Magical Gains

by Nicola E. Sheridan

  Suddenly he felt a sharp, hot strike of magic scrape his back.

  “Get out!” Omar screamed, his eyes wide and mad with jealousy.

  “Hey, Omar!” Phil began incredulously. “Lighten up!”

  “Get out!” Omar repeated, his dark eyes bulging and wild. His hand was held ready to throw another strike.

  “Omar, wait. If Primrose can do this for me, perhaps she can do it for you too!” Imran beseeched, hurt and confused by Omar’s sudden attack.

  “No, Imran! I want you to go! I never want to see you or your mistress again! Damn you both! All you have ever brought me has been misery and a life of servitude to this damned lamp! Now you are free and I am still, and ever will be, a slave. All because you slept with my wife!” He crumpled.

  Imran’s eyes were cold. “You cursed me first. I never asked Amira to curse you in return.”

  “Don’t speak that name!” Omar’s voice echoed with fury. The pain of his wife’s treachery still stung cruelly. “I can’t bear it. I have nothing, and you, as always, end up with everything.”

  “That is simply not true,” Imran replied rationally. “As you can see, I have nothing. Not even Primrose.”

  “You will find her though.” Omar sobbed. “I can never find Amira.”

  Imran closed his eyes and sent a silent prayer to the long-deceased. He wanted to explain it was Amira who seduced him, not the other way around. He wanted to say he never intended to cause Omar pain, and the entire tawdry incident was the fault of his own weakness and impaired judgment at the time. Imran also wanted to add that not a day went by without him regretting his actions and grieving for his brother’s life, but the moment for apologies and explanations had long since passed.

  “Good-bye, Omar. Please accept your life as it is now. Only then will things become clearer,” Imran said gently.

  “Don’t be so fucking trite!” Omar roared, but his words were lost in a swirl of Imran’s shimmering magic as he disappeared from sight.

  * * * *

  Back beside the Serpentine River, Primrose struggled to stand. She vaguely noticed the river swirling curiously now, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Her jeans hung off her emaciated and withered body as if on a grotesque coat hanger. She looked around a little wildly but her aged eyes failed her. All Primrose could see was the dim light on the water, and a faint glow on the horizon. Could that be Mandurah? she wondered faintly. Crouching on creaking knees and cracking hips, she bent over and picked up Imran’s lamp from the soft muddy ground. She brought it to her weathered face, willing herself to feel some warm pulsation of life, but it was as cool as the air around her, even colder perhaps.

  “Imran?” Nothing happened but the wind rushing around the dead she-oaks. “Why aren’t you here?” she mumbled fearfully. Primrose shook her head, fighting the maudlin thoughts that ran helter-skelter through her confused mind. Finally, a self-pitying sob broke through her parched throat and she sank miserably into the soil, nursing Imran’s lamp. Primrose wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that, shivering by the river. Time seemed to move slower than it once had. After a while, she forced herself to stand. There is no point in staying here, she finally thought. Taking a deep breath, which resulted in a coughing spasm, Primrose slowly headed down the river. Surely she would find a house or riverboat soon.

  * * * *

  Imran materialized in a twinkling of his revived natural power on the footpath outside Primrose’s little house. The house was silent and dark. Even Mrs. Michaels’ house was empty. Quietly, aware of the rhythmic beat of his own footfall, he walked up to the front door and opened it with a silent spell.

  The house smelled slightly stale, and he knew no one had been there since the MIT scoured it for his magical traces. Wearily Imran sank down on the couch, wondering fruitlessly where Primrose could be. He didn’t doubt Quillian brought her back to Australia. Quillian was heavily reliant on his stolen magic and would need to return and gather more power soon. The adventures of the day would have been at his significant magical expense.

  “Primrose, where are you?” Imran wondered worriedly. Had Quillian killed her? He shuddered at the thought. Suddenly there was a knock on the door.

  Imran stood straight and spun around. Like a fool he had not closed the door behind him.

  “Imran? Is that you?” sounded Ian’s not-so-pleasant nasal twang.

  Imran gritted his teeth in annoyance.

