Part 1 Introduction
Rust literally grew up in the underground, in an abandoned loop of subway track where a large tribe of urban gypsies, proud heathens, and mystical vagabonds set up camp. His mother was a noted clairvoyant who made peculiar candles that could make or break the fortune of those who dared to light them. His father, despite an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin, had a successful career in vaudeville as an acrobat and comic, but he harbored a secret talent for transformation with the help of a magical tambourine. Very few ever witnessed the miracle. Rust himself never saw this particular trick, though he once caught an indirect glimpse of it, seeing his father's silhouette against a bonfire morph into beasts, bird, and curious pieces of furniture.
Needless to say, Rust grew up in an unusual neighborhood, full of communal festivities and obligatory freakshows. But sometimes, Rush would find himself in a nook near the surface, contemplating this familiar darkness in his life and wonder about the mountains and pasture, the soil from which the wicked herbs and mythical flowers grew, the very foliage and blooms that disingrated when they were submerged into his world, becoming merely a a wafting scent from an upside-down, dried bouquet. It was while he was pondering these very thoughts, one day, that the subway track rumbled, and the dust from obliterated cement rained from a sunlit crack above. And Rust gazed at this vision--this cloud of silt suspended in a slit of sunlight--as if it pulsated with magical possibility. For right above lived that other world he only knew briefly while at school or at the carnival, that strange land above where people regarded the sun not so much as a source of romance as much as regularity and routine.
It seems odd to most but it was perfectly normal to Rust, that he developed an ecstatic curiosity for the mundane. Soon after. he toiled over elaborate plans for expeditions. He scaled buildings, crawled through vents, swung on ropes, slid into dark corners just to glimpse a man sip brandy while engaging in stoic conversation over finances with his wife, witness a poor student smell a steaming pie before wielding an eager knife, admire a clerk finger through the crisp edges of paper files, and wonder at artful slosh of suds while a girl from the tennants tended to her laundry.
Rust could not feign invisibility flawlessly, however. Whether it be because of over-inquisitive neighbors or the serendiptous arrival of unsuspecting cops, reports of a peeping tom circulated throughout various neighborhoods.And even though they were uncommonly supportive of their son's hungry mind and strange inclinations, Rust's parents got particularly worried after an ugly incident involving brush with law enforcement and some angry dwellers armed with kitchen utensils, the entire intriguing chase culminating with a showdown on a tower and Rust dangling happily from the hour-hand of a large clock, sixty feet up in the air. Sternly, his father insisted," Due to the boy's inelegant method of mischief, he must be inititated into OUR special way of dealing with matters." So for his thirteenth birthday, both his mother and father recruited his Uncle Boris to give Rust a special present: his first spell.
Needless to say, Rust grew up in an unusual neighborhood, full of communal festivities and obligatory freakshows. But sometimes, Rush would find himself in a nook near the surface, contemplating this familiar darkness in his life and wonder about the mountains and pasture, the soil from which the wicked herbs and mythical flowers grew, the very foliage and blooms that disingrated when they were submerged into his world, becoming merely a a wafting scent from an upside-down, dried bouquet. It was while he was pondering these very thoughts, one day, that the subway track rumbled, and the dust from obliterated cement rained from a sunlit crack above. And Rust gazed at this vision--this cloud of silt suspended in a slit of sunlight--as if it pulsated with magical possibility. For right above lived that other world he only knew briefly while at school or at the carnival, that strange land above where people regarded the sun not so much as a source of romance as much as regularity and routine.
It seems odd to most but it was perfectly normal to Rust, that he developed an ecstatic curiosity for the mundane. Soon after. he toiled over elaborate plans for expeditions. He scaled buildings, crawled through vents, swung on ropes, slid into dark corners just to glimpse a man sip brandy while engaging in stoic conversation over finances with his wife, witness a poor student smell a steaming pie before wielding an eager knife, admire a clerk finger through the crisp edges of paper files, and wonder at artful slosh of suds while a girl from the tennants tended to her laundry.
Rust could not feign invisibility flawlessly, however. Whether it be because of over-inquisitive neighbors or the serendiptous arrival of unsuspecting cops, reports of a peeping tom circulated throughout various neighborhoods.And even though they were uncommonly supportive of their son's hungry mind and strange inclinations, Rust's parents got particularly worried after an ugly incident involving brush with law enforcement and some angry dwellers armed with kitchen utensils, the entire intriguing chase culminating with a showdown on a tower and Rust dangling happily from the hour-hand of a large clock, sixty feet up in the air. Sternly, his father insisted," Due to the boy's inelegant method of mischief, he must be inititated into OUR special way of dealing with matters." So for his thirteenth birthday, both his mother and father recruited his Uncle Boris to give Rust a special present: his first spell.
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