A Wizard's Passage

May 22nd, 2020

The first signs of the wizard’s coming went unnoticed by the people of Hamfleet, but not by the beasts. In the early days of that summer the oxen lowed and fretted at their yokes, chickens refused to lay or pecked at the eggs still in their nests, while coyotes and wolves and wild dogs prowled closer than any other time in living memory. Even the fish of Sapphire Lake, the life’s blood of the little village, turned cunning and kept to safer waters.

"They know something’s about to happen," said the Widow Morren one bright day on the lake-shore. She, the ale-wives, and a handful of others had all gathered at the edge of the water to work, sing, and generally keep one another company through the season’s heat. Morren sat in her customary place, on a stone a little ways apart from the rest of the group, which not only befit someone of her profession but also let her sit close enough to the edge to soak her feet as she worked. The staff of a cunning woman, made of sturdy oak and banded at each end with iron rings, lay in easy reach beside her.

"Who is it that knows, Morren, and what?" It was Gira, an elderly ale-wife with rheumy eyes and a face given to crinkled smiles, who asked.

"The beasts know," said the widow. "The fish. The birds. Haven’t you noticed?"

"Tell us all the same, you old witch." Some of the younger women exchanged fearful glances, wondering what the "witch" would do, but their elders only smiled and rolled their eyes. They remembered Morren and Gira both as young women, inseparable but always, happily, at one another’s throats.

Morren harrumphed and set aside her charm. "Well Gira, as soon as I find a way to talk to beasts and ask them, I’ll be sure to come find you. Perhaps I’ll be able to understand you at last."

"Perhaps if you sing to them they’ll speak, if only to make you stop."

"You’d like that, would you?" Morren laughed, but soon enough got a faraway look in her eyes.

Gira frowned and returned to her own work. She would have liked to hear a song, in fact. Once Morren had rarely gone a day&emdash;or an hour, it had seemed at the time&emdash;without singing. Worry and sorrow had quieted her over the years. Now it was rare to hear a song from the cunning woman’s hut. She’d hoped anger, playful or no, might have brought her voice back more fully. Even if only for a time.

The cunning woman stared out across the lake. Beyond the stilts of the crannogs where most of them lived, she could just make out the darting shapes of the fishers. They glided here and there across the shimmering surface on coracles, hauling at their nets. Sometimes they would whoop for the silver-scaled catch within but more often they only cursed and went looking for somewhere else to cast.

The winter was looking to be a lean one.

"Why would fish have reason to be afraid?" This time it was Aliena, Gira’s niece and one of the youngest women in their little group, who asked.

Morren blinked, coming back out of her thoughts. "Aside from nets and turtles, you mean? They have few other reasons. Natural ones, I mean."

"Perhaps it’s a wizard coming," offered one of the others. "Or fairies!"

"You’re always on about fairies," Gira said.

"But perhaps&emdash;"

"Fish and beasts have no reason to fear their kind," Morren said. "That I do know."

"Then a wizard," Aliena said. "Do they have reason to fear a wizard?""

Morren shrugged. "They’ve as much course as any, I’d think. Wizards are dangerous folk."

"You married one, didn’t you?" That was the common rumor, at least. The widow had always been tight-lipped about what sort of man her husband had been, and she had no intention of changing.

Gira smirked. She had known her friend’s husband better than most; he’d been an odd one, true, but maybe nothing more. "Morren has always liked danger. Not that you’d know anything about that, Aliena."

"I don’t know what you mean, auntie."

" ‘Course you don’t. And I’m too blind to see the way you look at Hafstan, in any case."

Aliena blushed and the rest laughed, and the matter of the fish and what they might know was forgotten for a time.

***

It was the next sign, some days later, that started Morren to worrying. Hafstan Carpenter came to her cottage on a foggy morning complaining of a heacache and a pain in his knuckles. Now a carpenter with bad joints was nothing new to the cunning woman, nor was a young man who regretted his wine the next day. But something in the faroff look in his eyes gave her pause.

"When did it start?" the cunning woman asked. She had only to point to a stool and Hafstan dutifully sat down. The fire hadn’t yet been rekindled from the night before, and Morren coaxed it to a merry crackle as she listened.

"I’ve felt it coming for days," he said. Hafstan didn’t know the import of his words, but it Morren surely did. "Every night when I lay down, it’s worse than it was."

"Hmm." Morren brought out a poultice made of urine and a poisonous herb and other things besides, the very same concoction she used on her own aging bones when they ached. She rubbed it into his knuckles. "Did I ever tell you about the day you were born?"

The carpenter gave her a puzzled look. "No."

