The Last Wizard

by Jane M. R.

  She doesn’t notice. “I didn’t bring matches,” she apologizes. “Sorry.”

  Whatever matches are. “Tis a’right.” I rest the meat over the grate of the cold oven and acquire the two fireflints from the missing brick space in the oven where the cook used to keep it. Weird the random things I remember.

  When the wood ignites, I put my fire tools back and look at Brine, hands clasped in front of me. My sister used to pretend she wasn’t upset when I asked, and because she would always say, “I tis a’right,” I would leave her alone, accepting that she was “alright.” My father – my chest hurts thinking about him – corrected me, saying that females will tell you they are alright when they are most definitely not alright and when they say, “I don’t want to talk about it,” that means they most definitely want to talk about it.

  “What tis I supposed to dost, then?” I had inquired. “Speaketh or nary speaketh to them?”

  “I knoweth nary,” he had said. “I beseech thee to betray the secret to meself whence upon thy discovery of it.”

  I experimented on my sister. Come to find out, you actually do talk to them about it. The trick is to have the perfect entrance as you dive into what is troubling them.

  “So…” I begin, “you hath come to grace meself with thy presence because I art devilishly handsome?”

  This wins me a laugh out of her. “I could hardly stay away,” she entertains. Her eyes fall to the floor. I almost have my entrance.

  “Tis a lie,” I say. “I art most definitely nary devilishly handsome. Tis because I findeth an oil lamp in the garderobe, and upon buffing it up with me sleeve, a genie spewed forth and granted meself one wish.”

  “Being kind of stingy, isn’t he? It’s usually three.”

  “Methinks he used to belong to King Henry the Seventh and learneth how to be selfish.”

  She’s smiling. I keep going. “So upon me single wish, I wisheth for thee.”

  Her cheeks get rosy. “And not to rid you of all that hair?”

  “Nay. Thy presence brings me greater peace.” I gauge her for a reaction. She sits up straighter and straightens her shoulders. The bodice on her dress forms her torso better than the baggy shirt she wore last time and I do well not to stare too long.

  “I can’t lie about being your wish,” she says. “Because I come for selfish reasons.”

  I take the chair and spin it around and sit, straddling it. My bugle-beard feels like it’s going to reach out and grab her. “Pray tell, to what demon tis troubling thee? I shall hunt it and devour it. Not raw, mind ye. I shouldst cook him first.”

  She laughs again. I want to scoot my chair closer so I can touch her laughter on my face.

  “No demon. Just my mother.”

  “Aw!” I tense up, embarrassed. “Whereupon, forgive me!”

  She’s shaking her head. “You didn’t know. It started at dinner tonight. Oh, by the way, I slipped up and said ‘wilt thou’ to my mother.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Tis the better dialect. Much more noble.”

  She waves a hand in front of her face. “Anyway, it started at dinner. You see this dress?” She indicates the voluminous fabric and lace and the obvious threads of leather weaved around her waist and down her back. They look like chains forcing her clothing to her body. But she didn’t need to indicate. I’ve already noticed every detail.

  I nod.

  “This dress – every dress – is made this way. The leather threads you see are tied in such a way that someone else has to untie them to get you out of your dress. Untying it takes about twenty minutes if the macramist is quick. Every woman who reaches of age must wear these dresses – they do it because it is one sure way to keep them chaste. Does that make sense?”

  Her dialect is still a little rough to follow but I get the gist of it.

  “Okay…” She takes a deep breath, “so tonight I got into an argument with my mother over it, about how I don’t need a dress to keep me chaste, and I got mad and left. I came here because this is the only place where I can be free from these stupid dresses, from men who think that a woman is automatically a whore if she is not tied, and to be free from my mother.” She’s clenching her fists. “My mother refuses to see how it kills me to be chained down. She’s always signing me up for one class or another. First it is violin, and now it’s art, and she wants to make sure I look my absolute best and act like I should and…” Clearly the list goes on, but she stops. Probably because she came back to the castle to flee her mother, not bring her along.

