The Grimoire of Kensington Market

by Lauren B. Davis

  CHAPTER TWO

  TWO WEEKS LATER, IN THE EARLY MORNING, when Maggie let Badger out in the back garden, something looked off. The sky was clear. Still, it looked too dark. The sun had risen; she’d seen it from the bedroom window. She looked over her shoulder at the clock on the kitchen wall. Yes, just after eight. True, the sun rose late this time of year, but it was up. So why was the day so dark? Badger sniffed here and there, staring at the top of the wall as though at an invisible squirrel. The shadows were long and fell in the wrong direction. Evening shadows, not morning. She shivered. Just a funny trick of the light, surely. “Hurry up, Badger.” She hugged herself and stepped back into the kitchen.

  By ten o’clock, Maggie sat at her desk, perusing a collection of folk tales from India. Just then she noticed a small red flame hovering over a book. Oh, no, she thought and rushed over to see what it was. The light was brightening, about to burn out, in a moment it would be gone, as would the book. Even now it was becoming indistinct, fading, the writing on the spine was barely visible. The Stubborn Season by … but Maggie was too late. The tiniest puff and the book was gone. Forgotten. Lost. The bookshelf contracted as though the story had never been. She preferred not to notice when a book disappeared. They disappeared all the time, of course, but if she didn’t look, if she didn’t know, then she could avoid the sharp cramp of sorrow in her stomach. Still, there was something almost holy about bearing witness to such a death even if one couldn’t help, wasn’t there? What happened to a story never told again? All she could think of was void.

  The bell over the door chimed. Badger’s head came up and he rose to his feet from his bed by the fire. Someone sneezed, twice.

  “Excuse me … is anyone here?” A child’s voice.

  “Hello?” Another sneeze. “Look at the dust! Hello? I got a message for someone named Maggie?”

  There were few people who would send her messages; she had no friends save for Mr. Strundale and Alvin. Her parents were long dead. The store received no flyers and no bills, since apparently the mailman wasn’t intended to find the place.

  “Hello?” The child sounded a little frightened. “Anybody?”

  Maggie sighed. “Come on, then. Back here. Badger, sit.”

  A boy’s thin face peered around a bookshelf. He was perhaps ten years old, wearing a too-large red plaid jacket and droopy camouflage cargo pants. Black hair stuck out in an impressive number of directions.

  “You sure have a lot of books,” he said.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” She wandered back to the desk, the boy following, and sat.

  “Does your dog bite?”

  “Badger’s more his own dog than mine, but I’ve never known him to bite, have I, Badger?” Badger’s tail thumped on the floor. The boy looked dubious. “Did you say you had a message?”

  “Right.” The boy held out a pale blue envelope. His fingernails were black rimmed.

  “Do you work in the coal mines when not delivering messages?” Maggie regarded the envelope with suspicion. She refused to have a cellphone because having one meant people were likely to call you and she didn’t want people calling her, not even Alvin. She didn’t even have a land line. Alvin didn’t seem to care and popped in when he wanted to see her. Kyle, her brother, told her he thought she was nuts, hiding away from the world, but what had the world ever done for her? Might be from Alvin, or Kyle, she supposed. She hoped it wasn’t from Srebrenka or any of her acquaintances from her time in the Forest.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  The boy scratched his head just above his ear. “Just some guy.” He waggled the blue envelope. “You gonna take it?”

  She wasn’t sure why, but she felt obliged, if only to reassure herself it was nothing to worry about, probably not even meant for her. But the boy was here, and no one came to the Grimoire unless they were meant to. “I’ll take it.” Odd, it was heavier than it looked. Sure enough, there was her name and address, written on the envelope in silver ink. Silver? Her heart fluttered. Her fingers tingled. She tore open the paper. In the centre of a small piece of blue paper were a few words written in a squiggly silver script.

  Follow me

  No signature, not even a period at the end of the short sentence. She turned the note over. Nothing. She looked at the handwriting. “I don’t understand. Am I supposed to follow you?”

  He frowned. “I doubt it. Maybe.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “The Forest?”

  He shrugged. Maggie opened the desk drawer. She reached into a wooden box and pulled out a ten-dollar bill that she dangled in front of the boy. His eyes narrowed. “I’ll give you another if you promise not to deliver more messages.”

  “I don’t make promises. But I’d rather you gimme a book.”

  “Really?”

  He glared. “What, you think I can’t read?”

  “What kind of book?”

  “I dunno, like an adventure story or something.”

  “Have you read Peter Pan?”

  “Is it any good?”

  “It’s about a boy who never grows up and battles a pirate who has a hook instead of a hand.”

  “I dunno. What’s so good about never growing up?”

  “Point. But he can also fly, and he’s leader of the Lost Boys.”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  She got him the book. A nice edition, with full-colour illustrations.

  “Thanks.” He tucked the book inside his coat.

  He was skinny as an eel. She gave him the ten-dollar bill as well. He hurried out as though afraid she’d change her mind. Poor kid. It occurred to her he might work for Srebrenka. Alarming thought. She picked up her tea. Silver ink? It almost looked like the silver swirls Pipers developed on their skin as the addiction grew. She’d developed just a few traces along her abdomen and chest, the kind easily covered with clothing, although they’d faded away after six months or so of being clean.

