Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (22 page)

It was an altar, inescapable and true, an altar in the shop floor of a Tanning Salon in Tooting.

With the expression of the tactful atheist entering a hushed church, Sharon examined the offerings. None seemed to be dripping blood or glinting with gold, which gave some reassurance. Indeed, however tidily they’d been presented, this collection, laid out for the unknown
She
of the altar, was more an assemblage of knick-knacks and hand-me-down souvenirs, odd bits of scrap and strange story-weighed mementos of trivial events. There was a plastic sandwich wrapping on which someone had painstakingly written,
3.20 a.m. with thanks,
a clean Thermos flask missing its screw-in seal, a pair of old shoes worn through at the toes, an orange fluorescent jacket carefully folded, a navy-blue flat cap with its faded badge buffed up as bright as the metal could go, a megaphone with a hole where the batteries should have been, an old tin whistle and a meticulously stacked collection of train tickets, assembled over the years and held together with a rubber band.

Displayed on this crooked table, they looked more like rejects from a car boot sale than objects of worship, yet the
Mona Lisa
could not have received more care and attention.

“Can a temple close?” Sharon ventured.

“St Paul’s Cathedral closes,” murmured Rhys.

“Shut up, Rhys.”

“I’m afraid business hours are between 11 p.m. and 5.30 a.m. So if you don’t mind…”

“Business? I thought you were like… religious and that.”

“Religious? Good grief no!” exclaimed the woman. “We’re more of… of a mutual appreciation society, you might say. We appreciate the world around us, the
hidden
world around us, if you like: the world
of the spirits that watch over us in the night. It’s not worship at all–that would be so crude. It’s more… a fan club. A fan club for the spiritually appreciative!”

“You’re Greydawn’s fan club?”

A flicker passed over the woman’s face and Sharon saw it: the shadow that twisted at her back. Sharon shared the clenching in her stomach and
knew,
without even needing to sense it as a shaman, that the woman was afraid.

Then, louder and brighter than she needed to be, “Well, yes, of course, Greydawn! Our Lady of 4 a.m. is a generous and kind spirit, a protector of the night–vital, in fact, for the well-being of the city! Naturally we like to express our appreciation to her.”

“Excuse me?” Rhys had one hand raised in polite enquiry. “There’s no, uh… human sacrifice in your appreciation, is there? Only I feel I ought to ask, see, because sometimes people say ‘appreciation’ and it means all sorts of sticky practices.”

“Good grief, no! Why on earth would we?”

“How about initiation rituals involving two long sticks and an ice bucket?”

“Sweetie, at my age?”

“Orgies?” he asked with the tiniest glimmer of hope.

“Do you know what that would do for our relationship with the local council?”

“No,” replied Rhys earnestly. “Would it be good?”

“You have to fill out enough risk assessments just to hold a prayer meeting, let alone budget for condoms.”

“Do you?”

“Now look,” barked the woman, and it was an imperious bark when she needed it, “it’s very nice of you to drop by and I do wish you good luck in your future endeavours to save the city and all of that business, but really, I have a lot of things to get on with.”

“Yeah, but,” Sharon shifted uneasily before coming out with it, “Greydawn is, like, missing, yeah?”

A movement over the woman’s face. Not recognition, but perhaps a well-practised substitute.

“Oh, yeah,” confirmed Sharon. “She’s missing. And there’s spirits vanishing from the walls of the buildings and the stones of the street.
And you–your name is Edna Long and you used to be a hairdresser here, and I know that because I can hear the snipping of the scissors and, though you can’t see it, your floor is covered in a carpet of human hair. But then, but
then…”
Sharon grimaced in concentration “… you were going home late one night and you heard these footsteps behind you and there were two men and you thought, ‘They’re gonna mug me, they’re going to rough me up,’ but you didn’t dare run because that’d make them run and they’d outrun you and then…” a certain thinness was apparent around Sharon’s hands and face, a certain fading-into-nothing as she spoke “… and then you felt something move in the air beside you, a hand slipped into yours, though there was no one there, and a voice whispered,
Do not be afraid,
and when you looked back, the muggers had turned away.”

