by Stanzin
CHAPTER 2
Magic and Mayhem
In the days that followed, Gregory spent hours reading the letter over and over. He spent almost as long peering at the photographs. Vincent and Vera Grey. Father. Mother. Quincy and Johanna Appleby. Uncle. Cousin. Alicia Appleby. Dead aunt. He scanned the people in the photographs for features similar to his. He found many. He looked at his cousin. He decided that her nose was exactly like his own. He carried the pictures everywhere.
He struggled to fall asleep, his nights plagued with questions. When he finally managed to fall asleep, he had absurd dreams, in one of which his Aunt was a pink cat.
Reggie, Alf and Mixer thought they knew the reason behind his furtive disappearances.
‘We all know its Astrid. Just admit it, will you?’ said Reggie.
It was after lunch, and they were chucking stones from the roof of the orphanage to the river.
‘I’ve no idea what you’re going on about.’
‘Come on, Greg. She’s let you kiss her, hasn’t she?’ said Mixer, huffing as he threw the farthest of any of them yet. ‘Hah! Beat that!’
‘Wasitnice?’ Alf asked eagerly. He was the tiniest and wiliest of the four. His speech had two speeds: fast and gibberish.
‘Did you have to spit her shining, flaxen mane out of your mouth?’ Reggie asked.
‘You’ve lost your marbles, the lot of you,’ Gregory said. He wished he had kissed Astrid already.
‘So this is what things have come to?’ Mixer said, looking injured. ‘You won’t be straight with us? That’s how much our friendship means you?’
‘I told you once if I told you a million times, Mixer. You’re only my friend ‘cause you mix nice desserts. And ‘cause the cook lets you sneak stuff out of the larder,’ Gregory said. He almost wrenched his arm throwing the next one, but it did go further than Mixer’s.
‘The two of you’ve been gooey eyeing forever,’ Mixer said. ‘She knows you want to couple up, right?’
Astrid had become close to him because she read almost as much as he did, but she would not let Gregory borrow her books, saying, ‘the boys at the orphanage would get them all kinds of filthy.’ Gregory only ever read her books under her strict eye, and even then, there was a whole, mysterious collection she wouldn’t let him touch.
‘Go find your own love life.’
‘Argh, let the miser be. What I wanna know is who ratted us out to the Director ‘n the Bobbin,’ Reggie said darkly.
Gregory made a great show in foiling his next throw – he could blame that for his reddening ear if they asked, but the others were too buried in their own resentment.
‘Westillhavethegrimoire,’ Alf said. ‘I’d’vebeenrightpissedifthey’dconf’scatedthatafterallthetroubleIputintonickinit.’
‘Fat good that grimoire is without an instrument… not that it’d make a difference if we had one,’ Reggie said bitterly. The Bobbin’s punishment for their theft of his instrument had been harsh, but not as harsh as the humiliating failure to get that powerful looking staff to work for them. ‘Do any of you know why it wouldn’t work for us?’
That question, unvoiced before now, had haunted them most of all.
What if they were not magic enough inside to actually be mages?
‘Hardy said we mayn’t have blooded the thing properly,’ Gregory said. Blooding was how instruments were bound to a mage. ‘And I’ve been thinking… maybe you can’t blood someone else’s instruments.’
‘I don’t know about you folk, but I’m done messing about with magic,’ Mixer announced. ‘It’s too much effort to make for gains I can’t see.’
Guilt mixed uneasily with the ache Gregory already felt at the thought of leaving his friends behind. He had been trying not to think it, but in little over a month, he would likely have his own instrument – Reggie, Alf and Mixer would not.
Not long ago, Gregory had wondered why more people didn’t use magic. The question had astounded him as soon as he had thought of it. When Gregory wanted something badly enough, he went about getting it. Almost everyone he knew who couldn’t do magic wanted to – badly! There had to be something more to why they did not.
