The Lost Mage Read online

  Darakin made some sputtering noises that started Nora laughing. “Fire is fire, Nora. It burns. And frost freezes. Am I to believe that these things are not constants in this realm?”

  “No, chill out – no pun intended, that means to calm down. I was just yanking your chain.”

  “Chain? What chain. There are no bindings on me.”

  “It means I was just teasing you.”

  “Oh.”

  They walked the rest of the way home in silence. Darakin stood back while Nora opened the apartment door. She walked in and exclaimed, “Oh sweet Jaysus. It looks like curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Mrowley’s dead? No! Where is he? How do you know?” Darakin brushed past her into the apartment and looked around, frantic to find his companion. He rushed past the disastrous mess in the kitchen into the living room where he promptly tripped over a small table that had been upended. He flew several feet and came to rest in front of the coffee table where he saw the cat sitting on the sofa, enjoying a bath.

  “Mrowley!”

  What?

  “You’re alive!”

  Can’t put anything past you, can I?

  Darakin reached out and stroked the cat. “It’s … Nora said you were dead and well, I’ve grown attached to you.”

  Mrowley cat-blushed at Darakin’s words. I like you, too, Dude.

  Nora came into the living room.

  “Why did you tell me that Mrowley was dead?”

  “I didn’t!”

  “You said curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Lordie, it’s an expression we use here. It’s a cat’s curiosity that gets them into all sorts of mischief.”

  Actually, it was a fly.

  “Don’t you see the mess in here?” She pointed to the table that he had tripped over.

  Darakin looked around at the apartment. Every book, magazine and knick knack that had been on a table or shelf was on the floor. He looked back toward the kitchen. The flour canister had been toppled and the white powder was all over the counter.

  “Mrowley!” Darakin bellowed.

  What?

  “I told you not to go on the countertops.”

  You did?

  “Yes. And you told me that all I had to do was ask and you would obey.”

  Hold on there, dude. Obey is not exactly a word in the cat vocabulary.

  “Well, you said you wouldn’t do it. Why did you? What happened here?”

  I told you, there was a fly. It took awhile, but I caught him.

  “What’s he saying?” Nora asked in annoyance.

  “He says there was a fly.”

  “Well, that explains it.”

  Here. The cat picked up something in his mouth and jumped down to deposit the little insect corpse at Nora’s feet.

  “I feel so much safer now,” she said wryly.

  “Mrowley, this place is destroyed. You did this,” Darakin spread his arms wide to indicate the destruction, “all to catch a fly?”

  What can I say? It was an epic battle.

  “An epic battle? Are you insane?”

  No. Listen, the average speed of a housefly is four point five miles an hour whereas my average speed is about thirty miles an hour. However, since the fly can actually … well, fly, he can avoid most of the barriers that get in my way, causing me to need to achieve high speed and use a bit of my psychic abilities to know where he’s going and reach it first. Now the science of the situation is such that …

  “How do you know all this? You’re a cat!”

  Mrowley shrugged. Exactly.

  “Exactly what?”

  What?

  “I asked how you knew these facts because you’re a cat and you said, ‘exactly.’”

  Yes.

  “Yes what?” Darius cried in frustration. “You can’t read yet you somehow know the average speed of a housefly? How do you know that?”

  Don’t know. Just do. I guess you need some innate scientific knowledge of your prey’s abilities in order to effectively hunt. I mean, how do you think birds fly? They use physics, dude.

  Darius sat on the couch holding his head. He looked up at Nora. “He gives me a headache sometimes. He’s lecturing me on average speeds and science, when he was able to follow the conversation, that is.”

  Nora laughed. “He sounds like a genius with ADD.”

  “What’s ADD?”

  “Never mind. He’s a cat, Darakin. Why do you let him frustrate you so? Besides, I’ve seen cats go crazy for flies before and I’ll tell you there’s nothing scientific about it.”

  Pfft. What does she know?

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He’s just sticking with his science story.”

  “Oh, please. Just help me clean up the mess, will you?” She turned toward the cat. “As for you, you wee beastie, you’ll be learning to clean up if you keep making messes like this.”

  Mrowley blinked silently at Nora before lifting a paw to continue his bath.

  “It’s no use trying to reason with a cat.” She shook her head.

  Darakin and Nora cleaned up the latest cat mess and then ate a lunch of sandwiches and potato chips. Darakin was amazed and pleased by the crisp chips.

  “You say they just fry potato slices in oil? Nobody in my realm has thought to try this. It’s delicious.”

  “Indeed it is. They’re also high in fat, but we eat them anyway.”

