Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

He stomped down the stairs.

Both the doctor and the woman chased after him. This time their faces were apologetic.

“No, no. I’m sorry. I really did just want to find what is wrong,” she said.

“Come on, boy. It is just a joke,” he said.

Theissen whipped around as he raised his eyebrows. “Joke? Is it funny to make people uncomfortable?”

The doctor lowered his head, then looked up with a narrow expression. “Is it funny to constantly change the color of man’s suit coat?”

Expecting him to admit guilt, what the doctor got was a broad grin. Theissen nodded. “Much funnier. Especially since you never listen when I tell you I don’t want to be a doctor.”

“But you are so good at it!”

Theissen glared at him. “I’m good at carpentry too. I hate being a doctor. It stinks. Literally.”

“But everyone needs—”

“No!” Theissen shouted. “You need. I haven’t barely seen anything for what I have done. And you keep talking to my father as if it is what I was meant to do forever. And what makes me even angrier is that you keep hogging all my shop time for this work stuff when all I want is to finish that cabinet I have been working on!”

The doctor gave a derisive snort. “Cabinet making…. You could be saving lives.”

“I like cabinet making!” Theissen walked back to the road.

The woman chased after him. “Wait! At least tell me what kind of sickness I have. I won’t make you come in. Just tell me what is wrong with me so I can find a cure.”

Theissen cast her a glare as he said, “What you have about six other men in town have, though you have it worse. It smells like old milk, and it makes me want to throw up.”

“But what is it?” She nearly fell at his feet as if begging.

Giving her a shrug, Theissen turned toward the road. “I don’t know what it is. All I see is that the first point of infection was your privates—and that has nothing to do with me. Good day!”

He stomped off without another word, not looking back.

“You are cruel and unfeeling!” the doctor had chased after him when Theissen had reached the main road back towards his home. It was clear the man had stayed to comfort the woman and offer some advice. He must have run to hunt him down. “Have you no feeling for the sick?”

Theissen stopped and tilted his head. “Sick? You know, most of those people you have me look at have self-inflicted diseases, hers included. How can I feel sorry?”

A glare had formed on the doctor’s face. “They are in pain. Surely you know pain. Your almighty wizard power doesn’t prevent pain, does it?”

“Almighty…I…ooh! I am so sick of you!” Theissen stomped his foot again. “Stop using me! What I can do is not almighty, ok? I’m just a kid, and I don’t want to see sick people all the time. I hate it!”

“It is what you were born for!” the doctor snapped.

“It is not!” Theissen shouted back, stomping his foot again.

Looming over him, the doctor’s voice grew severe as he spoke. “I already spoke with the village elders and your father. They all agree that you are best fit for healing. After your budding ceremony your career as a doctor will be declared, so you might as well get used to it.”

Theissen stared up at him. It was a threat. However, his father had not once discussed this with him, and he would have. For that matter, his father had not yet ceased to teach him carpentry. In fact, his father seemed to look sad when Theissen mentioned the doctor and what they did together.

“You liar.”

“What?”

Theissen reached out and touched the doctor’s coat. “I said you are a liar. My father would never make me take up doctoring if I didn’t want it.”

“Oh, you will want it,” the doctor said, nodding with a clenched jaw. “You will want it, or else.”

“Or else what?” Theissen stepped back.

The doctor was about to retort but his eye caught on his coat, and he stared instead. It was rainbow swirls all over now. “Hey! You put this right!”

“You can’t threaten me,” Theissen said, and he turned to go home once more.

The doctor tried to follow. Tried, but instead he lost a shoe attempting to step forward. The thing stuck in the ground where his other foot had sunk also.

“Come back, you!”

But the boy trotted off, laughing meanly as he hurried away.

*

“I’m sorry, but there is no precedent in punishing someone for changing the color of someone else’s clothes,” a village elder said to the doctor with a slightly covered smile on his face. “And as for your shoes, I’m afraid sinking into the ground must be due to your own weight gain. If no one else saw the boy make you sink into the ground, then we have no choice but to dismiss your claim.”

“But it is vandalism! There is a case for that!” the doctor declared.

Yuld covered his mouth also, shaking his head with about as much hidden merriment as he could muster. “Actually, I find your suit quite attractive—for a clown.”

“I have been humiliated!” The doctor’s face had gone red, clutching his suit coat as if it were Theissen’s neck that he was wringing.