  She snorted. Follow the boy back to the Forest? Not likely. But if she wasn’t supposed to, then why had the boy been admitted to the store? Well, she didn’t care. She wasn’t going. She scratched Badger behind the ear and went back to her book.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING AS BADGER AND MAGGIE RETURNED from their walk, Maggie noticed the boy from the day before pacing up and down the street, looking decidedly perplexed.

  “Are you back?” Maggie opened the door of the Grimoire. Given the shop’s knack for being inconspicuous, she never needed to lock it. “Tell me you’re not looking for me.”

  “Did you change something about the place? It looked different yesterday.”

  “I don’t believe anything’s changed here in a very long time,” said Maggie as she stepped inside.

  Although it wasn’t quite true that nothing ever changed, was it? The darkness she’d noticed in the garden yesterday had remained all day, and today it seemed even darker still. On top of that, the garden looked smaller. Impossible, of course. It was just a sense she had, of the stone walls being kind of … compacted. Badger trotted into the maze of bookshelves, heading for his nest of blankets near the fireplace by Maggie’s desk.

  The boy followed Maggie inside and when he closed the door behind him the street noises immediately quieted. He pulled a blue envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Got another one for you.”

  He put the envelope in her outstretched palm. More silver ink.

  “Look, who’s giving you these? Do you know Srebrenka? Is this from her?”

  The boy snorted. “I wouldn’t do nothing for her.” Then he looked a little uncertain. “That who you think it’s from? Look, some guy gives them to somebody, who gives it to somebody else, who passes it to someone, who gives it to a kid I know, and he gives it to another kid I know, until i
t gets to me. I’m like a boss, kind of, to some around there, and they know to bring things to me. I know my way around. Thought there might be some cash in delivering it, is all.”

  She reached into the inner pocket of her black peacoat and pulled out some bills. She handed them to the boy without counting.

  He looked at the bills and grinned. “This is turning into a pretty good gig. I’m your delivery guy if you want, okay? Don’t matter how the streets are all funny.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Would I have asked?”

  “Everyone’s talking about it. Shifting buildings and shrinking streets … from the Forest, they say.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nobody knows what’s up, right? But something is. I got to go.” He gave her a quick salute and dashed away.

  A few minutes later Maggie sat at her desk, still wearing her coat, staring at the envelope. She took a deep breath and tore the paper.

  I need you. Follow me

  She cursed and slammed the top of the desk with her palm. Badger barked. “Sorry, boy, sorry.” Maggie turned to the fireplace, took a long match from the little brass container by the hearth, lit the match and held the flame to the page. When it caught, she tossed it into the ashes, where it lay for a moment, glowing and backlit, the silver going black, until the paper browned, curled and then burst into flames.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE NEXT NIGHT A BITTERLY COLD WIND worried the corners of the house and rattled the windows. Maggie could almost imagine it as an elemental being, a malicious spirit. It snuck under the door and was strong enough to riffle the thin mat. For a moment she imagined this might be the spirit responsible for the compacting of her garden and was thankful whatever magic held the Grimoire together seemed strong enough to withstand it.

  She carried a tureen of chicken stew to the table. The steam rose, fragrant with rosemary, onions and black olives. She placed it next to the bowl of green salad. Badger sat by her chair, his ears cocked, his mouth open. “You’ve had yours. Lie down. Go on, now.” The dog, grumbling a little, slunk to his bed by the stove.

  Alvin sat at the table, slicing the crusty bread. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his heavy grey sweater and Maggie thought his forearms were quite beautiful, as she did his strong and long-fingered hands. Even though they were calloused from the hard work on the boat, there was something elegant about them, just as there was something well worn about his big slab of a face, the result of time spent in sun and wind. Deep creases around the eyes and mouth. Skin not coarse, but a bit leathery. The thick hair that always looked wind-ruffled and was bleached from the sun.

  “That smells good.” His knee bumped the table leg and the plates shook. Alvin Mustby was a big man, with long legs and big feet and big hands, and he always seemed to be bumping into things. “I’m going to bring you chicken every week if you promise to cook like this.” He often did that, popping round with a bag of groceries. He was the sort of man who could be counted on for such practical things as chicken and salad and bread and so forth. She did not expect roses or perfume, nor did she crave them.

  “Is this your way of inviting yourself to dinners?” Maggie poured tea from the squat brown pot into their mugs.

  “Well, it’s only fair the hunter’s fed, isn’t it?”

  “Stopping off at the grocery store is hardly the same as tracking a deer through the winter woods, now is it.”

  “You’ve never had to contend with the wilds of Whole Foods.” He spooned the stew into their bowls. “What’s been going on here?”

  She considered telling him about the letters but decided against it. She had almost convinced herself it was a bad joke. “There’s something strange about the garden. Sounds mad, but it looks smaller, and, well, darker.

