My Son, the Wizard

by Christopher Stasheff

  Papa released a long, pent-up breath. “So. You have no problem in taking orders from your wife, then?”

  Mama looked up at him sharply.

  “From my sovereign, no,” Matt corrected. “As husband and wife, we pretty much manage to talk things out between us.”

  “Is the separation of the two roles so clear, then?” Mama demanded.

  Matt grinned. “No, not at all—but when we’re alone, we can be pretty sure we’re just husband and wife. Come on, Mama, Papa—advanced degrees notwithstanding, it’s time for you two to go back to school.”

  I am Ramón Rodrigo Mantrell. My wife, being Cuban-born, prefers to keep the old form—she was Jimena Maria Garcia y Alvarez when I met her—but I was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx, so I think far more like an American than a Spaniard, and write my name as a man of New York.

  I was born in America, but my father, Joachim, was born in Spain, not far from Cadiz. He was twenty when Franco began to build his power. Joachim argued with his mother and father over politics and left home. He saw what was coming and left Spain too, emigrating to France. There he made a life for himself working for a baker in Provence, and fell in love with a French woman. They married, but in less than a year the news from Spain began to trouble him badly, endangering his marriage. At last, when the Civil War was in full swing, his wife sadly agreed that he must return to Spain and fight for his principles. Thus he came to fight against Franco at last, as a guerrilla.

  The war went badly, of course, because Franco had endless supplies of weapons and tactics from Hitler. Papa made friends among the Americans in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. When the war ended, he escaped back into France, but saw that Hitler would conquer that land, too, and realized that America would be safer than his wife’s homeland, especially for a Spanish partisan and his wife. She agreed, and they came to America.

  Even there, Joachim chafed as Hitler conquered nation after nation. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, his wife, no doubt strained to the breaking point, packed him off to the army. He could not fight Franco, who, with his own war won, was wise enough to stay neutral—but he could help to defeat Mussolini and, at last, Hitler himself. He came back to his new home limping, his body wounded, but his soul at peace at last. A year later, I was born.

  I grew up in the Bronx, speaking both French and Spanish at home, and English in the neighborhood and at school. My mother sang to me in French, then later taught me the old songs, of Roland and the knights of Charlemagne; my father taught me The Song of El Cid and told me tales of Don Quixote. They were both determined to give me a better life than they had had, and wanted to send me to college. Ah, but I was young and adventurous, my country was at war, and I wanted to be a soldier like my father, so I enlisted in the U.S. Marines instead. I was lucky; my tour ended just as the war turned really ugly. I had done my duty and had my fill of fighting, so I chose not to re-enlist and returned to civilian life and, to my parents' relief, college. Then, since I did well, they encouraged me to go on to graduate school—and what should I study, with their songs ringing in my head, but comparative literature?

  In that I found joy, but at Rutgers College I found more, for I met Jimena and, by some miracle, she loved me as I loved her. She was a Cuban exile whose family had barely escaped as Castro took over, and they lost everything, all their money and property. She learned English after they came to New Jersey and still speaks with a heavy accent, but thank Heaven, it is from Havana, not New Brunswick. She can make herself understood in English—but she is an absolute spellbinder when she recites poetry in Spanish. I can attest to that, because listening to her chanting of poems and seeing the excitement they raised in her eyes, I fell under her spell for all my life.

  We made plans to marry once I received my doctorate, so I attacked my dissertation with zeal. I spent my evenings in the library researching criticism and my days in my office and classrooms, for once I passed my comprehensive examinations, I found a position and began to teach, first as an instructor, then moving to another college as an assistant professor.

  I finished my dissertation, was awarded my doctorate, and applied for tenure. Six months later, I married Jimena, knowing I had secured a comfortable future for both of us.

