The boy is removed from the house he has been raised in just before his nineteenth birthday and moved to a flat overlooking the British Museum.
Everything seems basic and similar to the house, and in the closet he finds a series of suits, white shirts, and identical bowler hats.
Kind of restricting in the fashion sense, but then again, the man wears nothing but grey suits that may or may not be identical, so I suppose it could be worse.
His "challenge", as the man puts it, has not yet begun, but he now studies independently, with no more lengthy and somewhat confusing lectures.
Apparently he has been taught at least a fundamental amount of magic, though it is not referred to as magic, because:
"He practices the things he has been taught, though it is difficult to gauge the effectiveness of his illusions on his own."
And this is where he (I can't really call him the boy anymore) gets a little creepy.
Unrestricted by walls or rules, he begins to wander the streets, and often spends time "observing people". Yeesh.
I guess it isn't unforgivable, considering how little contact he has had with people, but still.
One day, he tries to revisit the house, but finds it abandoned, and on the way back to his flat, he realizes he has lost his notebook.
As it begins to rain, he retraces his steps and sees a woman reading his notebook.
No, this is not Celia, though I wish it was. She's currently traveling with her terrible father, to the best of my knowledge.
Instead, this is a contender for the novel's most pitiable character: Isobel Martin. As to why she is so pitiable, well...we'll come back to that eventually.
He gently confronts her about the notebook, and they exchange names.
Finally, I can refer to him by the name he uses for the rest of the book.
"Marco Alisdair" is how he introduces himself, a name he took great pains to choose for himself.
He offers to buy her a drink as thanks for finding the notebook, and they find a tiny cafe.
They make small talk, something I'm personally awful at, over glasses of Bordeaux, and Isobel asks him about the symbols written in his notebook.
She appears to know something about the things in the notebook, and when Marco inquires as to why, she tells him that she reads tarot cards, and he asks to see them.
The top card of her deck is Le Bateleur (The Magician), and he smiles at that. As she flips through the deck, she asks about his notebook again.
He offers to show her, and she accepts.
They leave the cafe and he moves Isobel so that her back is pressed against a grey stone wall.
And then they exchange a bit of dialogue that sounds like it was taken from Fifty Shades of Grey.
"'Do you trust me, Miss Martin?' he asks, watching her with the same intense stare from the cafe, only this time his eyes are barely inches from her own.
'Yes,' she says, without hesitation.
'Good,' Marco says, and with a swift movement he lifts his hand and places it firmly over Isobel's eyes."
So he uses his illusions to make her see a snowy forest, she's amazed, so on and so forth. It's a lot less impressive compared to some of the other illusions that Marco and Celia create throughout the book.
And we end the chapter with why I pity Isobel.
"Isobel laughs again, and she is still laughing when he leans closer and kisses her....To passerby on the darkened London street, they look like nothing out of the ordinary, only young lovers kissing in the rain."
For those who like surprises, Chapter Six should be up by next Monday.
[Spoiler Alert]
[Spoiler Alert]
If my pity wasn't enough of a hint:
Marco and Isobel, despite how adorable they might be, do not last. Being bound to another person in the way Marco is can have some...shall we say, side effects, and unfortunately, Isobel gets caught in the crossfire. But we won't get to that for a while.
Whoops! Already used my typical ending before the spoiler alert...
So here's a gif of Calvin and Hobbes dancing!
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