Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands

Thursday night began with a bad omen and grew progressively worse by the hour.

Duchaine burst into sight before him as Nick was traversing the labyrinth at around six o’clock. The big warlock was sweating, his stang strapped to his back. The presence of the warlock weapon was never a good sign.

“Come on,” Duchaine panted, “we need to make it to the Department in double time.”

Nick raced after him through the remainder of the labyrinth. They were through it in half the time it would’ve taken him alone. Once out they raced down to the dock were Duchaine’s large canoe was berthed; Nick, winded, dropped onto the board-seat near the prow while Duchaine untied and shoved them off. Soon they were under way, the big man’s powerful arms at work with the oars.

“So,” Nick asked a few leagues later when he had his breath about him and when he’d grown anxious with Duchaine’s harried glances around. “Care to tell me what the hurry is?”

Something rustled in a field of cat tails and Duchaine whipped his gaze around to witness it.

“Hello?” Nick said. “Okay. You’re totally freaking me out here. I’m going to piss in my pants any second. I’m serious. I’m going to pee all over your canoe. You’ll have to clean it up—”

“You should tell me your plan for crafting the wand.”

“What?” Nick could not have been more surprised if Duchaine had slapped him. “I told you, when we get to the lab, I’ll explain to everyone all at once. I don’t want to have to explain things fifty times. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“A huge troll horde, with at least twenty bargs, was seen in Utica County, heading west, charging straight for the Department. I got the call on my speaking stone.”

“What are we going to do?”

Duchaine banked hard right around a bend. “You should tell me how you plan to solve the W.A.N.D. in case something happens on the way. We don’t want the solution dying with you.”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” Nick said, white-knuckling it as they banked.

“I’m serious,” Duchaine righted the canoe and kept on rowing up North Creek as it flowed into the larger North River. “It’s irresponsible to risk everything for no reason. Just give me the cliff notes version.”

Nick had to raise his voice to be heard over the small rapids. “Yeah, sure, I tell you and you can dump me overboard and say a grindylow or whatever killed me. Then you take all the credit for saving the W.A.N.D. Project. For all I know you already have a wand anyway. Why not use that one, if it exists, as the Grand Vizier seems to think?”

Duchaine paused and produced a withering look of shock and disgust. “Nick! This is no time for conspiracy theories. You—” he bit his tongue and his gaze darted eastward.

“What?”

Still rowing, the big warlock kept a wary eye on the eastern horizon. A few minutes later he rowed into the tall reeds and shedding cattails along the western bank. He put a finger to his lips when Nick opened his mouth to ask why they were stopping here.

Two minutes later Nick had his answer; the ground began to quake. Pebbles shivered loose from the bank and rolled down into the river.

Five minutes later it was over and Duchaine was rowing again, with even more alacrity than before. “You know what that was?”

“A troll horde?”

“A huge troll horde, two hundred at least. Judging by their marching pattern and direction, I’d guess they’re being led by the troll king and heading for the Department.”

“Oh man,” Nick breathed. “We’ll beat them there though. You said the DME destroyed all the bridges across the North River, right? It’ll take them hours to reach a shallow enough area to cross.”

“Eight or nine,” Duchaine declared in grim dulcet tones. “Ten at most.”

Neither spoke again until they reached the Department forty minutes later.

Nick was standing in the lab, facing dozens of brother warlocks, including Duchaine, Bailey, and young Arthur Penrose. They were waiting for him to explain. To reveal the answer they’d been working towards for the past fifteen years. And the pressure couldn’t have been heavier; in addition to the troll horde on its way, more shagas had escaped the valley, and wraith attacks were on the rise in the High Peaks region in Essex County.

“Can’t I just talk to you about it?” Nick whispered out the side of his mouth to Duchaine.

“If you have an idea just spit it out already,” Luc, Other Nick’s father, said. “We haven’t got all night.”

“That’s what she said,” Tim Hunter quipped, eliciting laughter.

“It’s okay, Nick,” Duchaine assured him. “Whatever it is, we all want to hear it.”

Five deep breaths helped somewhat. “Okay,” Nick said at last. “It seems to me that we need to stop thinking like warlocks if we want to make this happen.”

“They brought this upstart in so he can tell us to stop thinking like we’re supposed to?”

Nick cringed at Luc’s mockery. If he had any hope of getting these seasoned battle-mages to listen to him, he’d have to crank up the truth-factor, dig into their failures. Another deep breath to center his chi, then he opened his mouth and poured out his frustrations.

