George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

The lords gasped in delight. “It’s starting!” cried the lord of the stagnant river. “I feel it!”

The tar spread into her core, seeking her heart. But her heart was missing. In its place lay the Goddess’s orange, the flavor of life which would drive these demons from her land.

The orange burst. Its peel scattered like ashes. Eleven orange segments flew from her body and drove wedges through the sorcerers’ hearts. Screams echoed through the throne room — the sounds no longer hers.

O my Goddess. Now I can die.

The girl fell from the hooks, her body broken. An orange tree sprung from where she landed, bursting from seed to sapling. The tree grew until its roots rocked the throne room, tore the walls down, stretched to the heavens and drove through the earth. Oranges blossomed from every branch. The girl’s soul entered the tree, shy as a child, to meet her Goddess. The orange-tree guardian kissed the girl’s soul, breathed her a new body, and sent her forth.

On a farm near what had been the eleventh kingdom, a woman birthed a baby girl who smelled of oranges.

Desirina Boskovichhas published fiction in Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, and Clarkesworld, and in the anthology Last Drink Bird Head . She is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, and when not writing fiction, she works as a freelance copywriter and creative consultant. She lives in Brooklyn, where she claims to pet cats, drink coffee, and enjoy other stereotypical things. Learn more at desirina.com.

Fantasy literature is full of characters from the real world exploring wondrous dreamlike landscapes — the Pevensie children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , to name just a few. Often the challenge the characters face in the fantasy world mirrors those they face in the real world, and the courage to confront an evil wizard is the same courage they need to face the school bully. A fantasy world allows characters to face their problems from a new angle, and therefore discover within themselves new resources they never knew they had.

A fantasy world serves much the same function for writers as well, allowing them to use the prism of the imagination to face issues that would otherwise be too painful to think about, or to comment on political or social issues with more subtlety and less stridency than might be possible with a head-on approach. Our next story is about this interplay between a fantasy world and the real one, and about the important role that fantasy serves for both readers and writers when dealing with difficult subjects.

Long ago, far away, in another time, and another place.

In this world, there lives a wizard.

She is old, but not that old.

She is young, but not that young.

The wizard lives alone in a tiny house at the forest’s edge. To the north are the tangled woods, home to unlikely zoological and botanical specimens the wizard has spent several lifetimes cataloging; she plans to spend several more. To the south lies the city: Perta Perdida, the City of Lost Girls.

The girls of Perta Perdida call the wizard Hanna D’Forrest, when they think of her at all. She’s charged with their protection. Whether this responsibility is one for which she volunteered, or one forced upon her, they no longer remember. Neither does she. Time moves differently here, languid as a summer stream. A place of refuge, this city was built to elude change. If they could trap this world like a leaf in amber, they would. But in the absence of that kind of magic, they settle for slowed clocks. They cling to their world as tightly as they can.

Still, occasionally time gets tangled, and change slips through the loops in the knots. Dangers force their way in through the cracks.

A wizard’s job is to untangle time, to retie the ropes. And to fight the danger they’re facing now.

The wizard came from the forest. She was abandoned there as a child, lost by parents too poor either in funds or spirit to give her the care she deserved. She had been too naive to carry bread or pebbles. Hungry, cold, and stark naked, she wandered until she found the witch’s hut. The witch was an outcast from the city, but an outcast by choice. There are no women the city turns away, only women who find they can no longer stay.

Cunning yet kind, the witch took a good look at this lost girl, and then took her in. She made the girl tea, brewed from dandelion leaves and dried birch and the dehydrated leaves of stinging nettles. She gave her a dress, the gray cloth scratchy to the skin, woven from the rough wool of her pet goat. She fed the girl hot stew, seasoned with herbs that grew in the shadows and had many names.

Like all children, the girl had been taught to fear witches. She had also been taught to trust and obey her parents. Having learned the folly of the second lesson, she had no trouble discarding the first.

She slept on the hearth. Tended the garden. Harvested herbs and learned their names. Petted and sheared the goat, then carded and spun and wove its wool. Hunted the rabbits and wild boars and fall stags, and cured their meat for winter.

In turn, the witch taught the girl all the spells and petty magic she knew. She did not mind when the girl danced bare in the moonlight, or streaked naked through the woods, or swam nude in the river, flashing like a fish.

In time, the girl’s power surpassed that of the witch. The witch was growing old, and to tell the truth, she had always been somewhat plain. But the girl was beautiful, and she grew more beautiful every day. Being a woman, her beauty and her power were inextricably linked. She could have chosen to ignore the connection, of course; she could have sought deeper learning in dusty books and ancient spells. She might even have turned her wand on herself, assuming whatever shape she liked; possibly one less risky.

Yet the dusty books had been transcribed by old men, and the ancient spells were first uttered by old men. Even the wand had been pioneered by a young man, who’d needed a tangible object with which to focus and thus wield his power.

The girl needed none of this. The raw energy of her feminine strength was power enough.

The witch understood this. She was not resentful. She did not envy the girl her beauty, nor did she envy her power. She knew these gifts were volatile and untameable. Possibly even extremely dangerous.

She also knew that, despite everything, there’s still something to be said for dusty books and ancient spells. So when her garden-variety mutterings and petty incantations no longer held the girl’s awe, she called on an old friend who lived in a tower in another land. The books were sent. The girl studied these, too.

Time moved slowly in the forest, especially in winter.

The girl learned to assume the shapes of various animals. When she leapt like a deer or swam like a fish, she was a deer, she was a fish. She brooded like an owl. She flew high as a crow. She frolicked like a squirrel. She hid and waited with the patience of a snake.

Inspired by tales of the past, she came to imagine the future.

She longed to see the world.

So she did. She traveled far and wide, and grew in beauty and power, and had many adventures, all beyond the scope of this tale, until she was no longer just a girl, but a wizard. Though, of course, even as a wizard, she was still just a girl.

She came to Perta Perdida, and met its princess. She was invited to serve in its court. Yet she knew in her heart that she was still a wild creature, and though she would always be tied to this jeweled city, she could not live there. So she made her home at the edge of Perta Perdida, in the wild liminals where deeper magic remained possible, fueled by the tension between city and forest, structure and chaos.