Resistance is Feudal

This is not my story. It’s the wizard’s story; it is his, and if God had not seen fit to arrange otherwise, he would write these words.

But I alone am left to tell this tale.

I was only a child when the wizard came to us, but I remember that day well. The sky was cloudless and cornflower blue. It was harvest season, and I was in the field with Da and my three older brothers, gathering the wheat. We would give half to the lord, keep another quarter for ourselves (Ma would make rolls and bread and Da’s beer), and sell the balance in the village. Tilling and sowing was hard work, but Da would hear no complaining. “Better to bend your back in a field, Edward,” he’d say, “than to break your leg chasin’ a cow or a goat or a damn chicken. Chickens is worst of all.”

A man of serious wisdom, my Da.

I stooped to pull up a weed, and I guess that saved my sight and maybe even my life. I heard a crack like a tree splitting in two. My hair stood on end and my whole body felt like water had frozen along it in a flash, then melted away.

I went blind.

It was just for a second, but I couldn’t see. The weed disappeared, present only by touch. The ground dissolved to white nothing.

I heard screaming. The whiteness broke up into patches like clouds, or fog, and drifted away. I looked up.

A few rods away, a fire burned on the field. Two of my brothers ran from it, terrified. Da had been knocked to the ground and wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see Harold, my oldest brother. Smoke poured up from the ground where the fire’s tongues licked.

In the middle of the flames stood the troll.

I gasped and began to back away. It was taller than a rod, its body blackened, as if scorched by the flames, but it stood still, as if the fire did not bother it. Light flickered and glinted from it—it had patches of strange, almost metallic scales, like snakeskin, but rigid and hard. Oily shadows danced along those parts of its body. It was bald, its pate mottled, one eye surrounded by a protruding ring of scales.

As I watched, Da started to get to his feet. The troll raised its right arm—it was tipped not with a hand, but with some sort of long, thin claw, a single spike that spat a bolt of red lightning. Da screamed and fell down again.

Then a figure came around from behind the smoke and flame. It was Harold, with his hoe and sickle. His hair was burned and one eye was swollen, but he swung the sickle anyway.

Over the crackle of flames, I heard a loud clang as he struck the troll. The troll turned, slapping Harold’s weapon out of his hand. Its left arm had a hand at the end, as mottled and decayed as the skin on its head. Harold started to back away, but the troll grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him closer.

I struggled to my feet, casting about for a weapon. I could find only a rock, part buried in the soil. I started to dig it out. Harold cried out. The troll was choking him with its one hand, hoisting him inches off the ground with no effort at all. Harold kicked and flailed. No good.

I finally pried the rock loose. I rose up, turned to throw it—

Another figure had risen up from the ring of flames that now sputtered on the ground. The dust and ash of burned wheat drifted by. The newcomer was no bigger than Da, but he wore a strange tunic the color of dried mustard, and it seemed to connect to his pants somehow, so that they looked to be all of a piece. He had cuts and bruises on his face, and his tunic was torn. The troll turned to look at him...and raised its lightning wand arm.

I threw the rock.

I had been practicing all summer with my sling; my aim was good. I hit the troll in the back of its head. It jerked, and turned to look at me, fixing me with that strangely armored eye. I panicked and would have run if not for a sudden high, piercing sound.

The newcomer, the man standing in the flames, had brought up some sort of wand and a blast of bright lightning flared out at the troll.

He was a wizard! Using a magic wand to blast at the troll!

The troll lurched backward, turning to the wizard again. It threw Harold down to the ground. The air came alive with bolts of crimson lightning, flashing and wheeling in the clear day. Nearby wheat caught fire and burned to dust almost instantly.

Soon, they were so close that they stopped throwing lightning at each other. Instead, they grappled and fought. The wizard put his wand against the troll’s head and I saw a great explosion of light. The troll screamed once, its voice something like the stretching sound leather makes when boiled in the smithy. It smashed its heavy lance-like arm into the wizard, knocking him down, then turned and fled up the hills, out of the fields and into the wilderness.

Da groaned, and Harold crawled to him. Edmund and William, my other two brothers, were long gone, having run away already. Harold held Da’s head in his lap.

I walked over to him. “Is he all right?”

Harold was bleeding where the troll had hit him, coughing from the smoke and from being choked. “I think so.”

The fires died down, leaving a ring of scorched turf on the field. And in the middle of it lay the wizard.

I went to him. He lay sprawled there on the ground, dead. His garment, now that I was closer, was black and gold, shiny, as if wet. I’d never seen anything like it.

I knelt down next to him. His magic wand lay next to his hand, and there was a wallet near him. I wanted to touch it, but I was afraid. I had heard tales of what wizards carried in their pouches.

