Tuesday, December 26, 1939
Shanghai International Settlement
Shanghai, Cathay

The cramped and tangled streets of the International Settlement, that peculiar enclave of foreign consular jurisdiction wedged into the corner of Soochow Creek and the river Whangpoo in the heart of Shanghai, lay under a grey pall of silence on the afternoon of Boxing Day. Where in other, happier years these streets had glowed with decorations for the holiday season, their Western aesthetic clashing jauntily with the local architecture, and had bustled with cheerful crowds of Britannian, Liberion, Gallian, and Fusōnese expatriates making their busy social rounds, in 1939 there was only quiet gloom.

Most of the houses hereabouts were dark, their empty windows staring blankly into the deserted streets. Only in the diplomatic corner of the district, where the various nations of the Settlement Council had housed their representatives, remained any signs of life. Most of the foreign merchants, bankers, and manufacturers had already decamped in advance of the Celestial Emperor's deadline, but the consuls and attachés remained, under orders from their governments to remain until as near as practicable to the very last as a gesture of protest at their peremptory expulsion.

In an upstairs bedroom of one of the still-occupied townhouses, fronting onto what had been a pleasant little square in happier times, a little girl sat at a desk that was too large for her, trying her best to tune out the racket of moving preparations coming from the floor below and concentrate. As much as she was looking forward to going home, Marisa Kirisame had something she was determined to get done before leaving Shanghai.

Spread out on the leather-topped desk in front of her was an array of small treasures she'd accumulated over the past year and more. She'd found some of them in dark street markets in obscure corners of the city—places where, she was certain, her father would have had a fit if he had known she'd visited. Others had come to hand almost accidentally, by a kind of serendipity that had convinced her it was guided by some invisible providence. Someone unfamiliar with magic would have dismissed them as the usual sort of junk a sentimental child might readily accumulate: shiny stones, fragments of crystal, a trilobite fossil of indifferent quality, a stub of chalk in a curious shade of blue, an old-fashioned quill pen that had seen better days.

Only the object in the center, the largest and most treasured of Marisa's treasures, would have attracted a second glance from a casual observer. It was a cunningly constructed wooden box about the size of the palm of an adult hand, the eight corners of its vertical sides perfectly joined with delicate finger joints. Its flat top had the eight Taoist trigrams of the bagua neatly inlaid in darker wood, one on each panel, radiating from a central hole.

Completing her inventory, Marisa gathered up her smaller treasures in a black velvet bag, which she tied up and tucked away in a skirt pocket. The wooden box she wrapped in a cloth and thrust into another, larger pocket, along with a small leather-bound journal and the tattered quill pen.

Rising from her desk, she looked around the room, making one final sweep to ensure that she wasn't leaving anything behind. Most of her things had already been packed and removed. The remaining furniture—the bed, wardrobe, mirror, desk and chair—would be staying behind. Only the trunk at the foot of the bed would go with her when she left this room, her sanctum for the last three years, for the final time on Friday.

Nodding to herself, she went to the hallway door, opened it, and leaned out, shouting for the benefit of whomever might hear, "I'm going over to Alice's~!" Then she paused for a few seconds, listening. When no reply came, she considered her duty done, closed the door, and crossed to the window, snagging her oversized hat from her bed as she went.

There Marisa hesitated for a moment, one leg thrown over the windowsill, her booted foot dangling in the cool late-afternoon air. One last check. Was she certain she had everything?

Yes. Everything. She was as ready as she would ever be, and there would never be a better time.

"Yosh'—!" she declared, hopping the rest of the way out the window.

Alice Murgatroyd considered reminding Marisa of how many times she'd told her not to come in through the window, but since it was probably the last time her friend was ever going to do so, she didn't have the heart.

The younger blonde was her usual chipper self as she swung herself into the room, despite the gloomy mood that had settled on the neighborhood over the past few weeks. Her golden eyes were shining, her cheeks pink from the chill outside. She was decked out in her dressiest clothes, all black as usual, but for her ruffled waist apron and petticoat, and the white blouse that was revealed when she took off her jacket.

"Evenin', Alice!" she declared, draping the jacket casually over the back of the chair at Alice's dressing table, and then, "Hiya, Shanghai!" as the animated doll of that name flew happily over to greet her.

"It's not really evening quite yet," Alice pointed out calmly. "What brings you by this afternoon?"

"Why are you bein' so formal?" Marisa wondered, tilting her head. "Am I not allowed to just wanna see you?"

