“Twas a grim kind of a night when he first came a-knocking on my door. The stars weren’t out, the moon weren’t bright, and the rain was already pouring quite a hammering down on my little shed. I was up in the wops with no one around. I couldn’t’ve seen if someone had come along, as I had no windows then. And with the cabin having no windows, one of them old oil lanterns, hanging from the ceiling by a frayed rope, was all I had to see by. It was blue, the lantern, and rusted on the bottom, I can still remember it, just swinging there. 

I was lying on my bed, a very thin mattress laid crosswise the floor. The mattress was slightly damp, as was the air. It was damp, it was wet, and it was very cold. The walls of my little cabin had been sheets of corrugated iron, and as I lay on my scrappy bedding, I ran my hand along the bumps, which made a sort of knocking sound. It’s odd to say now, but that metal, and running my hand across it, was a comfort of mine; especially on long, cold nights, or the wee hours of the morning. I just liked it, I don’t know why. 

I think I must have been very tired, for it was late at night, but I couldn’t sleep. I had snuffed the light ages back, so I just lay in the dark, with my hand dragging along the wall, listening to the rain drumming against the roof, and my own hand knocking the thin metal wall. And I felt the cold wind leaking in and whipping me, and I heard thunder in the distance in large cracks and booms.

Then, there came a scuffle and a commotion outside.  Then there came a rapping at my door, which was just by my feet, it being a small room and all. I had this old door back then, a weathered, wooden door with the paint peeling off. It was shutted and bolted from the inside, but whoever was beating against it, had a strong enough hand. The old door shock, swinging in a bit with the knocking. It was dark and I was skittish, especially in those years when I was up on my lonesome in the bush, so I sat right up, and scrambled to the top of my bed. I am not afraid to say, I was afraid. I cowered at the top of my bed, imagining all the horrible ways I was going to die, with the storm beating down and around me. And I watched the door. Somewhere in the distance, thunder ripped. The old wood moaned and the weight of the incessant knocking bent her further in. With the door bent curved wise I could see the night all flecked with rain just behind it. I pressed my left hand against the wall to steady myself, although I was sitting down, and in a huddle no less. I busied my right hand with fumbling in the dark, I rifled my pockets and on finding nothing I began to blindly sweep and pat along the (small and dirty) floor until I found an old and torn paper parcel, which I took up.

I shook it, and emptied its meagre contents out over my palm: spent matches, and short ends from good matches that over-jostling had since broke. The knocking at the door stopped, and whoever it was outside, began moving around the cabin itself. And he started banging against the metal walls, which a’course were, at that very moment, thinner than ever. I jumped when he hit right behind me, and I scuffled my way into the middle of the room, right below the oil lamp, which began to slowly swing. It was still dark and I still had the matches in my hand, so the longest one, I took, and struck it against my knee. 

The match came to life with a fizz and a sparklingly bright light atop it. The whole cramped cabin was shot up with warm light and harsh shadows. I held the burning match between my thumb and forefinger. I raised it to each of the corners of my little cabin, (and it was small, no much bigger than a broom closet, or outhouse) looking all around. No one was in there with me, and what a relief that was, though as I thought, no one else inside, I couldn’t help but also mutter to myself,

“Not yet, anyway.” As if in response, the feller outside gave the furthest wall a swift kick which had the cabin rattling. From its leaks and holes, the roof shook with enough water that I felt assailed by a sheet of indoor rain. I cupped my hand over my match to stop it from snuffing, setting the room in a low red light, which I must say gave the gear I had strewn all over the floor much more of a sinister feel to it. Once the sudden water spell cleared up (as much as it ever did for all the leaks in that ramshackle hut) I thought to put my light somewhere where it could better weather such abysmal weather.

