Consequences Read online

  the BOOKS of MAGICTM *4

  Consequences

  Carla Jablonski

  Created by

  Neil Gaiman and John Bolton

  For Matthew and Michelle, just

  because.

  —CJ

  Contents

  The Books of Magic: An Introduction

  Prologue

  It was another glorious day in Free Country, a spectacular…

  Chapter One

  “So you see, Molly, it’s like this.” Timothy Hunter took…

  Chapter Two

  It couldn’t be, Tim told himself. He was holding a…

  Chapter Three

  King Auberon of Faerie sat on a high-backed, richly upholstered…

  Chapter Four

  Tim left the abandoned lot in a hurry, heading for…

  Chapter Five

  Daniel huddled on the steps beneath a statue in Piccadilly…

  Chapter Six

  Tim stared at Molly and Marya, both frozen mid-step. He…

  Chapter Seven

  Tim continued staring at Molly and Marya. “Okay, so far…

  Chapter Eight

  Gwendolyn led the blue gentleman through a tunnel filled with…

  Chapter Nine

  Reverend Slaggingham had been tickled to see the transformation in…

  Chapter Ten

  Tim shook his head. “This death wish of yours, Tim,”…

  Chapter Eleven

  Brother Salamander was above Gwendolyn on the ladder, grunting heavily…

  Chapter Twelve

  Marya stroked the white mane of the unicorn as they…

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What strange company you keep these days, my husband,” Titania…

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE BOOKS OF MAGIC

  An Introduction

  by Neil Gaiman

  WHEN 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 was—a 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 mean…a story that would go from the beginning of time…to the end of time…and have someone meet all these strange people…and learn all about magic….

  Perhaps it wasn’t so ridiculous….

  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 seen—more 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 Karen—a 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 things—most 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 long….

  Neil Gaiman

  May 2002

  Prologue

  Free Country

  IT WAS ANOTHER GLORIOUS DAY in Free Country, a spectacular afternoon in an eternity of blissful hours. All was well in the sanctuary world, originally created as a haven for children in danger. The lovely spirits who were the heart and soul of this paradise, the Shimmers, danced above their crystalline pond. Children’s laughter could be heard punctuating the soundscape, mingled with lapping water, rushing brooks, birdcalls, and wind chimes. This was a world where the formerly deprived, the previously abused, and the perpetually frightened could be happy and safe. Yes, all was as it should be, as it always was.

  Or was it?

  Daniel sat glumly in a rickety little rowboat, glaring at his fishing pole. His long dark blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that poked out from under the battered top hat sitting low on his forehead. He had rolled up his striped cotton trousers and his overcoat sleeves so they wouldn’t get wet, but they did anyway. This did
not improve his mood.

  “Any luck?” Spud asked.

  Spud perched in the bow of the boat, facing Daniel, with his fishing line over the side. Daniel was in the stern, gazing unseeing at the high cliffs rising from the riverbanks. It had been Spud’s stupid idea to go fishing. Daniel wasn’t going to let him get off lightly for such a bad plan.

  “Not a nibble,” Daniel complained. “You know, Spud, it would help if we had some bait on them hooks.”

  “Cripes, Daniel,” Spud replied. “Any ol’ gump can catch fishies with bait! And here I thought you was a sport.”

  “I’ll tell you what I am,” Daniel grumbled. “I’m stunning bored, that’s what.”

  “Awww, ain’t you a drip and a half,” Spud complained. “You’re a regular wet blanket these days. Ever since your sweetie pie scrammed out of here.”

  “Marya wasn’t my—” Daniel whirled around on the bench, nearly capsizing the little boat. He settled himself before he continued. “We was friends. That’s all.”

  Spud snorted. “Sure. You were just pals. ’Cause she wouldn’t have anything to do with the likes of you.”

  Daniel turned back around in his seat, so that Spud couldn’t see his face. He fixed his eyes on a spot on the horizon and counted to ten. His hands balled into fists, despite his effort to stay calm. “What do you know?” he muttered.