What could we do? We would have to bury him, but where?

And then he opened his eyes.

Five weeks passed.

“Edward!” I shrank at the sound. Da was yelling for me again. I felt as thought the only time I ever heard my Christian name was when it was bellowed.

“Edward! God damn your eyes, you lazy skulk-about! Get in here!”

I was outside, near the little shed where the wizard lived. The troll’s lightning had almost killed Da. Ever since then, he’d been unable to work hard. His heart would start to pinch and pound whenever he did too much. That left me and my brothers to work the fields. Along with the wizard.

He didn’t like being called a wizard, claimed he knew no magic. But I had seen him use his wand that day. I knew the truth.

At first, when he’d finally woken up, he hadn’t been able to talk. Well, that’s not true. He spoke, but not English. It sounded like it might be English, but it had strange words to it. Every now and then, I’d pick out a word—man, woman, church—but they were pronounced wrong, as if he was strangling on something. He was speaking in tongues, I knew. Strange words. I tried to write them down as I sat over him. (Harold and Edmund and Ma took care of Da. But I was intrigued by the wizard, and I watched over him while he tossed and thrashed in his sleep.)

He said strange things like “starfleet” and “endeavor” and “warpcoreflux,” none of which made any sense. Magic incantations to heal himself.

He recovered after a few days, began speaking again, but couldn’t remember anything before he had appeared in the field. He didn’t even remember using his magic wand to drive off the troll. I had been afraid to touch his wallet or wand, so I had left them in the field when we helped him to the house. A few days later, when he felt better, we went back to the field. A blackened circle marked the spot where he and the troll had appeared. By now, he had beard growth on his cheeks and he wore proper clothing: an old pair of Da’s breeches and a woolen shirt with cloak. He still couldn’t speak, cocking his head when I talked, as if he understood partly. Certain words would make his eyes light up, as if understanding lurked somewhere in his mind but could not come forth, like a creature afraid to leave its lair.

He took up his wand and wallet without fear, studied them, then shrugged, indicating that they meant nothing to him...

But that wasn’t it. They meant something to him, but he wasn’t sure what.

Ever since then, the wizard had become my responsibility. Da wanted nothing to do with him, but Ma wouldn’t let us turn him out of doors, especially after I told how he’d fought the troll, which surely would have killed all of us otherwise. Da had allowed the wizard to live in the old tool shed. The roof leaked horribly, worse than the house’s roof, but he took it. Da made him work the fields, to make up for the fact that Da couldn’t work any more. The wizard spent every spare minute in his little shed, looking at the strange tunic-pants he’d worn that day, and the magic implements in his wallet.

“Edward!” Da yelled again. He probably wanted another flagon of ale. “Get your lazy arse in here or I swear by God, Christ, and John that I’ll have ye tonsured before the sun sets!”

That was Da’s latest threat—to send me off to the monastery up in Dunberry. I was no good for fieldwork, he claimed, and would be better off in the monastery, where at least I wouldn’t waste his time and food.

I kicked the dirt and went back into the house. Da lay covered in a blanket near the fire, coughing. “There you are, you layabout! Skulker! When I call your name, you come, you hear? You hear?”

I nodded and mumbled something.

“And talk clear! I can’t understand you half the time, talkin’ under your breath like that! Cursin’ my name, no doubt!”

“No, Da.”

“I give you food, clothes, roof, and you curse my name, you do!”

“No, Da.”

He sniffled, his face red. He’d lost weight in the time since the troll attacked him, and what weight was left had settled in his jowls and his waist, like it was dragged down his body. “Get me my mead.”

“Yes, Da.” I took his horn from him—my fingers brushed against his clammy skin for a moment and I shuddered, pausing. Da’s eyes lit up and he clouted me on the side of the head. He had lost weight, but he was still a big man. My head rang and it felt like a fire started under my left eye.

“Hurry!” he barked. “None o’ yer layin’ about! When I give you a God-damned chore, you’ll do it right away, by Christ!”

I held back tears as I nodded, apologized, and ran out to the mead barrel. I filled Da’s horn and ran it back to him. I wanted to leave as soon as Da had his drink, but he grabbed my wrist and held me there as he drank his first. I watched him, gulping and greedy.

“Useless, scrawny...” He wiped his lips with the edge of the blanket. “Get out in the field! If you can’t help your brothers with honest work, maybe they can use your useless skinny body as a rake!”

He shoved me away from him, and I gladly let him, then ran out the door, around the back of the house, to the shed, where I finally let the tears come. I leaned against the old, splintered timbers and sank to the ground, crying.