Fic: To Summon A Friend
Title: To Summon A Friend
Author: missilemuse
Part: 1/1
Wordcount: 3200
Rating: Gen
Warnings: none
Summary: A ten-year old Sherlock finds his great-grandmother’s Diary and decides to summon a friend for Christmas. Pity, the demon isn't Christmas-spirited!
Spoilers: for all the three books…none for the series.
Disclaimer: Sherlock belong to ACD's grey cells (though the kid version is completely mine!). Bartimaeus, the djinni, is a stroke of genius on the part of Jonathan Stroud!
Author's notes: So the idea of putting Bartimaeus and Sherlock in the same room, just wouldn’t leave my brain alone. This story doesn’t have too much magic as I wanted it to be about the interaction between two like-minded, yet completely different souls. Knowledge of the book would definitely help you enjoy the story better…though the references to the book have been explained as the story progresses. (Sorry for the shameless plugging, but if you haven’t read THE BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY yet, go ahead and treat yourself to book 1 of the tri-series this Christmas. I wager that you would have all three read by New Years!). If you read the story, please review!
The pull was sharp, wrenching. I already knew that there was no point resisting. Time and space were meaningless concepts in the Other Place but as I was mercilessly and painfully torn from it, I had to admit to myself that it had been quite some time since my last formal dismissal. I could still hear the echoes of Nat’s voice as he had released me…
Look at me waxing all long and poetic. Truth is that I am a centuries-old hardened spirit,who has suffered slavery under countless humans, from greats like Solomon to an unwashed fakir in the tenth century who had sworn to bathe only once a month (that’s right!). Most humans are nothing but insignificant lumps of flesh motivated by the seven deadly sins (Yes, that’s what they call them, but they never seem to learn). That they had found the means to enslave beings like me, didn’t make them naturally superior, like they assumed- it just highlighted their colossal stupidity (Remind me later, to tell you the story of the imbecile who discovered fire while burning himself to a crisp).
The smoke coalesced in the centre of the pentacle to form a skeleton…not an acid-boiled version mind you! They look fake. Instead, I copied the hip-gyrating, bits of flesh hanging off version of Gladstone that had chased me over the London roof-tops (Thank You Honorius!).
The skeleton appeared in a menacing aura of stinking flesh and howling noise, while performing a sinister rotation. And then, as its gaze fell on the magician in the pentacle opposite, it stumbled magnificently.
As I have already mentioned, I am centuries-old, so you can imagine what it would take to surprise me (Actually you can’t, since the answer is NOTHING!). But this…
It was Nathaniel!
Well, his spitting image anyway.
It was a ten-twelve year old boy in a perfectly tailored suit, with thick black curly hair falling over a pale forehead, and the kind of gaze that was making me feel like a clown in a circus rather than a hideous skeleton. He was squatting calmly in his own pentacle with what looked like a large black leather-bound book open in his lap. The summoning chamber, which must also be the kid’s bedroom was large and opulent, so probably a senior magician’s apprentice, just peachy! As I regained my balance, he whooped and clapped his hands together in …delight?
Nat was… This just couldn’t be.
In my rare bout of surprise, I had forgotten to switch off the special effects accompanying my appearance. He pouted. Finally an age-appropriate response; I was mildly relieved, before he spoke in perfect diction, “Could you stop making that howling noise? You’ll wake Mummy.” The undignified sounds squeaked off into pin-drop silence (So, I followed an order without argument…once in a century…it happens!).
The boy sat up straight and spoke in the most grown-up voice he could muster. “Hello Bartimaeus, welcome to the twentieth century. My name is Sherlock. I’m pleased to meet you.”
Pompous prat! Wasn’t he a bit too young to forgo his birth-name and pick out his official one? Not to mention that he was the third kid summoning me to date. If I had any shame in the first place, I would have felt mortified.
The skeleton finally deigned to speak with one hand on its hip, “Okay kid, this is not a dinner party, and whoever put you up to this hasn’t probably told you, how dangerous…”
“Your skeleton is wrong.”
Now this was just plain rude!
“You have a Pisciform and a Hamate missing from your right wrist and a Talus missing from your left foot, that’s making you lopsided.”
I wished that the skeleton had eyes that could be rolled in irritation. He looked like Nat and talked like Ptolemy- a special kind of hell!
