Page 7

Chapter seven

“ I f I need you to pick me up I’ll text,” Willow said. “But I can probably get a ride with someone from here.”

Guilt pinged in Ash’s chest. “Didn’t Joyce say everyone can take today off?”

“Yeah, but some of us want to go in and do some cleaning anyway.” Willow nodded. “Hal got so much done yesterday, we’re ahead of schedule. It’ll be fine. Besides it’s volunteer work. You’re under no obligation at all.”

“Besides the obligation of care we have to one another as a human society,” Ash said. “Satre said—”

“Shut up about Satre, for God’s sake, and go. I have leaves to sweep.” She waved and walked off. Ash didn’t start the car up, torn between his desire to help the people who’d been flooded out and Hallow, sitting beside him.

The mark he’d sucked into Hallow’s neck was glaringly obvious whenever he looked at him, and thinking about what they’d done went straight to his dick.

“Are you okay?” Hallow asked, after a few long seconds.

“I, yeah. I am.” Ash started up the car, heading into the city.

“Who’s Satre? A friend of yours?”

Ash snorted. “No, he’s a famous writer, he was around last century. He wrote a lot about human existence and how to lead better societies.”

Hallow leaned his head back and regarded Ash. “Do you always consider his opinion before you do something?”

“No?”

“So what’s the big deal now?”

“Well, it’s a community thing, I guess.” Ash sighed, trying to gather thoughts that weren't replays of Hallow riding him like a Greek God. Focus. Satre. “I feel like I’m doing good by helping you, but would I be doing more good if we stopped and helped them clean up?”

“Life isn’t always balanced, though.” Hallow ventured.

Ash shrugged a shoulder. “Well, no.”

“And you could tie yourself up in knots always wondering which is the best thing to do.”

“Right… but I don’t know. I guess I’ve been selfish for so many years. I stayed away from home, I let my sister deal with… a lot of things alone. I did some good work overseas, helped with beach clean ups and volunteered at animal rescues and stuff, but it was all because it was what I wanted to do in the moment, or to look good on my Instagram. To endorse something so that some other people would donate money, and I didn’t have to.”

Hallow reached over to rub Ash’s shoulder. “You’re being very hard on yourself. I don’t think you need to be.”

Ash sighed. “Maybe.”

“Actions, well, they’re actions. Your intent to help is worth a lot, and you have helped, you’ve done a lot. Willow doesn’t seem like she’s holding a grudge.”

“No, I guess not.”

As they drove into the city, the guilt faded, giving way to confusion over what he’d done with Hallow the night before. He had to say something or Hallow was going to assume they’d do it again that night. He wanted to, so very badly, but he couldn’t risk both their hearts that way. It wasn’t fair to Hallow and it wasn’t fair to himself.

“Hallow, what we did last night, um. I don’t regret it, but I don’t think we should do it again.” He kept his eyes on the road, refusing to look at Hallow to see his reaction.

Hallow’s voice was light when he replied. “I thought you’d probably say that. I had a lot of fun. If you want to do it again, I’d like that very much, but I understand.”

It was what Ash had wanted to hear. So why did it feel like his heart was shattering? It was the right choice. He was being sensible.

As they drew into the city centre Ash was distracted trying to remember which streets connected up and which were only one-way.

They didn’t really have a lot of direction on how to find the sort of magical help they needed, but Ash knew that if magic users did exist in this world, there had to be some on Karangahape Road.

The road, capping the central business and shopping district, had a storied history. Protests, sex clubs, alternative medicine, pride parades, upmarket bakeries, festivals and live music could all be found there, written in the lines of the cobbles and in the faded signs of the old shop facades.

It was a place for everyone.

Finding a car park was no easy matter. As he navigated side roads, Hallow pulled out a small golden crystal and waved his hand over it.

“You were right about this place. There’s something nearby, a magic user, or a nexus or something.”

“Good.” Ash pulled the car into a park and switched off the engine, wiping his forehead. Driving in the central city on a busy Friday was stressful. “Can your crystal show us exactly where?”

“Yeah.”

They got out of the car. Hallow turned in a slow circle, then pointed towards K Road. “This way.”

Ash adjusted his sunglasses and looked around as they walked. So much had changed since he’d last been here, but a lot was still familiar. There was a new bicycle store, but that same little dairy had been open when Ash was a teenager. The essence of the street hadn’t gone.

Hallow paid little attention to his surroundings, focused on the crystal in his hand. Somehow he avoided bumping into anyone. His natural grace, or his intuition perhaps, had him weaving as naturally through the pre-lunch crowd as elegantly as a deer through trees.