  “I know more than you think,” Spud taunted. “The way I heard it, Marya ran away because you tried to kiss her.”

  “What?” Daniel rose from the bench without even thinking. He turned and stepped in front of Spud, scowling down at the boy.

  “Quit rocking the boat, will you? Do you want to end up in the water?” Spud scolded.

  “You take that back,” Daniel ordered. He knew he shouldn’t let Spud get to him like this—that it would only egg Spud on. But the things he was saying! Daniel couldn’t just let that pass.

  As predicted, Spud smirked and kept up with his teasing. “Yep. I heard you snuck up on her at Shimmer Rock and gave her a great big ol’ smackaroonie! She burst into tears and ran away, clear out of Free Country.”

  Daniel reached down and grabbed Spud’s upper arm.

  “Ow!” Spud yelped. “Let go!”

  Daniel yanked Spud up off his seat so that they were nose to nose. “You listen to me,” Daniel growled. His voice was low and serious. He didn’t think he had ever heard himself sound that way before. “I never did no such thing.”

  For the first time, he saw real fear in Spud’s brown eyes. The boy squirmed, trying to get away, and knocked his tweed cap into the water. “Let go,” Spud said—only this time it wasn’t a command, it was a plea.

  Daniel just clenched tighter, with both hands now. Spud stopped struggling and went limp in Daniel’s grip.

  “You think Marya’s gone because of something I done?” Daniel demanded, giving Spud a little shake. “What do you think she took with her as her most special memento? Huh?” He shook Spud again. “The little ballerina statue I gave her. What do you think of that!”

  He released Spud, who teetered and then sat down hard on the bench, water sloshing up into the rowboat. Daniel bent his knees a bit, rocking with the boat, keeping his balance.

  Spud rubbed his arm and scowled at Daniel. “Okay, okay, you don’t have to get all physical.”

  Daniel knew Spud would have a big bruise on his arm, but he didn’t care. Spud had to learn that he couldn’t say such things and get away with it.

  “So then why did Marya leave?” Spud asked moodily.

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed. He felt anger rise up in him again, only this time it wasn’t Spud he was mad at. “It was that Timothy Hunter,” he said with a clenched jaw. “Timothy Hunter lured her away to the Bad World and I hate him for it.”

  “So why don’t you go and get her back, instead of picking on me,” Spud complained, rubbing his arm again.

  Daniel stared at Spud. He had never realized what a genius Spud was until that minute. He was dead brilliant!

  Sitting down beside Spud on the little bench, Daniel clapped a hand on Spud’s shoulder. Spud flinched, as if he were afraid Daniel would hurt him again.

  “That’s just what I intend to do, old chap,” Daniel said to Spud, giving him a friendly squeeze. “I’ll find her, all right. I’ll find that bloody Tim, too. Timothy Hunter will regret the day he ever came to Free Country.”

  Chapter One

  “SO YOU SEE, MOLLY, it’s like this.” Timothy Hunter took a deep breath and launched into his speech. “I am the greatest, most powerful magician of all time. At least”—he ducked his head modestly—“that’s what they tell me.”

  Tim paused and then groaned. You sound like a head-swollen, egomaniacal loon, he scolded himself.

  Timothy Hunter, the boy with the potential to wield extraordinary magic, skate-boarded back and forth in front of Molly O’Reilly’s dilapidated house. He’d been doing it for about half an hour. He and Molly had planned to meet later, and he was determined to have this conversation today. He tried out different speeches as he carefully avoided the many cracks that spread like veins in the pavement. In this part of London, a bloke was lucky if the traffic lights worked and the garbage was picked up regularly. Asking for smooth asphalt was a bit much. Tim didn’t mind—he developed his awesome boarding skills by learning not to let such obstacles trip him up.

