The tower caught Oscar completely by surprise - in the drizzle and the dark he hadn’t been looking about him and he had no idea that anything that large could possibly be there until he was standing there with it looming over him, out of the orange streetlight, up into the cloudy night. It was a white, square tower, solid and stern, and it seemed so huge that Oscar couldn’t quite believe that he had never seen it before, but no one else was particularly surprised by it - all Maggs said was:

“What are we doing here?”

“Oh,” Ridley looked crestfallen, “You don’t…?” She chewed at her lip for a moment and then obviously made a decision, “Well, let’s see - follow me…” and she led them through the gates and into the building.

Despite its forbidding appearance and, Oscar had to admit, impressive entrance hall, the tower itself was actually disappointingly homely inside. It seemed, in fact, like nothing so much as a big and important school, with hardwearing linoleum floors and bland official paintwork.

Ridley ushered them all into an ancient looking lift and they creaked up several floors until she led them out into a deserted corridor and then through an unmarked door into what, to Oscar’s eyes, looked unfortunately like a schoolroom.

One end of the room was taken up with a large table, crowded with complicated looking bits of apparatus, all strange glass containers suspended from various metal frames and retorts, some of which Oscar cheerfully recognised from Hammages, which he presumed meant they were magic, in some way.

Elsewhere there were a number of chairs, of all different kinds, with small tables spread between them; the walls were lined with bookcases and, in the few gaps where there weren’t bookcases, prints and posters: a night sky with the constellations drawn in, some of them quite new to Oscar, maps of countries he didn’t recognise, strange diagrams and charts and a couple that looked worryingly medical.

Ridley stood expectantly in the middle of the room and looked at them:

“Well?”

“Um…” Maggs was evidently as little impressed as Oscar, “It’s very nice, I’m sure…”

“You don’t remember it?” Ridley’s smile slipped.

“Should I, dear?”

“Well, I’m afraid so, yes…” Ridley shrugged and turned to sit on the edge of the large table, “I was rather hoping I might jog some memory or something, but… it’s your study, Maggs - where you taught your apprentices - don’t you remember it at all?”

“Mine? This is my room?” Maggs stumbled backwards into one of the chairs and gazed around her in amazement, “I… I… no… I’m sorry, Ridley, I don’t, I don’t recognise it at all…”

“No, I’m sorry, Maggs, I shouldn’t have just sprung it on you like that…”

“Hang on a minute,” Oscar was confused, “I don’t understand - how can you not remember your own room, Maggs?”

Maggs looked up at him and then at Ridley, who gave her a sad smile. She turned back to Oscar.

“Oscar, I have a confetti… confession to make… I’m not a Magi. I was once; I was, everyone tells me, a great one, a powerful one, but then… the Darklings came….”

“Darklings? You said that before - those things in Hammages, that attacked us…”

“Dark spirits,” said Ridley, grimly, “Spirits beyond the control of the Magi - there are many of those, of course, but these ones are different - they are rebels, determined to attack the Magi, to defeat them… ‘The Wild Ride’ they call themselves, they first appeared about twenty years ago - before my time, really…”

“I… I don’t remember it myself….” Maggs shook her head, “To me now the time before the Wild Ride is like a story someone told me once. All I remember is waking up knowing that I knew something once but that I now couldn’t remember what it was - there was a hole in my mind: they had taken my magic away from me. I still have trouble, with words, with some things, memories - they are slippersly, you see?

“Anyway I wasn’t the only one. The Wild Ride were everywhere and we were all afraid. And their magic is dark and, what’s the word? Wrong… different… the Knights Watchmen can’t track them any better than anyone else could: they can’t find them, they can’t stop them. So they decided to do the next best thing: to hide us instead. They covered places like Hammages and the Temple with glamours and wards, they sealed up our houses and colleges, they watched our every movement and moment, keeping us secret and safe. We call it The Veil and it keeps us hidden from the world.”

“Well, it did,” said Ridley, “Now the Wild Ride are back, walking through the Veil like its not there and no one is safe.”

“And the Knights Watchmen are worse than ever,” continued Maggs, “You saw that for yourself - before they might have been strict and over-protectortive, now they persecute us and punish us for our own vulna… vulneral… weakness, they’re no longer interested in keeping us safe - they want to keep us subbujuggered, too. Now we don’t just hide from the Darklings, we hide from the Watchmen, too…”

“Which is why we need places like this,” said Ridley, “It was a really lucky find - the private rooms of Magi are always secured and hidden by magic, you see, Oscar, but after what happened to Maggs, this room was left open to anyone to enter, but still secret, if you follow me - the perfect refuge from the Watchmen, really.”

