The wizard returned to his meal. The fish was perhaps a bit overdone, but he was finally happy with the amount of lemon. The secret was not just to drizzle lemon juice, but also to leave a slice or two in the pan while it cooked.
Gwendolyn opened her mouth as if to speak several times, but seemed to lose her nerve and took a bite of food instead.
Tristan wondered at that, but didn’t want to press her. The poor woman looked like she’d been through enough trouble as it was, without needing any more from him. So they finished their meal in silence, comfortably on his end and nervously on hers.
“What is your name?” she finally asked, when her plate was cleared.
“Tristan the Great and Powerful Wizard of the Forest,” he said, a little embarrassed that he hadn’t said that already. In his defense, his guests normally already knew who he was. “Since I can’t safely s\\\\end you to Blueville,” he said, changing the subject, “or even as far as Yellowville, is there anywhere else you’d like to go?”
“I fear it’s hopeless,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. She touched the yellow and purple spot on her cheek. “Maybe I should just go back with him. It wasn’t the worst life. He did provide me with a roof over my head, and I was never hungry. There is nowhere I could go to be safe from him, I think.”
Tristan was a little offended by that. “My tower is completely safe,” he countered. “And I can’t imagine you would be happy going back to a life you were obviously so desperate to leave behind.”
“That’s true,” she said softly. “But I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“It would hardly be an imposition,” the wizard lied. He ignored Solvent’s pointed look. There was no denying that having the woman around would be incredibly distracting to his work. It was a particularly bad idea since the next Gathering was in only a week, and he had hoped to showcase his butterfly spell by then. But she needed the help, and once he showed her around and got her settled into one of the spare rooms, she would surely be able to take care of herself.
A small part of him wondered if she would be interested in his work, but he clamped down on that thought. He didn’t have the best history with women, and if this particular woman showed any interest in him it would only be because of what he was providing for her in the way of housing and protection. Better not to put her in the position of thinking he wanted that from her.
“Come,” he said, “I’ll take you to your room.”
Gwendolyn followed the wizard up the long, winding staircase and wondered if she had just made a horrible mistake. Damien was awful, but at least she knew how to handle him. Over the years she had learned to read his moods and understood when she could talk him down, and when she just had to ride out the anger.
This wizard, on the other hand, was a complete unknown. She had been too hungry to think straight when she approached his tower, and now she realized that she had no idea what this man was like. He had shut down Damien with just a few words! He hadn’t had the slightest bit of fear when faced with the sword, and she knew that her husband was well-known for his ability with the sword.
How powerful, how dangerous, was this man who didn’t even flinch? Not to mention he wasn’t just any wizard, but a Great and Powerful one. If there was anything he wanted from her, she would be powerless to object.
She shivered at the thought and wrapped her arms around her chest, suddenly self conscious about the state of her dress.
“Here we are,” the wizard said, and opened the door to the most beautifully decorated room she had ever seen. It was sparse, in that all it contained was a bed, a wardrobe, and a desk, but each was made of deep mahogany with brass handles and accents.
“Thank you,” Gwendolyn murmured.
“I don’t have any women’s clothes,” he said, “but for now you can wear the robes in the wardrobe.” He frowned. “Hold on, that won’t do. It’s against the Rules for a non-wizard to wear wizard robes.”
This was it, Gwendolyn despaired. He would claim to have nothing suitable to wear, and she would have to wear her dress in tatters or nothing at all. That would be the price of his hospitality.
The wizard waved his hands, and the wardrobe doors sprang open. Inside were ten blue and purple robes of soft cloth. With a snap of his fingers, three emerged from the wardrobe and floated in the air.
He glanced over at Gwendolyn and tilted his head, considering.
She bit her lip, bracing herself.
He muttered an incantation, and the robes shrunk. He waved one over and held it up to her, and nodded when he saw that it was a reasonable match to her size. With another wave of his hand, the robes lost their intricate embroidery and changed to a deep goldenrod color.
“Here,” he said. “Only wear these, the others are for wizards.”
The robes fell neatly into her arms, and she stood there, beside the bed, with a shocked look on her face. “Thank you,” she said, “Thank you so much.”
Tristan scratched his neck awkwardly. “Yes, well, you can’t keep wearing that dress. You’re getting dirt on everything.”
“Is… there anything else?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. Unless there’s something else you need?” He looked at her with wide, innocent eyes.
Gwendolyn’s gaze softened, and at last the tension left her shoulders. Here was a man so good that he didn’t even understand the weight of his actions. This hospitality didn’t come with a price, it was just something he thought of as basic decency.
