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

three years ago. Good news is, our cousin has a prosperous farm and is married to a very sweet lady. He is about as old as Kinnerlin, so I suppose they probably started out as adults at around the same time. Brodik looks a lot like you, you know. Actually, he and I look like brothers. You ought to invite him some time to a festival. Have Alania come by and bring him and his wife. Just tell her not to bring the fancy carriage. Danslor is not a prosperous village. In fact, it looks quite run down. I intend to fix that a bit, but really I think the villagers that live here are the main problem. Never have I met a larger group of pessimists—but then I have not lingered in most of the other villages along this route so I really ought to stop with my judgements.

Anyway, I was just dropping a line. Say ‘Hello’ to Milrina for me. I hope she is having a better time than I am.

Your son, brother, and all that,

 

He signed it with flourish, grinning at how nice his first long letter home looked. Hopefully there should be more to send in the future. He had tugged the air to see if a letter would come from home yet, but so far, as he felt on the air, all that had been left on the kitchen window sill was a pie—too big and heavy to lift off with a simple breeze.

So he added:

 

P.S.  Please do write back. Just leave the letter on the windowsill, like I asked.

By the by, I couldn’t snitch those pies you have been putting there. They are too heavy.

 

He blotted the last scripted words then waved the paper to dry. Once sure it was, he folded it and searched about his pockets for sealing wax.

He had none.

With a frown, Theissen reached out and touched some candle wax from off the table and pressed it to the paper, sealing both halves closed. His cousin was right about one thing. It really was convenient that he was a wizard. He could only imagine groping around for things he had lost for so long before getting frustrated. In fact, if he had not found ink, he would have resorted to writing the letter with his finger, changing the color of the paper with a touch. The funny thing was, whenever he used magic to write his handwriting was much more beautiful than his real script. And regardless of how nice it looked, he really wanted his mother to recognize his writing on sight. He preferred ink writing anyway. It made him feel respectable.

Rising from his chair, Theissen stepped to the door and opened it, lifting the folded envelope up on his open palm. A wind stirred and then brushed past his face, whipping his hair into his mouth. But it also took up the letter, floating it away towards his home. Theissen was sure his mother would be delighted when she saw it sitting on top of the pie she had just set there.

Lowering his eyes as he brushed his hair out from his face with a hand, he noticed the potato-faced woman staring straight at him. Theissen gave a small bow then trotted the rest of the way out of the farmer’s home, going directly to the gate. She retreated, drawing her shabby shawl closer around her neck, shaking in her already quivering skirts and muddied boots. Theissen glanced once at the air. It calmed around them. He still had to figure out a way to make a small breeze that did not stir absolutely everything up when he made them.

“Demon,” she muttered under her breath, pulling towards a neighbor’s fence.

He was just walking by, but Theissen stopped and shook his head at her. “No. Wizard. There is a vast difference.”

And he continued on. His reputation as a wizard was going to get out eventually, but the idea of being known as a demon first by a bossy lumpy woman had to be stopped before it could begin.

He continued in his cheerful stroll, heading straight into town, casually allowing the flowers on the bushes bud and the leaves turn a healthier green as he passed by, sure that the woman was still watching him.

The village was starting to feel more like home that way anyway. People were watching him. Some came out to gossip as he trotted into the village center towards the witch’s home. And, of course, when he stopped at the witch’s gate and let himself in, more eyes peered at him. Most expected him to be thrust out by a ghastly spell, but Theissen merely gave a polite knock at the door, glancing at the well-tended lavender bushes at the gate.

“Enter.”

Theissen paused, but did not open the door. He leaned towards it and called aloud, “Pardon me? But uh, I came to see the wh…um owner of this establishment.”

“I said enter. My hands are tied up at the moment, so just come on in.” The voice inside sounded somewhat irritated.

Shrugging to himself, Theissen grasped the door handle and pushed it in.

Inside the home was the same simple kind of entryway as the farmer’s house. There was a small table with a hanging oil lamp over it. To the side was a brick oven with a cook stove set on top of that. There, a man wearing regular brown breeches, a usual wool tunic, and a long cook’s apron stood in front of a large cast iron pot stirring a rather pungent smelling liquid the color of pond scum. Theissen cringed looking at it.

“Can I help you?” the man asked before looking up. He was reading from a fairly beaten up book with strange handwriting inside and covered in illustrations. Around him were also jars upon jars of dried and powdered herbs though Theissen saw a few with liquid in them, one labeled honey and the other vinegar. It was a kitchen.

“Um, yes. I hear you can…can tend to…. What is it you are making?” Theissen stepped in closer.

The witch looked up. In front of the man’s eyes were strange circular pieces of glass held on his face with a thin metal wire and a chain. He blinked first and then plucked the glasses off. “Oh, it’s you. The stranger.”

