“A Wizard is always a wizard, except when his pants are down. Then, he is doubly a Wizard. For there is never a better time to be more of what you are than when you are not.”

— Quote by Wizard (Grandfather) Albernathy Thomas Barnwinkle

* * *

“Sister Leia. Sis —”

Leinan reached out and grabbed Aemon from where she was crouched. She slowly, slowly drew him toward her and beckoned his sister to huddle with them.

“Not. A. Word.” She breathed in the children’s ears, barely audible even to herself.

“But. We haven’t heard the s — ”

Leinan winced hard and shook the boy roughly until he stopped. He was trying to speak softly, she knew, but Aemon and Kaimen, were children, and children were never good judges of that sort of thing. Also, he kept speaking with the letter ’S’, and the sound ’S’ made, her father had taught her, was the easiest sound to make out in the middle of the night.

“It doe’n’” She began to say, but then she stiffened. They all did. It was back. That voice. Beautiful and terrible like the moon shining on hard ice and fresh snow.

A voice which wound and played and sang —

“Oh come now, my children, I’ll take thee away,

  into a land of the winterly Fae.”

— There was a giggle of raw enjoyment, and the sudden crackling of leaves in what Leinan could swear was a skip and a step.

“The land of snow and ice and cold,

  with summers away and the nights grow bold.

The trolls come out and the centaurs sing,

  for fresh little children the forerunner bri — ”

There was a long pause in which Aemon froze staring back at Leinan with eyes as wide as river stones and Leinan had time to think that the whites of his eyes were awfully easy to see in the dark, when that beautiful voice exclaimed —

“Oh. My…. What a wonderful hat.”

— and then there really was silence.

Still. Leinan didn’t move a muscle — and neither did the children — until she felt the bite in the air just barely lessen.

Then, and only then, did she bring her lips to Aemon and Keimen’s ears, so close they brushed the edges and she breathed “‘ome. ‘Uiedly. Li’e hunding rabi’”. The clicking sound tongues made was also rather audible in the dark, and for a moment she worried that the two hadn’t understood her, but then they nodded and for all their eyes glowed with fear their faces were set resolutely.

She beckoned and like shadows they crept through the night. Slowly. Ever. So. Slowly. Because ‘slow was quiet’, as her father would say.

It was also agony.

Where was the village?

* * *

“Oh, I do wonder who you conversed with so, Barnibus. Thy never said.” The wheedling tone floated as if on a breeze from the far side of the camp fire where the white haired form of the Forerunner had flopped, for want of a better term.

Barnibus looked up from where he held a skewer of fish over the fire.There were two steaks on the skewer.The fish were rather small after all and so two made sense in so far as it filled up the available skewer space while also not overburdening the thin stick.It was also the number of the present company. which was good, and a prime, which, Barnibus thought, was unfortunate, if only because he would have preferred to keep this experience as low key as he possibly could.

Four steaks might have been better, he thought.

Four was the number of cardinal directions. Four balanced nicely in a conversation. It left no participants out while also not so many as to be a crowd. There were four letters in the word four and when the letters were added together, produced a nice, even, two digit number. That number was divisible by four, and if the alpha-numerics began at ‘0’ rather than ‘1’ which was best for a variety of reasons, then that nice, even, double digit number divided into fourteen. And if Barnibus had to explain why that was fortuitous, than obviously you have not been listening.

Four was comfortable, no two ways about it.

Still, if Barnibus had decided to grill four steaks, he would have had to use two hands to hold both skewers, leaving him unable to stroke his beard if the need arose.

Beard stroking was very wizardly and, with no robe, staff, rod, or anything else at all wizardly about himself at the moment aside for his hat, Barnibus was feeling the distinct need to compensate.

“Oh. Well.” He coughed “I was speaking to my hat of course, as a fellow must when he is lost and alone in the dark and cold.”

The Forerunner rolled herself up in a motion so fluid that an olympic gymnast might have envied, and propped herself up on her stomach with her chin in her hands. She beamed at him from around the fire as he blinked at her and blew a lock of the palest hair Barnibus had ever seen from her face.

“And is thine hat a good conversationalist?”

“Not at all,” responded Barnibus adamantly. “It is often quite rude and rough at times.”

Barnibus thought he saw her twitch, though that also might have been the flickering of the fire, but in any event, in a moment, the Forerunner had somehow summersaulted herself into a sort of cross-legged, knee up, seated position.

“Oh you daren’t say! Not to his brim!”

They both laughed and Barnibus felt his hat bristle haughtily on his head. He stroked his beard in a wizardly fashion, and ignored it.

The Forerunner never really stopped moving. She was jittery, almost like a child who had had one too many sips from her mothers coffee cup. She didn’t look like a child though, something that Barnibus was all too aware of as he sat with nothing on but a sodden hat and some underpants. She was beautiful — but beautiful in an… other way.

By all means, she was also beautiful in a non-other way too. The Forerunner was well endowed in all the right areas from her smooth skin to the curl of her lips and the way her wild hair curled as it fell over her ears, to — ahem — well, all the right areas.

But, there was a perfection to her as well that, when viewed in the physical realm was surreal to the point of dissonance.