“Do you really not recognise any of it, Maggs?” asked Oscar.

“No, dear me, no - I’m not sure I even recognisise the person who used it, if you see what I mean…”

“That’s something else,” Oscar was still trying to puzzle it all out, “If you’re not that same person any more, how come the Darklings are still trying to get you? Why you?”

“They’re spirits,” interjected Ridley, “We can’t expect them to behave like rational humans.”

Maggs shook her head, “And part of the problem is that I don’t really know why they attacked me in the first place - I can’t remember, after all…”

“But if this is your room, maybe there’s something in it, something that can give us a clue…” Oscar ran to the table at the top of the room, pulling out a drawer underneath it. All that was inside was some blotting paper and a small metal box that rattled as the drawer opened.

“I’m afraid I’d already tried that - there’s nothing,” said an unexpected voice.

There was a pause, as if everyone there was holding their breath, then the cat, who was still sitting on the carpet in front of Oscar, stretched extravagantly and there was a heavy sound behind as Maggs fell to the floor.

Lights started flickering on in the distance, and in the snapping flashes Oscar could see movement everywhere, more of the strange, shadowy, shifting figures like the one the cat had chased away, jolting down between the aisles, rattling like sticks, jumbling up and over shelves and raking down books and jars in their wake.

Somewhere in the distance there was shouting, at first incoherent and scared, but there, further off, the frightened shouts became determined, voices of command and action taking over and taking charge.

“Spirits Alive! You’re surrounded by some of the best magic money can buy! Use it!”

“To the lifts! You and you, fetch those books, follow me!”

One of the creatures came clicking out from between the shelves into the reference section and stopped, its head turning, loose on its neck. The old man who had fallen over whimpered into his beard and the thing unbent towards him, its brittle fingers uncurling. But before it could reach out for him someone came running into book section from the department beyond.

“Harker! Brabant!” The man was dressed in a stiff, blue coat with silver stars on the cuffs and the collar. At the sound of his voice the creature’s body suddenly switched, realigning, thin, branching spikes of hands reaching out towards the new arrival.    “Oh no, you don’t!” The man snatched a book from the shelves and, letting it fall open in his hand, tore out a page with one swift movement and threw the paper at the monster.

The sheet of paper seemed to hang in the air and then began to twist in some unfelt breeze, and as it twisted and flapped, its shape changed, it seemed to grow, extending out great, papery wings. The rattling creature slashed at it, tearing the paper with its claws, but the man was already tearing out another sheet.

And another uniformed man came running, and another, and soon the whole books department was full of flapping, blundering pages, all batting against the creature like moths against a lightbulb as it swatted at them ineffectually, forced back a step at a time. Then, one after the other, the pages began to wrap round the thing - the creature tore at them but they stuck fast. Its legs were bound together and it stumbled, desperately trying to put out more legs, which were, in turn, bound before they could reach the floor. Then its hands were wrapped up, then its arms, then, like an Egyptian mummy, it fell to the floor, bundled up entirely in sheets of paper.

“Right, Brabant, you come with me, Harker, you start rounding up the customers: I want fobs and seals for everyone…”

“Come on,” said a voice suddenly startlingly close to Oscar, “Help me get her up, we need to get her out of here.”

Oscar turned to find a young woman with a frizzy mop of blonde hair bending over Maggs, trying to wake her up.

“What are you doing?” He tried to pull her away, but the woman just shrugged him off.

“Don’t be daft and give me a hand: we’ve all got to get out of here - I can’t be found here, I know for a fact that Maggs’ fobs are ten years out of date and I’m betting that you don’t have either,” and she shot him a quick grin over her shoulder, “Now, come on, please Maggs, just wake up.”

The black cat wandered up to Maggs and sniffed at her ear.

“Darklings!” Maggs suddenly sat upright with a cry that sent the cat scampering back behind Oscar’s legs.

“Its alright, Maggs,” said the young woman, “They’ve gone, but unfortunately only because the Knights Watchmen have arrived - so we’ve got to get out of here, pronto.”

“Alright, alright, let me just get my legs working again…” Maggs suffered herself to be helped to her feet, “And how were you…” she suddenly stopped and peered at the young woman suspiciously.

“Ridley,” said the woman, helpfully, “You’ve met me before, at the Temple… with Thursby?”

“Thursby!” Maggs obviously recognized the name and was glad to hear it.

“Come on,” the young woman tugged at her elbow, “If we can get out of here, I can take you to him.”

“And Oscar,” said Maggs, suddenly grabbing hold of Oscar’s arm, “We can’t leave Oscar behind.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said the young woman and smiled at him again. There was something infectious about the smile that appealed to Oscar immediately, the way it flashed across her otherwise concerned and anxious face, “Now, if we have everyone, let’s go, now!”