"Of course. I'm sorry. I'm just a little distracted from all the commotion today. All but the last of our things have gone to the Empire Aberdeen now." With a slightly sad smile, she went on, "We sail on Thursday."

Marisa nodded. "We're out on Friday," she said. "Pop wanted to hold out until Sunday, but Captain Sugita doesn't want to cut it that fine, and, well, it's his ship." She looked around Alice's bedroom, which was almost as bare as her own, and puffed out a sigh. "I always knew we weren't gonna live here forever, but still, it's weird to think of leavin' like this."

"I know, it's strange," Alice agreed. "And to think, when Father was first given this posting, I wanted to stay behind."

"Yeah, same here. I wanted to stay in Fusō with my grandparents. Pop wouldn't hear of it, though. Said it would make him look bad not to have his whole family with him." Marisa smirked. "Plus he didn't want me makin' a nuisance of myself on the mountain."

"Ah, yes. Your friend the shrine maiden." Alice smiled indulgently, having heard stories of this mysterious personage for the past three years. "You must be looking forward to seeing her again."

"Well, yeah. She's so bad at lookin' after herself, who knows what I'll find when I get back there?"

Alice chuckled. "I'm sure she'll be grateful for your supervision," she said archly.

"She needs it," said Marisa with a cheeky grin. Then, becoming serious, she sat down on Alice's bed and asked, "What's the latest word outta Europe?"

"Not good," Alice admitted, seating herself on the other side. "Ostmark is already on the brink of collapse. Most of their lands east of the Danube have already fallen. Karlsland and Orussia are cut off from each other, Baltland is in darkness, and no one really knows what is going on in Suomus."

"Are you gonna get drafted when you go back?" Marisa wondered.

"I already have been," Alice replied. "As soon as we reach England, a place in the RAF will be waiting for me."

"Wow," said Marisa, wide-eyed.

"I'll be ready," Alice assured her calmly. "It's not the magical career I envisioned for myself, but one must do one's part, after all."

Marisa nodded, her expression as serious as Alice had ever seen it, but said nothing.

They talked of other things for the rest of the afternoon, self-consciously avoiding any further discussion of the war in Europe and the part the Britannian was preparing to play in it. Marisa ate dinner that evening with Alice, her parents, and the few members of the household staff who remained; this was not at all unusual, although everyone at the table was silently conscious of the fact that, like so many other once-routine activities of late, this one was happening for the last time.

Marisa didn't go home after dinner, as Alice had half-expected she wouldn't. Ever since their conversation about the war and Alice's impending induction into the Royal Air Force, the younger girl had been preoccupied with something, and as they whiled away the early evening in her room after dinner, Alice's instincts told her it ran deeper than just the fact that they were soon to go their separate ways. It was like she had something to say and, most unusually for Marisa, couldn't think of a way to say it.

Finally, as the point in the evening arrived when she would have to either go home or explicitly invite herself to stay, she seemed to reach an internal tipping point and suddenly blurted,

"Listen—Alice? I need your help with somethin'."

Alice raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I... I wanna try and Awaken myself before I go back to Fusō."

Alice blinked. "Are you joking?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Marisa shot back, her eyes glittering fiercely.

"No. No, you do not," Alice conceded. "All the same, you're awfully young to be trying something like that—"

"You were nine," Marisa interrupted.

"True, but my circumstances were different. You know that. I have the blood of my mother's people, and I had her to guide me. For you..."

"Alice, I have to do this myself if I'm gonna do it at all," Marisa declared. "Pop will never send me to a real witch school, you know that. Not even when I'm old enough. He'll pull every string he can to keep me out of it. Make me stay home and not get involved. But if I have my own magic... if I make my own magic... then he can't stop me."

"But what will you do with 'your own magic'?" Alice wondered. "You won't be able to join the Imperial Army or Navy. They have no use for... for ordinary magicians."

"I dunno," admitted Marisa. "Whatever I can."

Alice hesitated, clearly unconvinced, and Marisa darted to her, taking both her hands and looking her square in the face.

"Look, Alice," she said. "So I don't have a plan. I never have a plan. But..." She paused, searching for words, then shook her head and blundered on, "Alice, Reimu's alone. Except for me, she's always been alone, and if she stays that way, one of these days she's gonna die alone. Just like the Hakurei before her." With tears standing in her eyes, she continued, "If I'm there, and I've got my own magic, maybe I can keep her alive."

