Aurelius and I Read Online Free PDF Page A

possible moment before doing their homework (with varying levels of success, I feel I must stress), and that nobody in the history of the world has ever gotten square eyes from sitting too close to the television. For me though, the secrets revealed to me by my grandmother were not of the usual variety – they were far more important. My grandmother taught me about magic.
    The existence of magic had not been revealed to me as a greatly shocking revelation. Indeed, I cannot even remember the first time I had heard my grandmother mention the subject. She had simply always spoken of it, ever since I was born and almost certainly before. To my Grandmother, magic was simply fact. She believed in its existence in the same way other people believe in the existence of physics (which, incidentally, she was oddly suspicious of).
    You see, my grandmother was a Romany gypsy. You are probably wondering what exactly that means, well, so was I, so I’ll tell you what she told me. Apparently, the Romany are a group of people from Eastern Europe who travel around together, visiting many places without ever stopping somewhere to make their home (“Home is where the heart is, Charlie,” my grandmother would often tell me). Well, many years ago some very evil people invaded lots of the countries of which my grandmother had grown up in and had tried to murder all of the Romany gypsies (for what reason is something which I, to this day, have never been able to discern). In any case, without going into too much horrific detail and spoiling what has up until now been a relatively cheery tale, many of the Romany people were forced to flee and make their homes in new countries. My grandmother had come to England and, as much as she would hate to admit it, was surprised to discover that she preferred a more stationary, settled lifestyle where she could really get to know a place, and make friendships that lasted. She did, however, insist upon sticking to her Romany roots wherever possible; in fact she still lived in a caravan, although it was a modern one with running water, and a toilet and a TV, not one of those pretty wooden, horse-drawn ones you see on television. “You never know when you might need to take your home somewhere else, Charlie,” she would tell me. I never had the heart to point out that her caravan had no wheels, and that, in any case, she owned no car with which to tow it.
    Another, more important element of my grandmother’s Romany roots was the fact that she thought of herself as a very spiritual person. As such, she felt herself to be very in touch with the earth, or so she told me. In truth I never really understood what she meant by such things, except that it seemed to necessitate that she believed in almost all forms of myth and magic and was a very superstitious person in general. It should come as no surprise then that she was the first (and, until now, only) person I told about my bizarre experience with Aurelius and the squirrel.
    “And what did you do next?” she asked me once I had recited to her all that I told you in the previous two chapters, almost without taking a breath.
    “I ran,” I replied sheepishly. By now a day had passed, and in the safe, comfortable surroundings of my grandmother’s caravan’s tiny living room, faced with so many unanswered questions, I was beginning to regret my decision to flee.
    “Probably a good idea,” she assured me in her unusual, yet comfortably familiar accent which hinted subtly at an exotic past. “And have you told your parents about what happened?”
    “No. I didn’t think they’d understand.”
    “Probably not, Charlie. Probably not,” the old woman agreed. “Nevertheless, you must be aware that there may well come a point when they shall have to be told – this Aurelius character isn’t just going to disappear you know, not after going to such trouble to find you.”
    “But he didn’t find me,” I protested. “We just sort of ran into one another.