Stuck In Magic

by Christopher Nuttall

  “It’s a little quieter than I expected,” Brother Havre said, from behind me. I tried not to jump. I’d always had the feeling he didn’t like me. Given that he kept making eyes at Jasmine, I was fairly sure he was jealous. “There should be more people on the streets.”

  I gave him an odd look. The courtyard was empty, save for us, but the streets beyond were crowded. New York wasn’t so busy and, the last time I’d visited, it had been heaving with people. It looked as if there was no hope of getting out of the courtyard, let alone back to the gatehouse and onto the road. The older folk looked uneasy as they finished setting up their stalls. I didn’t blame them. I’d grown up in a city and I found Damansara oppressive as hell.

  “There should be more,” Brother Havre repeated, reading my face. “It’s oddly quiet.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. A pair of wealthy men – judging by their clothes – appeared on the edge of the courtyard. “Who are they?”

  “Inspectors,” Brother Havre said, darkly. “You go back to Jasmine. I’ll take care of them.”

  I nodded. I had no trouble recognising his attitude. I’d been much the same, before the army had knocked it out of me. I was tempted to point it out to him, but I knew he wouldn’t listen. I wouldn’t have listened at his age. Instead, I turned and walked back to Jasmine’s stall. She smiled at me as I came up.

  “Grandfather says we can explore the town,” she said, pressing a pair of coins into my hand. “We just have to be back in time for tea.”

  I felt an odd little qualm. Jasmine hadn’t said anything about it, but … it was clear I’d have to make a decision, soon, about what I wanted to do with myself.

  Stay with the travellers or find a place somewhere else … I cursed under my breath as I accepted the coins and studied them thoughtfully. I just didn’t know enough to make up my mind. What was I going to do? I didn’t know.

  Jasmine passed me a long cloak, then donned one herself despite the heat. I pulled mine on and followed her out of the courtyard, into the packed streets.

  They weren’t as bad as I’d feared. The crowd seemed to know when and where to move, walking in long lines that moved surprisingly quickly. It was worse on the roads. Oxen carts clashed constantly with horse-drawn carriages, their drivers shouting curses at each other … it struck me, suddenly, that they might

  be real curses. A handful of guardsmen were trying to calm everyone down, but it didn’t look as though they were having much luck. It looked as though a dozen fights were constantly on the verge of breaking out.

  I kept my eyes open, watching the crowd. A small boy – he couldn’t have been older than eight – eyed me speculatively. I eyed him right back and he looked away … a pickpocket, probably. An older man groped Jasmine’s rear … I started forward, intending to punch his lights out, but there was no need. There was a flash of light and a wave of heat … he staggered away, clutching his hand and cursing openly. I stared at her in astonishment. I would never be truly used to magic.

  It was all around me, I realised dully. Street magicians played with fire for the locals, or performed tricks that might have been sleight of hand … or real.

  I’d seen my share of street performers, in the states and overseas, but I wanted to stop and stare like a rube. Jasmine stood next to me for a few moments as a man turned a woman into a statue, moved her into an absurd pose, then released the spell. She staggered, her face twisting as if she was unsure if she wanted to laugh or cry. Jasmine caught my hand and pulled me away. I didn’t try to resist. I didn’t dare lose her, not in a city I didn’t know.

  Jasmine kept up a running commentary as we made our way onwards. The veiled men and women were high-ranking aristocrats … or, the cynical part of my mind added, people aping their social superiors. How could one tell if one couldn’t see their faces? The middle and merchant classes wore more dramatic clothes respectively, showing off their wealth if not their breeding. The poor wore rags. I couldn’t help feeling sick at the sheer number of poor and desperate people on the streets, from pickpockets working the crowd to topless prostitutes who looked as though they were coming to the end of their lives. I saw the desperation in their eyes and shuddered, helplessly. They didn’t want to be on the streets, but what choice did they have?

