The Last Wizard

by Jane M. R.

  “You said in all the realms? What kind of realms are you talking about?”

  “Other mortal realms with other races of people. Some with something called teknology, or something like that. I spakest with an elf once who sayeth he wast strapped into a contraption that could fly to the sun, or something.”

  “What?”

  I guess that is too much too soon. “Me thinks it best to tell ye in pieces. Otherwise ye might get confused.”

  “Too late.”

  She continues to lead me to her house, though she stops and stares at the ground.

  “Okay, now I know there is a road here.”

  “As ye can see, the Fae Realm dost nary recognize the changes the Lethea make. Let us continue to thy house.”

  “If I can find it.”

  We walk about some more. Finally, she stops again. “This is it. That’s the willow tree where there should be a bench beneath it. But, clearly, the bench and my house and everything else but the trees are gone.”

  I walk forward. Reaching my desired spot, I point. She joins me. Together we look down at two, small green spheres glowing like fireflies. They are no bigger than my thumbnail. The spheres hold perfectly still, suspended in the air, side by side about a foot off the ground.

  “These art Lethea. Also, ye parents. They art currently sleeping close to each other. Though, there art a couple others scattered around as well. Servants?”

  A couple more spheres dot the small space at random; different rooms on different floors.

  “Yes. But, their rooms are…” She points upward.

  “The Fae Realm dost nary recognize anything built by Lethea. This is how the space of ye house translates into the Fae Realm.”

  “What happens if something were to walk through them?”

  In answer, I lean towards the Lethea and slap my hands together, right through them. Brine gasps but stops short when she can see nothing happened.

  “Nary anything,” I say. “Sometimes twill cause their ears to ring, or their nose to itch, or something. From what I hast been told, anyway.”

  She’s shaking her head. “This is so…”

  “Now ye knowest why I tarry to explain some things.”

  A noise above my head causes me to look up. Brine too. A large spread of feathered wings is descending upon us, my short ponytail flapping about behind my head.

  Brine clings onto me.

  “Tis a’right. Tis a’right.”

  The gryphon lands in front of us; a creature with the head and forelegs of an eagle and the hindquarters of a lion.

  I think Brine stops breathing. Her death grip is cutting off the circulation to my arm.

  “Zadicayn Eldenshod,” the gryphon says, “Life wants to speak with you.” His yellow eyes hover upon both of us. “To discover why there was a three hundred twenty-four year gap after a desperate spell. I am to take you to them.”

  I nod in affirmation, looking down at Brine who is pale and shivering. I reach my other arm around her. “Brine, tis a’right. Tis a’right.”

  “It’s not real!” She covers her mouth with the back of her hand, shaking her head. “How can any of this be real? I’ve got to be dreaming.”

  I smile. Once the shock of this all wears off, I may not ever be able to shut her up about this. “Nary a dream, Brine. Come. Fly with me.”

  “Fly? You mean… like a bird?”

  “Yea.”

  She sucks in too much air. I tug on her but her feet are rooted to the spot. I release her, walking to the gryphon who crouches low for me to slid onto his back. Brine watches me. I reach a hand down to her. “I rather wish ye cometh with me. I really dost nary wish to leave ye in this spot.”

  She holds my gaze for a long time, taking turns every so often to look at the gryphon who is waiting patiently.

  “No one has fallen off my back, human,” the gryphon says. “Nor will they ever. You are safe with me.”

  Brine still shakes her head. I pull my hand back. “A’right. I shalt be back for thee, but ye must nary leave this spot or I shall never find ye again.”

  The gryphon pulls back his wings.

  “Wait!”

  The gryphon stops. Brine blinks her eyes many times before she steps forward. I reach down to her again. She slides her cold hand into mine. It is so small.

  “I’m wearing a dress! Should I sit in the back?”

  “Ye shalt feel more reassured if I hold ye. I shall respect ye and thy dress.”