"Or perhaps you can die with her," Alice pointed out.

"Maybe," Marisa replied, unhesitating. "But you said it yourself. You gotta do your part."

Alice regarded her younger friend's pleading face for a few moments, her own countenance impassive.

Then, a slight frown crossing her face, she softened and said, "All right, Marisa. It's against my better judgement, but... you've made your point." Lowering her head, she closed her eyes and sighed. "I'll help you."

Her distraught expression changing instantly to a gleeful grin, Marisa let go of Alice's hands and threw her arms around the Britannian instead, nearly bowling her over backward as she cried out her thanks.

The preparations took them an hour, by which time the house had gone entirely still and the night outside Alice's bedroom window was filled with silence and moonlight. Working as quietly as they could so as not to draw attention to themselves, Alice and Marisa rolled up the rug that normally adorned the middle of the room, uncovering the wooden floor beneath. Alice found a storm candle and lit it, then put out the electric lights, while Marisa got out her stub of blue chalk and drew a magic circle on the bare floorboards, consulting her notebook repeatedly to make certain she had the details right. The chalk marks glowed faintly in the dim of the candlelit room, and brightened perceptibly when she completed the circle, after which she stationed various of her lesser treasures at specific points around it.

Seating herself seiza near the middle of the circle, careful not to scuff any of the marks, Marisa took the wooden box from her pocket, unwrapped it, and placed it precisely at the center. From another pocket, she produced a short, broad candle, like a tealight, and placed it in the box's center hole, then borrowed Alice's candle to light it. It burned with a faint floral scent, bringing a touch of springtime into the wintry darkness of the room.

Taking back her candle, Alice stood clear of the magic circle, her mind filled with doubts. She knew what Marisa was trying to do was insanely dangerous. To take advantage of the full moon's weakening of the barrier between the material and spirit worlds, penetrate that thinned veil with sheer brute force, and invite an entity from the other side to form a bond with her and activate her inner magic... that was normally a thing done by a fully pre-trained witch candidate, in the protected enclave of a proper magic school, under the watchful eyes of the faculty.

The ceremonies were elaborate and carefully conducted, and for good reason. Not all spirit entities were benign—a great many of them were anything but—and to simply open a hole in the Veil and shine one's light through willy-nilly was to invite everything that would be attracted by that light to try and find a place within one's soul. Prospective witches had to be taught to defend themselves in the æther before undertaking such a thing, and even then, the better schools had wards in place and sentinels standing by to drive back the worst that the breach drew.

Marisa, by contrast, had whatever she'd learned from reading the various books of magic she'd managed to scrounge up over the past couple of years, these little trinkets and nicknacks she'd accumulated along the way, and one eleven-year-old, recently initiated faeblood witch with no formal training in spirit defense standing behind her.

That, and her own burning, irrepressible will.

Alice smiled slightly in spite of her trepidation as she watched Marisa commence the ritual, referring constantly to her notes.

"It'll have to be enough, won't it, Shanghai?" she murmured under her breath as she stood her storm candle on the floor next to her, then pulled on her puppeteer's gloves. "She won't be denied."

Shanghai, floating in her usual place not far from Alice's right shoulder, said nothing; only nodded, her porcelain face set in a look of grim resolve.

The circle brightened as Marisa reached the critical point of the ritual, particles of light filtering upward to form a glowing column around her. Her hair and the smaller items around her briefly levitated as the veil rippled, momentarily bending gravity...

... and then it parted and all hell broke loose.

Alice's bedroom filled with a strange, harshly monochromatic light, slightly painful to the eye, like the light of a Wood's lamp. Everything seemed frozen in place—dust motes, Marisa's trinkets, the flecks of glowing æther rising from the magic circle, all suspended, as if time had halted for all but the room's animate occupants. In the air over the circle, above the crown of Marisa's hat, a rift opened up. It glowed so fiercely with that weird and painful light that the living eye refused to see it directly, glancing across it like a printing fault caused by a crease in one page of a book. And through this fault poured... things. Dark and mostly shapeless, they came in their dozens through the rift and swirled about within the confines of the circle, forming a cylinder of spinning, flitting, gnashing something above the would-be witch's head.

Through eyes attuned to the spectral, Alice saw Marisa arise from her body to confront them, spirit eyes blazing like golden torches, trailing a silver astral cord behind her. Some of the shadow-things dove to meet her, while others streamed past, making for the cord.

