Just Another Day

He doesn’t turn out to be what I expected. As a rule, magicians don’t, but there are stories about the wandering magician. That he is the only magician not tied to a town or city I knew, and that every magician fears or respects him. But he is ordinary, like the cops who went plainclothes. Give him a suit and tie and you’d never notice him at all.

I have no idea what he thinks when he looks me over. He is calm, but behind the calm is a wall. “Officer Ramirez.”

“Julio.” I hold out a hand, he shakes it.

“I understand the local police want someone to spend a day with me, know more about the subtle parts of the world. And that Lance was involved.”

I nod. “I’ve heard of him.”

Lance Christensen. The police officer who could show up at any department, who worked at all of them and none. He solves the kind of crimes that never make official books, and the ones that no one talked about at all.

“Do you have a name?” I ask to fill the silence.

The magician chuckles. “I do. I don’t use it often, because people can find my family through me. Mostly I get called the wandering magician, or Honcho.”

“Honcho.” He nods, adds nothing. “I’m not sure how this is meant to work; do I go with you, or you with me?”

“With me might work better; we’ll be walking.”

We walk for a good two hours Houston Falls isn’t much of a town, barely 1, 300 people, and the magicians walk is more a slow stroll from the centre outward. He pauses a few times, frowns a couple of others, but otherwise just makes small talk with me, nods to locals. Many of them nod back without thinking about it. We find a small diner at the outskirt of the town for lunch.

He answers his phone once. “Jay,” he says, not looking even though it was a generic ringtone. There is a pause. “No, I have no idea if the god inside Charlie can chew through bed rails. Is there any particular reason to ask this? No? Ah. Carry on, then.” He texts someone after, putting his phone away and continuing to eat his sandwich.

“This is a test?”

“Pardon?”

“We walked around. That was it.”

“I try and help places with magic before doing other things.” He sips his coffee. “Knowing the lay of a place is important. Magic changes things: to change something without understanding it is, at best, a risk. So I took the time to get a feel for this place. For things that might need help, for what is wrong, or feels wrong but isn’t. Humans are complicated, and the same applies to places humans make. You’ve had dealings with magicians.”

I nod. “Some of them I’d rather forget.”

“I imagine so. The problem with being the magician of a place – which I am not, in the sense that other magicians are – is a question of size as much as information. There are limits to what one can do in a situation that one is deeply part of. Even magic – perhaps especially that – doesn’t allow magicians that kind of freedom.” He stands. “Shall we continue?”

I bite back a reply and follow him. The walk back is the same, a circling inward, though this time the magician walks faster. He pauses to look at buildings every so often, and then just keeps walking.

“You’re doing magic.”

He glances back at me and nods.

“Am I’m meant to learn anything?”

“Here.” He holds out his left hand.

I take it, half against my will. The last house we passed was typical Houston Falls suburbia, not that the town has much urbia to speak of. Two floors, four bedrooms, no garbage, no fence, cheap siding, in need of a paint job. And anger, Boiling through one bedroom into the rest of the home, felt more than seen. A killing rage, but a helpless one too that diminishes moments later, Pulled away, gathering into the magician with casual calm.

I blink, and the world looks normal again as the magician lets go of my fingers. “You – who – what?”

“Divorce, fury at a stepfather for replacing her father. Some of the hate is earned. Most is not, or at least not at that level. But children learn much about stepparents from the media, and stepfathers are treated as even more incompetent than fathers in general. Tensions flare up, boil over. I stopped it from happening, at least a little bit. Gave everyone space to find perspective. Two doors down, there is a roof that needs to be fixed, so it is now borrowing strength from a dying tree. You were expecting something... more?”

“I have heard stories about you.”

“I have some impressive things. And foolish ones,” he adds dryly. “Often when I have no choice, or someone tries to push me back against a wall. But this is the core of what I try and be: helping others, not being noticed. Walking in the world of small miracles. That anger was one person in a house, Julio Ramirez. There were things under it I gave gentle nudges to as well.”

“And that’s it?” I try and keep my voice even, but I doubt I succeed.

The wandering magician merely keeps walking. I don’t ask to see any more. I don’t know how he’s carrying that much anger from one person easily, never mind anything else. But part of me doesn’t want to know: too much understanding can be weakness. He veers off path, finally, heading to a small park we somehow managed to mostly avoid while walking the entire damn town. The part has a sandpit and two sets of swings, a few trees, ill-kept grass. One set of swings is old and rusted, with one family using them. They seem subdued for a mother and two children playing on swings, but the other set draws my attention. The swings are closer to trees no one has made a fort in, and oddly pristine. No one is using it, the grass high around it. Whoever mows the park avoids this area, and no one presses them about it.

The magician walks over to the new set of swings. I follow. Nothing feels odd, or strange. There’s no unnatural chill to the air, no whispering voices without bodies. But even so, I find myself slowing as I get closer, wanting to move away without knowing why. I keep moving. Being stubborn is a power all its own, at least sometimes.