  It takes her a minute before she nods, squeezing her eyes shut as I pull back my shoulder and she slides a leg over which drags her dress up as promised. She hauls it back down as far as she can. I unbutton my coat and hand it to her.

  “It shalt be cold once we fly. Wear this.”

  She puts it on. It covers her bare legs a little more modestly and I hope that still goes further to reassure her.

  The gryphon pushes back his wings, and with a solid whoosh leaps upward. Brine makes a choked shriek and hunkers across the gryphon’s neck, eyes shut so tight I fear she may never be able to open them again. The gryphon throws his head back and clucks at her.

  “Ye holdeth too tightly,” I say, trying not to laugh.

  Her white-knuckle grip loosens, but the gryphon turns his head to change directions and her grip tightens again.

  I wrap both arms around her and lean over her back. “Let go,” I say with as much reassurance as I can. “I shall hold on to thee.”

  Her small body quivers, and then slowly, slowly, she lets go. I lean back, bringing her with me. She resists at first, but then her spine relaxes and she sits up straight with me. Her head is hunkered so far down into the tall collar of my coat she looks like a turtle in its shell.

  This time I do laugh at her, hoping the sound will break the tension in her body. “Open ye eyes, Brine.”

  She shakes her head with enough fervency to rival the beating of a humming bird wing. She says something. Through the whoosh of gryphons wings on either side of me and the wind tossing at my clothes I don’t hear her. I lean in closer. “What sayest thou?”

  She lifts her head out of my coat. Her eyes are still shut. “I have to be back before sunrise in… the Human Realm.” She pauses. It must sound so strange to her calling it that. Like it is a place among all others.

  “Then we hath about,” I have to count on my fingers. “Twenty-two days.”

  She starts “Twenty-two what?”

  “Twenty-two days, Brine. In Fae time. The Fae dost nary recognize space nor time in other realms. One hour here tis roughly one minute in the Human Realm.”

  She’s shaking her head. I laugh at her again, joy filling my blood and I breath in the life that for three hundred twenty-four years I didn’t have. And it’s because of this girl in my arms that I am even here.

  A universe of green, gold, rock, crystal… everything… sparkles below us as if we are above the vast expanse of space, above the blanket of time. A world cupped in the hand of an immortal. There are no words for what I see, for what I feel, because that would be like describing what the space between the stars is made of.

  She needs to share this moment with me.

  Was I like this my first time flying? I don’t remember. It came so naturally to me. But then I had been frequenting the Fae Realm with my father since I could walk.

  “Open ye eyes,” I prompt her again.

  She shakes her head. I tuck my face close to hers. “Ye shall nary fall. I shan’t allow it. I promise. Open ye eyes.”

  Her body shudders. But she lifts her head. And opens her eyes. At first it’s a small revolution of her head on her white neck, and then she’s trying to look at everything at once.

  “It’s…” She stops, her lips parting to form sounds for which there are no words.

  But I know. “Yea… it tis.”

  Ahead of us, a circle of white Fae wood hovers as if anchored in the air, forming a loop, marked all over with the black script.

  The gryphon flies through it. T
hat inevitable pop again and that strange pressure like all my blood is pressing up from under my skin. We emerge on the other side of the arch and we are flying over a different landscape.

  We fly for another half hour, flying through five more loops accompanied by that popping noise every time. Brine is silent.

  The gryphon tilts his beak to descend. Brine gasps and throws her body back. I hold her tighter, squeezing the gryphon’s heaving ribs with my knees.

  “Ye art safe with me, Brine.”

  The land about is green with the lush vibrancy of life. Structures pepper the valley. With a scatter of wings and heaving of muscle, the gryphon lands in the grass at the base of a massive mountain, next to a bridge arching over the river.

  I dismount first, swaying a minute, solid ground briefly unfamiliar. I reach back to help Brine. She accepts my hand, landing on her bare feet in the grass. I turn and bow to the gryphon. “I Thank ye.”

