The Sorcerer

"I didn’t move for a good five minutes after that, let me tell you. Just stood there, knees trembling, trying to process what had just happened. Part of me wanted to celebrate, to laugh, to shout to the heavens, ‘I’m alive!’ But the rest of me, the sensible part, was still far too aware that this little reprieve might very well be temporary. Temporary, yes. Because in a place like that, my friend, survival isn’t a victory—it’s a postponement. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of getting myself into and out of all manner of scrapes, it’s that a postponement is never quite as long as you’d hope.

"I decided to take a moment, just a moment, to let the realization sink in. ‘You’re not dead,’ I told myself, quite firmly. ‘You’re still breathing. Your limbs, though they’re trembling like a leaf in a gale, are intact. And your hat, despite all odds, is still perched upon your head. Miracles, all of it.’

“With the personal pep talk out of the way, I finally dared to look around. The manticore was gone—thank the heavens—but the forest beyond the clearing remained as foreboding as ever" And that, of course, left me with a dilemma. ‘Do I stay here, in this peculiar little sanctuary, and risk whatever other horrors might decide to wander by? And for that matter whatever these flowers might do to me. Or do I rather press on, back into the trees, and take my chances with the unknown?’ Neither option, you’ll agree, was particularly appealing.

"But the thing about dilemmas, my friend, is that they don’t resolve themselves. And so, I made my choice. ‘Forward,’ I said aloud because sometimes you have to say these things out loud—you know? To make them feel real. ‘Always forward.’

“And so forward I went—and by forward I mean the exact opposite direction that I saw the manticore go. I am foolhardy, sir, but I haven't a death wish.

“Yes, I made my brusque way through the bush. At this point, a sudden realisation came over me. The dense undergrowth—vines, thorns, brambles, all that. Why—it was growing thinner!

“In fact, sir, the forest floor had become empty of almost all obstacles—and had been for some time. Now, I know what you're thinking: ‘Surely you’d have noticed that while you were running for your life!’ But let me assure you, my friend, when a manticore is involved, one tends to prioritise forward over observational detail.

"And yet, once I noticed, I couldn’t un-notice it. I stopped—just for a moment—and looked around. The forest, thick and wild not long before, had opened up like it was trying to lead me somewhere. The undergrowth, which had been tearing at my boots and coat only minutes ago, was nowhere to be seen. It was almost too perfect, you see, as though someone—or something—had swept it clean ahead of me.

"'Well, that’s unsettling,' I muttered, because what else do you say when the woods stop behaving like woods? ‘Or, if my luck turns it could mean settlement!’ But I couldn’t just stand there gawking; standing still in a place like that felt like asking for trouble. So, I kept moving. But silently this time. Or, I suppose, as silent as a man such as I can be.

“Eventually, however, the silence got to me. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts I hadn’t noticed how quiet it had become. No rustling leaves, no chirping bugs, not even the faint creak of branches in the wind. Now, let me tell you, there’s nothing quite as unnerving as silence in a place that should be alive with sound. It was so unsettling that I needed to abandon my clandestine plan for my sanity if anything else.

“‘Forward’ I repeated, ‘forward. Always forward.’ I can't tell you why but I repeated the damned word like a mantra. And yet, I kept going, because, well, what else was I supposed to do? Turn around and hope the manticore wasn’t waiting for an encore? Not bloody likely.

"Now, let me tell you something about forward. Everyone likes to toss the word around like it’s a virtue—always forward, never back, stiff upper lip and all that rot. It’s a fine sentiment when you’re sitting comfortably by the fire, brandy in hand, waxing poetic about progress and all that. But out there, in the middle of nowhere, when forward means stumbling blind into God-knows-what with only your stubbornness to keep you company, well, let’s just say it loses a bit of its romance.

“And another thing—who decided ‘forward’ was the answer to everything? Sometimes backward is the wiser move! If you find yourself heading straight for a cliff, for example, forward isn’t particularly clever, is it? But no, you can’t say that in polite company because you’ll get branded a defeatist. As though running headlong into a death trap is somehow noble. I’ll take a bit of healthy cowardice over blind bravery any day, thank you very much. Survival is a perfectly admirable goal, if you ask me.

"But here’s the queerest thing about forward, my friend—it’s not always where you think it is. One moment I was stepping through what felt like open forest, and the next, the trees parted, and I found myself staring at something I hadn’t expected at all: a path. Not a natural trail or some game track, mind you, but an actual, honest-to-goodness path, worn as though it had been walked recently too.

“I am not much of a tracker sir, "I am not much of a tracker, sir—one picks up a thing or two, mind you, but I’d never claim expertise. Still, even I could see it plain as day: something was desperately wrong about this path. There was not a single bootprint to be seen. No sign of people, no scuffs of heels, no neat, orderly tread marks—not even a bloody wagon!

