Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING
ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more
speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective
eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..."
Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and
then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant,
nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see
fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling:
“I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world,
an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial,
subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve
an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.”
– Melissa McPhail.
F Trope: “When
wizards are immortal, they don’t need to train successors, and may not be able
to…”
Sidaji the
Immortal pursed his lips, glaring down at the bucket of swamp water, tapping
the edge. His fingers strayed to the runic marks inscribed on the sides. He
stared for some time before looking up and saying, “You are Luca Růžička.”
Luca sighed and tugged on his soaking wet jeans. His black Converses
squelched on his feet and he scratched at a mosquito bite on his forehead.
Ranghild Peeters,
the beautiful and incredibly annoying second apprentice said, “You’re not
supposed to pick at pimples. I’ve got a skin cleanser...” She stepped a bit
away from him as the smell of Okefenokee swamp drifted up from the water
leaking from Luca’s tennis shoes and dribbling on the Persian rug.
Luca snapped,
“It’s a mosquito bite.”
“Yeah, right,”
said Ranghild.
“You try sloshing
around in a swamp to get a bucket of ‘water clear of duckweed, water clear of
waste’ and see how long you can keep the mosquitoes from eating you alive!”
Sidaji looked at
her and said, “You are Ranghild Peeters.”
She blew her
startlingly raven black bangs up her forehead and said, “Yes, Immortal One.
Now, can we get on with the transformation. I’ve got things I have to do
today.”
Luca muttered,
“Like flirt with every guy in Minneapolis?”
Ranghild shook her
head, “We’re broken up. Get over it.”
“I didn’t break
anything up. You dumped me.”
“Only because
you’re being such a...”
Sidaji the
Immortal straightened up, lifted his arms and thundered, “Silence!” The thunder
was literal as the windows of the mansion they were living in on Mt. Curve
Avenue overlooking Lowry Park shook in their frames. Only Luca and Ranghild’s
unity spells kept them from shattering. Across the street in the park, an
autumn flock of common egrets took wing, rising up in a cloud of white stark
against the golds, reds, oranges, and browns of the pond.
The wizard looked
down on them, having swelled to twice his usual height. The floor beneath him
creaked as he stepped toward them, saying, “þearf
sy forþsetennes héafodcwide manian gescaep lifiendee!”*
They looked at each other, shrugged, and Ranghild said, “Your Immortal
Greatness, we are currently in the early part of the 21st Century.
I’m not sure shouting in Old English will accomplish anything. Especially as
neither one of us can understand it. You enchanted us with this century’s
English vocabulary.”
Sidaji stared at her, blinked, then said, “I seem to be having some
trouble remembering things today.” The wizard’s apprentices both stepped back
in unison, finding that the grand piano behind them blocked their retreat.
Sidaji laughed, rattling the chandelier in the entryway.
“You’re immortal!” Luca exclaimed.
“What do you mean you’re having trouble remembering?” Ranghild exclaimed.
Sidaji pushed his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing heavily tattooed
forearms. His hands were blunt – the hands of a farmhand rather than a
dandified city boy – and his nails, while clean and trimmed, the nails of a man
who had worked for his livelihood. He looked at his hands, studying them for a
moment. Then he looked at his apprentices. He smiled and said, “My body is
immortal, child. There was never any guarantee that my memories would be
immortal as well.”
They looked at each other and Sidaji laughed again. “What are you
laughing at?” Luca said.
“The two of you are acting like you’re in a movie. Are you really that
much in love that you can’t think independently?”
Both of them, temporarily frozen in age as teenagers and prone to forget
that they had actually been born in 11th Century Denmark and the
Kingdom of Bohemia, were neither teenagers nor Americans and effectively his
slaves – blushed furiously. Sidaji waved them away, remembering at the last
moment to disempower the gesture, said, “That doesn’t seem to help me remember
how to turn this swamp water into botulism infected water.” He looked at them
and added, “Why are we going to poison the water supply of Minneapolis?”
Names: ♀ Denmark, Belgium ; ♂ Austria, Czechoslovakian
Translation: (From
Old English – http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk/)
“There is far more of import here than your mortal sex lives!”
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