“Unfortunate events come and go like the errant winds. Some are predictable, some are not. But the masterful hand may sail either to more fortunate endings.”

— Quote by Wizard (Grandfather) Albernathy Thomas Barnwinkle

* * *

The fall was long but not so long as to be fatal.

Nevertheless the wizard screamed the entire way down, his hands flapping like he was trying to fly.

Midway down he ran out of breath, drew in some more and continued. An action he realized was unwise a moment before he hit the surface of the surging river, the River Whelming — though he did not know that. Just as his toes touched, he quickly gobbled down air with somewhat mixed results, and then sank like a stone.

He hit the river bottom with a dull thud that reverberated up his spine and what might have been an epithet that escaped his lips, except that all that came out were bubbles. Reflexively, he pushed off from the river bed, and, struggling with the water logged arms of his robe and kicking feebly with his legs, slowly began to rise, mostly aided by all the air that had gotten trapped inside of his robe on the way down.

“Oh golly my aged ancestor the fourth,” The Wizard hacked out as he broke the surface. “By my hat!”

He coughed up water and wiped furiously at his eyes.It helped only a little.

Water greeted his eyes, and forest and mountains looking far closer than he felt they should and nothing at all that looked like a life raft or a dock or a passerby who might help.

“Fudge cakes,” He whispered. “Where am I?”

His eyes alighted on his hat floating sullenly away from him down the river.

“Hat!” He squawked, and started stroking its direction.

The hat did nothing so helpful as to catch onto an overhanging branch, or rock, and instead seemed to be sneering at him with its brim as it rounded a bend in the river and was gone.

“No! Hat! Come back your sodden fudge muffin. I’ll” — He tried to pick up speed with his arms, panting already from the exertion. “I’ll — I’ll turn you into a laundry basket, you big ol’ handkerchief. Don’t think I won’t. Come back here!”

* * *

The great Wizard Ogden Mumfsworth Follyfurth the sixteenth is credited with observing that Wizards, by and large, were not swimmers, or athletes at all for that matter. Oh, you came across the odd story of Merlin striding into battle next to King Arthur, or Gandalf the Grey, cutting down Orks and fighting ring wraiths with the fellowship, but generally, Wizard Ogden said, Wizards tended to prefer a more peaceful life, ensconced in their Libraries and personal studies and, well… studying. This was useful in cultivating the grand, wizardly facial hair and growing the admirable paunch that many wizards were known for, but far far less useful when swimming for your life after your hat down a river.

Also. The wizard Gandalf the Grey, Wizard Ogden noted in a post script, was purely the work of a Sir J. R. R. Tolkien, and therefore not really a historic figure despite the frequency with which he was quoted, and therefore should be disqualified from the analysis. It was all a mater of perspective.

Wizard Ogden, This particular drenched wizard noted in passing, was wrong. At least on the subject of swimming. It was not so much the lack of fitness, so much as the overwhelmingly large amount of river water a wizard’s robes had the capacity to hold. He did not even have that impressive wizardly paunch to help him float. Instead of having grown to fit his wisdom, his girth had instead shrunk to fit his social network, that unhealthy side effect wearing a Wizards Hat in public sometimes incurred.

He pressed on. Distantly, he thought, it looked like he was gaining on his hat, and so great was his focus that he completely missed the village of Landsend as he passed them by.

* * *

“Leia’s gone.”

Flynn didn’t look up as the other boy approached. He counted. Nine hens in the first coop. Only seven in the other. That was four hens less than there had been this morning before a bunch of rascals had let them out on a lark. They’d all get a switching if he could name them, but the naming… that was the rub.

He glared as he thought about that little trio, Cal, Hue and Mei. The entire village knew they were little hooligans, and, judging by the dung eating smirks he’d spied as he’d run around chasing the hens, he thought his suspicions were right on the silver…. Still, all he’d get was a sympathetic pat on the shoulder if not an embarrassing knowing ruffle of the hair unless he actually caught them at it….

Flynn sighed and looked up as the other boy shuffled impatiently. “What’s that again?”

Theilan did not looked pleased.In fact, Flynn noticed belatedly as he straightened from his inspection, if he didn’t know the normally stolid boy better, he would have said that Theilan looked down right annoyed.

Theilan was not really Theilan’s name, anymore than Flynn was Flynn’s. Somewhere, back in antiquity when the tiny village had been founded, the combined populace had all decided that the custom in Landsend was to have names comprised of multiple parts… and that custom had endured. Unfortunately. Theilan’s full name was Theilanandor Elenandorson. So needless to say, that name was saved for folk Theilan did not know, didn’t like, or, mainly, formal occasions. To most he was Theilan, or to his very close friends, just Theil.

Flynn’s name was worse. Flynnist’thadious Fynfinniganson was his name. And He went as just Flynn even for his formal occasions, thank you very much!

“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Flynn asked. “I e’spied her just the other day corralling those two orphan children for Mistress Margaret.” Mistress Margaret was the Mayors wife.

Theilan’s eyebrows pinched. “Yes.” He said. “And just the other day was the last anyone’s seen of her. Or Aemon. Or Kaimen.”

