It’s not even ten in the morning and
I’ve had a drink. Not coffee or tea, but something definitely
stronger. Jay has left the hotel in search of another breakfast –
because when you’re eleven and from far Outside the universe,
breakfast is very important. As is everything else. The wandering
magician is somewhere in this town working quiet magics. It is what
he loves best, but sometimes I think it’s also his retreat from
other things. Not that I’d dare say it.
The drink goes down with a smooth burn
and I feel a little better. Jay telling people this morning that he’d
been spayed had been an adventure in itself. To say nothing of the
attempt to reserve-microwave a pop tart for reasons I still don’t
understand. I assume someone on tumblr convinced him it was a good
idea. Probably without ever wanting to. The space where the microwave
was makes my skin itch when I look at it.
That was one reason for the drink. Jay
making a dimension just for stray dogs was maybe not another, but it
is Jay. It’s not one thing: it’s a hundred little things, all
piling up on each other. I could go away again. Take a break. But
each time hurts Jay, and he’ll never understand why.
“Go away,” I say when the door to
the hotel room opens without anyone bothering to use the lock.
Sometimes the magician just forgets to: when you’re a wandering
magician, every door is open to you.
But it’s not the magician, or Jay.
What enters looks to be a man, but he both wears and carries an
impossible beauty. He tried to use it on me once; it’s as much
history as we have. I’ve learned more from Jay, because it never
occurred to him not to tell me when I asked.
“The magician isn’t here. If you’re
looking for him.” I don’t move. I can do some pretty impressive
things if I have to, but I’d rather not test myself against someone
who is the equivalence of a magician for Outside the universe. Even
with more drinks in me I’d never consider it.
“I was.” His voice is silk and
honey, butter and chocolate all rolled into smooth perfection. “But
I felt other problems and thought perhaps I could help with them,
Charlie?”
He says my name like no one has. I
shake the effect off. “Are you trying to toy with me, Moshe?”
“No. I am a Walker of the Far
Reaches. We are what we are.” He pauses, eyes paler than they were
a moment ago. “I admit I didn’t expect to be resisted so easily.”
“You say my name in an –
interesting way. It definitely doesn’t top Jay saying it.”
“Ah! But he is why you seem...
unbalanced?”
“Jay. He just – the things he
does...” I trail off. “The wandering magician is able to cope
with more than I am.”
“He is what he is as well. But I am
also from the Outside, and there are things you simply have not
considered. Jay is not human, at all, for all that he can hide so
well even you forget what he is. You and the magician are his anchors
in this world, but that means more than you think it does. He learns
what is allowed from you. He has, in human terms, outsourced his
morality to you and the magician. Because it is not a natural thing
to him, not part of what he is.”
“And every time he pushes the
impossible at us, the possible bends a little more.”
“It is not something he intends, but
yes. Children test limits. Jay is no different, though I doubt he
understands what he does at times, or even why. But he is testing
himself as well as you. Learnings things that are not bindings, and
thus far outside of both his experience and his power. I would not
call it easy, what you have been called to do. But I would suggest it
may be the most important thing that will ever be done.”
“By me?” I ask slowly.
“No.” For a moment I think he is
going to leave it at that, but Moshe is no more human than Jay: “By
anyone.”
I stare at Moshe.
“Even I have limits,” Moshe says.
“Jay, I think, does not.”
“I try not to think too hard about
that. Ever.”
“It is wise not to. It may be safe to
explain that he is pushing you, and to ask him to stop it. He cannot
operate on instinct alone.”
“And we have to teach him to think
before he acts.”
“All the time, yes. I think that is
the lesson, among others. I could be wrong. Jay does not wish to hurt
you. You know this.”
I nod. “Because
of jaysome, yes.”
“But he must he
told when he does. You cannot hide things from him; attempting to do
so will only confuse him further. It is nothing I envy you.”
“When why were
you here?”
“Sometimes I help
the magician – escape, when he needs to. I could offer you the same
service.”
“No.”
Moshe’s eyes
narrow slightly. “These lessons for Jay can be applied to you as
well. To learn to think before you act. To not speak wholly on
instinct.”
“Maybe. Still
no.”
He nods once, and
vanishes.
I turn on the TV.
Sit down on the bed, and find cartoons and watch them until Jay
returns. The magician and I are human, for all that we know and can
do. And I think Jay doesn’t scare me, not half as much as what
might happen to him and because of me when me and Nathen are gone.
I hug Jay tight
when he returns, and he returns it with a jaysome grin, not
understanding it is more than just a hug. I’m not sure he can. I
think some day he will. And I don’t know what to think of that at
all.