Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  If I’d known, I would have crammed the car with supplies, I thought. The toolkit and first aid supplies were useful, but they wouldn’t last for very long. I had only a limited amount of ammunition and no way of making more. I could have brought enough arms and supplies to build a whole kingdom for myself.

  The thought sobered me. Jasmine had shown me enough magic – parlour tricks, she’d insisted – for me to be very aware there was an unpredictable element in my new world. She might imagine herself to be performing tricks, but I … I now knew how primitive tribesmen had felt when they’d come face to face with the wheel, guns and every other piece of technology that was light years ahead of them. The gulf was so wide I feared I couldn’t begin to cross it. Even Jasmine’s assurances there would be work for someone like me, if I was willing to work, fell flat. How could I learn to use magic?

  “You can’t,” Jasmine said, when I broke down and asked. “You don’t have the talent.”

  I gave her a sharp look. “What happens to people who can’t do magic?”

  “They don’t go to magic school?” Jasmine shrugged. “Seriously, there are places for everyone.”

  I sighed and resigned myself to asking more questions as I struggled to learn the language before it was too late. I’d always been good with languages, but this one … Jasmine’s spell was a hindrance as much as it helped. She wasn’t that good a teacher either. I found it hard to believe that everyone spoke the same language, with some slight local variations, but … the more I thought about it, the more it seemed true. Back home, there was an entire industry built around teaching people to speak foreign languages. There were people who knew what they were doing. Here … there didn’t seem to be any need. I forced myself to learn, trying to come to terms with the underlying grammar. It didn’t help that there seemed to be a higher and lower language, as well as a written script that made no sense.

  They always leave this part out of the books, I thought, grimly. They wave their hands and overlook the problem so they can get on to the meaty part.

  It grew harder, as the days wore on, to remember that I had children. The boys

  … I wondered, grimly, if they’d ever guess what had happened to me. They’d report me missing, right? I’d certainly be listed as AWOL when I failed to show up for duty. And then … and then what? They’d never find my car, let alone my body. Cleo would probably insist I’d gone underground to avoid paying child support. And when they realised I hadn’t cleaned out my bank accounts … I made a face. Cleo would get the money, along with my army pension and everything else. She’d push to have me declared dead as quickly as possible.

  I felt a pang. I loved my sons. I’d even loved her. And I’d never see any of them again.

  “You’re brooding,” Jasmine said, when she found me on the edge of the clearing.

  “It doesn’t really make things better.”

  I glared at her. “What do you know about loss?”

  “Too much.” Jasmine didn’t sound angry, merely saddened. I’d told her I couldn’t stop thinking about my family. “They’re not dead. They’re just out of reach.”

  I stared into the trees. We were a long way from the Greenwood, but I’d been warned – time and time again – never to go out of the clearing after dark. The urge to just walk into the woods and keep walking, in the desperate hope of finding my way home, was almost overpowering. Jasmine had told me that there was no guarantee of going anywhere – and I believed her – and yet it was hard to stay where I was. My father had deserted me when I’d been a child. I’d promised myself I’d always be there for my sons. And, through no fault of my own, I’d broken the promise.

  The stars mocked me, every night. They were so different. I wasn’t on Earth.

  I was … I was somewhere else. It was good news, in a way; I could tell myself I wasn’t in the past, years before my children had been born, or so far in the future that my great-grandchildren were nothing more than dust. And yet, they might as well be. I had no hope of ever seeing them again. I glared down at my hands, wondering if there was any point in going on. Who knew what would happen when we finally reached the city? Would I stay or would I go?

  Jasmine touched my shoulder, lightly. “They’re not dead.”

  I rounded on her. “They might as well be.”

  She stood her ground. “You can remain lost in memories, if you wish, or you can look to the future.”

  I shook my head, slowly. There were times when it was impossible to forget that we came from very different worlds. Jasmine had grown up in a world where the slightest scratch could mean certain death, if the cut got infected. There was a fatalism in her attitude I’d seen in the Third World, but not in America.

  Death was her constant companion, despite her magic. She’d learned to accept death in a manner I found impossible …

  She’s never had any children, I thought, sourly. She doesn’t know what it’s like to lose a child.

  I knew I was being unfair, but the thought refused to fade. Jasmine was young.

  It was hard to be sure of her age – Jasmine herself didn’t seem certain – but she couldn’t be any older than nineteen. She didn’t seem to have any suitors sniffing around either. That surprised me. Jasmine was strikingly pretty as well as a gifted magician and singer. But then, it was also unclear if she’d stay with the clan. If she left, her partner would either have to let her go or leave the clan himself. There weren’t many people in tribal communities who’d make that choice.

  “I had a wife,” I said. Cleo and I would probably have gotten divorced – I couldn’t trust her again, not after she’d cheated on me – but … it hurt. “Don’t you have anyone?”

  Jasmine shrugged. “Everyone here is related to me, in one way or another,” she said. “If I stay, I’ll meet prospective suitors when the clans assemble for the winter ceremonies.”

  I reminded myself, again, that Jasmine was young. “You don’t have anyone at Hogwarts?”

