Going Pear Shaped. A tale of wizards, lizards and galvanised tubing salesmen.

Chapter 1: 'Whatever you do, don't come in.'

Chapter 1: 'Whatever you do, don't come in.'

Even the longest journey starts with the first step.  For the wizard Cadmus Catchwinkle, the second step consisted of getting his foot entangled on the corner of his rumpled blanket and colliding heavily with the table by the bed.

He picked himself up, dragged his voluminous wizard's robe off the bed and wrapped it tightly around his lanky body.  He scratched his grubby beard and stifled a yawn.  He felt troubled and unsettled.  Something was keeping him awake and this time it wasn't just the bed lice.  

Cadmus staggered over to the grimy window that looked down onto the cold, dark streets of Port Packham.  He rubbed his bleary eyes again and squinted at the rooftops of the Port spread out below him in the darkness.  He listened for a few seconds to the sound of the waves slapping against the sides of the boats in the quayside.  It was unusually quiet at this late hour of the night.

The lanterns on Port Packham's old harbour draped themselves along the water's edge like a cheap necklace, picking out the tawdry alehouses with their yellow glow.  Light suddenly spilled out across the damp cobblestones as a door opened and another drunken customer was ejected with a shriek onto the wet street.  Some grizzled fishermen, returning from a midnight fishing trip out at sea, were mooring their small boat by the harbour steps.  They glanced up briefly at the sound but then continued with their work.  They'd seen it all before.

From his vantage point in the upstairs room over Grod's Fish Gutting Warehouse, Cadmus watched the drunkard stagger slowly to his feet, take a few faltering steps sideways and finally stumble head first over a collection of lobster pots that lay drying by the harbour wall.  A few moments later, the sound of snoring came from behind the tangle of nets where the drunkard had fallen.

Cadmus tut-tutted and shook his head.  Port Packham was rapidly going to the dogs, except that any self-respecting dog would probably give it back.  Of course, these days, there was just as much underhanded dealings going on inside the City’s Council as there was in the Port’s grimy narrow alleyways.

The resonant echo of a bell sounded in the distance.  The gangly wizard looked across the harbour and saw the dark, jagged spires of the Psionic Priory carving a serrated outline of spikes against the moonlit sky. The old Priory's stone foundations clung limpet-like to the very edge of the sheer cliffs across the bay from the rest of the Port.  High up in one of the tall, arched windows, a single light still burned. 

Cadmus gave an involuntary shudder.  What were they up to, now?  The Brothers of the Paranormal shunned all the traditional uses of magic in the world, preferring to keep themselves in isolation up in their ancient Priory.  They regarded magic as the harnessing of unstable primitive forces and more dangerous than even their own psionic abilities.  Cadmus grunted again.  What a cheek, he thought.

Instinctively, the wizard slipped his hand deep into a pocket of his voluminous robe and felt his fingers close over the smooth, reassuring surfaces of his magical Watch Glass.  Perhaps he could get it to show him what those monks were up to. 

Cadmus brightened up considerably at this thought.  At any rate, it might distract him from whatever it was that was preying on his mind.  He lifted the small prism of glass out of his pocket and placed it on his palm.   The magical runes etched into its surfaces glowed with a cold, blue fire.  Cadmus muttered a simple spell and passed his hand over the Watch Glass a few times.  He wasn't particularly talented at casting complex spells, but he was able to perform basic magic.  Sometimes it even worked.

The lines on the sides of the prism of glass glowed like tiny neon tubes.  Cadmus held it carefully between his finger and thumb, raised it to his eye and peered into its depths.