  “Of course it is. Are you stalking me?” he snapped.

  “No. I want to see Primrose. I’ve been waiting for her. Is she around?”

  “Does it look like she is around?” Imran bit back angrily.

  “Um. No.” Ian looked nervous. “I can’t remember things. I keep forgetting. Some weird things have been going on, you know.”

  “Indeed? I hadn’t noticed.” Imran’s tone was acid.

  “I just wanted to…to…you know,” Ian began awkwardly. “Did you know she has gone missing?” he gushed.

  Imran looked at him quizzically. “You don’t remember seeing me earlier?”

  “Did I?” Ian sounded extremely unsure of himself.

  Curious, Imran switched on the light and took a good look at Ian. He looked pale, not his usual ruddy self, his hair was lank looking, and several angry pimples marred his cheeks. Imran ran a hand through the air close to him. Ian’s aura felt hot, and strangely wrong. Imran inhaled strongly and noticed the toxic odor of Quillian’s corrupt power.

  “What are you doing?” Ian asked uncertainly, stepping back and taking a good look at Imran. “What’s wrong with you? You’re a mess.”

  Imran snorted without any amusement. He looked tired and knew it. “I’m a magician, Ian,” Imran began, and a smile lingered at Ian’s shocked face. “You have a spell on you.”

  “Did you?” Ian began accusingly.

  “No. Not me. A bad magician, the bad magician who has Primrose.”

  Ian scowled. “What bad magician? You’re talking shit,” he said with some of his usual hauteur.

  “You know I’m not. Can’t you feel it?”

  Ian looked perplexed. “Whatever happened, Primrose deserves it,” he said with little confidence.

  “No, she doesn’t, and you know it.” With a gentle clenching of his fist, Imran drew the spell away from Ian and blew it away. Ian watched with wide piggy eyes as the fuming haze that dogged him for days dissipated into thin air.

  Suddenly Ian stood straighter, and the boorish look returned to his visage.

  “Well!” he exclaimed. “I feel a lot better!”

  Imran stared at him, loathing every inch of this behemoth.

  Ian grinned broadly in return. “You looked wrecked, Imran! It’s nice to see you looking like crap for once! In fact, you look like you could do with the ‘three S’s’!”

  “What would they be?” Imran asked coldly, though he didn’t care to know.

  “A shower, a shit, and a shag,” Ian taunted, but petered off as Imran remained unmoved by the wisecrack. After a moment of tedious silence, Ian asked, “Well, who put the spell on me?”

  “Quillian,” Imran replied.

  Ian laughed. “No way! He’s my boss.”

  “A fact I am aware of.”

  “Why…”

  “The whys and hows don’t affect you, Ian.” Imran insinuated his words into Ian’s thoughts. “You do not need to know any more, and you do not need to think about Primrose anymore.”

  “Primrose?”

  “Yes, leave her alone.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with her anyway!” Ian bellowed. “Bloody bitch, she’s made a fool of me.”

  “No more so than you have made of yourself,” Imran assured him.

  Ian scowled. “Fuck you!” He turned to leave. “I don’t know why I even came her
e.”

  “I don’t either,” Imran replied.

  * * * *

  Far away, Primrose stumbled her way onto a main road. She passed several houses on her way there, but none would open their door to a wizened old crone.

  A ute zoomed past her at high speed tooting its horn loudly. Primrose felt her heart miss a beat. She stumbled. Her mind was getting fuzzy and she was exhausted, hungry, and tired. Mostly, she couldn’t understand why Imran hadn’t found her. After all, they were supposed to be happy together, forever. As these thoughts played roller coaster in her fragile mind, she fell one more time. The wind was so cold and the hard bauxite siding of the road so slippery, she couldn’t find her feet again. Finally, Primrose just lay there, willing someone to stop, or Imran to simply save her.

  As Primrose remained on the hard siding, she could feel mosquitoes settle on her exposed skin, but she didn’t have the energy to shoo them away. More cars sped past, one veering to the other side of the road to avoid running over her arm. Why did no one stop? she wondered drearily. Tears ran their course down her wrinkled cheeks, and her last moments of consciousness were wracked by uncontrollable sobbing.