The boy caught me staring at my wrist, and then harrumphed in impatience as he got up from the floor, the huge book clutched precariously to his chest.
Then he proceeded to do something no human in my presence for the first time had done in the last three thousand years.
He calmly stepped out of his pentacle and walked up to me.
And I’m not proud to say that my first reaction, that of the great Bartimaeus, the Sakhr-al-jinni who had built the pyramids, changed the course of the Nile (more than once), and fought in the battle of Al-Arish; was to stumble a step backwards in shock. It was a trick, had to be. He was wearing a talisman of some sort, like the Amulet of Samarkand or something similar… or wearing a silver armour inside his miniature suit, or maybe hiding a silver-tipped whip or a blade on his person …something!
But my essence didn’t quail as he walked right up to me and proceeded to clutch the skeletal wrist and point out the gaps in it with slender fingers. “This one’s for the Hamate and this one is for Pisciform.”
Then I remembered Hopkins/Faquarl. My vivid imagination had no trouble picturing the Afrit that could be nestled within the miniature body.
“What are you doing?” It came out as an extremely undignified high pitched squeal.
The boy sniffed before looking at the book in his hand and then back up at me again. “She says, you’re very intelligent. Maybe she was wrong!”
At such close proximity, I could see that the book in his hand was not a summoning manual or a magician’s tome written in some archaic language.
It was a diary- in English.
For the record I’m not usually this slow, but the suit, the grand room, the pretentious name and the high and mighty attitude did have me wrong-footed in the beginning. I gasped as a new realization struck me, “You’re a commoner…”
He beamed at me appreciatively as though finally relieved to see me confirm my supposed intelligence.
“Well done! You would be quite correct in that classification if magicians existed now-a-days and they don’t… atleast not legally. I think they do, even though the Government denies it. There’s a people’s government now, like she wanted. But you’re essentially correct, I’m not a magician!”
This conversation was not making any sense to me. The fact was that I was essentially free to do anything I wished right now (Mark my words, gobbling the kid was looking like an attractive option, every passing second). I could just leave but he was holding me, literally holding me by the wrist with the kind of trust even Kitty hadn’t shown me during her first summoning.
At the thought of Kitty, many things clicked into place simultaneously.
The diary… SHE said, I was intelligent.
I saw red!
I changed…the skeleton was simply not expressive enough. This kid needed to be taught a lesson.
Sherlock suddenly found himself clutching the hand of a teenage boy in a suit instead of a skeleton. He recognised the form from the description he had read. This was Nathaniel- the magician John Mandrake reproduced by the demon in excruciating detail. It was not public knowledge how he had sacrificed himself to save England from a clutch of power-hungry demons. He had Gramps and her diary to thank for that information.
He suddenly felt his palm burn and dropped the boy’s hand with a yelp. He looked up to find murderous rage etched on every line of the young face. For the first time since he had actually made up his mind to summon a demon, he felt an actual jolt of fear!
The djinni towered over him in the human form, looking far terrifying than the skeleton. The form was so perfect that no one would have known it wasn’t human, if it wasn’t for the eyes. They were blazing… with real fire.
It was Sherlock’s turn to stumble backwards, as the demon advanced on him with a deliberate finality… Its voice shook with anger. “I need to clarify a few things before I decide whether you deserve a painless death or a painful one.” Sherlock gasped…
“Yes, that’s right…caught on, have you? You are not a magician, or an apprentice. You weren’t forced to do this. You discovered this account, and foolishly assumed that you could call up and enslave a being of air and fire for a lark; for a laugh! Go on…laugh! It is the last thing you’ll do anyway…”
Sherlock had backed up against a wall, trembling from head to toe. The demon’s face towered over his own. This was not how it was supposed to go. She had said that it was very clever, witty. He had believed her, like he had always believed her through the words of her book. His great-grandmother’s diary, which he had found in the attic when he was seven and hidden from everyone, even Mycroft. One part of the reason was that the book had contained mechanics of basic summoning. All of the magical Libraries had been destroyed in the last revolt, and possessing any such material had been deemed unlawful, punishable by the strictest sentence. But he had kept the book well hidden, painstakingly honing his vocabulary, so he could understand everything that had been written in it.
