Was (Was #1)

2x08: The hole that shall not close down

Episode 2x08: The hole that shall not close down

London, December 14th, 2009

The driver seated in front of him—a balding, portly man wearing a creased shirt and a brown leather jacket—kept on chattering about all kinds of meaningless little things. Marek only listened to him half the time, doing so with a polite smile and polite nods; one could never know when idle banter would reveal interesting facts, and if the winds of chaos had landed him in that car, surely it wasn’t for nought. It never was, not when himself was concerned, not when he was grasping the way he did at the many darkening strands of entropy, feeling their wispy, untouchable threads burn his hands even through the fabric of his gloves.

Birds of a feather flock together...

‘...It ain’t your first time in London, I gathe’, Sir?’ the middle-aged man said in a mild Cockney accent over the background noise of the radio. All the while, he checked whether the lane next to theirs was free before turning his steering wheel.

‘Not really, no.’

‘Nice city, eh. You wouldn’t believe ‘ow many people keep comin’ back t’it. Like they never get tired.’

The mage, who had seen London struck by the Black Death in 1665, watched part of it burn one year later, and strolled in its streets during the Great Stink of 1858, among other things, merely smiled. The English capital remained a cesspool in many regards, and if that oblivious driver had been able to sense a tenth of what himself was sensing right now, he would probably had advised him to rush to Heathrow or Stansted, board the first plane scheduled to depart, and never, ever come back.

Nevertheless, it was true: Marek always ended up coming back to the British Isles. Whether it was the North or the South, whether Cornwall or the Highlands, it was in his blood, in his past, in his memories. Much like Aristeles was bound by the restraints he had imposed on himself without even being aware of it, by his longing for the very core of the Continent, himself felt the call regularly enough. It was well that this new assignment had brought him here; and if there was no way for London to come unscathed out of the upcoming ordeal, then so be it—he would be in the best position to witness its doom.

And so will pigs and swine...

‘Say, I don’t mind driving you around t’do some sightseeing, of course, but ain’t you sure there ain’t no specific place you’d like t’go to?’

The old rhyme was swirling in his mind, its redundancy helping him to remain focused on the maelstrom; it took him a couple of seconds to realise that the driver was asking a more direct question again, instead of just mulling about the awful weather, the twelve-day strike planned by British Airways over Christmas and the New Year, or President Obama accepting the Peace Nobel Prize—this is just a tad bit too early, if you ask me, Marek would have said had he cared.

‘Just go on driving, please,’ the mage whispered, head tilted, eyes set through the window to the dark sky above their head.

‘As you wish.’

‘I’ll tell you when it’s time to stop there. Soon, I hope.’

‘Where is “there”, if you don’t mind me askin’?’

“Well, I’ll know once we’re there.”

The driver frowned for a second, then merely shrugged, his attention shifting back to the traffic around them, in an attitude that hinted at the seasoned cabbie who had given a run to his share of weirdoes. Marek didn’t add anything. He had started humming to himself in a very low voice, to the tune of his rhyme, over and over again.