The Magical Book of Wands

by Raven M. Williams

  That new design caught the attention of the Aronnax Submarine Company of Brest, France. It seemed that issues during the sea trials of France’s newest submarine Plongeur prompted them to consider how to recover any crew stranded inside a disabled submarine. When I enquired if they had encountered just such a problem, the French government remained stubbornly tight-lipped, but I had my suspicions. At any rate, Aronnax offered up such a large sum of French francs for my design, and the rights to it in perpetuity, that I could hardly refuse.

  With that additional money, I built a home on my Tennessee property of such size and lavish quality that I knew my father, had he lived, would have been proud of my achievement. As for the location, the Smokey Mountains are as far as one might get from the sea, or even any significant lakes or rivers, and still be in the South. I am quite sure you can guess my reasons for finding that so attractive.

  But I can almost hear you asking: “And the wand?”

  I spent considerable time trying to identify the material of which it was composed, but failed utterly. It seemed a type of polished, extremely lightweight wood or bone, yet showed no sign whatsoever of any grain. Neither were there any buttons, switches, or other obvious means by which its three—of which I was at least aware—functions could be selected. Not desiring to accidentally injure some unlucky innocent through further study of the mysterious thing, I concluded it was best to handle it only when absolutely necessary, or, ideally, not at all.

  For that reason, I included in the design of the Banning Estate in Gatlinburg a tiny and all-but-undetectable compartment in the floor of its gabled attic. From the very moment of the house’s completion to my recent departure for Norfolk, the wand has lain undisturbed in that compartment.

  “And your advanced age?” I imagine you asking me next.

  Yes, I did not guess you had forgotten that not-insignificant detail with which I began this tale. You have no doubt concluded that the wand had something to do with it. In fact, it had everything to do with it, though it took me years to notice it at all, let alone figure it out.

  If you remember, the fish-man used the wand to heal its companion’s wound, which involved a yellow-orange glow of sorts. Just before leaving me in my bell, it again engaged that amber glow. It is my belief that in doing so, it ensured that my rapid ride up from the depths did not result in my suffering what we divers call decompression sickness, but you possibly know better as “the bends.”

  And just how does that explain your attaining such an unnatural age? I imagine you asking.

  The answer, at least the only one I have ever been able to come up with, is that the wand’s healing function has remained in effect throughout all the years since then. Locked away in its secret vault in my lavish mountain home, it has emitted whatever power with which it healed me, to keep me from becoming sick also. And this, my dear reader, is the absolute and honest truth: since being pulled back onto Elizabeth Loud’s deck, I have not suffered so much as a common cold. No headaches, toothaches, or bouts of the flu. Nothing. I am, and have been, in perfect health. Even my aging has been slowed to such a rate that now, at one hundred and twenty-eight years of age, I appear to the eye to be roughly half that.

  The wondrous healing properties of the wand were not limited to me, either. At the time of my beloved ‘Vinia’s passing in the fall of 1959, she had just celebrated her one hundred and tenth birthday. It is true that the wand seemed to affect her to a lesser degree than it affected me, but I attributed that to the fact that the fish-man had somehow set to the thing specifically for my body. At least that is my best guess.

  My son, too, benefited from it. Throughout his childhood and up to the day he left our home to seek out his own fortune, Howard remained as healthy as either his mother or I. Unlike his parents, though, Howard began to age as normally as anyone else did the moment he left home for good. Though he lived a long and fruitful life, he eventually succumbed to cancer in 1938, having attained the perfectly normal age of seventy-one.

  All this brings me to my purpose in returning to Newport News. Have you perhaps already guessed it? If so, allow me to take just a tiny bit more of your time.

  I have been blessed with wondrous health and the best family a man could ever hope to have. Too, I have seen and experienced more than any man, woman, or child now living. Perhaps more important than any of that, though, is the perspective that my amazing longevity has given me with which to look back at the long life I have been so privileged to live.

  On this journey, I have watched the world pass by, witness to both beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty, good and bad. Science has progressed at an alarming rate throughout this newest of centuries that will, before much longer, give way to yet another. Though we have not yet achieved anything such as the wands of the fish-men, mankind has possibly passed them in other such areas. We have fought wars of progressive savagery until my own has been left to appear primitive indeed. The modern wonder of electricity has replaced gas and steam, and even that teeters on obsolescence in the wake of the atom. Most incredibly, we have even devised the means of leaving this world behind, traveling so far as the moon itself.

  But those advances are all of the technological variety. I have asked myself often on this bus ride if we as a species have changed, and if so, has it been for the better? I have seen the answer through the window to my left, and it has been both a resounding “yes”—and an equally resounding “no.”

  While signs of division, both racial and fiscal, remain abundantly clear, I still hold out hope for us. That hope’s source is none other than the vicious fish-men I encountered as a much younger man. You see, it occurs to me that I have focused my memory of them on the wrong aspect of our brief encounter. Rather than the threat against me that precipitated it all, I find myself concentrating instead on the altruistic act that ended it. I confess I felt very foolish indeed, once it dawned on me, as it is so simple.

