Levitator, page 8
“And where did you say you got this again?”
“My mother had it. One of my father’s things, I guess.”
He looked like he didn’t believe me. He’d yanked the blinds down and now stood with his arms crossed, suggesting that my presence irritated him and he was looking for holes in my story. He certainly didn’t like me. He’d already threatened me with a screwdriver. But would he have gone through with it? Was he capable of murder? Hamilton thought that my father might have been killed by someone he knew. A jealous, power-hungry apprentice certainly fitted the bill.
“So what happens now?”
“We test you to see how powerful you are. There are four elements — earth, air, fire and water. Your magic will align with one. Robert was one with fire. I am aligned to earth…”
“And what about Ashley?”
“She’s—”
“Not a wizard,” Ashley interrupted, as she brought back the mug (now filled with water). In her other hand, she held a red candle wedged into a black metal holder. She set them both down on the table, about six inches apart. “Nor am I a witch, before you ask.”
Then what was she? Another question for later.
I watched the apprentice kneel down next to a potted plant. He dug out a handful of dirt and tipped it onto the counter next to the mug. Then he plucked a pencil from the top of the cash register and set that down next to the pile of dirt.
“Four elements in a row, four challenges in a row,” Raza explained. “You must use your magic to light the candle, freeze the water, sculpt the earth into a ball and raise the pencil up into the air. Shouldn’t be a problem for the son of Robert Strode.”
I stared at the objects.
“So, what catalysts do we need?” Raza asked.
“Uh…” This magical test was off to a poor start. “An onion and a feather for air. I know that much. No idea what you need for the others. I’ve only ever cast one spell.”
“You don’t know the other basic spells either?”
I shook my head.
Raza scoffed. “My father taught me those when I was four. I passed the tests at five.”
“Lucky you. My asshole dad abandoned me when I was a baby, remember. He showed zero interest in me growing up and never told me he was a bloody wizard! Now, with no warning, I’m seeing ghosts. Vampires are real and to be honest I’m starting to lose my mind a little. So how about a little less sarcasm and a bit more understanding?”
“Your father wasn’t an asshole,” said Ashley.
“Well, he was to me. Now can we get on with this? Can’t you give me what I need?” I was surprised by my own outburst. I couldn’t even remember most of what I’d said, my pent up feelings and frustrations gushing out like water from a burst pipe.
“Fine,” grumbled Raza. “I can write the other spells down for you. Hey Ash? Could you get the extra ingredients for me? We’ll need a pumice stone and a bay leaf, a seashell and some liquorice root, and a dried acorn with a pinch of cumin.”
“Sure.” Ashley disappeared into the back room again. I couldn’t yet work her out. She wasn’t a wizard, yet she could obviously see beyond the Veil. She was also fighting my corner, defending me to Raza, but I didn’t know why. Maybe she liked me? Or maybe she was just pretending to like me and the two of them were playing some sort of good cop, bad cop routine?
“Your father did care about you.” The mysterious Ashley backed through the bead curtain, carrying a plastic tray with the ingredients Raza had listed.
“Maybe he lied to you about that,” I suggested. “After all, he lied to me my whole life.”
“Let’s focus on the tests shall we?” The apprentice held out a piece of paper. “This first one is the fire incantation. Hold the pumice and the bay leaf in your hand and read the words out loud, slowly and clearly. If you stutter or get any words wrong, start again. Concentrate on the candle and will it to light.”
I nodded. I had an advantage. Hamilton had already shown me how to cast a spell, so this would be a piece of proverbial cake. I took the paper. Raza had scribbled Latin words across it in seven lines. Weirdly, it seemed to begin with the same phrase as the levitation spell.
“Peto cum humilitate…” I began, glancing at the candle, visualising a flame bursting forth atop it. “Ma’haganonoma omnipotens, qui exstat in sempiternum…”
I read the rest of the words, slowly and carefully. The flame was going to light. Any second now. Then, I’d be accepted into this wizard’s club and the record store, its contents (and maybe the lovely Ashley) would be mine. Any second now. It was going to happen. A beautiful orange flame, whooshing up towards the ceiling. A demonstration of my enormous power (thanks to dear old asshole dad) and my mastery of the...
