Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy

by Gardner Dozois

  Soaring, Zinder wings in over the gilded roofs, which have carved on them statues of strange birds and animals. These seem to be able to see him too—a couple of carved stone heads creakily turn to watch him go by.

  Then there is a balcony. Zinder glances down.

  A princess, with hair white as the barley grain on the plain outside, is leaning her head on her jeweled hand, gazing at the moon. “Will the wizard never return to us?” she asks. “We miss him so.”

  She uses the word wizard which, here, means wise man. She hasn’t seen him though. He hasn’t allowed her to.

  Zinder turns away and flies to a huge bright open window, and straight through into a golden hall.

  THE scene is spectacular—like a dream, in its own way, except he has often come here or to other such palaces. So Zinder isn’t unused to these gleaming glamours. There are vast candlebranches of gold, the hundreds of clean white candles burning in them with such clear flames they are like crystal butterflies. There are silver fretworks over walls hung with red silk, and floors of icy marble.

  The King and his nobles feast.

  Gigantic trays of beaten gold continually come in, on which balance gigantic roasts dressed with smaller roasts, fruit, and vegetables. Parades come and go of silver jugs of red wine and alabaster jugs of pink wine, and jugs made from transparent quartz, holding white wine so pure that it is green. On the tables, draped in white cloths dripping crimson tassels, sit castles built of ice and sugar.

  The feasters themselves are dressed in garments so thickly embroidered with colored silk and pearls that they are like armor—the men and women can only move very slowly and stiffly.

  What a noise! Music and shouting, small dogs yapping, and, in gold cages, birds that talk and sing.

  Unseen, Zinder lands deftly in the middle of the room. He spreads his wings to their widest.

  Then he appears.

  Worse noise—uproar—knives and metal plates falling with a series of clanks, a jade jug worth millions of coins dropped and shattering.

  After which, utter silence.

  In the silence, Zinder gently speaks.

  “Good evening.”

  He can speak like a king himself. He has always known how. No one ever had to teach him, just as, when in his own village, nobody had to teach him how to quack.

  But once he has spoken (and mentally reached out to mend the jade jug with a thought), the uproar all-round starts again. Nobles come struggling up in their stiff clothes to clap him on the back or wring his hands, the ladies touch the edges of his crow-velvet wings. The King himself leaves the table and comes over to Zinder. The King and Zinder bow lightly to each other: equals.

  “How may I assist you?” Zinder politely asks.

  “We need nothing, sir, I assure you. My sick chief cook has recovered, thanks to your powers—and behold the feast! The trees that wouldn’t fruit in my cherry orchard have all gone mad, and cherries big as apples are exploding from them!”

  The King, so far, has never asked Zinder to do anything he would have to refuse. In other cities, it has quite often been different. Many kings, having seen Zinder’s magical powers, promise fortunes to him—as if he couldn’t conjure fortunes for himself if he wanted—in return for his help in wars or invasions. Mainly, they want particularly disgusting types of war machines or weapons to be invented for them, mentioning things that breathe unquenchable fire or shake the ground like earthquakes. Such interviews are no fun. Zinder always refuses, won’t give an inch. Sometimes then the kings get angry, one or two even order their guards to seize and punish Zinder. The results of this kind of order, though perhaps amusing—men spinning about with their swords turned into fresh loaves of bread, that sort of thing—never end in Zinder’s capture. The kings sulk. Only once did Zinder offer any help in a war. He built up the walls of a town so high, and made the gates so strong, that they were impassable. And he formed a dragon that chased the enemy away, but it breathed nonflammable flame, and there were no casualties. Dragon, high walls, and impenetrable gates melted into air once the threat was removed.

  Zinder and the King walk about the hall, while everyone else claps and smiles. And Zinder becomes aware that the King is about to ask him for something impossible after all.

  “Between ourselves,” says the King, “my daughter—” Zinder says nothing.

  They reach the semiprivacy of a huge open window. The city lies below, scattered over the night like splinters of broken golden jade.

