Spanish Castle Magic.

Today, all four of us partook of the time-travel that is a visit to Castle Market. Angela, despite no prior interest, opted in and rushed her boots on. I suppose we make an odd quartet, and I don’t know what the people who saw us on the tram must have assumed, although University answers an awful lot around here. Samuel has his hair clipped from cleaning the cuts, and was wearing one of my father’s raincoats rather than his brown leather, but even so, in shades and bruised to a melon yellow, he’s like a victim of paintball ’Nam, he’s got to make people wonder what. In the markets though, among all the freeze-dried old women, spasticated waists and tattooed bruisers, he looks relatively normal.

We stayed longer than before, just to frustrate Samuel out of his pessimism, as he still insisted there would be nothing to see, no one to find. I was becoming more interested in the effect my trips had on him – that he implied a vague threat, but refused to talk about his own assault. It was easy though, to make him wait into the afternoon, since Angela’s cocoon of uninterest released a child of enthusiastic delight. I don’t know what the larval stage of that metaphor is but Angela was transported back to her school days and skipped verily from stall to stall. I think Granelli’s sweet shop might have done the trick. She took Norman off to find shellfish at my suggestion of paella for tea, leaving Samuel and me in the café.

The question I’d finally formed for Samuel was “If there’s nothing to find here, what would be worth beating you up for?”
“Sheer bloody-mindedness-” he began, but then he stood up. He snapped at me “Stay” and took off. He paused at the corner, or else I’d think he was just avoiding the question.

Before a minute passed, his place at the table was taken by a stranger. A man with excess pounds and oblivious curly hair joined me with a cup of tea. He had off-duty clown hair. He looked pale, and his fingers were ink stained.
“Was that Salt I saw you with?” He asked.
“Who?”
“The chap in the sunglasses, Salt. The chap in the raincoat, I think he was sat here.”
“His name’s Samuel.”
“Is it now? Samuel, and not Salt.”
“Hayne.”
“Ha! Very good. Nevertheless, it was Salt. How did he come by his bruises?”
“I think you’ve mistaken him for another man.” I said.
“And what would your name be? I wouldn’t want any further confusions of identity.”
I told him, although childhood warnings came cartoony to the fore.
“Really? Well I suppose that explains the bruises.”
“Meaning what? What’s your name?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you, if I see you again.” And then he vanished – not into thin air unfortunately, but into the crowd, so that a man became scraps of fabric and then nothing.

Samuel came back before the other two. He’d seen one of the men who attacked him, but lost him on the top floor. So we both agreed to go back again tomorrow. I told him about the stranger. It seems typical that the first magician I find turns out to be a bigger dodge than the people I was worried about down there.