  He arrived at the end of the street and rolled to a stop. “Try again,” he told himself, picking up the board and turning it around. “Version number three hundred and twelve.” He kicked himself along until he picked up speed, then balanced expertly as he dodged cracks, litter, and a mangy stray dog.

  “Okay, Molly, you’re probably not going to believe me, but I swear on anything you like it’s true,” he declared. “I didn’t believe it at first either. But these guys—I call them the Trenchcoat Brigade—came and gave me the heads up on being magic.”

  He flipped up onto the sidewalk as a car drove past him, spraying some gray slush—the last bit of slush from the winter. “I’ve been to other worlds,” he continued. “I even saved a few.”

  He frowned. Every time he tried telling even imaginary Molly about some of the truly stupendous things he’d done, he had to stop. It sounded impossible and worse—it sounded like bragging. Then he wound up feeling like a total fake, because he wasn’t always certain how he had done the things he had done.

  Take Free Country for instance, he thought. The kids there had kind of kidnapped him, wanting to use his power to save the place. But instead, he’d short-circuited everything. Literally—major power eruptions. The weirdest thing was, that was what ultimately saved them. Tim had protected that world by accident. He was glad he had—he just didn’t know how he’d done it.

  What if Molly asked him to prove that he was magic? She was definitely an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it kind of girl. Her down-to-earth, no-nonsense attitude was one of the qualities he liked best about her. That and the fact that she was super tough, really brave, and awfully funny. He liked her soft-looking hair and sparkling brown eyes. Even more important, she was someone he could talk to. Like when he found out that the man who raised him wasn’t really his father. She’d come through aces when he’d told her. High marks in all categories.

  Only, even then, he had held something back. Something big. He didn’t let her in on the fact that he had also found out who his real father was: a man named Tamlin, who lived in a completely different world called Faerie and could turn himself into a bird. Tim had left out that little feathered detail when he talked to Molly.

  “I should have told her everything right then,” he muttered. Was she going to be angry that he’d waited so long to tell her? He’d never kept a secret like this from her before. It had been almost six months since the Trenchcoat Brigade episode, and she still didn’t know. The snow was melting, the ground turned to soggy mud, and tiny little buds were starting their willful attempt to grow in this concrete and asphalt world, and still Tim had not told her
.

  So much had happened so fast—time seemed to move differently for him now. It had moved differently that first day—or was it a first lifetime?—when the Trenchcoat Brigade had appeared out of nowhere to lay this whammy on him. They’d taken him to the past, the present, and even into the future, only to deposit him back in the here and now—only the here and now had been forever changed for him. “Here” now included unseen gates, passageways into other worlds, worlds that bordered on his own, and “now” meant one thing in this world and quite something else in any other. That made it hard to tell how much time had passed during any of his adventures. When Tim had saved Faerie from the grip of the evil manticore, Molly hadn’t missed him at all. As far as she could tell, he’d been gone only a few short hours, yet Tim had been to death and back again. It had felt like days, weeks, even months.

  It was all so impossible, and yet it had all happened. No wonder he’d been having trouble finding the words to tell Molly. It was a delicate situation to explain. Tim tried it out loud. “I know you think you know me, but you don’t, because I hardly know myself.” He shook his head. That wasn’t something a girl would like to hear. Yes, he thought, the words have to be just right.

  You make the choice to believe in magic, Tim mused. To be magic. To live in a magic world. But nothing turns out the way you expect. And you’ve got no one to turn to, no one to show you. No teacher. No parent. No one but yourself to count on—unless you tell Molly.

  Tim pulled up short. Was he being selfish in wanting to tell her? Was his real reason so that there would be somebody he could share this burdensome gift with? He knew Molly couldn’t show him the ropes; he’d need someone magic to do that. Someone like the magician Zatanna or John Constantine of the Trenchcoat Brigade. But neither of them had offered to be his magic tutor. He had this weird feeling, though, that he and Molly could figure it out together. But was that fair? He seemed to be continually risking death whenever he encountered a magic world, creature, or adventure. Did he have the right to drag her into danger, too?