“Okay, thank you, Mr Smith. Fire isn’t your forte, it seems. You’re right, Ash. He didn’t kill Robert. Junior can’t even light a candle.”
I looked up at the candle, which remained stubbornly unlit. How had I failed? I’d nailed Hamilton’s levitation spell first time out. It didn’t make sense.
“You said my father was a fire wizard. Shouldn’t I be one too?”
Raza shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. His magic has passed to you, but it is obviously taking a different form.”
Damn. Throwing fireballs would have been cool.
“And let’s not forget,” added Raza with a smirk, “your magic is also weak. You might not have it in you to be a wizard. Not everyone does.”
“Ignore him, Merlin,” said Ashley. “He’s just grumpy and feeling a little vulnerable.”
“Don’t read me, Ash. I’ve told you before. I don’t like people peering into my head.”
“Then don’t be mean.” Ashley turned to me. “This doesn’t mean you can’t cast fire spells, just that they won’t be as effective as your core element. Whatever that turns out to be. So, it’s not fire. It doesn’t matter. Try the next one. Read it slower this time. Picture the result of the spell in your mind and use your magic to make it a reality.”
“That’s what I was trying to do.” I snatched the next bit of paper as Raza held it out. “Which one is this?”
“Water,” said Raza.
“So, I’ve got to freeze it, right?”
The apprentice nodded. “If you can. You’ll need the seashell and the liquorice root for this one.”
I plucked up the liquorice and clutched it in my hand together with the shell. “Got any tips that aren’t ‘clear my mind’?”
The apprentice shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Thought not. He doesn’t want me to succeed. He’s only giving me the bare minimum of help. I’m an annoyance to him. A spanner in the works. I bet he thought this record store was his. And then Robert Strode’s son turned up and ruined it all. Well, I’ll show him. I’ll show all of them. Think cold. Think ice. Think about the water molecules slowing down, joining together, crystallising and solidifying.
I said the words (again the spell mentioned the name ‘Ma’haganonoma’), but I don’t remember saying them, a sudden headache pulsing as I recited each one. It must be working, I thought. This is exactly what it felt like when I cast the levitation spell in mum’s living room. I finished the incantation, screwed up the paper and tossed it aside, looking up triumphantly.
The apprentice picked up the mug and took a sip of the water. “Chilled. But not frozen. Strike two,” he said with a smirk. “Water’s not your thing either. I’m starting to wonder if you’d be more suited to an admin role.”
Did I get the spell wrong? Why wasn’t the magic working? From what the apprentice had said, a four year-old could do these tricks. Maybe he’d written the spell down wrong just to get rid of me? I’d already failed two tests. Failing to light a candle and freeze a cup put me firmly in Mickey Mouse sorcerer’s apprentice territory. I’d been hoping to live up to the name that I hated. Back in Bath, I had been a wizard. But I wasn’t now. It was like realising you’re a brilliant footballer, but only on a Tuesday.
“Which one do you want to try next?”
I pointed at the pencil.
“Ah, the air test. Weakest of the four elements. But there needs to be balance. The aim here is to lift the pencil. See if you can levitate it high enough to touch the ceiling. Although considering your performance so far, I’m not expecting much.”
The apprentice held out my crumpled levitation spell. I took it and held it in my left hand, grabbing the onion and the feather with my right.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Raza said.
Okay. I’d done this before. I’d lifted myself off the floor, so how hard could it be to make a pencil float? It was a pencil. I took a deep breath. I could do this. I even remembered some of the spell. “Peto cum humilitate,” I said. “Ma’haganonoma omnipotens, qui exstat in sempiternum…”
As I said the words, I could feel something inside me stir. Here we go. I wasn’t just going to raise the pencil a couple of measly inches, I was going to slam it into the ceiling. That would show Raza. So, I willed the pencil to move like a bullet and as I spoke the words I could hear it rattling on the table. Come on, damn you. Rise. Fly!
