Authors: Andrew Gordinier
Chapter 11
Owen stubbed out his cigarette, his fifth by John’s count. They both sat silently for a moment, each contemplating life in their own way. John envisioned the wonder and horror that must have been visited upon mankind by angry and petty hearts and recalled the gravity that his grandfather’s letter carried and the implication that no one seemed willing to take the burden of that power. Such terrible things had been done by men without magic; the spoken word alone had often enough been enough to drive entire nations to madness. John was suddenly ashamed to be a part of humanity.
Sitting across from John, Owen saw it all remarkably differently. The old ways, the traditions of secrecy and abused power were a dark stain upon the history of mankind, not just mages. They were, after all, simply men and women who by some poorly understood mechanism could do the impossible. No wonder the power went to their heads. Owen thought of his friends and how they had tried for a new way where mages were servants of mankind and held to the highest ethics. He knew, though, that it was a doomed ideal if for no other reason than there were so few students, and of those, there were even fewer of a like mind to better mankind. Power, he mused, does after all corrupt.
“If I don't want to learn, don't want this power, can I turn it off? Give it up?” John suddenly felt as if he had been thrust into far more than he could ever handle. He didn't even want to contemplate if he could handle the powers of a god.
“No, you can't undo this. You can't even ignore it. Do you dream of patterns like the one in the ring?”
“Yeah.” John’s voice sounded weak and hopeless.
“That's because you can cast spells in your dreams. Most of us can and have learned to block it out.” Owen searched his rumpled cigarette pack for one last smoke. John was relieved when he came up empty because he hated the smell. “One way or another, you got to learn to handle this. You don't have to learn everything. At the very least, though you gotta learn to protect yourself and protect others from yourself. When you were looking at that ring, you damn near blew us and this shop to hell.”
John slumped as he felt the burden settle squarely on his shoulders. He wanted to cry, but that ever present social conditioning told him that men don't cry. It was all too much though: his father’s death, unexpected unemployment, no money, and now the burden of responsibilities and power that he could hardly fathom. A few stray tears slipped down to his chin, and he became enraged. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. All he had wanted was to live a quiet happy life with Barb. The death of that dream had unleashed the gates to this hell. That was a lie though, and John knew it somewhere deep inside himself; he just couldn't admit it yet. There is no point in second guessing life, but John had too many regrets to see that yet.
“Come on, kid. It could be worse.”
“It is worse. Some of this is stuff I got when my dad died last week and here I am pawning it because I got fired and can't pay my rent.” John felt like a hard luck case on the side of the road with a sign asking for mercy, any kind of mercy.
“Yea. It's worse,” admitted Owen. He knew where this was going. Knew what he had to, and should, do. He hated it, though. His own kids were proof that he had not been a particularly good father, and he doubted he could be an exemplary teacher. He also resented whatever it was that had brought this kid through his door. As a mage, he knew there was no such thing as truly random chance: everything had a cause and effect. Sometimes those long strings of cause and effect could do extraordinary things all on their own. “You need a teacher, and you need a job.”
“Yeah.”
“I need help here in the shop. It ain’t easy, and I won't be an easy boss, but I pay fair. While we're at it, I'll be your teacher. As little or as much as you wanna learn, I'll show you.” It was all too easy to say it. “That means you're my responsibility, though. You screw up, and it comes back to me, so no fucking around.”
“Sure.” John was grateful for the job and was afraid at the same time.
“You can keep this crap you were gonna pawn especially that ring. Things like that used to be passed down along family lines and even without the spell, it's damn valuable.”
“What does the spell do?”
“It's a sort of fire bolt spell. Things like that were kept secret within families.” Owen paused for a couple of heartbeats. “Be here at ten tomorrow. We open late and close late, so be ready to put in a long day. And kid?”
“Yeah?”
“From now on you call me 'sir'.” Owen had doubts about taking the kid in, but there wasn’t much he could do. The kid wouldn’t last long on his own and he might hurt someone else while he was screwing up his own life. Better to keep an eye on him and do what he could.
Chapter 12
Owen didn't lie; he was not an easy boss, and it only took John the first day to figure that out. When work started, it started, and there were no questions about it. What took John longer to figure out was Owen's sense of humor. He had a supply of dry and witty comments that John seldom had a response for. His humor seemed to be part hazing, part gallows, and part cynical wisdom. When it came to magic, though, there was no joking around and Owen taught him with a deadly serious tone and kept him aware of the dangers to himself and others.
