Reckonings
Authors: Carla Jablonski
the
BOOKS
of
MAGIC
â¢
* 6
Reckonings
Carla Jablonski
Created by
Neil Gaiman and John Bolton
For Neil,
where the magic all began,
with thanks.
âCJ
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful queen whoâ¦
Timothy hunter winced as Molly O'Reilly's mother launched into aâ¦
“Not bad for a first try!” he cheered, making triumphantâ¦
Tim hoped he'd find Molly soon. He was getting tired.
The Body Artist carried the cat-boy-magician through the dark streetsâ¦
The Body Artist laid the sleeping cat on her stainlessâ¦
I don't feel any different, Tim thought. Well, other thanâ¦
Tim ran and ran, and then ran some more. Heâ¦
Tim felt very groggy. He'd been deeply asleep for someâ¦
Molly O'Reilly gripped the pitchfork and tossed soiled hay ontoâ¦
Tim slipped the opening Stone back into his pocket andâ¦
Molly knew the instant she opened her eyes that sheâ¦
A chill ran along Titania's spine. The boy had madeâ¦
Tim felt Molly's hands disappear from his. “Molly!” he cried.
Tim made his way to the car a few blocksâ¦
W
HEN I WAS STILL
a teenager, only a few years older than Tim Hunter is in the book you are holding, I decided it was time to write my first novel. It was to be called
Wild Magic
, and it was to be set in a minor British Public School (which is to say, a private school), like the ones from which I had so recently escaped, only a minor British Public School that taught magic. It had a young hero named Richard Grenville, and a pair of wonderful villains who called themselves Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. It was going to be a mixture of Ursula K. Le Guin's
A Wizard of Earthsea
and T. H. White's
The Sword in the Stone
, and, well, me, I suppose. That was the plan. It seemed to me that learning about magic was the perfect story, and I was sure I could really write convincingly about school.
I wrote about five pages of the book before I realized that I had absolutely no idea what I was
doing, and I stopped. (Later, I learned that most books are actually written by people who have no idea what they are doing, but go on to finish writing the books anyway. I wish I'd known that then.)
Years passed. I got married, and had children of my own, and learned how to finish writing the things I'd started.
Then one day in 1988, the telephone rang.
It was an editor in America named Karen Berger. I had recently started writing a monthly comic called
The Sandman
, which Karen was editing, although no issues had yet been published. Karen had noticed that I combined a sort of trainspotterish knowledge of minor and arcane DC Comics characters with a bizarre facility for organizing them into something more or less coherent. And also, she had an idea.
“Would you write a comic,” she asked, “that would be a history of magic in the DC Comics universe, covering the past and the present and the future? Sort of a Who's Who, but with a story? We could call it
The Books of Magic
.”
I said, “No, thank you.” I pointed out to her how silly an idea it wasâa Who's Who and a history and a travel guide that was also a story. “Quite a ridiculous idea,” I said, and she apologized for having suggested it.
In bed that night I hovered at the edge of sleep, musing about Karen's call, and what a ridiculous idea it was. I meanâ¦a story that would go from the beginning of timeâ¦to the end of timeâ¦and have someone meet all these strange peopleâ¦and learn all about magicâ¦.
Perhaps it wasn't so ridiculousâ¦.
And then I sighed, certain that if I let myself sleep it would all be gone in the morning. I climbed out of bed and crept through the house back to my office, trying not to wake anyone in my hurry to start scribbling down ideas.
A boy. Yes. There had to be a boy. Someone smart and funny, something of an outsider, who would learn that he had the potential to be the greatest magician the world had ever seenâmore powerful than Merlin. And four guides, to take him through the past, the present, through other worlds, through the future, serving the same function as the ghosts who accompany Ebenezer Scrooge through Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol.
I thought for a moment about calling him Richard Grenville, after the hero of my book-I'd-never-written, but that seemed a rather too heroic name (the original Sir Richard Grenville was a sea captain, adventurer, and explorer, after all). So I called him Tim, possibly because the Monty
Python team had shown that Tim was an unlikely sort of name for an enchanter, or with faint memories of the hero of Margaret Storey's magical children's novel,
Timothy and Two Witches
. I thought perhaps his last name should be Seekings, and it was, in the first outline I sent to Karenâa faint tribute to John Masefield's haunting tale of magic and smugglers,
The Midnight Folk
. But Karen felt this was a bit literal, so he became, in one stroke of the pen, Tim Hunter.
And as Tim Hunter he sat up, blinked, wiped his glasses on his T-shirt, and set off into the world.
(I never actually got to use the minor British Public School that taught only magic in a story, and I suppose now I never will. But I was very pleased when Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar finally showed up in a story about life under London, called
Neverwhere
.)
John Bolton, the first artist to draw Tim, had a son named James who was just the right age and he became John's model for Tim, tousle-haired and bespectacled. And in 1990 the first four volumes of comics that became the first
Books of Magic
graphic novel were published.
Soon enough, it seemed, Tim had a monthly series of comics chronicling his adventures and misadventures, and the slow learning process he
was to undergo, as initially chronicled by author John Ney Reiber, who gave Tim a number of thingsâmost importantly, Molly.