  We walked past a row of temples – Jasmine’s disdain was obvious – and past a set of mansions before circling back towards the marketplace. There were fewer people on the streets, something that alarmed me before I realised it was getting hotter and hotter. The locals probably took siestas, sleeping through the heat and returning to the streets when it grew cool again. Or as cool as it ever got. The terrain outside the city strongly suggested the kingdom was one bad summer from drought and famine.

  “This might interest you,” Jasmine said, as we stopped by a stall. “What do you think?”

  I stared. The stall was covered with books. They looked oddly tattered, as though they’d passed through multiple hands or simply produced by printers who didn’t quite know what they were doing, but … they were books. And the letters on the front were English letters … I reached for one and picked it up. The language was impenetrable gibberish, as if someone had tried to transliterate a foreign language into a pronunciation guide, but … they were English letters.

  And Arabic numbers. I’d wondered, earlier, if I was truly the first person to cross the dimensional gulf. I knew now I was not. There was no way a completely separate world could have duplicated the letters and numbers so precisely. God knew Latin and Chinese numerals had nothing in common with their Arabic counterparts.

  The sense of unreality washed over me – again – as my eyes swept over the rest of the books. There were instructions on how to build a steam engine … I couldn’t read the text, as if the book had been produced by IKEA, but I could follow the diagrams. Others showed how to produce printing presses, abacuses and looms … one of them looked something like a spinning jenny. I stared down at a book about the human body, shaking my head in disbelief. It was just …

  unreal.

  “My wife laughed at that book,” the stallkeeper said. He had the air of a man

  telling a joke that never got out. “Can you believe they left out one of the holes?”

  I put the book down, wishing – suddenly – that I could read. It was easy enough to sound out the words – I guessed there was no clear agreement on proper spelling – but … Jasmine’s spell didn’t seem to work quite right when I said the words to myself. I was tempted to ask if we could buy one of the books, but … I frowned as I realised the true implications of what I was seeing. I’d assumed my knowledge of modern life would give me something to sell, when – if – I left the travellers … I cursed under my breath. I should have known better than to assume anything. All of the low-hanging fruit, when it came to industrial development, had already been plucked. I didn’t know if there was another cross-dimensional traveller or not, but it didn’t matter. I could no more produce a jet engine or a computer for them than I could get pregnant and give birth …

  Jasmine steered me down the stalls. I followed, feeling numb. Stalls selling food contrasted oddly with stalls selling weapons, primitive blunderbusses and muskets that looked as if they would explode in the user’s hands. It was strange to note that the stallkeepers had gunpowder weapons out in the open, but no edged weapons bigger than a dagger. There were no swords, no spears … it made no sense. Or did it? If gunpowder weapons were unreliable, and I had the feeling they weren’t particularly accurate, they might not be seen as dangerous to the balance of power. The thought made me smile. If the gunsmiths were producing blunderbusses now, what would they be churning out in a decade or two?

  I hoped I’d be around to see it.

  I touched the pistol at my belt and smiled. The odds were good it would be worth a lot of money, if I sold it. I didn’t want to sell it. I’d had to leave behind far too much already. And besides, it would useful … at least until I ran out of ammunition. There w
as no hope of finding more, not here. I doubted the local gunsmiths could do anything with the pistol, except – perhaps – taking it apart for ideas.

  Jasmine stopped in front of a food cart and bought a pair of squidgy sandwiches that might have passed for hot dogs, if they hadn’t been squashed by the seller.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat it – the cart looked terrifyingly unhygienic – but my stomach rumbled loudly the moment I took a sniff. The stench of the city had faded … no, it hadn’t faded, I’d just gotten used to it. I wanted a bath. It didn’t look as through the locals bothered to wash. Even the richer ones looked filthy.

  This city is a breeding ground for disease, I thought. I’d seen all kinds of diseases in third world hellholes, some of which had been alarmingly close to home. Do they even know to boil water before they drink?

