by I did not immediately open my eyes.
Partly because I was experiencing a dislocated feeling of unreality, and I needed to get a grip.
Partly because I was suffering from a strong desire to unburden myself of the breakfast I’d eaten a couple of hours ago (or what was left of it).
There was no way I was going to greet Britain’s most famous magician by throwing up all over her shoes.
‘Hi,’ I finally croaked, and cautiously opened one eye.
Merlin was not bending anxiously — or curiously — over the woman who’d materialised in her living room, as I might have expected. She was on the other side of the room, engaged in something I couldn’t see, because her back was turned to me.
When she made no response to my greeting, I took a moment to take stock of where I had ended up.
It wasn’t a living room.
Picture to yourself the classic wizard’s house. You know the type. The shelves full of bottled liquids? The scuffed wooden floor, the floating candle-lights, the cat?
The massive spell-book open upon a tall oak table?
That’s literally where I was. No word of a lie. I felt like I had strayed into some kind of fairy tale theme park, except that the space had none of the polished-and-pristine, freshly-built perfection of a visitor attraction. This was a place in which somebody lived and worked. The shabbiness of the rugs covering the floors proclaimed it, their woad and indigo-blue shades streaked with dirt here and there, and covered in white cat hair. I knew it from the smells that filled the air: herbs fresh and dried, candle wax, new-baked bread, and other things unknown to me.
I knew it from the presence of Merlin herself, who was no actress playing a role. Magick radiated from her in about the same way that light radiates from the sun.
‘So,’ I said thickly, once I’d achieved a kneeling position without keeling over. ‘This is where the grimoire’s got to.’
Her head came up. ‘What’s that?’ she said to the wall, then swiftly turned around. She stared; not at me, but at the spell-book lying open upon the table nearby. And what a spell-book! A proper grimoire, bound in hide, with pages stacked a foot thick.
‘Is that still there?’ she said, and came over, wiping her hands upon the rough canvas apron she wore.
I managed to beat her to it, but not by much. I had time to observe a two-page spread, closely written in script I could not, at a glance, read, and an astonishing quantity of dust, some of which flew into the air in a thick cloud when the grimoire disappeared.
Which it did instantly, accompanied by a neat little pop of magick.
‘I had forgotten it,’ said Merlin, frowning. But the frown cleared when she looked at me.
I preferred the frown, I quickly decided. She was looking at me the way she had done at our exhibition, only this time it was worse. My insides turned over, and I retched.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Could we hold off on that for a bit? I am still feeling discombobulated.’
‘Ah,’ she said.
‘Something about being hauled a millennium back in time. It appears it doesn’t agree with me.’
She smiled faintly, and went back to her corner workstation. Some of the candles followed her, their flames helpfully brightening as they drifted nearer to her table. ‘We have not gone back in time. We have only taken a small step outside of it.’
‘Out of time,’ I repeated, fuzzily attempting to focus on the concept. ‘You mean, between the echoes?’
She looked at me again, over her shoulder. ‘Where did you hear of that?’
‘They do it at Farringale.’ I wanted to go over and see what she was doing, but I felt uncharacteristically diffident. Surely it would be rude to go nosing into the doings of Merlin? The Merlin. Giddy gods. ‘But it’s nowhere near as advanced as this,’ I offered, like she would care for my praise.
It was true, though. Baroness Tremayne’s hideaway had felt distanced from reality; hazy, echoing, shadowy. In there, you really felt her isolation from the real world, her distance from anything that might pass for living. She was a single thread from a vanished past, slowly unravelling.
Merlin’s wizardly wonder could not have been further removed from that. It was vibrantly real, every inch of it, and Merlin herself as alive as you or I.
‘Hmm. Perhaps they need help,’ she murmured, mostly to herself. She returned to me, but this time she carried a little tincture bottle of smoky glass, inside which bubbled a freshly-poured potion. An actual potion.
We don’t really do potions anymore. I mean, we do, but the delivery system’s changed. Orlando’s lab produces them in handy spherical capsules, the jelly coated ones. You swallow them like a pill (or you burst them in an assailant’s face, as per those sleep-bubbles I like so much).