  My Jimena bore our first—and, sadly, our only—child, so we bought a house where we could afford to: in a neighborhood where everyone else worked in factories, and looked at me oddly because I wore a suit to work and carried a briefcase. I did not mind, knowing that it would only be a few years until we could move to a neighborhood in which there would be people who wished to discuss Voltaire and Proust as often as diapers and plumbing. Still, I did my best to be a good neighbor, winning most of those good working people as friends.

  But fate played a cruel joke on us all, for the neighborhood went downhill slowly but steadily, and the recession and inflation of the seventies ate away my earning power. Since I was more skilled at teaching than at currying favor, and cared more for the students than for research, I was never given tenure, and therefore never promoted, but remained an assistant professor for twenty-one years.

  No, let us not make excuses. I failed as an academic. However, I succeeded as a husband and father, which was far more important to me.

  Not having tenure, though, I had to move to a new college every seven years—fortunately, there were several within commuting range. It was well that I had made friends of our neighbors, for we stayed in that neighborhood for a quarter of a century.

  In my last college, my department elected a Marxist as chairman. He tried to make me teach the plays of Molière as documents of class struggle, and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur as an indictment of the bourgeoisie, which scarcely existed in Malory’s time. I refused, of course, and was denied tenure again—of course. Disgusted, I looked for another means of making a living. A man came to my office and told me he was from the Taxpayers’ Organization for Reduction in the Cost of Education; one of their goals was to persuade faculty members to leave teaching, now that the Baby Boom had passed the colleges, and go into more profitable kinds of self-employment. He offered me a modest grant to buy my own business, explained how to arrange a small-business loan, and offered to enroll me in a correspondence course in bookkeeping. I was so exasperated with being exploited as a professor that I accepted his help and went looking for a profitable business. We did not need so much money anymore, since Matthew had graduated from college and was working his way through graduate school as a teaching assistant. My neighbor told me he was ready to sell his store and retire, so I discussed it with Jimena. It was not as though I was planning to quit a job—with no tenure, I would be out of a job in May, and being fifty and only an assistant professor, there would be little chance of employment in a time when colleges were trying to reduce faculty. In fact, we realized we had little choice, though Jimena might still be able to find a position. I took out a small-business loan and bought.

  I worked hard, and at first we prospered, earning a little more than I had as a professor. Then, though, a pusher hooked the neighborhood boys on a new drug, and before long, they would do whatever he told them. They had always been rowdy, but now they became a plague. I think it was actual malice, that they meant to close my store. With their brains riddled with that drug, I am surprised they could form the intention and hold to it. It was almost as though someone else did their thinking for them, told them what to do and how. Perhaps one of them was not so sodden as he seemed.

  However that may be, they scared away the customers, and even tried to frighten me from delivering orders to my senior citizens. They failed in that, of course, partly because I know how to fight well enough myself, and they knew it—but more because they all remembered me from their boyhoods, and were still somewhat in awe. I never had to lay a hand on any of them, of course, not even now when they acted against me, though I did have to speak sharply to them once or twice.

  Still, I feared I might have to declare bankruptcy, for no one wished to b
uy the store. We sold our house to have money to live until one of us could find a new job. I don’t think the bank had any idea what to do with the store, and I suspect it will stay closed. A nice young couple bought the house—and though they seem good-humored and easygoing, there is something of the trained fighter about both of them. I hope many others like them will buy into the neighborhood and make the boys behave.

  So I planned to close the door and walk away from the house, telling myself I would begin a new life even though I was past fifty. I never dreamed it would be so splendid a life as our son Matthew gave us. After all, what more could a professor of comparative literature ask, than to live in a medieval epic?

  Even Papa couldn’t tell if the room at the top of the south tower was a classroom or a laboratory—at a guess the magical equivalent of a physics teaching lab. One wall was solid shelves, crowded with bottles and arcane hardware and glassware. Before it stood a chest of drawers four feet high and eight feet long, with a top made of slate—a laboratory bench if ever there was one. Another wall was covered with a thinner slab of slate, already having geometric designs chalked on it. Before it stood a table strewn with parchment around a large open book, obviously being used as a desk. The far wall held a chart of the heavens, with rather fanciful zodiacal symbols.