So he did what he usually did when faced with a problem – ask someone in the know. Only a handful of people in Pencier were full-mage, people who could do all and any kind of magic. They were the Director Lawrence Hughes, who had a wand; Roberts (who was called the Bobbin on account of his spectacular nose), who had a staff; Earl Mayer Amschel, who had a fancy looking hat; Caius the Healer, who had a wand; the Sheriff Kapil Shinde, who had a sinister looking black baton; and innkeeper Martha Moser, whose ring wrought more fear than even the Sheriff’s baton.
The question had struck him as he had been delivering meat from the butcher’s to the Earl. The Earl trusted Gregory alone of all the boys to not defile his meat, and so patronised him often. He had been coming out of his sprawling house to walk his quickly growing Feagles (giant, bouncy dogs), and had deigned to indulge Gregory’s question briefly.
‘Ah, child,’ the Earl had said, ruffling Gregory’s head, ‘it doesn’t do to covet. It doesn’t do to think above your station. Now you listen to me, and this is the truth: magic isn’t something you could earn if you worked all your life till your back broke. It’s something you’re born into if you’re lucky, and you weren’t lucky. It’s not fair, but that the way of things, and the quicker you accept it, the less time you’ll spend pining about what’s not to be.’
He had handed Gregory an entire Tael and walked off. It was more money than Gregory had ever held at once in his memory, but he had never felt poorer.
Unwilling to take the Earl’s word for it, he had thought about other people he could ask. The Sheriff was too aloof and intimidating; Martha Moser would likely believe he had come around only to fool around her daughter Astrid (something that, he had thought ruefully and indignantly, had not even happened yet).
So he had caught the Director and the Bobbin at their usual round of morning poker, which they reluctantly put aside to tell him what they knew of the economics of magic.
It wasn’t just that instruments of magic took incredible skill to make, and that such skill was rare.
It wasn’t just that it took years and years of practice to become a good mage.
The village craftsmen could cast the few spells necessary to their trade. These half-mages had their instruments too - Fergie the blacksmith wielded an iron gauntlet where his left hand should have been, and he used it to control the heat in his fires; and even his simple fire sorcery and basic metallic alchemy put him in great standing with the villagers.
Magic itself was not rare at all, but the avenues to learn how to wield it were.
A year ago, Fergie the blacksmith took Hardy, the then strongest boy in the orphanage, as apprentice. Hardy was given a plain iron bracelet for an instrument, and sometimes, when he came around the orphanage for a delivery or a visit, he would amuse and thrill the boys by conjuring fire. Hardy earned nothing – his payment was his opportunity to learn magic and the prestige that learning would one day bring to him.
Every boy envied Hardy’s luck. Magical apprenticeships were rare and greatly coveted. The other coveted apprenticeship in Pencier was at the village’s famous hospice. It was the oldest building in fifty kilometers, and its frequent use during wars in the past had put Pencier on the map. Five apprenticeship slots opened up every year, and every year, some two hundred would apply. Without a sponsor or master, learning magic was simply unaffordable. Pencier was home to two thousand souls, but less than fifty were magicians of any kind.
If the mages of the village were envied, it was nothing compared to what the boys felt for the mages in the Domremy City, capital of the Kingdom of Domremy. They were politely called sparklers and clinkers. There were other unkind names.
They were called sparklers because some item of their clothing was guaranteed to light up in inexplicable colours and patterns.
‘Puffinry,’ the Bobbin had called
it.
They were called clinkers because they wore curious little gadgets that were ever whirring and clicking. The Bobbin himself was an honorary clinker; he wore thick goggles with multiple lenses that slid in and out of use with a gentle and pleasing clicking sound.
‘The city is magical, to be sure,’ the Bobbin said, ‘but there’s a place there more magic than any place in the whole country put together.’
‘Gurukul Caverns,’ exhaled the Director.
And such was the reverence in both men’s faces that Gregory had to fight down a laugh.
Gurukul Caverns was an ancient academy of magical learning. An Arch-Sorceress from the Aryan nation had founded it more than a thousand years ago. Yes, you had to be filthy rich to get in, but you also had to demonstrate great potential. The Caverns accepted you only if it thought you would one day add to its greatness.