I cupped my fire into that snuffed lantern, and it caught to the wick. I grabbed the old, blue thing and realised that there was nothing now, between myself, and opening the door. With the lantern, even in that horrid weather, I could go out, without fear of my light doing the same. My hands shook a little as I took the lantern down and off its oily string. I clutched the cord that looped on the lantern’s top, and I clutched it hard as I went to step for the door, but some courage in me still needed mustering. With the rain pounding with my heart, and the long footsteps of that man, pacing outside, I thought that maybe I didn’t have too much time on me hands. I took a deep breath and stepped across the cabin. Before I knew it I was pulling chains back and undoing those flimsy latches before the door, and I was standing out in the rain. And for my lantern… I couldn’t see a Gosh darn thing.

The light from it was there a’course, but nothing came of it. The world outside was bleary and dark, and my little light seemed so far away behind so many sheets of icy rain. And as for the rain, it soaked me through with every breath. Not that I was breathing much. I choked as I stepped into the storm and from there I was gulping for air, but letting more water in for it. I coughed and spluttered for the deep and abiding coldness of it all, and the wild drench of the rain. It was a kick-up of a thing, I’m telling you, and I staggered out there with my useless light in the impassible dark.

Great black clouds churned above me, and the night was like pitch as well. Then there was a clap of thunder someplace near. And the man come rounding the corner. And I froze where I stood. He was tall, and large, and coming out from behind the shack, spilling forward like so many black sheets and all at once. I ran for the door. It was a mad dash from sod to shack, but I made it, gapping it as the door nearly shut on me, it was swinging in the wind and all. And I found my little shack were no brighter than outside, darker even, and it grew no brighter with my being there. I must’ve, I realised, dropped my lantern out there, out of fear, and left it lying in the muck as I ran. I kicked myself for it but no matter. I fumbled with the locks and bars but the door had gotten very wet while swinging loose in the rain, and I could nary see a thing. Locking the door proved impossible so I held it shut and threw my whole weight against it, bracing myself and the door in case the bugger tried knocking it in. The old thing buckled outwards a bit with my weight on it, but it did not break. 

I breathed quietly in the dark. I stood like stone. Still. And perhaps I had the face of death about me. I cannot say I remember what I thought when I felt someone pushing on the other side of the thin wood. Or as I felt the doorknob twist in my hand, too cold and slippery for me to slow. But I forced myself forward pushing back the rising force on the other side, that I could not see but I knew to be harmful. 

I can tell you this, as I fell suddenly forward, the door whisked away and out of sight, my hands flying, flailing, as I lurched towards the grass and the mud; I screamed. Yes, I fell flat onto the ground, and screamed with fear. I screamed as I came toward the dirt and as I met it, and I screamed a while longer as I lay in the wet grass and mud, black water streaming down and around me on all sides. The great shape bent down as it stepped over me and into my cabin, it was carrying my lantern, by which I could see that it was a man, with a great green coat and pointed hat. His feet thumped as he padded through my door, he circled my home like he was some sort of shuffling snuffling carnival curiosity. I was still out on my hands and on my knees, trying to force myself against the rain and onto my feet. And from behind me I heard the man from my own doorstep speaking down to me, like I was some vagrant come a-knocking, 

“You know,” he said, and I can’t tell you how his voice was, except that it were warm but still had this deep melancholy to it. Though then, that night, it was the horn of war for all the sudden and booming fear it inspired within me “you should not have tried to brace it. It did not do anything. Far be it from me to remind you, but should you not know your own door opens both ways?” 

From where I was, on all fours and on the ground, I was still filled with a certain indignation,

“What?” I half spluttered. He snorted, and raised his voice when he repeated the question,

“To satisfy my curiosity, why did you try bracing yourself against a two-way door?” I looked at him, through the mud, and the rain, the terrible rain, and I saw that he had cast aside his pointed hat, and was leaning in the door frame, with his arms folded. And he stood there, and he addressed me. Myself being bellow him, some many paces away, scrambling and scrabbling in dirt and the rain; he came off as a rather cocky sort of a fellow. Then again with him standing between me and shelter, I felt compelled to answer,

“I don’t know - I was terrified.” 

“Terrified of what?” he talked fast, didn’t string thoughts together so well. 

“You, a’course. What kind of fellow are you to be harassing me anyway? First you scare me off my wits and then you get all verbal like and attack me for it.” Fear in me gave way to confusion by the feller’s odd manners which broke away beneath a rising tide of anger that took me up from my muddy knees to my feet, where I stood, facing my invader. 