“Be that as it may, I wonder if you provoked him,” the bailiff replied. His face was straight as usual. The sheriffs were laughing though.

“Beside the point!”

“That is the point.” The carpenter walked into the room. He gave the doctor a passing look before addressing the village elders. “I came as fast as I could. My son told me what happened as soon as he arrived home. You owe him and us an apology.”

Flustering at the idea, the doctor pulled back. “I owe him? Preposterous! The child had a tantrum when we were visiting a patient, and he took it out on my coat and shoes.”

The dry look from the carpenter answered him.

Turning to the judges, the carpenter said, “My son informed me that the doctor took him to see Radina Spinner.”

The elderly men gasped, turning their gaze to the doctor who returned their stares without even a blush.

“He also said that the doctor has threatened him, saying he had to become a doctor or else. I never agreed to that,” said the carpenter. He bowed his head to the leaders of the village. “Before when I agreed to allow my son to attend the sick with the doctor, it was on a temporary basis. And then when you insisted that he continue working with him for the health of our village, I relented, though with reservations.

“Now, even at my daughter’s wedding this man came to me and insisted that I keep my son in his employ indefinitely, saying that you approved and even insisted that my son change trades, I wondered how my son felt about it. Up until now my son has been silent about how the doctor has not listened to his desires to quit. I myself had not known more than his strong wish to continue with carpentry.”

The carpenter frowned. “I must now declare a father’s right to teach his own son in his trade. Theissen has made it clear to me he wants to be a carpenter and not a doctor.”

“But he was born to be a doctor!” the doctor declared.

Turning to give the man a hard look, the carpenter shook his head. “No. Theissen was not born into your family, but mine. He was born to be a carpenter. And if you dare take my son to a place his own mother has forbidden him to enter again, I will bring you to court under charges of usurpation of fatherly rights and abduction.”

Not another word came from the doctor’s lips. He trembled. Next to the muscular carpenter, he was nothing.

Yuld nodded. “He would have that right.”

Swinging around, the doctor snapped at him. “Why are you taking his side?”

The teacher shrugged. “The law is on his side in this case. I cannot disagree with the law.”

Casting both men a glare, the doctor stomped out of the hall.

One of the elders leaned over the table to the carpenter. “Are you sure you do not want to have your son healing people? He truly does have a gift for it. It would be a pity not to see him use it.”

There was a firm look in the carpenter’s eye when he answered him. “I will not see my son unhappy, and these many months he has been very much so. I have even seen him look ill on occasions, and I have often wondered why since he had yet to tell me until tonight. My son will not enter a profession that makes him feel sick all the time. He hates it, to be plain.”

The elders nodded.

“What a shame.”

But Theissen did not see the ruling as a shame. He was happy when his father returned with news that he no longer had to go with the doctor on his appointments. He was happier still when he found out that he could continue with his carpentry for the future afterward.

As the years continued to pass, Theissen grew taller and stronger. He also became somewhat more mischievous. Without the burden of doctoring or the burden of being taken in front of the village elders anymore, the boy grew carefree and happy. Some marked the change from the sober child to the laughing youth as regression, but others saw it as progress since Theissen had learned to smile.

Of course, that did not mean he still had not gotten himself into a fair amount of trouble. With Tolbetan just barely gone on his journey, he was now the eldest son. That meant he was to carry a larger load around the carpentry shop. It also should have meant he ought to behave with more decorum. Unfortunately Theissen had never given up his pranks of turning things strange colors, and the village was now speckled with odd hued flowers, rocks and the occasional fence railing. There were also distorted rocks shaped like frogs and squatty looking men lining some roads. The thing was, many people liked seeing these funny objects in their town. Several said it gave Lumen Village character. But likewise that meant that a few did not like the rainbow striped stones or the dumpy looking figurines along the lanes. Some of the villagers demanded that Theissen have his hands severed just to stop him. The magician was one of these complainers, of course. Luckily, the law said nothing about artistic expression or about altering the shape of a rock along the road.

But just as Tolbetan had left, Theissen had turned thirteen. And as he got older, things started to change. His voice began to crack. Then one day, Theissen went to talk to his father in secret. And the next day the carpenter declared that his son had budded at last.

Everything for the budding ceremony was set up. Their family arrived like always, gossiping among each other as the ladies of the home served food. The young men gathered together waiting for