Before Alice could command her, Shanghai moved, swooping forward to intercept the latter group. The doll plunged through the circle in a spray of golden sparks, unhindered by a barrier meant to ward off creatures of an entirely different spiritual persuasion, and into their midst. Still in complete silence, she laid into the shadows with a glittering miniature broadsword and fended off all who tried her with a spiked shield.

As the war within the circle raged, still more shadows flooded into the room from without, racing in screaming rings around the outer perimeter. Drawn by the commotion of Marisa's battle with the first wave, this batch slipped and seeped into the real world through whatever cracks and thin places they could find and converged, looking for a fault in the circle through which they could invade it.

Ye gods, thought Alice as she searched her mind for a spell appropriate to this situation. Are there any but darklings here?

Pushing the thought away, she flung out the only spell card she had that seemed even vaguely adequate to the task at hand, crying, "Doll War—Little Legion!"

The weird distortion in the room swallowed her voice, leaving it nothing but a faint, tinny echo even in her own ears, but the magic worked regardless, calling forth a tiny army of dolls. They failed to manifest materially, appearing only as flickering, indistinct spirits, but even in that attenuated form they were equal to the task of engaging the shadows. In their dozens they attacked, ripping into the second force of shadows that had gathered outside the circle, forcing them to abandon their efforts at entry and turn to defend themselves instead.

Alice, pushed to her limits by the demand of powering and controlling more dolls at once than she had ever attempted before, quickly recognized that this was a losing battle. The dolls weren't powerless, but they fell faster than Alice could restore them, and the shadows seemed numberless. Perish as they might—and they were doing so in droves—there were always more coming.

In the fleeting glimpses she could catch of what was going on inside the circle, she could tell that matters were little better in there. Shanghai was holding her own, furiously, valiantly, magnificently defending Marisa's link to the living world, and Marisa's incandescent will burned away any darkling fool enough to try her directly, but neither of them could keep this up forever, any more than could Alice. Sooner or later, one of them would slip, and that would be the end of them. Possibly of all of them.

And nowhere in any of this chaos was there even a hint of a single bright spirit.

If this is the state of the local spirit plane, thought Alice grimly, then this city is truly lost.

Feeling the first creeping hint of desperation, Alice cast about for some way out of this nightmare. Finally, through a gap in the chaos still raging within the circle, she spotted it.

"Shanghai!" she cried. "The candle!"

Shanghai turned, cutting down another shadow, and realized at once what her mistress meant. The ritual candle in Marisa's octagonal box was still burning, anchoring the portal. Snuff it out, and the rift would collapse. The dark spirits within the circle would stop coming, and with any luck, that would stop drawing the ones outside the circle to the room...

... but to reach the candle, Shanghai would have to leave her post undefended.

Seeing no other option, the doll steeled herself to make the attempt, calling on all that remained of the strength her maker had infused into her small shell. She might just be swift enough to pull it off if she gave it her all, even if cost her independent existence.

Just before she would have moved, something changed. The strange, hurtful light shifted, its harsh-edged bleakness softening and warming, and with that change came a new sound. It was only a faint growl at first, barely audible under the howling and hissing of the darklings, but it swiftly grew into an overpowering roar—as if someone had managed to cross an enraged lion with an oncoming train.

Golden radiance burst out from the rift and flooded the entire cylindrical zone within the magic circle, instantly erasing all the shadows trapped within. Dazzled and stunned by the flash and the roar, Shanghai dove for cover into Marisa's lap, instinctively raising her shield over her head for protection. Outside, Alice reeled back in astonishment as the yellow-gold light filled the circle and then burst outward, filling her entire bedroom...

... and then it was gone, and she was thudding to the floor on her knees like one of her own puppets suddenly unstrung, her eyes smarting and head ringing with the sudden dark and silence.

When she came back to herself, she was still crumpled on the floor not far from her bed, her gloved hands slack in her lap. She raised her head slowly and looked around. The bedroom was still in darkness, but normal darkness, cut by the moonlight shining in through the windows. Her storm candle lay nearby, knocked over on its side, no longer burning. The candle in the middle of Marisa's ritual setup had gone out as well; a thin wisp of smoke rose from the wick, visible in the moonlight as it curled toward the ceiling.

Marisa was lying flat on her back in the same spot where she'd knelt at the start of the ritual, her arms flung out at her sides. Her hat had fallen from her head and rolled away, coming to rest against a leg of Alice's writing desk. She was breathing and looked uninjured, as far as could be told in the dim light.