  Alvin forked a large, dripping chunk of meat into his mouth and made appreciative noises, then got up and peered out the window to the garden. “Hard to tell much in the dark. Odd stuff going on all over, I hear. Most of it just gossip.”

  “What about?”

  He returned to the table. “Lots of cops on the streets over by the Forest.”

  The Forest used to be a social housing project called Regent Park, full of red-brick low-rises, mixed-income families and some petty crime, but since elysium had taken over the drug market, the neighbourhood had become something different – more menacing, more insular, a thousand times more dangerous. At first, because of the park in its old name, Pipers had started calling it the Enchanted Forest. But the more they used, and the more Pipers there were, the less enchanted it looked. Once there had been a sort of gritty, hardscrabble sense of community, but that was over now. Some low-income families had moved out, displaced, others had nowhere else to go. The place was a no-go zone for just about anyone else, even the police. Maggie knew it only too well.

  “Some sort of unrest,” Alvin continued, “but no one’s saying for sure, and there’s nothing in the papers. Rumours, though, which sound as nuts as your shrinking garden.” He scratched his head. “People think the Forest is taking up more space.”

  “Pipers moving into buildings outside the Forest?” The only good thing about the Forest was its self-containment. One side of the street was a reasonable, if down-on-its-luck neighbourhood, the other, the Forest side, had become something out of that Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell.

  “No, not that. More like the neighbourhood itself is … expanding.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I. Streets getting smaller on the border between Cabbagetown and the Forest, and something about streets ending where they didn’t used to. You know, the geographical confusion that’s happened in the Forest for a long time.”

  Yes, Maggie knew. Space inside the Forest wasn’t precisely static. “But not outside the Forest.”

  “Not until now, if the rumours are to be believed. Not that I do. Probably just what you said – more people on the pipe. You do realize you’re the only person I’ve heard of ever getting off the stuff.”

  She considered that. She’d never heard of anyone getting off it either, not permanently, unless you counted death. And when Srebrenka had come after her, hadn’t she said as much? “That can’t be true, can it?”

  Alvin shrugged. “Well, no one I can think of has ever stayed off it like you have. Speaking of people who are still at it, no word from Kyle?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking about him. He’ll turn up one of these days.”

  She considered. “Possibly. Then again, he’s been so angry at me for so long, maybe not. He’s been pissed ever since I left home and didn’t take him.”

  “You were just a kid. You’re not to blame.”

  Just a kid in the thrall of Lenny the Predator Poet, she thought.

  So much might have been different if she’d not run away with Lenny. But then again, maybe not. Kyle had stayed with the cousins, who, after their parents’ deaths had become their negligent guardians, and look what happened to him. Maybe even if Lenny hadn’t put that first silver pipe between her lips, she’d have done it herself. If she refused to accept responsibility for Kyle’s addiction, she couldn’t put the blame for what happened to her on Lenny. Lenny died out there. So many Pipers did. But surely not all. Thinking she might be the only one who’d stayed clean this long was unsettling. It felt like a responsibility she didn’t want. She’d done it, and all by herself, so why couldn’t others? Why couldn’t Kyle?

  “Kyle cut down the apple tree in the backyard, you know. Just to spite me.” How she’d loved that tree. How many afternoons had she sat beneath it, nose in a book, hiding from her cousins’ varied tortures?

  Alvin gnawed on a bone. “What will you do if he does come back?”

  “I didn’t t
ell you, but when I saw him a few weeks ago he asked if he could stay here.”

  “Did he?”

  “Right. Look at your face. That’s the point. I don’t trust him any more than you do.”

  “Yes, well, I’m a jaded bastard. Not like my uncle.”

  Maggie blushed. “Your uncle was a saint, and you know God protects them, them and fools.”

  She put her bread down and pushed at the stew with her fork. “You think I should let him come here?”

  Alvin reached across the table and took her hand. “I think you should do what you think is right, for both of you. I’m no poster boy for charity, or for family for that matter. Never had much experience with them, save for my uncle.”

  Alvin’s father had been a gambler and sometime sax player, and when he’d married Alvin’s mother her parents had disowned her. When Alvin was just a baby his parents were killed in a car accident one night when Alvin’s father was being chased by unhappy loan sharks. His paternal uncle, Mr. Mustby, had taken him in, raised him in the Grimoire and was the only family Alvin knew.

  Alvin ran his thumb back and forth on the palm of her hand, tracing her lifeline. “What are you afraid of, if he came here? I could take the money and keep it safe, if that’s what’s on your mind, but I don’t think it is.”

  “No, not entirely. Besides, there always seems to be enough.”

  When Mr. Mustby died she found a trunk full of cash in the bedroom wardrobe, with a note inside saying, Maggie, my dear, this is for you. This place is yours now. It explained a great deal, all that money. For one thing, it explained why Mr. Mustby never cared there were so few customers. She had told Alvin about the trunk and told him she thought the money should be his, but he’d declined, laughing. “Not for me,” he’d said. “Anymore than this shop is for me. I don’t like being cooped up, and my uncle knew that. I don’t need any more money than I can earn myself. That ever changes, I’ll let you know.”