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing else I need.”
***
The next couple of days passed cautiously. Gwendolyn mostly stayed in her room so as not to be a bother, and she got used to Solvent showing up at her door to summon her to meals. Breakfast was always a quiet affair, but during lunch and dinner she learned that the wizard was surprisingly easy to talk to, although the topics he wanted to discuss were unusual.
She still jumped every time she thought she heard Damien at the door, but it was only ever the wind. Gradually, she began to settle in and feel safer in the wizard’s tower. She left her room more and more on her own, and as she did she realized that although the building was furnished very well, it was all quite… dusty.
“What are you doing?”
She startled at the wizard’s voice. “I was just. Cleaning up a bit. There’s quite a bit of dust, you see, and Solvent showed me where to find the sweep.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not angry with you.” He’d come to recognize the whole-body flinch that meant she was bracing herself for some sort of punishment. It pained him to see it, so he learned the sort of words, like a spell in themselves, that eased the tension out of her body and put her at ease.
Her breathing slowed to a normal rate, and she raised her eyes. “I also saw, in the closets, that you have a number of paintings and beautiful artifacts. If you’d like, I could hang those up around the common rooms.”
The wizard blinked. That was a chore he’d been meaning to get around to ever since he moved into the tower, some fifteen years prior. Only there always seemed something more pressing at hand, and he was never quite certain what should go where, so he’d continued to put it off.
“That would be lovely,” he said.
She nodded and set to it immediately, not waiting to see if he had more to say. She, too, had gotten used to his mannerisms, and knew that if she stood there waiting, he would stand waiting for her, and the silence would stretch painfully on until she finally released them both.
When she returned with two paintings she had already decided would be perfect for the dining room, the wizard was still standing in the same place, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Would you ever want to travel to another world?” he asked her.
When she first arrived, that sort of question would have sent her into a confused spiral, embarrassed by her own ignorance, but she’d learned to take his odd questions in stride. She could make up just about any sort of answer, so long as it maintained an internal logic. It was quite fun, she’d found, because in conversations like that it was more important to be reasonable than knowledgeable.
“I don’t see why not,” she answered truthfully. “Are you thinking of a parallel world, or a completely different one?”
“Either would do, I suppose, with some obvious limitations on the different one. Let’s call it parallel for simplicity.”
Gwendolyn hammered a nail into the wall as she thought. “If it was really parallel, I don’t think it would make much difference,” she said. “Everything would be similar enough I might not notice, especially anywhere outside Greenville.”
“That’s a good point,” the wizard said. He took a seat at the head of the table and rested his chin in his hand. “Entering a parallel world would only matter to a creature experienced enough to recognize its differences. Hmm. How about a different world, then? Something similar enough that you could survive, but with, say, a completely different set of people in it.”
Gwendolyn shrugged briefly as she lifted the picture onto the nail. “Wouldn’t make much difference to me, again. I already have nothing, and a world without Damien might be a better one. I think I’d miss you, though.” The woman squeaked and slapped a hand over her mouth.
Tristan went still. There was a long moment of silence between them, with neither of them looking at the other.
Finally, the wizard rose to his feet. “Very helpful, Gwendolyn, thank you. And the picture looks nice.” He spun on his heel and practically ran up the stairs.
Gwendolyn grimaced at Solvent. “Did I say too much?”
The cat’s ears twitched. “Meow.”
***
Tristan sat at his workbench, staring blankly at pictures of butterflies. “I’d miss you,” she’d said. How long had it been since someone cared enough about him to miss him? Had anyone ever cared that much? He was respected among the other wizards, of course, but that wasn’t the same thing. He’d run away to the forest as a young man because he never felt as though he fit in in the city, and he doubted anyone noticed he’d gone. Magic was the only thing that ever made sense. People… were complicated.
But Gwendolyn… She was different. She was easy to talk to in a way that nobody else ever had been, unless they were as interested in the subject of magic as he was. And even then, he found himself talking over the heads of his peers. Gwendolyn never made him feel like that. When they spoke, even if she didn’t understand the material, she understood him.
Take the butterflies, for example. He could open up a portal to another world and pull the butterflies into this one. Shrink the portal to the tip of the wand, and it would appear as though they were being created by the spell. It was a bit of a sideways tactic to get the result he wanted, and that fact alone was enough to displease him, but he had also wondered if there was an ethical dilemma involved in the action.