They aren’t half so potent as Merlin’s. Not even Orlando’s can quite match hers. As I downed a real, honest-to-gods potion, for the first time in my life, I experienced a rush of energy so powerful I shrieked a little bit.
‘Sorry,’ I said, clapping a hand over my mouth.
‘Too much?’ she said, the frown reappearing.
‘I think I’m okay,’ I said, drawing in a shaky breath. And I was. More okay than I’d been at any time in my life. More okay than I, probably, ever would be again.
I could get used to it.
‘I don’t suppose I could get the recipe?’ I ventured.
Her smile was brief and sort of… dusty, but it was a smile. ‘In a manner of speaking.’
She went back to her work station.
What did that mean? I hadn’t quite the gumption to ask. Yes, foolish as hell, but answer me this: would you want to look like an idiot in front of the Merlin?
So I dithered. My thoughts returned to Jay and Mum, who patently weren’t coming in here after me. Then to the grimoire, which had taken my vacated place in the outside world, perhaps forever. Mr. Elvyng would be happy to have it back, to be sure. Would Mum or Jay mind very much that I was gone?
‘I hate to bother you,’ I said into the silence. ‘I, um, didn’t quite mean to end up here. We were just looking for the grimoire.’
‘I had cause to consult it,’ she said, without turning around. Then, vaguely, ‘I cannot now remember why.’
And she’d forgotten to return it. It had sat on her table, gathering dust, for who-knew-how-long in her echo of a world. About four years, in our time.
‘But why return it?’ I said. ‘If it’s yours? Why not just keep it?’
‘It is not mine, precisely, and I rarely have need of it.’
….okay.
‘Was that the question you wanted to ask me?’ she said.
I thought frantically, trying to remember what had mattered to me a day or two ago. ‘Sort of. We were charged with recovering the grimoire, and when I met you the other day I thought you might have it. And you did.’
No response.
‘But now I have a million more questions.’
Silence, which I hoped was an invitation to ask some of them.
‘Starting with…’ I paused, and groped for the gumption I knew I still possessed. Somewhere, deep down. ‘Are you… Merlin?’
Her posture changed. Some tension in the shoulders, a rigidity in her stance. I sensed that she was… thinking. Weighing up what to say.
‘My name is Ophelia,’ she said.
‘Ah… oh.’ I felt my cheeks turn the colour of a telephone box.
Yep, we were idiots.
‘But in the sense that you mean it, yes,’ she went on. ‘I am Merlin.’
‘Ah… okay?’ I swallowed. ‘Um, how does that work?’
‘Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?’
Question number two of twelve million, and already she was dodging.
‘Uh?’ I said, at my most intelligent.
‘Ten years,’ she repeated, the words emerging thinly over the clatter of metal against ceramic. She was mixing something. Another potion?
I croaked something vague and idiotic. Ten years? How did I know? I’d be over forty. Probably still single, probably still working for the Society. Doing the same job.
Still happy, I hoped.
But how could Ophelia-Merlin be interested in any of that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Probably exactly where I am now.’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘You have changed, Cordelia Vesper. You know that you have, though you may not realise how much.’
‘You know my name,’ I whispered.
‘I learned of it. After we met, at your… “exhibition”.’
The air-quotes around the word exhibition couldn’t have been clearer. I blushed again. ‘We were trying to find out who had stolen — er, taken the grimoire,’ I said. ‘It was important. I’m sorry for the deception. If we’d had any idea…’ that you were a real person and might actually show up, we’d never have been so damned crazy.
Probably.
‘Well, it succeeded,’ she said, flashing me a small, surprising smile. A grin, even.
We, the bumbling Society, had amused the great and powerful Merlin.
Go, team.
‘And much good may come of it,’ she went on… sarcastically? Not?
Being Ves, I babbled. ‘We… well, we found the grimoire, sure. Its current owner — or caretaker? — will be delighted to have it back. And we’ll get the argent we need, for Torvaston’s regulator. Orlando’s working on it already, he’s got the best in the industry helping him and finally we’ve held up our end. They can go ahead and build it. And if it works the way we’re hoping it will, it could change everything. We’re… we’re bringing magick back.’ Overwhelmed with sudden emotion, I could have cried. With relief, mostly, because I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself how much fear I’d had. Fear that we would fail Orlando, the Society, magick — everything.