  When Primrose awoke, she found herself in a quiet, white room with a grey vinyl floor. There was a heart monitor on her finger, and an IV embedded deep in her stick-like arm. She lay there motionless. I’m in hospital, she mused. Primrose listened to the irregular beat of her heart. I’m going to die, she thought vaguely.

  It was at that point a nurse bustled in. She appeared to be non-magical. Her blond hair was tightly swept away from her face in a sensible ponytail and her blue eyes were lightly decorated with mascara and a little liner. She approached Primrose cautiously. Primrose could only imagine how awful she looked, literally a skeleton clothed in just the finest layer of flesh. Her hair, she knew from a tentative touch, was almost gone but for a few stray, grey strands that curled abstractly around her bald pate. She watched the nurse evenly.

  “Hello,” the nurse said as cheerily as she could. “I’m Mary.” Primrose said nothing. “I guess you’re a Baba Jaga?” Mary added cautiously. “You didn’t have any ID when you were found, but there were heavy magical traces.” She nervously glanced down at her observations sheet.

  “I’m not a Baba Jaga,” Primrose said, her voice as desiccated as her appearance.

  A Baba Jaga was an ancient old crone who had magical powers used for good, or bad. Baba Jagas were native to Eastern Europe and there was only one registered in South Australia. These small bits of information fluttered like crazed moths through her brain as Primrose gazed unseeing into space.

  “What is your name, then?” Mary asked, feeling a little more certain.

  “Primrose Phoebe Brasco.” Primrose coughed and struggled for breath. Mary looked concerned and scribbled on the chart. When Primrose recovered she asked a few more questions, such as date of birth and address. Frowning, Mary wrote them down.

  “If you are only thirty-one, and are a non-magical being...” Mary looked at her intently, as if she didn’t quite believe it. “Can you explain your appearance and heavy magical traces?”

  Primrose felt a slow, warming irritation filter into her brain at Nurse Mary’s accusatory tone. “I was attacked, obviously,” Primrose wheezed, aware her story didn’t seem very credible.

  “By whom?” Mary asked, her expression stating she thought Primrose had a psychiatric illness as well.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Primrose replied with a rasp. “I don’t want him to know where I am.”

  “No one will get you here, love. I’ll get Dr. Chau to come around in a minute to check you over,” Mary replied, as if talking to a demented geriatric, which Primrose knew was exactly how she appeared.

  “Can I make a phone call?” Primrose asked after a long moment’s thought. Nurse Mary glanced at the observations sheet and then at the clock. Primrose struggled to sit upright.

  “Don’t strain, love!” Mary chided and helped her up, gripping Primrose’s twig-thin arm with her strong hand. “Of course you can. The telephone is there.”

  “Thank you,” Primrose mumbled in response.

  Sitting up, Primrose felt a little better. Slowly, as her mind couldn’t work quickly, she gathered she was in a locked wing of the hospital—one for magical beings. She looked through the doorway and saw there were magical ion sensing devices in place of smoke alarms on the ceiling. She frowned. Trying not to glance at her decaying hands, she gripped the telephone. Straining her eyes, she could read faintly “press 9” before dialing out. She stopped. Who should I call? she wondered, her sister? Friends? Her parents? They wouldn’t believe her. No one would, no one except for Imran. An ache hit her in the chest at the mere thought of him. Where was he? Was he well? Could he find her? Could he save her? Primrose knew without a shadow of a doubt the curse Quillian put on her was still slowly working on her body. She knew her internal organs were slowing, winding down to rest for eternity. She was going to die soon. Primrose didn’t need to look on her observations sheet to see death was imminent. She could feel it.

  Primrose’s hand trembled over the dialing buttons. She could try her house. Maybe, just maybe, Imran would be there.