She paused for breath, an action that pushed her back into three-dimensional full colour. Swaying a little with the effort of inhalation, she grinned at the astonished woman. “So, basically, what I’m trying to say here is that you totally need a shaman.”

I joined the Friendlies a long time ago. “Joined” is the wrong word, and so is “worship” while we’re here. “Joined” implies a cult, and we’re most certainly not that. It would be rather akin to saying, “I worship the London Underground” or “I bow down before the high altar of the dustbin cart.” These things are an intrinsic part of our city, our very lives. I… appreciate them. And I show my appreciation for the Underground by touching in and touching out at the start and finish of every journey, and the appreciation I feel for the dustbin men by always tying the bags securely and tipping at Christmastime.

But the things that lie just below the surface–the shades of the city, formed from time and use and stories and whispers–they are as important to me as all the obvious, material things, and I feel that they too deserve our appreciation. Their works are hard to perceive, for they are as much in the not-things as any visible deed. They are in nightmares that do not visit you in the night, in the monsters that do not crawl out from the cracks between the paving stones, in the cold winds that do not freeze your cheeks, in the sense of terror in a lonely night which does not, in fact, turn out to be a killer waiting in the place between the pools of street light. They are the park that does not wither, the wall that does not crumble, the glass that does not shatter, the roof that
does not fall. I suppose the Chinese would call them a form of energy, that same energy that the sorcerers tap for fire and the wizards manipulate with words. They are the product of life, and life is what they sustain.

Tell me that isn’t worth a bit of incense.

Her name was Edna.

“Like the beauty salon?”

Yes, like the sometime beauty salon turned temple.

“My husband left me a fair bit when he popped,” she explained. “And when I got to retirement I looked at this place and thought, ‘Well, I could sell it’ and Starbucks were very keen to buy, but you know Tooting has such a good, independent spirit about it I couldn’t bring myself to sell to Starbucks and I knew the Friendlies were always looking for a place and I thought, ‘Why not?’ ”

“What if Friends of the Earth had asked to buy it?” Rhys queried.

“Well, I’d probably be living in Majorca and the Friendlies would have had to go back to that Portakabin in Hammersmith,” admitted Edna. “It’s all about community responsibility.”

They sat in the Tooting Taj Mahal–Finest Indian Restaurant in London–and ate poppadoms with chutney while, just on the edge of hearing, things sizzled and spat in the kitchen. As Finest Indian Restaurants in London went, Rhys had to admit this was definitely in his top ten to make the claim, which was as common in London as Traditional Family Pubs, Authentic Home Cooking and that staple of the retail market, the Final Reduction Closing Down Sale which had
lasted for nine months. The chutneys had been brought on a stainless-steel platter, and Sharon was working her way round from pasty-mild colours to vivid scorchers, trying each with the tip of her tongue and waiting thirty seconds to see if her eyes started to water. Rhys kept well clear of them all, sitting back in his chair. Sounds from Bollywood’s greatest hits drifted through the air, and on a flat-screen TV in the waiting area for takeaways, girls in yellow saris performed a dance against backgrounds that switched from mountain peaks to the busy streets of Tokyo without either narrative reason or shame.

“It began three years ago,” said Edna, cracking a poppadom on her plate with an expert rap of the knuckles. “We’re none of us shamans in the Friendlies, but we keep an eye out, of course, just to make sure the spirits of the city are all right. There’s been ups and downs–the business with Blackout was really very messy, and the death of cities–but thankfully all that fuss passed by, and it seemed to be under control. The spirits of things have their natural life cycles, as does the city that made them. It’s not like a dryad is really going to stick around once her lamp post has been demolished. And the canal wyvern can hardly keep his sheen if the water that spawned him is covered in algae, but these are just part of life’s natural flow, and, generally, things find their way.