  Jasmine blinked. “Hogwarts?”

  “Whitehall,” I corrected.

  “No.” Jasmine shook her head. “How many of them would want to live out here?”

  She waved a hand at the caravans. I shrugged. Her description of Whitehall had made it sound like a boarding school from hell, where you couldn’t walk down a corridor without someone zapping you in the back and turning you into a frog.

  The whole idea was utterly terrifying. Jasmine seemed to take it in stride, but

  … her attempts to explain magic to me had been incomprehensible. Nothing she said made sense. It all boiled down to trying to explain things like the whichness of the why and … it made me think of the song about the dancing centipede. She’d lost the talent as soon as she’d tried to figure out what she actually did.

  “They might see it as a step up,” I pointed out.

  “A step down,” Jasmine corrected. “None of them grew up here.”

  We stood together in companionable silence. It struck me, suddenly, that she was oddly relaxed in my presence. I liked to think we’d become friends over the last couple of weeks, but … it was odd. I was a big beefy man and black besides. I was used to people eying me with concern, even with fear. Sometimes I understood and sometimes they were just assholes. And yet, Jasmine didn’t.

  She neither learned towards nor away from me. It was curious …

  It clicked, suddenly. Jasmine wasn’t nervous, around me, because she didn’t need to be. She had magic. She could protect herself. I’d known women in the sandbox who’d been able to rely on their relatives to protect or avenge them –

  such protection had a price, up to and including complete submission – but Jasmine was different. She wasn’t a defenceless girl, she was … my head spun as I realised she was strong in her own right. I’d known some female soldiers who were just as tough as the men, women who’d earned their spurs, but this was different. The world seemed to turn upside down as I glanced at her. I was wondering why Jasmine wasn’t nervous around me? P
erhaps I should be nervous around her!

  She let out a breath. My paranoid mind wondered if she could read my thoughts.

  The concept made my skin crawl. What if she could? What if … I tried not to think of her naked and promptly thought of her naked. I told myself, sharply, that I was being silly. She’d told me enough about magic to convince me she couldn’t read minds, although it was possible she was lying. Or simply accidentally misleading me.

  “You can make your own choice, here,” Jasmine said. “Be what you want to be.”

  I laughed as we made our way back to the caravan. The clan was moving out again, heading down a road that looked as if it had seen better days. I had the feeling it had been trodden down by thousands of people, over hundreds of years.

  The air grew warmer as we picked up speed, inching our way out of the woods. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw, for the first time, hints of real civilisation. I could see tiny villages in the distance, half-hidden amidst the fields.

  My heart sank as I took in the sight. I was no farmer – I knew very little about farming – but I could tell the peasants were working desperately to scratch a living from the soil. The land looked almost painfully dry, the plants seeming to droop as they fought to draw nutrients from the soil. The handful of workers in view looked tired, utterly beaten down. They were all men. I couldn’t see any women at all.

  The air seemed to grow even hotter. I felt sweat trickling down my back.

  Jasmine seemed unbothered. I couldn’t tell if she was using magic to shield herself or if she was simply used to it. I kept my eyes on the countryside, my eyes trailing over row upon row of sickly-looking crops. A dry ditch marked the edge of the fields. It looked to have dried up years ago. The ground looked as hard as stone. I couldn’t believe the farm would last for much longer, no matter how hard the peasants worked. They looked permanently on the edge of starvation.

  We drove through a town, the locals paying very little attention to us. They didn’t show any sign of interest, or fear, or anything. I’d been in places where the locals greeted American troops with sticks and stones – at least partly because they knew the local insurgents would kill anyone who wasn’t insufficiently unwelcoming – but this was different. The locals didn’t care about us or anyone. I saw a woman making her way down the road, just as we left the town, and stared. She looked ancient. It was hard to believe she was still alive.

  I heard a galloping sound and looked back, just in time to see a line of horsemen cantering past. The hooves kicked up dust, which the wind blew into our faces. I reached for my pistol, then stopped myself. Who knew who the riders were? What would happen if I killed one or more of them?

  “Local toffs, out for a ride,” Jasmine explained. She waved a hand, the dust fading from the air. “They’ll own the estate for sure.”

  I glanced at her. “Who owns the land?”

  “The local lord,” Jasmine said. “That” – she said a word her spell couldn’t or wouldn’t translate – “is probably his son.”

  She sounded indifferent. I had the feeling it was a matter of great concern to the peasants. Land ownership was a major issue right across the world. The people who worked the land could find themselves displaced, or enslaved, if the land was sold to someone else. And it would be perfectly legal.

  “Asshole,” I commented. I didn’t know the brat, but I disliked him already.

  “Why don’t the peasants revolt?”

  “It happens,” Jasmine said. “They all get killed.”

  I put my thoughts aside as we drove down towards the city. The land looked like a chessboard, patches of cultivated land rubbing shoulders with fields that had been left fallow and ditches that looked as if they’d dried up years ago. An irrigation project would probably have done wonders for crop yield, I thought –

  I’d seen it work in Afghanistan – but I doubted anyone was interested in trying.