He raised his huge hands in alarm, though he certainly didn’t fear for his life. He would be happier if I calmed down I knew, but I wouldn’t be calm, not when this feller had the gall to think to -

“Sorry, I did not mean to offend, but you can sympathise, I hope, when I say I just wanted out of that storm.” Then he smiled, and punched me on the shoulder, as a friend. That hot anger inside me deflated like a sad balloon, and I was left a wet and raggedy thing. Defeated, and with no protestations left to offer, I caved,

“No, you're right, the rain is vile. Go on then.” He grinned, and stood there, and grinned, and stood there “Oh and if you please,” I gestured at him and the ground, “could you move from the doorway, I’d very much like to come in too.” The man laughed, 

“Ha!” and then shuffled out of the way. I came in, holding one arm to my side with the other. I was bent and beaten down, mud was on my knees and I was trailing water behind me. And I was glad to be out of the storm. 

It came to be that after some fumbling about with very little light, I was sitting pretty in one corner of the little shack, and the stranger in the other, with the lantern hanging suspended like between us. The room was right small and our feet were almost touching. I was silent, the man was humming some old tune I couldn’t really place. And I must say, I was staring at him. He, on the other hand, seemed to have lost his gaze somewhere in the corners of my roofing, and was trying to find it. I was in a rugged brown cardigan and messy overalls, he was, he was wearing something altogether different. 

It is difficult to describe the man then occupying my space, I have told you he was large. He was indeed, large. Superficially, which is the only way I can think to tell you of him, he had a grand green coat that sat on him well and was a sturdy sort of a thing. And he wore a waistcoat over that, brown and unbuttoned with a large gap left between its two halves. And then an old tatty yellow thing, which he wore beneath the overcoat, and a cardigan just under that. It all came toppoling down from his head in a sort of flipped cup, the bud of a flower, just at the tip of it opened, but not yet blossomed; though, I did get the impression,  if a strong gust of wind were to come up from beneath him, or if he were to fall some distance, his coats might splay out and “bloom” just yet. Like some worn parachute. He also had a tall and pointed green hat, which he was not wearing, as he had cast it aside somewhere in the muddle. 

His beard was not particularly interesting or of note, it was no bigger than mine, but he fiddled with it as he sat. As he sat in a small pile of clothes and other such things that I had kept strewn about the cabin floor. It was not a comfortable thing, the seat he had made for himself, and he shifted in it at a near constant. Eventually, he stuck his hand in the mess, rummaging for some sort of a cause to his pain, the pea to his princess of you will.  He came up with a rather strange metal object which was totally alien to me. He cast it aside, but on settling back down, he did not look the slightest bit more comfortable for its loss. The pile remained, well, a pile of not at all soft particulars. He realised this, I realised this, and he looked at me with a grimace on his face. 

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He looked at me with that grimace before coming to his feet all of a sudden and knocking the roof, setting many parts of it a leaking again. 

“Oh, sorry,” he said. Now, I was still reeling from the oddness of the situation, so it wasn’t that I was very forgiving, rather, too aback to care.

“Uhh, she’ll be right.” I murmured, still staring at him as he padded about the cabin on his great feet.

“Would you?” he said, suddenly turning to face me again, though I could’ve sworn he’d been headed for the door, “would you be alright if I made myself something, more, comfortable?” I just gestured vaguely,

“Go ahead” 

“Thank you kindly, now if I can just find it” and as he spoke he dug through his coats, to find some pocket or bag, and you can probably guess what I did; I sat on my springy mattress, and watched him intently.

With some flourishing, he drew a long twig from betwixt his rags and pointed it at me. Thunder cracked just over head. I looked at the stick with what must have been some alarm and the twit grinned and laughed. He had a sallow sort of a smile. Anyway, he turned from me and took up this odd stick (slender and shaved it was, so more of a wand, really) and he fiddled with it for a bit, stooping over the thing, poking and prodding away, as if it were to do something. He drew the tip of it back so it bent curved. Then on his releasing it, it came up straight again with a thwack and a shiver. 