O-oh, Flynn mouthed. At least Theilan had said the two children’s names so that he wouldn’t have to look like an ass when he didn’t remember. It was not a good look forgetting orphan’s names, he thought. But they were so quiet and, well, they mostly played by themselves. Always polite and well behaved. Never causing mischief…. They were just bland. Not like Cal, Hue and Mei. Quite the opposite really. But Leinan had really taken a shine to them and often minded them in Mistress Margaret's absence. Leinan was Theilan’s sister.

An uncomfortable picture was starting to paint itself in Flynn’s mind.

Theilan rolled his shoulders. “At least, I do not think they have. None of the older folk are saying anything to me, even with Da gone to the city. Just shooting each other looks and fingering bowstrings. And boar spears. Won’t say anything more than ‘We’ll find her, boy’ or ‘Just you wait, she’ll turn up. Right as rain.”

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Flynn saw Theilan clench his fist. “They just don’t want to venture too far into the Werwood,” He sneered. “Not this close to winter. I’m going.”

Flynn blinked at Theilan as his friend turned to stomp off. And then up at the noon day sky and then the tree-line you could just see if you looked straight down the market path, passed all the stalls and hawkers and.… his brain finally caught up to him.

“Wha — hoy! Theil. Hold on. It’s passed mid day. You’ll never” —

“My sister has been gone since this time yesterday. I’m going after her.”

“This is not the first time Leia’s camped out in the Werwood” Flynn reasoned. “We all have, on larks and…” Flynn waved his hand about in a ‘you-know-what-I-mean’ gesture. “Why do you think —”

“The wind is strange.” The other boy said.

Flynn cocked is head, thought about it, and shivered as he felt the goosebumps pop up along his arms. It — was strange, he thought. Cold. Early. Hard to describe.

“Everyone’s saying it. They’re already preparing the winter rites.”

Flynn cursed… Under his breath of course. He was passed his seventeenth name-day, but still, the last thing he needed was some mischief maker like Cal, go blabbing to his mother that he’d heard him cursing like caravan driver. Speaking of…

“You there! Callithuan, you wretched street urchin!”

Cal glared beadily at him. “What da you want?”

Flynn reached into his pocket, grabbed the smallest silver coin he could find, inspected it — coined in Ballen, perfect — and flicked it over to the boy who caught it bemusedly in his fist. “You’re hired. There’s 9 and 7 hens in these coops. If even a one goes missing before my Da gets back, I’ll have your hide for winter gloves.” Cal thought about this, peered hungrily at the coin, then nodded sharply.

“Oh, and,” Flynn continued innocently, peering at Hue and Mei from the corner of his eye. “If the other five missing hens were to appear in these coups while I was away, why, I think I’d spare another one of those coins.”

Hmph, he thought, as the children minus Cal dashed off. By the time they realized there were only four missing hens instead of five, they’d probably have spent the rest of the day searching… and then they’d realize he’d promised them money only if they brought back five. He smirked to himself.

Flynn bumped his fist into the Theilan’s meaty shoulder. “Come on then. We have a hound back at the ranch. We don’t have to search by our lonesome, do we?

* * *

“Enough!” The Wizard's voice thundered with the deep threat of a mountain land slide. “Halt River! I command thee by” — A wave crashed into his face and his thundering gave way to splutters. He grasped tightly to the log he had been gripping for the last hour or so now — or was it two? And hacked coughs into the moldering bark. “Insolence!” He wheezed. “By my Power and my Name! By Rod and Staff” — his eyes widened as he caught sight of the sudden surge in the rapids ahead and he kicked up his leaden feet just in time to push off of the grey boulder — It spun him about and then his back struck something hard, and his right butt cheek exploded in agony as he ran something over, and then he breathed in water when he gasped.

“Fish toes and Mammoth antlers.” If my grandfather could see me now, he thought as he gasped and wheezed into the log.

Through squinted eyes he could see his Wizards Hat just bobbing along in calm waters, as if it had not a care in the world. “Drat you Hat!” He muttered, “When I catch you I’m going to” … and then his eyes widened as his brain caught up to what he was seeing.

Ahead, there was his hat… sneering at him with its brim. And then some more fearsome rocks all jockeying for the right to rock his world first and then… It looked like the edge of an infinity pool….

The background rushing of water that he had been hearing for some time now finally morphed in his mind to what it really was.

A waterfall.

“O-ok. River. River?” He splashed some water with his hand. “I apologize for angering you.”

No response.

“River? Listen to me, River! This is no longer fun — River!”

His left butt cheek exploded now and he howled into the log. But when his voice came next, quiet at first, then louder, there was a deeper quality too it. Not quite an echo. At least, not tangibly like an echo. But there was something more to it nonetheless.

“Hold River. Stay Tide. By Name I bid thee abide.” His hand rose, and he heaved it up and away as if he were forcefully tugging something out from the water, and impossibly, the Wizard was suddenly standing on its surface.

“Cool thy temper. Assuage thy fury—” his mouth worked for a moment as he tried to think of what might come next after that — “I… Wizard Barnibus Jefferson Montgomery Barnwinkle am on a mission and Iwillbeoutofhereinahurry!”