For those who could not afford the Caverns, or were turned away, there were boarding houses full of the magically educated unemployed, ready to teach privately at very reasonable rates… rates that nevertheless were beyond the pockets of almost any villager in Pencier. Only Astrid had tutors; her mother would let travelling mages pay for their lodging by teaching her magic. She was fifteen, and had had her own instrument, a ring, for two years.
And so there were two kinds of people in the world: the Mage and the Mundane.
The conversation had left Gregory deeply unsettled. He could understand if something were beyond his reach because of physical impossibilities such as being too far or too high. He could understand if a girl who did not wish to couple up with him was beyond his reach by her own choice. He could understand if another boy refused to lend his magnifying glass in play because he had a prior right to property.
‘But magic’s not like that,’ he had fumed later to Reggie, Alf and Mixer. ‘Everybody can learn it! We want to learn it! Magic doesn’t belong to anybody – we shouldn’t have to beg to cast bleeding spell!’
‘It’s not like begging’s gonna get us anywhere either,’ Mixer had said.
‘What we need is books!’ Gregory had said.
Reggie and Mixer had immediately groaned, but Alf had nodded.
‘Worm, we don’t all have yours and Alf’s reading sickness,’ Reggie had scoffed.
‘You know better, do you?’ Gregory had demanded. ‘No one’s going to teach us! No one’s going to give us instruments! We’re not suddenly going to get sponsors or masters. Even if one of us does, then that’s a road closed to the other three. There are books on magic out there – I’ve seen them in the Earl’s library. Those books have got the learning we want… if we can get our hands on them.’
‘You’re off your rocker if you think we’re gonna try and steal from the earl,’ Mixer had said. ‘They’ll have our heads for it! We’re not doing it! And you’re not to do it either!’
‘The Earl’s not the only one with books!’
‘Who then?’
‘Gypsies.’
And the others had finally looked excited.
The gypsies were a strange and colourful people, held in suspicious regard everywhere, and blamed of every thievery that occurred during their passing. They were also famous purveyors of magical curiosities, collected from all over the continent and even overseas. They claimed knowledge of magical secrets that not even the Shamanate knew about.
An aura of great mystery shrouded them, perpetuated in part by their eyes, which were large and could be green, or grey, or a startling hazel. Whenever the Merlot Tribe of gypsies came around and made camp, the mystics of the village (or loonies, like Alf liked to call them) would ensconce themselves for hours in the stuffy tents at the village boundary, and emerge with varied expressions ranging from transported to deeply grave, as if Doomsday had been revealed to them.
The night before they knew the gypsies would come, in the early days of summer, Alf had said:
‘Booksareonlypartoftheproblem – weneedinstruments.’
‘You reckon the gypsies know how to make instruments?’ Mixer had wondered aloud.
‘I bet they do!’ Reggie had said. ‘I bet they could give us something as good as Hardy’s bracelet!’
‘It’ll cost,’ Gregory had said.
‘How much could it possibly cost? What if we put everything we got together? They’d make us something for sure.’
It had been a heady thought.
‘Andiftheydon’?’ Alf had asked.
‘Then we’ll nick theirs,’ Reggie had stated. ‘We’ll get Hardy to show us how the blooding’s done.’
No one had argued; it wasn’t wrong to steal from thieves, and everyone knew gypsies were the most thieving lot in the world.
The boys began hounding the gypsies for instruments as soon as they rolled in. To Reggie’s affront, they were laughed at and sent away. Gregory did not let it bother him too much. He was not blindly accepting like the loonies were, but his curiosity of magic ran deep, and there were many avenues to learning about magic.
‘Let’s split up,’ Gregory said. ‘We’ll cover the gypsies quicker that way.’
His true motive for splitting up was to find a particular gypsy.
