The Sorcerer

“Well, then, let us dispense with the formalities and cut straight to the meat of it, shall we? After my… let’s call it an arrangement with Death was concluded, I came to my senses rather abruptly. And when I say abruptly, I mean that in the most literal sense possible—consciousness slammed into me like well a sheer wind, you see, I was falling.

“Yes, falling. Through trees, no less. Branches clawed at me with wild abandon. Why the forest itself had taken umbrage at my sudden—if wholly undesired—intrusion. A most undignified affair, I assure you.

“And then, with a great thud, I landed. And not gently, mind you. The earth welcomed me with all the tenderness of an anvil, and I dare say I left quite the impression—both on the ground and on my posterior. Now, I should say my brief return to consciousness was just that—brief.

“Only after the fact was I vaguely aware of my initial fall through the canopy. At the time I was far too preoccupied with the sudden cessation of motion and the immediate, all-encompassing ache that followed. Pain has a remarkable way of narrowing one’s focus, you see. The many sensations of the moment—sharp, dull, throbbing—demanded my full attention. They drowned out any coherent thought I had save for a singular refrain: I am alive, though I dearly wish I were not so aware of it.

“The first vivid thing I can remember—aside from the pain, of course—was the cold. The earth beneath me was cold. The wind against my sorely beaten body was cold. The snow that had loosened from the boughs above during my graceless descent, which now lay heaped atop me, was cold too. It was not altogether an unbearable cold, but it was persistent. It was a crisp cold. The kind of cold that wakes you up in the morning. But, of course, I was hardly conscious, much less awake so it did no good to me.

“The snow pressed against my face and the icy crystals nipped at my skin as though to say, ‘Get up, you fool, and face the day.’ But I couldn’t. Not yet. In fact, my mind was so addled with what I must assume to be post-being-treated-like-interdimensional-postage exhaustion that I lay there, utterly still, unsure if I was more snow or man at that moment. I lay there, it seems to me now, for what felt like an eternity, though time is a slippery thing in the cold. Yes, that is most certainly the case when in the cold. I, sir, I can assure you I've been in the cold far more than I should like, and seconds seem to crawl and minutes seem to stagger, and hours, hours seem to stretch out. Yes, hours mock you with their perpetuity.

“You know, sir, once, once I was travelling through the wastes of the Yukon. “Yes, that is right, sir. The Yukon. Dreadful territory, really. I mean, the coal isn’t even half of it there. The sun, you see, the sun does not set there. Or if it does, it stays there for months and months at a time. Months! I mean… I hardly got a wink. You must understand, I was there not for leisure, oh no, but for a client’s specific purposes. And while I do share a bit of, shall we say, sorcerer-to-client privilege—confidentiality and all that—I shan’t name names. However, the specifics of the task? Well, those I could relay, should you be so inclined. Yes? Well, my client was in particularly good standing with the Court and he needed for some reason or another a tonic of rapid peeling. Now I shouldn't ask to know why a man might need such a thing—I mean the man's handwriting was absolutely dreadful so that's the best I could make of it. But for the “rapid” part of this “peeling potion” I was journeying to the North for a particular rabbit. Yes, a rabbit. But not just any rabbit. I was in pursuit of the jackalope.

“You might scoff at this, of course—‘The jackalope! That does not exist,’ and so on, as so many uninformed people are wont to do. But let me assure you, sir, the American jackalope, specifically, is quite real. Rare as hen’s teeth, mind you, and far more valuable. Typically, they’re found in the arid climes of the Midwest, bounding across deserts and prairie fields with those ridiculous antlers perched upon their heads. A curious spectacle, to be sure, but in the snow? In the Yukon? Ah, that’s an entirely different matter. If you should find one there, then you’ve stumbled upon something so rare, so precious, it’s worth—well, I hesitate to say its weight in gold. No, not merely gold. Its weight ten times in gold. If not more. Yes—you will find it particularly interesting that—”

Mr Wells goes on like this for some time. And he does often. The reader will have to trust in my judgment when I say I have included the absolute minimum required to grasp the essence of the man. Eventually, I wrangled him back on topic:

Ah—yes. My thought process after becoming fully cognizant went something like this: ‘Why is my hat always the first casualty? Was that a rib cracking, or am I just dramatic? Would the snow kindly stop settling into places it has no business being?’ Ultimately, however, some stubborn spark in me—call it pride, call it stupidity, call it the will to live—urged me to move again.

“Slowly, painfully, I shifted my weight, and the snow tumbled off me in clumps. My arms felt like lead, my legs were as uncooperative as ever. but I managed to push myself up onto one elbow. ‘Move, I told myself. Just move.’ And with a groan that felt like it belonged to a man three times my age, I pushed myself further upright, propping myself on both arms now. In time I stood—and in time I had regained entirely my capacities.