  By the time Primrose, unconscious and delirious, had been found by a Baptist minister and taken to hospital, Imran managed only to pace morosely around the house. He walked into the kitchen and noticed with distaste it smelled off. The fruit in the bowl acquired a family of fruit flies, and the milk in the fridge was as thick as yogurt. With an irritable wave of his hand and a casually muttered spell, the smell and rotten food were gone. Imran closed his eyes, inhaled the fresh, clean air and remembered how hungrily he used to watch Primrose busy herself in the kitchen, cooking, cleaning, and humming. She never knew just how much Imran watched her. He waited with baited breath for her to toss her long dark hair over her shoulder, or absently run her hands down her thighs to dry them. He wanted her then, almost unbearably, but it was nothing like the force of his desire for her now. Slowly Imran sank down onto a kitchen chair. Primrose’s sweater was hanging over the back, like a dead thing. He ran his hand over it, and fought the urge to smell it. Finally, he sighed heavily and let it fall into his lap. After a long stretch of immobility and thoughtlessness, Imran relaxed and began to concentrate. Deep in concentration, he sent tendrils of his power out, trying in vain to feel for Primrose. Imran sent these tendrils far and wide. Finally he felt the faintest echo of something that could be Primrose. Still concentrating hard, Imran gently pressed on that thing, tentatively probing. In the distance he could feel her, weak and insubstantial. Primrose was there, somewhere to the south and alive.

  * * * *

  As Primrose’s ancient hand lingered over the telephone, wondering whether to call home, a small Oriental man strode into the room. He studied her with a peculiar mixture of concern and interest. “Miss Brasco?” His voice held the faintest trace of a Mandarin accent.

  “Yes.” She could see her strange aged reflection in the sheen on his spectacles, and she quickly glanced away.

  “I am Dr. Chau. I was here when you were admitted to emergency,” he spoke quietly. “You were unconscious and in an advanced state of exhaustion.”

  That’s hardly surprising, Primrose thought dryly. My body has been turned into that of a 103-year-old, and I had to trek out of the bush to find a road…

  “While you were unconscious, we took a number of blood and magical ion tests,” Chau continued, his face unflinchingly serious. “The results of these tests are somewhat contradictory.”

  Primrose remained silent. She loathed hearing her own diminishing voice.

  Chau took a step closer and studied his clipboard quickly.

  “You have significant magical ion traces,” he continued, “but unusually for a magical being, your vital signs and systems are significantly deteriorated.” He paused and ran a h
and over his bald pate. “It appears as though your body is dying.”

  The words reverberated soundly through Primrose’s brain. It was one thing to think you were dying, but it was quite another to hear you actually were. She was terrified.

  “This in itself is unusual, as the magical traces indicate you have significant power, and should be regenerating yourself…”

  “I can’t. I’m not magical,” Primrose ground out in her new dry and ancient voice.

  “I suppose even magical beings do die,” Dr. Chau said cautiously, ignoring her words. “I am not an MB specialist. The MB specialist, Dr. Georgescu, is away this week,” he added thoughtfully. “I think I will send you up to Fremantle Hospital. They have a specialist, a Dr. Elliot, on call―”

  “I am not an MB. I have been cursed.”

  “It is illegal to curse a human being,” Chau countered. “No one would dare, not in this day and age.”

  “Were the magical traces you found on me registered?”

  “No. Another fact I wanted to ask you about.”

  Primrose paused, and dug around in her foggy mind for the right words. “They aren’t registered because the MB responsible for this curse is not registered,” she said hoarsely, relieved she could answer coherently.

  “Highly unlikely, Miss Brasco.”

  Primrose laughed dryly. “If you’d asked me the same question a few months ago, I would have agreed with you, doctor.” She coughed and tried to regain her breath from the effort of the sentence. “Now I know that is simply not true. The government may seem to be controlling the arcane, but it is failing. I think some magic just cannot be contained, or registered, or understood.”

  Her heart monitor beat out her arrhythmia and beeped a warning. Chau frowned.

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I am saying…” She stopped and gasped for breath. “The magical being who did this to me is unregistered, corrupt, and…and in such a high place of power no one can stop him.”

  “No one is out of reach from the law! Give me a name and I will hand it to the police!” Chau seemed genuinely affronted.