Jasper Fforde - The Song of the Quarkbeast

‘In an instant Owen’s carpet was gone in a burst of tattered wool and cotton.’

For Maggie and Stu

With grateful thanks

for kindnesses too numerous to mention

I work in the magic industry. I think you’ll agree it’s pretty glamorous: a life full of spells, potions and whispered enchantments; of levitation, vanishings and alchemy. Of titanic fights to the death with the powers of darkness, of conjuring up blizzards and quelling storms at sea; of casting lightning bolts from mountains, and bringing statues to life in order to vanquish troublesome foes.

If only.

No, magic these days was simply useful . Useful in the same way that cars and dishwashers and can-openers are useful. The days of wild, crowd-pleasing stuff like commanding the oceans, levitating elephants and turning herring into taxi drivers were long gone, and despite the advent of a Big Magic [1] It’s a sort of rekindling of magic that happened two months before the time of this story, and in which Jennifer played a large part. two months before, the return of unlimited magical powers had not yet happened. After a brief surge that generated weird cloud shapes and rain that tasted of elderflower cordial, the wizidrical power had dropped to nothing before rising again almost painfully slowly. No one would be doing any ocean-commanding for a while, elephants would remain unlevitated and a herring wouldn’t be losing anyone wanting to get to the airport. We had no foes to vanquish except the taxman, and the only time we got to fight the powers of darkness was during one of the Kingdom’s frequent power cuts.

So while we at Kazam waited for magic to re-establish itself, it was very much business as usual: hiring out sorcerers to conduct low-level, mundane and very practical magic. You know the sort of thing: plumbing and rewiring, wallpapering and loft conversions. We also lifted cars for the city’s clamping unit, conducted Flying Carpet pizza deliveries and could predict weather with 23 per cent more accuracy than SNODD-TV’s favourite weather girl, Daisy Fairchild.

But I don’t do any of that. I can’t do any of that. I organise those who can. The job I do is ‘Mystical Arts Management’, or more simply put, I’m an agent. The person who does the deals, takes the bookings and then gets all the flak when things go wrong – and little of the credit when it goes right. The place I do all this is a company called Kazam, the biggest House of Enchantment in the world. To be honest that’s not saying much – there are only two: Kazam and Industrial Magic, over in Stroud. Between us we have the only eight licensed sorcerers on the planet. And if you think that’s a responsible job for a sixteen-year-old, you’re right – I’m really only acting manager until the Great Zambini gets back.

If he does.

So as I said, it was very much business as usual at Kazam, and this morning we were going to try to find something that was lost. Not just ‘mislaid-it-whoops’ lost, which is easy, but ‘never-to-be-found’ lost, which is a good deal harder. We didn’t much like finding lost stuff as in general lost stuff doesn’t like to be found, but when work was slack, we’d do pretty much anything within the law. And that’s why Perkins, Tiger and myself were sitting in my parked Volkswagen one damp autumn morning in a roadside rest area not six miles from our home town of Hereford, the capital city of the Kingdom of Snodd.

‘Do you think a wizard even knows what a clock is for ?’ I asked, somewhat exasperated, as I had promised our client that we’d start at 9.30 a.m. sharp , and it was twenty past already. I’d told the sorcerers to get here at nine for a briefing, but I might as well have been talking to the flowers.

‘If you have all the time in the world,’ replied Tiger, referring to a sorcerer’s often greatly increased life expectancy, ‘then I suppose a few minutes either way doesn’t matter so much.’

Horton or ‘Tiger’ Prawns was my assistant and had been with us only for the past two months. He was tall for his twelve years and had close-curled sandy-coloured hair and freckles that danced around a snub nose. Like most foundlings of that age, he wore his oversized hand-me-downs with a certain pride. He was here this morning to learn the peculiar problems associated with a finding – and with good reason. He was to take over from me in two years’ time. Once I was eighteen, I was out.

Perkins nodded an agreement.

‘Some wizards do seem to live a long time,’ he observed. This was undoubtedly true, but they were always cagey about how they did it, and changed the subject to mice or onions or something when asked.

The Youthful Perkins was our best and only trainee all wrapped up in one. He had been at Kazam just over a year and was the only person in the company roughly my own age. He was good looking, too, and aside from suffering bouts of overconfidence that sometimes got him into trouble when he spelled more quickly than he thought, he would be good for the company and good for magic in general. I liked him, too, but since his particular field of interest was remote suggestion – the skill of projecting thoughts into people’s heads at a distance – I didn’t know whether I actually liked him or he was suggesting I like him, which was creepy and unethical all at the same time. In fact, the whole remote suggestion or ‘seeding’ idea was banned once it was discovered to be the key ingredient behind advertising and promoting talentless boy bands, something that had until then been something of a mystery.

I looked at my watch again. The sorcerers [2] After a well-argued plea for gender equality at the World Magic Expo of 1962, ‘sorcerers’ refers to male or female practitioners. The feminine ‘sorceress’ is no longer used, except by some of the old duffers who think that a female sorcerer’s place is in the home, conjuring up food and cleaning the house by thought power alone. we were waiting for were the Amazing Dennis ‘Full’ Price and Lady Mawgon. Despite their magical ability, Mystical Arts Practitioners – to give them their official title – could barely get their clothes on in the right order, and often needed to be reminded to have a bath and attend regular mealtimes. Wizards are like that – erratic, petulant, forgetful, passionate, and hugely frustrating. But the one thing they weren’t was boring, and after a difficult start when I first came to work here, I now regarded them all with a great deal of fondness – even the really insane ones.

‘I should really be back at the Towers revising,’ fretted the Youthful Perkins, who had his Magic Licence hearing that afternoon and was understandably a bit jumpy.

‘Full Price suggested you come along to observe,’ I explained. ‘Finding lost stuff is all about teamwork.’

‘Do sorcerers like teamwork?’ asked Tiger, who, after ice cream and waffles, enjoyed questions more than anything else.

‘The old days of lone wizards mixing weird potions in the top of the North Tower are over,’ I said. ‘They’ve got to learn to work together, and it’s not just me who says it – the Great Zambini was very keen on rewriting the rulebook.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I hope they actually do turn up,’ I added, for as Kazam’s acting manager in the Great Zambini’s absence, I was the one who did the grovelling apologies to any disgruntled clients – something I did more than I would have liked.