Alice sat for a moment longer, gathering herself, and listened for the sounds of alarum that must surely follow such a commotion... but the house remained quiet. Everyone else apparently slept on, oblivious to what had just happened in the corner bedroom at the front of the house. Shaking her head, Alice rose unsteadily to her feet and made her way toward Marisa.

With a soft rustling sound, Shanghai emerged from under Marisa's apron. The doll's clothing was rumpled and torn, her hair askew, but she, too, appeared unharmed as she flew to her mistress's shoulder. Alice touched her gratefully, brushing at the doll's hair with her fingertips, then knelt at Marisa's side and bent over her.

"Marisa?" she asked softly. "Can you hear me?"

For a moment, Marisa lay still, her visage uncharacteristically blank. Then she uttered a muted "Huh!" as her eyes popped open, her face taking on a look of surprise. She sat suddenly up, then blinked and reeled slightly, grabbing Alice in a clumsy hug for support, as a wave of vertigo washed over her.

"Easy," said Alice. "Are you all right?"

Marisa didn't reply for a moment, looking thoughtful, as she ran through some internal diagnostics. Then, rubbing a hand down her face, she said, "Yeah... I... I think so." She blinked some more, shaking her head, and slowly pulled herself into a more stable sitting position, smoothing her skirt over her knees. "I mean..." She glanced at Alice and grinned a slightly shaky version of her usual grin. "I definitely ain't dead..."

Alice concealed her relief behind a censorious tut, rising to her feet and dusting herself off, then went to switch the electric lights back on.

"That's more down to luck than judgement, I'll wager," she said.

"Aw, gimme a break," Marisa grumbled.

"You just summoned every darkling in Whangpoo into my bedroom," Alice pointed out.

"C'mon, I didn't know that was gonna happen," protested Marisa. "It wasn't like that in any'a the books. Ain't there anything but evil spirits in this town?" She clambered to her feet, dusting at her clothes, then set about gathering up her things from the remains of the circle.

"That was unexpected," Alice conceded. "And troubling. I fear the situation in Cathay is much worse than anyone realizes."

"Yeah, well, good time to be gettin' the heck out, then," said Marisa pragmatically. She finished collecting her small treasures and tucking them away in their bag, then picked up the wooden box.

"More to the point," said Alice, "did it work? Did you make contact with anything worthwhile?"

Marisa didn't reply for a moment while she turned over the box and tapped the remains of the ritual candle into her palm. Only after she'd dropped them into the wastebasket by Alice's desk did she turn an uncertain smile to her friend and say,

"I think so. It's kind of a blur, but... whatever that was at the end? I think we talked. Well... not really talked, but... you know."

She bent and picked up her notebook and quill, pocketing the latter and paging through the former; then, with a cry of delight, she rushed to Alice's side.

"Look! It happened!" she cried. Reaching Alice, she held out the book, open to a spread near the middle, for her friend's inspection.

Sprawled across both pages was an inscription that looked like it had been burned into the paper rather than written with ink, in a round hand that was simultaneously both familiar and not—Marisa's, but also someone, or something, else's. A magical contract, binding an entity whose Name was not for Alice's eyes to Marisa's service, and she to its care, for an indefinite term. At the bottom, the entity's signature was only a blur to Alice, but below it was Marisa's signature, bold and strong, in dark red drying to brown. Alice's eyes automatically lit upon the fresh little wound on Marisa's left hand, incised by the nib of her magical quill.

"How 'bout that?" Marisa inquired, her eyes sparkling. "I did it! I'm a witch!"

Alice smiled. "So it seems. What manner of spirit is your new familiar?" she wondered.

"I dunno!" said Marisa, cheerfully unconcerned. "Like I say, it's all kind of a blur. Here—watch and see what I get." So saying, she put the notebook away and closed her eyes, concentrating.

Nothing happened.

After a few seconds, she opened her eyes again, confused. "Huh? I don't get it. Where's my magic?"

"I don't know," Alice replied, equally baffled. "Mine doesn't work quite the same way, but as far as I know, now that you have a spirit contract, it should just... happen."

Marisa tried again, this time scowling, her brow furrowed with effort. Still there seemed to be no reaction. Marisa's confusion this time was tinged with dismay, not to say incipient panic.