John learned quickly how to read spell patterns without casting and was relieved to learn how not to cast in his sleep. Since Owen had told him it was possible, he had lived in dread fear of it. He spent the first few nights lying awake in bed, totally exhausted and afraid to fall asleep because he might incinerate himself or do something else more embarrassing. The last lesson of that first week, though, was one that immediately caught John’s attention and fascinated him.
“Every mage can see patterns.” Owen fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “They don't always take the shapes you think, and you might not always literally see them. Sometimes you'll hear a few beats ahead of the music, especially blues, classical and jazz. Others you'll see where things will land like leaves or snow. However, the best example is cards. Shuffle these.” He handed John an unopened pack of playing cards.
John opened the cards and shuffled the stiff cards while Owen continued to talk. “The strange part of it is that it's the same for everyone. Casting a spell is like stepping into some vast internal space and seeing a pattern is like reading a newspaper in the mirror.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah.”
“So . . .”
“Don't bother, kid. You'll get it when you get it.”
Owen had a habit of half explaining things that drove John nuts. Not just about magic but about everything. When John was learning to clean the shop, he had asked where the mop bucket was, and Owen had said; “It's where it is.” John had assumed that he had lost it or forgotten about it in the cavernous basement where Owen stored just about everything. He had searched for an hour before giving up and taking a moment to eat his lunch. The mop bucket was in the refrigerator. No explanations were offered, and no questions were asked, even though it had not been there earlier. For some reason, everything was a puzzle and could only be learned as it happened.
“So deal out a game of solitaire.” Owen's ever present cigarette barely clung to his lip as he spoke. John had to think for a few moments before dealing; card games were not his thing. Soon enough, though, he had seven neat rows of cards lined up on the counter top.
“Just watch for now.” Owen cracked his knuckles and set about the cards with light fingers. Before he flipped a card, he called out what it would be without missing once. In what John knew had to be record time, he had finished the game without missing a card.
“What the fuck . . .”
“Shuffle the cards again. Seven times: no more, no less.” Owen watched John for a heartbeat or two before starting to talk in a careful tone, as if reciting a poem from childhood. “There is no disorder, there is no chaos. The universe is essentially a giant clockwork mechanism. The gears will turn as they have and as they should, right to the very end. It's easy to see the pattern and order with planets and such, but here, on this human level, things get messy. There is just too much going on and too much changing to be able to see the order. The only thing that is not clockwork in the universe is life, especially crazy humans.” Owen paused to light another nasty cigarette. “We are the mice in the clockwork! We can run around and shit on everything all we want, and it won't change the way the planets turn. The thing is: even the chaos we create has predictable outcomes and effects. Radio waves follow the laws of physics, cars, smoke, and cards . . . . All obey the rules, even if we don't. That's why I can do this.” Owen called each card as he flipped it over, not missing a single one, not even the joker John had slipped in while he was talking.
“Music doesn't follow the laws of physics . . .”
“No, but good music is math and repeats sequences.”
“How do I do it?”
“Don't close your eyes or use your hands. That’s a terrible habit to learn so don't start, but go back to that large empty place you saw when you looked at the ring.
John let his eyes lose focus and reached back inside himself and found it was amazingly easy to go back through that door to the vastness inside. What was not easy was staying there. It was terrifying and empty. John fought down the urge to fill it with something anything. “Got it.”
“Good, now picture the deck of cards while you are looking at them.”
John suddenly saw that the description of reading in the mirror was accurate. It was as if he had two contradicting images and one didn't make sense. “Okay, but it takes a lot of effort.”
“You'll get used to it. You don't have a choice. Now, is the first card red or black?”
As John thought about them and as he visualized the deck of cards they became transparent, with tiny wisps of color drifting away from each one and mingling with the world around them. “What are the bits of color . . . .”
“Those are threads. Influences and forces from outside the pattern or influences the patterns have somewhere else. Red or black?”
“Black.” Owen flipped the card over and smiled. Without prompting, John called the rest of the cards without error or hesitation.
