The Wizard And The Dragon

by Joseph Anderson

  I always closed the slab that sealed off the water compartment. I didn’t know what effect the colder weather might have on the water.

  A few more days passed in a similar way. Each night I tried to stay awake as long as I could to catch Tower outside of his room. I would stare at the ever burning flame of the candle, still lit from my first night, and will myself to keep my eyes open. Each morning I would wake up to the same burning flame and find that Tower had been out and busy during the night.

  I wasn’t sure if he was actively avoiding me or if the timing was merely a coincidence.

  Nearly a week went by before I finally saw him. I walked out of my room in the morning and found him sitting at our dining table in his usual chair. He had moved the table into the center of the room and had moved my chair to sit at the corner closest to his own. He watched me as I walked down to the table and took my seat.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurted out before he had a chance to say anything.

  He cocked an eyebrow at me and smiled. “What for?”

  “The spider. For interrupting. You looked mad.”

  His smile had eased me a little but not entirely.

  “Ah,” he said. “There’s no need for apologies. I was angry, very angry, but not at you. Nor the spider, really. It was just the closest thing I could lash out at. My friend had just died in the mines. Killed by the creature that chased after me.”

  “Friend?” I spoke the word slowly, dragging the pronunciation of each syllable. “Your familiar. He is your friend?”

  “Well, he isn’t anymore,” he said with a sad smile. “You’ve spoken about a wizard that lived in your village. What did he teach you about magic?”

  “Nothing. He never had a reason to speak to me.”

  “Most users of magic are capable of creating, or summoning, a familiar. Some are an essence of a thing, or the embodiment of an element such as water or air—picture a small person made of water, water that is alive and thinking and acting with a will of its own. Some are animals, occasionally endowed with a significantly higher intelligence than normal for their species. I’ve also read of inanimate objects being brought to life, sustained by magic in the same way we use it to make food.

  “Some magic users have a familiar as a tool, or an extension of themselves. Others, like myself, see a familiar as a companion or a friend. You only saw him once and I kept the two of you apart because of his appearance. In time I think you will be comfortable with fire and you would have eventually met him.

  “You would have liked him,” Tower looked at the table as he spoke. “He was a good friend.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Tower’s eyes were glazed and he was taking a moment to steady himself. I sat mutely with my hands in my lap. I couldn’t imagine a creature made of fire without fear seeping into my chest. To me, fire was a consuming, chaotic, uncontrollable force and not something that could be befriended. I still felt sad for Tower, even if I couldn’t understand.

  “You were alone this week,” he said, breaking the silence. “I wanted some time alone to mourn my friend but I should have told you before now. For that I am sorry. There was a second reason, however. It’s about what you did with the spider.”

  “I said I was sorry. I meant it,” I stammered out.

  “No,” he said softly. “You affected the spell and the outcome of that encounter. You acted and used some innate ability when you touched my arm. I spent part of this week preparing for that.”

  “I don’t understand. Preparing for what?”

  “To teach you. I have never taught anyone before and I needed to plan some of the lessons out.”

  “Teach me what?” I asked, still not understanding.

  “Magic. To teach you magic. If you’re willing to learn.”

  “What?”

  “Magic.”

  I gawked at him. “I am not a wizard.”

  “Neither was I, when I was your age. You are capable of using magic. I saw as much when we were down in the cellar. It’s hard to explain exactly, but trust me that you will understand it one day. When you are older.”

  “Me? I can use magic? Like you?” The idea of it both thrilled and terrified me.

  “If you let me teach you. Would you like to learn?”

  My mind raced to say yes but I had a rare moment of forethought for a boy so young. I had seen Tower create food and items out of gemstone. He had cast spells sometimes with crystals, and sometimes with nothing at all. He had created fire. Consuming, burning, killing fire. I hated flames. Anything more than the candle in my room was too much.

  Minutes passed as I went over my thoughts. Tower was staring at me expectantly.

  “Can you teach me to hold fire in my hands?”

  Tower tilted his head at me.

  “So it can never hurt me?” I added

  “With time, I can,” he replied with a single, small nod.

  “Then yes. Please.”

  “Then we’ll start tomorrow.”

  Tower got to his feet and walked up to his room, likely to make the final preparations.

  I sat alone at the table. There was a pile of freshly summoned food that my stomach could no longer ignore, but I didn’t reach for it just yet. I was staring at my hands in my lap and imagining holding fire in them, or sending torrents of flame through the air from my fingers. I thought back to how the fire had so quickly gotten out of control in my village, and I couldn’t decide if I had just made the best or worst decision of my life.

  Chapter Seven

  My education began with a series of questions. Tower had cleared the food, plates, cups, and utensils from the central table and replaced them with a daunting pile of objects. Most of them were books but there were also quills, loose papers, crystals, and other things I didn’t recognize.

  “Do you know how to read and write?”

  “I can read a little. I don’t know how to write,” I answered.

