you?” The cat rolled over on to her back and stared up at him with her huge eyes.

  “Shite!” It was then that Manx realised the truth. It was all an act! She was trying to manipulate him! To turn him into her obedient servant. He pulled his hand away and wondered at his own stupidity. How could he fall for that?!

  “Shite?” The cat did her best to look innocent. And she was very good at it with those big round eyes. But not good enough.

  “You think you can just bend me to your will? Get to the check out desk and be grateful if I don't leave you behind.”

  “But, I'm being nice!” She called after him as he walked away, seemingly shocked that he could even suggest doing such a thing. Then as he walked away she changed her tack and started batting at the empty air with her feet as a kitten would. “You can't leave me,” she pleaded. “I'm adorable!”

  “And I'm not a bloody doormat!” He called back. “Get your furry little arse back on the check out desk and don't even think about making me doubt whether to let you come back with me! It won't go well!” In fact why was he even thinking about it, he asked himself as he reached the check out desk and started dressing? He should just kick her out. She was nothing but trouble!

  “Yes Manx,” she muttered woefully as she hurried after him. Then she rushed past him, jumped up on to the desk, and did her best to be civil to him – which for her meant silent – and he did his best to ignore her as he dressed for the walk home. A walk that he discovered, would begin with another session with the hacker.

  He sighed and started work on the vines while the cat looked on impatiently, but did her best to be adorable and innocent. No doubt, he knew, she was already wondering when dinner was coming and when it would be the best time to leave another mess in his slippers as a protest against her mistreatment. That was the wonder of cats. It didn't matter what they did, they never remembered what they'd done wrong.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I don't see what you find so interesting about that pig!” Whitey complained as she lay stretched out on the table on the back deck. She was in one of her moods. “It's just a walking slab of bacon! And it smells!”

  “Hush you!” Manx told the cat off quietly. “I need to concentrate.”

  “It won't help,” she told him moodily. “There just isn't enough stuff between your ears to begin with!”

  “Certainly not enough to remember how to feed you tonight!” Manx replied. “Now hush! Let me work.”

  “You're no fun,” the cat moaned at him. “I miss my little Ella. She was fun. Dumb as a box of rocks, but she'd play with me! And she'd feed me too!”

  “You just had lunch a few hours ago!” he told her. “You eat any more and you'll burst! In fact have you looked in a mirror lately? You're starting to bulge!”

  “Piss pot! How dare you! Don't you have any decency?! You never say something like that to a lady!” The cat let out a disgusted sigh and then let her head fall back to the table so she could sleep. Apparently she was done with the insults for the moment.

  Manx held himself back from telling the cat that she was no lady, and turned his attention from her as she fell silent, and on to the boar.

  It was as usual rooting around in his back yard, looking for anything it could find to eat. There wasn't much he suspected. It had eaten every
thing it could find. But there wasn't a lot else around either. It and its friends had eaten everything they could find in the street – and probably the rest of the city since they were everywhere. So now it was going back over old ground in the hope that it might have missed something.

  One day, he thought, he was going to have to get a solid fence right around his property. One that would prevent wild boars from gaining access to it. The picket fence hadn't been of any use. In fact its remains were piled high with the rest of the firewood.

  But he didn't care about that just then. Or the pig's hunger. Nor even the fact that his yard looked like a construction site dug by drunken labourers. He cared about the pig's feelings towards him. For the most part it had none. It would snort and squeal in warning if he stood up, and threaten him with those razor sharp tusks if he moved towards it. But other than that it was perfectly happy ignoring him. In fact it scarcely even noticed that he was there. There were more important things in its life.

  That would change. Hopefully.

  Manx concentrated, clearing his mind of any distracting thoughts, just as Torm of Smyte's journal had said he had to. Torm had had similar problems to him from what he'd written. And it had taken him a long time to realise what was wrong. He was letting his own emotions get in the way of his magic. Just as Manx knew he was also doing. But in Manx's case the emotion that kept gripping him and ruining his control was fear.

  He'd always known that. It didn't take the wisdom of the sages to tell him that he was a quiet, even timid man. But when you lived in a ruined body in which everything hurt, when you couldn't fight or defend yourself or even run away, what else could you become but fearful?

  From the age of five he had lived with a terror of being hurt by the other kids. Of being laughed at by them. Taunted. And sometimes even bullied. That fear remained. It dominated his life. He liked to pretend he was stronger, braver. But the truth was that he hid himself away like a coward. And he had an undying need to be liked. And so whenever he felt threatened by someone, he let it control his magic. He instinctively turned his fear into a spell of desire. That way, his immediate threat became helpless against him. And the reason it was only men who were affected, as much as he hated to realise it, was simply that he wasn't afraid of women. That and he'd gone to a boarding school where there were no women.

  It was a simple emotion. Primitive. And completely useless. But now he knew how to use his gift properly. Or how to try. Though he knew from the journal that it had taken time for Torm to take control of the magic.

  It wasn't easy. The boar was big and muscular and those tusks looked dangerous. Every time he stared at them Manx felt a bolt of fear rip through him and weaken his insides, and he had to control it. Even though he knew he was safe. There was a railing between him and the boar. It didn't look very strong though. And the picket fence hadn't lasted long against it.