  “Should you consider becoming my son-in-law,” says the King, “I could extend, to a remarkable mage like yourself—”

  Zinder breaks in quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve received a better offer?”

  “Not at all.”

  Zinder is far too tactful to tell the King how many offers of royal marriage have come his way.

  AT that moment, having learned from her maid that the Wizard Zinder is in the dining room, the princess herself rushes—rather slowly, due to her clothes—into the room. Her jewelry flashes on her as if she had run in out of a rain of stars.

  Halfway along the hall, she recalls that she is a princess. Then she walks incredibly slowly. Reaching Zinder, she is pale as her pale hair, and then pink as the wine in the alabaster jugs.

  “Why were you away so long? Months have dragged by since I—we—saw you.”

  “I have a lot to do,” Zinder says.

  He smiles at her kindly, though he is sorry to smile, in a way, because he knows this makes her like him more. Every night he is somewhere, another city, or a town, or a little village like his own. Zinder is genuinely busy by night, polishing up the world, making it, where he can, better. And where he can’t, comforting it.

  But the princess is in love with him.

  He leans to her ear and whispers, “Forget me. I’ll send you another to love. He will be handsome, rich, and far more suitable than I.”

  “But you are handsome,” murmurs the princess, dreamily, forgetting everything else. “You are rich in magic.”

  “The one I’ll send to you will be rich in the way of a king. And much more handsome. Trust me.”

  The spell takes hold. She sighs. Two tears drop out of her eyes, heavy as glass beads, and stain the edge of her dress. But the stain quickly vanishes in the heat of the room.

  As for the rest of the people there, they haven’t seen any of this. Instead, they saw seventeen swans with silver feathers and turquoise crowns fly in at the windows and circle round, singing of joy and wealth to come.

  It is true he will send her a prince. Already, on a journey to the East, Zinder has located just the right man. So into his brain Zinder has blown a powder of thoughts about a blond princess—exactly as he has also blown into her blond thoughts the idea of a young leopard of a prince. The swans finish their song. Unicorns enter and conduct a warlike fight that ends in honorable truce. Zinder sits down at the King’s right, and eats his first meal of the day or night.

  After the unicorns fly off, white geese appear and become a troupe of maidens clothed in golden tissue, who dance. Dance over, they spread goose wings and also fly off into the night. Last, the moon sails to the window to cries and gasps of fear from the feasters in the hall. But the moon is shown to be a round white ship with gossamer sails, and she fires a silver cannon into the room that showers everyone with ribbons and sweets. Then the moon too fades. All this has allowed Zinder to finish his meal. The princess too has cheered up. Zinder magics a blue rose onto her plate. When next he has time to visit this city, she will be happily engaged to the leopard prince.

  The huge palace clock, made to look like an ebony turtle, strikes one in the morning, then two, three, four.

  Zinder changes half the candleflames into butterflies, which glitter off into the dark.

  In the half-light, he leaves the King and his court as suddenly as he came, disappearing before their very eyes, as always, and as they expect him to.

  The real moon is down.

 
; But from so high up, Zinder can soon see the tails of the clouds. They are catching a faint early sheen from the hidden waking of the sun.

  He must go fast now, homewards.

  The mighty city swims far behind, the forests unfurl below, full of leaping deer, wolves slinking like last moonbeams, brown summer ermine that play squeaking along the banks of streams narrow, from up here, as slowworms.

  Quickly, noting a splash of red, Zinder descends to puff out a burning hut with a single breath. A cruel hunter, who greedily always takes more hares than he needs for the pot, Zinder fills with a dream of the hunter’s own wife, now herself a hare. (She is grieving over the hunter, also a hare, whom someone has killed in a trap.). A widow sobbing by a grave among the trees, Zinder whispers to consolingly. He puts a handful of money in her pocket and a sprig of something that will grow into a bush of flowers. Their perfume, once she makes them into scent, may well bring her a fortune.

