The Magus of Hay(119)

‘My daughter’s drawn to paganism. It hasn’t turned her into a werewolf.’

Claudia nodded.

‘All right.’ She looked across the fields. ‘The project, then.’

‘Can I guess?’

‘Do.’

‘Is it Hay itself? If he was the Magus of Hay, was the project the Kingdom?’

It had come to her whole, standing so close to the border between England and Wales. Here before her was the Kingdom, right on the frontier. No obvious housing estates or factories visible from here, only the original medieval town. You could almost see the walls.



‘If I’ve got this right,’ Merrily said, ‘declaring independence was a spontaneous act. Richard Booth didn’t think about it, plan anything… he just said it and it happened. Metaphorically speaking.’

‘Far more than metaphorically.’

‘And when everybody thought it was a joke… to Peter Rector it wasn’t. It was something that was almost visionary.’

‘Almost?’

‘Maybe Booth thought it was a joke too, with his tin crown and his plastic orb.’

‘Which, unintentionally, are magical artefacts,’ Claudia said. ‘Far more powerful than if someone very rich had fabricated the real thing – real gold, real jewels. Here they are, made entirely from recycled stuff. Glass jewels nicked from a dog collar. Everything cobbled together. Worthless.’

‘Second-hand. Very Hay?’

‘Yesss!’ Claudia jumping down to the grass, surprisingly nimble for someone her size. ‘Breaking all the rules. Saying to the government and the council and tourist and development boards…’

‘You don’t exist,’ Merrily said.

‘Exactly. Booth and his supporters were saying, “On our level of consciousness, you don’t exist. If we don’t see you, then you aren’t there. We’ve made you disappear.” Magic.’

‘Is it?’

‘Natural magic. A number of factors coming together at the right time. Serendipity. Serendipity is very close to magic. Except it doesn’t last. Mostly it explodes. The bubble pops. Unless…’

Claudia walked out into the darkening paddock, the grass sloping towards woodland below the town on the horizon, sparkling now with lights.

Merrily didn’t move.

‘The last redemptive project was to make sure it continued?’

‘The continued powering and protection of a brilliant chaotic mind,’ Claudia said.



‘So Rector had appointed himself court magician.’

‘I never actually thought of it like that.’ Claudia looked momentarily disapproving. ‘But I suppose you’re right.’

She went to stand where the hare had sat.

‘An exercise like this stands more of a chance of success if it’s set in train at the beginning of something. If it’s not a rescue package. Blank canvas. You spot your opportunity and then you move quickly. When you look at Hay now, it’s hard to imagine how it was before the first second-hand bookshop opened, most of its shops closed down, its railway ripped up.’

Claudia extended her arms.

‘Imagine this is Hay. This field. Imagine the gate is the castle. Behind it – as in physical reality – the Black Mountains. Below it, the River Wye. Most of the medieval town walls have gone – but still there, the stones taken to build houses and shops, so therefore still in the town. It’s all still here. On our mental model, we might choose to put the walls back in their original place, enclosing the heart. The street pattern at the core of the town, if you hadn’t noticed, actually forms the shape of a heart.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Look at a street plan sometime: High Street, Castle Street, Lion Street, Bear Street and the rest… all blood vessels shaping and wound around a heart. Peter’s self-appointed task was to make it beat. To a strong, persistent rhythm that couldn’t easily be stopped. To give it momentum.’

‘How does that work? What do you mean by the mental model?’

‘Something that exists on a higher plan. Constructed in the imagination. Imagine it as virtual reality on a screen into which you can drag images, make things happen. All magic works through will power and the harnessing of energy. Spirits, if you like. Which can be seen either as external forces or processes from deep in the human psyche. In this case, we also have natural energies directed into the town – the power of water rushing down the Dulas Brook, with all its waterfalls, flowing into the River Wye, the best, most revered river in England and Wales. But more powerfully, emerging on the other side of town, you might have something else.’