She planted a hand in Oscar’s back and pushed him ahead of her, crouching down to keep her head out of sight below the tops of the shelves. They soon found themselves in a gloomy corner, facing a huge pair of concertinaed metal doors.

“The goods lift,” huffed Ridley as she hauled on one of the doors, “It’s how I get in here without being seen: give us a hand, will you, Oscar.”

The doors gave a horrible grinding squeal as they yanked back on them and in reply shouts went up all over the department.

“Over here! In the corner! To me, to me!”

Ridley gave up on the doors and started pushing Maggs through the slight gap they had opened.

“Come on, Maggs, breathe in… quickly now, Oscar, we don’t have much time - quick! The doors!”

Now inside the lift, Oscar threw all his weight behind Ridley, as the doors grinded agonizingly closed. Through the opening he could see one of the uniformed men running towards them, a black rod clutched menacingly in his hand and something else, too: the black cat, the one had saved them from the terrifying creature, who came scooting through the closing gap as the door finally gave way and clanged shut, and the lift dropped away beneath them.

“Goodness,” Maggs slumped against the wall of the lift, “That was a close shave.”

“We’re still being shaved,” said Ridley with a grim smile, “It’s not over yet - they’ll be on the look out for us now.”

“Who will?” Oscar was bewildered, “Who were those people? Why are they chasing us? What were those things? What were they doing? How…?”

“If I’d wanted to be ruthlessly interrogated,” Ridley laughed, “I could have just stayed behind.”

“Be serious, young lady,” Maggs bent down to be on a level with Oscar, which, for her, wasn’t far, “Those were the Knights Watchmen, Oscar, they’re a sort of police force.”

“Magic police?”

“You really don’t know who the Knights Watchmen are?” Ridley was astonished, and became serious herself, “You’ve got yourself into a very dangerous fix, Oscar, and you’ve just made some very dangerous enemies…”

“But not the most dangerous,” Maggs gave Ridley a meaningful glance.

“Yes, I saw that…” They both looked at Oscar with such serious expressions that he felt quite uncomfortable. Maggs was about to speak when the lift suddenly juddered and started squealing to a stop.

“Quick, Oscar, help me with this door again!” Ridley started pulling at the handle, “Stick close together, everyone, this is going to be tricky!”

They turned straight out of the lift and out through a pair of battered doors into a gloomy side street. It was dark already, even though it was still quite early, and the trees in the small park opposite were spindly, leafless shadows against the sky.

With Ridley pulling at their hands, they stumbled out into the Christmas crowds. They were somewhere behind Hammages, in dim back streets away from the seasonal lights and dazzled throngs, but even here there were plenty of shoppers, jostling to and fro, forcing them to dodge and duck, forcing their way upstream.

“Ridley, where are you taking us?”

“There’s a… It’s a…” Ridley was looking up, nervously scanning the roofs of the buildings around them, “I better not say, but it’s a safe place.”

Oscar couldn’t quite tell what she was afraid of, but after what he had seen this afternoon, he didn’t like to imagine what it might be. He couldn’t stop glancing up at the roofs whenever he dared, trying to spot what Ridley might have been looking for, but he couldn’t see anything in the wintry darkness, just the outlines of cranes and air-conditioning units and gargoyles and… one of the gargoyles suddenly shifted and moved: a black figure against the night, which then leapt out over the canyon of a street and disappeared among the towers and balustrades of the building opposite.

He froze, trying to catch it again, any glimpse of movement in the shadows, and then he realized that Ridley and Maggs had gone, slaloming between terminally snarled traffic at a junction. He sprinted after them, breathlessly,

“Maggs, Maggs… there was something… on the roof…”

“They’re after us,” Ridley nodded, grimly, “Come on, we don’t have much time…” and she was off again, pulling them down another side street.

Gradually they were now running beyond the shopping crowds into empty streets of darkened shop fronts, places already closed for the evening. A lot of them seemed to be clothes shops, with windows full of dummies and racks of clothes disappearing away into the shadows. As they were passing one, Oscar glanced in. And at that moment one of the mannequins, draped about in a lacy wedding dress, turned its head and met his gaze.

He froze, stunned, as the mannequin raised an arm and pointed at him. Then it lurched forward, its outstretched finger banging against the glass. He could hear it shouting, wordlessly, muffled. Maggs grabbed him.

“Spirits!” she pulled him after her, across a road, “Quickly, they’ve set spirits to look for us!”

“This way!” shouted Ridley, “We’ve got to keep moving.”

