Chapter 14: Something About Wizards
[The previous chapters of this long piece of dreck may be found here. I don’t think this will make any sense if you haven’t read the previous parts.]
The talk of blood and guts during the toast was bewildering to Sterling. Confusion must have registered on his face, for the wizard, who was seated directly across from him, began talking as they sat down to the meal.
“You are wondering about that violent toast? Well, good, you should be wondering. All that talk of blood and guts. Maybe it will knock that brain of yours off square, get a gear or two engaged, break a pin… or something.”
“Let the cub eat his soup before you start in on him,” the Badger said.
“We are going to start with a nice, warm vichyssoise and some bread,” said Mole, putting down two bowls at Shash and Randy’s place. The table was laid out with an elaborate set of silver spoons, knives, and forks in different sizes, enough to panic even a reasonably well bred animal. Sterling should have been concerned, but was not. Had he been concerned, his trepidation would have been assuaged by the site of Shash picking up his bowl and lapping the soup up with his tongue before even half the table had been served.
“You can’t have hot vichyssoise,” said the wizard, still looking at Sterling and ready to continue his discussion about the toast.
Mole, making his way back to the table with two more bowls, said simply, “of course you can… here it is,” as he put down bowls before the wizard and the Brown fox.
“For 300 lives of men I have walked the earth, and I’ve never heard of warm vichyssoise. Vichyssoise is supposed to be served at 40 degrees.”
“Duck save us from all foodies,” said Randy, who had not started his soup. “Before you know it we are going to be listening to the wizard talk about ‘bacon covered trenchers’ and ‘squab rubbed with rosemary.’”
“That’s some pretty shitty foodie talk,” said the wizard, now turning to Randy. “You obviously know nothing of food.”
“You don’t have to describe carrots. You just fucking eat them.”
“Are there no differences between carrots?”
“Of course there are, but the enjoyment of them is subjective. De gustibus non est disputandum, if I find something of merit to eat in this world, I would confine myself to saying, “try the veal” and leave it at that.”
“Well, there will be no veal at this meal,” said Mole sitting down to his soup. “This is all what you would call ‘vegan’, Sterling, which is prescribed by the ducks, but we don’t eat this way because of the ducks, we eat this way because it is the right thing to do.”
Shash had gotten up from the table, walked to the kitchen, and was refilling his bowl from the soup pot as Mole sat down. From the kitchen he said, “You have honey on the table. Honey’s not vegan.”
Mole rolled his eyes. Badger began to laugh. Mole replied, “In the Marshland Upanishad the Great Duck gives honey to Mergi when she is sick.”
“I thought we weren’t eating this way because of the ducks?” Said Randy.
“It’s so good to have friends get together!” Shouted Badger with a laugh.
Mole looked exasperated, but laughed. He clasped his hands together and said “enjoy” to the all the creatures at the table, most of whom had not started eating. Shash had sat down again. There was a moment of silence when everyone looked at their soup and smelled it.
The scent coming up from the soup was beautiful to Sterling. He could smell the broth, potatoes, leeks, and pepper. He was glad it was warm. It smelled warm. He was certain that everyone at the table, even the wizard, was smelling, quietly smelling, all of the food and each other. Then mole picked up a spoon and began to eat his soup. Everyone else started in also.
“How is it that you have only lived 300 lives of men, wizard?” Said Randy, “I thought you were around for the Flowering of the Trees, which makes you over 21,000 years old, or 10,000 duck, which, in either case, is more than 300 lives of men.”
The wizard was now deep into his soup, bending over his bowl in an effort not to spill any into his beard. His voice, measured and stentorian, emanated from a bundle of white hair.
“Counselor, you want to argue with me about things that don’t matter. As much as I would love to argue with you about whether Balrogs have wings, I am here to talk to the cub. So,” and here he looked back up from his soup and directly at the eager rabbit who returned his gaze with a mischievous, nerdy smile, “I would ask you to refrain from poking at me until we are properly stoned on Brown Fox’s boarding school blond hash and are listening to some of Badger’s Elmore James records.”
Shash leaned into the table and tried to look around the wizard so he could see the Brown Fox.
“Where did you get boarding school blond hash?” he asked.
The fox, who was eating her soup with a spoon, and here it should be noted that none of the snouted animals who ate with spoons looked dignified doing so, though the fox did better than most because she was carefully pouring each spoonful onto only a slightly protruding tongue, looked back at Shash and said, “Like I would ever tell.”
The wizard, still deep in his soup, turned his gaze back onto Sterling.
