A Sudden Wild Magic

Tod gave the zip up as hopeless. The garment was too big anyway. He gathered it around him and followed Brother Tony through the door and down some dingy stairs. “I’d introduce you to the landlady, but she’s out at the moment,” Brother Tony said over his shoulder, “but you can take it she’ll accept you as the new lodger without question. Arth’s quite good at that kind of thing.” Outside the front door of the house, he ceremoniously handed Tod a small, flat key. “There you are. It’s all yours now.”

While Tod worked the key into the tight pocket of the cotton trousers, Brother Tony led him briskly down a street lined on both sides with striped brick houses, small, stingy, and ugly. The fact that the rain was now passing into weak, watery sunlight only seemed to make the dwellings look more dismal.

“This is the shabby area,” Brother Tony told him blithely. “You’ll find it’s all you can afford. Costs are high here.”

They rounded a corner into a larger road. Here the buildings were larger and flat-faced and full of windows and constructed either of raw red brick or raw gray concrete. The place was full of people and traffic, but Tod found he could only concentrate on the buildings. Seldom had he seen anything more ungracious. He thought of the small Residence he had inherited in Haurbath, and of the town beyond it, all of it quiet, old, and beautiful, and was stabbed through and through with the homesickness he had somehow managed to avoid on Arth.

“Is otherworld all like this?” he said miserably.

“Most of the towns. It’s a crowded world,” Brother Tony said. “Some of the coutryside is almost worth looking at, but of course, they build on more of it every year. No idea of space.”

“Oh,” said Tod. Almost he could have believed he was simply in a bad dream, except that the rain had left the sidewalk full of puddles, and his canvas shoes were now soaked until his toes squelched. They reminded him at every step that this was no dream. And if he was tempted to imagine still that it was a dream, there was Brother Tony’s trim and cheerful figure beside him, dressed like the smartest of the passersby, to make sure he knew it was true. Tod himself looked like the shabbiest of the males who passed. As for the females, Tod found he was too depressed even to be astonished at the short skirts the young ones wore. Bad. Female legs usually interested him rather a lot.

“Hope you don’t mind my asking,” Brother Tony said confidentially, “but what exactly were you sent over for?”

“Eh?” said Tod. “Oh, I kissed a woman.”

“Really?” said Brother Tony. “They’re punishing just for that now, are they? Where was she from? Leathe?”

“No, she was from here, I think,” Tod said. Looking at the style of the females they passed had made him quite certain of this.

“Here? Otherworld? Come off it! She couldn’t have been! They don’t know about Arth here, let alone how to cross over!”

Tod had transferred his attention from the pedestrians to the traffic and was watching cars rushing through sprays of water from the wet road. The cars, he thought, were probably the only things worth looking at in this place. Although none of them were as handsome as his own wonderful old beloved Delmo-Mendacci, some of them were almost comely. He wondered if the controls for driving them were anything like the same. But Brother Tony’s incredulous outcry recalled him to what he had just said. He had spoken without thinking, and yet, now he considered, he knew it was true. He had all along picked up from Zillah pictures of a world he knew was this one. Hm, he thought. And a great deal fell together in his head — most of what the women might have been doing in Arth, in fact, although he found he was still a little puzzled about what Zillah herself was doing there.

“I was joking,” he said, and hastily laughed. “She was Leathe, of course.” One of the things that fell together in his head was that Zillah’s safety depended on his not letting Arth know where she came from. This was going to be a little difficult if the ritual had indeed given the High Head a thread through into his mind.

To his relief, Brother Tony laughed too. “Leathe from whence all our troubles come!” he said. “Are you quite sure you don’t want a haircut?”

They were level with a large window behind which several young men were having things done to their heads by other young men. The aim seemed to be to get their hair to stand upright. “Yes, I am sure, thanks,” Tod said firmly.

“Then we’d better get to the bank before it shuts,” Brother Tony said. He led Tod to an establishment a few doors on, where he showed him how to obtain money and pay it in. Tod looked at the small wad of blue papers he received. Money? Astonishing to think Arth was able to do this. It didn’t do to underestimate the power of Arth. “And this is how you use a cash-point,” Brother Tony instructed. Tod watched and nodded. His head felt far too full of new things.