Ridley raced up another street and then turned suddenly down under a dim arch that Oscar had almost missed, leading them through into a dingy little alley way tucked in between gloomy buildings. The alley was cobbled and slick with rain, and clattering down through it was like suddenly turning back in time.

“Come on, you two…” Ridley called over her shoulder, “They have spirits set all over London, a network of spies and informants, but as far as I know they’re mostly on the main roads. If we stick to the back streets and alleyways, we might be able to slip the net.”

“Or we might not,” said Maggs, grabbing her by the arm, “Listen…” They all stopped, barely daring to breathe, and there it was, above the sounds of cars and shoppers and the million accidents and rackets of London, a deep, lonely, ringing bark: a dog, a large dog, baying at the winter sky, and somewhere another bayed in answer, and another, belling out across the city.

“Wish Hounds…” whispered Ridley, “They’ve set Wish Hounds on our trail… come on! There’s no time to lose!”

They plunged down a narrow passageway, past a sudden burst of light and life in an open pub door, and out into another street.

“Too late!” shouted Maggs, “We’re doomed! Look: there!”

She was pointing at a small, white Yorkshire terrier in a little tartan coat on the other side of the road, which was quite happily minding its own business, sniffing a lamppost.

But as Oscar watched it suddenly stiffened and brought its head up. And it started to swell, no, grow - getting bigger and stronger. The belt of its coat snapped and it fell away. The dog, now the size of a Labrador, turned towards them. Its hair was still white, but it’s ears hand gone a deep, bloody red. So had its eyes and it was looking straight at them.

Then it threw back its head and started baying at the skies. At that the black cat suddenly leapt into the road and ran straight in front of the Hound. The dog’s head snapped round and then it turned and raced after the cat, baying at full cry.

“Quick!” Ridley grabbed Oscar and pulled him after her, in the opposite direction, “Once again that cat has saved our bacon,” she said, hurrying along, “Remind me to buy it a fish… if we see it again.”

There was barking coming from all around them now - it was difficult in the maze of streets to tell exactly where the dogs were.

“Wait,” Oscar grabbed Ridley’s coat, “We haven’t lost them all: they’re not all following the cat.”

Ridley stopped and listened.

“I think you’re right…”

“I’ve got an idea - Maggs, give your coat to that homeless man.”

“Charity is all very commendable, Oscar…”

“Hang on,” said Ridley, smiling, “I think I know what he’s up to… give me a hand,” and she started struggling out of her own coat.

“What on earth?”

“Dogs hunt using smell, even Wish Hounds,” said Ridley, “Our clothes will have our scent on, if we can just confuse that trail a bit…”

“Of course, of course: brilliant!” Maggs started unbuttoning her own coat.

“Excuse me,” Oscar ran up to a boy about his age who was gazing at a pile of computer games in a shop window, “Swap you for your coat - mine’s practically new.”

The boy looked at him with an appraising eye.

“I’ll take your coat and your trainers.”

Oscar looked down at his trainers - the birthday present he had asked for so desperately. The trainers that everyone at school had wanted: the trainers that the Wish Hounds were hot on the trail of.

“Ok, it’s a deal.”

“Hurry up, then, my mum’s ’sposed to be meeting me…”

“I’m hurrying, don’t worry.”

Maggs came running up as Oscar was tying the laces on his new - well, second hand and not so nice - shoes.

“Ah, shoes - good thinking!”

“Come on, you two,” shouted Ridley from across the street, “The running will keep us warm, even without coats,” and she was off down another side street, with Maggs and Oscar following close behind.

They came out into a bustling main street, with crowds of shoppers pushing to and fro, in and out of shops, getting in each others’ ways and becoming more and more unseasonal with each shop. Ridley made to cross the road when Maggs caught hold of her arm and pointed.

Oscar followed her finger to a tall building on the opposite side of the road, something that appeared to be a pub that was trying, very hard, to be a medieval castle and an Arabic palace all at the same time, climbing upwards in a forest of turrets and spires. At the very top of these was an ornamental knight, holding a golden banner, who, as Oscar watched, gave an extravagant stretch and then bent down to examine the people passing by so far beneath him.

“Spirits,” whispered Maggs, “They’re still watching…”

“And not just them,” hissed Ridley, “Look out…” and without warning she grabbed both of them, turning them away from the road, to stand up against the glass of a TV showroom, gazing at their own reflections in the glass.

“Look!”

There must have been a video camera set up somewhere in the window, because one of the TVs on display was showing the pavement behind them and on it Oscar could now clearly see two Knights Watchmen strolling apparently casually down the street, a Wish Hound at their heels, for all the world just another pair of Christmas shoppers.

“We’ve just got to get across the road,” hissed Ridley, “Bloomsbury is pretty clear, usually.”