“Ah.” The magician holds up his right hand, pressing in into the air between both swings on the set, The air ripples in the way water does, ugly colours spilling forth from the touch. Every hair on my body stands up on end. “You are hungry, yes, but this is not a place to sate your hunger,” the magician says, and his voice has the authority you expect in leaders but almost never see.

The hole ripples. I think something speaks, but not in words.

The magician presses his hand against it, and the hole is gone. The air becomes only air. “This is what magicians are,” he says softly, without power I think, but his voice fills the silence with a compelling calm. “We close the weak places of the world. We stop Entities from getting inside. And if they do, we find them and banish them again. This is being a magician, Officer Ramirez. The magic is a small, small part of that. A bonus, a thank you from the universe for aiding it.

“You see terrible things in the world every day, and you wonder why magicians have not prevented them. This is what we prevent, this is what we heal. We deal with what people can’t, and give them space to deal with what they can.”

“You think –.”

He turns. This time it is swift and hard and I step back even faster than I did from whatever was at the swings. I reach for my gun, only realizing I am when the magician lets out a sigh. “I don’t think. I know. People can deal with terrible things, Julio, and most people have the fortune of being stronger than they ever have to know they are. You see a magician, and you see someone with power, but that is how people see the police as well. And I know how little my power truly means, at the end of the day. I also know what it could be, if I let myself be swayed by the moment.”

“You don’t understand what I saw,” I say, and my voice is cold even to my ears.

“No. But I was in the town of Raven’s Bluff when it was wiped off the map,” he says mildly. “I know who did it. I even know how. But if I had destroyed them, it would have taken the entire global economy down with them. I gave them very good reasons to never do that again, and we brokered a cease-fire. I could have done other things. I have access to that options other magicians don’t. In the end, I saved the town but no one inside it. And every day I live with that, and many other things as well.”

“Karstwood Bay.”

“I have been there. The town was just large enough for a magician. Who died.”

“I killed her.”

“I imagine that’s one reason Lance wanted you here. He is Justice, and it has no room for mercy. He thinks I have more of it than I believe I do.”

He doesn’t do anything. He could force me to speak. Pull truth out of me. He just waits. “She – Kim Li, was her name – let a serial killer murder an entire family.”

“I learned that after the fact. Your gun.”

“What?”

“You may need it.”

And there is the mother and her two children from other swing set, walking toward us. Nothing is right about them, and the children move too fast. They have claws, and teeth, and other things as well.

“No,” the magician says. Nothing else, but all of them stop. Too close, too fast, too no longer hiding themselves.

“We hunt,” the hiss, their voice one being speaking together. “Hunt down the monsters who hide as humans, and this one killed us.”

“He did.” The magician’s gaze flicks over to me. “This is Azuneh. They have other names, of course, but they are from Outside the universe. And hunt down Outsiders who sneak into the universe and take places over. One person, then a family, and then they spread. And once they spread far enough, they open a way that should not be opened. Azuneh was killing such a hive, and you killed Azuneh. And the magician who was making sure Azuneh made no error and that the other homes had not been affected.”

“We called you, magician, with our bodies dying.”

“And I came, and made sure the hive was dealt with. That was just another day for me, Julio. So is this one. You didn’t know you were doing anything wrong, and magicians can make mistakes like any other human can. Azuneh made mistakes as well.”

“We did not!”

The magician turns his gaze on them, and the children and mother step back. “A magician died because of you; I consider that, at the least, carelessness. The hive was about to grow, you panicked. As did Julio, for reasons that make far more sense.”

“What happens now?” I ask, and my voice is almost even.

“This is another day. All days are, if we let them. Azuneh has other monsters to destroy, and help in doing them might be more effective if aid came from someone who understand law enforcement rather than magic. Magicians don’t walk in the same world as other people; it is not always a benefit.”

The entity hisses. The adult looks displeased, the children not as much. “Did you have three bodies in Karstwood Bay?” I ask.

“Two. One died getting into the house. We were – in a hurry,” is admitted.

“And you didn’t think about what would happen to the person you were inside after you left?”

Six eyes blink in surprise. “No?”

The magician pulls a phone from a pocket and hands it to me. “If you need to get hold of me, call Jay on this phone. He always answers, and his phone is always on.”

“What?”

“I have the rest of this town to finish helping,” he says gently. “I imagine the two of you can work things out without me?”

I look at Azuneh. We don’t like each other. I doubt we ever would. “I don’t want this kind of power.”

“If you did, this would never have been on the table,” the magician says with a smile, and walks away.

“We are not yours; we are not bound to you,” Azuneh hisses softly.

“I have no idea what you mean by that. But I do know that you need help, or you’re going to hurt a lot more people than you help. Do these – ah, children and their mother – is there a father? Another mother?”

“Father, yes.”

“And what does he think of you?”

“We should know?”

I take a deep breath. “Let’s find out,” I say, and follow something I can’t even begin to explain out of the park. It might be just another day, but that doesn’t mean it has to be like all the others. And I’m pretty sure it won’t be, not ever again.