Theissen nodded, then gave a formal bow. “Yes. I’m Theissen Darol Mukumar Carpenterson of Lumen Village. I’m a journeyman carpenter just taking a stop before I continue on.”

“It looks like somebody hit you. What’s it for?” The witch turned back to his brew, reaching into a small pot and then sprinkling in a reddish powder into the bubbling concoction.

Giving a shrug, Theissen took another step closer to see what was in the pot. “For not minding my own business, I guess.”

To that, the witch smiled. “A bad habit of yours, I gather?”

Pulling back, Theissen gave a bashful shrug. “Sorry. I was just curious.”

“I don’t think you got bashed for being curious,” the witch replied. He had a genial smile. The smell of the flow about him was clean. Nice. If this was a witch, then perhaps the legends Theissen had heard were indeed false. This man seemed normal. The witch gestured towards the pot. “As for this, I am making a medicinal cure for intestinal discomfort. The butcher has been eating too much cheese lately. It gums up the works.”

“Why doesn’t he just eat more food with fennel seeds in them? My mother says that is a safe way to keep digestion healthy,” said Theissen as he leaned against the table.

The man grinned at him, pointing with his spoon. “It sounds like your mother is a regular witch.”

Theissen stood up with a jerk. “She’s a what?”

But the man only laughed. “Yes. Yes. I thought you were like the others, though I must say you are awfully brave to walk into my shop. Most people stay trembling on my doorstep.”

Still, Theissen just stared, horrified that the man called his mother a witch. But then considering it for a while, this man was a witch so of course he did not think it an offensive thing. Thinking more on it, Theissen began to flush with shame. There really was nothing cruel or cold about this man at all. Aside from his cousin and his wife, the witch was perhaps the friendliest person he had met thus far.

Theissen could see the witch smile kindly on him with a nod. “And maybe I am wrong about you after all. Go ahead and sit. This will only take a moment to finish.”

Then the man began to add another herb, a dried green leaf that Theissen recognized to be alfalfa. Once he whisked it in well, the witch started to stir the pot in a clockwise motion, uttering words low in his throat.

“Rivers flow south. Fish swim to the sea. Draw from the well. Come to me.” He then tapped the pot with his spoon and said, “Trap.”

Even as the man was speaking, Theissen saw the natural flow from the north pull in and then from the east, and then another from the south and the west with heralding music that the flow made when urged by magic. With the last word, the potion rippled a golden sheen and then went back to its murky green color, giving off a loud whooshing sound familiar to the noise the magician’s spells made. However, the flow inside the potion swirled around like its own individual river, almost singing a marching anthem. Theissen could actually see what drinking the potion would do. It would draw out toxins from the body and then take it down the bowls to be removed. It was ingenious.

Theissen looked up at the witch, too speechless at what he had just seen. The magician never liked him around when he was casting a spell. At last he got to see what one looked like up close. He felt like applauding.

“Impressed?” The witch even looked surprised at Theissen. “Now, that’s a first. Are you sure you’re just a carpenter?”

Nodding though still enraptured at the swimming motions inside the potion, Theissen still could not put two words together, let alone one.

Laughing too kindly to be described as a witch, the man took out a glass jar and started to ladle the brew inside. He glanced back once or twice at Theissen, chuckling each time he set eyes on the young man’s amazed expression. Eventually he set a jar down on the table and said, “What is it that entrances you? Do you want to learn witchcraft?”

Popping his head up, Theissen nodded. “Rather! The magician wouldn’t even let me look into his doorway let alone learn from him.”

The witch paused, blinked then sat down. “You had a magician in your town?”

Theissen nodded, at last taking his eyes off the fascinating patterns the flow in the brew made. “Yes, but it was a village, not a town.”

“It must have been a prominent village then,” the witch said with snort, and he got up.

“It is on the Jatte map,” Theissen offered.

To that, the witch laughed. “Yes. Magicians are too pompous to settle in small hamlets. Now tell me, why didn’t he want you to learn magic? I could have sworn they love having apprentices and all that. Most magicians love to hear themselves talk.”

That woke Theissen to reality. What would the witch say if he told him he was a wizard? Throw things at him? Cast a spell at him turning him into a demon? It seemed wise to play the fool, though this man looked capable of discerning real idiots from fakes.

So he mumbled. “I have an inclination towards ma….”

He smoothed his hand over his mouth in the manner to hide a cough.

The witch looked amused. He sat down again. “An inclination towards marriage? Monkey business? Marigolds? Muskrats?”

Theissen lifted his eyes in a smirk. “Towards monkey business. The man hasn’t liked me since the day I was born.”

However that revealed too much, and Theissen saw it