“I remember saying, ‘Well l, that's step one, Now for step two: figuring out where the devil I am.’ The forest offered no answers, though, seeing it for the first time, it looked rather idyllic—if a bit dark. In fact, the more that I looked at it, the more it looked exactly how I would imagine an Evil Forest to look.

“I mean, it looked just like the German Black Forest—I’ve been there you know. A dreadful place if you wander too far off the beaten path, though the pastries in the nearby villages are quite something. But yes, this forest had all the hallmarks of its—somehow—more sinister cousin.

The trees were altogether unlike the black forest. In fact, they were unlike anything I had come across in all my days. They were dark and foreboding—if a tree can be foreboding. They seemed almost lifelike. Occasionally I glimpsed at one, and it looked as if it had some... I don't know, some face staring back at me. But I would simply take another look, and—I must have been imagining something. The ground—the ground was a tangle of roots and frost. It was uneven, treacherous. It seemed to be hellbent bent on getting me to misstep and twist an ankle. The air felt... Thick. It wasn't a physical sense, mind you, it wasn't humid or anything like that. But there was a weight to it, a sort of... I don't know, a sort of tension. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I mean, the occasional creak of a branch in the wind... sounded unnervingly like a footfall, and I found myself glancing over my shoulder far more than I'd care to admit.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? How a place can seem alive, even when there’s no one around. The forest had a presence, a personality almost, and not a particularly friendly one at that. It didn’t feel malevolent, exactly, but there was an undeniable sense that I wasn’t entirely welcome here. I mean to characterize it, I got the strongest sense that the forest was saying, ‘You don’t belong, stranger. Best you move along.’

“Of course, there was nowhere to move along to, no path to follow, no obvious direction to take. Every way looked the same—dark. Now that I mention it, dark is right. The sun, it seems, was setting. I could not see the sun exactly. The trees overhead were far too thick. The whole place just seemed to dim slowly. But standing still wasn't an option either. Not when this bloody cold was nipping at my heels—and I'm fairly certain one of my ribs was, in fact, cracked. I mean, they were certainly reminding me of their displeasure at that.

So, I did the only sensible thing a man in my position could do. I picked a direction at random, and started walking. I won't lie to you. It wasn't a confident walk—more like, it was a tentative shuffle. And I certainly wasn't having a merry traipse through the woods!

No, it was the kind of gait that says—and I'm terribly sorry for personifying everything the way I do. I have a terrible bad habit of it. No, but I think the gait said to the world, I think, ‘I'm moving forward. But I'm fully prepared to turn and run in another totally random direction, if needs be.’ Which, in retrospect, was probably wise, given the circumstances. But at the time, it felt like progress, and progress was better than nothing.

“The forest, though… it wasn’t making things easy. To make the long and short of it, it did not go well. It took several hours to make. Middling progress. No less than a few miles at most. And it grew darker, still.

I mean, my jacket was already roughed up quite a bit in the fall, but it was veritably torn to ribbons by the many many thorns and brambles that infested this place. But, to take account of my wardrobe, it was, in fact, quite similar to the garb I am wearing now. And in some cases, the selfsame. As I have said previously, it is the uniform of my vocation. My lovely, lovely jacket. It was but the first casualty.

“This tall top hat? Anything but tall at the time. It had landed beneath me in the fall, poor thing, and the titular ‘top’ was all but punched out. And the rest of my garb was in all manner of states of repair.

“But one thing held true, as it always does. My wand. I had at least that going for me—it was unharmed, unscathed So I had at least some defense in my jaunt through the undergrowth though what good it might do in this dreadful place remained to be seen.

“Just as I decided it best to set up some primitive camp, perhaps fashion a fire from whatever I could scrape together, I heard something. Oh, you never forget the first time you hear something in a forest like this. It was a low sound. A grumbling sound. Just to my right. A growl. At first, I thought it might have been my stomach protesting the lack of sustenance, but no. No, this was far worse. It was deep, resonant. I turned, slowly, carefully, because even a fool knows you don’t make sudden movements when you hear that kind of sound in the dark.

“And there it was. A manticore! Ye Gods, a manticore!

“Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like the sight of a manticore in the dim light of a cursed forest. They’re majestic, yes, in the way that a hurricane might be majestic—terrifying, overwhelming, and absolutely the last thing you want to deal with at the moment.
“It stood there, no more than twenty paces away. I suppose I should describe it for you—manticores are not that common in England, I should think—more a mythical creature really, like a Scottish Conservative. And all of the manticores I've met are staunchly Tory. Not that I’d half a mind to ask him.

