A mage alone, p.2
A Mage Alone, page 2
Bookkeepers see lots of things but are never seen. They see receipts for sexual services processed as client dinners. They see gratuities paid prior to the awarding of large contracts. And there’s loads and loads of money spent on booze.
As if reminded, he reached into his filing cabinet and pulled out a bottle of red, filling the used coffee mug next to the keyboard. He took a drink, ignoring the stale odour.
His mother’s final lucid moments had been a transfer of her worldly wisdom to him. One nugget was that putting booze in a glass let everyone know that it was booze. But put it in a mug, and it was just a drink. He toasted the advice and the dull reliability of bookkeeping.
Regardless of the purpose of the transaction, it always boiled down to a reassuring structure: a debit and a credit. A balance of the two.
So how the fuck do I process being a mage?
He drank and closed his eyes, exhausted by the emotions of the night before.
The office door opened, and he moved the bottle under his desk with a smoothness that spoke of practise. He pasted a smile on his face and got up to greet whoever was paying his bills.
“Morning, Ang. How are things?”
“Good.”
Ang was short on words, short in stature, and overwhelming in intensity.
“Last week,” she said, holding up a bundle of invoices, receipts and other paraphernalia before placing them on the bench.
Ang’s dry cleaning business looked like part of a national chain. Instead, she had bought a small family business and nearly tripled its profits in the eight years since. Nothing much had changed other than her attention to detail and an insistence that everything be done her way. Like handing over documents that could be emailed.
“Good weekend?” he asked.
“Same, same.”
“Business or personal?”
“Both.”
Ang stood in the same spot, eyes fixed on Eili. He wasn’t sure whether she was observing or waiting; both were equally likely and he had accepted over the years that she simply didn’t need to talk.
So he filled the gap instead.
“I’ll take care of these, and get any statements back to your accountant later this week, if that’s OK?” he said, holding up the stack of papers just in case there was any doubt as to what they were referring to.
“Yes. By Tuesday, and with confirmation to those three accounts, and a hard copy to my post office box,” she said.
“I can always just walk them—”
“No. Three emails, one posted to my post office box.”
Ang believed in established processes. Her processes. Repeatable, reliable processes that needed to be followed by all.
Eili was more used to running on the fly. Both parents dead from cancer at an early age—his father from industrial exposure, his mother only after years of suffering. Then he was on his own.
It made him accept change as a constant, but also appreciate the insistence on order that Ang brought. It made her happy, and she was the client. Perhaps as close to a friend as he had.
She stood for a moment longer than he was comfortable with, long enough to notice the dust motes being pushed between them by the heater, and then nodded once in acknowledgment.
He started to turn away, the transaction over.
“And you?”
“Me. What?”
“Your weekend. How was it?”
His mind threw back an image of a man with a grenade on his head and a poster talking to him. Saving him. That was Monday. He couldn’t remember the weekend.
“Good, yeah. Busy. Thanks for asking,” he said.
“Anything special?” she asked.
“Caught up with some old friends, made some new ones, and wished I’d avoided both. Same, same, you know?”
It wasn’t quite a lie.
Ang was difficult to read. She was controlled, deliberate. He wasn’t sure how much of that was her, and how much was Vietnamese heritage. She never spoke of her past, leaving him with the impression she had her own share of challenges. Like all of them. You just had to learn to deal with things and move on.
Like being a mage.
“Are you well?” she asked.
For God’s sake! How the hell would I know? Everything I’ve seen in the past 24 hours points to a resounding no.
“Yeah, fine. Busy.”
He felt a sudden surge of anxiety, and started extracting himself from the conversation.
“I’ve, ah, got a client meeting coming up,” and pointed at his wrist as if he had a watch on it. “Running late, you know?”
Her mouth twitched—it could have been a smile, he couldn’t tell—and she nodded, once, then turned and left.
He kept his forced smile until he was certain she had gone and almost ran from the reception to collapse at his desk.
He reached under his desk to rescue the wine, finished the cup with a gulp and refilled it.
He looked at the scuffed walls until the panic passed. His chest started to warm as the wine moved through his body, and he looked through the blinds at the front of the office. Out on the street, traffic continued moving: cars heading one way into the city, and lumbering semis moving the other way to the factories and warehouses of the west. Slowing down as lanes merged, taking off as everyone adjusted to the new flow. The weak sunlight caught grey exhaust as trucks accelerated, and Eili tried to capture them with his eyes in the brief moments before they disappeared. Too late.
He finished his wine, and shook his mouse to wake up his computer.
Too many distractions, too much bullshit, he thought. Time to get back to the real world.
The excitement of business administration beckoned. But it was OK. He had wine to help.
———
3
The trucks were the real giveaway that the end was nigh.
It was easy to overlook the softening daylight until you had fallen into night, but the increasing number of trucks rushing to beat the evening provided the real cue that the day was closing.
Eili moved papers into discrete piles he would attempt to make sense of tomorrow, but the mounds reassured him he had achieved something.