When I finished the evocation, I started again, repeating each word, feeling the pain that came with each spoken syllable. All the while, the pencil rattled on the table, as if an invisible hand held it down. Louder and louder, refusing to rise…
“Stop,” said the apprentice. But I didn’t want to. I needed the pencil to rise. I needed to prove my worth to him. To myself. To the father who’d abandoned me.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Ashley’s voice. Low and calming. “Merlin. Stop. That’s enough.”
The pencil remained on the table. It had barely moved.
I hung my head. “Damn it!”
“No.” Ashley turned me around. “Look...”
I looked up. Hundreds of records from the store’s display boxes and shelves now floated near the ceiling, a shifting kaleidoscope of album covers, slowly twisting and turning, as if somebody had switched off the gravity. It wasn’t just the music collection that was airborne. My spell had lifted up the potted plant, the gramophone in its display case, a chair, various bits of paperwork, the mug of water I couldn’t freeze, the candle I’d failed to light, and my bag. Even the cash register had risen up off the counter. Only the power cord was keeping it from going any higher.
I would have cheered my success, but I didn’t have the energy. Instead, I sagged to the floor, my legs suddenly weak. My head pounding. My skin tingled as if I’d been rubbed up and down with a bunch of party balloons.
The apprentice looked around the room, trying to hide his obvious disappointment that I’d passed one of the tests. “You’re still no wizard, junior,” he said, pulling tentatively at a hovering Happy Mondays album. “But I think we’ve definitely found your type.”
“Then this is cause to celebrate,” said Ashley. She stuck out her hand to help me up. “It’s Friday night and it’s been a long day in a long week. I, for one, could do with a drink. So, grab your bag from the ceiling, Merlin Smith. If you think you’ve seen some weird things so far, a night out at the Fat Trumpeter is going to blow your tiny human mind.”
13
THE FAT TRUMPETER
The Fat Trumpeter was deliberately hard to find. The entrance was a nondescript door with a speakeasy grille, set into the side of an old red brick building on Hollen Street, a few minutes walk from Fortress Records. The only evidence of something there at all was a small plaque with a Hitchcockian-style silhouette, depicting a large bald man holding a trumpet to bloated lips.
Even if you did stumble across it, somehow ignoring the welcoming lights of The George pub and The Moon & Sixpence nearby, the Fat Trumpeter was a members only establishment, a policy enforced by a man with the build of a troll. I later learned that he actually was a troll and no, they don’t lurk under bridges like the faerie tales would have you believe. Catterwall, for that was the troll’s pronounceable name, apparently had a nice apartment in Canary Wharf and ran a dog-walking business on the side. Whereas I saw him unveiled, as an overweight man-mountain with pale grey skin, a flat nose and a bulging bottom lip, to all you humans he looked like a tanned, shaven-headed gym instructor. Either way, you messed with him at your own risk.
The nondescript front door led to nondescript stairs, which spiralled below street level. A short walk along a narrow brick corridor, past a cloakroom staffed by a bored-looking woman with purple hair, there was a plain wooden door. Nothing weird about that. There are plenty of basement bars in the world. Plenty of doors that lead to them. But when I ducked through this particular door, I stepped out onto the deck of a four-masted pirate ship.
It was an old galleon, its main mast rising up out of sight towards a shadowed ceiling, square sail unfurled, rigging still set, the ship’s wheel just visible on a smaller raised area at the stern. Yet it was also a pub. There was an oval-shaped bar in the middle of the deck where the entrance to the ship’s hold would have been. This was surrounded by a line of fat metal stools, while at the ship’s rails, metal chairs clustered around candle-lit tables.
“Welcome to the Fat Trumpeter,” said Ashley. “Try not to stare.”
That was easier said than done. The room that contained the ship was cavernous, possibly as large as the building itself, which I guessed was three or four floors high. Gloomily lit, the walls and the ceiling were painted black, so it seemed as if we were sailing through a cloudless night on a voyage to who-knows-where.