In contrast, Ash was so distracted watching him that he collided into someone on a phone call and then tripped over a rental scooter lying on the ground, stumbling until he caught his balance.

Hallow glanced over his shoulder and smirked. “Nicely done.”

“Shut up, we're not all ethereal fairies.”

“Cute.” Hallow reached to take Ash’s hand, guiding him in his wake to avoid further mishaps. It worked too. By sticking close to Hallow, Ash borrowed a little of his grace and only tripped over his own feet once. Probably he should refuse to hold hands, try and build distance between them, but he couldn’t quite manage to pull away.

“I think we’re getting closer.” Hallow looked up. “We have to get across the road.”

“There’s a crossing up ahead, the rainbow stripes.” Ash pointed with his free hand. The rainbow crosswalk certainly hadn’t been there when he was a teen in the late nineties. Being out and gay was still dangerous then. AIDs and beatings and shame…

They crossed the road, Hallow sped up, visibly agitated with the time it was taking to get there. He was like a dog straining at the leash. Ash hurried to keep up but slowed when they walked past a bakery. There was an apple pie in the window that made Ash’s stomach rumble. “Why don’t we just—”

Hallow grabbed Ash’s arm so suddenly he dropped his phone. It landed with a clatter on the pavement.

“Shit.” Ash crouched to pick it up.

“Sorry, Ash, I didn’t mean to startle you, I thought— No, I’m certain. This is the place.”

Hallow jabbed a finger at a recessed door. It was half-hidden, jammed in beside a vape shop’s huge window. It looked like a locked door, maybe to someone’s flat, but there was a clear sign above the door. “ The Magic Shop” was painted in bright red script.

“Well.” Ash pocketed his phone. “That certainly sounds like what we need.”

“It does.” Hallow strode forward and opened the yellow door.

Yellow door. The Magic Shop. It was familiar somehow.

Then Ash remembered he’d seen this door before, in the otherworldly alley.

“How can that be?” He looked around at the mundane city street and then at the door he’d seen in his dreams.

Hallow was through, inside already. He was wasting time.

Ash hesitated. It felt like too much luck to have found the place so quickly. Before he stepped through, he eyed the doorframe, suspicious that the door itself was going to move him between worlds without his permission.

He stepped through. It seemed to have done exactly that.

The shop was by far larger on the inside. The door was narrow, and the neighbouring shops too close to allow this spacious interior.

Ash’s nose twitched with the unmistakable smell of dusty books. He felt at home immediately.

Every second-hand bookshop he’d been to in every corner of the world had smelled exactly like this. He had frequented such places, dropping off whatever he’d recently read and picking up something new. The aisles were narrow, but tall. Taller than they should have been, with access ladders on sliders dotted here and there. There was a desk, leather-topped, made from sturdy reddish wood, with an ancient-looking till on top near to the door. No one sat there, but there were books piled on the floor and a shelf of jars containing herbs and crystals behind it.

“They have clothes here!” Hallow’s voice came from somewhere deeper in the shop.

Ash’s suspicion was still intense, but he didn’t want to lose Hallow. He summoned up his courage and closed the door behind him. Instantly the traffic, the sounds of people talking, a guitar busker, and the chirp of the crossing signal hushed. Ash glanced behind him in case the door was somehow reinforced, and he hadn’t realised. It looked perfectly ordinary — glass panes in a wooden frame, a flippable open/close sign hanging off it.

There was no reason for that door to have blocked all the sound out. Well, no non-magical reason.

“Hallow?”

“Yeah, Ash?”

Ash made his way through the aisles, trying to locate Hallow by the sound of his voice. Nervously, he looked up at the ceiling. It was far higher than would make sense, since all the shops along this side of the road had flats above them. The store spread wide horizontally as well. The aisle he stepped into to find Hallow should by all rights be the far side of the vape shop.

Ash’s brain buzzed, trying to make the dimensions of the place make sense. A pain throbbed behind his left eyebrow. He took a breath, trying to ignore the inconsistencies. Even if the co-called inconsistencies were in space and time, something Ash had previously thought were set in stone.

He turned a corner at the end of a long shelf of books to see Hallow emerge from inside a huge circular rack of clothes. He had a red and blue patchwork cap and bells on his head, the horns of it hanging down on either side of his face.

“What do you think?” Hallow shook his head so the bells jingled. It was a testament to his handsomeness that somehow Hallow made even this ridiculous garment look cute.

