“Circle, boy, the first circle,” he corrected Bernard gently.
“Oh, yes, the first circle then,” Bernard agreed quickly.
Old Book Guy continued then, “To be considered, supplicant, please repeat after me: I — and here you state your full name — have come before the Society of the Second Dawn of Mankind to seek membership to the first circle of enlightenment,” Old Book Guy paused to let Bernard repeat the first statement of the request for membership, but Bernard was hesitating again. Old Book Guy was getting impatient so Bernard felt he needed to explain.
“I call myself Bernard and usually omit mentioning a last name. I don’t normally use the name that’s on my birth certificate. Is it okay if I just say Bernard?” Old Book Guy seemed relieved that Bernard’s hesitation was just about what name to use.
“Ritual calls for your full name. Don’t worry, we’ve heard it all before. How bad could your name be?” Bernard thought about this for a moment and then decided that this group had to be one of the very few places where he could use his real name without drawing ridicule.
He resolved to tell them then: “Daemon Soulforge.”
They stared, but not in the way he had been stared at other times he had had to say his real name. Their stare was a sort of awed stare, like he would have expected if he had called himself Chuck Norris or Badass Kickasserton. Normally, people laughed, sometimes while spurting milk from their noses.
He felt a need to explain.
“My parents, they play these games with their friends, they . . . LARP.” He didn’t think anyone at this meeting would know what that meant, “they kind of play an adult version of make-believe where they act out a sort of fantasy life. In their case they play a LARP where they’re vampires in the modern world, hiding out in mortal society and being all mysterious and stuff. Their characters in that game, the characters they’ve been playing for years, the same characters they were playing when they met and fell in love, were part of a vampire group thing called the Soulforge and they are soooo into that stuff that they changed their legal last name to Soulforge, and well, that’s, yeah, that’s why that’s my name,” he finished lamely.
The Second Dawners were looking to Old Book Guy. Old Book Guy seemed to have been working through some serious thoughts since Bernard had first said his real name; Bernard didn’t think Old Book Guy had heard a word of his subsequent explanation as to why his parents had named him that.
Before the silence grew too long, Old Book Guy came to a decision and announced that the meeting was over, “Daemon, please stay and have a siddown with me for a while, okay? I need to talk some things over withcha.” Old Book Guy’s accent was more New York by the minute.
It took the assembled Second Dawners some time to pack up and depart. All the while, William Former Senior was making disgruntled noises that might have been speech to Old Book Guy, but which were incomprehensible to Bernard. Eventually, the majority of the cultists were gone, with Bernice last to go. She hesitated in the doorway looking to Old Book Guy as though she was about to ask a final question, but she must have seen something in his expression that made her desist. She left quietly then, without further delay.
Old Book Guy took two chairs and placed them a comfortable distance apart, facing each other. He motioned for Bernard to sit in one while he sat in the other. They looked at each other without talking for a few awkward minutes. Old Book Guy seemed to be composing himself, trying to decide how to start, but Bernard had his own ideas and was curious about some things, so he spoke first, derailing the older man’s train of thought.
“What
is
your name anyway? I keep thinking of you as Old Book Guy.”
Old Book Guy laughed when he heard this and, after a moment, answered, “I am the leader of the Society of the Second Dawn of Mankind, its Oracle of the Celestial, as the proper title goes, but you can call me Jim.”
Bernard was a bit let down. He knew that most people had normal names — other than his family — but he had expected this figure of mystery and grandeur to have a name with more vim or whiz to it, something like — well Gandalf was taken — Randalf maybe? Bernard decided that perhaps Jim had enough of the mystical about him, with his heavily embroidered robes, authentic spell book, and seeming super powers, that he didn’t need to have a flashy name. The sort of people who needed flashy names were people like his parents: wannabes. He guessed that was why they went and got flashy names, to compensate for a lack of any real mystique in their lives. Jim evidently was mystical enough to make due with a name like Jim. While Bernard had been mulling this over, Jim waited politely. After a time, he asked if Bernard had any other preliminary questions he wanted to get out of the way.