  “Has anyone ever read something to you?”

  “Sometimes. My parents could only read a little better than I can. There were signs in the village that I was taught. The village wizard sometimes told us stories, but more often when I was younger.”

  He nodded along to my words. “I will teach you. At first I will instruct you with all that you need to know, but eventually you will be able to learn and teach yourself. Ultimately, you will be your own best teacher. Now,” he continued, “this wizard of yours. What did he tell you about magic?”

  “Nothing. I think my parents were afraid of it and always told me not to ask him any questions. Sometimes, on special occasions, he would cast spells to entertain the village. He would make lights appear in the sky and whirl around our tables. I always thought they were the most amazing thing I had ever seen, until I came here.”

  Tower scoffed. He stopped pacing immediately afterwards and looked directly at me. His mouth was a firm, straight line. “I will teach you more in one year than that man gained in his entire life,” he spoke with a tone that I had never heard from him before that moment. I think it was pride.

  “More questions,” he bellowed and resumed pacing. “Tell me what you think of magic. What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try. Guess,” he offered.

  “It’s dangerous. It’s wonderful and terrible at the same time. It’s something impossible.”

  “Ah,” he said in response to my final word. “Impossible,” he repeated it for me and smiled. “I think most people would agree with you. It is a good answer. But it couldn’t be more wrong.”

  I looked at him with confusion. I couldn’t understand how he could say holding fire and creating things seemingly from the air were not impossible actions. Even at that young age, I had discovered and innately felt that the world had rules. Magic always appeared to me as a method of breaking those rules.

  “Think of a tree. Picture it in your mind. It is an apple tree. You pick one of the apples and you take a bite out of it, exposing the core
of the apple. You dig out one of the seeds from inside of it. If you plant this seed into the earth it will grow into its own tree over many years. In maybe five years it may bear more apples with more seeds. Do you think any of this is impossible so far?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good,” he said with a smile. “Now. This time, I have the apple. I take a bite and pick out a seed. I place it in the ground. But I am a wizard. I focus my magic onto the seed in the ground and I channel energy into it. The seed sprouts in seconds. The trunk of the tree pushes out of the ground and expands. Branches stretch out and leaves begin to pop out along them. That’s when I stop. This new tree has gone from seed to bearing apples in only a few minutes. I ask you, what is the impossible part of what I just described to you?”

  “The time. I mean, the speed. You made the tree grow so fast,” I said the words slowly, as if I was trying to avoid a trap I might fall into.

  “Yes, all the magic did was increase the rate of what would eventually happen. You’re correct. And that, Bryce, is the essence of magic. You do not do impossible things. You effect the potential of things. Sometimes you will accelerate and unleash the potential of something. Other times, like I do with our food, you freeze the potential. You slow it down, sometimes to a complete stop. Do you understand?”

  “No. I’m sorry, but I don’t,” I lowered my eyes to the floor as I spoke.

  “Don’t worry. You will. Another example for you to think on. Were you ever taught how to make a fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “I watched my mother do it many times. I helped collect wood and strip it for tinder. She would take a rock and strike it at metal to create a spark.”

  “Flint and iron. Yes,” he nodded. “You said you used wood to burn in the fire. Why wood? Why not stone? Or soil?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think back to the apple tree. It wouldn’t be able to grow without sunlight and air. You would think that a tree grows out of the ground, and that the majority of what makes the tree is taken from there. That’s incorrect. The wood is mostly carbon. The tree extracts it from the air. However, this process requires energy. Sunlight, the light and heat of the sun, that energy, is absorbed by the tree and used to fuse the carbon from the air into itself.”

  I watched Tower intently. I was surprised to find myself following along with what he was saying, even if I didn’t understand the meaning of some of his words.

  “Now,” he continued, “you take that same wood that has been created by trapping sunlight. You create that spark of heat, and flames are produced from the wood. What is fire? Light and heat. What was the sunlight used in the process to make the wood? Light and heat. In a way, the fire is the sunlight. But most things are not made in this way. Like the wood, only certain materials have energy trapped within them. It is that potential that magic can harness and control, and it is that potential that limits the power of magic. The gems here, the stone, the...”

  I felt like I was on the cusp of comprehending what he was trying to explain, but I was too young. He smiled warmly at me and placed a hand on top of my head and ruffled my hair.

  “Keep this in your memory. You’ll understand it one day.”

  The wizard walked to the table and picked up one of the books and a single feather. When he placed them in my hands, he cupped his hands over my own and drew my attention to his eyes. He stared at me with purpose.

  “These items are yours now, but only if you promise to take care of them. They are enchanted objects, like the candle in your room, and will remain so as long as they are kept close to the tower. Do not let any flame come into contact with them or they will be destroyed. Do not allow them to get wet or they will be ruined. Do you promise?”

  I nodded. My heart beat faster in my chest. I had never been entrusted with anything so precious.