Last year, a tall gypsy, a comic everyone called The Funny Man, had traded him a week’s work of chores around the camp for a dirty and battered old book on magical beasts and plants. Halfway through the week, as Gregory was working, he’d fallen into a discussion of illnesses and scars with another gypsy, who boasted of being able to identify every ailment there was. Somewhat hopefully, Gregory had described his mysterious childhood illness, and it had stumped the gypsy, who’d never heard of such a thing. Not willing to admit defeat, he’d offered to examine Gregory’s blood for traces of the sickness. Gregory had eagerly provided a vial, not wincing in the slightest when the evil-looking needle had been plunged into his arm. Seven different tribe members had put his blood through a battery of tests, extolling the uses of and capabilities of blood magic, but at the end, they had remained baffled.
Disappointed, Gregory had sought refuge in his new book, and over the course of the year, memorised it, even the dedication written in tight handwriting in the beginning, made by somebody called Mairin Fahy to someone called ‘The Green Imp.’
Gregory had looked for the gypsy who’d given him the book, but hadn’t found him anywhere. When he’d asked, he’d been told the man had wandered away a few months ago, which was something the man seemed to do occasionally.
Meanwhile, refused by every gypsy about crafting him an instrument, Reggie had worked himself up into a rage. And yet, no opportunity presented itself for the theft of either a book or an instrument, though the grown-up gypsies all had one; instruments were closely kept and usually worn.
Eventually, determined to retaliate for the gypsies’ ridicule, the boys had snuck into Chief Merlot’s own carriage and rummaged around; the Chief had been demonstrating a new magic outside: moving pictures! The interior was plushy and dim. A great many curiosities were strewn about the place that the young thieves had been unable to make any sense of.
They had heard a noise, and in a panic, had rushed out of the tent. Alf, determined to have some measure of success, had plucked a large tome off a velvet cushion, before scrambling out of the window with the rest.
Only when they were safely back in the orphanage grounds had they looked at what was in Alf’s hands: a thick grimoire of spells – a real treasure! They had pored over it through most of the night and endured the next day with bleary eyes and buzzing heads.
‘The book’s useless on it’s own. We need an instrument,’ Reggie had said.
‘What’ryougonnado? AsktheBobbinforhis?’ Alf had scoffed.
‘Well, not ask per se.’
The others had looked at him in amazement.
‘You want to steal the Bobbin’s staff?’ Gregory had asked with a shudder.
The idea was frightening, and for more than what the Bobbin would do to them. The village of Pencier adhered to a code – they
did not steal from each other, ever. Gregory could not remember the last time he had heard of a non-gypsy theft in the village. And to steal someone’s instrument was beyond despicable.
But Reggie had gone on:
‘We got a book… we’re halfway there…and we’re not stealing, we’re borrowing… we can’t lug his staff around – we’ll obviously have to put it back!’
And such was Gregory’s desire for magic, that he let Reggie persuade him.
Alf had volunteered for the actual theft, saying:
‘You’re crazy, Reggie, you know that? The Bobbin will kill you. I’m gonna go along with this just to see him kill you. If we’re caught, I’m telling him it was your idea, which it is anyhow.’
Gregory knew the truth behind why Alf had volunteered to steal the staff; like Gregory, Alf too had tried different ways to fill the hole of magic in his life – he was obsessed with runes.
‘Runes are magic writ down,’ he’d say to Gregory, the only one who’d listen, (and talking about runes was the only thing he’d take care to slow down for). ‘Everything, from stone and grass and sky, to animals and people and things, can be writ in runes. Everything has its own rune, that’s different from all other runes, like a shoe is different from a hammer. To speak, most people get by a-knowing five hundred, maybe seven hundred words. But there’s thousands of things, and words for them all, and that means runes for them all. But you can also have runes for doing things, like lifting or rolling. There’s rules to follow, but you can couple two runes up to make a more complicated single rune – but that new rune has the meaning of its parents runes. That way, runes are like instructions – you telling magic what you want magic to do. It’s like a language – the language with which we speak to magic energy - but with action built into it. Coz when you power a rune up and release it, it carries out the instruction you wrote.’