"Come on," she said, as if bargaining with someone. She pulled out her notebook and consulted it again. "I got a contract right here!" She got out her quill and held the stained nib up in front of her, going slightly cross-eyed to focus on it. "Signed it in my own blood an' everything! Speakin' o' which, ow," she added, shaking her hand. Then, putting the matter of the mild injury aside, she put book and quill away again and demanded, "So what gives?!"

Alice opened her mouth to suggest that they consult with someone better-informed than herself—for example, her mother—in the morning, but before she could speak, both girls were diverted from the conversation by a tapping at the window.

Turning, they saw a small animal of some sort sitting on the outer windowsill, its exact shape and color indistinct in the moonlight. As they watched, it tapped once more at the glass with its nose.

"What th' heck?" Marisa wondered, and she went and threw up the sash. "Oh! It's a cat!" she declared—unnecessarily, for with the window open, Alice could see just as well as she could that it was a cat—a cobby tom with upright ears, his color still hard to distinguish, sitting complacently on the windowsill.

"Where'd you come from?" Marisa wondered, crouching down to get herself at eye level.

The cat regarded her benignly, then reached out with a forepaw and booped her on the nose. When the paw made contact, both cat and girl glowed with a shimmering golden light—the same light, Alice realized with a thrill, that had surged from the rift at the climax of Marisa's ritual and wiped away the army of shadows.

Startled, Marisa stumbled back, collided with Alice's bed, and sat down involuntarily upon it. The golden glow lingered about her for a few seconds, then faded. Regarding her hands thoughtfully, she concentrated for a moment—and it came back, even though the cat was no longer touching her.

"Now we're talkin'," said Marisa with a satisfied grin.

"Nya," said the cat, sounding for all the world like he agreed.

A moment later, he sprang from the windowsill into his new mistress's aproned lap, then curled up and settled in, purring loudly. In the full light of the room, the two girls could see that he was a ginger tabby, but unusually pale—more yellow than orange. In fact, his fur was an almost perfect match for Marisa's golden waves of hair. Marisa petted him almost absent-mindedly, then looked up at Alice with a deeply confounded expression.

"So... I guess this is my familiar?" she said.

"I guess he must be," Alice agreed. "How extraordinary."

"I wonder why he's... y'know, an actual cat?" Marisa wondered. "Every witch's familiar I ever heard of was just a spirit."

Alice shrugged. "I've no idea," she said.

Shanghai, intrigued, left her shoulder and flew over to get a closer look at the cat. He, in turn, opened his eyes partway to look the doll lazily over, then greeted her with a laconic, "Nya," before closing his eyes again.

"Ah, well, it probably ain't important," said Marisa cheerfully. She flopped down on her back across Alice's bed and raised the cat above her head, then hugged him to her chest, which operations he endured without objection. "Welcome to the material plane, Mr. Murgatroyd."

Alice blinked. Mr. Murgatroyd purred like an idling motorboat, evidently content with his borrowed name. Alice raised a finger, as if to speak, but then lowered it without comment, instead turning to close the window against the chill night air.

"The Tiger of Shanghai" - an Our Witches at War Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2022 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

the Empire Aberdeen - The word Empire prepended to the name of a British merchant vessel circa World War II indicated that the ship was the property of the Ministry of Shipping, rather than a private-sector shipping company. Although they were usually operated by commercial crews under contract, the ships remained government property and received their tasking directly from the Ministry.

By the end of the war, there were hundreds of Empire ships in service, but none IRL ever carried the name Empire Aberdeen.

a Wood's lamp - Originally a lamp made with Wood's glass, a type of glass invented by physicist Robert Wood that filters out visible light and permits near-infrared and -ultraviolet to pass. Wood's lamps were used mostly for medical diagnosis, by exploiting near-UV light's tendency to make certain chemicals fluoresce. Nowadays, Wood's technology is long obsolete, but the term is still used generically for any portable ultraviolet light source.

a cobby tom - In cat (and horse) jargon, a cobby animal is one that is thickset and relatively short-legged. Well-known cobby cat breeds include Scottish folds, Persians, and both British and American Shorthairs.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm curious about the comments regarding all the dark spirits in the city; are those a reflection of the mood of the place? Like, the worse the mood or the actions of those living in the vicinity, the more the darklings and their like are drawn to it, likely also driving away the more benevolent or even guardian-type spirits? Almost feels that Mr. Murgatroyd recognized both a kindred spirit and a way out of an otherwise no-win situation. Either way, sounds like Shanghai, and possibly Cathay as well, might be in even more dire straights in 1946 than is guessed.

-Droken