Sorcerer on the Street

The Eastside Heritage Museum wasn’t one of the big places to draw tourists from around the world. In fact, it often seemed that not even the local residents knew it was there. It had been established by the bequest of a local collector decades earlier, and since then it had been a convenient place for the estates of certain individuals to donate the ephemera of their lives, when such a contribution could be beneficial for tax purposes. The museum had few visitors, which I thought was a genuine shame because some of the collections contained genuinely intriguing items. The only problem here, besides the lack of money, was that there were few people curious enough to look at the exhibits and understand what they really were, or what they could mean.

There was always at least one person on the front desk; to redirect people who wandered in searching for one of the more financially endowed museums, or who simply needed directions to some other business in the neighbourhood. Today, the sole figure on duty was an older lady with hair the colour of spun steel, whose determination belied her age. She was stern and determined; and lived for the rare days that she would meet someone genuinely interested in learning about the most local of local history.

As the door at the front of the former doctor’s office swung open, the wind drove in bitter hail to form a small puddle on the tiles. Evadne immediately drew herself up to her full height, knowing that the person blowing in with such a bitter wind was more than likely some delinquent merely seeking shelter from the elements. And while she had compassion, she had no sympathy for those who wouldn’t care about dripping on the museum’s precious treasures. It was a scene I had watched a hundred times before, over the days I had been here. Evadne might have been old, but it seemed that age had only hardened her convictions into a material harder than obsidian. Her wit was still as sharp as ever; and she could easily overwhelm any mischievous child with a bearing that evoked the authority of every authoritarian schoolmistress of their childhood.

I watched from the corner of exhibition hall 3, giving her my full attention and expecting a show of some kind. That was, until I shifted my focus to the figure silhouetted in the doorway. He seemed to be wearing one coat over another, a desperate measure to protect against the elements which would make it practically impossible for anyone to judge his build. In Evadne’s eyes, this was just one clue to suggest that the newcomer was homeless; but it didn’t buy him any sympathy today. She knew from long experience that the people who needed help most were among those most prone to abuse the slightest trust. This man’s hair, crudely hacked short, gave the impression that someone had let him borrow a pair of scissors for two minutes at the most, and he’d done the best he could. It wasn’t a good look. But I could sense she was already debating with herself about how to treat this visitor. He clearly wasn’t the right kind to properly appreciate the museum’s contents, but he also seemed tiny and vulnerable. She might not be sure if she could bear to send him back out into the fury of the storm that must surely be waiting right outside this building.

“I’ve just moved into the neighbourhood,” I heard the stranger say. He spoke louder than he needed to, and forced his voice into a kind of rough growl, as if that could make him any more persuasive. It probably didn’t help much, because even from the next room I could tell how reedy that voice must be in its natural state. Was this just a child, hoping that by passing as a man he could intimidate the old lady? I really didn’t know how I should feel about that. But a moment later, after taking a big breath to help him deepen his voice again, he continued with what could have been the perfect choice of words: “I want to understand this place. The people who built it, and the values they held. I think that looking at a place’s history will make it easier to understand its character today. And that’s something I will need to know, if I’m going to work round here.”

Evadne’s first response was to question what kind of work this child could do in any case; and she put it a little more coarsely than I would normally have been comfortable with. But before that could properly sink in, she sighed and gestured towards the three doorways. In theory, the rooms were supposed to show different aspects of society, or different eras in the history of Eastside. But so many of the exhibits were jumbled up now; things that had been donated and put on display wherever there was space, due to the lack of attention from those properly qualified to catalogue and analyse the exhibits. Still, Evadne did her best to explain. Exhibition Hall 1, she explained, was filled with historical items which could cast light on the city as a whole; the walls primarily given over to maps of the city – and Eastside’s place in it – over the years. Exhibition Hall 2 was supposed to hold relics of the craftsmen and industries on which the local economy was founded; products made by local manufactuaries through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and advertising posters for local boutiques and theatres which had long since closed.

When the explanation was complete the boy thanked her gratefully, dropped a single coin into the collection box beside the counter, and made his way into Exhibition Hall 3. This was the most recent, and most specific, of the three rooms; although in its own way it was also the most eccentric. Landlords and business owners had been fairly rich since this town existed, and had often built up collections of exotic items among other ways of displaying conspicuous wealth. That was a tradition I had first-hand experience of. As Evadne described it, this room held the personal collections assembled by prominent Eastside residents through the years; from the extensive playbill collection of a 1940s landlord to boxes of sacred items collected by a mill owner on his tour of the world a century before.

In reality, most of the room was filled with collections of junk and miscellaneous ephemera. The things brought together by hoarders, whose descendants thought it would be easier to donate everything than to search through boxes for anything of value. Still, there were important things here. A collection of colonial-era relics contained what could have been a number of genuine magical talismans. There were spears arrayed to one side of the window, which almost certainly would have had some value if you could find an interested buyer. The room’s central table held several collectors’ books with baseball cards of different eras; as well as a set of 75 tarot cards printed in the middle of the last century. The museum staff had removed one card from that particular set because it was badly burned, and another because of the bloodstains. At the point farthest from the door, a display case held a dozen human skulls, many of them with carvings upon them, and all accompanied by little scraps of cardboard which displayed a wildly incorrect provenance.