  Most of the room’s floor was clear space, but with sand sunken four inches into it, twelve feet square. Beyond that, the windows were casements filled with glass, instead of the usual arrowslits, but with heavy curtains to either side of each—just the kind you would need to darken the room completely, keep drafts out, but also keep light in at night. Several lampstands stood about, with two more lamps on the worktable and one on the desk.

  It was a very businesslike room, but the business to which it was devoted was magic.

  Friar Ignatius, lean, tonsured, and robed, watched as Papa recited a poem, and a phoenix appeared, burst into flame, then faded from sight. The friar nodded. “An excellent demonstration of illusion for one who has had no training for his Gift, Señor Mantrell—but perhaps your education in poetry has made you something of a wizard already.”

  “Then that would be true of Jimena, too,” Papa said.

  “It would indeed, as I can see from the formidable concentration with which she recites. In fact, she brings the verse to life so intensely that I hesitate to call it reciting.” Friar Ignatius faced the two of them. “You both have great powers, but I see already a difference in your talents.”

  “Difference?” Mama looked from Papa to the friar, wide-eyed. “What difference? We are both magicians, are we not?”

  “Yes, but there are differences between magic-workers, in emphasis and sometimes even in powers. One is more skilled in healing, another more in the making of wondrous objects, a third in bringing living creatures to him out of thin air. Even in wizards whose power is war, one may be better suited to defense, and another to offense.”

  “You mean not all wizards can do all magics?” Papa asked.

  “That is true, but is not what I meant. Most magicians can do most magics; it is a question of each one’s greatest strength, of what each does best.”

  “Then what is my talent?” Mama asked.

  “Your talent is to bind spells that others cast, bind them so fast that they cannot hurt you or any whom you protect—and to bind others by spells of your own,” Friar Ignatius answered.

  Papa frowned. “Do you say that she can compel others to obey her?”

  “No.” Ignatius turned to him. “It is more subtle than that. Her spell binds folk to wish to do those things that make her happy.”

  “Well, that is true, certainly.” Papa slid an arm around Mama’s shoulders and smiled down into her eyes. “I have known it since I met her—but do you say it is in fact magic, not merely metaphorically?”

  “Fact! Metaphor!” Friar Ignatius threw up his hands in exasperation. “What use are such words when you speak of magic? She has the power—what else do you need to know?”

  “Nothing,” Papa admitted, gazing deeply into Mama’s eyes.

  She smiled up at him and pressed more closely against him. “But there is more to it than metaphor here, Ramón. What I did in New Jersey, I did without knowing. Here, I can do what I intend—and by nothing more than reciting verse!”

  Friar Ignatius nodded. “And the verse puts your wishes into harmony with the forces of this world, so that they can manifest as action. Remember, though, that you must always end your verse with a command for the action you desire.”

  Mama still smiled up at Papa. “Can I compel even you, then?”

  “Me most of all,” Papa answered. “You always have.”

  “Ah, but that was by asking, or telling you what I desired. I did not command.”

  “Nor could you here in Merovence either, Dame Mantrell,” said Friar Ignatius, “for your husband is a wizard as powerful as yourself, though not in the same fashion.”

  Papa looked up, frowning at the interruption of their little idyll. “What is the manner of my power, then?”

  “Would it surprise you to know that your aptitude was for the magics of war?”

  Papa gazed at the friar, then abruptly smiled. “No, not really.”

  “Attempt it,” said Friar Ignatius. “Recite a verse that would light a fireball for you to hurl.” He took Papa’s arm, stretched it out, and cupped the palm. “Make it appear right there, but floating above the skin, and tell it to burn everything but you. Remember, when you ‘throw’ it, you only direct it—propel it by thought expressed as spoken words, not by the force of your arm.”

