The upper portion of my wooden head flapped every time I bowed. My brain case had a broken hinge in front and a delicate latch hanging open behind, both half hidden under curls of fake hair. When I dipped my head, the top flew open, revealing a hollow cavity only to flop back up with the rest of my body.
My father bit his lip. “You're incomplete. Your creator didn't finish. There's no brain in there. What, did you lose your mind?” He chuckled and elbowed me. “Laugh. Or at least bow again. That was funny.”
“Welcome to Ingeld!” I replied. You are the gentle soul of wit my dear Father and one day we shall laugh together.
“A real friend would have laughed at that. Don't you know how to say anything else?”
“Welcome to Ingeld, the Sorcery Capital of the World!” I boomed in sonorous, hollow tones. “Come to Ingeld, let us feed the magic appetite you crave. We satisfy your every need. Come to Ingeld. Come and save.”
My father laughed. “So you can say something else, but I guess we hit your limit. You deserve better. Ha! Let's break you out of this forest prison.”
My father's stout, iron limb made short work of the vines and brambles he hadn't already cleared. He bent a few of the larger saplings out of the way and cleared a wider path. Then he went back and dragged my stout, wooden body into the cold, wan light of day. My father pinched his nose again and plucked the worst of the mushrooms and mold, pitching these back into the copse.
“He just left you there. That so-called master wizard in Ingeld. Who but a wizard has the knowledge to imbue such delicate, arcane artistry? And who but a master has the arrogance to abandon something like you? You're magnificent. You were his baby, and he left you.” My father sat by the cobblestone road and pulled me down alongside him.
“Welcome to Ingeld.” I nodded. Yes, Father, oh yes, whatever you say. The old man is barely known to me for I am your child and I crave your adulation. Tell me more about my magnificence and my delicate artistry. I do not know them now, but I will understand you soon and I will drink your words as they fall from the heavens like sweet rainwater.
“The mysterious Wizard of Ingeld invested all that time and effort and then just left you there trapped in the trees, breaking down. My master-to-be. When he's done with me, is the man going to lock me in prison and leave me to rot?”
“Welcome to Ingeld,” I agreed, head flopping open again.
“And what's worse, he left you unfinished,” Father fumed. “Will this master only teach me half what I need to know? What kind of person does that? Where's your brain? Where are your thoughts? I want you to have thoughts. I want you to chat, to think, to laugh. I want you to say something besides . . . ”
“Welcome to Ingeld,” I said.
“Yes, that. We're changing that right now.”
My father sat thinking. His fingers traced patterns in the mud as his mind dipped and swooped and turned along similar convoluted, quirky paths.
The seed thus planted, an idea began to sprout and spread its tendrils within my father's mind as he sought to fashion a crude brain for his wooden child. Father searched the ground littered with little treasures to suit his task. He examined his surroundings and the tools at hand. Later, my father regaled me with the conversation he held with the mage and the artificer on the eve of my birth. I will attempt to reproduce it and convey his feelings accurately; Father felt this was one of the most important conversations he ever had and to this day remains unsure whether the voices represented three separate entities or one. Lately, he keeps asking me if I hear voices, too.
What do you think you're doing? the artificer asked.
Well, running around the kingdom with wild hopes clearly didn't work, the mage replied.
And all those frantic bursts of sorcery worked so well the last time, the craftsman spat. We must proceed methodically and cautiously to prove our mettle.
It's always metal with you, isn't it? Well douse the forge and hide the hammer; it's my turn to make something, the mage said, rubbing his hands together. Forget methodical. Let's get magical.
My father dug into the earth with his fingernails and formed a ball of clay. He grabbed pieces of quartz to make me naturally brilliant, but also some young twigs to encourage me to brush up on new ideas and let my intellect blossom. He found horse mane and sheep's wool clumped in the brush by the road. These were to help me ponder knotty issues, think nonlinear thoughts, and solve tangled, hairy problems.