In this new series of novels-without-pictures, Carla Jablonski has set herself a challenging task: not only adapting Tim's stories, but also telling new ones, and through it all illuminating the saga of a young man who might just grow up to be the most powerful magician in the world. If, of course, he manages to live that longâ¦.
Neil Gaiman
May 2002
O
NCE UPON A TIME
,
there was a beautiful queen who presided with her king over the land of Faerie. She enjoyed being queen, reveling in her luxuries and Magicks, the beauty of the land and her court. But being queen can be very lonely. Her husband, Auberon, had married her to form an alliance. Perhaps he loved her a little; she loved him sometimes. But she never forgot that her real value to him was political. That and his hope that she would produce an heir and thus ensure the royal line.
And while Titania had company at all times, she had no true friends. With so much gossip and intrigue at court, how could she confide in anyone there? She had often relied on her courtier Amadan, but she wasn't sure if she could trust him. He'd turn up in the oddest places, as if he'd been eavesdropping or spying. She didn't think he was reporting back to her husband, for Auberon seemed easily irritated by the
tiny creature, but Amadan had an agenda at all timesâthat much she could see.
Still, Amadan had stood her in good stead when she first became queen. She was not royalty by birth. She had been thrust into royal life unprepared; it was Amadan who taught her, counseled her, protected her. But an obsequious flitling was not a true friend. And there was nowhere she felt that she could just be herself.
So she began to visit the world of the humans. The gates were always open; it was easy to do and easy to hide her Faeriness beneath glamours that gave her skin the human hue. The unfamiliar landscape and the promise of uninterrupted time alone made her feel free. Free enough to sit and weep for her family whom she had left behind when she moved to the court, for her lonely heart, for her thwarted romantic dreams.
“Sorrowing lady, why do you cry? What may I do to help you?”
Those were Tamlin's first words to her. Tamlin, perhaps the handsomest human she had ever seen. He was nearly as beautiful as the Fair Folk. “Don't be afraid,” he said. “My name is Tamlin, and I would never harm you.”
“IâI think I'd better go back now,” Titania stammered, feeling as foolish as a young child. He set her heart racing, and it frightened her. She wanted to
get away from him, and yet she didn't want to let him go. She stood. “Yes, I must go back.”
“Then let me escort you,” Tamlin insisted. “These woods are no place for a woman alone. Let me come with you to your home.”
“You wish to come to where I live?” Titania asked. “Of your own free will?” An idea was forming in her head.
“Of course,” Tamlin replied.
“Come then, Tamlin. Of your own volition, come with me.”
And so she brought the human to Faerie, knowing as she did so that he could never return to the land of his birth. Visit, yes. But he would always have to return to her as her willing prisoner.
Willing because before long they fell in love, and Tamlin did not ever want to leave her side. She taught him certain Magicksâshape-shifing, for example, and herbal remediesâand they spent many happy days and nights together.
But their happiness couldn't last. Tamlin was furious that Titania would not leave her husband for him. She refused to give up her Faerie kingdom in order to be with him openly. When she announced that she was pregnant, and that the child would be the King's heir, Tamlin angrily reminded her that she could not know who the child's father really was. Was
he
the father, or was Auberon? Would the child be all
Faerie, or would human blood also course through his veins?
Titania hid her fear of the consequences and sent Tamlin away. She did not want to lose her title, her position. Even if the child were his, she would never tell him. It would give him too much power over her; he would have too many rights to claim. Perhaps, even if the child were Tamlin's, Auberon would never have to know. The child might take after her, after all. It might yet appear to be a true child of Faerie. She could train the human nature right out of him if necessary.
Yet, to be safe, she secretly asked Amadan to hire a special nurse for herâone who could be trusted. And on that fateful day, with King Auberon away, she bore her childâ¦a child with obvious marks of humanity.
“This child's existence will be a threat to you as long as you live,” Amadan warned her. “You could be tried for treason for your infidelity. This child is the proof of it.”
“What can I do?” she asked.
“What you must. That is, if you value your throne.”
“Yes,” Titania murmured. “Yes. Do it.”
The nurse took the pink and healthy baby boy from the Queen's arms. “I have always been reliable,” the nurse said. “You can count on me.” She wrapped the baby in her cloak and left the room.
“We will inform the King and the court that the child was born dead,” Amadan said. “It will not be a lie for long.”
Tears trickled from Titania's eyes. “Please. Leave me alone.”
Amadan bowed, and flitted out the window.
The sad Queen stared out the window at the night sky. “Oh, Tamlin,” she moaned. “What have I done? Now you will never forgive me. I may never forgive myself.”
Days went by. Auberon grieved and consoled his unhappy wife in her loss. Amadan hovered, and watched to keep Tamlin away.
But Tamlin had followed the nurse into the woods. He was astonished when she and the baby disappeared into a misty portal. There was no proof that she ever did what she had set out to do; she certainly did not return. He never said a word to Titania. She had wanted to be rid of the childâhis childâso what would be the point? He stopped coming to her door, stopped yearning for her so keenly.
And despite everything, Titania was convinced that her son was alive. Somewhere.