  It looked as if no one was even thinking about helping the peasants. The riders I’d seen cantering past had been doing them harm simply by existing.

  And they keep the peasants so downtrodden they can’t even think of a better life, I mused. It made sense. I’d seen it before. It was just sickening.

  They’d sooner keep their power than make life better for everyone, including themselves.

  The wind shifted, blowing an unholy stench into my face. “What the fuck …?”

  Jasmine giggled. “Do you know what we call cityfolk?”

  “No.” I forced myself to breathe though my mouth. The stench was appalling, the scent of piss and shit and too many humans in too close proximity. “What?”

  “Stinkers,” Jasmine said. She sobered. “Believe me, it fits.”

  I nodded as the city came into view. Somehow, I didn’t doubt it.

  Chapter Four

  The city – Damansara – was … striking.

  I was used to cities that sprawled out until they blurred into the suburbs, overrun towns or countryside. Damansara was a walled mass, with a clear line between the city and the country outside. The land immediately outside the city had been cleared, providing absolutely no cover for an invading army bent on looting, raping and burning its way through the city. I could see a handful of men on the battlements, watching the distant horizon. I hoped it was just paranoia. The idea of being caught up in a war was far from appealing.

  The stench grew worse as we made our way towards a gatehouse that looked a lot like the Jugroom Fort. It wouldn’t stand up to modern weapons for a second, I decided, but it would be difficult to assault without firearms and explosives.

  The gates were designed to allow only a couple of wagons and carts through at any one time, ensuring the guards would always have the advantage in numbers. I was pretty sure there were cauldrons of boiling oil positioned above us, ready to make life miserable for anyone who caused trouble, and archers on the battlements. I’d seen archers in the SCA. Bows might not have the flexibility of guns, but an arrow through the gut could be lethal. The men who’d died at Agincourt might as well have ridden straight into machine gun fire.

  I shivered, helplessly. There was a sense of age around the gatehouse that was almost a physical presence. I’d seen buildings from the colonial era and none of them had the sense of being hundreds of years old. This one looked as though it had changed hands time and time again without ever losing its sense of purpose. I felt tiny and insignificant as we joined the line of horse-drawn carts waiting to pass through the gatehouse, my eyes threatening to water as the stench grew worse and worse. I’d been in a dozen hellholes with poor sanitation and no clean water and this was worse. The stench of too many people and animals in too close proximity was almost unbearable. I did my best to bear it without complaint.

  The guards eyed us nastily as we inched through the gatehouse – I was uneasily aware that the building was designed to let the defenders pour boiling oil on unwanted guests – but waved us through without comment. I was surprised. They looked the type of guards to demand bribes before they let anyone through the gates, their clothes so tattered that the only thing that marked them as guardsmen were the white sashes on their shirts. I’d seen more impressive policemen lazing in their cruisers or stuffing themselves with donuts. And yet, some of them had lean and hungry looks that bothered me. It was never good to attract the attention of the police in a third world country. They were almost always deeply corrupt.

  Jasmine looked uneasy as we made our way onto the streets. I didn’t blame her.

  The city reminded me of New York, although the buildings were smaller and much less impressive. They seemed to hem us in, looming over the crowded streets and casting long shadows into our hearts. I had the sense we were driving straight into an ambush, although I couldn’t have said why. A team of men with modern weapons could have made an attacker pay in blood if he wanted to take the city.

  And the local population would pay too.

  I studied the crowds curiously as we made our way down the road. They
were of all colours and creeds, from men darker than myself to women so pale I thought they were albinos. There was no unity, as far as I could tell: there were people covered from head to toe and people wearing barely enough to cover their privates. Some looked extremely rich, surrounded by cronies and bodyguards as they paraded through the city; some looked so poor they had to be beggars, constantly begging for alms. I felt a pang as I saw a handful of amputated men, sitting by the roadside. There was nothing I could do for them.

  The stench – incredibly – seemed to get even worse. I tried not to think about the sewers. I wasn’t convinced that any of the buildings had any plumbing. The buildings themselves were an odd mix, a blending of medieval styles from all over the world. I thought I saw European influences, mingled with Arab and Far Eastern. It was easy to believe, suddenly, that I wasn’t the first person to find my way across the dimensional gulf. I was alone, but if an entire town or city had been scooped up and shipped to a new world …

  Jasmine pulled on the reins as we entered a large courtyard. “We’ll be setting up here,” she said, as the rest of the travellers parked their caravans in a circle. It reminded me of cowboys readying themselves to repel an ambush. “And then we can go explore.”

  I nodded, stiffly. My arms and legs were aching, but that was nothing a little exercise wouldn’t cure. Jasmine hopped down effortlessly and waved to her grandfather, who started barking instructions with the air of a man who expected to be obeyed. I scrambled down beside him and hurried to work, lifting boxes of goods out of the caravans and piling them up as directed. Jasmine was setting up a small stall, a structure that looked oddly childish until she completed the finishing touches. A couple of younger girls hurried up with a tray of tiny glass jars and bottles. Potions, from what she’d told me earlier. I still found it hard to believe they actually worked.