“It’s amazing.”

“Can I help you, fine folks?”

Ash startled. He hadn’t heard anyone approach.

The man was almost Ash’s height, about six foot, but the most remarkable thing about him was his outfit. He looked like a classic stage magician in black dress pants, a pristine white shirt with black waistcoat and bowtie under the suit jacket, topping it all off with a black silk top hat. From the tone of his skin Ash guessed he was either from somewhere in the Mediterranean or Eastern Europe, maybe even the Middle East?

Hallow smiled, pulling the hat off and setting it on top of the rack. “Hello, we’re here for magic.”

The man smiled, his eyes sparkling. “Most people who walk through my door are looking for exactly that.”

“What do you…” The words caught in Ash’s throat. Asking for advice on how to move between worlds, between realities wasn’t the same as asking for the location of the books on philosophy. “...have on moving between worlds, in terms of practical instructions?” Hallow asked, seamlessly picking up Ash’s abandoned sentence.

The Owner, which was what Ash immediately thought of him as, capital letters and everything nodded, taking in Hallow’s appearance with no apparent surprise. “Right this way, down aisle three.” He turned on his heel and led them to the far side of the shop. “Although it’s possible that what you actually want is down aisle thirteen. I’ll leave that to you to decide.”

“What’s on aisle thirteen?” Ash asked, curiosity piqued.

The Owner had gone.

Hallow scanned the shelves of books, making impressed noises. “Oh, this one is a history of the alleyway!” He pulled out the book and flipped through the pages.

Ash looked at the spines of books closest to him. They seemed interesting enough. Tomes on travelling, different worlds, even a copy of Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time but the suggestion of aisle thirteen nagged at Ash. It was an itch under his skin, like the one he got when it was time to move on from the current location and explore somewhere new.

Leave Thailand for Bali? Or head from Fukuoka to Sapporo? Stay here or look at whatever The Owner had hinted at? “I’m gonna check out aisle thirteen.”

Hallow nodded and picked up another book. Ash looked for the numbering system for the aisles and eventually found a small number three etched into the end of the wooden shelf.

Counting aisles, he found his way to aisle thirteen.

The shelves had no labelling on them beyond the spines of the books, so he started skimming them. All the books were hardcovers, bound in leather in different colours.

“The Magic Within, Unlocking Your True Potential, Cracking the Magical Eggshell, Magical Filter Removal …” Ash read out loud. Goosebumps prickling his skin, he pulled out Unlocking Your True Potential and looked at the contents page. It was a how-to guide for starting to practise magic.

Why had The Owner suggested he come here? Was this for Hallow? But he had magic already, although he wasn’t able to solve the yellow fungus problem, that was because of The Quetch, not because he was holding himself back from his true potential.

Did that mean Ash had the potential for magic?

Goosebumps prickled his arms and the back of his neck. He flipped to the first page, which seemed to be advising meditation. He put the book back on the shelf.

Then he picked up Magical Filter Removal. “Is it possible?”

“Everyone has magical potential.” The Owner said.

Ash startled all over again. The Owner seemed to have manifested behind him, no noise at all heralded his approach.

“But not everyone has talent, or the will to wield it.”

Ash swallowed, his mouth dry.

“Some of the things in the shop find their way to the correct owner. I think The Magic Shop is trying to communicate with you. Pay attention, read what you feel drawn to.” The Owner winked and walked off.

Ash groaned.

The book felt correct in his hand. He flipped it over. There was a single quote etched into the leather of the book.

“ The best guide I’ve seen to opening one’s mind to the universe’s potential and my own.” The quote was attributed but the name was written in symbols Ash didn’t recognise.

There was a paper sticker with the price written on it. Ash tucked the book under his arm.

Hallow, when he found him again, was seated on the floor surrounded by open books. He had his legs folded and a book balanced between his knees. He looked up at Ash with frustration.

“These are all wonderful books but none of them have exactly what we need. I don’t know what to do.”

Ash sat beside him, leaning against the bookshelf and picked up one of the open ones to look at the diagram inside. It seemed to be showing a ritual circle of some kind.

He set Magical Filter Removal down and Hallow instantly picked it up. “What’s this?”

“I don’t know, I guess it… resonated with me? Or something? I wanted to get it. The Owner kind of implied that the shop wanted me to have it.”

Was this all a vast prank on him? The Owner was a hired actor, Hallow was too, and all this stuff about magic and other universes was a vast skit organised for some TV show or Tiktok prank?