That detail in particular annoyed me. If you could accept that a human bone was a material like any other, and that some people at some times could use it to create a work of art, then it seemed only proper to ensure that every label was correct. I had ranted about that enough in the past, though. The old man who had bequeathed this particular part of his collection to the museum had always been more interested in spinning stories than finding the truth; and no matter how many times I tried to correct him about what he was actually holding, he paid no attention to my input at all. Talking to Evadne, or to the professors who were theoretically in charge of this place, had been equally unhelpful. So now, I just sat in the corner of a musty room of antiquities, hoping to meet someone who would recognise the value in front of him. And on that day, when this strange young man walked in seeking shelter from the elements, I thought I might have found him.

I watched him as he walked around the edge of the room, taking in the strange things before him. From the way he moved, it was hard to believe that he had any genuine interest in history, or in this area. Just another poor boy, the victim of bad fortune, seeking an excuse to come in out of the cold. But he didn’t just sit down and wait, and he didn’t seem to be in search of a place where he could indulge in any kind of narcotics. He just walked around the outer edge of the room, looking at each exhibit. Sometimes he half-knelt to squint at yellowing notecards which promised more information about the source of some relic, but he showed no particular preference for a specific topic or era. If I had to guess, I would have said that he was simply bored. He did, however, stare for some time at a pendant without taking in the explanation beside it; and ran his hands over the glass where one pack of cards was displayed. And after what felt like an age, he came to a case containing skulls.

There was one which, according to its sign, had been carved with intricate tesselating symbols by an Italian mystic; a serial killer who had been driven insane while drinking wild mushroom tea and meditating on theories of sacred geometry. In fact, it was much older; the carvings were part of a sacred pattern. The former inhabitant of that skull had given herself as a human sacrifice to a sun god on the date of the winter solstice. It was an ancient tradition, and one which I considered barbaric. But in my mind, such a custom should be remembered in disgust, rather than simply overwritten.

The next skull was set with jewels. The card with it said that it had been sold as the relic of an Islamic martyr; a devout man who elected to die at the hands of heretics rather than denounce his faith. I couldn’t say whether there was any truth in that tale or not, but if so I could respect the determination of that man. In that case, however, I didn’t really understand why his successors would have thought it appropriate to remember him by venerating his body parts; or by setting semiprecious stones into a piece of bone.

The third had no gems, and no carvings. The bone gleamed as if polished, the smooth finish marred only be a few yellowed spots and a small burn mark. It had clearly been used as a candleholder at some point; as evidenced by wax trails dripping down the sides of the skull, and the remnants of a cylinder of pale tallow still secured to the crown.

The boy reached out a hand, and rested it on the front of the display case.

“What’s your name, boy?” I asked, and he jumped back as if shocked.

“What?” he asked, displaying none of the presence of mind I had observed when he was debating his way into this place. He looked all around him before continuing: “I’m sorry, I didn’t… I thought there was nobody in here.”

“Just you and me,” I told him. “Pleased to meet you. My name is Isaac, and if you are amenable, I believe that I can offer you a great deal of assistance. Do you have the courage to take what is rightfully yours?”

“There’s nothing of mine here. Just old junk. And there’s nothing in the world for me, but what I can earn.”

“You are right,” I agreed. “The true measure of a man is the life he can make for himself, regardless of his starting point. But I can see your potential, and I know I can teach you to realise that potential. Without my assistance, there is little chance that you would even know what you could achieve.”

Perhaps I was being melodramatic, but I knew that I had to get his attention. Even if he didn’t know what he was looking at, he had hesitated in front of each of the genuinely important artefacts in this room. He had a talent for it, and that talent needed to be trained. And perhaps, more than any other reason, I was becoming bored. I needed to do something, to change the world even. And if all I could do was help one boy, that had to be good enough.

“Why me?” he asked. “I mean… you don’t know me. Why are you talking to me, of all people? How are you even–”

“No, I don’t know you,” I retorted. “Maybe you can tell me something about yourself. And then I’ll tell you something too. What’s your name, for a start. I think I introduced myself already.”

“Fair enough,” the answer seemed reluctant, but I could tell he was curious. Who wouldn’t have been. “My name’s a– uhh… John. John Blake. Call me John. And I’ve come to the city to be a detective, just as soon as I can find a place to start. Maybe it’s a dream, but… You said you’ll help me?”

“I don’t know about detectives. But I know you saw the magic in this room. The things that aren’t quite what they appear. You’ve got observation, and I heard that’s a half of it. Awareness of the world around you, and deductive reasoning, might be all you need to be a detective. That is, if you’re still interested in that when you hear about the other options.”

“Oh yeah?” he answered, raising an eyebrow now. “You know, I think I’ve got more options than you right now. So what are you going to tell me that’s better than being a private investigator? What do you think you know about me?”

“There’s only one thing I know about you,” I said, hoping that this was the right way forward. “And that’s all you need. It’s not about what you’re going to be, it’s what you are.”

“There’s a lot of people want to tell me what I am,” he snapped, and I could hear the anger in his voice then. There was still nervousness there, and his voice sounded more like a child than a man. But the long-buried anger could overcome all of that, and demanded respect. “So choose your words carefully. Who do you think I am?”

There was only one answer to that. I said it.

“You’re a wizard, John.”