  Thankfully, in time he controlled it, and he started summoning a new emotion. Happiness. It wasn't easy to know joy when he was staring at a wild boar. But he worked on it. Trying to imagine the cuteness of the creature. To let it flow through him. As he might have had he been a child and the boar a mere hoglet.

  And in time the feeling came to him. After all it was just a pig, he kept telling himself. And somehow that seemed to work.

  Then, when he knew as much happiness as he could find, he looked at the boar and released the feeling at it. Straight into its little, black piggy eyes.

  A heartbeat later the boar went mad. But not in the way he would have expected one to. Instead it started dancing. That was the only way he could describe what it was doing as it cavorted around his back yard, leaping into the air like a gazelle, snorting and squealing non-stop, and spinning around in circles. Manx had never seen anything like it. Pigs and he assumed boars, just didn't do things like that!

  Had he made a mistake, he wondered? Had he chosen to overwhelm it with the wrong emotion? He'd thought happiness would be safe. After all a happy pig was a friendly pig – wasn't it? But clearly he knew nothing about pigs and their feelings. Something that became apparent as the boar started prancing like a frisky colt.

  Could pigs do that, he wondered? Because he'd never seen anything like it.

  “What the hell is wrong with that pig?” Whitey asked as she watched three hundred pounds of deadly pork, acting as though it was a new born hoglet. “What did you do monkey man?”

  “I told it, it could have you for supper!” he replied, unable to take his eyes off the beast. Especially when it gave up on the prancing and started rolling around on the grass. What little remained of the grass that was.

  “Very funny!” The cat rolled on to her stomach to stare at him and the boar. “Truly there is a village somewhere out there missing its finest idiot!”

  “And a cat who'll be missing her dinner!” he retorted. “Now go inside and stop bothering me. I need to think.”

  But what he needed to think about was whether this was a success or a failure. Because he hadn't intended this, whatever it was, to happen to the boar. The magic was far stronger than he'd expected. But at the same time, he'd taken his first step in learning to master it. And there was so much more to work on.

  Torm, like him, hadn't had anyone to teach him about his magic. But he had had some knowledge of what a Smythe could do. Or, in his time, what a Smyte could do. Because the Smytes had been as well known as any of the other spell-casters in the world. And not just as thieves. They were also capable spies, agents and assassins.

  Like him they could conceal themselves in mist. But they could also use shadow to their advantage, wrapping themselves up in it, and they could see through it. They could climb vertical walls without a rope. Extend an area of silence around them. Unlock any door, find their way through any maze, and confuse any guard. If there was a furtive magic out there, they were masters of it. Which made him, when he thought about it, a complete failure. Actually he was worse than that. Smythe's were also the only family of spell-casters whose magic did not show itself in their physical form. They could pass for anyone in the street. But thanks to his scars he stood out anyway.

  Being a Smythe – or a Smyte – was almost a licence to steal. Unfortunately he had no need or desire to steal anything.

  But there was one other thing he read in the journal of his forebear. Smythes for the most part weren't thieves. Thieving was considered the lowest form of their craft. Most of them, like Torm, sought out higher stations in life. Stations like the spy masters of the various noble houses. Maybe that was why the spell-casters didn't like them. They were often the ones being spied upon.

  The boar distracted him just then as it let out an entirely different set of oinks and squeals, and for a moment Manx thought that something had happened to it. Until he realised the way the boar was rubbing itself against the torn up dirt while its little piggy eyes were fixed on a point somewhere far in the distance, and understood. The animal was happy in every way possible!

  “Oh shite!” He groaned quietly, then turned away. There were some things he just didn't want to see.

  Fortunately it didn't take long. Twenty seconds later the boar let out an ecstatic squeal and then got up on its feet and looked around. It looked more than a little pleased with itself, Manx thought. But then maybe it should – considering that it had just despoiled the dirt! Then it shook its head and started trotting away, still looking somewhat smug and unsteady on its feet, heading for his neighbour's garden.

  Maybe he'd overdone the magic, Manx thought as he watched the boar trot out of sight. Put too much effort into it. Or maybe pigs were simply especially easy to control that way.

  “Congratulations,” Whitey told him sarcastically. “You've turned a normal pig into a lecherous one. No sow is safe! You must be very proud!”

  “I thought you were going inside!” he snapped back.

  “And I thought you were going to feed me! Maybe start work on my fur – it's very matted and dusty. You haven't been doing your job very
well lately. I mean just what sort of a servant are you?”

  “The type who could have you dancing in the streets, right in front of the nearest wolf pack!”

  “Huh!” she snorted at him apparently completely unconcerned. “Don't you know anything? I'm a cat. None of your monkey magic tricks will work on me!”

  Was that true, Manx wondered? Or was she just making up stories to make herself feel good? He didn't know. But he hadn't read anything in any of the autobiographies he'd stolen from the library, about Smythe's controlling cats. They could speak to them, but that was the extent of their magic with cats as far as he knew. In fact he thought it was the extent of anyone's magic when it came to cats. The druids didn't command them either. Neither did the shamans. Cat's were just too self involved he suspected.