The Wizard’s Candle

For the past three days his destination had been to follow the water until he found a dark slip in the sky, a protrusion that was distinct and unlike any tree he had glimpsed. There, it was rumoured that a strange being – what the neighbours were fond to call “wizard” – dwelled near the stars, the highest window always seen to be burning. Several times, that distant flicker had led travellers astray and they would return to the villages baffled or thinking the forest alight. Hero’s own father, normally a mild-tempered man, had once been the butt of the latter, and, ever since, held the wizard and his nocturnal passions in nothing but the lowest esteem.

The birds were fluttering above now, and Hero’s eyes watched them flit to and fro. The sun made the fields look warm (when to him they were sour), and stroked the smooth back of the stream he followed. He was grateful to have Horse for company, even if all that the noble creature did was toss his fine mane in Hero’s face and frequently pause near the bank to flick the cool water or to civilly worry the grass. The leagues, he thought, would have been unbearable with no one to talk to – not that Horse cared a difference for anything Hero had to say, finding a greater interest in the pebbles that dusted the road, sometimes skipping ahead long after urges to “giddy-up” – But Horse is a good companion, insisted Hero, and yielded to yet another one of Horse’s tricks; it was while they were still, each occupying a separate spot on the bank, where the stream flowed softly against the rocks and drew tiny fish to ripple near the reeds, that a stranger appeared.

Hero leapt to his feet, reaching for his sword. ‘What?’ he demanded of the stranger. ‘What do you want?’

The stranger replied that nothing was wanted, and for a solitary youth, such as your humble self, to assume that there wasmust indicate not arrogance but a little insecurity – perhaps the signs of a guilty conscience.

‘Do you have a guilty conscience?’ asked the stranger. ‘Is that why you asked?’

‘Well, no,’ said Hero, taken aback. ‘No, I don’t. And that’s not the reason I asked.’

‘Then let me share your stream,’ said the stranger. ‘I am tired, and your horse seems to like me.’ And Horse seemed to indeed, his head bowing instantly to the stranger’s open palm, and discovering no apples or sugar lumps, licked it with a tender affection.

Hero sheathed his sword, ashamed. He wandered back to his spot on the bank. Supine on the grass, he gazed up at the sky and watched as a gust of birds – he knew not their names – swung in and out of the blue. He fell asleep to their movements. He did not dream.



Upon waking an hour or two later, judging from the shade of the sky, Hero stretched his arms and rubbed his eyes, thinking not of the stranger he and Horse had encountered but of the great distance left to travel.

In his breast pocket was a map, a gift penned neatly and precisely by Master Nibb, which he removed with the utmost care and pressed gently to the sky. No one from his village – not even Master Nibb – had ever ventured this far, and Hero was embarrassed to find himself lost where the ink had run out.

‘Good morning,’ hailed a sardonic voice, ‘I did not steal your provisions.’

Hero leapt to his feet, a habit he was getting sick of. ‘I didn’t think you would,’ he said, noting the stranger’s appearance – except the sight of Horse annoyed him: the silly beast was downstream! ‘You could have stolen him, though,’ he added.

‘Are you granting me,’ said the stranger, ‘permission?’

‘No,’ said Hero, ‘not at all.’ He glanced again at the stranger’s clothes. ‘He’s not really my horse,’ he confessed. ‘I just met him on the road.’

‘Did he follow you?’

‘…After a time.’

They heard a splash: Horse had gone swimming.

‘He’s a very good horse.’

‘You can have him.’

‘I can’t; he’s not yours.’

‘But he’ll always be somebody’s.’

The stranger made no comment, pulling from a secret sleeve one apple and a peeling knife. Silent, Hero watched as the apple shed its skin – and then its flesh – and then its core – until all that lay in the stranger’s palm were three or four pips. Hero had to speak. He explained about the wizard and how the villages were curious. ‘They want to put it out,’ he said, ‘and think no more of him.’ But the stranger seemed obsessed now with burying the pips.

‘Don’t know why I bother,’ snapped Hero, and stared at the sky.

‘Why should you bother,’ said the stranger, ‘when this “wizard” never bothers you?’

Hero paused. ‘Well,’ he began; the stranger interrupted him.

‘The land is lonely,’ said the stranger, ‘lonely with its trees and its rivers, its hills and its mountains. You keep looking at the birds – that is the land wishing it could see the next valley, instead of what it sees here.

‘The villages, in the same way, are taken with this “wizard”. And yet, they are tired of him; tired of his mystery. I think,’ said the stranger, ‘they are tired of themselves.’

Hero said, defensively, ‘He could be a bad man.’

‘He could be a good man.’

‘But we don’t know that.’

‘Then,’ said the stranger, ‘he is both.’

Hero shook his head.

‘Don’t I make sense?’

‘You do,’ said Hero, ‘but I don’t understand.’

Horse returned, his brown nose nudging the stranger. They looked at the youth in front of them, his head bowed and the fingers of his hands entangled.

‘So,’ said the stranger, ‘will you go there today?’

The youth muttered, ‘There’s no ‘day’ to go to.’

‘Then go somewhere else.’

The stranger mounted Horse; the youth glanced up, dumbfounded.

‘Farewell,’ said the stranger, and followed the water.