"You were big, my lad. Biggest babe I’ve ever seen, and no mistake. I always tell your mother, I say: your boy Hafstan, you ask him for anything and he ought to come running."

Hafstan nodded. "She thinks so, too."

Morren made a sound of approval. "But what I remember even more clearly is you had a caul on your head."

"Really?"

"True as day. I had to peel it off you like I was peeling an orange. Very curious, it was."

She fetched him a salve next, this one made of herbs, bark, and pig fat. "Rub this on either temple, just like that. The pain will dull soon. Did you know, as a cunning woman, you learn folks with cauls can see things sometimes. At dusk, or at dawn, or when something strange is liable to happen."

"It already feels better," Hafstan said as he stood and turned to go.

"Hafstan."

The carpenter stopped.

"Did you see anything?"

He took his time answering. "A man."

"Who? What did he look like?"

"There was fire in his eyes or I’m a fool. But I’ve never seen him before."

"Did anyone else see?"

Hafstan shook his head.

"Well, fool or no, I believe you." Morren sat in her little cottage long after he had gone. "Very curious."

***

As near as Morren could later determine, it was Aliena who spread the story. She must have overheard it when Morren had come to speak to Gira later that evening, and then the next day cornered Hafstan to demand to know if it was all true. Of course Hafstan wouldn’t dare refuse the young woman anything. After that the story was well and truly out.

"I wish she’d have stayed quiet," Morren told her friend a few days later. They were by the homestead where Gira lived with the rest of her family. The widow rather hoped Aliena was eavesdropping again. "She’s caused all sorts of trouble by it."

Gira smiled. "You’re only upset you aren’t the one who spread the story."

"I’m upset half the village thinks Hafstan mad. Do you know how many have come to ask me about it?"

"He’s always been a strange one, Hafstan. Everyone will come around by harvest. Stop being such an old badger."

"I hope you’re right. But if I’m an old badger you must be some greying sparrow."

"A sparrow? How?"

"Always happy to tweet and twitter, and never mind the cat prowling around below."

"Well, I’ve a badger to mind the cat for me." Gira slapped her knee. "Won’t you stay for dinner tonight? Perhaps with some of my ale I can teach you to sing."

They both rose, and both felt their age. Morren leaned a little on her staff. "Not tonight. I must see this through first, to the end. Whatever end it is."

Ham Fisher was waiting at Morren’s door as she approached it that evening. He wanted to know if it was true that Hafstan Carpenter saw a man wreathed in flames who was coming to destroy the village. The cunning woman did her best to put his mind at ease, but no sooner was she done with him than Engwulf Fisher was knocking and asking her the same. More followed after that, and others (somet with even stranger worries) came the next day.

Never in Morren’s long life had she been so busy, as fear and the signs of the wizard’s approach both grew stronger and stranger day by day. Cows stopped producing milk, or the milk came out sour, or in one case it came out black and smelling of shit. She gave out charms and chanted incantations, saw to sick animals, and gave Engwulf (who, in his defense, had seen his first child born only that spring) a stern talking-to about watching where he put the milk pail.

One night Hafstan was found groaning behind his workshop, clutching a bloody gash on his temple. Someone had thought the carpenter was the wizard everyone talked about and sought to solve the problem directly. The culprit was never caught but it was noted Ham had a new bruise on his cheek the day after. When he floundered in the lake a few days later and found a neat (but subtley-made) hole in his coracle, he said nothing of it and the matter was concluded.

***

All of Hamfleet watched the phase of the moon as the days passed and the signs grew. The moon waxed full and then began its waning. Morren prayed it wouldn’t happen on Fire’s Night, when the moon was darkest and magic was strongest.

The village was too poor to afford a proper temple. Instead they kept shrines to the gods on the outskirts, little more than wooden boxes with divine symbols carved into their faces and a wide slot into which sacrifices could be placed. They had no priest or caretaker to look after the shrines save Mad Ethric, a holy hermit who lived off the sacrifices to the gods and what little his meager garden and few animals could produce. He lived a full five miles from Hamfleet proper but sometimes ventured to the shores to talk with the fisherfolk or barter for much-needed goods.

Now, as the times grew darker, the path between Morren’s hut and the hermit’s distant dwelling was well-trod. Those who found no comfort in chants and charms sought it in divine blessing; those who found no comfort with the gods sought it in white magic. Morren, oddly, found herself agreeing more and more with the first group.

Five days before the new moon the cunning woman set out for Ethric’s hovel. She carried the staff of her office in her right hand, and tucked underneath her left arm was a hen. She held the fowl in a special grip she’d learned many years ago, and it never stirred so much as a finger’s breadth. The way was long and her bones ached, though she’d used her poultice on them just that morning. Once she’d have covered the distance in no time at all and sung the whole way. Now it took her most of the morning, and she passed in silence.