  I listen aptly, memories of my own mother filling my throat so it is yet another victory that I don’t cry in front of her. “Zadicayn,” my mother had said, was actually the last thing she said to me before her and my sister were ushered out of the castle along with all the castle staff as the mob of men came to claim me and my amulet. I didn’t know enough of the Fae language to communicate a spell to keep the bad men away. “I loveth ye. We shalt findeth a way to rescue ye. I promise. Be strong. I hath faith that ye wilt be strong. All shall be well in the end, Zadicayn.”

  My eyes blur and I sniff, managing to remember in time not to wipe my nose on my sleeve. “Eyndill,” I breath so I won’t accidently sob. “Thee art fortunate ye hath a mother who bestows so much care upon thy future and being well.” The smell of rosemary still left over from Brine cleaning the kitchen assaults me. “I wish upon I hath a mother who bestows great care upon meself.” I swallow hard and blink. When I return my gaze to Brine, she’s gawking at me. Didst I sayest something wrong?

  She stands from her seat and pins me with a gaze that nearly nails me to the wall. “Do you know nothing about feelings Zadicayn? Bloody priest I know you’ve been locked away for a long time but I won’t believe you’ve lost that.”

  I recoil, shoulders tensing.

  “Out of everything I just told you, you had to stab me again with the one thing I’m angry over. Thanks for nothing.”

  I did say something wrong. I wish I could tell her how I am more hurt over my mistake than she is. My throat is closing off. I don’t know how to shove those angry eyes off me, those eyes that are the only thing keeping my head above the ocean of madness. Forgive me. Forgive me. I knoweth nary what I sayeth. I don’t know how to fix this. I can barely keep my stupid tears from spilling in front of her as the emotional snake of my grief fangs my heart.

  Wordlessly, I stand up, push in my chair, and leave the kitchen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BRINELLA

  I don’t even feel bad about it. I want to cry, scream that I need relief. The only person whom I felt I could be free around refused to acknowledge my turmoil. For a brief moment, I hate Zadicayn. Anger and sadness battle for dominance inside me. And the meat on the oven is burning.

  I flipped the meat over and declare it done. I look to the doorway of the kitchen and wonder if I should call for him. But I’m too hurt to see him so soon. I push his meat away from the flames and spear mine with the knife and drop it onto a plate. I don’t even know if the plate is entirely clean.

  I eat with my fingers, choking down the gamey taste I suddenly hate so much.

  I finish the meal but Zadicayn does not return. I don’t know why he left the room. He’s the one that offended me. Restless and charged with emotions I can’t release, I exit the kitchen. Walk through the castle and out of the Grand Hall doors. Back up the trail to the mountain. And the more I walk, the easier it becomes to digest what he said.

  I wish upon I hath a mother who bestows great care upon meself.

  I reach the Fae Gate and knock ten times. The tunnel opens.

  I wish upon I hath a mother who bestows great care.

  I come to the boulder and start down the mountain. Through the trees. I stop on the road. I look left back to my house and then right… away from everything I hate.

  I wish upon I hath a mother.

  OOO

  Varseena doesn’t ask questions as she unties my dress. Doesn’t say anything, actually.


  I lay in bed.

  Zadicayn, starving for company, was still able to separate from his own needs to inquire about mine. He’s the first man who’s ever done that to me.

  The moonlight turns my tears into shiny orbs as I cry because Zadicayn doesn’t have a mother and I refused to acknowledge his hurt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ZADICAYN

  I can’t sleep on the bed. Isn’t because of the nest of mice that scurries out of it as soon as I lay upon it, or even the questionable smell. It certainly has dust mites. No. It’s because the first time I wake up on it, it’s from a dream that, for one horrid minute, I think I’m sinking through the floor of my vault.

  So I sleep on the floor of the kitchen. The dream of the vault doesn’t go away, but at least I’m not sinking through the floor, and the new scent of rosemary helps to balm my night terrors to make me think in my dream, just a little, that maybe my dreams are not real. They are certainly different from the usual, if nothing else.

