A snippet of the story

"I asked you not to do kill a witch here, nor bring them to the apartment to burn them in the oven. This is the second since I asked. I won't ask again."

"You won't, magician?" That there is nothing kind in Jack's smile goes without saying.

Boy's answering smile is kind, but does not reach his eyes at all. "I've known you for two months, Jack. I could tell the police so many things and they would hound you like a wild hunt, drive you from city to city without needing any magic at all."

"And that would free witches to do terrible things."

The fact hangs between them, ugly in its truth.

Boy stands, heading to the door, snatching his coat from the kitchen table. "I've done worse," he says, and does not slam the door behind him when he leaves.

⁂

Jack hadn't burned a witch in their oven, not even once. Three times he'd claimed to, neither had been true. Boy does not consider himself a man of many talents, but one that required no magic at all was knowing when someone was trying to trick him. Why Jack was doing it was more a matter of guesses, and Boy is rather certain that trying to guess the motives of a centuries-old immortal is a waste of time.

So he doesn't. In many ways, the people who become magicians aren't like you or me at all. He is angry at the lies, at Jack trying to push him toward anger, and that he burns off by walking through the night. The rain has fled the sky to leave behind clouds that the dawn dances through. Cities don't sleep, not as people do, but the stirring of animals and vehicles, of life and movement, of people and coffee machines, cannot but be noticed.

Electric lights flare in windows, tamed lightning cutting holes into the darkness the sun has yet to reach. Boy walks with the waking world until he finds a small coffee shop to duck inside, the local paper and a coffee enough. People slip in and out of the shop as he watches, coffee cups in hand. Modern talismans, but for the life of him Boy has no idea what they protect against.

The world changed when he was away. Some days it feels as though one day there will be more coffee shops than people in the city and no one will think that odd at all. He refills his coffee twice and watches the city through the prism of a single storefront. The rhythm of the city is as old as the village, a beat thrumming between people. Two hours produces nothing off-tempo at all, and Boy fills his coffee a third time with a frown.

Consider: put three people in a room and no one is going to entirely get along. Add more and you get factions, political groups, religions, fear, hate: all the noble sentiments about humanity cannot disguise the fact that we are fundamentally insane. Extend that to a whole city and the fact that nothing seems wrong at all is worrying on many levels. Boy finishes his third cup, leaves, walking quickly through side alleys and along small paths known mostly to cats and children. Two more neighbourhoods are circled; nothing leaps out.

No lost animals. No spike in the pulse of a city that needs a mage to soothe them, a city gone strangely quiet. His search widens, a brushing of fingers over telephone poles, asking them secrets, receiving images of posters torn down by wind and rain in reply. He shoves his hands in his pockets and begins a slow walk home. He has no idea what is going on nor why.

We can only see so far. Our failures of imagination are those of the world.