The Way of the Wizard

by John Joseph Adams

  She climbs toward the city center. Colorful houses with tiled roofs sprinkle the hillside like candy. Gardens hang from windows and flowers bloom around the doors.

  She reaches the palace grounds, passing beneath a bay of spiders weaving tensile webs like copper wire. Metallic tendrils caress her as she passes, simply wanting to know her. She walks a wide-open lane, lined with fragrant orange trees. Robots guard the way, their eyes enigmatic emerald, their fingers grasping ancient keys; they let her pass.

  Finally she comes to the heart of the palace, where the princess lives.

  The princess wears her hair free and wild, circled only by a silver band. Her skin is smooth as milk chocolate, her smile as sweet. Her bare arms are muscular, circled with metal bracelets; her simple dress swirls to the floor. She is barefoot.

  The princess and the wizard take one another in, accepting what has changed and savoring what has not.

  “You know why I’m here,” says the wizard.

  “Yes. I know.”

  The wizard describes the chaos she saw in the mirror: the attacks of the incubus and the summer of suffering.

  The princess asks her questions, contemplates the consequences.

  Finally she says: “My warriors can do nothing against a threat like this one. It is up to you.”

  “Yes. I know,” she says. She knows enough to be afraid.

  The creaking bus is filled with the smells of exhaust and Doritos, and the fruity-floral scents of teenage girls. Hannah sits by the window and watches the miles as the sun rises over the mountains. CD player in her lap, headphones in her ears: she’s as faraway as she can make herself.

  They’re heading to a daylong Bible retreat.

  Hannah’s sister Franny sits across the aisle with her best friend Krista. Their furtive conversation is drowned by the rumbling of the bus and the aural onslaught of Hannah’s private music. They bend their heads together, whispering and giggling.

  Peter sits four seats up, talking with two guys across the aisle.

  He became their youth minister four years ago. He’d been twenty-five then, idealistic and charismatic. Hannah’s mother campaigned hard to get him the position. When he had it, she invited him to dinner. She baked her delicious chicken potpie, and they all listened as Peter told them stories about the year he’d spent volunteering in Guatemala. His eyes shone as he described building a house for a poor family, or playing ball in the dirt street with a bunch of rowdy boys.

  He told them about his plans for youth group. He wanted to shake things up. “More energy,” he said. “More passion for Christ! We’ve got to get these kids’ attention.” He wanted more hands-on service activities, more dynamic sermons, more music.

  “Hannah sings, you know,” her mother said. “And plays the keyboard.”

  “Fantastic,” Peter said. “I’m putting together a worship team. Wanna come try out?”

  Of course she said yes.

  That night, Hannah lay awake thinking about him. He was the way she imagined Jesus: handsome and kind. When he told stories, you wanted to listen. When he looked at you, you couldn’t look anywhere else.

  That was before the demons came. (Despair. Rage. Guilt and Shame. The perfect quartet.)

  Peter swings out of his seat. He walks down the aisle of the bus, pausing at each seat to say hello. He talks to Krista and Franny for a long time, leaning to catch their words over the noise of the bus. She watches them watch him. She watches him watch them. Their faces are full of adoration.

  He doesn’t speak to her, just flashes her a smile she still can’t read.

  And the creaking bus forces its way forward.

  What’s the value of seeing the future if you don’t know how to change it? You can brace for the wave, but you can’t calm the sea. Helplessly, the wizard peers into her mirror, searching for knowledge to illuminate her path; she pores over her books, looking for anything that will help defeat the incubus.

  And while she searches, the city devolves into a waking nightmare. Perta Perdida is a world linked not by geography but by desire, mapped onto far-flung hidden spaces, governed by laws of the soul and not the mind. It falls victim to enemies that are equally fragmented, and thus untouchable. The city is everywhere and nowhere, fleeting and timeless; the threat they face is the same way.

  The incubus, irrational and lacking in substance, drifts through windows and beneath doors. Girl after girl falls victim to its night time whispering, cajoled in the darkness of deep sleep to places beyond consciousness, islands without a name, castles ruled by fear. Sleepwalking, they wander into the forest’s wilds, the shadowy in-between where the spirit dwells, safe from the prying sunlight. Girl after girl, wrenched from home, lost to herself, stranded in the badlands of her own mind.

  Afraid to fall asleep, the girls set watches through the summer nights. With lamplight and candlelight they sit vigil through sultry July, counting the hours ’til morning. They walk through the days pale as ghosts. Things fall apart: the bakeries are empty, the soup kitchens abandoned, the fountains dry. Even the butterflies are grounded, as the technicians lose their focus. The seamstress shops are closed, the tailors too blurry-eyed to see tiny stitches.

  There are desperate orgies. Girls drink all the sweet sangria they can hold, then dance half-clothed among the magnolias and orange blossoms until they collapse at dawn. If these are the last days, they want to enjoy them to the fullest.

  Still, there are disappearances.

  The Bible retreat ends with a sermon. Like every sermon to kids Hannah’s age, this one is about purity. The minister talks about purity in body, purity in mind. He talks about pledging the flesh to God. He talks about reclaiming lost virginity; without that loophole, the whole thing would be too harsh. He talks and talks.