And if the bar was an eye-opener, so were some of its patrons. Among the human-looking customers, there were... What should I call them? Monsters? Creatures? Faerie folk? I noticed a bald-headed colossus with tattooed blue skin and a big orange eye that literally stood out above the crowd. What was it? Or he? Or she? And how did you tell? Was he/she/it an ogre? An orc? No. Wait. Weren’t orcs green? Or were they grey? They were definitely grey in The Lord of the Rings. Maybe it—
“Frost giant.” Ashley elbowed me hard in the ribs. “You’re gawping. Don’t. Try to look like you belong.”
Again, easier said than done. So far, I’d only seen the denizens of the Underkingdom at a distance. The wyvern and umpteen ghosts, that vampire on the train, Bigfoot at a bus stop. This was the first time I’d seen any of them up close. Turns out, not only could I ‘see’ the creatures beyond the Veil, I could smell them too. Man, could I smell them! A musky funk that made a boy’s locker room seem like a fragrant spring meadow.
Ashley walked towards the bar and I followed her, staying close. A tall, muscled creature with skin like stripped tree bark lumbered past, its dead black eyes framed beneath a mane of leaves and twigs that curled into devilish-looking horns. I don’t know if I was more freaked out by its inhuman appearance or that it was wearing sandals and khaki shorts.
“Dryad,” Ashley said. She grabbed my hand and yanked me forward. “A tree spirit. Again, stop staring. That is unless you want your eyes poked out.”
Judging by the creature’s long and thorny fingers, I didn’t want them anywhere near my eyes. So, I looked down at the deck. At the wooden planks that creaked as I stepped on them, bleached and worn, as if they’d endured years of sunlight and salty water. The attention to detail in the Fat Trumpeter was amazing. The place had a level of immersion that most themed bars don’t manage to reach. It was the little touches that sealed the deal. Like when we reached the bar and I realised that the metal stools were made from old cannons, topped with scarlet cushions. I was about to sit on the nearest one, when—
“Seat’s taken,” grumbled the guy behind the bar, a sizeable, bearded man wearing a ripped Pink Floyd T-shirt.
“Sorry,” I said, moving out of the way. “I didn’t know.”
Ashley slapped a twenty on the polished counter. “Three beers please, Johnny. And ignore my friend. It’s his first time here.”
“Be his last if he ain’t more respectful.”
I’d been in some rough pubs, but this one was on another level. I’d never felt like more of an outsider. Hopefully, Ashley and Raza would protect me. Speaking of Raza, he’d veered off to talk with another guy in the middle of the Trumpeter’s main deck. They both glanced my way and then continued talking. I guessed Raza still didn’t like me. But something had changed since the pencil test. There was less of the I’m-better-than-you attitude he’d displayed when we’d first met. Now, he was almost wary of me. Maybe a little scared. And I’ve never scared anybody in my life.
Ashley handed me a chilled bottle of beer.
“Thanks.” I turned back towards the bar. “This place is amazing. It’s like a movie set. Incredibly realistic.”
“That’s because it’s a real ship, dumbass. This is the Triumph. Veteran of the Spanish Armada. History records it broken up back in the early 1600s, but a couple of enterprising vampires saved it, restored it and transported it here.” I must have looked shocked, because Ashley added: “So, you’re now dribbling your beer on a piece of English naval history… Come on.” She pointed to an empty table at the ship’s rail. “Let’s sit down. We need to talk.”
The candle on the table flickered, almost as if the flame was leaning deliberately away from me — like a child recoiling from a grandparent trying to give them a kiss. If I was now an air wizard, perhaps fire didn’t like me. That might explain my embarrassing failure to light the candle earlier.
For a few moments, Ashley and I sat in awkward silence over our slowly warming beers. She’d let her hair down and looked even lovelier than she’d done earlier. I’d like to go out on a limb here and say that she liked me. She’d certainly shown me the most kindness since I’d arrived. But was that just because I was Strode’s son? Or was it something else? I’d been wrong about this sort of thing before.
I thought about checking my phone, before remembering that Ashley still had it.