  My sleep has positively become worse since I’ve been out; something convincing me that if I sleep too long or too heavily, someone is going to spy upon my body and put me back in the vault where they think I belong. An unreasonable thought, I know, especially since I threw the lid of the altar down into the vault where it broke into three pieces and used every method I possessed in my castle to bust apart the podium where spun the gears to slide the prison bars over the only opening in the vault.

  However all that was true, I still believe I could have slept better if brown eyes were not still glaring at me from inside my mind, if Brine’s last words were not of contempt toward me for something I said about my mother while she was upset about hers. The raw ach in my chest does not dissipate upon morning. Does not fall into my belly with breakfast. Does not, still, burn off in front of the fire I am sitting so close to. My body is so cold. The coldness in the vault has seeded in my bones and I don’t know how to warm them.

  Forgive me, Brine, I say in my mind, willing, forcing, praying she will hear and will fly a softness to my heart to let me understand she forgives me.

  To let me know I have not chased her away forever. Some reasonable part that still clings to me – I don’t know why it hasn’t found me useless yet and fled hand in hand with my sanity – tells me that I am over reacting, that I should not feel this tormented over the confrontation last night.

  But I can’t help what I feel. I said something to the very person whom I already owe a kingdom’s weight of ‘thank ye’s’ and apologies for just being who I am and the circumstances she freed me from. At this point, being in the vault where I had muted all my emotions for over three hundred years was a mercy to this moment where my emotions are all firing back and biting me again from the inside.

  I don’t understand how I’m not sobbing like a court fool right now. I don’t think it’s because I’m getting emotionally stronger.

  Pressure slides across my hunched shoulders. A waking dream. I have contrived Brine from the sick fever in my mind and now my body is responding to it. My ears are even fabricating a voice for her.

  “Zadicayn.”

  I can’t answer. Because that will only confirm my madness which finally found me. I’ve lost the fight. My madness won’t kill me. No. It will still leave me a warm, dry husk with an amulet somewhere in England to keep the Faewraith away so they don’t rip their way into the Human Realm and start devouring humanity. Glad I am still good for at least one thing, even if I no longer have my mind.

  “ZADICAYN!”

  I give up. I can’t fight this anymore.

  “Yea,” I say into the flames. “That tis me.”

  “Zadicayn, are you okay?”

  “Nay, but thank ye for thy concern.” My Madness sure is soft, with a comforting arm across my shoulders. Is Death as gentle? I hope so. It makes transferring from one place of mind to another easier, less fighting, less heartache. Maybe that is why so many people are taken by death. Certainly everyone could live forever, but upon age when bones ache and flesh falls away, Death slides an arm across your shoulder. Warm. Tender. And asks a single question. “Doth thou wish to come yonder with meself? Thou wilt be upon young again, free of pain. Rejoined with loved ones.” And because the temptation is so warm, inviting, friendly, everyone goes. Some are just able to resist the tempt of Death longer. Death comes in different forms to people. For a young child stricken with the plague it comes in the form of a mother. For a widowed wife Death comes as her departed beloved. For an aging old man who has lived a good life, Death comes as the old man himself, just younger and spryer and full of energy.

  It would be altogether different if death came as a monster, shouting and demanding. No one would go if that was –

  “ZADICAYN!”

  Physical force pushes me sideways so I almost topple off my chair. I have to flail my arms and reset my feet to prevent doing just that. I throw a sharp glance at my Madness who has taken on the form of Brine. Maybe it’s not madness. Maybe this is Death. She won’t even need to ask if I want to go with her. I’ll stand up and do that right now.

  Death kneels in front of me, taking my hand. I don’t know why. Does Death usually do this to people? Take their hands?

  “Zadicayn, you are not well. I’ve been shaking you and saying your name for three minutes. Can you hear me?”

  Death looks remarkably like Brine. Her braided chocolate silk hair hangs like a ceremonial baldric over her right shoulder, but the apparent rain storm outside has her dress and matching head wrap sodden down so she now has a pool of water beneath her.