  Papa frowned for a moment, then chanted,

  “Let a ball grow all compact of fire,

  Not gross to sink, but light to aspire

  To strike at my foe. Let it not burn my skin,

  But my foe scald and singe!”

  A ball of fire exploded into life above his palm. Even though it was a very small sphere, perhaps the size of a bonbon, Mama and Papa both flinched.

  Friar Ignatius did a little, too. “Does it hurt?”

  “No, not at all,” Papa said. “I must have done correctly when I specified that it not burn me.”

  “Well done, Master Mantrell! Indeed, you scarcely seem a novice at all!” Then the friar frowned. “But why have you made it so small—and how?”

  “Well, this is just an experiment,” Papa said. “I don’t want to risk any more damage than I must. But do you not know ‘how’ yourself?”

  “No.” The friar smiled sadly. “I have the interest, but not the talent. You did not state its size in words. How did you do it?”

  Papa shrugged. “This is as I pictured it in my mind when I chanted the verse.”

  “Ah! So your intention manifests, even though it is not stated.” Friar Ignatius nodded. “Yes, you do have the talent indeed.”

  “Thank you, Father. Now that I have the fireball, what do I do with it?”

  “Hurl it at that spot of damp on the wall.” The friar pointed toward a block next to the window. “It needs drying anyway. But remember, even though you make the motions of throwing, you must tell it where to go.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Papa muttered, then wound up like a Yankees pitcher, chanting,

  “Damp upon the granite wall,

  I target you who darken granite.

  I hold here a flaming ball

  In my hand, O Spot of Damp.

  When I hurl it overhand,

  It shall strike and on you fall.

  Then shall you dry, mildew and all,

  And all shall see what service flame is.”

  “Will Tennyson forgive you?” Mama murmured.

  Papa hurled the fireball anyway—overhand. It arced away, homed unerringly on the damp spot, and struck the wall, exploding in a shower of sparks. Mama and Papa ducked. The sparks landed on the wooden workbench, a heap of parchment on the desk, a leather-bound grimoire—and Friar Ignatius’ robe.

  The friar yelped as flame blossomed on his arms an
d chest. Mama caught up a pitcher of wine and poured it on each of his burns while Papa started swatting out little blazes all over the laboratory. Somehow, they got them under control and put them all out.

  “Are you all right, Father?” Mama asked anxiously.

  “This one here!” Friar Ignatius said through tight lips, pointing at a burn hole over his elbow.

  Mama frowned down at the raw, ugly flesh beneath and chanted in a soothing tone. Before their eyes, the burn faded into pink and healthy flesh.

  Friar Ignatius stared, then drew a deep breath. “Yes. It seems that you have more talents than one, Dame Mantrell.”

  Mama shrugged off the compliment. “Every mother learns something of healing, Father.”

  “Then you must teach me,” Papa said, frowning, “for I shall have to heal men wounded in battle.”

  Mama smiled up at him. “You have learned a little already, Ramón, when Mateo was ill.”

  “Well, yes,” Papa admitted, “but I do not think we will find aspirin or thermometers here.”

  “Why not?” Friar Ignatius asked.

  They both stared at him. Then Mama said, “You have such things?”

  “No, but why should that stop you?”

  Mama smiled slowly, then nodded to Papa. “Even as he says. You should be able to conjure up penicillin, if you need it.”

  “True,” Papa said doubtfully, “but we cannot make it out of nothing, can we? From where will we steal it?”

  “Your magic can duplicate anything you have seen and know,” Friar Ignatius explained. “How it takes materials and assembles them, I have no idea—but I have seen wizards make all manner of things appear from thin air.”

  “Thin air, eh?” Papa gazed off into space. “Yes, the molecules of air could be combined to form heavier compounds.”

  “But why might your spells not gather molecules from earth and trees too?” Mama asked. “We do not need to see them rise for them to be there.”