  “This is your quill,” he said and pointed to the feather. “It has been partnered with this book for longer than either of us have lived. It will never require ink but it will only work on the pages of this book and no other surface. I will teach you how to write and draw with it.

  “The book is very special. I’ve only discovered two like it in the tower. Whatever you mark down in its pages will vanish when you close the book. If you write anything on its pages it will no longer be there when you open it again. However.”

  He opened the book on my lap and took the quill in his hand. He ran the tip of the feather slowly in the middle of one of the empty, open pages. It only took him a few seconds to write the single word. When he was finished, he tore the page out of the book and I gasped. He gave a small laugh and then closed the book.

  “Open it again now and turn to the page. You’ll find no trace of the damage done. In fact, the page will be back as if nothing was done to it at all.”

  I did as he asked and marveled when it was found to be true. I blinked several times at the renewed page as if there was a trick I could blink away. I looked up at him and saw that the page was still in his hand.

  “What you write and draw can be preserved by removing the page before closing the book. Remember that, and remember too that it will only do so when near the tower. If you took this outside and walked away with it, it would turn into an ordinary book forever. Even if you brought it back here, the magic would be gone.”

  I clutched the book to my chest. It was the greatest piece of treasure I had ever owned.

  “Now, for the rest of the day I want you to do whatever you like with the book. Get comfortable holding the quill. Get used to making lines with it on the pages. Pull as many out as you like. You can try drawing the candle in your room if you like or,” he held up the paper and pointed to the word in the center of the page. “Try to recreate the lines and shapes of this word. This is your name. This says ‘Bryce’.”

  I took the page from him as if it were made of gold. I had never seen my name before. In that tower, surrounding by magical artifacts and gemstones, my name on that page seemed equally as mystical and wonderful to me.

  I went up to my room and took the first steps of my education.

  We settled naturally into a daily routine. In the morning we would eat and then see to the needs of the tower. The rocks and stones we had extracted from the mines were broken down and removed of their gemstones. In a few weeks we had several sorted piles of differently colored and sized crystals and gems.

  The giant spider was fed twice daily, on the scraps of meat that we set aside after our meals. It seemed to be afraid of Tower and myself and made no attempt to extend its limbs out of its prison. He explained that the spider was that size only because it had grown beneath the tower, and that it was as incapable of thought and emotion just like any normal-sized spider, but I had my doubts. When I stared at its many eyes I could swear that I saw a stirring of the same intelligence I had seen in the dogs of our village.

  It was usually late afternoon when we started our lessons. Reading and writing came first in the day, and spellcasting and magical lessons were reserved for the evening.

  Tower proved to be a patient teacher and was adept at getting to the root of most problems that cropped up, especially when I was not able to explain why I didn’t understand something. Without being able to read and write, learning to do so was like learning another language.

  The first few weeks saw slow progress, but I think that was intentional. He spaced out each letter of the alphabet so I had an in-depth introduction to a new letter per day, with examples of the letter and words that started and contained it.

  After each letter was introduced to me, Tower used an enchanted book of his own to create pages of examples. He would neatly print about a dozen words to go with the new letter—apple on the first day, boat on the second, chair on the third—and have me practice recreating each of the words in my own book. He encouraged me to experiment, make mistakes, and to often close the book to erase early attempts until I got better at it.

  In the few
hours that I spent practicing to write the words and commit the new letter to memory, Tower would busily sketch examples of each of the new words. On the first day, when the letter ‘A’ was taught, I was given his drawings of apples, axes, acorns, aprons, ants, and arrows. He would pronounce each word for me and then have me choose the correct picture that matched the word he said.

  After a few days I had quite the collection of words and pictures, and Tower encouraged me to mix them up and try to match them on my own later. He told me that it was okay to get something wrong or be unsure as long as I went to him for a correction. I must have driven him mad with all of my questions.

  When we had covered the entire alphabet, he once again utilized his pictures and written words. However, this time, now that I knew every letter, he focused on the sound and pronunciation of each chain of letters. He read single words aloud for me and then insisted I read them back to him by sounding the word out for myself instead of simply repeating the sounds I had heard him say. It was an important distinction, and one that eased the first steps of my education.

  Those early days were meticulous and painstakingly slow, but resulted in a solid foundation for which Tower could teach upon. He tested me daily and was thorough in that he often backtracked and included questions about letters and words that we had covered days or weeks earlier. He relentlessly repeated his lessons until reading and writing ceased to be about memorization and recalling the rules. Instead it became a natural, effortless connection to thoughts and ideas in my head.

  The reading and comprehension of sentences and the messages they contained came next, and this is when the two areas of learning truly intersected. The lessons about magic were clearly my favorite of the two and Tower was ingenious and crafty enough to bait me with that knowledge. He pointed to the books of spells and magical writings on the table and told me that when I had learned enough to read them for myself, the only limiting factor on what I could learn was the speed at which I read.