  If an intelligent creature of another species could care enough for my well-being that it would risk itself to rescue me from its own kind, then by what right can I deny compassion for another man simply because of some minor difference such as skin color or religion?

  And there it is, just in time I should add, as the bus has just pulled into the station. If I am able, I will add a final entry after finishing the task ahead of me. Wish me well.

  FINALLY—

  It is done. In no more than ten or fifteen brief minutes, the long unfelt pains of aging have stirred to life in my body’s joints and muscles, and a general sense of malaise is settling over me. I confess I expected it all when I made my plan to come here. I fear asking him, but I wonder if the man operating the water taxi can see on my outside the rapid deterioration I feel my insides undergoing. Regardless, I am compelled to complete this last entry while I still can.

  From the bus station in Norfolk, I took a cab to the docks in Newport News. There, I hired a water taxi to ferry me out to the place where I had once dived on the wreck of the Florida and acquired the fish-man’s wand. To my surprise, the taxi man already knew its location and needed no directions from me, though he gave me quite a long look before casting off the lines and getting underway. I suppose that the billfold I handed him full of hundred dollar bills—none of them Confederate, I might add—bought me a certain relief from questions.

  Before he even said it, I knew we were in the right place. The passage of time had changed the place significantly, but it would not have mattered if even the harbor itself had dried up and a forest grown over it all. I felt drawn to that location like a salmon returning to the stream of its birth.

  Barge traffic up and down the James River kept the harbor’s waters choppy, but I wasted little time in going to the little boat’s rail and removing the wand from my jacket.

  I gave it a last look, my eyes traveling up and down its slender, relatively plain length. It had finally become laughingly clear to me sometime in the mid-1960s that it was in fact made of a type of plastic undiscernibl
e from that of my great grandchildren’s toys. Later, that had been very much on my mind as I watched those brave men walk, or rather bounce, upon the surface of the moon. I smiled for a wholly different reason then, though, as I threw the wand as far out over the water as I could.

  I barely heard the taxi man ask me why I had done that as a mottled green, three-fingered hand snatched the wand from the air before slipping back under the choppy water with barely a ripple. I knew then that I had done the right thing. Truthfully, though, I had never really doubted it.

  For any who reads this after I am gone, I strongly caution you not to go looking for the fish-men. Since our own advances have done little, though perhaps not quite nothing, to alter our innate savagery, it seems likely that the fish-men’s also remains much as it did in 1868. Rather than seek out those who look so little like us on the outside, but are so similar on the inside, I recommend you devote yourself to our own kind.

  As for me, I am, like the wand, finally going home. I have lingered too long in this life and I want very, very much to see my wife and son again. In fact, I think I hear in the lapping of the waves against the water taxi their voices calling me to them.

  It won’t be long now.

  The End

  About the Author

  Guy Donovan - I grew up in the Air Force. After my father got out of that bunch in 1971, we traveled all over North Dakota and Minnesota, going job to job, town to town. Picture Bill Bixby at the end of the old '70s Hulk TV show with a wife and two kids tagging along and you're not far off.

  Institutionalized by a child's view of the military, I went and joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1984 and was pretty much stuck with it until 1988. After that, I decided animation was the life for me.

  Following graduation from art school in 1993, My new bride (now my old bride)and I relocated to Los Angeles, where we quickly came to understand why so many people shoot at each other while simply trying to drive to work.

  In the toon biz, I worked on both television and feature films as an animator and storyboard artist/designer for Marvel Films, Hanna-Barbera, DiC, Saban Entertainment, Sony Pictures, DreamWorks SKG, and Warner Bros Feature Animation, amongst others.

  When the traditional animation business largely dried up in the early 2000's, I thought it best to "choose" to get out rather than just complaining about being "thrown out of it" by the warm-blooded corporate types who shipped all the jobs overseas.

  Needing to continue my wasteful and selfish habits of eating and sleeping under a roof (to say nothing of my wife's similarly selfish needs), I began working for the U.S. Government.

  I now live in North Dakota for the second time in my life with my wife and daughter. While I continue to work for the government, I dream of the day when my hobby of writing might someday supplant that paycheck I've been cashing for the last 16 years.

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Dragons-Treasure-Series-172879129537712/

  Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Guy-Donovan/e/B00EO3VRD8/

  Magen

  By Edward Buatois

  Chapter 1

  Rain pounced on Rylan Matthews as he stood outside Lincoln High School waiting for his sister, Naia, to pick him up. Tall and lanky and usually dressed in black, he was the kind of kid mostly only the bullies noticed. If they were honest, everyone would say he looked weird, but no one could ever say why.