Bernard did not hesitate for one moment, “What’s the deal with William Former Senior anyway? The way he talks, I mean.”
“Or the way I talk for that matter?” Jim said. His accent was changing again, heading to more of a French accent. When he had said
matter
it had sounded more like mat-air.
“Yeah, that too,” said Bernard, reminded of this further weirdness he suddenly wondered if they were related.
“Well, those who progress through the different circles of the mysteries gain much knowledge, but it changes us too, Daemon. The deeper your knowledge gets, the less comprehensible to others you become. Old William was our Oracle before me until, well, no one really understands him now except adepts who have progressed far enough into the mysteries. As for myself, I’m not yet so advanced as to be incomprehensible but my accent does travel around extensively. It’s rather annoying actually. People often think I’m from some foreign place because I have the accent of their homeland, and start talking to me in their native tongue, which I can’t understand, of course.”
Bernard thought about this for a moment. It was obvious that William Former Senior had communicated with Jim — communication that sounded like gibberish to everyone else. He had guessed that maybe the two shared an obscure language, but barring that, there had to be something supernatural going on here. He had mentally joked that Jim had a super power where he could clear his throat to stop people talking, and make them pay attention to him; he now considered this carefully: was there really a supernatural element to this man, to this group? This was big and it excited him, but he needed more proof.
His next question was, “Can you really do magic? Can you show me something right now?”
Jim smiled patiently. He looked as though he had expected this question would come up sooner or later.
“Minor tricks, nothing very flashy,” he said with an air of self-effacement. “I think you noticed I have a way to make sure I’m heard and respected. The book calls the effect the Grand Throat Clearing of Nushagra. I think Nushagra was some ancient Babylonian, or some such.” Jim had indicated the large book in his lap — the exciting old book — as he spoke.
He opened it then and thumbed through the pages, looking for a particular one. The book didn’t seem to have any page numbers that Bernard could see. It was all hand-written, as he had suspected, with illumination and diagrams throughout. The paper was old and tattered with some of the pages seeming to be on their last legs, nearly falling out as they were turned. Some of the pages were no longer bound into the book at all and were kept in their proper places only by being tucked between other pages that were still attached. It took Jim a little while to find the page he was looking for, but eventually, he smiled triumphantly and said, “Here it is! This is the one flashy spell I can show you. There are others, but too often the effects can be written off as coincidence or happenstance. This one is hard to dismiss as anything but magic.”
Jim concentrated, reading through the page, following along with a finger as he read, his lips moving. Bernard could see the language of the text was not English. It was not gibberish either, he noticed. It looked, perhaps, Latin? Whatever language it was, Jim could definitely follow it. Eventually, Jim, seeming satisfied that he had it all worked out, looked up from the book. He raised his hands up, showing them palm out to Bernard. He concentrated and Bernard thought he heard some Latin-sounding words muttered under Jim’s breath.
Jim’s brow furrowed in concentration and then he said triumphantly: “There!”
Bernard was confused. Nothing had happened. He thought it might be something behind him or out of his present field of view since Jim was, after all, facing in the opposite direction. He looked around but could not see anything.
Bernard was suddenly rather worried that these people
were
nutters after all. Maybe he had been wrong to think there was anything to all this, maybe he’d been taken in. He was embarrassed at his own gullibility and embarrassed for poor old Jim. He was feeling miserably uncomfortable and was about to tell Jim that what he’d done was great and really impressive, whatever it was; Bernard knew better than to argue with nutters or to point out how nutty they were, but then Jim looked at him significantly, and then looked at his own out-held hands.
His hands were still held palm out toward Bernard. Bernard didn’t see anything special happening there and it must have shown to Jim because he wiggled his thumbs next. Now, Bernard was not easily impressed, he could wiggle his thumbs too and didn’t think this to be any sort of magic. But then he felt that there
was
something he was in fact missing. There was something
wrong
with Jim’s thumbs. Was he double-jointed perhaps? The more he looked at them, the more the thumbs looked wrong. And then it became clear to Bernard and it put to rest his nutter fears for good: the thumbs on Jim’s hands were now on the other side of his hands, after his pinkies!