  After the sermon, while the woman at the organ endlessly loops the same emotive chords, the minister invites anyone who feels moved to come to the front and pledge themselves to God. It doesn’t matter if you’re understanding for the first time that you’re a sinner in need of grace, or realizing that you’ve strayed from your path and need that grace once more. God doesn’t care. God’s always there.

  But he doesn’t say anything about God’s opinion of a teenage girl sitting behind a keyboard and playing a duet alone with her youth minister, losing herself first in the music and then in his piercing eyes, so that when he reaches out to touch her chin, she finds herself paralyzed, and as his lips touch hers, she’s lost in euphoric betrayal, swimming in the shallows of a secret that she already knows is too deep for her to navigate, that becomes deeper with each illicit meeting, until she’s drowning in it with no anchors, and as the girl loses interest in her meals and becomes increasingly withdrawn, with dark circles under her eyes, spending more and more time in her room picking her way through weighty songs, well, she’s a teenager, what do you expect?

  One by one the kids streak down the aisles and kneel at the edge of the stage, and the minister prays for them, calling down God’s forgiveness and blessing.

  Hannah’s been down that road before—or down that aisle, to be more precise. God’s forgiveness might be endless, but she won’t accept it until the day comes when she can forgive herself. In the meantime, no matter how many times they promise absolution, she’s staying in her seat.

  When the tears streak down her cheeks, the girl beside her clutches Hannah’s elbow and then puts her arms around her. “Go on up,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I’ll come with you.”

  Hannah just shakes her head.

  She dreams of the day she can run. She’s thinking of a women’s college; she likes the pictures, girls nestled under an oak tree on the quad, or meeting for class in the library.

  She doesn’t particularly care which women’s college, as long as it’s far, far away.

  The days crawl by, and slowly the wizard Hanna D’Forrest learns more about the spirit. Her books hold drawings of a creature that preys on young girls by night and morphs into a stag by day. She hears report
s from girls who’ve seen such a stag, bounding toward the forest in the first light of dawn.

  If it assumes a physical form, she can defeat it.

  But how to draw the creature to her?

  She knows a way, but it isn’t easy.

  After her travels across the world, she retains only a few treasured possessions from her childhood days—items that once belonged to the witch. There are the books, of course; they existed for centuries before they fell into her hands, and she hopes they’ll exist for centuries more. There is a small stone carving of a cat, which she has always liked and never understood. There is also a vial of perfume so intensely precious that it contains only three drops.

  The witch refused to tell Hanna what was in the vial. She would only caution her against its use. The witch herself inherited the vial from a sorceress—she would never describe the events that led to this gift—but she had never used it, never sniffed it, never even opened it. The vial contained dark magic, deep and dangerous. The witch knew it was beyond her capacity to control.

  Your power is only your power if you know its limits.

  Later, under tutelage from great wizards, magicians and sorceresses, Hanna learned about the vial’s contents. Now she understands that this perfume holds the same power that gives her magic its force: feminine sexuality. It is feral. It is treacherous. It is extremely unstable.

  The incubus is dark energy. So is she. (If she can find the courage to tap that power. If she can find the resolve to do what must be done.)

  That night, the wizard trembles in her sleep.

  She dreams of lands she has never seen, lovers she has never tasted, spells she will never utter. She sees shining seas, glittering towers, assembly lines and forest floors. She smells frying noodles, hot metal, marina waters and sweet honeysuckle. She hears chiming bells, raucous construction, rock and roll.

  She dreams of the world she’s afraid to explore and the one she’s afraid to give up.

  She is old, but not that old.

  She is young, but not that young.

  She has never been so afraid.

  That Friday evening Hannah finds him after youth group.

  “I need to talk to you,” she says.

  Peter doesn’t say anything, just takes her elbow and leads her to his office.

  He leaves the door ajar.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asks. His face is concerned. His eyes are fixed on hers.

  Now she’s lost for words.

  Finally she says: “What you did was wrong.”

  It isn’t the way she planned to start, but it’s the most succinct way of expressing everything she’d planned to say.

  He looks at her and says nothing.

  She tries again. “I was thirteen.”

  He stands, walks past her, closes the door. He sits again. He continues to watch her. Finally she sees an expression she can read: shame.

  “I trusted you,” she says. “We all trusted you.”

  She doesn’t tell him about the heartbreak she felt when he stopped touching her, the loneliness when he no longer picked her up for extra practice sessions.

  That’s her own shame to bear.

  “You stand up there every week and talk about purity and chastity. If true love waits, then why couldn’t you?”

  She begins to cry. She’d hoped she wouldn’t; she wanted to be strong. But she’s contained these words for so long that she can no longer hold anything else.

  He hands her a tissue box. She pulls out one tissue for her nose, a second for her eyes. When she can see again, she realizes that he has tears in his eyes, too.

  She feels terrible.

  “Hannah, listen to me,” Peter says. “I am so, so sorry. You are right. What we did was wrong. You are a precious gift from God and you’ve always been precious to me. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret my actions. I pray for forgiveness all the time.”