  He arranged his shoulder-length dark hair to hide his black eye and breathed a sigh of relief when Naia finally pulled up in the black rust mobile they’d nicknamed Igor for its lazy headlight. He threw his book bag in the back and climbed in, saying nothing and slicking his wet hair back to let the water spray Naia’s face.

  She flinched at the feel of the cold droplets. “I am so sorry, my boss made me run an errand down to the Justice Center, and oh my God what happened to your eye?”

  He groaned, putting a hand to his temple. He had a rapidly growing headache. “Nothing.”

  “Was it Jason Feurman?” she demanded.

  He looked at her, then looked away. “Maybe.”

  She turned toward him, as much as the seat belt would allow. “Please tell me you fought back.”

  “I did.”

  “You did?” she asked, skeptical. “Did you try that move I showed you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “That’s how I got this black eye.”

  She made a disgusted sound and gunned the car into traffic, earning an angry honk from someone.

  “Fuck off!” she yelled.

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Naia,” he said, frustrated. “I’m just not a fighter like you.”

  “Obviously not. Tomorrow I’m coming into school.”

  He turned to her, banging his knee on the console and cursing. “To do what, Krav Maga him into the floor?”

  “If that’s what it takes!” she said with a sharp look. “Jesus, Rylan, I won’t be humiliated having my brother being some other kid’s punching bag!”

  “You’re humiliated? You’re seriously making this about you?”

  The car swerved as she turned into the next lane. “Well, what do you plan to do—run into the woods and pray to the rocks and trees again? I can’t handle that.”

  “What do you care what I do?” His gaze zeroed on her pendant, where the inset red stone of the grape-sized silver ball winked at him. “It’s an insult to Mom that you wear that. She believed. It should have gone to me.”

  She grasped it in her hand. “Sucks being the second-born, doesn’t it?”

  “Mom would have wanted me to have it.”

  “Well, she’s not here to debate it,” she said, and blew out a breath, softening. “I don’t want to fight, Rylan. You know I love you, don’t you? I just want you to find it in you somewhere to defend yourself. You’re better than that.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. But don’t you dare sneak out of the house again tonight to pray to the trees and rocks or whatever with your pebbles and twigs and stupid incantations. I mean it! It’s a crutch, and I won’t allow it. It won’t help you. There’s no such thing as magic.”

  Chapter 2

  The heavy rain didn’t help the humidity, and later that night, Rylan lay roasting in his bed. He kicked the covers off and wished he could run the air conditioner, but they couldn’t afford it. A welcomed cool breeze called to him through the window.

  He glanced at the clock: 12:30am.

  He rolled out of bed and padded down the hallway to the bathroom. His sister’s soft snores carrying through her door gave him ideas. Ideas she told him not to have.

  As he returned to his room, another cool breeze came through the window and licked seductively at his skin. Despite the heat, he shivered.

  He just had to get out of there, just for a ten-minute walk to clear his head.

  And if I’m going to go out anyway...

  He emptied his pack of schoolbooks and replaced them with his “go” kit, a plastic compartmented box meant to hold Hot Wheels cars but perfect for his totems, talismans, and runes. On the way out the window, he grabbed one more thing: the Elderwood staff he’d scored from eBay; he’d finally saved enough on his summer jobs from what he’d held back from contributing to the house. He felt guilty about that, but he had his priorities, too.

  He crossed the few blocks to the (relatively) untouched four-acre tree stand people called False Falls Forest. It was so named because, so the legend went, if you stood in the right place, the wind through the trees gave a rushing sound just like water over rocks.

  He’d never personally experienced it.

  At the center lay a grotto, formed in the curve of a long-dry creek bed. He set up his septagram as big as the clearing allowed, about ten feet in diameter. The staff made it easier to draw the lines.

  The contents of his “go” kit would look like junk to anyone else: a genuine Nautilus shell, a beaver tooth with a bit of skull, a bird’s skull, others.

  They weren’t junk. They
called to him and that’s all that mattered, that connection.

  He placed one at each point of the septagram: one representing Mother Earth; another three to represent the animals of the sea, land, and air; finally, three to represent mind, body, and spirit.

  He stood the end of the staff in the center, and tied the World stone to its top with a leather thong. He’d just finished tying it when a twig snapped behind him and his blood turned to ice.

  Chapter 3

  “Rylan, what the hell?” Naia’s voice proclaimed. “This is pathetic.”

  He palmed the World stone and turned to face her.

  “So this is where you go, this is what you do?” she asked, her eyes sweeping the septagram.

  “Leave me alone,” he demanded, nervously fidgeting with the hidden stone.

  She noticed and pointed. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  The pendant’s core glinted, smoldering red in the darkness.

  “Show me.”

  “Fine. Here. Happy?” He showed her but kept it in his hand.

  She looked and sighed with some relief. “Well, at least it’s not drugs.” She put out her hand and rubbed the stone with her thumb, her fingers cradling his hand underneath.

  Rylan realized this was the first time they’d actually held hands in ages.