Like Merlin With Training Wheels
The Department for the Quantification and Utilisation of Luck.
Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions had rocked the city all night, and by the early hours of the morning Cooper had given up any hope of sleeping.
As he wandered into the cafeteria stifling a yawn, his short hair still wet from the shower, he noticed that Cassie was the only other one there, she was sitting at a four-seater table wearing a burgundy-coloured T-shirt with, “Myth, a real ology” in gold lettering on the front, and was nursing a cup of coffee.
He bought what the vending machine optimistically described as green tea and sat at a table a few yards away.
“Care to join me?” he said, with an annoying grin.
“What’s wrong with here?” she snapped without moving.
“This is tactically better, from here I can watch both the corridor and emergency exit at the same time, two possible escape routes within easy reach.”
“I hope paranoia isn’t catching,” she said as she reluctantly moved to sit opposite him.
“Remember the old adage: even paranoids have enemies, anyway, I bet you know what’s going on, the only other people I could find were too busy with synchronised panicking to tell me anything.”
“Arthur Seat erupted last night, and Morrigan has control of the city.”
“That much I’d already worked out for myself.”
She looked around to make sure they were still alone before she spoke again, “This part is supposed to be top secret: including those trapped indoors by the lava, we estimate she has half a million people under her control, and growing by the minute, with three-quarters of those being her soldiers.”
“Wow, that’s an awful lot of super strong, super fast, hard-to-kill warriors.”
“And that’s only the beginning, she won’t stop until everyone on Earth of Celtic descent is in her power and then she’ll use them to drag humanity back into the Middle Ages, after that they’ll burn inventors at the stake as witches and all progress will end as an endless war begins.”
“Is there a way out of this or did you buy us one-way tickets to Australia?”
“Because I don’t have time to mince words, I’m just going to come right out with it; you might be our best chance of beating her––because you’re a warlock,” she said, stoney-faced.
“I’m a… what?”
“A warlock, that’s a male witch.”
“I know what a warlock is, it wasn’t the definition I was struggling with, but go on, I’m dying to see where this crazy train derails.”
“Remember I told you about the Tinkerbell effect?”
“Sure, some things only exist because enough people believe in them; as a conman I’m a big fan of the concept.”
“Right, and magick is one of those things,” she nodded enthusiastically, not being used to anybody listening to her theories.
“I don’t see how that’s applicable here.”
“Okay,” she said, after draining her cup, “imagine waking up in a world where only the bioelectricity that keeps us alive existed, I’m not talking about a power cut: all the batteries would be flat, there’d be no lightning in the sky and spark plugs wouldn’t spark.”
“Amish paradise, got it.”
“The point is,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest defensively, “that your laptop, like most other technology, is one charge away from being a doorstop, and the photos and music on your phone don’t exist, in any tangible way, without electricity.”
“Unless you’re telling me about an episode of the Twilight Zone you saw, I don’t get it.”
“You have the magick gene, Mr Cooper, which is why every instinct you have tells you to take your staff with you everywhere you go,” she said pointing to the tree branch resting against his chair, “but you’re as useless as a brownie in a high-jump contest without a widespread belief in magick,” she said, chuckling at a mythology joke that only she got.
“Even if that’s true, what about all the tests they subjected me to before you arrived? Why does their obsession with my luck make me Merlin the Magician, all of a sudden?”
“Because luck, like astrology and ghosts, is one form of magick that enough people believe in to make it real, and belief fuels your magick gene but you’re only half lucky because nobody believes anybody can be lucky all the time.”
“You’re talking nonsense.” He said, his head was spinning.
“You can feel it in your heart, you know it’s true. Two days ago you were covered in cuts and bruises, and your knee was very badly sprained. Less than twelve hours ago you walked back in with a burst lip and new abrasions, and yet, this morning there isn’t a mark on you and you’re walking normally, how do you explain that?” he couldn’t, he just didn’t want to accept any of it.
“Listen,” she said, putting a comforting hand on his, “I know this is a lot to take in all at once; let’s go to my flat, there’s something there that might help you understand.”
“Why, Miss Sloane, are you trying to seduce me?” he said, feigning coyness, resorting to the familiar comfort of mockery.
She blushed furiously and pulled her hand away so fast that the table rocked, he smiled quietly, every comment he made that subverted expectations was designed to gauge her reactions and look for exploitable weaknesses, in case she turned against him, which might sound paranoid, but twice in his adult life he’d trusted people (well, partly trusted) and twice he’d been betrayed and that wasn’t a mistake he was planning to make a third time.
“If you wanted a game, I have to tell you that I don’t play tennis,” Cassie said, pointing to the racquet Cooper had left on the roof as he manoeuvred his staff into her old, red Fiat Panda.