  But dawn is impatiently pushing up the heavy lid of the sky.

  Here the morning comes, trying to outrace him.

  Zinder sprints for the village.

  Before the first eyes open there, he must be back inside his village shell.

  He makes it with a single heartbeat to spare, sinking down, sinking in. Ready now to face another interesting day as Quacker.

  Zinder-Quacker never asks himself why any of this happens, or how he does it. Why he does do it is obvious enough. He loves pleasure, and he loves power. And it is sheer pleasure to him, the greatest pleasure of all, to do what he does, shifting the earth a little on her axis. Anyone can make a world suffer and cry. It requires no imagination. Child’s play, and no challenge at all. But to fix the broken jugs of despair, unkindness, illness, and ill fortune—this takes a creative mind. The power of it is staggering: to rock life, take it by surprise. Besides, to Zinder, it is endlessly interesting.

  Even so, how can he do it? What is he, this being, coiled up inside the outer case of Quacker?

  He doesn’t know. Can’t be bothered to try to find out. It was always there in him. Even when he lay in the cradle—that mound of baby the villagers had loathed and wanted to feed to wolves. Yes, even then he would fly out of himself by night, circling in the air, no larger than a moth, invisible, pushing roof tiles together, tickling mice to make them safe. Laughing to himself. At four, when reason came and he began to think in words, then he knew that he did this. That was all. He simply knew. With practice his skill has grown, which isn’t unusual surely, where someone is in a truly well-liked job, for which they have a talent.

  For now, he sleeps a moment. A moment is all Zinder needs, or Quacker.

  And then a coral strand of sunrise, as it normally does, needles through the cave of logs, and fills his shut eyes like two spoons, so they open.

  Now, it is Quacker. But Quacker, by day, also knows happiness—and is never afraid. Without considering, just as he never considers the ins and outs of it all when he is Zinder, Quacker grasps that nothing, in the end, can wreck him or deflect him from what he is. For Quacker is Zinder, and Zinder is Quacker. The answer is the riddle, the riddle is the answer.

  Even as he sat up, as always, Quacker laughed.

  That morning, two of the young men from the village, on their way to the fields with sore heads, one worrying about a coin he stole, and one longing for a feather bed, cornered Quacker at the edge of the woods.

  They pushed him over and kicked him.

  One heard the snap, he thought, of a bone.

  “Let’s drive the foul monster out! Bad luck it is! It’s better off dead.”

  Quacker lay on the tree roots, not hurt, for he could feel the broken leg mending totally in seconds.

  The brave youths didn’t know. They bent down over him, swearing and snarling. Would they kill him? Would it work?

  An awful growl rang out.

  Had a black bear charged out of the woods?

  Jumping back, the attackers saw no bear. It was the Great Hunter, standing there instead with his knives and his bow, and a scowl on his face fit to pare potatoes.

  “Get off him, you scum! Or I’ll do for the pair of you myself!”

  When the two youths had fled, grumbling that the old fool must have gone sweet on Quacker’s loose mother, the Hunter himself came over and lifted Quacker to his feet.

  “Thank you kindly,” said Quacker, with the grace of a king.

  For the first time the Great Hunter understood, heard Quacker. Embarrassed, astonished, he instinctively almost bowed. “You’re welcome,” muttered the Great Hunter.

  Billy and the Wizard

  TERRY BISSON

  Just what do you do when you find the Devil rummaging through your garage…?

  Terry Bisson is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels such as Fire on the Mountain, Wyrldmaker, the popular Talking Man (which was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 1986), Voyage to the Red Planet, Pirates of the Universe, The Pickup Artist, and, in a posthumous collaboration with Walter M. Miller, Jr., a sequel to Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz called Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. He is a frequent contributor to such markets as Sci Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, OMNI, Playboy, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. His famous story “Bears Discover Fire” won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Asimov’s Reader’s Award in 1991, the only story ever to sweep them all. In 2000, he won another Nebula Award for his story “macs.” His short work has been assembled in the collections Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories and In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories. His most recent books are a chapbook novel, Dear Abbey, and two new collections, Numbers Don’t Lie and Greetings. He lives with his family in Oakland, California.