“That’s right, they did,” Nick said over the rabble. “The Grand Vizier brought in a kid to help you guys because you have been failing to do your job for my entire life. Fifteen years and no W.A.N.D. What does that tell you? It tells you that you should shut up and listen to me.”

Pulse began to race again as it had been doing off and on throughout that morning and afternoon, every time he thought about what he’d have to do tonight. Duchaine concealed a grin behind a large hand. He winked at Nick. ’Keep going, you’re doing great,’ that wink said. Or maybe it said ’You’re totally screwed here but keep going because it amuses me.’

“So,” Nick continued, hiding shaky hands behind his back. “I’ve been checking out . . . alternate sources of information. And I found something so different from our usual mode of thinking that I realized why we are having such trouble making a successful wand.”

“Because we’re a bunch of old farts?” Tim suggested. There were several snickers and the tension in the room loosened a bit.

“No,” Nick smiled. “It’s because what we’re trying to do here is essentially create a new branch of magic. Considering my theory on what will make the wand work, I believe we are designing Quantum Magic.” He stopped talking to let this sink in.

Amid the rabble Tim Hunter’s funny voice chimed loudest. “Are you talking about the wave and particles theories? Like how elementary building blocks are inherently unpredictable, sometimes one and one is not always two? That sort of thing?” Everyone was silent while Nick answered in the positive. “That’s pretty advanced stuff. Where did you get this idea from?” Tim continued. “What source have you studied that turned you on to quantum mechanics?”

Ah, the moment had come round at last. There was no going back after this; it was the point of no return for Nick. He cleared his throat and said, “The Law of Resonance.”

The room exploded. Everyone was yammering away, some voices and their disgust more prominently audible than others. It was clear Nick had said the wrong thing, though how this might turn out was still unclear. There was hope—especially considering Duchaine’s watchful contemplative gaze—that this might yet work.

“Everyone shut up!” Bailey’s creaky old voice sounded somehow augmented.

“Sorcery!” and there was the dreaded but not entirely unexpected word, this from Luc. “That’s what this child proposes. ‘We need to think outside the box—sorcery’ the boy says. I’m out of here. If this is the direction the Grand Vizier wants to take, then I’ll have no part of it.” He started heading towards the door.

“Nick,” Bailey said, in a nominally more controlled manner than Luc. “Where did you read about the Law of Resonance?”

“A book?” Nick said.

“A grimoire’s more like it,” Harlan accused.

Bailey approached the center of the room, where Duchaine stood beside Nick. He set a gnarled hand on Nick’s shoulder and sent his withering gaze into the boys’ hazel eyes. “What book?”

“Infernal Devices, I think.” Nick’s cheeks reddened under the confession.

A chorus of cusses filled the room. Another two warlocks departed in a huff, threatening resignation; one of them even vowed to go ‘Straight to the Vizier himself and see what he thinks about his star pupils idea’.

“That is a very dark book to be reading from,” Bailey said. The man never seemed to blink.

“And yet you all seem familiar with it, sir.”

Bailey straightened up, taken aback. “I am a warlock. It is my duty to familiarize myself with our enemies’ tactics.”

“Well,” Nick said, “So am I. As a warlock, I was familiarizing myself. Anyway, we all know the Law of Resonance, like most types of magic, isn’t really white or black; its nature is dependent on the use to which the practitioner puts it. And if we put it to use to, you know, fight evil, well, then it’s white magic. Wizardry, not sorcery.”

Master Bailey scratched his stubbly chin, scrutinizing Nick. Then he turned to Duchaine.

Duchaine in turn looked to Nick. “You asked me for an electromagnetic oscillograph. Are you hoping to use it to determine the magnetic resonance of the earth itself?”

Nick nodded, relieved he was not being shut down. “And of ourselves. As I understand it, each individual resonates at a specific frequency. We would need to calculate the resonance of the earth itself—from which all magic originates, at least according to de Montfort’s essay on The Origin and Use of Magic—and the resonance of, say, me for example, and then tune the two frequencies until they harmonize.”

“At which point the practitioner will be tapping into the elements as his source of power,” Bailey said. “Which happens to be the definition of sorcery.”

