Wizand

 

There are Great Things Afoot about Peter’s work, and I should have an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT* to this effect some time before the end of the month.   Mwa hahahahaha.**

Meanwhile I promised another snippet or two from EARTH AND AIR.  Everybody out there has already bought it though, right?  http://smallbeerpress.com/  Well, maybe you need reminding to get it out of the TBR pile and into your hands.***  So here’s a snippet from WIZAND.

Apologies for the weird spacing of the extract.  I have no idea.  I thought I copied and pasted as I have done before. 

 

. . . As the first axe bit ringingly into the ash tree the wizand woke

and glided down into the base of the bole, just below ground level.

Next spring a ring of young shoots sprang from the still living

sapwood beneath the bark. They grew to wands, then poles. When

they were an inch or so thick the wizand slid back up into one and

waited again.

 

Seven times, at twenty year intervals, the wood was fresh

coppiced, but only for two or three years in each cycle were the

saplings right for the wizand’s needs, and no possible host came

near while that was so. By the time the timber was carted away it

was long poles, thicker than a man’s calf, and the wizand, safe in

the bole, waited without impatience for the next regrowth.

 

The economics of forestry changed again, and the coppicing

ceased. It was another hundred and ten years before the ash tree

was once more felled. This time it happened with the clamour of

an engine, and hooked teeth on a chain that clawed so fast into the

trunk that the wizand needed to wake almost fully from its torpor

and hurry past before it was trapped above the cut. More engines

dragged the timber away and the shattered wood was left in peace.

Next spring, as always, fresh shoots sprang up, ringing the severed

bole.

* * *

A man’s voice.

 

“These look about the right size. Which one do you want,

darling?”

 

Another voice, petulant with boredom.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

The second voice triggered the change. Instantly the wizand

was fully alert, waiting, knowing its own needs, just as a returning

salmon knows the stream that spawned it. It guided the reaching

arm. Through the young bark of the sapling it welcomed palm

and fingers. The hand was very small, a child’s, about seven years

old, but now that the wizand was properly awake it saw how time

was running out. There was little chance of another possible host

coming by, and none of the ash tree being coppiced again, before

the appointed hour.

 

“This one,” said the child’s voice, firmly.

 

A light saw bit sweetly in. The wizand stayed above the cut.

 

“I’ll carry it,” said the child.

 

“If you like. Just don’t get it between your legs. Or mine. Now

what we want next is a birch tree, and some good hemp cord. None

of your nasty nylon—not for a witch’s broom.”

 

When the children came in from their trick-or-treating the

several witches piled their brooms together. As they were leaving, a

child happened to pick out the wrong one. She let go and snatched

her hand back with a yelp.

 

“It bit me,” she said, and started to cry, more frightened than

hurt.

“Of course it did,” said Sophie Winner. “That’s my broom. It

won’t let anyone else touch it.”

 

They thought she was joking, of course, and later that evening

Simon and Joanne Winner found it gratifying that Sophie was so

pleased with her new broom that she took it up to bed with her,

and went upstairs without any of the usual sulkings and dallyings.

 

Sophie dreamed that night about flying. It was a dream she’d

had before, so often that she thought she’d been born with it.

 

The wizand was always cautious with a fresh symbiote. The

revelation, when it came, was likely to be a double shock, with the

discovery both of the wizand’s existence, and of the symbiote’s true

self. But hitherto the girl had always been around puberty. It had

never dealt with a child as young as Sophie, with her preconceptions

unhardened. If anything, it was she who surprised the wizand.

 

A fortnight after Halloween she took her broom into the back

garden, saying that she was going to sweep the leaves off the lawn.

 

“If you like,” said her father, laughing. “They’ll blow around a

bit in this wind, but give it a go.”

 

He went to fetch his video camera.

 

The wizand could have swept the lawn on its own, but with her

parents watching through the patio window Sophie kept firm hold

of it, following its movements like a dancing partner, while it used

the wind to gather the leaves into three neat piles in places where

they would no longer blow around.

 

“It’s wonderful what a kid can do by way of work, provided

she thinks she’s playing,” said her father. He was the sort of parent

that hides from himself the knowledge that his relationship with

his own child is not what it should be by theorising about the

behaviour of children in general.

 

When she’d finished, Sophie went up to her room and sat

cross-legged and straight-backed in the middle of the floor, with

the broom across her thighs and her hands grasping the stick at

either end. She waited.

“Yes?” said the wizand.

 

Sophie heard the toneless syllable as clearly as if it had been

spoken aloud, but knew that it hadn’t come to her through her

ears. She answered in the same manner, inside her head.

 

“I knew you were there. The moment I touched the tree. I felt

you.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“What are you? A demon or something?”

 

“Wizand.”

 

Sophie accepted the unfamiliar word without query.

 

“Am I a witch?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I thought so. Can we fly?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“We’d need to be invisible.”

 

“No.”

 

“But . . . Oh, you mean you can’t do that? Couldn’t I?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“You can fly, and you can sweep. Anything else?”

 

“Power.”

 

“Oh . . . ”

 

“Not yet.”

 

Sophie felt relieved. She didn’t know why.

 

“We’d better wait for a dark night,” she said.

 

Sophie chose a Friday, so that she could lie in on Saturday

morning. She went to bed early and waited for her parents to come

in and say goodnight. As soon as the door closed behind them she

fetched her broom from the corner beside the wardrobe.

 

“They won’t come back,” she told it. “Let’s go.”

 

“Sleep,” said the wizand.

 

“Oh. It won’t be just dreaming again? We’re really going to do

it?”

“Yes.”

Sophie climbed into bed with the broom on the duvet beside

her, closed her eyes and was instantly asleep. The wizand waited

until it sensed that the parents were also sleeping, then woke her

by sending a trembling warm sensation into her forearm where it

lay against the ash wood. She sat up, fully aware. . . .

* * *

* That’s IMPORTANT.  ANNOUNCEMENT.

** More mwa hahahahaha.  I will do a round-up of KES comments some day soon.

*** Or maybe I’m just lazy.  Hmm.  No, there are a lot of bad names you can call me–disorganised, procrastinating and easily distracted among them–but not lazy.