Alf could go on for hours. His skill in reading runes put him closer to magic than any other boy at the orphanage – it also made him bitterer; all his runic knowledge could not make him a mage.
The following night, Alf had sneaked out after curfew, and moved ghostlike to the Bobbin’s room. The door had been open, and the Bobbin had stepped out to the outhouse. His staff hadn’t been in the room, so Alf had quickly unlatched the window into the Bobbin’s room, and crept out into the courtyard. He’d waited in the shadows outside the Bobbin’s window for two hours, and just as he’d been about to give up any hope the Bobbin would fall asleep, he’d heard the snores. He’d noiselessly lifted the window, climbed in, crept past the Bobbin’s sleeping form, lifted the staff, and then lifted himself back out of the window. Clutching his prize, he’d raced off to meet the others by a secluded carp pond.
With an excitement and eagerness that dwarfed even that which they had felt for the Great Bug Hunt, they had tried a few of the simpler seeming spells from the grimoire. The staff had shuddered and hissed and remained entirely unimpressive.
‘That’s alright. It just needs to be blooded,’ Reggie had said bracingly. He’d scraped his knee very roughly in the skirmish with the Corby Blues the day before, and after a lot of wincing, he’d peeled of the fresh scab and set his blood flowing. They’d smeared that blood onto the staff and Reggie had recited some gibberish that Hardy had taught him.
The staff had caught afire.
Their yells of shock, though brief, had been loud. After quickly putting out the staff, they’d left it there, snatched up the grimoire, dashed back to the window, shimmied up the rope and into the room and into their beds. The Bobbin had come raging in the next morning, promising Armageddon to whichever night scamps had dared to manhandle his most precious possession. Gregory had looked on with an artful nervous innocence, as had the other culprits. The Bobbin found no answers from the huddle of scared looking boys and it would have stayed that way except for that accursed, inconvenient and mysterious photographer.
When the Bobbin’s staff had caught fire two weeks ago, it had also burned the most promising avenue to magic that Gregory and his friends knew. It was Gregory’s bitterest defeat till now, made all the more painful by the guilt of having mishandled another man’s instrument. It didn’t help that the Bobbin hadn’t been gentle with the paddle, and the four boys had refrained from sitting for three whole days.
Seeing their bitterness, Gregory couldn’t find it in himself to tell them he was leaving for the city in less than a month. He felt too guilty to even look into the grimoire again.
Gregory’s uncle was Commander of the Throne’s Watch. He had a feeling that meant he had access to anything and everything he could ever want to learn. The thought warmed him and filled him with guilt at the same time. He had not done anything special to warrant this good fortune. Getting lucky with an apprenticeship was one thing, but getting privileged like this was quite another.
Like the Earl had said, he’d gotten lucky. Reggie, Alf and Mixer had not.
‘What the matter Greg? You’ve been looking like you’ve lost something,’ Reggie asked, once they’d chucked the last stone into the river.
‘It’s nothing,’ Gregory said. He had been thinking that Alf, given the chance, would have probably been good at enchanting.
More than ever, he was resolved to keep the letters to himself and tell no one about them. It was better to leave like most did, quickly, without time for long goodbyes, or time for envy to settle in.
His plans of keeping his good fortune quiet nearly fell around his ears the very next day. He’d just gotten down from the warehouse rafters, about a half hour before lunch, when Joshua cornered him.
Joshua was one of the older boys perhaps a year away from apprenticeship consideration. He was also a bully, and he was holding Gregory’s letter and photographs in his hand. Gregory cursed; he had left them in his pillowcase and Joshua, who had linen duty that day, must have found them.
‘Joshua. You found something of mine?’
‘I sure did, Skinny. Gee, I guess I oughtta congratulate you. Turns out you’re a real nob,’ Joshua said, peering with great interest at the photographs. ‘Your mom and aunt are real pretty, y’know? Your kid cousin too. When are you gonna call us for tea?’
‘Put those down and be real careful at it,’ Gregory said. He put down his brush and sweep. Going over to a sink, he washed his face and hands.