“That blood and guts toast, you see, works out well for you. You have no idea what you are doing, you’ve said, and lack any understanding of who you are. So a great way to help you discover who you are is to send you to war, and it just so happens that we have one scheduled in a couple of days.”
Sterling was utterly confused. “I never said that I didn’t know what I was doing or who I was. I said I didn’t know where I was, which is true. I still don’t understand where I am.”
The wizard waved his hand. He was a big man, his “I Am a Motherfucker” shirt pinched at the shoulders and chest because of the size of his muscular arms and torso.
“Same difference. Where you are, who you are, what you are doing. I can speak many languages and the translation of everything you say is that you are as lost as a fruit bat in the daytime. Which is fine. Nobody here expects anything of you, and we want to help. Don’t we?” He then looked around the table. All the other creatures nodded their assent.
“I wish there were a hero’s journey we could send you on, but that ship left a few weeks before you showed up, so, luckily, it turns out that we have the next best thing. We can turn you into a soldier, and a sure fire way of teaching a young man like yourself who you are is to make you a nobody and send you towards some guns.”
“You have a war ‘scheduled’?” Sterling asked.
Here Badger broke in.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m sure that nobody has explained our system of government to you, but you should know that our entire world is centralized under one giant, incredibly complex, quasi-democratic bureaucracy. There are, therefore, no independent “states” that could have wars, and the ducks prohibit tribalism, so while we have ‘organizations’, ‘clubs’, and ‘corporations,”….
“And sects,” Brown Fox interjected.
“… and sects,” Badger continued, “There are no entities that would be interested in sponsoring the kind of sustained destruction, inhumanity, and misery that a war creates. About 90 years after the pre-penultimate war, we discovered a problem. When everyone who knows about war is no longer around, war becomes an increasingly attractive option. Some people love the idea of a war. The less they have of it, the more they talk about it. They write books about war, make movies about war, write poems, etc., etc. They start to include it as an ‘option’ and in a relatively short amount of time it starts to become the ‘only’ option. What should have been the ‘last war’ turned out to be the third-to-last war because, paradoxically, the only thing that stops wars is… war!
So, we decided to ritualize war. Now we have a war every five to ten years depending on the moon. These are not real wars. They are ‘re-enactments’. We pick a couple of engagements from your world and then every creature in Mushamaguntic goes out and fights. The officers get to wear shiny outfits and scream orders, the foot soldiers and sailors get to complain bitterly about the stupidity of it all. There is mud, broken equipment, confusion, gunfire, and explosions. Some people try to profit, things get fucked up, assholes rule the day, and innocent people get brutalized. War brings along his friends; Famine, Conquest, and Death, and everyone is reminded how much they hate war.
In two days, after the full moon, we are going to have a two day ‘re-enactment’. On the first day, the rabbit to your right will be commanding a Republican Navy in the Battle of Schooneveld. The following day we will all be participating in a re-enactment of the Second Battle of Manassas. You, of course, are invited to join us, but are under no obligation to do so.”
“But you should,” said the wizard. “There is no role confusion on a battlefield. Everyone is cannon fodder.”
Everyone laughed. Sterling was not sure why.
“I see you haven’t eaten much of your soup,” said the wizard. “Do you want me to cool it to forty degrees for you? I could do that by touching the bowl. I am a conjurer of cheap tricks.”
“No thank you,” Sterling said, “I like it warm.” Sterling thought he detected a satisfied exhale coming from Mole.
“If you don’t mind, can I ask you a couple of questions?” Sterling asked.
“Of course,” said the wizard.
“Are you really a wizard?”
“Do you mean, can I do magic? Yes, of course. I can do all kinds of magic. I can even twist a balloon into a horcrux.”
“No, I meant, do you not have sex?”
All of the animals stopped eating and looked at the wizard.
“Why would you ask that? What does being a wizard have to do with sex?”
“Well,” said Sterling, “In some of the gaming communities I belong to, a wizard is someone who doesn’t have sex until after 30 and then has to remain non-sexual to protect their powers.”
“This is something we did not know,” Badger said with wonder. “The cub has knowledge! He is not entirely ignorant.”
The wizard’s face had grown red. Not an angry red, but a blushing red. “The cub has some, trivial knowledge.” He admitted. “What was your second question?”
“Who do you fight against in the reenactment? The Faeries?”
“First of all,” said the wizard, “I don’t fight. I’m not one of them.” He pointed around the room. “They don’t fight the Faeries. They fight the domesticated animals.”
“You mean, like the pigs?”
“Yes, the pigs, the sheep, the goats, the cows, and, most especially, the dogs.”
“The dogs of war,” said Badger.