The hermit lived in a ramshackle dwelling along the height of a wooded hill. A long boulder like a giant’s shoulder formed a natural ledge which jutted into the open air, and it was on this stone outcropping that Ethric lived. Just enough soil clung to the edifice for him to keep a modest garden, and he needed only maintain a single straight fence to keep his property separate.

Morren found him tending to the fence, or making a show of doing so. Even as she approached he chuckled to himself and broke into a dance, first stepping as one might on a feast day and then bounding along through gaps in the wooden posts. He only stopped when the widow coughed, as politely as she could, and held the hen out for him.

"This is my best," she said. "She’ll lay you many eggs, and I hope the gods smile on me for each one."

Ethric was happy enough at the offering. Morren walked with him as he circled around the back of his little hut to his coop. She saw he already had more birds than he could keep, and plenty of other animals besides. The hermit smiled. He had more gaps in his teeth than was usual, and a permanent sort of faraway look in his eyes. "I’ve never eaten better than these last weeks," he said. "Nor will I again, I expect, though I live to see a hundred winters."

"You think you’ll live so long as that?"

"That’s not for me to decide."

"But you expect to still be&emdash;to survive what’s coming," the widow pressed.

"Oh, perhaps." He put a hand on her shoulder. "They come to you for guidance, more than me, and you’ve none to turn to. Is that it?"

"I’ve made charms for myself, but am I only to trust my own handiwork?" Morren’s voice quavered.

"You’ve two things else."

"What?"

"The first, pray. Pray to Lecna. Lecna knows the hearts of wizards and fairies both. Lecna sways the currents of magic as it sees fit. Lecna is the Changing One, sometimes god and sometimes goddess. Beg Lecna to turn this wizard’s path aside, if wizard it be."

"I gave you the hen."

"And I’m sure the gods will look kindly on you for it; you’ll be in my prayers tonight. But keep asking them. You’ll not be the only one."

"And the second thing I’m to do?"

"Be happy. Sing, dance. There’s no use in aught else."

On her way back, Morren resolved (silently) to pray every night to Lecna.

***

No sooner had Morren settled herself down to sleep than the storm began. At first it was only a wind, rising and then howling, but so suddenly that there were some who thought even the wind unnatural. The sliver of moon disappeared behind the thunderheads and lightning flashed in the skies above: the lightning of the upper air which sometimes came through that way in the summer months. It danced from cloud to rumbling cloud but never alighted to earth.

The storm gave Hamfleet sound, and fury, and dry heat, but no rain.

In the midst of it (after what felt like a whole night of lying awake, unable to keep her eyes closed) Morren left her hut to relieve herself. It was by then nearly halfway to dawn, but the cunning woman didn’t know that. She also didn’t know it was nearly time for the wizard to pass by.

The earth itself creaked and groaned beneath her feet while the sky crackled and roared above her head. With only the scant light of the stars, she could make out little through the gloom and walked more by memory than sight.

Perhaps it was only the dark or the din which tricked her, but to Morren it seemed she even felt the ground begin to swell. She felt her balance shift as the soil on which she trod rose steeper and steeper, or maybe she only fell (as old women sometimes do) but in any case she only caught herself by leaning on her staff. For a moment it was as though she were perched atop a newly formed hill and then, as suddenly as it rose up, the earth settled again and she stood once more on flat ground.

Morren’s breaths came in quick gasps. She fought to calm herself, but as she did so an idea came to her: it had been as though the earth itself were sighing. The notion did nothing for her calm.

"Yes," said a deep voice nearby. "You have the right of it."

This time her staff wasn’t enough to keep her balance and the old widow toppled backwards. But even the pain in her bones was no distraction, and she peered into the darkness for any hint as to the source of the voice.

A dog stepped into her view. It had mangy black fur and soft eyes.

"A wizard is coming," it said. Somehow its voice was even worse, now that Morren saw it coming from something so ill-suited to the sound. She could only stare. The dog licked her once on the shin. "Does this please you?"

"What&emdash;" She blinked, still not quite believing. "What manner of creature are you?"

"Only a dog."

"The wizard’s?"

"No. A dog from this place, which eats scraps left outside at night."

"How are you speaking, then?"

"A wizard is come," it said again, as though in answer. Then without another word it bounded off, never again to be seen in that part of the world.

The cunning woman didn’t sleep the rest of that night. First she went back to her hut to fetch a stronger ointment for her aches. She was no longer a young woman, she thought ruefully, and her days of falling gladly onto her back were long behind her. Afterward she ventured out again into the dark and the dry storm.

