5 May 2012
A not so long, but long enough that noone alive would remember it, time ago, far off the beaten path, in a remote part of the country, awkward to find, or even reach, there was a house. It was an old cottage with a roof revamped from the old thatch to a more modern slate affair. It was painted white, with a red door, that creaked and rattled when opened, as rust had mingled with the hinges, and the hinges had come out of the relationship worse for wear. One gable end, however, had never been painted, as it had succumbed to briars and bushes and ivy, climbing resolutely to the top, to be nearer to the sun. On the other side, a little garden, which had become overrun with weeds and plants of all imaginable species; Venus flytraps waited for flies, thorns waited for any would-be berry pickers, and thistles and nettles waited for children’s ankles.
Though, I suppose, a house is nothing without its resident, and in this particular case that resident was a very interesting old man. His name was Wimbly, Wimbly Wumble. He was a failed wizard. His face was white as a sheet, with cold piercing blue eyes. He had stiffly pointed black eyebrows, with long white hair, and an even longer white beard. His robes were red, with black lining, and when he unfurled them (though he didn’t often, for he tended to just throw them on in the morning, in his undies), the inside lining gave the interesting impression of moving flames. His mighty staff was carved from the trunk of a very rare and very beautiful species of swamp ash, which was said to be the most beautiful wood in the country, and thus great for all sorts of wizard ceremonies and spells. The stone fixed atop the staff was an ancient rune, which was said to be one of the original mystical stones of the olden times, when wizards were far more plentiful. All this, and Wimbly was still a terrible wizard, atrocious, in modern terms “he sucked”. He was about as magical as a romantic affair in Fast Eddies.
So, as people with degrees would say, he made an “interesting career choice”, becoming a full time wizard and all, but you see, Wimbly wasn’t always a terrible wizard, he had been quite a good wizard, back in the day, which was a very long time ago now, as Wimbly was an ancient. Now he was old. His sight was so bad that he couldn’t read incantations to cure bad eyesight, his memory was so shot he often forgot what he was trying to fix in the first place, and his bones creaked and groaned from years of strenuous spellbinding spectacles and feats beyond the human imagination. Now Wimbly was old and tired however, and his prime was far behind him. Inside us all there is a wish, a dream, something which we wish we could live to see before we pass away to the other side, or the other place. Wimbly had one final ambition, and he knew he would leave this earth with a flash and a bang, as all good wizards are supposed to.
He had felt the moment building up inside him, and he knew that something interesting would happen, but though he knew intensely that great things were afoot, he was still searching for the right farewell to existence. The only thing that had come to mind so far was an idea to create some form of machine. Manifesting his idea using magical thought of course, tools and software are for chimps like you, not wizards! It would create the best chicken anyone had ever tasted. Perfectly cooked and dripping with succulent juices. This just made him hungry. Then he pondered using a spell he remembered from an ancient time that allowed all persons within a 50 mile radius to simultaneously enter a state of objective perception of space and time, and realize the true nature of the workings of the world. He thought better of it, believing that such a spell would cause everyone within a 50 mile radius jump out of the nearest window. As appealing and all as that sounds, it was against Wimbly’s morals. Wizards, while stern and often unforgiving, are not evil. Any Wizard who dabbled with the dark side was not fit to be called a Wizard, they are an abomination to wizardry!
Truth be told, in the end Wimbly had very little control over the event. A Wizards journey to the other side has a profound effect on nature. Here’s what happened: During Wimbly’s final moments, in the throes of ecstasy, horror, and pain, a magnificent shockwave of the essence of his soul tore through his environs. A ripple of pure condensed concentrated magic, built up and stored within Wimbly during his final less magical years, obliterated his physical form, and filled his surroundings with a great light. This pushed forward across the landscape, over fields and mountains, at ferocious speed, and eventually the whole world was cocooned within the beautiful glow. What happened next varied depending on the person you hear the story from, some said that it rained cats and dogs, and pigs. Some said that the pigs weren’t actually part of the rain, and were flying of their own accord. Some said that it couldn’t have rained cats, as they have a well known aversion to water, and would have exploded immediately from such intense hydro trauma. In truth, all these things indeed happened. Everything magically possible happened, every banal cliché from people turning into frogs, to frogs turning into people, very hideously deformed frog-people.
When the light had passed, petals drifted down from the heavens, and filled the air with the scent of a summer’s day. The sky was a bright blue and golden cloth stretched to infinity above the world. The grass was a beautiful shade of light green. The land was fertile and crops were perfect. Springs burst open through the clay, and the water was the freshest most beautiful water you could possibly dream of, veritable manna straight from heaven. The world was the idyllic Eden-like paradise it was before money. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t last. This is the way of the world of course, and time and progress brought the earth to an even worse state than it was in Wimbly’s time. It’s nice to know that once it wasn’t like this though, isn’t it? It’s nice to know that one wizard’s last gift to the world, his ultimate thought, was to change the world to something better, even though he wouldn’t live to see it. Maybe we should hope, hope beyond hope, that sometime soon, some ancient, similar minded wizard in some far off land will croak it. Or maybe we should try and change it ourselves, to something better, even though we won’t live to see it.
Wimbly Wumble The Wonderful Wizard (2007) • Opuss № I