“Manticores are hellish beasts. Picture a lion, but larger,and fiercer, and thoroughly displeased with the general state of the world. Then add a set of leathery, bat-like wings, that look as though they’ve been stolen from the very gates of hell. And of course, the pièce de résistance—the tail. A great, barbed monstrosity, like a scorpion’s but magnified a hundredfold.

“This one was no exception. Its golden eyes glinted with a certain unsettling intelligence; t’was like it knew exactly how much I didn’t want to be there and was considering how best to make my evening worse. It growled with a great rumbling jowel and great quantities of spittle leaked from its maw.

“And there I stood, armed with nothing but my wand and what I like to call misplaced optimism.

Running was not an option—not with a beast that could leap half the distance in a single bound. Fighting? A manticore against one somewhat bruised and emotionally fragile sorcerer? Not ideal. Negotiating? Hardly. Manticores are not known for their diplomacy—their opinions on immigration are utterly ridiculous.

“I must confess that nothing so tactical came to mind when first I saw the beast. No, my first thought, the very first thing that entered my mind was, I am not in England anymore. That, of course, was quite self-evident, but it had only now truly crossed my mind. I was supposedly banished to the realm of Discord, Chaos Incarnate, and it was, what? A forest? A forest! Perhaps—perhaps it was some cosmic mistake, some clerical error in the grand bureaucracy of the multiverse. Or perhaps, and this is truly frightening, the realm of this Lord of Chaos was infinite, like a fractal, and any possible combination of events could occur within it. And it was just by pure happenstance that I ended up in a fairytale forest, fighting what I can only imagine to be some confluence of fate with rather sharp teeth.

“And because I had spent so long thinking that in the moment, I froze.

“Not for lack of fear, mind you—I assure you, I was terrified. No, it was that my body and mind were at odds with one another. My thoughts raced around my mind, colliding with one another and scattering like billiard balls, while my legs—the traitorous things—remained quite firmly rooted to the ground. The manticore took another step forward.

‘Ah, there we are. That did it.’ I thought at the moment. My legs now, apparently jolted awake by the sheer immediacy of the situation, decided that now was the time to act. Unfortunately, their decision was not to run or fight or do anything remotely helpful, but to stumble backward in what I can only describe as an interpretive dance of panic.

“This, of course, had the immediate effect of making me look exactly as incompetent as I felt, and the manticore, bless its terrifying little heart, seemed to find this development rather amusing. Manticores, it seems, have a sense of humor, though I cannot say I appreciated being the butt of its joke.

“I had backed myself up a considerable distance until my retreat was blocked by a tree. ‘Well,’ I muttered under my breath, ‘this is a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into.’ My wand, I still clutched it in my hand and trembled ever so slightly.Not from fear, mind you—well, mostly not from fear—but from the sheer absurdity of the situation. Here I was, a man of some considerable magical aptitude, reduced to a stammering, stumbling wreck before a beast that likely didn’t even have a sound economic policy let alone know what a wand was.

“And that, sir, is when my survival instincts finally decided to show up. Late to the party, as always, but better late than never, I suppose. With the manticore mere paces away and looking entirely too pleased with itself, my brain and body finally reached a mutual agreement: Do something, anything, or become dinner. My grip on the wand tightened, my knuckles were white with determination—or desperation, take your pick—and I mustered what little courage I had left.

“‘Right,’ I muttered, more to myself than to the manticore. ‘Let’s see how you feel about a bit of pyrotechnics.’

“Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my magic, while effective, is not always elegant. What followed was no exception. I raised the wand, aimed it squarely at the manticore’s hulking form. With a flick of my wrist, a shouted incantation (and a handful of pocket gunpowder) I unleashed a burst of fire. “To call it a fireball would be generous. It was more of a sputtering blaze, really—somewhere between a bonfire spark and a particularly ambitious candle flame. But it was enough. The manticore snarled;it recoiled slightly at the light.

“This, of course, was my moment. I didn’t waste time admiring my handiwork or considering how uncomfortably close I had come to being impaled or biten in half. Instead, I did the sensible thing.

“I ran.

“And when I say I ran, I mean I ran like the messenger at Marathon—I mean I ran. My feet barely touched the ground as I bolted through the undergrowth, dodging branches and roots and generally making a complete fool of myself.

“My lungs burned, my legs ached, and my heart pounded so hard I was half-convinced it might give up altogether. Still, I ran, because stopping was not an option. Stopping meant death—or worse, humiliation at the claws of a beast who’d vote with bloody Lord Salisbury!