Her alabaster hair, curling just so over her ears, the tips, barely tickling the edges of her shoulder-blades. Her grin, childlike mischief, a concept which was almost more stereotype than reality. The color of her eyes, grey, like early morning mists, barely concealing the snow cap on a distant mountain peak. How that description could fit eyes, especially ones reflecting the light of a banked fire was… impressive to the point of unreality. Which was the point.

Too perfect. Surreal. Other.

“My, you are observant,” His hat grumbled snidely. “Makes you wonder —”

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“If I may, Madam Forerunner, but” — Barnibus coughed into his beard. “What manner of creature are you? — If it is not too rude to ask.” Barnibus continued quickly as his Hat was suddenly wracked with a coughing fit as if it had inhaled a lot of saliva it did not have.

The Forerunner pouted, scrunching up her face prettily. “So blunt. So mundane! Oh where art thy game of riddles? Thy circles and tricks?” She sniffed looking mildly put out. “Oh, very well. A question for a question. I. Am a Forerunner. As I told thee already. Tee hee!” She grinned at him and jumped and spun in a circle giggling and landed, pointing at him over the fire. “And yee? It is not oft I see a man mimicking a bird with such ill success!”

“She’s got that right,” his hat sneered, as Barnibus reddened under his beard and coughed again.

“You — you saw that?”

“You. Are a disgrace to Wizards everywhere,” hissed his hat. “Where’s the knowing twinkle in your eye? The mystery? —”

“I did. And now thou is doubly in my debt, for questions two I hath answered and thee not a one. Questions three I call as just payment and interest!”

“ — The air of intrigue and wisdom of ages past? Why, if your grandfather were here, he wouldn’t be getting spanked by a simple question and answer ga —”

You could help me instead of being such a grump! Barnibus mentally hissed as he fumbled to adopt his Air of Intrigue and shove a Knowing Twinkle into his eye. He didn’t know if it worked. It was hard without his robe and staff and rod and — It was plain hard in just his skivvies and hat.

“Why,” Barnibus blustered, abashed, and lowered his bushy eyebrows in an attempt to cover up whatever actual twinkle had appeared in his eyes. By the snort he heard from his hat, he doubted it was Knowing. Still, he drew himself up. “Why, I am a Wizard, of course! Can you not tell?”

Barnibus did not need the book which bonked him on his head from inside his hat to tell him that he had made another mistake. But the Forerunner did not capitalize.

She had frozen. Like ice froze. A stillness that living creatures could never achieve. “Are thee truly?” She asked finally. “A magus of yore?”

“W-why yes, I am.” Barnibus rushed to answer, with a breath of relief. “Th-he Wizard part!” He amended, after a brief moment and the long tirade from the napkin —he thought that part really hard — sitting on his head. “A-a-and I could not tell you if I was! A-a Magus of yore!”

The Forerunner turned rose pink as she realized her error now — “Cheats! Tricks!” — but then suddenly she was circling him, poking at him and even sniffing him.She peered long and hard at his hat and nudged skeptically at his robes with her toe.

His robe… looked like it froze over slightly at her touch.

“Truly!” She said in bemusement. And then she laughed and summersaulted back over the fire, cackling. “And yet thy vestments!”

She twirled again, almost a pirouette — and then it was a pirouette — which went faster and faster and faster still until she was nothing more than a grey-white blur — and then she stopped.

Now she was wearing a shining white gown with a high collar just touching her chin, a stiff white hat standing proudly on her head and holding a long silver wand of pale ivory in her hand.

She posed imperiously, her wand held aloft above her head as if she were about to deliver fell judgement upon a toad and turn it into a prince… or, perhaps the other way around.

“Those are a Witches accoutrements — achem. Though, I dare say the color-scheme is quite uncharacteristic. The dark colors are far more vogue —”

“Black, doth not suit one such as I." The Forerunner sniffed, turning her nose up haughtily. "Yet, thine fish, doth wear the color full well.”

Barnibus blinked at the abrupt segue and then yelped as he realized that he had been paying absolutely no attention to his charge and all to The Forerunner.

“Fish feathers.” He muttered, abashed, and did not look at her as she giggled uproariously while he juggled the skewer.

There was an awkward moment where she made no move to take the skewer from him, which stretched until he stuck the butt into the soil beneath him, watched it a moment to ensure the sizzling fish did not slide down the length, and then “excuse me”, he said, red faced and got up to rummage in his robe.

“That is a mighty fine conjuring!” He complimented as he rummaged in an effort to save face. “Is it an illusion?”

There was a disdainful sniff from directly behind making him jump — but thankfully only in Surprise not Fright.

“An illusion?! Nay, nothing but the slightest glamour, turning what is not into what is! An’ so thee are a Wizard…” she proclaimed as he withdrew a set of ceramic plates and plastic ware from his robes.

The Forerunner backflipped back over the fire — her Witch’s garb fading back into her old attire on the way — as Barnibus bumbled for a response, juggling the cutlery, his dignity and all the while listening to the cackling from his hat — “She wonders! HA! No fault of her own. I often wonder myself!”