Father says he has trouble thinking organically and always regrets not having a handful of nails on hand to give me a sharper intellect. I always tell him not to be so metal-centric and that good twigs were more than sharp enough, although thorns would have been better. Lastly, he took the lock picks from his Artificer's Handbook and added them to my mental mix to help me unlock the mysteries in my life.
“I can do this. I know I can do this. It just needs the right ingredients and a drop of magic.”
Risking the last drop of magic on a gamble is foolish, the artificer argued. You don't think we'll need that to perform tricks for this wizard? If we even get to that point with this one?
Tricks and trinkets won't impress anybody. It's worth the risk for something like this, the mage said.
The Wizard of Ingeld won't thank us for playing with his doll, the artificer said. Not if memories of our sister are anything to go by. What if you break it?
What if I improve it?
What if you destroy it? Why not give up on this magic thing? We can join the local smithy guild and put our real skills to use. I'd take that over a master magician. Who needs a magician?
You do, desperately. All your metal pounding won't amount to a dragon's fart, the mage said smugly. What are you going to do when they come to slay the little dragon-in-training before we can harness our powers? Wave your hammer? Rally the smithy guild? You think the enemy will care if you never use these talents so long as the threat exists? So become a credible threat.
Perhaps, the artificer said, hanging his hammer on the wall.
You keep saying we must learn control and finesse, the mage whispered with twisted guile. That should appeal to your metal mind, eh? Set me free and let magic solve all our problems.
My father scrounged through his own pockets for a more personal contribution. He produced some dried rose petals, which he crushed and sprinkled over the brain. A floral scent wafted past his nostrils and smiled. Now I could appreciate beauty.
“I'm doing this,” my father told himself, opening his pocket knife. “I'm making a friend.”
You don't make friends with a whisper and a wave; you earn them through hard work, the artificer said.
My father raised the knife and the voices in his head silenced as action supplanted thought. He stabbed his hand. I wanted to reach out and grab his arm, but I was powerless.
Father let several thick drops of blood fall across my tongue and over my new brain. He smeared the last of the blood on my cheeks, giving my painted face a pleasant, rosy flush.
“We're blood brothers now,” my father said, clasping my wooden hands and admiring my metal fingernails. “Blood is a sacred bond, the red iron which flows through our bodies. Friends for life.”
We are linked by a common blood, dear Father, I thought, and that iron chain that binds us tight cannot be broken for did you not say blood forms the most sacred of bonds?
“I can do this.” My father muttered the words like a mantra.
My father admitted later he knew little of what he was doing beyond instinct and wavering faith in his own abilities. His books were useless for how to actually apply his strange, new talents and his experience with magic was paltry. He needed a wizard to turn skill into wisdom. I would have directed him towards my grandfather if I had the voice for it. But Father felt since metal craftsmanship was a vital component of my body, he had a chance.
Father chased stories of dragons and magic fables his whole childhood. The boys in all the fables always had kind, wise masters to teach them all the powerf
ul spells. And the powerful spells always required some sacrifice. My father wondered before the great moment of my birth arrived whether a few drops of blood would suffice for such sorcery.
Father placed the brain gingerly into the waiting cavity and shut the brass clasp behind my head. Nothing happened. Worse than nothing: my puppet lips and limbs repeated the same song and dance I repeated for years, courtesy of Grandfather's magic.
My father closed his eyes to concentrate. He steepled his hands and implored the gods to let him become the instrument of their blessing. Father stressed he never claimed to create life, for that was a sacred gift from the five gods, but thought he might channel some restive spark of that gift from his breast into mine. As always, the well of magic swirled around the edges of my father's consciousness. I can hardly explain it. My father tried to describe the well to me several times while retelling the story of my birth. I confess each attempt uprooted my mind. I could never graft his thoughts onto my own. In this as in many things, I failed him by not understanding such a vital mystery of what makes my father unique unto himself. Of course, Father sprouts mysteries like a sunny field sprouts dandelions and I can hardly pluck them all.
