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

Theissen nodded. “Yes. I’m afraid so.”

The magician glanced at his partner with a look. Then he asked, “But how did you first encounter this demon?”

Giving another sigh, Theissen said, “I happened upon him in the woods.”

Another community gasp rippled through the listening crowd. The trio of carpenter apprentices straightened up, ready to make their attacks again. A smell of growing vindictiveness oozed from them. Smelling it, Theissen grimaced.

“Happened upon him,” the magician murmured. “In the woods? Boy, don’t you know those woods are infested with demons?”

“I do now,” Theissen replied a tad too casually for anyone else’s comfort. He noticed it a too late, but then that was how it always had been. No one understood what he saw or felt. The woods just had not frightened him as they should have.

“Then why aren’t you dead?” his master asked.

Theissen shrugged with an apologetic look. “Should I be?”

“Of course!” Tomis shouted, pointing right at the demon at the chopping block. “That thing should have eaten you!”

Making a face, Theissen cast the apprentice carpenter a glare. “Should have? Really. I had no intention of being eaten. And personally I don’t care for how eagerly you people are for me to have been eaten simply because I had gone into a forest. I was avoiding bandits, which I think are much worse. They are certainly harder to deal with.”

The magician stepped back, pointing at him. “You think bandits are worse than demons?”

Theissen gave a brisk nod. “Yes. Especially when they outnumber you. At least I can see a demon coming.”

It seemed as if the entire town stared at him now. The pressure was enormous. Then he understood. Theissen shook his head, chiding himself for not learning how to be more tactful about his magic. He was just too flippant.

“You can see demons coming?” the other magician said.

“I can smell you!” The demon shouted out again.

“Shut up!” Theissen snapped back at it. Then reaching out on the thread of flow that touched the knot that was the demon, he pulled. With a twitch, everyone saw a change take place on the chopping block. The demon’s face looked even more human. Its eyes were less beady, more like small dark eyes of someone from the northern lands. Its ears were normal shaped.

Passing the magician with a solid step, Theissen walked through the crowd the rest of the way, going through the constables without even a glance to the other magician. Theissen looked the demon in the eye and said, “You won’t be eating anyone ever again.”

With a touch and then a twist of his fingers and a flip of his wrist, he pulled apart the last of the knots. Its skin smoothed out. All the calluses, all the bumps, all the wrinkles and all the hideous folds pulled into one smooth human body. Before him was a foreign face. Not Jatten. Its straight hair was as brown as its eyes. It was male. The horror on its face was real though. He peered at Theissen with terror, shrieking. “NO! You demon!”

“Not a demon,” Theissen corrected quietly. “A wizard.”

“Wizard?” a constable said aloud.

It murmured through the crowd as Theissen nodded to the constables sadly, telling them he didn’t want to watch the execution, and he would like it if they continued once he was gone. He headed back towards the shop.

“Are you leaving already?” Lordri Carpenter suddenly rushed forward, practically grabbing Theissen’s work belt. “We didn’t even get to start on Lord Baron Grianne’s order yet.”

Theissen stopped and stared at him. “You don’t mind that I’m a wizard? It doesn’t scare you?”

The man laughed looking somewhat manic. “Care? All I care is that today was going to be a lucky day! If you leave, what will I say to Lord Baron Grianne?”

Casting his two apprentices a wry look, Theissen exhaled. Both boys pulled back from his gaze.

He said, “Alright. I’ll stay.”

Several people in the crowd actually cheered. It startled Theissen somewhat, but the more predictable charge of the threesome apprentices set him back to the reality he knew. The ringleader stomped over and pointed an accusing finger. “So your brother used magic this whole time?”

Theissen shook his head with a smile. “Nope. I’m the only one in my family who can do magic. Kinnerlin bested you because he was better than you.”

They glared more. But inside, Theissen felt vindicated for Kinnerlin’s sake. He nodded again to his master to urge him that it was about time to leave. He also gave a look to the apprentices.

“Remember what I said? The shop has to be clean before you get lunch.”

Tomis turned with wide horrified eyes to his fellow apprentice who shrunk back as if he wanted to run away.

“Wait!” The magician in the crowd reached out towards Theissen. He stopped short of actually setting a hand on him.

Theissen turned to look.

“Please,” the magician said. “My colleague and I would like to have a discussion with you.”

Giving a skeptical frown, as his previous experience with magicians had all been bad, Theissen said, “What about?”

Grinning with almost instant relief, the magician glanced back at the other, urging the one to join him. “Pardon us, but we are dying of curiosity! You are the first wizard in a long time that we have met. And so skilled too! Please. Give us a moment to offer a proposition.”

“Proposition?” Theissen murmured. “What about?”

Lordri Carpenter cut in at once, blocking their way to him with his arm and then his entire body, shoving his chest up to look fierce. “Oh, no! He is my journeyman. Any deal you make with him has to come through me.”