“And then, as if this damnable forest grew bored with tormenting me, I saw it—a faint light ahead—a clearing!

“Now, I’m not usually one to put much stock in divine intervention—the Old Man has it far too much out for me—but in that moment, I would have kissed the ring of just about any being who claimed to aid me. Saints, eldritch horrors, embodiments of chaos (perhaps)—I wasn’t picky. If they’d seen fit to give me a reprieve, I wasn’t about to question their motives.

“An as I burst into the clearing I was more or less prepared to make a desperate—and I'm sure it would have been quite desperate—last stand. But what I found instead of my Thermopylae, was something most peculiar indeed.

“The clearing, you see, wasn’t the barren sanctuary I had expected. No, it was carpeted—absolutely covered—in a shimmering sea of blue flowers. Their petals caught the moonlight and gave the affair an otherworldly glow.

“At first, I didn’t think much of it. ‘A bed of flowers then? Eh—not the worst place to die.’ But then I heard something. Or, more like, didn't hear something. The manticore. The snarls, the thundering footsteps, all of it stopped the moment it reached the edge of the clearing. I turned, half-expecting the beast to be upon me, and it was there just beyond flowers. It paced back and forth along the treeline, its eyes locked on me for the whole of it. ‘By Jove…’

“It was afraid.

"Now, when any animal—particularly one as ferocious and self-assured as a manticore—stops in its tracks, you can be sure of one thing: something has unsettled it. This wasn’t some tactical recalibration, some predatory pause to reassess the situation. No, this was genuine, palpable fear. And anything that is enough to scare a manticore is surely enough to scare me.

"However, I was met with a rather grisly decision. I could either be afraid of the immediate death promised by the manticore, or the—what I assumed to be—less-than-immediate death of whatever these flowers might do to me. Naturally, I chose to procrastinate and took the threat to my future self rather than the one to my present self. Always an excellent survival tactic, don’t you think?

My gaze dropped to the sea of blue flowers that surrounded me. Their glow in the moonlight cast some light on the clearing, making it feel like a—like a dreamscape more than anything. I crouched down and ran my fingers just above the petals. I didn’t dare to touch them directly, though I suppose the point was moot—I was already in the midst of them. Any hesitation at that point was, frankly, absurd. But still, they didn’t look dangerous. No thorns, no sinister pulsing—they were gentle, unassuming things, almost glasslike in their fragility. Not threatening in the least.

"And their fragrance! Sweet, almost intoxicating. It reminded me of something… a citrus, perhaps—no—more like—hmm—like a summer's wind. But whatever the case, for the first time since this deranged adventure began, I felt calm. I do not believe this was an effect of the flowers. No, now I know their effect, and I’ll spoil the suspense for you a bit: it is not a prolonged, painful death. As you can see by my sitting here before you now, alive and well—I survived the ordeal.

"No, I think it is the same kind of calm one might find in a patient of an incurable disease. Their fate has been sealed by forces far outside of their control, and they can do nothing but wait for the inevitable. There’s a serenity in that, you know. A peculiar peace. I’ve found, amongst the acutely ill and those about to die, that they are perhaps the calmest people in the world. That is the feeling I had at the time. Not fear. Not panic. Just… stillness.

"Stillness, yes. But only for a moment, mind you. For then, naturally, my brain, ever the overachiever, decided it couldn’t simply let me enjoy this rare instance of tranquility. Oh no, it had to remind me—quite loudly, I might add—that I was still very much in mortal peril. Mortal peril, indeed! My dear fellow, it wasn’t content with just whispering, ‘You’re going to die,’ oh no. It had to go into the specifics. 'The manticore is right there. It’s pacing. It’s thinking. Probably about how best to sauté you.’ Utterly unhelpful, I assure you. Though, not entirely unwarrented. The beast was still there.

"For what felt like an eternity, we stayed like that. Me, frozen among the flowers, and it, circling, testing, considering its options. Every now and then, it would pause, lift its great shaggy head, and sniff the air—I swear I couldn’t possible imagine what it thought to accomplish in doing so.

"I thought, ‘Well, this is it. Any second now, it’s going to decide I’m worth the risk, flowers or no flowers, and that’ll be the end of me.’ And let me tell you, I’ve never felt so simultaneously alive and absolutely, positively doomed.

"But then, something miraculous happened. It stopped. Dead still. Its ears perked up, its head swivelled sharply to the side, and it stood there, listening. For what, I couldn’t tell you—there wasn’t a sound in that cursed forest except my own ragged breathing. "And then, without so much as a backward glance, it turned and slunk back into the trees. Just like that. One moment, I was staring death in the face, and the next, it was gone, swallowed up by the shadows as though it had never been there at all."