The Conjure Man
Charles de Lint
I do not think it had any friends, or mourners, except myself and a pair of owls.
You only see the tree by the light of the lamp. I wonder when you would ever see the lamp by the light of the tree.
The conjure man rode a red, old-fashioned bicycle with fat tires and only one, fixed gear. A wicker basket in front contained a small mongrel dog that seemed mostly terrier. Behind the seat, tied to the carrier, was a battered brown satchel that hid from prying eyes the sum total of all his worldly possessions.
What he had was not much, but he needed little. He was, after all, the conjure man, and what he didn’t have, he could conjure for himself.
He was more stout than slim, with a long grizzled beard and a halo of frizzy grey hair that protruded from under his tall black hat like ivy tangled under an eave. Nesting in the hatband were a posy of dried wildflowers and three feathers: one white, from a swan; one black, from a crow; one brown, from an owl. His jacket was an exhilarating shade of blue, the colour of the sky on a perfect summer’s morning. under it he wore a shirt that was as green as a fresh-cut lawn. His trousers were brown corduroy, patched with leather and plaid squares; his boots were a deep golden yellow, the colour of buttercups past their prime.
His age was a puzzle, somewhere between fifty and seventy. Most people assumed he was one of the homeless—more colourful than most, and certainly more cheerful, but a derelict all the same—so the scent of apples that seemed to follow him was always a surprise, as was the good humour that walked hand in hand with a keen intelligence in his bright blue eyes. When he raised his head, hat brim lifting, and he met one’s gaze, the impact of those eyes was a sudden shock, a diamond in the rough.
His name was John Windle, which could mean, if you were one to ascribe meaning to names, “favoured of god” for his given name, while his surname was variously defined as “basket,” “the red-winged thrush,” or “to lose vigor and strength, to dwindle.” They could all be true, for he led a charmed life; his mind was a treasure trove storing equal amounts of experience, rumour and history; he had a high clear singing voice; and though he wasn’t tall—he stood five-ten in his boots—he had once been a much larger man.
“I was a giant once,” he liked to explain, “when the world was young. But conjuring takes its toll. Now John’s just an old man, pretty well all used up. Just like the world,” he’d add with a sigh and a nod, bright eyes holding a tired sorrow. “Just like the world.”
There were some things even the conjure man couldn’t fix.
Living in the city, one grew used to its more outlandish characters, eventually noting them in passing with an almost familial affection: The pigeon lady in her faded Laura Ashley dresses with her shopping cart filled with sacks of birdseed and bread crumbs. Paperjack, the old black man with his Chinese fortune-teller and deft origami sculptures. The German cowboy who dressed like an extra from a spaghetti western and made long declamatory speeches in his native language to which no one listened.
And, of course, the conjure man.
Wendy St. James had seen him dozens of times—she lived and worked downtown, which was the conjure man’s principal haunt—but she’d never actually spoken to him until one day in the fall when the trees were just beginning to change into their cheerful autumnal party dresses.
She was sitting on a bench on the Ferryside bank of the Kickaha River, a small, almost waif-like woman in jeans and a white T-shirt, with an unzipped brown leather bomber’s jacket and hightops. In lieu of a purse, she had a small, worn knapsack sitting on the bench beside her, and she was bent over a hardcover journal which she spent more time staring at than actually writing in. Her hair was thick and blonde, hanging down past her collar in a grown-out pageboy with a half-inch of dark roots showing. She was chewing on the end of her pen, worrying the plastic for inspiration.
It was a poem that had stopped her in mid-stroll and plunked her down on the bench. It had glimmered and shone in her head until she got out her journal and pen. Then it fled, as impossible to catch as a fading dream. The more she tried to recapture the impulse that had set her wanting to put pen to paper, the less it seemed to have ever existed in the first place. The annoying presence of three teenage boys clowning around on the lawn a half-dozen yards from where she sat didn’t help at all.
She was giving them a dirty stare when she saw one of the boys pick up a stick and throw it into the wheel of the conjure man’s bike as he came riding up on the park path that followed the river. The small dog in the bike’s wicker basket jumped free, but the conjure man himself fell in a tangle of limbs and spinning wheels. The boys took off, laughing, the dog chasing them for a few feet, yapping shrilly, before it hurried back to where its master had fallen.
Wendy had already put down her journal and pen and reached the fallen man by the time the dog got back to its master’s side.
“Are you okay?” Wendy asked the conjure man as she helped him untangle himself from the bike.
She’d taken a fall herself in the summer. The front wheel of her ten-speed struck a pebble, the bike wobbled dangerously and she grabbed at the brakes, but her fingers closed over the front ones first, and too hard. The back of the bike went up, flipping her right over the handlebars, and she’d had the worst headache for at least a week afterwards.
The conjure man didn’t answer her immediately. His gaze followed the escaping boys.
“As you sow,” he muttered.
Following his gaze, Wendy saw the boy who’d thrown the stick trip and go sprawling in the grass. An odd chill danced up her spine. The boy’s tumble came so quickly on the heels of the conjure man’s words, for a moment it felt to her as though he’d actually caused the boy’s fall.
As you sow, so shall you reap.
She looked back at the conjure man, but he was sitting up now, fingering a tear in his corduroys which already had a quiltwork of patches on them. He gave her a quick smile that traveled all the way up to his eyes, and she found herself thinking of Santa Claus. The little dog pressed its nose up against the conjure man’s hand, pushing it away from the tear. But the tear was gone.
It had just been a fold in the cloth, Wendy realized. That was all.
She helped the conjure man limp to her bench, then went back and got his bike. She righted it and wheeled it over to lean against the back of the bench before sitting down herself. The little dog leaped up onto the conjure man’s lap.
“What a cute dog,” Wendy said, giving it a pat. “What’s her name?”
“Ginger,” the conjure man replied as though it was so obvious that he couldn’t understand her having to ask.
Wendy looked at the dog. Ginger’s fur was as grey and grizzled as her master’s beard without a hint of the spice’s strong brown hue.
“But she’s not at all brown,” Wendy found herself saying.
The conjure man shook his head. “It’s what she’s made of—she’s a gingerbread dog. Here.” He plucked a hair from Ginger’s back, which made the dog start and give him a sour look. He offered the hair to Wendy. “Taste it.”
Wendy grimaced. “I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself,” the conjure man said. He shrugged and popped the hair into his own mouth, chewing it with relish.