Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions - By Neil Gaiman Page 0,80

only occurs when you can talk to your angel. He tells you secrets.”

This was the first time that it had occurred to Grey that the Church of England might have its own esoterica, its own hidden cabala.

The other boy blinked owlishly. “You mustn’t tell anyone that. I’d get into trouble if they knew I’d told you.”

“Fine.”

There was a pause.

“Have you ever wanked off a grown-up?” asked MacBride.

“No.” Richard’s own secret was that he had not yet begun to masturbate. All of his friends masturbated, continually, alone and in pairs or groups. He was a year younger than them and couldn’t understand what the fuss was about; the whole idea made him uncomfortable.

“Spunk everywhere. It’s thick and oozy. They try to get you to put their cocks in your mouth when they shoot off.”

“Eugh.”

“It’s not that bad.” There was a pause. “You know, Mr. Aliquid thinks you’re very clever. If you wanted to join his private religious discussion group, he might say yes.”

The private discussion group met at Mr. Aliquid’s small bachelor house across the road from the school in the evenings, twice a week after prep.

“I’m not Christian.”

“So? You still come top of the class in Divinity, Jewboy.”

“No thanks. Hey, I got a new Moorcock. One you haven’t read. It’s an Elric book.”

“You haven’t. There isn’t a new one.”

“Is. It’s called The Jade Man’s Eyes. It’s printed in green ink. I found it in a bookshop in Brighton.”

“Can I borrow it after you?”

“Course.”

It was getting chilly, and they walked back, arm in arm. Like Elric and Moonglum, thought Richard to himself, and it made as much sense as MacBride’s angels.

Richard had daydreams in which he would kidnap Michael Moorcock and make him tell Richard the secret.

If pushed, Richard would be unable to tell you what kind of thing the secret was. It was something to do with writing; something to do with gods.

Richard wondered where Moorcock got his ideas from.

Probably from the ruined temple, he decided, in the end, although he could no longer remember what the temple looked like. He remembered a shadow, and stars, and the feeling of pain at returning to something he thought long finished.

He wondered if that was where all authors got their ideas from or just Michael Moorcock.

If you had told him that they just made it all up, out of their heads, he would never have believed you. There had to be a place the magic came from.

Didn’t there?

This bloke phoned me up from America the other night, he said, “Listen, man, I have to talk to you about your religion.” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t got any fucking religion.”

—Michael Moorcock, in conversation, Notting Hill, 1976

It was six months later. Richard had been bar mitzvahed and would be changing schools soon. He and J.B.C. MacBride were sitting on the grass outside the school in the early evening, reading books. Richard’s parents were late picking him up from school.

Richard was reading The English Assassin. MacBride was engrossed in The Devil Rides Out.

Richard found himself squinting at the page. It wasn’t properly dark yet, but he couldn’t read anymore. Everything was turning into grays.

“Mac? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The evening was warm, and the grass was dry and comfortable.

“I don’t know. A writer, maybe. Like Michael Moorcock. Or T.H. White. How about you?”

Richard sat and thought. The sky was a violet-gray, and a ghost moon hung high in it, like a sliver of a dream. He pulled up a blade of grass and slowly shredded it between his fingers, bit by bit. He couldn’t say “A writer” as well now. It would seem like he was copying. And he didn’t want to be a writer. Not really. There were other things to be.

“When I grow up,” he said, pensively, eventually, “I want to be a wolf.”

“It’ll never happen,” said MacBride.

“Maybe not,” said Richard. “We’ll see.”

The lights went on in the school windows, one by one, making the violet sky seem darker than it was before, and the summer evening was gentle and quiet. At that time of year, the day lasts forever, and the night never really comes.

“I’d like to be a wolf. Not all the time. Just sometimes. In the dark. I would run through the forests as a wolf at night,” said Richard, mostly to himself. “I’d never hurt anyone. Not that kind of wolf. I’d just run and run forever in the moonlight, through the trees, and never get tired or