  After eating, they sat on the couch to watch some television, only to end up running to the bedroom, once again closing the door before Mrowley could get in. The dejected cat went back to the sofa to lie down.

  A few hours later, Nora crept out of the bedroom, tiptoed to the bathroom and softly closed the door. Mrowley leapt up and padded into the bedroom.

  Nora came back only to find the cat sound asleep, curled up next to Darakin’s firm chest. She surprised herself by smiling at the sight. She’d tried everything to make the small, cramped apartment seem like a home. She’d filled it with knick knacks (many of which Mrowley had broken during his encounter with the ferocious fly) and pictures, but she could never shake the loneliness that had haunted her life since leaving Ireland.

  So, she thought to herself, ‘twas only a strange man and a crazy cat I needed to make me feel at home again.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning, Darakin was pleased to awaken and find Mrowley and Nora still asleep. There were no tiny rodent corpses to be found anywhere. A good start to the day, he thought. He crept out of bed, being careful not to disturb either of them.

  Nora murmured in her sleep and rolled over. Mrowley opened one sleepy eye and then crawled over to curl up next to Nora. Stifling an “aw”, Darakin turned and left the room.

  He went to the kitchen and looked around. He would love to prepare breakfast for Nora, but he didn’t understand the machines that the people of this realm surrounded themselves with. He looked at the stove from which he’d seen Nora produce fire, but though she’d tried to explain it to him, he had no idea how she’d done it. Feeling useless and out of his depth, he picked up his pile of money and went down to the street, making sure that the door was unlocked so he could come back in.

  Down on the street, he looked around for ideas on how to prepare a breakfast. A young man walking by struck a match and lit a cigarette. Darakin recalled Mrowley mentioning these small wooden sticks as a means to summon fire.

  “Excuse me, young man.”

  “Who, me?” The kid looked to his left and right to see if there was anyone else around.

  “Yes. Please, may I give you notes in exchange for those wooden sticks?”

  “Notes?”

  The teen’s blank expression caused Darakin to search for another word. “Yes, I mean, dollars?”

  The boy laughed. “So, you want to give me a buck for a used book of matches?”

  “A buck? Goodness no! I don’t even have one and I see no forests around where I could find one. Plus, if such an animal were available, I believe it
s value would far exceed that of the wooden sticks. But I would give you one of these notes.” He held up one of the bills.

  “Deal!” The young man snatched the five dollar bill from Darakin with one hand, while throwing the book of matches at him with the other. “Sucker,” he laughed as he ran down the street.

  Darakin shrugged. He crossed the street at the traffic light as Nora had shown him. He gathered up some brush and twigs from the small park there before he made his way back up to Nora’s apartment. He tiptoed in, listening for sounds that she was awake, but the bedroom was quiet.

  He looked around the kitchen for an appropriate place to start a cooking fire. There was no hearth or chimney, so he took a plate from the kitchen over to the living room window, which he opened. He spread the brush and twigs on the plate and tried to strike the match the way he’d seen the young man do. Nothing happened.

  He turned the book over and noticed the flint. “Ah, some sort of friction, perhaps.” He struck the match against the flint. It sparked but failed to light as his fingernail scraped along the coarse material. He quickly became frustrated after five or six attempts. He looked at the ruined matchstick in his hand and ripped another out.

  This time, after only took four attempts, the match sparked to life. He held the match up in amazement as he gazed at his beloved fire. Within a few seconds, his fingers became warm and he snapped out of his reverie to realize that he was about to get burned.

  He held the match to his pile of tree debris and smiled as the fire lit. He fanned it to life and then returned to the kitchen for a pan and a knife. He broke a few eggs in it and went to hold them over the fire.

  The apartment soon filled with the smell of the fire and the cooking eggs. Nora is going to be so pleased, he thought.

  In the bedroom, Nora put a hand on the cat’s soft back and stroked his soft fur.

  Mrowley purred. After all this time, not one person, but two! He was in cat heaven.

  Suddenly, the peaceful moment was broken by the shrill beeping of the smoke detector. The cat leapt out of bed. Fire! Fire! Fire! He ran out of the bedroom and into the living room, where he ran in circles before hiding under the sofa.

  Nora tried to jump out of bed, but became tangled in the bed sheets and collapsed in a heap on the floor. “Oh, my God! What’s burning?” she screamed as she picked herself up.

  Darakin, alarmed at the mysterious beeping, the hysterical cat and the shrieking coming from the bedroom, ran back and forth, trying to figure out what to do.

  Nora appeared at the bedroom door. “Oh, sweet Jaysus! You don’t start a fire on the floor!” She ran to the kitchen and grabbed the tea kettle, the contents of which she poured on Darakin’s small cooking fire. “What were you thinking?”