“How does it feel?” Owen straightened the cards and started to slowly shuffle them.
“Amazing.” John let go of the vastness and was dizzy, as if he had stood up too fast.
Owen laughed at him in a good-natured sort of way. “That's another thing to get the swing of. Here take the cards, go home and practice. By tomorrow night, I want you calling cards by name out of three mixed decks.”
John looked worried about the challenge but was also still shocked by his newfound ability.
As Owen watched John get ready to leave, he debated stopping what would happen, what seemed inevitable, when people learned this simple trick. There was always that truly human reaction to take advantage of this skill and see how far it could go, sometimes at the race track, or sports, but most commonly at casinos. It never went well and was sometimes dangerous. After all, mages are mortal and could still get their kneecaps broken if they won too much at the wrong casino.
“The kid’s gotta learn,” Owen said to himself, as he set about closing the shop for the night.
Chapter 13
By the end of the week, John had no problems with cards, dice, or most any other sort of game of chance. He had shocked himself by predicting the lotto drawing as he watched it, but was disappointed when he couldn't predict it hours ahead. When he asked Owen about it, Owen shrugged and said, “I don't know all the answers, kid, but we got limits.”
Limits or no, John knew what he had and was starting to see that perhaps this magic thing was not all bad. When Owen gave him his first paycheck that Friday, it felt like the keys to the kingdom. It was small and had John not had grand designs on the meager amount, it would have hardly kept him alive, but Owen had shown him how to make it work for him—or so John thought.
John left the shop at nine and had the check in his bank by nine thirty via a nearby ATM. He went home and set about getting ready for the next day by ironing his dress shirt and polishing his good shoes. He had spent time at the library on the computers researching all the casinos near Chicago, and there were a surprising number of them. He decided that his best bet was to stay as far away from home as possible, without going too far. He didn't want any questions raised too close to home. In the end, he decided his first target would be a river boat casino out in Aurora. He could get there by train easy enough, and odds were he would never go that way again. As he checked the train schedule and set his alarm clock, John felt like a bank robber right before the big score.
Despite his excitement, he slept well. In the morning, John wouldn't remember his dreams. He would only know he awoke feeling centered and ready for the day. It was for the best that the dream of Sandra and the call center did not stay with him, no matter how harmless it was.
Stepping off the train in Aurora, John was disappointed. He had expected to be able to hail a cab but couldn't; he was used to there being a cab every five minutes. With a measure of shame, he realized he was starting to think like someone who lived in the city. He walked most of the way to the casino before he found what he felt was the only cab in the whole town.
John’s feet hurt from the walk and there were salt stains on his shoes and pants from the walk in the mush and splatter on the sidewalks. It may have been spring, but the sidewalks were still getting a regular dose of salt. In all reality, John no longer felt like he was looking his best and felt slightly deflated as he walked into the casino. The throngs of people clustering around slot machines and other games of chance that early in the day drove home to him that this was a place of desperation.
People won every now and then, but as someone famously pointed out, on a long enough timeline, the house always wins. So, under the flashing lights and behind the noise of electronic and natural excitement, there was a determination to ignore what came next. Forget about the lost money that was meant for something practical like savings, the rent, or food for the kids. This was a place to win, a place to have fun! John did not need his newfound abilities as a mage to see the ugliness hidden in plain sight.
Ignoring his revelation and revulsion, John approached a black jack table and sat down with the few other people already there. He trusted himself with cards, he was best with cards. Still, he put his money down with a hesitation he had not expected. Two hundred dollars was two, maybe three, weeks’ worth of food to him, and it was quickly turned into chips that were worthless outside the casino. A good portion of John that still doubted magic and still thought this was all some screwed up nightmare promptly panicked, but he stayed calm by telling himself to stick to the plan. So he did.
He lost a few hands, and won a few others, but he made sure to lose the majority of his money before he started winning for real. Even then, he was careful to lose large amounts of money from time to time. After a while, the dealer got switched out with a new one and John took this to mean they were watching him, so he wandered the floor for a short time. Eventually, he landed by the craps table and started playing. He won and lost in spurts but always made sure he won just a bit more than he lost. He didn't count his chips, he just played, switching games every now and then and even pausing to have a small meal before going back for more. It was late afternoon before he decided to count his chips and was shocked to find he had just over forty-five thousand dollars. Much more than he had planned to win. It was time to go.