He had always thought of her as a friend (the only one he had); and she had said that her encounter with Bartimaeus had been the greatest thing to happen in her life. This, from a woman who had been a revolutionary since she was barely twelve, who had orchestrated and carried out bombings, and robberies, as a part of a group thumbing it’s noses at the magical rule, and who had later played an important role in consolidating a People’s Government, after the magicians had been finally overthrown. She had said that the djinni was a trustworthy friend, as long as you trusted it completely. Sherlock had believed her and done exactly that...but it had all gone wrong…
As far as he could remember, he never cried. Not when other kids roughed him up and called him a freak or a weirdo…not when Daddy had died last year, not even when Mycroft had left for school, abandoning him among cretins who didn’t understand him at all… the diary had been a talisman, keeping the tears at bay…the promise of a friend hidden within its pages; a brilliant, other-worldly friend, who would understand him, like him the way he was, who wouldn’t care that he wasn’t normal. The hope…the waiting…all for nothing…
I was debating my options. Dangling him upside down from the ceiling and bobbing him up and down like a yo-yo was at the top of the list. (Ok, so I had said I would kill him, but I don’t think I had enough of Faquarl in me to do that. Before I could begin, the boy (Sherlock, really!) slumped to the floor, in a posture of abject defeat, the book now limp in his hands. “Go ahead…do whatever you want! I don’t care”, he added viciously.
“Eh!” Nat had never given such an expression in his life. This wasn’t fair. He should be squealing for mercy. There’s no fun to be had in trampling a defeated enemy.
He was muttering savagely, “She was so wrong about you… she was so stupid…and I was an IDIOT!”
Since I had a fair idea who ‘she’ was, and what she must have written about me, I couldn’t let the slight pass unanswered. I changed again. There stood Kitty Jones, her twelve year old self, the one that had tried to nick the Amulet of Samarkand from me. She flicked her dark hair out of her eyes as she adjusted the cuffs of her leather jacket. “Where do you think you get off calling me stupid?”
There was no hint of recognition on Sherlock’s face. “Who are you?”
The girl preened. “Such wilful ignorance! That’s my diary you’re holding, pea-brain.”
Sherlock scoffed. This is my great-grandmother’s diary. You’re just a kid.”
Oh! Kitty’s descendent… that did explain the self-destructive behaviour. Hereditary insanity was a terrible terrible thing!
I sat down next to him, leaning against the wall, and marvelled again as he didn’t even flinch. “It is her, Sherlock. She had to grow up first to become a great-grandmother.”
I had his attention then. He looked at me hungrily, his grey-blue eyes raking over my face. He looked so much like Nat in that instant, that my imaginary stomach gave an odd flip.
I leaned my head back into the wall and closed my eyes tiredly. “Why did you summon me, kid?”
He went very red before answering in a low voice, “She said, you were a great friend… I thought…maybe I too…”
Kitty gave a bitter laugh, quite unlike her real one, though the boy wouldn’t know that. “It doesn’t work like that, Sherlock. I don’t know what exactly she has written in there, but every time I’m brought here, I’m automatically enslaved and it hurts…hurts like hell! You don’t hurt someone, then expect them to be best buddies with you. A slave and a master cannot be friends on any level. Do you get that?”
The small voice was challenging. “It is not like I have enslaved you. I left my pentacle. You are free right now.”
…which is why he wasn’t dead, TRUST…it was my Achilles heel. This pretty picture…me sitting shoulder to shoulder with a human, during my first summoning by said human, and calmly conversing like equals, was what Ptolemy had dreamed about. He would have been so smug right now!
After magicians like Nat and Ptolemy, what wouldn’t have I given for a regular master? One who would be properly terrified of me and hit me with the Inverted skin, when I got too annoying. Was a little normalcy too much to ask for?
Instead I got this kid, who genuinely trusted me, or rather, trusted Kitty… How could I possibly harm him after that?
He was still staring. “You were friends with her.” His tone was accusing. “She was a non-magician too!”
“She was different, kiddo.”
“Yes, I know… She followed you to the Other Place. I’ll do it too. I don’t mind. Can I come right now? Its Christmas tomorrow, and Mycroft isn’t even coming home. I hate it here. I don’t even care about coming back.”
Did I say insane? Wrong! This kid was completely nutters. Something about the way he was pleading with me was just so wrong! Kitty had followed me to the Other Place for a purpose. It was the only condition under which I would help her. And she had desperately needed my help. Unlike Ptolemy, her visit had been very short. Yet, it had shaved years off her life..
