Oscar and the Magi: Floor Seven
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.