  The gryphon tucks a leg under and bows back. Turning from us, he throws out his wings and blots out the sun with his body.

  I’m nearly knocked over by Brine who cages me in an embrace.

  “Zadicayn! I can’t believe it!”

  Brine, your touches are like a drug to me. You’ve got to stop. “I thought ye might enjoy this.” I disconnect by sheer force of will.

  “Enjoy this?” Now that she’s not touching me, she begins to dance anxiously on her feet. I quit like how my coat looks on her, the long hem brushing her bare ankles and the sleeves swallowing her fingers. Her pure joy makes me smile. This is what I’ve been wanting to see since I left the vault. Someone else’s joy because of something I did.

  “This is… this is… I’m dreaming!”

  “Nay. Tis real.”

  “You are the greatest friend anyone could have!”

  Friend. Huh. I’m not certain if I should do her the favor and say that eighteen-year-old single men don’t make “friends” out of girls.

  She can’t sit still. She’s walking about the area of the glass bridge and glass bench under the tree. She presses her hand against the tree, upon the grass, as if trying to convince herself it’s all real. I remember doing the same thing when Brine wasn’t looking when I first left the vault. Trying to convince myself I was really free. Some days I still have to touch just to make sure.

  “Brine.”

  “Yes?”

  I look at the bridge leading into the mountain. “I wouldst love to show ye the very roots of Life – the place to whence I go – but Life shan’t allow anyone in who dost nary live in this realm. Except for wizards because I art employed by them. Ye shall tarry here. Ye shalt be fine. Naught can harm ye in the Fae Realm. Just nary wander off on ye own. Ye still hast that stone with my blood?”

  She touches her leg over her pink dress and nods.

  “Ye shall be a’right. But if perchance ye get taken by gorgaks, I can still find ye with that stone. But dost nary lose it because ye can nary go back to the Human Realm without me as escort.”

  “Gorgaks?”

  “Yea. Gorgaks. They art the Fae Realm vermin. Aside from being a terrible pestilence, they collect things, and it dost nary matter be it big nor small, people nor stone. But ye shalt be a’right. I just wanted to warn ye.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Her eyes still dart around curiously. She’s holding onto my coat so I decide to leave it with her so she can have her hands on something familiar in this strange place.

  “I shan’t be long.” I face the mountain. Clasping hands behind my back, I proceed up the glass stairs, across the glass bridge, and to the mountain.

  OOO

  Anxiety nearly boils out of my skin. Do they know I am the last one? Do they know why? Do they care?

  Swallowing does not soften the hard nub of fear in my chest. I recall something from the histories of the very first wizards that say if the wizards fail to stay alive, the Fae would wash their hands of us. According to the Fae, they have thousands of realms to care for to be bothered with one that cannot care for itself.

  I wipe sweaty palms on my pant leg and pass under the shadowy threshold into the mountain. There are many turns in the mountain, but that willowy black script begins scribbling along the white Fae wood floor in response to my amulet, showing me the way.

  Enough turns bring me to a deep throat in the floor. I ignore the trepidation and step onto the open blackness. A white disk of light spreads under my feet, the black script weaving out as if they are roots to my body. I begin to lower.

  There is no way to kill Life. But, really, the only reason why Life has taken such precautions to guard its access which restricts all but their employed wizards and select few whom they call and have delivered here, is to keep their shrine holy. A sort of place to invite Gods to worship.

  The disk of white light lowers me down, so deep I can’t even guess how far I’ve gone. The well of rock around me ends and I sink into a void of stars, endless in their reach, eternal to their time. No one can place where in the universe Life is kept. For certain it is hovering in the universe because no world has right to lay claim to their domain. Each world and realm where are scattered wizards have their own access to the Realm of Life.

  Without warning, the stars end and I’m again in darkness but for the light beneath me, still sinking. The next chamber I’m lowered into is an illusion. The colors are too vibrant to be real, with some transparency to everything so I can still see behind to eternity.

