Shamanka by Jeanne Willis

wearing a magician’s outfit that looked like it belonged to a fat bloke. His name wasn’t really the Dark Prince, of course. No, that was just his stage name.
    â€œDid he tell you his real name?”
    Bart hits himself on the head with his pudding spoon to jog his memory.
    â€œLet me see. Was it Tommy Tucker? No! It was a regular, English name. Was it Bobby Shaftoe? Only he’d been to sea and he was bonny. No, no, his real name was John. John Tabuh – that was it! Why do you ask, d’you know him?”
    Sam touches the locket around her neck. “He’s my dad. I’m trying to find him. He left when I was a baby.”
    Bart blinks slowly. Fake stone-dust floats off his eyelashes and lands in his pastry. “I’ll tell you what,” he says. “Fathers don’t just say ‘Bye, Baby Bunting’ and leave for no reason. Maybe he just went hunting to fetch you a rabbit skin.”
    â€œNo, if that was the case, he’d be back by now. Aunt Candy told me he was an explorer but I found his photo and his magician notes and … I
dream
about him.”
    â€œI’ve never had a dream,” says Bart. “Not when I’m asleep, anyway. Not even when I was a little boy under a haystack. When I’m sleeping, it’s as if the curtains fall and the show’s over. There’s no encore of events that happened in my life. I only ever have dreams in the day when my eyes are open, when I’m standing still. Maybe I’m dreaming now.” He freezes in his chair; his fork halfway to his lips, his mouth fixed in mid-chew. One second he is a man of flesh, the next he is stone. Sam taps his bowl with her fork.
    â€œBart … Bart!”
    He shakes his head like a dog with wet fur and becomes human again. “Where was I? Has the clock struck one? Has the mouse run down?”
    Bart gathers his thoughts and picks up the invisible thread that might lead to John Tabuh. The last time he saw him he was performing tricks where the Jumping Bean Man now stands. Good tricks they were, like he’d been doing them for far longer than his years. John couldn’t have been much older than … what, eighteen?
    How did he come to be there? Well, he never said much, but he did mention he’d met an old lady on the Piccadilly Line who’d told him to get out at Covent Garden. Sam’s mouth drops open.
    â€œThat’s what happened to me! An old lady on the train told me to come here too. I wonder if it was the same person? That would be too much of a coincidence, surely? Unless it’s some kind of magic?”
    Bart shakes his head. “Not magic, just maths. Coincidences are one a penny, two a penny. It’s a small world and a very repetitive one. A very repetitive one. I bet your old lady sits in the same seat on the same train every day and has done for donkey’s years. The odds are that ninety-five per cent of old ladies talk to strangers on trains, rising to ninety-nine per cent if the stranger is handsome. If he happens to be a magician, Covent Garden is bound to crop up in conversation, so, statistically, the chances of the same lady talking to you and your dad are much higher than you think.”
    Sam would have preferred a magical answer to a mathematical one. She toys with a sugar cube and takes out a pencil. “So, Mr Statistics, what are the odds of me finding my father? Give me a number between one and ten.”
    â€œThree.”
    Sam writes it on the sugar cube, drops it in her glass of water and holds Bart’s hand over it. “Only three? Are you sure?”
    He nods and squeezes her hand. She turns it over. There’s a number three written on his palm but he never put it there.
    â€œHow did
that
get…?”
    â€œMagic, Bart. If
only
you’d said five. A three in ten chance of finding him is not good.”
    He wipes crumbs off his lips. “If you want my advice, leave him alone and he’ll