  “Well, I … I … wanted to make you breakfast.” Darakin’s shoulders slumped at this latest failure.

  While Darakin was stuttering out an explanation, she pulled a chair under the smoke detector and removed its battery. “Could you not use the stove, like everyone else?”

  “I couldn’t remember how you summoned fire with it, so I bought these,” he held up the matchbook, “and made my own.”

  She grabbed the matches from him and opened it. Only three matches remained. “You paid for this?”

  “Yes. A young man seemed very eager to exchange them for one of my notes.”

  “One of your … ach, Darakin, how much did you give him? You didn’t have any singles in that pile.” She softened at the dejected expression on his face. “I’m sorry; it’s just that matches are cheap. He ripped you off.”

  “Ripped me off?”

  “Yes. He cheated you. You paid way too much.”

  “Oh.”

  “Help me get this mess cleaned up and we’ll go over money. I’m sorry we never did it yesterday but you need to learn about its value here.” She looked at the pan with its ruined eggs and the scratched Teflon from Darakin’s knife. “My pan! You used a metal knife on this?” She sighed. “Okay, first we’ll go over kitchen dos and don’ts and then we’ll talk about money.” She took the destroyed pan and the plate full of wet, burnt branches and headed into the kitchen.

  Dude. The cat, having emerged from under the couch, shook his head.

  “Don’t start, cat. I’m not in the mood.”

  It’s just that women here like a dude that can keep his cool in an emergency.

  “Oh, really?”

  Yeah, the cat said, licking a paw. Sometimes, you just have to sit back and take a chill pill. You know, be calm. Have a bath.

  “Says the cat who ran around like a maniac before hiding under the furniture.”

  Whoa. I wasn’t hiding. I needed a strategic location from which to launch a counterattack, if necessary.

  “A counterattack? Last time it was a sneak attack.”

  See, hiding under here means it could be a sneak counterattack. Obviously, one wasn’t necessary this time, but I needed a place to assess the situation because you never know when you’ll need the element of surprise.

  Darakin made a sound of frustration and followed Nora into the kitchen. He spent the next hour learning about how to turn on the oven, the purposes of the refrigerator and other appliances, as well rules about not scratching Teflon surfaces with metal utensils.

  Then Nora sat him down and discussed money. She taught him what the value of each denomination was, how to make change and went over some basics about what was expensive and what wasn’t.

  After two exhausting hours of trying to teach money and kitchen etiquette to Darakin, Nora phoned Sean to find out if he wanted them to work that night.

  “Thank Goodness, we’re both to go in tonight,” she said to Darakin as she hung up.

  Darakin stood and touched the phone. “This … device – it allows you to speak to Sean?”

  “Yes, this is a phone. Remember, I used one on the street the other day? That was my cell phone. This is my home phone. People in this realm like to stay connected.”

  “It still seems like magic to me.”

  “Yeah, but you thought my non-stick surface pan was magic, too.”

  “Come on! A surface that you cook on and there’s no mess? No stuck or burnt on food? I stand by my decree that it’s magic.”

  Nora laughed.

  “Well, I should pack my old clothes up if we’re going back to Sean’s.”

  Mrowley made some odd choking noises at the thought of the small room at the back of the bar. In two short days, he’d grown accustomed to having two warm bodies, a soft bed and his own litter pan.

  “Mrowley? Are you okay?”

  Yeah, just a hairball. The disappointment was clear in his voice.

  “Is he throwing up in my living room?”

  “No, well actually, I don’t know. Are you throwing up, Mrowley?”

  No. Just a gagging thing. I’m fine.

  “He says he’s fine.”

  “Okay, but listen, I told you to stay here. That little room at the pub is no place for a grown man and certainly no place for a cat. You’ll stay with me for a wee bit. I insist.”

  “I don’t want to be an imposition.”

  Dude! Impose. Impose. Please? I like it here. I even like her.

  “That you’ve already been, between dead mice, battles with flies and a fire in me living room. It’s no time to be apologizing now. Besides, I have to confess that I’m enjoying the company, despite the messes.”

  Wahoo. Please, Darakin? Let’s stay here. Please?

  “Well, it seems that you’ve made quite an impression on Mrowley … and on me. I admit that I, I mean we, would be happy to stay with you for awhile.”

  Nora blushed with happiness.

  “In that case, put some food down for Mrowley and then come help me cook us an early dinner.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Darakin did as she bid.

  Mrowley rubbed against his hand as he was putting the food out to show how happy he was with the arrangement.

  Later that afternoon, Dar
akin and Nora walked the ten blocks to the bar, because Nora was fairly certain that Darakin wouldn’t get on the subway yet.