  A unified combination of forest and sky and sea is abuzz with each Essence of Life, moving about their habitats as if oblivious to their surroundings of trees, water, and clouds not being real.

  A cow, a hawk, a bear, beetle, humpback whale, gold fish, on and on and endlessly on the Essences represent every creature, every species of everything that have a Lethea on every world within the compass of every God.

  The Essences here is what gives every creature life. If one specific creature becomes totally extinct, then their Essence dies. That is how you can kill Life. However, the Essences have ways to save a creature from total extinction. Like the halicorn. They died off so fast that by the time the Halicorn Essence could rescue them, there was only one left. And to this day it lives in the Fae Realm, unable to repopulate.

  My spinning disk of light stops, and there I hover. Nothing to catch me should I fall; an eternal reach all around me, spread all the way with colors and images and each Essence of Life roving about their respective space.

  “Zadicayn Eldenshod is here,” I say to the endlessness around me. An elephant lumbers by, touching me with light and air.

  “Hello,” says a female voice, many female voices… all the voices of each Essence combined into Life. The voices swirl around me, whispering and shouting at the same time, in perfect sync with each other. “We went three hundred twenty-four years, six months, eleven days, two hours, forty-nine minutes, twenty-three seconds before another spell was cast in the Human Realm. Why the delay? And why was your last spell before the delay so abnormal and desperate?”

  I take a deep breath. “Three hundred twenty-four yore, the humans desired our magic and began to kill us for our amulets to useth them for themselves.” It is unnecessary for the Essences to know about the religious sect getting involved. All they will understand from this is that I am the last wizard. “When they realized the amulets died when we dost, they stopped killing us. By then, I wast the only one left and so they took my amulet to figure out how to use it and forceth me into a vault so I wouldst stay alive but out of the way. That abnormal and desperate spell wast to keep me alive.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “Another human freed me just recently.”

  “The girl you brought with you?”

  “Yea.”

  I stand silent for several minutes, but they ask no further questions. They had an answer to the one question they had. They were done with me.

  But I’m not done with them.

  “Essences,” I call out, “I be the last wizard for the Human
Realm.”

  Silence. A Moorias Essence gallops by me, the snake for its tail hissing and bouncing along. A Seadweller dips her belly out from beneath the surge of an illusioned ocean.

  “If I die, the Faewraith wilt attack and consume everyone. Humans shalt cease to exist.”

  Silence.

  I clench and unclench my fists several times before he I am calm enough to proceed without turning my plea into demands. “I wish nary for humans to become extinct. I wouldst asketh for aid in this, to give again magic to wise and honest men to keepeth the Faewraith away.”

  The feminine voices dagger my soul. “To ask again?” spoke the million voices combined into one. “If the twenty we granted you failed, twenty more will only fail again.”

  A pang of fear lances through me. “Humans art… a selfish race. But the rest of them shouldst nary be punished.”

  “We cannot help. Twenty men we gave the magic and they failed. If man cannot do it, then who?”

  “Let us tryeth again!” The black future for the humans sets fire inside my head.

  “Maybe the humans should die.” The voices darken. “Maybe they should die and the dragons they almost killed could live again on that realm. Humans kill. Let them be killed for once. The dragons need a new realm to live anyway. They are almost done repopulating –”

  “The dragons art nary in the Human Realm anymore?” I nearly step back in shock. I had only been out in society a few times but I thought I only didn’t see any dragons because of their migration. This news that humans had nearly killed them off to the point the Fae pulled them into the Fae Realm while I was vaulted is a punch to my chest. I had dragon friends.

  “Humans almost made them extinct. Some romanticized thought convinced a people called knights to ride after to slay them for rewards from their kings. Let something else that does not kill selfishly take the place of the humans.”

  I want to throw spells to hurt them, to wrangle some mercy out of the Essences that give… and take away.