“You are far from your libraries and covens master Warlock.” She frowned, suddenly pensive. "Many a tale were oft told of the wise old folk with their hats and their staves and their wands, spinning world threads into tapestries, and tapestries into futures. But none now tell them in these parts. The folk of these lands dealt cruelly with thine kind in elder years.”

Barnibus slowed as he made to proffer one of the plates of fish. “Cruelly…” he croaked.“What happened?”

Even his hat seemed to hold breath it didn’t have, and he could tell they were both thinking the same thing. His Grandfather’s fell doom? Was this it?

But the Forerunner was wagging her finger and grinning! “Nay Nay! By mine own count thy hast defaulted once more!” She touched her finger to her chin cutely considering. “I think” — she grinned toothily — “Why. Yes. A piece of thine dignity shall suffice!” And before Barnibus could do anything, she was standing directly in front of him — seemingly forgetting to cross the distance — and had licked him on the nose.

“GAHHH!” Barnibus yelped again as he fell back on his rump juggling the plates of fish, to roaring laughter from both the Forerunner and his hat.

And it was at that moment when a trio of panting and sobbing youngster burst through the trees and into the fire light.

“Aha!” The Forerunner proclaimed after a frozen moment where nobody moved and Barnibus felt at the edges of his lost dignity. She clapped her hands in delight. “Thine course is served and so is mine!”

And then she advanced on the children.

* * *

By the time they stumbled into the fire light, they were shivering.

Creeping through the forrest on a winter chilled night did that. Without the blood pumping hysteria of pursuit, the slowness dropped their body temperature like a stone and the breeze, not nearly as biting as it had been, took care of the rest.

Leinan shivered. Aemon and Keimen looked positively frostbitten in their short sleeves and sandals.

For a moment she could just stare at the fire. The little hollow in the forest glowed with flickering yellow warmth and the smell and sound of something sizzling made the saliva surge in her mouth. When was the last time she had eaten?

She nearly missed the tableau as she stumbled closer — or more like, the crackling fire held her attention almost hypnotically until —

“Thine course is served and so is mine!” And the shivering cold froze her where she stood, helpless as the monster skipped daintily towards them.

Leinan had never actually seen their pursuer.

She hadn’t needed to. She had sort of just known that the owner of the voice that sang to them did not belong to one of the villagers on a lark.

So cold. So melodic. So etherial.

It had filled her head with images of lonely mountain peaks covered in mists and untouched snow, frozen over lakes and dark, cold, moonless nights. It had filled her with terror.

Now Leinan saw her, and she knew.And she knew that the twins next to her knew.This was it.This was —

There was a long silence in Leinan’s head.A primed silence.The wrong type of silence which your ears fill with tinnitus ringing and time stretches before your eyes.

The image of etherial beauty smiled beautifully at her with a mouth filled with pointed teeth and eyes as cold and grey as the mountain mist. Eyes which danced and played and were not kind. Eyes which —

It was almost a relief, in a way. The harrowing chase ended. The pain in her muscles. The twisting gnawing terror in her gut. The cold —

And the spell ended as an ugly, hairy back interposed itself between them, and jabbered something unintelligible to its face.

The face — the cold, beautiful, wild face, with eyes heavy with savage glee and hair like spun, moon-dappled snow — looked affronted.

* * *

“— A Guest?!”

The hairy back — which Leinan noticed now was only really ugly in contrast to the monster — in fact it looked quite a bit like any other back one of the men in the village might have, if a little sun deserving — gabbled something back and shifted the enormous hat stationed on his head self importantly.

“Thou’st plays fast and loose with thine claims, hatted one! I saw no bargain struck, no gifts exchanged.” The monster spluttered. “They stumble ‘pon thy campfire like moths to flame and thieving vagrants besides! They are not attired for….”

And there was argument, punctuated by furious spluttering from the monster which was looking more and more petulant and gibberish from the nearly naked man in front of them.

“— Thine own attire —”

Furious jabbering and a jabbed finger in the air as if to make a point.

“I concede that —”

“— Sought these rabbits o’er stone and under bow I claim that they —”

And just as Leinan came to her senses and was about to reach out and grab the two children and race back with them into the tree line, Keimen — quiet sweet and attentive Keimen who listened and watched and was very dutiful in her chores and almost never spoke — stepped up to the naked man and bowed low, somehow ignoring the monster.

Keimen said carefully, in a very small but clear voice, “We thank you, sir, for your offer of hospitality this cold night. We have nought to give save for our deepest gratitude, and one red berry plucked just yestereve, but we do accept your gracious offering of supper and firelight.”

And, so saying, Keiman reached up and plucked a plate that Leinan just noticed was in the man’s hand and replaced it with a red berry from her satchel.

Leinan froze, eyes wide, her hand on Aemon’s shoulder, her other still grasping fruitlessly for Keimen’s cloak. The audacity — the —

And the nearly naked man with the hairy back — with the large pointed hat with a brim spreading like a halo around his head — with the beard so long it wagged against his chest while he spoke and with eyes that twinkled and glimmered like caught stars beneath his eyelids —

The Man smiled.