Cashing his chips out was not difficult. The young woman behind the old style banker’s bars was happy to get the manager to cash him out. The manager tried to convince him to stay for free in the casino’s attached hotel and check out the show that evening, but John politely refused. He did wonder what kind of show they could attract to a small casino in a town like Aurora. At the exact moment that John was about to tell the manager to back off, the man handed John a tax form so he could account for his winnings on his taxes. Then came the big question:
“Cash or check, sir?”
John, for the first time all day, realized he had not truly thought this out. They already had his name and information on the tax form, but he felt something dangerous about accepting a check. Cash, on the other hand, was begging for other more obvious issues. One does not get on a Chicago train or bus with a bag full of small unmarked bills and expect to reach their destination with anything but an empty bag.
“Cash, please,” said John, despite his reservations.
“How would you like that, sir?”
“Hundreds, please.” John may well have asked for a bag of gold coins, but he had come to the conclusion that money can be lost and made again. So the manager counted out an extremely large stack of hundreds for John with the aid of a small machine and several security guards who seemed to have come from nowhere.
“Is there anything else, sir?”
“Yeah, can I buy a briefcase to put it all in?”
The manager smartly plucked a hundred dollar bill from the pile, vanished into a back room, and returned with a remarkably nondescript and cheap briefcase that lacked a lock. John piled the money into it and made for the exit, after thanking everyone for their help. As he was leaving, though, he was struck by a rational bit of paranoia, and he made a quick stop at the men's bathroom.
After making sure he was alone, John did what he thought was sane and reasonable for someone in his position, and hid money everywhere he could think of: in his shoes, socks, underwear, and a couple of bills in every pocket. He had gotten carried away and won too much; this was not going to go unnoticed. He found himself wishing he knew how make himself invisible or how to teleport. There had to be a dozen different ways magic could save his ass, but he just didn't know any and had no way of even guessing. It made John feel foolish and frustrated. Sure, he had access to great and mysterious powers that were beyond belief, but was this going to stop him from getting mugged, or from being stupid enough to do this in the first place? Apparently not.
John walked to the cab station in front of the casino and was quickly on his way to the train station. He wanted to look behind him, he wanted to look to see if there was some menacing black car full of goons following him, but he was too scared to. At the train station, he paid the cab driver with a hundred dollar bill—it was all he had—and didn't wait for change. He tried the doors to the small station, but they were locked. John jogged up to the platform and looked at the posted schedule. Despite the chill, he was sweating. The next train would arrive in ten minutes. Just as he thought he might at least make it downtown before he got mugged, his head got slammed into the bulletin board. Only the fact the board was mounted on a concrete wall stopped his head from going through it.
“How'd you do it, fuck ball?” said a voice behind him.
“Urgggghhh?” John tried to ask what was going on, but whoever was behind him was still making a slow but determined effort to put his head through the wall.
“You can do better than that,” said a second voice. “We'd at least like your answers to be in English.” There was some laughter as John was pulled away from the bulletin board, and then was slammed into it again before being allowed to fall to the ground. He looked up at two men dressed in suits, very nice suits, who were laughing at him in a way that reminded him of every high school bully that had ever been. John was scared, but unimpressed.
“Relax, Fuck ball.”
“We just want to ask you a few questions.”
John made a move to sit up and was promptly kicked back to the ground.
“How the fuck did you win so much money at so many different games?”
“I cheated?”
“We know that, Fuck ball. We just want to know how.”
“Magic.” John figured it was the truth, and there was no way they would believe it, so he may as well tell them. A bad idea with poor instant results when the one with the limited vocabulary kicked him in the balls.
“I don't have time for you or for this shit. If I ever see you in my casino again, I will kill you. Kill you slowly.” There was a long pause and through his pain John could hear a train in the distance. “You gotta pay taxes this time though.”
The less verbal of the goons opened the briefcase and pulled out a handful of bills, while the foul mouthed goon wrenched John’s arm till he gasped in pain. The other one shoved the handful of bills into John’s mouth till John choked on them. He could hear them laughing as they walked away with the briefcase and the approaching train slowly drowned their voices out.
John felt stupid and powerless.