There Morren stayed, sitting with a piece of bread she had thought to snatch on her way out, for the rest of the night. Toward morning the thunderheads moved away and the dawn found a grumpy-looking but still very much awake old widow sitting not a hundred feet from the road to Hamfleet. Now and then she nibbled on her bread, or looked this way up and down the road. To the east she had a clear view of the path for many miles, but to the north she could see only a little ways before it reached the cover of the northern woods and curved out of sight.

She would stay there and wait for the wizard, she had decided. In part because she wished to give whoever it was a piece of her mind, and in part because she couldn’t bear to think of what the next night would bring, if there was still more to come.

(Once, near midmorning, a few of the women came to Gira and asked why her friend was staring at the road. "Let the badger be," she told them all. "There’s no help for it now and she’ll have to come out of this mood on her own.")

So the hours passed. The road remained empty all through midday and into the afternoon. Morren kept at her vigil. The sun was halfway through its return to the earth when the cunning woman, about to give up at long last, spotted the lonely shape on the path to the east.

It came slowly, unhurried. Morren’s patience ran thin now that the end was in sight.

As the shape drew closer it resolved itself into a man.

He had nothing on his person which might proclaim him as a wizard. Morren, like all the rest, had heard stories: wizards wore long flowing robes, sometimes pointed hats and sometimes dark hoods. They carried magical staffs and wands of enchanted wood. They had long beards, piercing eyes, crooked noses, and bore on their faces the passage of centuries. Fire danced along their fingertips and their voices were powerful enough to shake the very firmaments above.

This man was nothing like that. His hood was green and fell to his shoulder blades, in a style so out of date even the people of Hamfleet had begun to imitate it. He wore a simple russet tunic and a blue overtunic. His belt did little to hide a slight paunch, and his hose was of burgundy. His boots looked to be of good leather, but simple make. His eyes held no twinkle of knowledge. His dark cheeks were covered by a beard, true, but of the same sort any farmer might grow. He seemed to Morren quite young indeed, although to others he seemed old enough to have young grandchildren. No fire danced in his hands, no imp or familiar helped carry the pack slung across his broad shoulders.

It wasn’t until he reached the point where the road curved away to the north that he seemed to notice the cunning woman waiting for him.

"Good day!" He called, waving. His voice did not shake the firmaments.

Morren returned the gesture with a smile.

Then he was away, leaving the village of Hamfleet behind with no more than a pleasant greeting from afar.

***

In the days which followed Morren quickly found herself less and less busy with the affairs of others. Even as Fire’s Night neared, the signs of the wizard’s coming dwindled away and were soon forgotten.

"You’re grateful to be left alone, I expect," Gira said when next she and Morren found themselves at the lake shore together.

"Yes and no."

"What else could you have to worry yourself over?" The ale-wife looked at her friend incredulously, though Morren didn’t notice. She was looking out across the lake. The fish had returned to their usual haunts, and now the nets were full to bursting once again.

"I’d expected something more of my first wizard," the cunning woman said after a time. "All that, and then... no magic. He only bid me good day, and there was no power in what he said."

"Is that all?" Gira grunted and packed her newly-washed clothes into her basket. "Age has made you happy to worry, I think. There’s nothing for it, I’ll leave the badger to her growling."

Morren bid her friend goodbye and returned her attention to the charm in her lap. As she wove the strands of horse-hair together she began to sing, first softly and then louder. Her song rang across the waters and some of the fishers even paused in their coracles to hum along. Gira, hearing it as she walked away, smiled broadly and slowed her step to listen awhile.

---

Second try, and I think I did pretty well with my challenge to write a happy ending. Though I admit this isn't a new story for me; I wrote the original version sometime in 2017. That version was much more kitschy and experimental when it came to the writing style, while the one you just read was more an experiment in a different type of narrative.

This story hits at a couple key points about how magic and wizards work in this setting which I've otherwise had a hard time communicating; the idea that a wizard's magic isn't some kind of tool that they use when they like but simply an effect they have on the environment. Though I don't go out of my way to say it in the story, I don't expect a reader would get the impression that the wizard knows he's causing all this trouble for Morren and the people of Hamfleet. He's just walking from point A to point B and the world is reacting to him in ways he may not fully see or understand. Likewise, magic isn't something a wizard can just turn on or off, it permeates their words. Even something as simple as a polite greeting from afar can be a spell.

I have at least one other story in me that will hit on similar points, but I don't know if it'll wind up as a part of this series. If all goes well I might try the more traditional publishing routes for it.