“It’s no good, Ridley,” squeaked Maggs, “They’re everywhere.”

“They’re not the only ones,” said Oscar, who had caught sight of something else on the TV, “Follow me, I’ve got an idea.”

He turned away from the shop window before either of the other two could react and then, they too, turning to stop him, found themselves caught up in a great bustle of American tourists, the crowd Oscar had spotted on the TV screen.

The three of them quickly found themselves surrounded by chattering tourists, swept along, right past the Knights Watchman, and across the road. Ridley shouldered them out of the crowd and the three of them escaped up a side street and out of danger.

The Remainders gang (myself, Finbar Hawkins & Jon Millington) have had a few sketches featured on Tilt, a BBC Radio 7 sketch show - so, finally got that credit on a BBC radio comedy show. My work here is done.

I think the most recent show is available on listen again, still, but this is the show’s page, which might prove slightly longer lived than any Listen Again link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/comedy/progpages/tilt.shtml

After the dim calm of the shelves of books, this department was bright and colourful. They walked between tall shelves filled with glittering glassware and shining, mysterious contraptions.

At the end of the shelves was a table on which was set up some kind of scientific experiment: retort stands and flasks, beakers and pipes. A bright blue rock in the bottom of a bottle steamed out yellow smoke that condensed in a long coil of pipe into a thick scarlet liquid that oozed down through a column of glass beads.

Beyond, at the end of a further set of shelves, something was buzzing and throwing out sparks. Beyond that Oscar could see the great wall of drawers that he had glimpsed earlier, where a shop assistant was weighing out garish powders on a set of scales.

“Alchemy!” Maggs was gesturing at the experiment, “Oldest of all the sciences… First find your spirit, then libby… libiberal… set it free. This is how you conjure a spirit out of its hiding place, you see.”

“It looks like chemistry,” Oscar was doubtful: this reminded him a little too much of school.

“It is chemistry!” Maggs seemed inappropriately enthusiastic, “Without the alchemy of the Magi, there wouldn’t be any chemistry - there wouldn’t be any of the modern sciences. Of course, people these days don’t think anyone does alchemy anymore: but they’re wrong!”

Maggs was shouting and waving her arms about and she was attracting the attention of a distant shop assistant, who was watching her prancing around the display with a snooty expression. Oscar decided he ought to try and distract her.

“So magic is all experiments and chemicals?” He could see that all the bubbling and explosions looked like fun, but in his bitter experience such excitement always seem to need too much hard work to get it going. And too much tidying up afterwards.

“Ah, no,” Maggs was off again, beetling away between the shelves, “Alchemy is not just a science: it is an art: the art of magic!”

They had come through into a more open section of the department, where stands and racks dotted the floor, displaying sequined cloaks, long straggly scarves and oddly shaped hats. The floor itself was covered in strange patterns, circles and stars and five sided shapes, and stuffed animals stared down on them from niches in the wall. It was quieter here and the lights were dim.

Maggs was standing in the middle of one of the circles drawn on the floor, surrounded by cryptic symbols.

“A magic circle,” she was just as enthusiastic about this chalk drawing as she had been about the experiment, “You see, once you’ve liberalated your spirit you have to bind it again, but this time to your own command. The Magi must ensorcel the spirit to obey the words of power…”

“Like spells?” Words of power sounded more like the sort of magic Oscar had had in mind when he snuck his way up here.

“They are spells! Magical lore handed down through the millennia: the secrets of the ancients,” Maggs spread her arms wide and Oscar became aware that the snooty shop assistant and once again appeared in the distance.

“Although, to be honest, they don’t use the ancient lore so much these days,” Maggs was leaning forward conspiratorially, “The Great Work simplified a lot of the rites, made everything a lot easier.”

“I see,” said Oscar, he didn’t, of course, but magic made easy sounded perfectly fine to him.

“You shall do, you shall do,” Maggs moved away again, dodging around a stand of gnarled old staves, “This way, and I shall show you.”

Maggs opened a door in a wall and led them through into the back of a display made up to look like a real room, complete with wood panelling and bookshelves, only with one wall missing so that customers could look in.

At one end of the room was tripod with a bronze dish on top that was spewing out purple smoke. As Oscar watched a suit of armour emerged, clanking, from beyond the smoke and dropped a creaking handful of powder into the dish. The smoke turned dark red.

At the other end of the room a book on a lectern turned its own pages as a strange billowing, glowing fire jumped in a magic circle on the floor before it. The fire danced and writhed, taking on different shapes: a dragon, a cat, a strange beast like a horse with horns, a small, goblin like creature…

Maggs pushed past a skeleton on a stand and ducked under a crocodile hanging from the fake ceiling, stepping down out of the display back onto the shop floor. The suit of armour watched them pass and then heaved itself back to its bronze dish.