‘Or maybe, we won’t be good enough to be your guests. That little cousin of yours, she’d likely be scared to see a bunch of great dirty fellows like us here, wouldn’t she?’
Gregory said nothing. He took off his tunic and proceeded to wash soot off himself. Joshua liked to rile people up. He liked scaring the kids much more than he liked beating them up. Gregory wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
‘What I’m wondering is, why keep such good news to your self. Happiness oughtta be shared, y’know?’ Joshua went on.
‘Yes, well, I’m selfish like that. You haven’t told anyone?’
‘Nah, but I’m thinking maybe I will,’ Joshua said.
‘What do you want, Josh?
Joshua, whatever else he was, was of Pencier’s orphanage, and the boys had an in-house code. If there was a dispute, a fight could then decide the side of the right, winner takes all.
‘What I want, is to let everyone know you’re nothing but a sparkler in making, and then I want to throw these dear scraps of yours in the fire,’ said Joshua dropping his fake grin for an unpleasant sneer.
Gregory nodded and said, ‘I win, you keep mum till I say otherwise. And you give what’s mine back to me. Let’s fish.’
Every fight in the orphanage was fought at the carp pond behind a row of trees behind the orphanage – and fights were obliquely referred to as ‘fishing’. The tradition actually had a gypsy origin – fifteen years ago, a Pencier boy had challenged a gypsy boy to a fight. That fight had happened at the carp pond, as had every fight thereafter. Even the gypsies called it ‘fishing’ now.
The fight was quick and brutal, with a few boys cheeri
ng them on. The bets quickly favored Joshua. Gregory waited until he heard that the bets were going four to one against him… and then no one was quite sure what he’d done, but Joshua seemed to go limp all at once… his eyes had glazed over… and Gregory had knocked him down. Afterwards, when the two came back for dinner, no one commented on Gregory’s swelling eye or Joshua’s fat lip.
It wasn’t punching Joshua’s face that had won Gregory the fight, though. A few weeks ago, in the Director’s collection of books, Gregory had found a thin but pretty looking manuscript titled The Gladiator’s Discipline. It had been written almost two thousand years ago, by a warrior-slave who had earned his way to freedom by never losing a fight. He had taught himself to read and write, and then written a book of simple rules of fighting to win.
Gregory had devoured it. One rule struck him more than others:
‘A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.’
The book had then gone on to show a simple drawing of a human body with the weakest and most vulnerable areas highlighted. One of these had been the solar plexus, where Gregory had sunk his fist when Joshua had rushed him.
He took a perverse pleasure in not telling anyone how he had won; the Director begged the boys often enough to read his books, and the manuscript was right there.
Joshua was sullen and Gregory cheerful as he gingerly patted the letters and photographs inside his tunic pocket. His other pocket clinked merrily with the proceeds from the bets. Alf had made sure everyone had paid up. The witnesses had let people know who’d won, but no one knew what the fight had been about. Gregory felt much better for venting off and chatted animatedly with everyone.
A few nights later, he took the Director’s advice and did something he had been putting off for a while. He wrote his Uncle a letter. After many revisions, he looked over it with a careful and nervous black eye. It read:
Dear Uncle Appleby,
I wanted to thank you for deciding to accept me into your home.
I sorry I can’t remember you. The Director will have told you that I have no memory of my life before I arrived at the orphanage.
I don’t remember my parents or what they were like but I don’t believe they abandoned me. I want to know what became of them and how I came to be at the orphanage. I have many questions and it would be impossible to put them down in a single letter.
I suppose I’m lucky to have my own family find me. I’d love to meet you and Johanna soon.
With warm regards,
Gregory
Gregory groaned after reading it over for what seemed like the thousandth time. It seemed woefully inadequate. The letter’s blunt adolescent honesty embarrassed him. Nevertheless, he’d given it to the Bobbin the next morning for posting. Gregory spent the next month in nervous anguish.
The reply arrived four days before his birthday.