This seemed so wrong to Bernard then that he didn’t know how he could ever have missed it. This trick’s subtlety was truly a testament to how much people ignored the unusual as a reflex. Bernard looked at the misplaced thumbs squarely for a moment and found that it made him so uncomfortable he had to look away again.
Jim nodded knowingly.
“It has the same effect on most people once they notice, although few do unless forced to do so,” he said. He shook his hands briskly for a second or two and when he stopped Bernard noticed the thumbs were back in their traditional locations.
“It’s not terribly useful, but it is undeniably magical,” Jim said with a grin. He looked like he was enjoying showing off. Bernard imagined there weren’t many practical uses for the trick with the thumbs.
Jim confirmed this with what he said next, “The most fun I’ve ever had with it is shaking hands with people at a party where no one knew me. At first the person you’re shaking hands with thinks they gave you the wrong hand, or that you did, and then they notice that your thumbs are wrong and then they either work really hard at acting casual about your supposed infirmity, or solicit at length the story of how you were injured and then reconstructed. Some ask if it was a birth defect. Really, I don’t use it often, that’s why I had to look it up.”
Bernard didn’t care that the spells might not be useful – this was real proof of the supernatural!
If this is real, then their book probably also has real information about a real prophecy, a real apocalypse,
he thought.
This had dawned on him suddenly and he immediately blurted out, “How long have we got? Before the end of times, I mean, according to the book?” Jim seemed pleased.
“You’re catching on very quickly Daemon. Most people spend more time stunned and confused, questioning and doubting. You’ve moved quickly from neophyte to acolyte; from outsider to believer. This is good because I fear you will have a hard life ahead of you.” Jim delivered this with pride that fell to a sad melancholy at the end.
“What do you mean?” Bernard blurted. “And why do you keep calling me that? I really,
really
, prefer Bernard.”
Jim was stern, “Eventually you have to face who you really are Bernard. You can’t hide from your destiny behind some boring old name you made up. You are the Demon of the Soul Forge.”
This took Bernard aback. He was no demon. This guy was misunderstanding: there was no Soul Forge. It was a stupid name his parents took on as their family name, from a game. He was about to explain this at length to Jim, but Jim seemed to read what he was thinking from his expression.
Jim been doing that a lot
, Bernard thought.
Another of his magic tricks?
“I know there is likely no actual Soul Forge, Daemon. We’re not fools. I’m referring to a passage from the book,” Jim indicated the large old book in his lap. Bernard had so many questions he wanted to ask about that thing, but Jim kept talking. “The book is far from literal, there are many passages that we don’t believe have been accurately translated or that have words for which we have no translation. Worse, some of the passages are incomplete. There seem to be missing paragraphs or even pages. And, if that were not bad enough, there are also parts that are metaphorical where the meanings are not meant to be taken literally. The bit about the Demon of the Soul Forge is one such passage.” Bernard was all ears now, his unasked questions forgotten. It seemed like Jim was telling him that this ancient magical book of prophecies and spells included a passage about him.
“In the passage in question it is said that the Demon of the Soul Forge, weary of the aches in his soul caused by the lamentations of the other dwellers of the forge, would seek out the acolytes of the New Sun, those who prepare for the Second Dawn – that’s us by the way – and gain from them the fires he will eventually need to ignite the New Sun. Imagine how glad I am to find out this passage is not literal. We were rather worried, you know,” Jim smiled ruefully. “We had no actual fire to give, or anything, and I don’t know what I’d have done if an actual, honest to the New Sun, demon had shown up here asking for it. There were contingencies, of course. We bought a propane burner a few years ago and bring it to meetings, just in case, so we could give the demon
something
. I also practised my groveling and worked out some abject apologies, just in case. We were worried that the New Sun would fail to ignite because of our failure to give this demon the fire he would need. But you, you’re wonderful. Your being the demon puts all this in a different perspective. The fire must be knowledge, of course.” Jim seemed really, genuinely, happy about this.