Jack of Ravens

20

Haight-Ashbury was like a medieval street fair. People swarmed across the streets in outrageously colourful clothes, with jugglers, mimes and musicians moving amongst them. Many were on some drug or other, acting strangely and disconnected from the behaviour of straight society. It was hardly surprising that Church had not been aware of the people from the Far Lands who had made their home there. In the Haight, their strangeness was the norm. Church once again encountered the eerie puppeteer whose marionettes moved without strings, but when Church approached him he quickly packed up his stall and disappeared into the crowds.

Church and Niamh questioned as many as they could about the whereabouts of the Extinction Shears, without any luck. Their investigation had to be conducted surreptitiously, for the spider-people and their agents were everywhere — brutal police officers, men in dark suits who could have been FBI or government agents, violent criminals who raped and robbed and beat up all who got in their way.

By October, the freewheeling mood in the Haight had changed irrevocably. Ice caught up with Church as he questioned one of the Tuatha De Danann near the entrance to Buena Vista Park. ‘Man, you don’t want to go back there. There’s some kind of mass protest. Everyone’s been pissed since the drugs bust on the Dead house. It’s going to get ugly.’

‘All right. I’m done here. We’re getting nowhere.’

‘One other thing.’ Ice held up a jewel that sang a strange, lilting song whenever he pressed it.

Church recognised its otherworldly nature. ‘Where’d you get that?’

‘Took it off a kid a couple of blocks back. Told me he lifted it from some stall in Hippie Hill. The Market of Wishful Spirit, he called it.’

Church recalled the bizarre travelling market he had seen in the Court of the Soaring Spirit. ‘What are they doing here?’

‘The kids said the market comes and goes, like magic. I thought he was tripping.’

They bypassed the disturbance at the Haight-Ashbury intersection to get to Hippie Hill, the lower part of Golden Gate Park that swarmed with beggars and the homeless.

As they passed through the crowds, the quality of the light changed. Mist drifted in and suddenly the air was filled with the aromas of perfumes and spices. They broke through the mist to find a great many stalls populated by people who were unmistakably not of this world. Their odd and grotesque appearances were often masked by wide-brimmed hats and cloaks, medieval gowns or Elizabethan doublets. To a person, their faces had a waxy sheen that made them look like masks over their real faces.

A few hippies passed amongst the stalls in a trance, beckoned here and there by the owners, and offered delights or nightmares disguised as such.

Church moved through the stalls, asking one purveyor after another about the Extinction Shears. Finally he came to a skeletal man in a black robe made of tatters who rubbed his hands together obsequiously when Church questioned him.

‘Ah, so sorry. Just sold,’ he said. ‘But I can offer you even greater wonders …’ From the mass of items on his stall, he plucked a glass globe that appeared to have a world at its centre.

‘Who bought the Shears?’ Church snapped.

‘A Fragile Creature.’

‘We’ll never find him,’ Ice said.

‘Perhaps you can.’ The trader’s eyes glittered. He picked up a small hand mirror; in its centre, a faint light shimmered like a torch on the horizon. ‘Follow the light and it will lead you to your heart’s desire. Yours for just a small price … a very small price.’

Church glanced at Ice. The Hell’s Angel snatched the mirror and they ran from the market as fast as they could, the cries of the trader rising up behind them.