They passed down an aisle of what looked to Oscar like empty fish tanks, turned into one of pet food and supplies and then came out into a small open space.

All around them were high walls of cages, stacked one above the other and in each cage were animals: alternately small white dogs and black cats. Normally you might have expected to have heard so many animals before you saw them. Oscar knew well (after many failed attempts to persuade his parents that a pet dog would be good idea) that the normal pet department downstairs in Hammages was a cacophony of barking, yowling, chirping, scraping, banging and rattling. But this one was quite different.

The animals sat perfectly still in the centre of their cages, none of them so much as twitching or scratching, all of them staring forwards, breathing gently. The effect was deeply eerie.

As they approached, a small black cat came wandering out from behind the cages and, seeing them, sat down in their way, curling its tail around its front paws. It strange air of self-possession seemed to affect even Maggs’ boundless enthusiasm.

“Here,” she whispered, “I’ll show you. What’s the time?”

Oscar instinctively went to look at his watch and so almost missed what happened next as the black cat quite clearly and unmistakably said:

“Four forty eight.”

Oscar stared at it, open mouthed, but it didn’t do anything else: it just sat there staring over his shoulder, off into the distance.

“What?” was all he could say.

“Oh, it’s a simple grandeur…no… glamour! They put it on all the familiars to show that they’ve been properly enscorce… orlorce… orlated…. spellbound, you see,” Maggs waved her hand at the cages, “You can ask any of them. Any one at all.”

“But you’re not going to,” said a voice, “Because you’re leaving, now.”

They both turned to find the shop assistant Oscar had noticed earlier standing between the cages, glaring at them. He was thin, balding man, with the kind of wispy moustache that makes you think the owner must have grown it simply to put himself in a bad mood whenever he looks in a mirror.

“I’ve been watching you - especially you,” he jabbed a finger at Maggs, “Prancing like a twit. And now you’ve really done it - letting animals out of the cages: I’ll have you banned for life - and you:” he turned on Oscar,  “We don’t allow unaccompanied children in here.”

“He is accompanied,” interjected Maggs.

“I’ve told you before,” repeated the shop assistant, “You don’t count.”

“But I’ve got my voucher,” Oscar held out the piece of yellow paper with the special offer on it. The man snatched it out of his hand.

“Give me that. You won’t be needing that, because you’re leaving - now: out!”

“You can’t!” Oscar was too horrified to be able to argue coherently: he was overwhelmed by the thought of all this being snatched away before he had even started exploring, let alone understanding, let alone even learning some real, genuine magic. It was too much to bear.

“I can, and I am; I am deputy sub-manager, Alchemy, and given the current security situation….”

“I have friends in high places,” Maggs was trying to draw herself up to look imposing but it wasn’t working very well: she wasn’t very tall, even drawn all the way up.

“No you don’t,” snapped the shop assistant, “You say that every time and none of them has ever materialised. So this time, out you…” he stopped suddenly, peering over their heads, into the distance, “What have you done now?”

Oscar and Maggs turned. Oscar suddenly realised that they had almost come full circle and were back at the books department. Away in the distance, beyond the books, there was what looked like camping things and surveyor’s equipment. Someone was running about down there and shouting.

“Tsk, customers,” said the shop assistant, who obviously saw the ‘assisting’ part of his job description as an unnecessary waste of his time, “Stay here.”

“I thought you wanted us to leave,” said Maggs.

“I’ll be back with security,” shot the assistant over his shoulder as he marched away through the books.

“Come on, Maggs,” Oscar tugged at her sleeve, anxious to get away before everything could be spoiled, “While he’s gone.”

“Wait a moment, Oscar,” Maggs was staring after the assistant, “There’s something…”

Maggs’ voice trailed off, her attention fixed on the distance. What was it now? He felt a sudden cold chill - as if a door had been opened somewhere and a wind had blown in from outside.

He suddenly realised that all the animals had also turned their heads to look back over his shoulder at the books. He turned that way slowly.

The reference section was empty, but away in the distance, among the tents, he could see that the lights had gone out. As he watched more lights went out, plunging more of the department into shadow. Someone was shouting somewhere again.

The cold chill was intensifying: there were goose bumps on his arm now.

The lights in the further books section went out.

Oscar felt panic rising in his throat, as a thick silence rolled in with the dimming light, a silence in which the tiniest noises became at once magnified and distant.

Someone screamed and then an old man with a knotted beard ran into the reference section from the darkness beyond. He tripped and fell, bringing a stack of books down with him. Oscar could hear that he was crying.