After all, papers don’t lie, he thought. Do posters?
He’d had similar thoughts throughout the day, despite attempts to bludgeon them with debits and credits, coffee and wine.
He admitted defeat and shut up shop.
Cars were banked up along St Vincent Street, headlights shining on the back of the car in front as they attempted their own escape. He weaved between them, giving each driver an absent wave of thanks, all while holding his breath to avoid the sickly exhaust fumes made sharp by the icy air.
He barely made his way to the kerb as the lights turned and traffic surged, answering an angry horn blast with a cheery wave. Sorry. Not sorry.
The street lights were coming on as he made his way toward the docks. His shadow stretched out before him before it faded into the footpath, replaced by another indistinct shape as he approached the light from the next pole.
He rounded the corner and made his way to the Dockside. It was a ritual, of sorts: break the painted yellow line on the ground outside the door—the one marked “No smoking beyond this line”—enter the hallowed grounds and pay respects to the wise beings in all their glory.
Nick looked up from his phone as Eili entered, taking a few moments to disengage and recognise him. His brow crunched and he took a quick look at the clock. Just past five.
“Early night; business a bit slow?”
He pour a beer into a coffee mug as Eili made his way to his place at the bar.
“No, it’s perfect. Finally found someone who will pay me to drink,” and he took his first draught. “Either that or they’re trying to stop me stuffing up their business.”
Nick snorted and turned back to his phone.
“Bert, Bert. How’re things?”
“Bloody terrible,” Bert said.
Bert was shaking his head. “No use complaining, though. No one listens.”
“Maybe you don’t pay them enough,” Eili said.
They coughed their laughs and turned back to the TV in the corner. Horses were lining up for the 5:20, and everyone at the Dockside—all four of them—knew something was bound to raise serious doubts about the health of the industry. Eili knew nothing about horses or dogs, but if there was one thing that was certain, it was was that the Berts would find something wrong. Even if there was nothing.
The racing gates opened with a crack, and the commentator’s drone drowned out the hum of the neon tubes overhead. Eili downed his beer, held his mug up to signal for another.
He shifted his full cup to the centre of the pool of condensation on the pockmarked bar. As an afterthought he shifted the cardboard coaster underneath, then shrugged and started picking it apart as it softened.
The Berts broke out on cue. Something about track conditions. Poor ground staff. Not enough in the prize pool to attract competition. Something. Nothing.
Eili turned back to the thought that had been with him all day.
He had to go back, he knew, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to see. Go back and talk to a poster that talked back, and he would have proof that he hadn’t imagined the night’s events. Crazy but not hallucinating. Or go back and see a poster, stuck to a wall. Nothing more and nothing less. Hallucinating, but not crazy.
He scraped the pile of wet paper balls into a mound, moulding them together.
He’d be happier with the second option. He could dismiss it as a one-off, and get on with his life. A business ticking along with minimal effort. A townhouse with views over the Port. And no time wasted on complicated friendships or relationships. Just get on and do my own thing, one day at a time. No fuss, no trouble.
Eili nodded to himself, comforted by the conclusion.
But if it’s real?
He shook his head to rid himself of the thought and raised his mug for another.
“Hey, when’s the karaoke coming back? It’d be good to get some life in here,” Eili said.
“Nah, boss won’t have it. Brings in the crazies,” Nick said.
From across the bar Bert yelled something at Bert, slamming his glass on top of the bar as he accused him of changing channels to avoid paying up on a side-bet they’d had. Bert yelled back that they’d never agreed to it because Bert hadn’t paid up the last bet. Theft and bloody murder, it was.
Nick turned back to Eili.
“Not those blokes. He doesn’t want all those latte people. Says the hardest thing they buy is soda water. Do you know how much fresh lime costs these days? Anyway, no. No good for business.”
Eili raised his fresh mug in mock salute. “It’s why I keep coming back: to bring a little magic to the place!”
He frowned at his choice of words.
Nick had turned to the Berts, who were now arguing over whose turn it was to pay for the round. Real world problems.
Eili moved the paper mound to one side and started destroying another coaster.
He’d have to go back, he knew that. It wasn’t healthy to have something festering.
The Port had been around long enough to see people come and see them go. It wasn’t going to change because of a hallucination or some other craziness. It was the Port, and the Port kept going.
He stood up to leave. Nick looked up expectantly.
“One more,” he nodded, and Nick relaxed. “Last one,” he muttered to no-one in particular, and sat back down to his pile of paper balls.
The barking of the Berts continued, calling out the stewards for their inconsistent approach to strapping. Whatever that was.
———
Eili stood in the middle of the intersection, old rail lines baked into the road under his feet in a nod to the area’s industrial heritage. The night’s stillness carried the echo of scraping metal and mechanical grunts as the latest arrival was unloaded at the Port.
No one had passed in the five or ten minutes he had been there. It was just him. Him and the yellow building, home of multiple generations of flour merchants before they were replaced by property investors looking for the next big thing.