“A rather elastic sort of a thing you've got there.” I said, but he didn’t hear me. At some point he must’ve been satisfied and he twirled the stick again through his fingers. And he turned to face the pile he been sitting in. And he raised the long stick (which was about the length his forearm, so pretty long) high above his head, or as high as he could raise it with the cabin’s low ceiling. The light from the idly swinging lantern caught the paleness of the wand. And I swear the rain started hammering harder as the wand was raised, and I swear the stranger knew it, and I swear he wanted it that way. The fire in the lamp flickered and there were a few seconds of darkness in the shed, a few moments of black bleakness between me and the stranger. I never saw his hand move except for in that darkness, so he must’ve brought his wand down hard and fast.

The pile weren’t a pile anymore, it was a plump armchair, ripe, red and overstuffed. And the stranger’s arm weren’t raised neither, as it had been before the latern almost snuffed. His wand was lowered, if still pointing at the chair that had been my trekking equipment. I blinked. He looked at me and smiled. He had a sallow sort of a smile. But I was wise to it now, for all the storming outside and the madness inside I wasn’t about to let some party tricks throw me off, now was I? so I raised him, or I called his bluff, one of the two. I stared at him, and the chair, though I tried not to look too incredulous (miracle or no that was my stuff he’d transmogrified) and I said,

“Could’ya use that to fix me roof?” his eyes widened, evidently he was wanting more of a reaction out of me, but I wasn’t going to give him one, not yet anyhow,

“What?” he didn’t stammer it out, but he were now looking from me to the chair, and then to his wand, and all back again.

“I mean to say, awful lotta leaks in the roof, bad stuff on a night like this” another crack of thunder obliged my point “and you’ve got a magical whose’awhat’sit. Seems like you could fix a few things.”

“A magickal whose’awhat’sit, did you say?”

“You know, a thingy. Or can you not fix the leaks?” at this point the wizard (and he was a wizard full and proper, I would come to know) had some idea of my game and I think he thought he might play to it. He glanced at the roof, flashed one of them salesman’s smiles with far too much teeth. And then he was all business. 

“Yes I will fix your roof, and I will do you one better, I will upgrade your whole living space. I’m getting a bit tired of corrugated iron, are you not?” 

“Well” I said, worried I’d gone out a wee bits too deep “I don’t know about that” but he had pulled off into a current, a riptide, and there were no catching him now. Especially as he cracked his knuckles and drew that stick, that stick he had that was long as man's forearm, and more flexible still.

The leaks were fixed first and the roof was made tile, though you couldn’t see it from the inside, once he hid it with wood panels and all. My (somewhat precious to myself) walls, were flattened to wood and then shot back with the expansion of the room. Yes, he grew the room out as well, till it were the size of a proper study or lounge. It had room for a stuffy bookcase, furnishings and all. I was asked to sit down during the cabin’s growth, so I wouldn’t stumble for the floor shooting off in all directions away from the wizard, as it expanded itself. It was as this refurbishing was done that I found myself sitting in a plush armchair beside the man. He came down into his seat and spilt his coats, allowing the contents to go filing themselves into drawers what had just sprung up from the ground. Then he sild back, letting himself sink into the soft cushions of the chair. He sighed, letting the final room construct itself. There was no oil lantern anymore, though the chandelier had crystals in a shade quite near blue. And for the first time ever my shack had a window in. I could see that it was raining outside, and it was raining hard.

I did thank him, but he didn’t say anything, maybe there was a murmur, but I didn’t catch it. There was a fireplace in the lounge, and the fire was burning a long time before we spoke again. I was quite comfortable there, and I think he was quite comfortable, and we both knew the other was comfortable, so there was really no need for talking, we could just sit there enjoying our comforts. But as I said, the fire had to burn a long time, but we did get to talking again that night, the stranger and I, the wizard and I.