Then the light went out in the reference section.

“There’s something…” Maggs’ hand suddenly gripped Oscar’s shoulder. It was as if she was trying to pull him away, but neither of them could move.

Oscar shivered: it was really cold now - the cold of deep cellars, of high, lonely places, of stone and ice and dark malice.

Something shook the bookshelves like a storm wind passing, lacing Oscar’s face with ice and whipping his breath out behind him. Books fell to the floor, their pages rattling in the wind. And as they watched, something came ratcheting up from the pages, the black, scratchy lines of diagrams and drawings cross-hatching together, sketching out a thin, angular, scarecrow figure that stepped up out of the books. A half-completed drawing of something unimaginable, the work of an insane and impossible artist, the shape, the angle, the style constantly shifting and changing as it stalked out of the darkness and lifted a terrible clutch of talons and claws out towards them both.

A sudden thump against his back, a scrabble of paws and warm fur against his face and the little black cat that had been sitting on the floor beside them leapt up onto Oscar’s shoulder and launched itself, hissing, at the shape in the darkness. It folded itself away as the cat jumped straight through it, lines and stalks snapping as the wind sucked it away, back among the books, bouncing between the shelves like tumbleweed.

I’ve now uploaded Oscar & the Magi up to Scribd, the online writing community, where you can read it on screen in their lovely interface. You can find it at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2516647/Oscar-and-the-Magi

Oscar regretted going through the doors immediately. Because, as he tried to feel about him in the terrible blackness, half hoping to find another door, half petrified that he might put his hand on something far less pleasant, a low voice spoke in his ear.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Oscar froze, helpless with fright - barely able to breathe, suddenly aware of his own heartbeat rushing away in his ears. That was his heartbeat, wasn’t it?

“Can I help you, sir?” came the voice once more. Oscar couldn’t place, in the darkness, where it was coming from. It seemed to be wholly in his head.

“I…” he struggled to speak, “There was… I’ve got… discount… Kennedy’s…”

“Ah, yes, I see that now, sir.” ‘See it’? ‘See’ what? In this darkness? In his backpack? “Please continue, sir, and I hope you have a pleasant day’s shopping.”

And as the voice spoke, Oscar suddenly became aware that he could see a dim light ahead of him - a light that became brighter - a line that grew into a rectangle that became the outline of a door.

And Oscar reached out and pushed and it opened - it opened and Oscar stepped through into…

…into a shop floor exactly like the ones he had passed through on his way here.

In fact it looked remarkably like the book department he had just left.

He looked back to if there were any clues as to what was going on and discovered that the dark place that he had just been in was nothing more than a tiny hallway between two sets of double doors.

There was no one else in it.

Oscar let the door shut behind him and decided that if possible, he would find another way back down.

He looked around to see where he was. It looked like an ordinary, brightly lit book department, with a few adults browsing in the distance. No one seemed to have noticed him coming in.

Above his head was a sign saying ‘Reference’. He looked at the bookshelves beside him: “Audubon’s Book of North American Spirits’, ‘From Ayayascha to Wendigo - Wood Spirits of the Americas’, ‘A Supernatural History of Canada’, ‘In the Tracks of the Sasquatch’ (a big book, that one).

On the other side: ‘Gypsy Magic of the Carpathians’, ‘The Bath time Book of Elizabeth Bathory’, ‘Lycanthropy for Beginners’, ‘Vampires: The Dummies Guide for Suckers’.

This was starting to look like the right floor.

Oscar went to the end of the aisle. Off to the left the book department evidently continued, but the books there looked a lot more interesting: huge, leather bound books encrusted with precious metals and gems, where the shelves had an odd shimmer to them, like a heat haze.

Ahead was a different department entirely - shelves filled with bottles and flasks, bubbling, smoky liquids of every colour and hue. A shop assistant on a wheeled ladder scooted back and forth across the face of a wall covered in tiny drawers. Every so often he would stop, open a drawer and scoop out some brightly coloured powder into a twist of paper that he would then calmly toss over his shoulder. Below, at a counter, another assistant caught the packages, tying them with black ribbon and stacking them in front of a customer.

To his right… an old woman was standing in the aisle, staring at him. Oscar turned and picked up a copy of the Abridged Necronomicon (’Guaranteed No Threat to the Reader’s Sanity’) and pretended to be absorbed in it.

He peeked up. The old woman was still staring at him. There was something ever so slightly strange about her fixed stare and he buried his face back in the book, trying to look interested.