Ash looked around the shop, smelled the age-old paper of the books, looked up at the ceiling which seemed to have grown even higher than it had been earlier. There was no way this space could exist alongside the vape shop, unless magic was real. He knew, deep in his bones, that Hallow had never lied to him. Would never.

Besides, why would anyone want to watch a TV show where Ash, a travel influencer, was tricked into thinking magic was real? Wouldn't they just… have a ghost jump out at him, or put him on stage with a pop star or something like that? Quick pay off for the audience. No, this was all really happening, which meant he had to figure this out.

He sighed.

“Okay, let’s go ahead and choose some to take home and study. Then we can try and get to the bottom of it all.”

Hallow nodded, setting a handful of books to one side and returning the rest of them to the shelves. He was frowning, his mood subdued.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I thought I was sensing the magic here because there was something essential for us to find. I guess I was wrong, and I was sensing the existence of the place itself, but I’m annoyed. I wanted a key.”

“Nothing so simple.” Ash stacked the books with his one.

Hallow’s mouth twisted to one side. “I was hoping for a crystal or a… I dunno.”

“Well, we haven’t explored the whole place. If there’s clothes, there’s bound to be crystals and maybe even little statues of dragons.”

“Why would anyone want a statue of a dragon?” Hallow got to his feet.

“Um, I guess because humans like cute things and sometimes like to make collections of them?”

“Weird. Dragons aren’t cute.”

Ash blinked. “Do you mean they’re like predators where you come from?”

Hallow tilted his head, eyebrows furrowed. “That’s a leap. No. I mean, they’re wise and ancient and should be respected, not made into cute figures to collect.”

Ash swallowed. “So, you do have dragons in your world? They’re a myth here.”

“Yeah, we do.” Hallow shrugged. They’d reached a large table shoved against the wall that held small baskets of crystals, runes and other small items. Ash wanted to run his hands through them, but he didn’t want to be disrespectful.

Hallow sniffed and leaned closer, bent at the waist. He eyed the crystals with a critical look and dug a small black stone out from the bottom of a pile. “This one, maybe… if I can pair it with the right… ah!” He grabbed a larger, jagged piece of rose quartz. “I think with these I can channel the stuff I read in the book, maybe. It might work. I’ve never done it this way, but I think it has a good chance of working.”

“Good.” Ash nodded. “There was a checkout counter by the door.”

“Can’t we use this one?” Hallow carried the crystals to a second desk which was close by.

Ash blinked. He hadn’t seen it before. How did he miss something like that? Had it moved?

The Owner sat behind this desk, flipping through a book. He looked up as Ash set the stack of books on the desk in front of him.

“Made your choices then?”

Ash’s stomach churned. That question felt far too large for a mere purchase. He looked away, rubbing the hair on the back of his neck with one hand.

“Yes, these please.” Hallow said. “Ash, I need your magic card to pay with.”

“Right.” Ash fumbled out his wallet and passed over his credit card.

His mind wandered. He should take a picture of the rainbow crossing and post that on his socials.

He still had to visit his father. Guilt soured his mood. He’d been so distracted with Hallow he hadn’t even visited his own father. He watched The Owner placed their purchases in brown paper bags and handed them to Hallow.

“A pleasure to meet you. Good luck,” The Owner said.

“Thank you, good luck to you, too!” Hallow took one bag, Ash took the other and they made their way through the deceptively normal front door.

Safely back on Karangahape Road, Ash’s shoulders relaxed. The world outside was exactly as it had been. Noise, and people and cars going by. Nothing to worry about here.

Ash’s stomach rumbled. He checked his watch, about midday. They’d spent longer in the shop than he’d realised.

“Let’s get some sandwiches or something to eat on the way home and then try out this stuff, huh?”

Hallow slipped his arm through Ash’s. “Sounds perfect.”

Ash wondered if he ought to drop his arm, not encourage this kind of friendly affection. Not when they were actively working to get Hallow back to another dimension. What they’d done the night before had been wonderful, transcendent in a way, but nothing between them could last.

Hallow would go home and Ash would remain here, trying to make something of his life, all the while knowing magic was real and that there was an infinity of possible worlds on the other side of the right door… Maybe he’d come back to The Magic Shop once this was all over. See what he could learn.

They retraced their steps to the apple pie bakery and picked out lunch. Ash couldn’t resist touching Hallow and smiling at him. They’d agreed to not sleep together but that didn’t mean things like this had to change, right?

And if it hurt his battered heart when they finally said goodbye, well. It would be worth every moment that Hallow smiled at him.