He cringed, waiting for the blow to fall. The water to slide from under his feet. Anything…. But then he blinked and smiled and shook his shoulders out as the power — the Anima he had forced into his voice — held.

“AHAH!” He stamped his foot on the water. “AHAHAHAHAHAH — Take that you backwater stream from —” He felt something almost like a shift, as if a giant had cocked an eyebrow and he was standing … on the eyebrow. “I-I mean. Thank you, River, I… I will be on my way right — ” He started brushing water off of himself — his grandfather always did say dignity before — There was another shift and he stumbled. “Right. On my way now.” He huffed, and hurried off after his hat.

* * *

Both a short and a long time later — short because the actual amount of time was rather short, but long because any amount of time spent striding over the tempered surface of a raging river just before the long drop of a waterfall was too long a time — Wizard Barnibus keeled into a slump against the gnarled root of a tree he did not recognize, some ways away from the bank, gripping his Hat tightly by the pointy tip. He was exhausted.

He glared his bushy eyebrows — all wizardly eyebrows were bushy — at the Hat. “You are a rather ornery bit of stitches and lint.”

“And you,” the Hat said back with a tone that dripped saccharine like molasses, “are a rather pitiful excuse for a Wizard.”

“There’s no need to be nasty.” Barnibus said testily and went to place the hat where it belonged — on his head — and groaned as he realized how heavy it was.Which, of course, was why he had been dragging it in the first place instead of wearing it.“What did you do? Drink the river?”

He held it before him and shook it like he was trying to shake a spider out of a shoe and… jumped as a frankly alarming amount of river water poured out of the breach! And poured. And poured… and poured even more. Wizards hats held far more than people thought they did.

Barnibus glared at it. “Were you holding that in reserve for when I put you on?”

The Hat radiated smugness tinged with not a small amount of disappointment.

Barnibus huffed and stuffed the now empty Wizarding item onto his head.

The Hat was a big hat. Almost too big, such that if you had seen it sitting on a table, you would probably have guessed that it would have sunk all the way over his head and down his face. It did not. Wizards Hats were hats, not balaclavas. So it sat perfectly snug. And this hat was the genuine article.

It was big and grand and sky blue with a trunk that rose up and curved down down behind him into a point. The brim was wide and luxurious with expert stitching and just thick enough that it neither flopped down around his face like a cloth napkin, nor so rigid as to stick out like card board. It spread out smoothly and evenly on all sides like a big blue halo.

He was really lucky to have this hat. It was his grandfather’s before him. And before his grandfather, it was his grandfather’s grandfather and before his grandfather’s grandfather, it was… you get the idea. He had no idea why this hat just kept skipping generations the way it did, but… that was the way with wizards, and he had a sneaking notion that when the time came, he’d also be passing the hat down to his grandchild instead of his child. You had to keep things like that going in the wizard community.

He was really lucky to have this hat. He could have been stuck making his first Wizards hat the way most young wizards started out and wasn’t that the chore. He was absolutely garbage at needle work, and he didn’t think he was particularly unique in that judging from the things he saw young wizards wearing on their heads. Really…. He was lucky. Really. Now if only….

His eyes moved slowly up the gloomy wall of wood, leaves and bark of the trees, until the little patch of sky he could see very, very high up peaked into view. Not a door, or a portal, or even an eldritch hole in reality anywhere in sight.

As if reading his thoughts, which it was, the Hat said, “The accumulated works, books, and magic left behind from generations of Barnwinkles all in one library, and you had to animate the one glyph that —”

“A post-it — a modern post-it note, is not sufficient —”

“—Read, ‘Press me not, for fell doom and grand demise awaits whomsoever empowers my circle’”.

Wizard Hats had very good memories. Of course they did. They spent most of their time sitting on the heads of wizards, and the title ‘wizard’ first came from the word ‘wise’ and wise, implied long memory. So, it made sense. Wise Wizards, ergo wise Hats, ergo long memories. It was fortunate. And… also unfortunate. Sometimes.

Barnabus sighed. “What do you suppose that means?”

“Press me not —”

“The fell doom and grand demise portion, if you please.”

The Hat paused, and then said almost sulkily. “I do not believe I was on your grandfathers head when he inscribed that warning….”

“Well, Surely, when he — ”

“Or the rune.… Or the circle.”

“Do you think it might have been your winning attitude?” Barnibus asked after a moment.

The hat sniffed, which struck Barnibus as a very odd thing for a hat to do, and did not reply.

Barnibus wrung water out of his beard, realized that it was not just his beard that needed wringing, and started shivering.

“H-How do you suppose we get back?”

The hat still did not respond. Barnibus shrugged and wrapped his waterlogged robe tighter around himself. That wind was cold! And the light was starting to wain.

A fire he thought. And dry clothes. And food….

His eyes alighted on the many, still flopping forms littering the site where his hat had ejected so much water, and nodded with satisfaction. Some of the fish were quite large. Maybe one thing would allow for the other, he thought, and he stumbled to his feet.

“You're welcome,” hissed his hat moodily.

Barnibus ignored him.