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. There was no water on sale, not even the ever-present bottled water I’d seen in the Middle East. Everything looked alcoholic, which made a certain kind of sense. Beer and wine had been safer, at least in the short run, until people had figured out the importance of clean water. I gritted my teeth, then bit into the sandwich. It tasted better than I’d expected, with a spicy sauce that make my mouth burn, yet … I didn’t recognise the meat. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what I was eating either. Cat? Dog?

  Snake? Who knew?

  “We’d better start heading back to the caravans,” Jasmine said. She gave me a sidelong look as we started to walk. “What do you think?”

  I hesitated. The city might grow on me, if I let it. I could find a place to stay, surely … I shook my head. I didn’t know where to find a job or … or anything. I looked at the beggars and shuddered, wondering if I’d end up begging myself. What could I do, to make a living? Teach the locals how to make sandwiches? They already knew how to make sandwiches. I probably knew all sorts of things they could use, but … how could I make myself heard? I didn’t

  know.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. The city did have its good points. “If I stay …

  what would I do?”

  “They’re very accepting of newcomers here,” Jasmine told me. “People come from all over the world, just to trade their wares. There’s always work for someone who’s willing to work.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. The Diddakoi weren’t that accepting. I’d have to dedicate myself fully to them, if I wanted to stay permanently. It was just a matter of time, I feared, before they started asking pointed questions. “When do I have to decide?”

  “We’re due to leave in five days,” Jasmine told me, as we entered the courtyard.

  She squeezed my hand, reassuringly. “You have until then to decide.”

  Chapter Five

  I couldn’t decide, not really.

  The city did start to grow on me, as Jasmine and I spent a handful of days exploring the streets. It was weird and wonderful, yet – in so many ways –

  alien and horrific. There was a bit of me that insisted I could fit in, that I could find a job and build a life for myself, and there was a bit of me that wanted to stay with Jasmine and her people. It wasn’t easy to decide. The city wasn’t a very safe place and yet staying with the travellers would mean –

  eventually – subsuming myself in their society. They’d made it clear they would accept me, but only on their terms. And I wasn’t sure I wanted that kind of life for myself.

  I spent the week, when I wasn’t helping Jasmine and the others, exploring the city. The basic design reminded me of New York – the streets and buildings were laid out in regimented patterns – but generations of inhabitants had laid their own work on top of the chessboard, creating their own little worlds within the city. I walked past temples for a dozen different gods co-existing in uneasy harmony, then strode through a magical section – it was oddly empty, as if no one visited unless they had business there – and peered into what was self-evidently a gated community for the rich and powerful. The guards looked nasty enough to deter anyone, beyond hardened thieves. I guessed they had authority to do whatever they liked to intruders. The law probably didn’t apply to the wealthy.

  My instructors had taught me to learn the lay of the land. Or the lie of the land, as one of them had cracked. It wasn’t easy. I spoke to people – Jasmine had encouraged me to speak to as many strangers as possible, to ensure I leant the language quickly – but few of them really wanted to discuss politics. The questions I wanted to ask would raise eyebrows, I was sure, because they were the sort of questions that would make it clear I really was a newcomer. I bought mugs of foaming beer in bars and taverns, then sat and listened unobtrusively as people – merchants and farmers, mainly, as well as runaway serfs – talked and gossiped. And, slowly, a picture began to emerge.

  The city was, technically, a free state. It owed loyalty to the king, but the king didn’t seem to have any real authority over it. The city itself was run by the city fathers, who were elected by property owners. If you didn’t own property, I guessed, you were effectively disenfranchised. The property owners could run the city to suit themselves. Or could they? The merchants grumbled about taxes and tariffs laid down by warlords and aristocrats, making it harder for them to turn a profit as they moved from city to city. I had the uneasy feeling the city’s independence wasn’t anything more than an illusion. The walls were strong, but the city could be surrounded and besieged very easily. I doubted the locals had enough food within the walls to withstand a siege. The local warlord could bring them to their knees very easily.