  He moves from his chair and kneels in front of her. He takes her hands in his. “Hannah, please understand. I am terribly, terribly ashamed. But I know that God’s forgiveness is limitless. And I also know that God wants me to keep doing my work here. I’m reaching kids and saving souls all the time. That’s God’s plan for me. It would be terrible if something got in the way of that. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Hannah says. “I understand.”

  “Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by guilt and I think that maybe I’m the wrong man for the job, but then I realize that’s just the devil whispering to me, trying to make me weaker. God wants me here.”

  Hannah blows her nose again.

  “I’m sorry, Hannah,” Peter says. “Please forgive me.”

  “I can’t,” she says. Wiping her eyes, she gets up, opens the door.

  “Hannah!” he says. “Stop.”

  She doesn’t stop.

  She climbs in the van, where Franny is waiting with their dad. “What took you so long?” Franny asks.

  “I was talking to Peter.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “I’m okay, Franny.”

  “You look like you were crying.”

  “Drop it, Fran.”

  That night, Hannah can’t sleep. She lies awake as the clock ticks past eleven, then twelve. She grapples with the same old problem she’s been wrestling with for years.

  She slips out of bed. Turns on the lamp. Opens her Bible to that dog-eared passage she marked five months ago:

  “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.

  You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

  The truth is hard. The truth is shameful. The truth will turn her parents against her, alienate her friends, tear apart her community and leave her ostracized. The game was rigged against her from the beginning; she’s sinned, too.

  The truth will destroy her life.

  For five months she’s known what to do, but she’s been too afraid to do it.

  Now she slips out of her bedroom, down the hall, and into Franny’s room. Fran is asleep, hair across the pillow, lips parted, blankets kicked aside. Hannah cuddles up next to Fran without waking her.

  She wonders what imaginary worlds Fran visits in her mind, if they’re as rich and colorful as Hannah’s own. Perhaps she’ll never know. Sisters can be like that—inscrutable. But maybe she can make the real world a little safer for her. To protect Fran’s adolescence, she’s got to let go of her own.

  Hannah is afraid, but she has an incantation for that:

  “There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear.”

  Strong magic.

  Powerful magic.

  She recites the words until she falls asleep.

  The wizard Hanna D’Forrest sets her things in order. She polishes the mirror and dusts the books. She weeds her garden. She sweeps the floor of her cottage and drinks a cup of tea. These things give her courage and comfort.

  Evening shadows slant longer and night falls. She braids her hair. She opens the window. She says the prayers she knows, which are really spells in disguise: because what is magic, but desire wedded to language? Her language is careful, her desire is strong.

  She uncorks the vial.

  Being a wizard, she knows when she’s in the presence of power—and this is it. The perfume will draw the beast to her tonight, but it may also draw other dangerous creatures and lost monsters, lurking in this world or the next. She’s doing her best to save Perta Perdida, but she could just as easily bring a host of hauntings down upon their heads.

  When you dabble in dark magic, you run that risk.

  She dabs one drop onto her left wrist. She dabs another onto her right. She dabs one onto the collarbone above her heart.

  She’s setting a trap, with herself as bait.

  She lies in bed and waits, watching the barest trickles of summer breeze manifest in the gauzy curtains as they tilt towards the window and then away.

  The rest of Perta Perdida sleeps safely that night, as the spirit rambles restlessly, searchin
g for the source of that teasing scent.

  When it comes, she’s ready. She feels the weight of it descend on her like fog in the forest, a blanket of damp emptiness, a gaping void that longs to be full but can only invade, swallowing soul like a leaking sieve. She utters the words that will bind it to her until morning: a spell for star-crossed lovers, a spell for cloud-free starlight, with some improvements of her own design.

  Through the arduous night she grapples and dances with that cold entity. She embraces the abyss, struggling to retain the strength of her own identity with the strongest magic she knows. She makes love to the spirit. She seduces the insatiable force. She comes to understand it with frigid certainty, though it threatens everything she knows.

  When the first rays of dawn bleed into the dark sky, the power of the binding spell begins to fade. The shadow slips through the window and becomes the stag, finding refuge in beastly form. And shadowlike in her stealth, the wizard slips through the window and becomes a deer.

  She follows the stag into the forest, leaping as it leaps, running as it runs.

  She speaks to it in the language they both know.

  She sings to it, the ancient songs.

  She teaches it poems and prayers.

  The forest knows no morning; the branches block out golden rays of light, making twilight eternal.

  She runs, bidding it follow, and so it comes. They run with supernatural strength through the long dim day, miles falling between them and the city. They run as if they’ve never done anything else and will never do anything else again. Deeper into the forest she leads the spirit astray, losing it the way she was once lost herself.

  And as the hours pass, she loses herself again in the joy of kinetic energy, the swift motion of hooves, the grace of nimble leaps. She’s never spent so much time out of her own body. As she leaves the city far behind, she leaves herself behind, too. There are minutes where she thinks of herself as nothing but that body in motion.

  They run until they come to the other edge of the forest. On this side is a highway that lies in another world, the world we call the real world.