The magicians didn’t blink and eye at that. They immediately turned to him, bowing. Up close, the magicians appeared no more different than the magistrates back home to Theissen. They did not smell cold or hateful. There was nothing secretive about them. There was real honest curiosity coming from them. All of Theissen’s skepticism slipped away to a growing wonder.

“All we ask is to study him,” one of them said.

Theissen made a face. Study him? That was not appealing.

The other noticed and bowed to him. “We are seeking knowledge. We want to know where wizard’s magic comes from. How it works. Surely we might have something to offer you as well. You can’t so be completely interested in carpentry not to be interested in the magic as well. It certainly is more—”

“He most certainly can!” the master carpenter said in an offended voice.

Glancing over his shoulder, Theissen noticed the watching crowd. They were the new entertainment. Indeed, this town was painfully like his home. It was only larger and full of more lovers of gossip than he thought possible.

Theissen raised a hand. “How about this; I go with the magicians for three hours a day. The rest of the time I work for you.”

“But why?” the carpenter asked him staring over at the demon who was now whimpering for his life. “You don’t need their magic. You can do all that.”

Barely giving the thought a glance, Theissen looked towards the magicians with more interest.

“That may be, but I have been curious about magicians. Our village magician didn’t want me near him,” Theissen said to the pair that waited eagerly. “I thought you were going to be like that too. But I really do want to know about magic, spells and all that.”

“But what about carpentry?” Lordri Carpenter said, his voice now turning to a whimper.

Theissen smiled at him with a laugh. “I’ll still do that. It is my trade after all.”

The two apprentices walked over to their master, staring at Theissen more fearfully.

“But he’ll cheat,” one of the apprentices for Munden said, his face growing more hate-filled by the second.

“I don’t use magic in my carpentry,” Theissen replied with a glare.

“You can’t prove that!” The apprentice snapped.

Clenching his teeth, Theissen ignored him. He nodded to the magician. “When can we start?”

“Tonight?” one of them said.

Theissen shook his head, glancing at his master’s two apprentices. “No. I have unfinished business tonight. I need to make sure the shop gets cleaned and organized. How about tomorrow in the afternoon?”

Lordri Carpenter looked dismayed. So did the apprentices, but for other reasons.

Sighing, the magicians nodded. “Agreed.”

The only person who seemed happy about the arrangement was Theissen. He walked with a skip to his step, gesturing back towards the street that would lead back to the shop. The crowd parted for him.

There was no use in pretending now. Everyone would know he was a wizard by the end of the day anyway. So when he walked up the hill, Theissen gestured to the air and called out to the two young boys who would be learning under him. “Come on! Hurry up!”

A gust of wind pushed them forward.

“You don’t want me to have to make you,” he added with a glint in his eye.

They suddenly scurried after him, keeping just the right distance behind.

The master carpenter shrugged and trudged after them up the hill.

Despite his grand entrance into Liptan Town, Theissen’s fame had not spoiled him. In fact, it had done the opposite effect. It made him more like his old self. After all, he had nothing to hide now.

The town had a feel like Lumen Village, so much that Theissen started into his old habits of making small stone figurines when he was bored, and changing the color of flowers. But other than that, the only few times he practiced magic was when he was being followed by the annoying threesome and when he studied with the magicians. However, occasionally he used magic in the carpentry shop to keep the larder locked and to put the badly cut wood pieces the apprentices hacked up back together for a second and sometimes fifth try.

In a much cleaner shop now that the boys had sullenly swept up the sawdust and put away the tools, Theissen had them working on end tables. They were beyond stool making, which was a relief to him.

“Look,” he said, picking up the wobbly curled wood shaving off the ground and pressing it back into the wood piece, sealing it up like new. “When planing wood, you are trying to make it flat. Smooth. That means go slow.”

“But it is taking forever,” complained the kid whose name at last was told to him as Boid. He kicked the sawhorse. “Can’t you just wave your hand over it and make it yourself?”

Theissen gave him a dark look as he shoved the tool back into the apprentice’s hands. “No. That would defeat the purpose of this exercise. Now try it again. Long smooth strokes.”

“The purpose?” Boid slammed the tool down, getting a doubly dirty look from Theissen since he knew that Theissen disapproved of the abuse of tools. “What’s the purpose? Boring me?”

Groaning, Theissen grabbed his forehead. “For heaven sake. Why did you become a carpenter’s apprentice if you thought it was going to be boring?”

“I didn’t know,” Boid snapped back. “I thought I’d just be fun.”

“It is fun.” Theissen turned towards him, poking the wood. “You get to make something amazing with your own hands. But that takes time, and practice.”

“But that is so boring!”

Tomis worked silently in his corner. He had learned early on not to argue