“Tamer’s Tale” by JunoMagic
3. A Winter’s Tale
As it turned out, Tamer’s mother had trained her well for her duties as a housekeeper. But the wizard was also a kind master to her, quite different from old Merrsem to whom her friend Jehan was apprenticed to learn the art of boat-building. Merrsem was fond of whisky and even fonder of the strap, and poor Jehan was the one to suffer for it. Tamer’s father called it “growing pains that are part and parcel of every apprenticeship”. But Tamer for her part was glad that they were not a part of her apprenticeship. The wizard never failed to say a friendly word when she served him, and the one time when the porridge was burnt, he flicked his fingers and winked at her, and all the mess was gone. He seemed to appreciate her quiet ways, and when she worked the garden of the cottage he sometimes told her a tale about the wide, wide world, and she almost forgot that she was working at all.
When she served his breakfast on the third day after the wizard had arrived, she almost dropped the tea-pot in surprise, for when she looked at him she almost did not recognize him. The long white beard was gone, making him appear years younger than his venerable age had to be. In fact, as she gazed at his bright eyes, she thought it was hard to tell how old he was. His face showed the lines of a long life and wind and weather, yet there was something timeless and youthful to his face that had been completely hidden by the beard. In fact, she thought in a small, secret corner of her mind, he looked beautiful. However, she never remembered anyone telling her of the wizard appearing without a beard. As she moved back and forth between table and hearth, she mused that growing a beard to the length of half a foot was probably nothing for one who could wield lightning and thunder. And certainly more comfortable than wielding a cut-throat-razor such as her father used, cutting himself evilly whenever the knife lost its edge.
But she did not mention anything about the beard, or how beautiful she thought the wizard to be, to anyone.
As autumn turned to winter, the wizard made no move to leave Himling again. When she gathered all her courage and asked him how long he intended to stay, he smiled at her and replied in this scratchy voice that was both velvet and steel that he did not know yet. “Even wizards need holidays, now and again.”
It was a rough winter, the winter between her fifteenth and her sixteenth year. Cold and long, with harsh winds and ice and snow from November to February. The pale sun was gone from the sky in the middle of the afternoon and only dared to creep back over the eastern hills of the shores of Lindon shortly before noon. But to Tamer this winter was the brightest she had ever known. Scooped up in the cottage, the wizard told many tales, as much, she thought, to amuse himself as to entertain his young housekeeper. Sad tales he had to tell, of forfeited love and doom, and great stories of light and valour. Of Elves he told her, and of dwarves, and of the kings of men, and the land that drowned in the Western Seas…
Sometimes, as she lay down at night, her mind was whirling with all the names of heroes and far away places. But her heart was lightened by the knowledge that there was a wide, wide world beyond that stretch of grey-blue water between the eastern coast of Himling and the western shores of Lindon.
Beyond the occasional smoke ring turning into a dragon or a tree to illustrate one of his stories, and, of course, the vanishing beard, she never witnessed any sorcery at all. Nevertheless, she did not doubt his power for a moment. There was a fire in his eyes that spoke of deep mysteries and dangerous knowledge, of many experiences in many ages under the sun. She was always aware of this. At times it made her a bit nervous. At other times, it added a thrill to the routines of dark winter days, and sometimes it was a comfort against the woes of the world.
Thus, when her mother lay dying at the end of January, she turned to the wizard in desperation, begging for help.
The wizard’s eyes turned dark and sad at the news, and he agreed at once to accompany her to the small hut of her family to see her mother. It was a long walk in the gathering darkness, with storm winds blowing flurries of snowflakes into their faces. Tamer was astonished to see that when they reached her home, the wizard’s beard was back and longer than ever, covered in snow and ice crystals. But this was not the time or the place to remark upon this strange feat. She showed the wizard to her parents’ bed where her mother lay wheezing with a racking cough and high fever, a piece of blood spattered linen pressed to her mouth.
The wizard sat down at her side and took her bony hands in his. Tamer was frightened to see how the strong hands of her mother, hands that had held her during her first steps, hands that had held her father’s in the midsummer dance, had planted so many flowers and gathered so many cabbages, such strong hands, such capable hands, were suddenly thin and brittle as bird’s feet, claw-like and feeble.
It was then, that a veil seemed to lift from Tamer’s eyes, and for a moment she could see a world that lay beyond the vision of her every day world, and more: she could see paths that led beyond this world. It was a world of shadows, yet it seemed to be a truer vision to her heart than the world she knew. She looked at her mother, and she saw that life was fleeing from her body, that for her mother the only path led away from this world and into the darkness. Tamer shivered with fear at this strange sight and wanted to turn away when she grew aware of the wizard’s presence in this world beneath the world she knew. In this strange world of shadows and twilight and confusing paths of past, present, and future, he was so bright that it almost hurt to behold him. But she could not turn her gaze away from him. Light he was, and beauty and strength and wisdom, and she saw that he could walk all the paths there were, past, present, and future, and indeed that one dark path that led beyond this world into the darkness.
Then, as suddenly as the veil had withdrawn from her world, it was back, and Tamer looked upon the small shabby bedstead of her parents, with her mother clutching the hands of the wizard. “Aye, Hulda,” the wizard murmured. “Tis time. Go and rest, my dear. Your life has been long and full and good. Now it’s time to rest.”
He reached out and stroked her forehead. Tamer’s mother smiled at him and closed her eyes, shuddering with a last painful breath.
The wizard bid Tamer stay with her family in this time of grief. But Tamer would not hear of it. Now that her mother was dead, her apprenticeship was over. Now she was the housekeeper of the wizard, not girl or daughter any longer. But she did not speak of her vision of the world that lay beneath and beyond reality all during many evenings of winter’s tales.
On the first day of spring the wizard, again dressed with beard, blue hat, silver scarf, and grey cloak, with a long staff in his hand, left the cottage and Tamer. His holiday was over, his stay in Himling at an end. He did not say where he would go, or when he would return. He was a wizard, after all.
But when he would return, Tamer would be there, with a fire in the fire place of the cottage, a pot of stew on the hearth, and she would welcome him home. And if it was not Tamer, then it would be her daughter, or her granddaughter, or her great-granddaughter, because the youngest daughters of her family had always been the housekeepers of the Grey Wizard.
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