I usually don’t give a toss about humans and their problems. But I couldn’t help but wonder, what had happened to an otherwise intelligent ten year-old, to make him not want to be himself. This was so messed up…Not your problem, Bartimaeus. Your objective is to get home, and ensure that he doesn’t summon you again.
Time to treat him like the kid he is…
Kitty adopted a nonchalant tone. “And what about ‘Mummy’? Won’t she miss you?”
Sherlock’s expression faltered for a minute. “Mycroft will take care of her. She’ll be alright.”
“That would be the same git who’s not even coming home for Christmas (Uh yeah, I know what Christmas is! I was actually around when the bloke was born and B.C. became A.C.). I don’t really think that he is up to the task of looking after her.”
Sherlock’s entire countenance lighted up. “You are the first…person to call him that. He is a right git, but everyone seems to think; he is perfect.”
Ah! A politician in the making... Now Bartimaeus, go for the jugular!
“I can’t stay for long Sherlock. I would have liked to be your friend (Ha! Ha!), but it pains a spirit to be trapped in this world for too long (true enough, the itch was skimming Kitty’s toenails). I know that I can disappear right now as you have essentially placed no bonds on me. But I need you to understand that you cannot call me again… I need you to promise me this, Sherlock.”
This form was my ace of trumps. Kitty had been the most persuasive human I have ever known.
Sherlock chewed his bottom lip as he pondered my words. “We can be friends, even though you cannot be here, right? The way you were friends with her, though she never called you back.”
Patience, Bartimaeus…He’s just a kid…
“Fine!” I agreed; anything to get me home this instant. “So, do I have your word as my friend?”
His eyes shone with a fierce kind of joy, but his voice was solemn. “I promise not to call you again, unless I really really need you.”
Okay, so I never had much patience to begin with...
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Angry Kitty was scarier than most demons.
To his credit, the kid held his ground. “You are my friend, and friends help each other. I’ll call you only if…only if it’s a matter of life and death…I promise!”
‘Matters of life and death’…from a ten year old commoner kid who called his mother ‘Mummy’ and was probably waited on hand and foot, from dawn to dusk, in his palatial mansion. Whoever Mycroft was, I already pitied him. I considered…he could grow up to be an accountant (trust me; income has always been inversely proportional to activity, since times immemorial). Besides, kids have short attention spans. He will be distracted by something and forget all about me. It was obvious he had no idea regarding my true power, or he would have been using me instead of this hogwash. This was an unsatisfactory arrangement. But hell, I’ve had much worse…
“Deal!” Kitty held out a hand, which Sherlock shook firmly. She got up, and began dusting off her clothes. “So, I better be off now…”
“Wait!” He had shot to his feet too. Someone really needed to teach this kid some proper etiquette (I know…look who’s talking right?).
“Here…” He thrust out the black book towards me. “Merry Christmas, Bartimaeus…”
I froze. No one had ever given me anything tangible of my own, hell no one had given me anything other than orders (or requests) period! I swallowed, as I felt something warm settle inside me.
“She was your friend and would have wanted you to have it”, he declared confidently.
I found that I had to clear Kitty’s throat in order to reply. “Thanks…” There was nothing I could add to that. I took the book knowing full well that I should destroy it, and certain that I never would.
That was when something unprecedented occurred to me. “Hold on, don’t go anywhere”, I ordered Sherlock and disappeared with the book. I hid the book where no human would ever find it (Ha! Nice try, but you are a human too!). It took me only twenty minutes to get what I wanted for Sherlock (you don’t want to know where I went for that!).
By the time, I reappeared before him, he was attempting to pace a furrow into the smooth marble floor (there goes my accountant career option straight out of the window).
“Merry Christmas to you too!” The words sounded foreign on my tongue….
In Kitty’s hands was a clean, smooth, non-flesh covered human skull.
His hands shook, as he accepted my gift with an almost reverent expression on his face, and I mentally congratulated myself on picking right.
As I finally dissipated back to the Other Place, if you are imagining that my feelings towards mankind had undergone a paradigm shift, or that I had been brainwashed into loving humanity, or some such nonsense, you would be sadly mistaken (as usual!).
But I do admit that only for that instant; I hated one of you just a little bit less!
THE END….
(I will write more in this universe, depending upon the response to the story…Hope you like it!)