He was vaguely aware of some movement and he peeked again: she was gone. He suddenly realised he had been holding his breath and gasped with relief, when the old woman’s head suddenly loomed in right next to his and said:

“Very good idea, that, reading it upside down. A sovereign remedy against… what is it?… oh, yes: insanity.”

Oscar jumped, dropping the book.

“I was just looking…” he said, bending to pick it up. The old woman reached for it too, meeting him at floor level.

“You have to be careful what you just look at in here,” she fixed Oscar with a wide grin and then snatched the book up while he was distracted, straightening up and jamming it back on the shelves.

“Where’s your, um,” she fumbled for a word, “Magister? Off shopping?”

Oscar didn’t have a clue what she was talking about but he got the feeling that this was an important question - if he got it wrong he would give himself away: this old woman who realise that he didn’t belong here. He’d get thrown out! He had to think of an answer fast!

“You’re here on your own aren’t you?” the woman jabbed a finger at him while he was still hesitating; “You snuck away from your, your… magister and crept in here on your own.”

“Please,” Oscar grabbed her hand, “Please, I don’t know what a ‘Magister’ is - I don’t know what any of this is: I just wanted to have a look - I won’t tell anyone, I promise…”

“Don’t know what a, a… what one of those is? How did you get in here?”

“My uncle sent me this book, you see,” Oscar yanked his backpack round and started rummaging in it, “And it had this piece of paper in it and it said this was here and…” he pulled out the book and the old woman snatched it from him gleefully.

“Kennedy’s Primer,” she said, wistfully, stroking the cover. She started riffling through the pages.

“Please,” said Oscar, “You won’t throw me out, will you? I just wanted to see…”

“Throw you out?” She looked up from the book, grinning from ear to ear, “Throw you out? My dear boy, you are in the middle of the most extra… extera… amazing experience of your life: why would I stop that? Besides,” and she leant in close again, “I’m not supposed to be here, either.”

Her grin was now so manic that Oscar couldn’t help wondering whether he had accidentally made friends with a mad person.

“Maggs,” said the woman, still grinning. Oscar just stared at her, not quite sure what she meant but afraid of being impolite.

“Maggs,” she said it again and nodded with emphasis. Oscar tried to think of something noncommittal to say but then she thrust a free hand at him and said: “And you are?”

Oh! ‘Maggs’ must be her name!

“Oscar, I’m Oscar… pleased to meet you…” she grabbed his proffered hand and jerked it up and down vigorously.

“Ah, this is so… what’s the word?… Thrilling! It’s thrilling! Where shall we begin?”

“Begin?” Oscar couldn’t help wondering what he had got himself into now.

“Learning, you’ve got to learn - it is the duty of all young Magi.”

“A what? What’s a majy? Is it like a magician?”

“Don’t let any of this lot hear you say that! Oh, he knows nothing! This is so… what was the word? I just said it, just now, what was it? Thrilling! It’s truly thrilling!”

Maggs clasped Kennedy’s Primer to her and sighed, then she beamed down at him and handed the book back.

“Well,” she said, “since we’re here, we might as well start here: these books here, all around us are all… what are they? Help me out here…”

Oscar couldn’t tell whether this was a test or just her forgetting a word again. He looked at the books she was gesturing at. They must all be part of the same series - shiny white covers with bold black text on the spines: “The Observer Book of Goblins”, “The Observer Book of Sylphs”, “…of Dwerger”, “…of Naiads”… he took a guess…

“Guides?”

“Guides! That’s it, they’re all guides… the question being: what are they guides to?”

“Well, that one says something about Swamp Monsters.”

“No, dear, that question was ret… rehetoreh… I’ll answer that one myself: they’re guides to what we call Spirits.

“You see, all around us, everywhere we go, there are spirits. It’s difficult to explain just what they are: they’re not really creatures like you’d think of them, more like… like… a force, or a sensation, or a potent… potentate… something that could exist.

“Perhaps you know a place that has a strange feeling to it - a lonely standing stone on a lost moor somewhere, or a room that’s always cold… a shivel up the spine, goosebumps, a nervous wind…”

“Like a haunted house?” Oscar had read about haunted houses. He liked the idea of ghosts, as long as they were happening to other people.

“Exactly - in fact a haunted house is always a tell tale sign of an active spirit. But most spirits aren’t active at all - they’re dormice… no… sleeping… inactive, you see - so we have all these guides telling you how to find them and recognise them when you do…”

“Wow,” Oscar tried to sound appropriately amazed, but he couldn’t help feeling that all this sounded rather like a slightly more exotic form of bird watching, “And what do you do when you’ve found them? Write them down?”

“Ah, well, that’s the fun bit,” Maggs grinned again, “This way…”

She beckoned to him and he followed her down the aisle of books and round a corner into an entirely new section.