  BILLY had a secret. He liked to play with dolls. One of Billy’s dolls could talk. His name was Clyde. Clyde only talked when Billy pulled his string.

  One day Billy pulled his string.

  “Would you like to meet the Wizard?” Clyde asked.

  Billy was surprised. Clyde had never asked a question before. Billy pulled his string again.

  “How about it?” Clyde asked. “How many little boys get to meet the Wizard?”

  “What’s he the Wizard of?” Billy asked. He pulled Clyde’s string again.

  “He’s the Wizard of Everything,” Clyde said. “And he’s hiding in the garage.”

  “What’s he hiding from?” asked Billy. He pulled Clyde’s string again.

  “He’s the Wizard of Everything,” said Clyde. Sometimes Clyde said the same thing over and over. “And he’s hiding in the garage.”

  BILLY looked in the garage. There was nothing in the garage but old magazines.

  “I looked in the garage,” said Billy. “But I didn’t see any Wizard.”

  He pulled Clyde’s string.

  “Of course not,” said Clyde. “He’s hiding. You have to look harder.”

  Billy looked harder. “I still don’t see any Wizard,” he said. He pulled Clyde’s string.

  “Of course not,” said Clyde. “He’s hiding. You have to look harder.”

  Billy looked harder. He looked through all the magazines.

  Finally, he found one called Today’s Wizard. He opened it up, and there was the Wizard. He was little and flat, and he wore a pointy hat.

  “I am not the Wizard,” he said. “Go away.”

  “You are so,” said Billy. “I can tell by your hat.”

  The Wizard didn’t say anything. He was just a picture. After a while, Billy turned the page.

  There was the Wizard again. “How did you find me?” he asked.

  “Clyde told me you were hiding in the garage,” said Billy. He turned the page again.

  The Wizard was the same on every page. He had a pointy beard to go with his pointy hat. “That Clyde,” said the Wizard.

  “Are you really the Wizard of Everything?” Billy asked.

  “Turn the page,” said the Wizard. Billy did. “And who told you th
at, my boy?”

  “Clyde,” said Billy.

  “That Clyde,” said the Wizard. “You should know better than to pull his string. Turn the page.”

  Billy turned the page again.

  “I’m not the Wizard of Everything,” said the Wizard. “I’m the Wizard of Everything Else.”

  Billy thought about that. “Who are you hiding from?” he asked.

  “Who do you think?” asked the Wizard.

  Billy turned the page. “I give up,” he said.

  “The Devil,” said the Wizard. “Now put me back in the pile.”

  “Are you playing with dolls again?” asked Billy’s mother. She was standing in the door of the garage.

  “No, ma’am,” said Billy.

  “Come to supper then.”

  “BILLY was playing with dolls again,” said Billy’s mother. She was carving the turkey.

  “Of course,” said Billy’s father. “That’s because he’s a sissy.”

  “I am not,” said Billy.

  “You are so,” said Billy’s father. “Look, I brought you another doll.”

  BILLY took the doll to his room after supper. It was a baby doll. Billy hated it.

  It had a string. Billy pulled it.

  “You’re a sissy,” said the doll.

  “I am not,” said Billy. He shook the doll and pulled the string again.

  “You are so,” said the doll.

  Billy tied the doll to a pencil. Then he got a book of matches and burned the doll up. He pulled its string so he could hear it scream.

  “What are you doing in there?” asked Billy’s mother.

  “Nothing,” said Billy.

  “Playing with dolls,” said Billy’s father.

  “DOLLS are stupid,” said Billy. It was the next day. He was playing with Clyde behind the garage, where no one could see. “I hate dolls,” he said.

  “Pull my string,” said Clyde.

  Billy did.