“It started small. Gargoyles began to vanish from the sides of the churches, tribes of imps from the rubbish grounds; whole neonfly hatching grounds disappeared from the lamps around the substations. The shrieks that sit on the windowsills of newborn babies, the dream catchers and foil-winged pixies that sneak into houses at night and move your front-door keys–I personally never understood why–they… faded. Diminished. Vanished. We were concerned, of course we were, but we thought… well, it couldn’t be anything, could it? The big spirits were still there, Father Thames and Greydawn, the watchers who divide the night from the day and then…

“How do you say that a thing you cannot perceive has vanished? Greydawn was not a face or a voice, she was–she
is
–She Who Walks Beside. I don’t want to judge, dear, but you seem like a girl who might know what I’m talking about when I say there’s a 4 a.m. feeling. It’s a sense you have at four o’clock in the morning, in the city, when all the lights are out–even the lights for the tourists, Big Ben and the London
Eye and all those, they’re dark too. And you walk down the middle of the street because you can, where during the day there would be traffic, and nothing moves, nothing stirs all around you and you know are you alone, and it is invigorating, it is marvellous, it is wonderful and it is terrifying all at once because you are tiny and squashed beneath this great silence and the city and then you look up and… and you know you aren’t alone. Not really. Not ever. Not in a city.

“She walks beside you.

“Greydawn. Our Lady of 4 a.m. She walks beside you and puts her hand in yours; and you never hear it, you never see her, but she’s the one who whispers in your ear without words,
Don’t be afraid. I am with you.
She is the keeper of the city wall, the guardian of the gate, she keeps your fears of what might be from becoming the truth of what simply is.

“And she’s… gone.” Edna almost choked on the word. “She vanished in the night and now the gates are opening and…
things
are coming through that should not be crawling out of the night, and the only shaman in London is a goblin. I mean, a goblin! And not just any goblin, a goblin who managed to anger the Seven Sisters
and
the Bag Lady
and
the Beggar King all at once with his ridiculous arguments with Blistering Steve… and… the Friendlies should do something, but we don’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to burden you with all this. Shall we talk about you?”

Rhys recognised this question. It was a staple of his disastrous time trying to succeed at online dating, a phrase which politely informed the other person that he knew he’d blown it and hoped she didn’t mind. Dating, when you were a druid, was never easy, he liked to tell himself.

“Uh… okay. ‘I’m Sharon, I work in a coffee shop.’ Actually, I guess I should say worked in a coffee shop. I’ve probably been fired by now.”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“Failed to turn up to work.”

“Why?”

Sharon stared at Edna and wondered exactly what it was about her own demeanour that appeared so un-shamany. “Um… saving the city?” she prompted.

“Oh yes, of course! That does make sense. And forgive me asking, but how long have you been a shaman?”

Sharon hesitated, a mouthful of chutney halfway to her lips. She put her piece of poppadom back down on the plate, wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, “Are we talking, like, how long I’ve been walking through walls, or how long I’ve been getting the training?”

“You need training to be a shaman?” asked Edna. “I thought shamans just… knew.”

Sharon groaned. “Why do people always say that? Everywhere I go they say that, and I am having it up to here with this whole ‘Sharon knows shit’ shit. Sorry, no offence there.”

“None taken, dear. But you
are
meant to see the truth of things, aren’t you? Isn’t that what it’s about?”

“But what does that
mean?”

“I think, Ms Li,” put in Rhys, “that when you are in touch with the spirit world, as I’m sure you are, then maybe you’re supposed to see things that no one else sees. See?”

Sharon hesitated. “Does, uh, does a guy called Dez count?”

“Um… is Dez transparent?” asked Rhys.

“Kinda. He’s my spirit guide.”

“Your spirit guide is called Dez?” There wasn’t shock or condemnation in Rhys’s voice, but rather the careful tones of a man who really,
really
wanted to make sure he’d understood a difficult concept.

“Look,” exclaimed Sharon, “this isn’t about Dez. We’re talking about Greydawn vanishing and that, so please can we just move on from my knowing shit, or not knowing shit, or whatever the shit is I’m supposed to do?”

There was a silence in which eyes examined napkins and fingers fidgeted around the edge of plates. Sharon shuffled in her chair, then added, “Sorry. I’m getting a little stressed. I read a book which said you should try breathing really slow, but that just gets me breathless. Can I ask, how’d you go about ‘vanishing’ spirits anyway?”