But I was babbling for another reason, too. A new, different flavour of fear.
You have changed, Cordelia Vesper. You know that you have, though you may not realise how much.
I had. She was right.
Let’s not talk about that, my heart said. Let’s just talk about the mission. Nice, achievable goals, even if they were challenging. Measurable successes. Clear ways forward. Nobody needs to change in profound, irreversible ways, or become anything they aren’t ready to be. I can just stay… Ves.
But we don’t get to choose who we become. Do we? We bumble from day to day, doing what we do, trying not to screw up; and inexorably we’re swept along in whatever happens next. And then, and then, and then… you’re someone you never thought you could be.
Maybe someone you never wanted to be.
‘Is that the aim? Restoring magick?’ said Merlin, setting down her pestle. Or mortar? Is the pestle the bowl bit, or the grinding tool?
Focus, Ves.
‘It may sound crazy…’ I began, and then couldn’t think how to continue.
‘Oh, no,’ said Ophelia-Merlin. ‘I should think it’s achievable, with the right tools.’
Suddenly I didn’t want to know what the right tools were. I couldn’t have said why; I only felt a deep-seated feeling of panic. If I turned that corner, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back.
‘Do… you want to hear the story?’ I croaked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Tell me everything.’
So I sat with Merlin the Master Magician and told her the whole story. And I mean, the whole story. More than I’d told the queen of Aylligranir. More than I’d told to anybody except Milady. Every. Single. Detail.
Which was basically me buckling under the pressure and prattling like an idiot again, but maybe I was usefully prattling. If anybody could help us push this insane project through, surely it was Merlin.
She asked a question or two here and there, but mostly she just let me talk. And when I’d finished explaining just why we were chasing down her grimoire, and the sequence of events that had led up to my presence in her fantastic Wizard’s Lab; when at long last, I stopped burbling and fell silent; she sat staring at me with a tiny frown creasing her brow, and said nothing.
Folks, this is why I talk too much when I’m nervous. There is nothing — nothing — scarier than dead silence.
I cleared my throat. ‘Anyway, I ought to be getting back to it. Mum and Jay will be wondering where I am, and we need to wrap things up with the Elvyngs. Get that argent back to Orlando. Go on with the mission.’
She said nothing.
‘And I’ve taken up way too much of your time. I’m sure you’re very busy.’
Making potions, apparently. What else did a living magickal legend get up to all day? I didn’t bother asking. Chances of her giving me an answer seemed about nil.
I’d sunk onto a cushioned stool halfway through my narrative, when my still-wobbly legs began to give out on me. I now rose from it, with an air I hoped might pass for brisk, breezy and confident, and flashed her a professional smile. ‘Thank you so much for your time, and of course for returning the grimoire. We really appreciate it.’
Turning to go, I realised I had no idea how to get out. I hadn’t arrived here through anything so conventional as a door, so there was no point expecting to exit out of one. ‘Would you be so kind…?’ I said, waving my hands in a vanish-me-please gesture.
Her frown deepened, and creases appeared around her narrowed eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said.
But seconds passed and I wasn’t vanished. Whatever she was saying yes to, it wasn’t in response to my request.
I waited in stomach-churning discomfort.
‘Yes, I think perhaps—’ said Merlin (or Ophelia). Her eyes refocused on my face, and something blazed therein. Something magickal, about which I badly did not wish to think too hard. ‘The signs are there,’ she murmured.
I glanced around the room, but there was no one else in there. Just the two of us.
I cleared my throat again. ‘Ma’am?’ I said. ‘Please let me go?’
She blinked. ‘Ah,’ she said, and waved a dismissive hand. ‘I must consider the—’
Whatever it was she planned to consider must remain forever a mystery. With that careless wave of her hand, she cast me out of her wizardly grotto and back into what we mere ordinary mortals think of as reality.