  There were more and more details, from a hundred different people, that I tried to slot into a coherent whole. There was a king, who had a daughter … and only a daughter. The general opinion seemed to be that she’d be married to one of the warlords, sooner or later, and the outcome would be civil war as the rest of the warlords banded together against their new king. It definitely sounded like a recipe for trouble. I did my best to work out how the different places went together, but it wasn’t easy. My mental map was effectively blank. They might as well have been talking about somewhere on the other side of the world.

  The stories seemed to grow wilder as they touched on events further and further away. A king turned his kingdom into a land of the dead. A naked woman rode a dragon and melted down a castle, in hopes of putting the rightful heir on the throne. A sorceress lost her powers, only to come back stronger than ever before. A university … the word brought me out of my listening trance. Was there another dimensional traveller? Or was it just a wild coincidence?

  I mulled it over for a while, then dismissed it as useless. The stories were so wild that I couldn’t tell how much of them were actually true, if any of them were true. And even if I knew, what could I do with the knowledge? I had no way of knowing where to find him or … or anything. If people were being dumped randomly into the world, they could be scattered right across the globe. The thought made me shiver. I could have found myself drowning if my car had been dumped into the ocean …

  A sense of loneliness washed over me as I stared down at my drink. The night was growing darker. The erotic dancers were coming onto the stage, but … I didn’t want to look at them. I felt oddly disconnected from the world around me, lost in my own thoughts. The patrons were starting to hoot and holler, waving their hands at the dancers. It could have been a rough bar near a military base, except … I stood, leaving the beer for whoever wanted it. I didn’t trust it. Alcohol was supposed to be safe, but I had my doubts.

  Besides, I’d seen enough shady characters around to know it was better to remain sober. The last thing I wanted was to be mugged.

  The darkness was hot and muggy, the air smelling of spicy food and rotting meat.

  My stomach churned as I walked past a row of stalls, selling something akin to kebabs and sausages. I didn’t want to know what went into the meat. Behind the stalls, a sewer gaped open. The stench almost overpowered the food. I forced myself to breathe through my mouth as I kept walking, h
eading down the road to the campsite. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the stalls, not when they didn’t even have the slightest respect for hygiene. The sewer had to be a breeding ground for disease.

  I kept one hand on my pistol as the crowd closed in around me. They were just too close … I gritted my teeth, reminding myself that I’d been all around the world. And yet … I tried not to look at the street rats – little boys, mainly –

  running through the crowd’s legs. They wanted to rob me, to steal what little I had … I shuddered as I saw a small boy who was probably a girl. Her face had been so badly mutilated that I knew it was just a matter of time before she died in a ditch. No one seemed to be helping the poor kids. Their lives had only just begun and yet they were already over …

  My gorge rose. I’d seen poverty in America – I’d grown up in poverty – and yet, this was different. This was worse. There wasn’t any hot and cold running water, let alone computers, televisions and any other modern concepts. I’d learnt to hate the people who thought they were helping my community, as a young boy, yet I had to admit they were trying. Sometimes very trying. Here … there didn’t seem to be anyone interested in helping the poor. I guessed that anyone who did would have very dark motives indeed. The boys could be turned into pickpockets, like Oliver Twist; the girls … I shuddered. I didn’t want to think about it.

  I heard someone shouting further down the street, sounding more like a carnival

  barker than a protester. I hesitated, then walked towards the noise. I wasn’t the only one. The shouting was coming from a courtyard, just like the one granted to the travellers. I frowned as I passed through the crowds, noting that the onlookers seemed to range between very rich and middle-class. It was odd, I thought. What was it … a flash of light burst out of nowhere, illuminating the courtyard and revealing a stage. A show? I stared as five people were pushed onto the stage. For a moment, I thought it really was a show. And then I realised it was something far worse.