“Neither do I.”
“Then why did you get me to requisition it for you?”
“Put it down to pest control.”
“You could spout rubbish for Scotland,” she muttered as she climbed into the driver’s seat, her flat was only two miles away, across town, but skirting the city turned it into a journey of over fifty minutes
There were only official vehicles on the road, mostly army convoys, tanks and armoured cars, their headlights cutting through the gloom as the volcanic ash filled the sky, shrouding the city in darkness.
Occasional glimpses of grim-faced soldiers hunched over steering wheels were caught in their headlights, and it bothered both of them that they were heading in the opposite direction from the people with the big guns.
“I’d try to get your car undercover before that stuff falls, if I were you,” Cooper said, trying to lighten the mood, as he pointed to the sky.
“During the evacuation, the army picked up a geologist and we’re putting her to work, she says it can stay in the upper atmosphere for months, years in some cases, but I think it’ll last as long as Morrigan wants it to.”
They parked outside a modern apartment building and climbed the stairs to the second floor. “I have my clothes and a few essentials at work, but I didn’t have room for my books,” she said unlocking the door.
Cooper let out a low whistle when he saw inside, “No kidding, you could get on one of those hoarder TV shows.”
“It’s not hoarding, I’ve just got too much stuff to fit into the available space,” she said defensively as she fetched a hefty hardback that was too big to fit into a bookcase. He took it from her as she struggled to use her forearm to sweep the contents off of the table, which didn’t add perceptibly to the mess on the floor.
He laid it on the carpet and sat down beside it as she pointed to the surface she’d just cleared. It wasn’t a coffee-table book in name only, stick some legs on it and it could’ve doubled for the real thing, the cover was bound in some kind of black, animal skin with the title, “A Beginners’ Guide to Spell-Casting from Alchemy to Thaumaturgy” in white lettering that strobed with an orange glow when it caught the light.
Inside the pages were made of vellum and on the first one, written in large, block capitals was: “THE WEE ONES SHOULD NOT GO UNWATCHED WHILST SPELL-CASTING.”
“When it says, ‘wee ones’ are we talking about Lord of the Rings style hobbits or children?” Cooper said.
“Look on it as entry level reading.”
After skimming a few pages he closed it and turned to her, “They stuck a ‘k’ on the end of ‘magic’, is that an old spelling?”
She shook her head, “Ending in a ‘c’ is when you pull a rabbit out of a hat, when it finishes with a ‘k’ you pull the hat out of a rabbit, without animal cruelty. One is a trick, the other is not.”
“If I’m going to believe you and embrace this whole concept,” he said, “maybe you can answer a few questions first; this book must have cost you at least a month’s salary, or was it a gift, and if so, from whom and why?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business, but if you must know I got it for fifty pence in a charity shop, they thought it was merchandise from a movie or failed TV pilot show.”
“Disappointing, but it has the ring of truth. One more question: It mentions that fairies are afraid of cold iron, whatever that is, why is that?”
“Cold iron is what fairies call any metal. It’s poisonous to them, although nobody knows why, but it’s no coincidence that they went into hiding around the same time as the mass production of cutlery spread across Europe.”
After flicking through the pages for a few more seconds he slammed it shut, “Look at the size of this thing, do I really have to read it all?”
“We’ll take it back with us, so you can study it at your leisure, there’s no need to lose your temper,” she said, pointing to the staff that was resting against his knee. He looked down at the runes carved along its length that were pulsing faintly with a blood-red glow.
“What the…,” he jumped to his feet, stumbled and fell backwards over a pile of newspapers. His staff clattering to the ground, the lights slowly fading. “What the hell was that?” he squeaked sitting up, his voice higher and less manly than he would have preferred.
“Basic familiar magic,” Cassie said, “witches have their cats and warlocks have their staffs.”
“Yeah, well, paging Doctor Freud on that one,” he said, standing back up.
Back in the car park, he dropped the spell book on the back seat and was about to put his staff in when a voice came from above and behind them.
“Warlock! We meeteth again, now thou art mine!” it squeaked. They both spun around just in time to see the six-inch tall pixie swooping down out of the sun, wings a blur.
He dropped his staff and snatching the tennis racquet from the back seat, swung it in a two-handed backhand. She gave an ear-piercing squeal as it connected, leaving a bright red mark, from the string, over most of her forehead. As she shot high into the sky, tumbling head over heels, he yelled, “And the next time I see you I’ll have a rifle and you’ll be the bullet!”
He looked at Cassie, who was staring at him in open-mouthed amazement, “What?” he said as he picked his staff back up, “Where would the world be if we all started taking cheek from fairies?”