I once asked Father why I never had any brothers or sisters. He told me that while he had no regrets, he'd unwittingly fed a large piece of his soul to the five gods to create me. Father always wondered what further sacrifice they might demand of him next. He was loathe to try again lest he lose too much of himself. Twigging Father's dour mood, I told a fantastic pun and asked what specifically he had lost, but he just gave me a weak, watery smile and patted my shoulder. I never asked about siblings again.
The well had shrunk again since Father last accessed it, constricting until he could hardly squeeze his arm down it. Father would always bare his arm and clench his fist during this part of the story, plunging it downwards. Once he got past the thick walls, he said the bottom of the well opened wider than the largest ocean. The waves roared in the darkness as my father dipped into his well. He raised his hand and sipped from its warm, salty waters. He always performed this action for me, too, and I would raise my hand with him to sip from the air.
As my father drank, he felt his body swell with power. He told me he fed all his boiling frustration, coiled anger, and yawning loneliness into the well, forcing it to open wider. The well gushed now, filling him and engulfing him. He would suck great gulps of air and inflate his chest to try and show me how the well filled him, but I always gathered this was a pale imitation of reality.
Father focused on me. He placed his hand on my wooden chest, injecting all the warmth pulsing through his body into the my heartwood. The heat passing through my father burned a handprint into my flesh.
The brass hinge and latch melted and fused along the seam in my wooden skull. My father told me it looked like a little metal crown or cornet encircling my head. That metal seal locked away my brain as the mud baked in my head. The resulting thermal plume sent the costume hat I loved so much lofting into the sky.
Father fell, his butt smacking the cobblestones, elbows scraping against the rocks. His fingers tingled. He watched the hat drift down from the sky like a huge, black leaf.
My rough, skeletal fingers reached out and snatched the hat, bark shavings curling around my knuckles like little hairs. My father scooted back. I think sudden movements frighten him.
I gasped, sucking air into my cheeks and exhaling. How does one describe the moment of his birth other than to say it felt exhilarating? My brain rattled as I twisted my head, child-like and curious, to better see the heat steaming from my mouth and nostrils. I fanned myself with the hat, making little steam swirls.
I examined my body, comparing myself to my father. My wooden chest did not rise and fall like his, but it fluttered with each breath. My breath steamed the air just like his, and my articulated eyelids blinked like his. I extended my crackling joints, tracing a finger along the smoldering brand on my chest.
“Am I alive?” I asked in a voice of liquid consonants and deep, lolling vowels. Each syllable pealed like sweet-throated song birds. I startled at the sound of my own voice. What transplanted joy to never have speech and receive the gift of words, to lack a mind and suddenly fill with clear thoughts. I felt like I spent years pouring my potential into a closed barrel, locked away behind crude spells. Now my father shattered my prison of hoops and staves with his magnificent iron foot. He freed my body and my mind.
“You live,” my father gasped, straining to seal the emptiness inside. What shallow dregs of magic remaining in his hands pulled back into the well, threatening to suck him back down the hole.
“Thank you, Father.” I bowed, still grappling with proper thoughts and speech.
My father ignored me for a moment to focus on the large, old man charging down the street. The old man wore no peaked hat. He wore no hat at all. His half cape was short and practical with not a hint of silver stars or moons. The man's beard was silver with white flecks, long, brushed, and oiled, and his gray eyebrows bristled into themselves like wild bushes. He clothes could look nothing less like mine, yet every taunt muscle and bulging vein of his being shouted his profession: wizard.
Aha, I thought. My grandfather has arrived and now our happy, little family is complete.
“What have you done to my doll?” Grandfather screamed, arms raised as though to call down thunder.
“Your doll?” Father echoed, shaking his head like a horse shooing a fly. “He belongs to himself.”
“Oh, Father.” I embraced him. “Thank you, thank you!”
“Stop calling me that. I am not your father. I'm not old enough to be your father.” My father crawled away, breaking the hug.