  My staring long enough must have alerted to Death that something was wrong with me, because Death encircles arms around my back and tucks her head onto my shoulder, facing away from my mad bush of black beard. Even Death doesn’t like it.

  She pulls me in tighter. I can feel her heart beat. Death doesn’t have a heart.

  “Bri – Brine?” I can’t durst to hope.

  “It’s me, Zadicayn. Brine Frondaren.” She starts to rub her hand vigorously up and down my back. I gasp as if it pains me. It’s not Death.

  I clinch her back tighter than I probably should, but I have to hold her close or else she will see the tears leaking out of my damned eyes. But the heavy breathing in my chest betrays me, added upon by sounds coming out of my mouth despite my lips are pressed shut.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” she whispers in my ear. “I’m so sorry.”

  And I lose it completely.

  I’m sobbing like a fool, continuing to do so because she continues to pat my back and whisper – whisper – in my ear, “It’s okay. Let it all out. It’s okay.” And so my body obliges, apparently to have her continue to pat my back with her arms around me and hear her whispers in my ear.

  I’m severely messed up.

  “I brought you some f-food,” she says with a shiver.

  “Oh! Brine, thou art cold!” I knew this. I can feel her wet body along my bony arms. Selfishly, I ignored her wetness. But I have no problem breaking contact now to serve her.

  I stand from my chair and throw wood into the fire while wiping my nose on my sleeve, getting it blazing (maybe that was too much wood) and insist she sit on the chair where I had just occupied.

  She does so, holding her arms and leaning forward, removing the head wrap and dropping the sodden mess on the floor. I run out of the room and come back with a blanket, draping it over her and making sure she is thoroughly covered. I look around. Is there anything else I can do for her?

  “Th- thank you.” She shivers.

  “Nay. I thank thee.” She looks up at me from the corner of her eye, as if perked to my voice. Maybe not, but I keep talking just in case. “I dost nary know what kind of life ye hast, but I nary believe tis easy for ye to leave upon thy chosen whim.”

  She sits straighter up in her chair. She’s not going to tell me what kind of life she has when she is not here, because I am just a hairy stranger who crawled out of the vault.
Or maybe it’s the kind of life where she won’t be able to keep seeing me forever and is taking mercy on my wretched heart and not befriending me because that twill only hurt worse upon me when she is no longer allowed to visit. I’m too scared to ask if I am right, so I will pretend ignorance and keep my distance from her, too. At least, I will try.

  “It’s not easy. I’m not proud to say I had to throw a tantrum to leave my house on the pretense that I am staying the night with a friend.” She pulls at her wet red dress. It does not have ties like the last one. “This tiable versus untiable dress thing is exhausting so I won’t bore you with it. As for me coming here, I’m short of friends that nurture my need for certain things. My cousin was the last and, really, only friend I had. I didn’t realize how badly my spirit has been destroyed without him. You, on the other hand, are someone I enjoy being around.”

  I perk. Hairy face and all. But I see her wince upon her inadvertently calling me a friend. Based upon her declaration, tis best for both of us, I suppose. “I had to come back today because I didn’t sleep with how awful I felt about what I said to you when I left yesterday.” She looks at me and I wish she wouldn’t, because I begin staring back like an idiot. “I am so sorry about what I said to you. I was angry and it was not your fault and it wasn’t you who caused it.”

  “Nary apologize. I hath a dragon’s weight of apologies I owe thee for me broken self. Ye gets this one for free.”

  She smiles wanly. “How did you sleep last night?”

  She’s asking because she sees it on my face and wants to know if she was the cause of my sleepless like she was to her own.

  I grin. “Like a whistersnefet.”

  She laughs. I love that sound. “A what?”

  I shrug. She strikes me as someone who is obliged to shoulder the burden of others and she doesn’t deserve any more of that from me. “Me sleepeth a’right. Me mattress tis worthless and the stone floor tis nary better.” She shuffles the blanket and herself around to expose other wet areas of her dress. “How long art ye staying?”