"No, sir. What I did see were hooves—uncloven and unshod, as odd as it sounds. You might say, 'Well, with how dangerous you’ve made these woods out to be, it’s far too treacherous for a man to walk here. It’s no surprise you see only hoof tracks.’ And that, sir, is a fair case—if not for the fact that the tracks were much smaller than any riding horse’s. Far too small, I assure you, for anything you’d expect to find on a farm or in a stable.

“Perhaps I’d been transported to the land of the Lilliputians, and they were about to trot out on their mighty steeds and offer me a very civil welcome—tea and tiny sandwiches, perhaps. And now that I mention it, sir, Mr. Gulliver and I have much more in common than you might expect. For one, we both have an uncanny talent for stumbling into places where we clearly don’t belong. And in both our cases we end up meeting creatures of decency and reason (and condescension) in an otherwise savage land. In his case, the Houyhnhnms and in mine… well… creatures not so very different.

“But perhaps I spoil too much, back to the story.

“Now, I’m not saying I was eager to follow a path laid out by something with unsettlingly small hooves, but paths have a way of making decisions for you. You see one and you follow it, simple as that. It’s instinct. And let’s be honest the alternative… didn’t leave much room for discussion.

“There were, as far as I could tell, three sets of tracks worth mentioning. One of them was very fresh—so fresh it couldn’t have been more than a day or two old—and it led straight off the path into the woods. Now, call me cautious, call me cowardly, but I wasn’t about to be the sort of man who goes galumphing after mysterious tracks back into the forest of death.

“The other two sets were older and both stuck to the path. One set headed the same way I was going, the other in the opposite direction, as though whoever—or whatever—had made them had passed back and forth a time or two. Same small hooves, same strange depth to them, but the fact that they both stayed on the path told me one important thing: it was travelable.

“And that, sir, was enough for me. The fact that something—small-hooved and strange though it may be—had gone up and down this path more than once without veering into the horrors of the woods gave me just a sliver of confidence. Travelable, as I said. Not necessarily safe, mind you, but beggars in cursed forests can’t be choosers.

“So I went. One step after another, careful not to wander too far into my thoughts, lest they start whispering unpleasant things like, ‘You’re being followed,’ or ‘That fresh set of tracks could come back this way at any moment.’ No, I kept my eyes on the path and my mind occupied with simpler questions—like how much further this cursed trail would drag me before I found anything resembling civilisation.

“I walked like this for some time, and then with a yawn, I realised how late it must’ve gotten. It wasn’t just dark anymore; it was late. That much is easy to tell. It had been morning when I was whisked away from my shop, but now, how the devil should I know? I tilted my head back, searching for the moon—some sign of time, of place—and that’s when I saw them.

“The stars.

“Now, sir, I am no astronomer. I am, however, a licensed member of the Astrologer’s Guild—a distinction which, I must assure you, is entirely more impressive on paper than in practice. It’s less about mapping constellations and more about telling widows their second husbands will be richer and kinder than the first. All the same, I know enough about the stars to recognise when something is wrong.

“And wrong they were. The sky above me looked like a drunken artist’s interpretation of the night—stars where they had no business being, constellations twisted into nonsense, and not a single familiar pattern to speak of. No North Star, no Orion, no Dipper, large or small. Just a scattering of light so alien that it made my stomach turn.

“For a moment, I stood there, staring like a man who’s forgotten how to close his mouth. Because here’s the thing, sir—when the sky changes on you, it doesn’t just unsettle you. It undoes you. It’s as though the world you know has peeled back its mask to reveal something vast, cold, and incomprehensible beneath. I had known, on an intellectual level, that I was no longer on Earth, but the confirmation was too much to bear.

“It makes a man feel small… when even the sky betrays you. The stars are supposed to be a promise, sir—constant, reliable, the sort of thing you can count on when everything else has gone to ruin. But when the heavens themselves twist into nonsense, well, what hope does a man have of making sense of anything beneath them?

“‘Right,’ I said aloud. ‘What now then?’

"It wasn’t a question I expected an answer to, mind you, but in moments like that, a man feels the need to say something—anything—to remind himself that he’s still there, still tethered to something real, even if it’s just the sound of his own voice.

“The stars, for their part, offered no reply. Typical.

“So I lowered my head and looked back at the path. Because whatever strange hand had laid it down, at least the path was something. It was solid. It led somewhere—or at least, it led away, which in my current state seemed good enough.

“‘Well,’ I muttered, shaking the stars out of my head, ‘forward it is then. Betrayed by the heavens, trusted to the dirt. Excellent.’

“And with that, I walked on, sir—half to see where the path might lead and half because standing still with that sky overhead felt far too much like giving up.