Gwendolyn, in her calm and thoughtful way, put his mind at ease. A butterfly wouldn’t recognize this world as any different from its own. A parallel world was already a better option than another sort of world simply for the logistics of finding the right sort of butterfly, and now better still because the butterfly wouldn’t be confused. Well, any more confused than if he was teleporting them from one part of the world to the next.
Which… was an option, now that he thought of it, but he liked it even less than his current plan.
He wondered if butterflies had the capacity to miss each other. Were their brains big enough to understand the concept? Or rather, their hearts? Now that was a question he may never know the answer to. And perhaps it was not worth the risk. If there was even the slightest possibility of breaking the hearts of butterflies, he should find another way.
“What are we going to do, Solvent, if we can’t import them?”
When there was no answering meow, Tristan looked around. The cat wasn’t in the workshop!
Then he remembered seeing Solvent at Gwendolyn’s feet, watching as she cleaned and decorated the lower rooms.
Of course. The cat was as entranced as he was by the woman.
***
That evening, as Gwendolyn cleared the plates, Tristan followed her to the kitchen.
“I was wondering,” he said, “if you’d like to join me for a glass of wine this evening?”
Gwendolyn smiled back at him. “Yes, of course.” Part of her wondered if this was it, the moment she’d feared when she first arrived. Another part hoped it was.
The wizard nodded and disappeared. He returned just as she finished rinsing the dishes, two glasses and a bottle of wine in hand.
“Come upstairs with me, I’d like to show you the study.”
She followed him up, her heart racing with nervous anticipation. He took her one floor higher than her own room, to a space that was lined from floor to ceiling with bookshelves. Two armchairs were placed in front of a large fireplace, with a small table between them.
He took a seat, gestured for her to take the other, and poured the glasses.
“This is a port wine, so sip carefully.”
Gwendolyn took the barest of sips and gasped. “What is this?” she exclaimed.
Tristan smiled. “A friend of mine makes this particular blend. Port is already considered a dessert wine, but this adds a chocolate overtone.”
“It’s so good,” she said. “Thank you for sharing this with me.” If not for his warning, she could have drank the entire glass in one gulp. It reminded her of a chocolate covered raisin, which she had gotten to try once as a young girl.
“I’m glad to.” He took a larger sip, enjoying the taste but also wanting to brace himself for what he wanted to say. “Talking with you really helped me today. I just wanted to tell you that— If you would like to stay— You are welcome to live here as long as you like.” He couldn’t meet her eyes, afraid of how she would react.
She reached a hand out to cover his. “I would like to stay. Very much. You’re a good man, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about you it’s that while you may not be very good at talking to people, you do care about them very deeply. You didn’t have to tell me it was your friend who made this wine,” she elaborated. “But you knew I would enjoy it and wanted to make sure he got the credit.”
The wizard scratched his neck in the way he did when he was feeling awkward. “I’m beginning to realize that you notice some things about me that it doesn’t occur to me to notice in myself.”
She gazed back at him, admiring the sharp line of his jaw. “I enjoy paying attention to you.”
He looked back at her in wonder, his eyes searching hers for the slightest hint of deceit and finding none. “I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that before,” he said. “But I enjoy hearing it from you.”
His fingers curled around hers and they sat that way for a long moment, just enjoying each other’s company and the warmth of that touch.
“Do you think you would notice if you had a clone, somewhere else in the world?” the wizard asked.
“Not if we never met,” said Gwendolyn. “But I don’t think I would like that very much.”
And with that simple question, they fell back into the sort of conversation that had become comfortable for them. Hypothetical questions and well reasoned responses, the sort of back and forth that stretches the mind in ways that are impossible, alone.
And as they did, Gwendolyn realized she would like to stay with the wizard. It had been easy to say, harder to feel, but here was a man who valued her company and her mind, who saw her for herself. She never would have thought she had anything of value to say to a Great and Powerful wizard, yet he made her feel like she did. He carefully considered the things she had to say, and if he cared overmuch for her beauty, he did not show it. That was not the basis of their relationship.
As for the wizard, he fell back on magical hypotheses as a way of calming his nerves. This woman who had stumbled into his life was beautiful and intelligent, and she helped him to think about his experiments in ways that felt brand new. It was all well and good to talk to himself or to Solvent or to any of the other wizards who visited, but her perspective was unlike any of the wizards he had ever known.
It had taken every effort of will just to invite her to stay longer, and he was still trembling with the anxiety of it. The worry that in asking, he would push her away.
But her hand was warm on his, and that made all the difference.