A question struck upon me as the logs in the fireplace were just slowing in their glow. And I called out, from the deepest recesses of my chair to the wizard. He was picking at some old lyre all the while, playing a ditty to the streams of rain, and I must’ve interrupted him. Good thing was he was good about it, or atleast was too tired to mind, I said,

“So what kind of feller are you anyhow?”

“I am a wizard.”

“Yeah, well I gathered that much, but what kind?” we didn’t look at each other as we spoke, we both sat in our chairs and addressed the empty room at large. Myself I was looking out the window as we talked, him, he was eying the wallpaper I reckon.

“I was not aware there was more than one kind. Is there?”

“Well, I don’t know, you're the wizard.” and he must’ve found some quiet humour in the conversation for he dropped his lyre and softly laughed,

“And you,” he said, “you must be some sort of god. For you have had no reaction to my magick, I must say you cared more for my knocking at your door than my transforming of it. Or have you met a wizard before? I know only one other, but perhaps you, my host, are more worldly than I?” I thought on that. As I sat on magic, and realised that I sat on magic, and was surrounded by magic, it did come to my notice, now that he’d mentioned it, I hadn’t revelled much in it. I couldn’t figure what to do so I just kept talking.

“No I’m no pretender to God. And you’re the first wizard I’ve ever met, or any sort of magical person for that matter. To be perfectly honest I hadn’t believed in magic till now, and I apologise for my boredom at the extraordinary, and at the extraordinary gifts you possess. But I’ve been off my wits for a while now, I wouldn’t be up here if I still had them about me. So think not that it reflects on you, personally, more that it shows my own lack of sense.” he laughed and laughed harder then,

“Yes, well, I suppose.” is all he said, and I think I started laughing too. 

The fire was stocked and footstools were dragged along the floor to the both of us. He put his feet up and lay back. And I did the same. And we were quiet for a bit. It was nice, really, especially with the rain hammering on the roof and all. It was better still that the hammering rain was more distant now for the low roof having been raised. Anyway, it came that he leaned forward and looked at me for the first time in a while. With a sudden pipe trailing in his hand (one I never saw him take out or light) he asked me, “Do you partake?” he pointed the end of it at me, and I blinked, then a’course realised what he was asking,

“Smoke? No, I don’t.” hearing that he smiled and lay the pipe beside himself, on an armrest,

“Yes, well, I do not smoke either.” I would’ve asked him, but I thought it was whatever, so I didn’t bother, and didn’t mind myself with all that. Although, I did start glancing at him, more often than the window, and I noticed that the pipe that had been lay to rest, seemed to be smoking itself.

I hadn’t asked any questions but he answered them either way. From his cut layers he managed a brown knit bag, and he said as he did, “I do not smoke, see. No, the pipe is not for me, it’s for this fellow here.” I watched as he unbuckled the bag at its top, and rummaged it, making all sorts of sounds as he did. Presently he was raising with both hands a skull, as a priest takes up a baby after baptism. It wasn’t a human skull, the thing he’d taken from the bag, it was more like a horse, with horns. It did have human-like qualities, I just couldn’t truly place them. “Come over here.” he said and motioned for me. I didn’t want to, but I pushed myself from the chair with a groaning all the same. I’d been sitting down so long it took me a moment to get my bearings but once I had, I wandered over to the wizard’s side. He had laid the skull in his lap, facing forwards so that it was looking up at him. “Open its mouth would you?” he asked as much as he commanded, and I don’t know why I did it, I suppose I had nothing better to do, but I bent down and pulled its jaw open, showing off all its nasty teeth. He took his pipe and placed it in the mouth, closing it again so the pipe was stuck between the skull's teeth, and still smoking.

“Hold it up.” He said, and passed the skull to me. It was heavier than I would’ve thought, but I held it by my chest with my two hands and held it so it was facing the wizard. The pipe hung loose in the corner of its mouth. The wizard looked at the skull, the skull looked at him. Somebody coughed, it was not the wizard and it was not me. I jumped, setting the pipe askew as I dropped the skull, and there were two voices to attack me. The wizard, “oh no, do not do that”, and, 

“Pick me up you fool!” at last, I gaped, and I hope the wizard got his satisfaction there. But I wouldn’t know,  I was too busy searching for words to address the skull and being generally flustered. I had no time to check the wizards face for a smirk, though I am sure it was there. And the skull went off again, “Oh look at that you’ve chipped my horn! You bloody fool!” I found myself on my hands and knees scrambling to help out this petulant skull, why? Again I still don’t know, but it was very assertive, the skull. 