And the poster around the corner.
He hesitated, then committed with a cough. Get it over with.
“Hello?”
One second, two seconds. Nothing.
His shoulders dropped and he was suddenly aware of the hot ache in his neck and shoulders.
No moving poster, just the sound of the Port as it continued as it always had. And as he could.
He breathed out in the cold night and turned home. Perhaps a drink on the way to settle his serves.
“Good evening to you once again, my friend.”
He spun back, tense again, as he heard the same clipped tones from an empty street.
The poster was smiling, nodding his turbanned head in greeting. The poster looked from side to side, scouting the street, and then moved closer to Eili, whispering.
“You know,” and another quick glance, “I would imagine this experience may be causing you some distress.”
Eili backed away. He wasn’t used to empathy from people, so speaking with a poster with unerring emotional intelligence was really pushing his boundaries.
“But I tell you: do not worry. I will help where I can.”
The poster sat back in his chair, nodding reassuringly.
Eili climbed the kerb to stand in front of the poster. He was still unsure whether he was crazy or this was just a drunken hallucination, but he was going to run with it until he could carefully escape. He glanced around to make sure no one was approaching and pushed through his shock with some of his swagger returning.
“You don’t get an offer like that every day.”
The poster beamed at the compliment.
“What’s your name?”
The poster sat bolt upright, his smile overcome by a distraught look.
“But of course! How rude of me. I am Mongha Khan, although I am mostly called Khan. So please, Khan. And you?”
“Eili. Eili Morgan.”
“So do you prefer Eili, Morgan or Eili Morgan?”
“Eili, please.”
“Eili, then. A pleasure to meet you. Although I must admit, I can understand why you might have difficulty with your name—”
Eili tried to interrupt to explain he had no difficulty, it was just a stutter borne of shock, and his name was given to him from his Welsh mother because ...
But he couldn’t get a word in.
“Because I, too, have such difficulties. However, I believe mine stem from my unusual existence. This face is that of Monga Khan, camelier and gold field storeman, but this form is the will of Peter Drew.
“He is a talented man,” the sweet voice pondered, “but I do not believe he appreciates that his artistry is akin to being a mage. Perhaps he is too drawn to the issues of this world to see the delight of his own creation. Which leaves about 1000 posters of me around the country yearning for more.”
Khan fell quiet as he thought of his brethren scattered throughout cities, perhaps having similar conversations with similarly awe-struck individuals.
Eili grabbed the opportunity to speak.
“So, Khan, you said you were a poster—which you are—but it’s also pretty clear that you’re something more. My question is: what? What are you?”
Khan sat, unmoving, so Eili repeated his question. Then again, a little more loudly.
He heard a snort behind him, then someone else shushing. He turned to see a young couple walking toward the Port, obviously avoiding looking directly at him.
Eili pulled his phone from his pocket and started a conversation that backed his overheard comments in: “No, really, what are you? Well, you’re a bastard if you don’t come to the pub as we agreed ... OK, see you soon.”
He hung up with a flourish that the couple missed. Khan was laughing at him.
“A masterful performance. I congratulate you!”
“You could’ve told me,” Eili said.
“I would not want to miss out on such fun. But your question remains unanswered. Repeated, and increasingly loudly at that, but unanswered.
“I am a poster, yes, but it is more correct to say I am an object that has been imbued with power. And that power has created life. I am a very lucky poster indeed!”
Khan continued to beam.
Eili felt foolish asking the question—in the back of his mind it would likely just complicate his life further—but couldn’t resist.
“How does a poster come to have power?”
“No, I do not have power, I am imbued with power. Given it, if you will. I cannot answer your question.”
“Why?”
“I have not learned why yet.”
Khan continued when he realised Eili didn’t understand.
“I am a poster. A poster created to highlight a noble being, true, but I have only been here six months. I have few answers, other than that next Friday is recycling day, and green waste the following Friday.”
“So you’re a magical being, and rubbish is your thing? Sounds like a promising world,” Eili said.
“Ah, but it is,” said Khan, leaning forward. “It is a beautiful world, filled with life and wonder. I will confess to you, I am uncertain about what this life holds but I am here and I am alive. That is surely enough reason to celebrate. For me, it is enough to celebrate.”
“Well don’t get your hopes up, that’s all I’m saying. It’s not like you’ve got the window seat.” Eili swept his arm to highlight the darkened houses and empty street.
“I still do not understand.”
Eili was about to explain when he remembered: I’m talking to a poster. He shivered and huddled closer into his coat.
“You haven’t got the best view, that’s what I’m saying. Look, thanks for chatting and all, but I may just get going. I’ve got work tomorrow and all, so—”
“Work! But you are a mage! You must learn of your power.”
“OK, tell me about my power, and then I’ll get going.”
Khan laughed, a rich laugh from his paper chest.
“Rubbish is my specialty, as you kindly observed. No, for an understanding of power, you must speak with someone much older and wiser than me.”
