The market at the centre of the Walled City was hot and crowded and full of life, yet for once, Misha was not enthralled by the spectacle of it all. More than once Bran found himself backtracking through the crowd to find the lost lad.
"Something bothering you?" he asked. Misha was looking at the glass window in front of a real estate agent. In it were displays of all the places on the market for sale or rent.
"Mm? Oh, no, just..."
Bran waited.
"It's all quite expensive, isn't it?" Misha said finally.
Bran looked at the adverts and all the zeroes. "You need to remember the currencies. I think the currency of Pretan right now is..."
"It's twelve, and I am."
"And you still think it's expensive?"
Misha looked incredulously at him. He pointed at the properties. "Even in the biggest city in Pretan you can buy a flat for less than some of these. And that's not even going into the rent..."
"Oh." Having grown up in Pearl City, Bran didn't have a good sense for what was expensive or not expensive when it came to property prices. These were just the prices he'd seen most his life.
Misha sighed. "The thing is..." He glanced warily at Bran, "I don't have any money. You know those hundreds in my wallet? That's it. If they were Pounds then it wouldn't be so bad, but once you divide it by twelve..." Misha sighed. "My father told me to pack light, so most of what I have's still in the bank and even then, it's not a lot, just saved up pocket money and the money that was supposed to pay for my school fees."
"School fees?" Bran suddenly looked concerned. "How old are you?"
"I'm nineteen," Misha replied. "When I say 'school' I really mean university."
"Just starting, or?"
"Between year two and three. I was originally transferring to a university here, but... I don't think that's happening anymore."
"Why's that?"
"My father was paying the school fees."
"Ah. And I guess everything, credit card and all that, is also connected to his account, am I right?"
Misha nodded. "And like you said before, I don't know how well connected he is here. He might be able to use bank transfers and things like that to track me."
To Misha, such thinking was bizarre, bordering on insanity, but it was his new reality. For Bran, on the other hand, it was just another normal day.
"So, I... don't know how I'm going to pay for anything, let alone pay you back..." Misha looked around at the crowd and all the price tags radiating money.
Bran shook his head, trying to curb his smile. "Misha, you remember what I said before?"
"Uh, you've said a lot of things."
"About you coming with me if you have nowhere else to go."
"Oh." Misha nodded. "I remember that." Vividly. The memory of it still made his chest feel warm.
"That still stands," said Bran simply.
"But... You said you don't have a lot of money," said Misha.
"When did I say that?"
"Earlier... when Helen wanted to eat more food."
"Ah, well... Yes, that's true, but it doesn't have to be a problem."
Misha frowned, confused. "You're not going to...?" He looked around. There were no small number of jewelry shops in the area stuff full of gold and other precious gems.
Seemingly sensing Misha's line of thinking, Bran put an arm over the other's shoulders and steered him to one side.
"I don't normally like telling people this, but I'll tell you anyway." Bran cleared his throat. "I never graduated high school, and I never went to university. The woman who owns the flat we're staying in looked after me, but I had to make ends meet myself. Can you guess how?"
Misha looked back and forth between Bran's eyes. They were standing really close together. He swallowed. "I'm guessing you didn't steal from jewelry shops."
"No. I started a business." Bran let Misha go and took the bag from him that Bran had given him to hold. He took it to the railing that separated the market area from the playground just beyond, set it against it, and pulled out the wooden box from within.
"A business?" Misha asked, curious again. The box was about a foot wide by a foot deep and looked suspiciously like a discarded wine box, like a cheaper version of the one's his father used to discard. "A business box?"
Bran turned the box the right way up and Misha saw that there was a slit cut into the top, almost like a letterbox, and above that were a series of words carved into the wood.
The first row was in Chinese, but the second...
"Place your wishes here," Misha read. "Wishes?"
Bran grinned. "A business box."
--
It was easy setting up the box itself, all Misha had to do was twist a thick bit of wire round the fingers of the railing and loop the rest through a handy hole in the back of the box, but it was the inner function of the box that had his interest.
After finishing his twisting, he crouched down by Bran and watched as he finished off the last strokes of the Memory Impression Spell. Misha had asked why he was doing it here - had he forgotten to do it at home? - but Bran said, with a huff, that he found spells like these tended to work best when written in the place it was going to be used. Misha was skeptical about this explanation, but he let it go.
"You sure this is a good place to put the box?" he asked instead. There was some foot traffic but not a lot.
"If it isn't, we can just move it later," replied Bran. He finished up the spell, waved the paper a few times to help the ink dry, then slotted it into the mouth of the Wishing Box. "Once we know it works, I'll find some more boxes we can set up more."
The pair stood back and looked at their work. It was going on twilight, and the office workers would start filling the roads soon, but for the moment, it was quiet.
The basis of the Wishing Box, as Bran had explained to Misha, was that everyone has hopes or dreams or worries and doubts, and for those who felt strongly enough about them to write them down, this box would help them get in contact with someone who might just be able to help them: Bran, and now also Misha.
Misha adjusted the box so that it hung more squarely against the railing. "Is this... legal?" he asked.
"Legal?"
"Yeah, like... setting up shop like this."
Bran pulled out his wallet and gave Misha a wad of paper. "Helen gave that to me earlier today. I applied for it a while back."
Misha unfolded the paper. It was thin, kind of like rice paper, and covered with beautifully calligraphed words in both Chinese and English. Misha's eyes skipped past the Chinese and began reading the English.
"The South Seas Department hereby ratifies the spiritual and/or religious activities of the organisation known as... Little Whale Toes?" Misha looked up at Bran. "You've started a religion called Little Whale Toes?" He wasn't sure if he found the religion founding more shocking or the name.
Bran took the paper then pointed at a bit lower down. "It's not a religion. See? Spiritual services."
Misha looked. "I don't get it," he concluded.
"It's simple: I earn a living by granting people wishes," said Bran.
"I get that part. I just... what's with this paper?" asked Misha.
Bran sighed and took the paper back from Misha. "This, my friend, is a license for trade. If I set up shop without one of these, Helen and her friends would be chucking me in jail."
"So... the SSD covers, uh, trading licenses?"
"Sure. You can't have the usual department issue them if you want to keep the paranormal secret."
Misha nodded slowly. He had a point. "So... if someone wanted to set up a business reading Tarot cards..."
"You do Tarot?" asked Bran, surprised.
"No, it's just a 'what-if' scenario."
"Well, if it's Tarot then that would be a normal business trading license."
"Because it's not real?"
"Oh, it's real, just anyone with any real talent at it wouldn't be making peanuts at a fortune reading stall."
"Really?"
"Well, the SSD usually does send someone undercover to test if someone's for real or not. Mostly they're not."
"But sometimes they are?"
"Sometimes, but rarely. And even then... it's easy to figure out someone's fate, it's much harder to change it."
Bran's tone as he said this struck a chord with Misha. "Why-"
"Hungry?" asked Bran, cutting Misha off. "I think there should be a good shop for siu-mai around here..."
Bran folded up his trading license, put it back in his wallet and began to wander off in search of food.
Misha sighed then gave the Wishing Box a soft pat on the top, wished it good luck in business, and hurried after his mysterious friend.