I scooped a chip of horn from the dull pink carpet and cupped it in my palm. “Keep it,” came the harsh voice of the skull from behind me “It’s yours, you’ve earned it.” As I was crawling around on the floor, at this object’s beck and call, the wizard was being no help at all. I glanced up to find him chuckling to himself and looking nicely comfortable in his stuffy old chair, reclined back in it and all. “And would you fetch my-” but I was step ahead of the skull this time, 

“Pipe?” I finished its sentence,

“Please.” and it sort of opened the corner of its mouth so that I might fit the pipe in, which was a surprise, as the skull’s mouth did not move when it spoke, I had supposed that it couldn’t move. 

The pipe being returned seemed to mellow the skull out a bit, “Thank you,” it said holding the pipe between its teeth, “Now, would you please pick me up.” The wizard looked down at the both of us from his chair,

“Smoking.” he said, “That will kill you, you know.” The skull didn’t laugh. I picked it back up and stood facing the wizard, I felt terribly odd,

“Sorry, for all that.” I said.

“That’s alright.” said the skull, and the wizard didn’t say anything at all. Having taken a long pull of its pipe, smoke began to trail from the skull's eyes. The wizard looked at it, and I noticed a furrowing in his brow. It was when the skull began to attempt blowing smoke rings from its pipe, its nostrils, and its eyes, and all of them at once, that the wizard clapped his hands and said,

“Right, to business then.” the skull paused in its puffs,

“Yes,” it murmured, “to business.” 

The wizard pointed a fat finger at the skull, 

“First order being. Who are you?” I didn’t know skulls could cough until then, or become incensed,

“Who am I?!” it went off “You don’t even have the decency to introduce yourself first? Who am I? Who sir, are you? Who are you to be going around necromancing my dead body, dragging me away from a rather pleasant stint in oblivion, only to ask me who I am?” the wizard drew back a bit into his coats, and raised his hands to the skull, in much the same manner as he had done to me when I’d gone off at him out in the storm. 

“Sorry, compatriot, and sorry to disturb you. I, I am a wizard. Practioner of magicks and collector of stories. I thought, from previous experience-” The skull had a harsh voice, harsher still when on the attack, and I can only say it was shrill as it interrupted the wizard,

“You thought from previous experience, did you? So all skulls are the same are we?” the wizard looked far more harangued by this object, a thing he himself had conjured up, than he ever did with me out in the storm,

“No, no of course not. I wasn’t saying that. It is simply that I find, and maybe this is just my bias from the ghouls and spectres I have talked to, but sometimes I find that the dead miss some earthly comforts, like pipe smoke” and he gestured to the pipe he had given it “and then, sometimes, if you give that to them, they start talking. But if you do not want to talk that is fine by me.” 

“Oh, so it's a trade is it?” the skull lowered its voice, and seemed to be pleased at just the idea, “you give me a pipe to smoke, and I tell you who I am, or rather, I imagine you’ll be wanting, who I was.”

“Well” the wizard relaxed a bit, surfacing from the recesses of his cloaks and the chair, “I would not think of it as a transaction, more, a friendly offer -” and the skull cut him off again

“I prefer to think of things transactionally, just a fact of my biology. But I accept your, friendly offer, although, is it not more of a payment and a product received?” and the skull laughed and the wizard did too, even I might or mightn’t of laughed nervously at that, although I have no idea what about.

“You, my friend” and the skull was suddenly addressing me, “I see you have a chair that needs sitting in, there’s no need to be holding me much more, so go sit in your chair. You can leave me low on the floor between the two of you, so that I might smoke my pipe in peace. Do this, and get comfortable, then I will begin my tale.” I did exactly that. And the skull started talking, and it talked a long time.