Table of Contents
This edition first published in the United States in 2009 by
The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
NEW YORK:
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
Copyright 2009 by Max Frei
Translation copyright 2009 by Polly Gannon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission |in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress
Book design and type formatting by Bernard Schleifer
eISBN : 978-1-590-20060-5
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CHAPTER ONE
DEBUT IN ECHO
Y OU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOULL LUCK OUT. TAKE IT FROM ONE WHO knows. For the first twenty-nine years of my life, I was a classic loser. People tend to seek (and find) all manner of excuses for their bad luck; I didnt even have to look.
From earliest childhood I couldnt sleep at night. As soon as morning rolled around, though, I slept like a lamb. And as everyone knows, this is exactly the time when they hand out the lucky tickets. Each morning at dawn, fiery letters spanned the horizon spelling out the most unfair of all possible proverbs, The early bird catches the worm. Dont tell me you havent noticed!
The horror of my childhood was waiting, night after night, for the moment when my mother would tell me, Sleep tightdont let the bedbugs bite. Time seemed to drop its anchor under my blanket; endless hours were eaten away by my vain attempts to fall asleep. To be sure, there are also happy memories, of the sense of freedom that descends upon you when everyone else is asleep (provided, of course, that you learn to move around quietly and cover the traces of your secret activities).
But most tormenting of all was to be woken up in the morning right after I had finally dozed off. This was what made me despise kindergarten, and eventually all my years at school. True, I did get assigned to the afternoon shift two years in a row. For those two years, I was nearly an A student. That was my final (and only) brush with glory as a star pupiluntil I met Sir. Juffin Hully, of course.
With time, not surprisingly, the habit that prevented me from merging harmoniously with polite society became more firmly entrenched. At the very moment when I was absolutely convinced that an inveterate night owl like me would never shine in a world ruled by larks, I met him. Sir Juffin Hully.
With a wave of his hand he put me at the maximum possible distance from home, and I found a job that corresponded absolutely to my abilities and ambitions: I became the Nocturnal Representative of the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of the city of Echo.
The story of how I came to occupy this position is so curious that it deserves a space of its own. For the time being, I will limit myself to a brief account of those distant events.
I should begin by saying, I suppose, that dreaming has always constituted an important part of my existence. Waking up from a nightmare, I was always certain deep down that my life was truly in grave danger. Falling in love with a girl from a dream could easily make me break up with my real-life girlfriend (in my youth, my heart couldnt accommodate more than one passion at a time). If I read a book in a dream, I would quote from that book to my friends as if I had read it in real life. And once, after I had a dream about a trip to Paris, I felt no compunction about claiming that I had actually been there. It wasnt that I was liar; I simply didnt see, nor did I understand, nor even feel, the difference.
I should add that I met Sir Juffin Hully in my dreams. Little by little, you could say, we became acquainted.
Sir Juffin could easily be taken for Rutger Hauers older brother. (If your imagination stretches that far, try to augment his striking image with a pair of light, slightly slanting eyes.) This effervescent gentleman, with the mannerisms and flair of an emperor of the Orient or a ringmaster in a circus, immediately won the heart of the boy I once was, the boy I remember still.
In one of my dreams we began nodding hello to each another. Soon we would chat about the weather, like regulars in a caf. Such superficial banter continued for several years, when out of the blue Sir Juffin offered to help me find employment.
He announced that I had, as he put it, an extraordinary bent for magic, which I simply had to develop if I didnt want to spend the rest of my life in an asylum. He then offered his services as a coach, employer, and considerate uncle, all rolled into one. This absurd announcement was nevertheless very attractive, considering that until then I hadnt discovered a single latent talent in myself. Even in my dreams I realized that no matter how you looked at it, my career wasnt going anywhere. Sir Juffin, inspired by my apparent willingness, plucked me out of reality like a dumpling from a bowl of soup. Up until then, I was certain that I had been a victim of my own imaginationhow strange we humans are, when all is said and done!
I will, I think, postpone the saga of my very first journey between worldsif only because I remembered almost nothing during the earliest days of my sojourn on Echo. In fact, I couldnt make sense of anything that had happened. Quite frankly, I suspected that it was all a protracted dream, if not a convoluted hallucination. I tried not to analyze the situation, but to concentrate on solving the problems at hand, since there seemed to be plenty of them. For a start, I had to undergo an intensive period of adaptation to my new life, for I had arrived in this World far less prepared than an ordinary newborn. From the first moments of their lives babies squall and dirty their diapers without disrupting the local traditions. But from the very first I did everything all wrong. I had to sweat like a horse before I could even pass for the village idiot.
When I found myself in the home of Sir Juffin Hully for the first time, he was absent from the premises. Indeed, being the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of the Capital of the Unified Kingdom was a busy job, and my protector had been detained somewhere.
The Head Butler, Kimpa, who had strict instructions from his master to give me the red-carpet treatment, was somewhat perplexed. Until now he had welcomed only respectable people to the house.
I began my new life with a question: where to find the bathroom. Even this turned out to be a faux pas. Every citizen of the Unified Kingdom older than two knows that the bathroom facilities of every dwelling occupy the basement and are reached by a special staircase.
