Getting to know Nicko

And then letting him go

Illustration by Mark Zug. Colourisation by Angie Sage.

I do like Nicko. He is the youngest of Septimus’s six older brothers and so is the nearest in age to Sep—two years older. However, they do not get to meet properly until Septimus is ten years old. Because the story really kicks off at this point Septimus and Nicko’s relationship develops at the same pace as the books themselves, just as it would have done in real life. Which meant that I got to know Nicko in the same, slow way as Septimus did.

A few chapters into writing MAGYK, I realised that I’d given myself a LOT of Heap brothers to write about—not to mention all the other characters that kept on appearing and insisting I wrote about them too. Sometimes it felt like they were all clamouring around me saying: ‘Me! Me! What about meeee?’. And so I began to learn the art of character management. First I discovered that it is very difficult to write a conversation between more than four characters. Three is an ideal number (Particularly when one is Marcia and she is getting really irritated about something. That is an absolute joy to write … but I digress). And as for keeping tabs on more than four characters’ internal dialogue, that is impossible.

And so there was no way I could successfully write all six Heap brothers at the same time. In the same place. Although this was not consciously done at the time, I now see that this does explain why I sent five of them: Jo-Jo, Edd, Erik, Sam and Simon off to go feral in the Forest. It kept them on hold and was a way of saving them up until later; it also gave them a different experience which I did not have to write about for a while. I also thought that the experiences that five teenage boys were most likely having in the Forest with a lot of young witches hanging around the place were not suitable material for a book aimed at age 8 years old and upwards. But that’s a whole other story, one I think that some fan fiction has picked up on.

Simon made a break from the Forest quite early but it didn’t do him much good. He still ended up mostly out of the way—chained to a radiator in the old Ladies’ Washroom, making small talk with the Supreme Custodian. So that took care of him. Sorry, Simon. You did rather draw the short straw. But you got your own back later …

So we are left with Nicko, which gave me with the perfect trio to write: Jenna, Septimus and Nicko. At first, of course—spoiler alert—Septimus is known as Boy 412, a child soldier in the Young Army. I had thought it would be Jenna who would be more sympathetic to the scrawny and scared boy soldier that Septimus is at this point. But I soon realised that Nicko was being surprisingly fair to the at times annoying, and possibly dangerous, Boy 412. Jenna was much quicker to anger. When they are being pursued by the deadly Hunter through Marcia’s Magykal fog, Jenna thinks Boy 412 is about to betray them and it is she who reacts.

Jenna, who had not been the only girl in a family of six boys without learning a thing or two, had Boy 412 facedown on the deck in an armlock.

“Let him go, Jen,” said Nicko.

“Why?” demanded Jenna.

“He’s only a silly boy.” Nicko says.

I like to think that even here Nicko has an inkling that Boy 412 is more to him that he understands right then. But who knows? It is still early on in the series and I was so caught up in the plot and that I hadn’t really thought about Septimus’s relationships with his many brothers.

By the end of MAGYK, because I’d spent a lot of time with our trio of Jen, Sep and Nicko, I really liked Nicko. He was an approachable kind of guy. He had a workmanlike approach to MAGYK; he knew a few things and could use them, but he wasn’t particularly interested and that made him feel accessible. What Nicko loved was boats and practical stuff: you need a boat built, then Nicko’s your man. He had become a sensible anchor, someone I knew I could rely on.

And so I found the Nicko became a bigger part of Septimus’s life than I had expected. In Book 2, FLYTE, he is the only person who believes Septimus when he says that Jenna has been abducted.

“What’s up, Sep?” asked Nicko, who could see his younger brother was upset.

“Simon kidnapped Jenna and no one will believe me, not even Marcia,” Septimus gabbled in a rush.

“What?”

“Simon’s kidnapped Jenna and –”

“’S all right, Sep, I heard what you said. Come and sit down and tell me about it.” Nicko climbed ashore and put his arm around Septimus’s shoulder. They sat together with their feet dangling in the Moat while Septimus told Nicko the whole story. As the story progressed Nicko’s expression became increasingly worried.

Finally Septimus came to the end and said, “. . . but I bet you don’t believe me either.”

“’Course I believe you.” Nicko says.

And so Nicko becomes an integral part of Book 2. He listens to Septimus, he supports him refuses to let him go off alone into the Forest. Together they meet their Shape-Shifting Grandpa Benji and do all the things that brothers should do together. I felt it was good for Nicko too, he enjoyed suddenly being a big brother when up until then he’d been the smallest.

Nicko’s story becomes enmeshed in the whole Septimus Heap series. So much so that he causes Book Four, QUESTE, to be written in an attempt to rescue him from oblivion. At the end of PHYSIK, Nicko decides to stay behind in an earlier Time so that his new love, Snorri, is not alone. This was a one of those moments when a character turns around and tells you, No I’m not doing what you want. I’m doing what I want. ARGH. I had expected Nicko to come home with the others to his own Time, but at the very last moment, he refused. Because he is a good and honourable guy. I understand that. But, oh, he caused me a whole ton of trouble.

One of the scenes I felt so sad writing was at the beginning of QUEST, when Jannit Maarten asks Sarah Heap to sign Nicko’s Release from his Apprenticeship Indentures because he had already been gone six months and, as Jannit says, ‘I have heard that he will never return.’ And indeed, how does anyone come back from five hundred years in the past? Thanks Nicko. I don’t know either. And so it was that Nicko made me think about The House of Foryx, which still causes my head to spin, although I do think the logic of it works.

The House of Foryx changed Nicko. I wasn't expecting that and neither were Jenna or Septimus, although I should have expected it. Because how can being trapped for an endless and unknowable amount of time not change someone, however practical and upbeat they may be. And so, after Jen, Sep and Marcia had very bravely got Nicko—and Snorri—back to their own Time, there was a sadness about Nicko, and a heaviness that everyone found hard to deal with. Me included.

But I guess that’s what happens when you let your characters make their own decisions. They change and you have to get to know them all over again. But that’s OK. Because people do change; it’s one of the things that makes life so interesting.

Just don’t go getting stuck five hundred years in the past, OK?