Sorcerer on the Street

Case 1. Museum Piece

The Eastside Heritage Museum wasn't one of the big places to draw tourists from around the world. In fact, it often seemed that not even the local residents knew it was there. It had been established by the bequest of a local collector decades earlier, and since then it had been a convenient place for the estates of certain individuals to donate the ephemera of their lives, when such a contribution could be beneficial for tax purposes. The museum had few visitors, which I thought was a genuine shame because some of the collections contained genuinely intriguing items. The only problem here, besides the lack of money, was that there were few people curious enough to look at the exhibits and understand what they really were, or what they could mean.

There was always at least one person on the front desk; to redirect people who wandered in searching for one of the more financially endowed museums, or who simply needed directions to some other business in the neighbourhood. Today, the sole figure on duty was an older lady with hair the colour of spun steel, whose determination belied her age. She was stern and determined; and lived for the rare days that she would meet someone genuinely interested in learning about the most local of local history.

As the door at the front of the former doctor's office swung open, the wind drove in bitter hail to form a small puddle on the tiles. Evadne immediately drew herself up to her full height, knowing that the person blowing in with such a bitter wind was more than likely some delinquent merely seeking shelter from the elements. And while she had compassion, she had no sympathy for those who wouldn't care about dripping on the museum's precious treasures. It was a scene I had watched a hundred times before, over the days I had been here. Evadne might have been old, but it seemed that age had only hardened her convictions into a material harder than obsidian. Her wit was still as sharp as ever; and she could easily overwhelm any mischievous child with a bearing that evoked the authority of every authoritarian schoolmistress of their childhood.

I watched from the corner of exhibition hall 3, giving her my full attention and expecting a show of some kind. That was, until I shifted my focus to the figure silhouetted in the doorway. He seemed to be wearing one coat over another, a desperate measure to protect against the elements which would make it practically impossible for anyone to judge his build. In Evadne's eyes, this was just one clue to suggest that the newcomer was homeless; but it didn't buy him any sympathy today. She knew from long experience that the people who needed help most were among those most prone to abuse the slightest trust. This man's hair, crudely hacked short, gave the impression that someone had let him borrow a pair of scissors for two minutes at the most, and he'd done the best he could. It wasn't a good look. But I could sense she was already debating with herself about how to treat this visitor. He clearly wasn't the right kind to properly appreciate the museum's contents, but he also seemed tiny and vulnerable. She might not be sure if she could bear to send him back out into the fury of the storm that must surely be waiting right outside this building.

"I've just moved into the neighbourhood," I heard the stranger say. He spoke louder than he needed to, and forced his voice into a kind of rough growl, as if that could make him any more persuasive. It probably didn't help much, because even from the next room I could tell how reedy that voice must be in its natural state. Was this just a child, hoping that by passing as a man he could intimidate the old lady? I really didn't know how I should feel about that. But a moment later, after taking a big breath to help him deepen his voice again, he continued with what could have been the perfect choice of words: "I want to understand this place. The people who built it, and the values they held. I think that looking at a place's history will make it easier to understand its character today. And that's something I will need to know, if I'm going to work round here."

Evadne's first response was to question what kind of work this child could do in any case; and she put it a little more coarsely than I would normally have been comfortable with. But before that could properly sink in, she sighed and gestured towards the three doorways. In theory, the rooms were supposed to show different aspects of society, or different eras in the history of Eastside. But so many of the exhibits were jumbled up now; things that had been donated and put on display wherever there was space, due to the lack of attention from those properly qualified to catalogue and analyse the exhibits. Still, Evadne did her best to explain. Exhibition Hall 1, she explained, was filled with historical items which could cast light on the city as a whole; the walls primarily given over to maps of the city – and Eastside's place in it – over the years. Exhibition Hall 2 was supposed to hold relics of the craftsmen and industries on which the local economy was founded; products made by local manufactuaries through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and advertising posters for local boutiques and theatres which had long since closed.