I have waited so long for this moment, but now that it has arrived, my father fears to embrace the tenet of our shared existence. The central being in my life insists he is peripheral; oh Father, why do you doubt yourself?
My wooden shoulders slumped, just like Father's did. Two branch-like arms reached to embrace my father. Wrapping around things comes naturally to a tree.
“We are tied together by the blood we share as are all fathers and sons,” I cried. Warm sap leaked around my eyes as I touched my red, flushed cheeks. “How can you deny the bond between us?”
My father wrapped his arms around my barrel waist. He wiped a sticky resin tear off my blood-painted cheeks and rested his forehead on my wooden brow. He squeezed my wooden shoulders.
“I am not your father,” he said, enunciating slowly. “I cannot be your father. I am a young human male. You are an ancient, wooden man doll thing. That is not the way the world works.”
I blinked and my heavy eyelids clacked like fallen pebbles. “Did you not grant me life? Did I not inherit your blood, your wit, and your rough good looks?”
“You're impossible,” Father sighed, rubbing his eyes. “What is your name? What do I call you? I am not calling you Son.”
“When the children pelted me with rotten apples, they called me Styx, so I suppose that is my name. Is it a good name, Father?”
“I cannot be your father,” he said, smiling. “But I can be your friend. Styx is an awesome name. Call me Devin.”
My father is now my best friend as well and he assures me I am awesome. He is not displeased I come born with my own name already and dared usurp his paternal prerogative. My life is sunshine and syrup. “I cannot call you Devin. You are my father. You are my creator.”
7. DEVIN, YEAR 494
The wizard strutted over to Devin and Styx, raised his finger in the air, and shook it. “That idiot doll thinks you are its creator? No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “A point in fact, I am that thing's creator. Designed by me, manufactured by me. Made by me, boy, no matter what flourishes you added afterward. That puppet was a demonstration project for one of my classes.” The wizard stroked his glistening, silver beard.
“You're the master wizard who made Styx.” Oh, the things I could learn from this man.
“Indeed I am
. You see standing here before you the superb,” the man spread his fingers like fireworks, “the terrible,” he clenched the fireworks into fists, “the learn-ed magician, The Great Cornelius. You may call me The Professor.” The wizard placed his hands on both hips, flipped his cape over one shoulder with a jaunty swagger, and stomped. The cobblestones shook beneath their feet and after making the sole of one foot tingle in his boot while the stump buzzed with expectant vibrations. The wizard grinned, raising his arms, and the rumbling intensified. Devin watched, rapt as Cornelius bent his waist in a slow, courtly bow while the ground shuddered and quivered like a living creature.
The dust rose from the cobbles, the air sparkled, and, for a moment, the bleak, winter sun brightened as the very stones of the earth danced to the old man's whims. The wizard's beard dipped below his knees and shook the dust off the end of his cape with a practiced flick of his long, slender fingers. Then his hair flopped over his face.
Devin was reminded of Styx's polished wooden head flapping on a hinge. He swallowed the loud guffaw rising in his throat as the man's name penetrated. It's him!
The wizard coughed. He slicked back his hair with both hands. Silence descended as though the dust had settled over their mouths instead of their shoulders. Devin licked his lips and glanced at the cobblestones. The ground had become cold and lifeless again.
“What an honor,” Styx cried, stepping forward and stretching one arm to shake the wizard's hand. Cornelius wiped his oily fingers on the puppet's trailing cape.
Why did he do that? Devin wondered. But who cares? It's him! It's him! The silence broke in a wild, chaotic torrent of words. “You're Cornelius? The Professor Cornelius? You wrote my favorite book.” Devin dropped his pack on the ground and dug through it, waving his copy of Guide to Fantastique Magick Creatures like a talisman. “This is the first book my mother ever bought me. The magic beastie book and the doll, you created that doll. Such craftsmanship and you have a workshop somewhere in town and classes and you made that fantastic doll for your classes and you teach classes and can I take your classes? But before we do all that, please sign my book?”
The Artifice Mage Saga Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 22