2
When I landed on the top of a lamppost in the London dusk it was peeing with rain. This was just my luck. I had taken the form of a blackbird, a sprightly fellow with a bright yellow beak and jet—black plumage. Within seconds I was as bedraggled a fowl as ever hunched its wings in Hampstead. Flicking my head from side to side, I spied a large beech tree. Leaves moldered at its foot—it had already been stripped clean by the November winds—but the thick sprouting of its branches offered some protection from the wet. I flew over to it, passing above a lone car that purred its way along the wide suburban street. Behind high walls and the evergreen foliage of their gardens, the ugly white facades of several sizeable villas shone through the dark like the faces of the dead.
Well, perhaps it was my mood that made it seem like that. Five things were bothering me. For a start the dull ache that comes with every physical manifestation was already beginning. I could feel it in my feathers. Changing form would keep the pain at bay for a time, but might also draw attention to me at a critical stage of the operation. Until I was sure of my surroundings, a bird I had to remain.
The second thing was the weather. Enough said.
Third, I'd forgotten the limitations of material bodies. I had an itch just above my beak, and kept futilely trying to scratch it with a wing.
Fourth, that kid. I had a lot of questions about him. Who was he? Why did he have a death wish? How would I get even with him before he died for subjecting me to this assignment? News travels fast, and I was bound to take some abuse for scurrying around on behalf of a scrap like him.
Fifth… the Amulet. By all accounts it was a potent charm. What the kid thought he was going to do with it when he got it beat me. He wouldn't have a clue. Maybe he'd just wear it as some tragic fashion accessory. Maybe nicking amulets was the latest craze, the magician's version of pinching hubcaps. Even so, I had to get it first, and this would not necessarily be easy, even for me.
I closed my blackbird's eyes and opened my inner ones, one after the other, each on a different plane.[4] I looked back and forth around me, hopping up and down the branch to get the optimal view. No fewer than three villas along the street had magical protection, which showed how wealthy an area we were in. I didn't inspect the two farther off up the street; it was the one across from them, beyond the streetlight, that interested me. The residence of Simon Lovelace, magician.
The first plane was clear, but he'd rigged up a defense nexus on the second—it shone like blue gossamer all along the high wall. It didn't finish there either; it extended up into the air, over the top of the low white house, and down again on the other side, forming a great shimmering dome.
Not bad, but I could handle it.
There was nothing on the third or fourth planes, but on the fifth I spotted three sentries prowling around in midair, just beyond the lip of the garden wall. They were a dull yellow all over, each one formed of three muscular legs that rotated on a hub of gristle. Above the hub was a blobby mass, which sported two mouths and several watchful eyes. The creatures passed at random back and forth around the perimeter of the garden. I shrank back against the trunk of the beech tree instinctively, but I knew they were unlikely to spot me from there. At this distance I would look like a blackbird on all seven planes. It was when I got closer that they might break through my illusion.
The sixth plane was clear. But the seventh… that was curious. I couldn't see anything obvious—the house, the street, the night all looked unchanged—but, call it intuition if you like, I was sure something was present there, lurking.
I rubbed my beak doubtfully against a knot of wood. As expected, there was a good deal of powerful magic at work here. I'd heard of Lovelace. He was considered a formidable magician and a hard taskmaster. I was lucky I had never been called up in his service, and I did not much want his enmity or that of his servants.
But I had to obey that kid.
The soggy blackbird took off from the branch and swooped across the road, conveniently avoiding the arc of light from the nearest lamp. It landed in a patch of scrubby grass at the corner of the wall. Four black trash bags had been left out there for collection the next morning. The blackbird hopped behind the bags. A cat that had observed the bird[5] from some way off waited a few moments for it to emerge, lost patience, and scuttled curiously after it. Behind the bags it discovered no bird, black or otherwise. There was nothing there but a freshly turned molehill.
3
I hate the taste of mud. It is no fit thing for a being of air and fire. The cloying weight of earth oppresses me greatly whenever I come into contact with it. That is why I am choosy about my incarnations. Birds, good. Insects, good. Bats, okay. Things that run fast are fine. Tree dwellers are even better. Subterranean things, not good. Moles, bad.
But there's no point being fastidious when you have a protective shield to bypass. I had reasoned correctly that it did not extend underground. The mole dug its way deep, deep down, under the foundations of the wall. No magical alarm sounded, though I did hit my head five times on a pebble.[6] I burrowed upward again, reaching the surface after twenty minutes of snuffling, scruffling, and turning my beady nose up at the juicy worms I uncovered after every couple of scrapes.
The mole poked its head cautiously out of the little pile of earth it had driven through the immaculate surface of Simon Lovelace's lawn. It looked around, checking out the scene. There were lights on in the house, on the ground floor. The curtains were drawn. The upper floors, from what the mole could see, were dark. The translucent blue span of the magical defense system arched overhead. One yellow sentry trudged its stupid way ten feet above the shrubbery. The other two were presumably behind the house.
I tried the seventh plane again. Still nothing, still that uneasy sense of danger. Oh, well.
The mole retreated underground and tunneled below the grass roots toward the house. It reappeared in the flowerbed just below the nearest windows. It was thinking hard. There was no point going further in this guise, tempting though it was to try to break into the cellars. A different method would have to be found.
To the mole's furry ears came the sound of laughter and clinking glasses. It was surprisingly loud, echoing from very close by. An air vent, cracked with age, was set in the wall not two feet away. It led indoors.
With some relief, I became a fly.
4
From the security of the air vent, I peered with my multi—faceted eyes into a rather traditional drawing room. There was a thick pile carpet, nasty striped wallpaper, a hideous crystal thing pretending to be a chandelier, two oil paintings that were dark with age, a sofa and two easy chairs (also striped), a low coffee table laden with a silver tray, and, on the tray, a bottle of red wine and no glasses. The glasses were in the hands of two people.
One of them was a woman. She was youngish (for a human, which means infinitesimally young) and probably quite good—looking in a fleshy sort of way. Big eyes, dark hair, bobbed. I memorized her automatically. I would appear in her guise tomorrow when I went back to visit that kid. Only naked. Let's see how his very steely but ever so adolescent mind responded to that![7]
4
I have access to seven planes, all coexistent. They overlap each other like layers on a crushed mille—feuille. Seven planes is sufficient for anybody. Those who operate on more are just showing off.
6
Once each on five different pebbles. Not the same pebble five times. Just want to make that clear. Sometimes you human beings are so dense.
7
For those who are wondering, I have no difficulty in becoming a woman. Nor for that matter a man. In some ways I suppose women are trickier, but I won't go into that now. Woman, man, mole, maggot—they're all the same, when all's said and done, except for slight variations in cognitive ability.