“No,” Nick shook his head. This was where things were bound to get tricky. “Please, it’s not like that. You need to trust me on this. That horde is on its way. We don’t have time to argue semantics, and we don’t have any other ideas. We all know the wards won’t keep them out for long.” Nick swallowed with a dry mouth. “When we harmonize the wand to the wizard, we will essentially be transforming ourselves, or at least our will, into a correspondence. It will be as if we are asking the earth itself for help and not—”

“And not bending it to our will, like a sorcerer would,” Duchaine finished for him with a smile. “You see old man? Nick is right. A new branch of magic, not sorcery. Well,” he padded Nick hard on the back, “sounds like a plan to me.”

The grizzled master warlock considered them both carefully. A long tedious interlude followed, during which Nick’s entire Plan hung in the balance. Finally Bailey said, “Do it.”

Nick exhaled as he watched Bailey shuffle off to his office, likely to seek updates on the troll horde through his speaking stone. With Duchaine and a few other warlocks too curious to have left with the others, they set to work. Arthur Penrose put one of his Lynard Skynard records on the Victrola to set the tone, setting the heavy begonias Rowena had placed on top in the hope of dissuading Arthur from playing his records.

“It’s your plan,” Duchaine said, “so we’ll make the first one for you. Hold still while I take the measurements.”

The oscillograph Duchaine had procured was caked with dust, the knobs were worn, and the honey finish had long worn off the hardwood casing. It looked like something Edison himself had cooked up over a century ago. It fit right in with most of the buffer equipment the warlocks had requisitioned over the years.

Duchaine clipped the leads to Nick’s right ear and left index finger. He made a series of notations on his pad while reading the momentum of the coil.

Forty minutes later, surrounded by dusty science books and while attempting for the fourth time to tune their small, carefully carved gobstone, Duchaine said to Nick, “So, basically we’re attempting to create a harmonic oscillator, right?”

“Well,” Nick adjusted the speed dial on the ancient wax cylinder phonograph they’d recycled into a resonator to tune their diamonds and various gemstones. “It’s more like we’re trying to turn me into a harmonic oscillator. The wand will be more like a focusing device, you know, so I don’t blow myself up when I try to gather and release energies.”

They continued their work late into the night. Warlocks came and went, offering the services and skill sets for various aspects of the W.A.N.D.’s creation. It was nearly midnight and the hour of their eighth failed attempt when Arthur Penrose contributed.

“Maybe a gobstone is the wrong medium,” the young man said.

“Oh?” Duchaine growled. He and Nick were both in foul moods by now. The announcement an hour ago that the horde was spotted only thirty miles away, and that its ranks had swelled had not exactly alleviated the pressure.

“It seems to me that we’re trying to create a harmony of frequencies, right?” Arthur said.

“Obviously,” Nick snapped.

“Well, wouldn’t it be better if we used a magnet instead of a gobstone? I mean, magnets are easy to adjust to different frequencies, and they’re entirely based on harmony and repulsion. If we affix a properly harmonized magnet to the tip of the wand we’d be promoting positive magnetic frequency.”

“Yeah,” Nick sneered, “but the energy released would shatter the soft magnet.”

Arthur shook his head. “Not if we encase the magnet in amber—”

“Which would harden and protect the magnet without altering its frequency,” Duchaine said. “That’s brilliant. We just have to make sure the frequency of the magnet matches—”

“The harmonic vibration of the wizard, and then we can tune it easy enough to the earth’s geomagnetic field,” Nick said, perking up. “Of course, we’ll also have to find a way to harness the energy, make it rotate somehow so that it fires out rather than explodes from the tip.”

Arthur looked down humbly. “Yeah, in de Montfort’s essay he mentions that the earth is the origin of magic, but he also points out that it is just as likely that the earths’ magnetic field, which extends from the center of the earth all the way out to space, is the true Source. I—”

“Yeah, that’s great,” Nick said impatiently. “Get the box of magnets.”

Another hour passed.

As word spread, some of the disgruntled warlocks started returning. Even the Grand Vizier came by to inspect their progress.

“There!” Duchaine exclaimed, holding the finished wand out before him.

Nick carefully lifted it from the man’s hands. Everyone watched with bated breath. This was it, the moment had come round at last—and not soon enough; the troll horde, marching at five-hundred strong with nearly fifty ravenous bargs according to Michael Delving who was following it, was only a dozen or so miles out.

“Well, go on, try it,” a voice ordered.

Nick held the foot long silver device by the Blackwood handle, and pointed it at a box of geodes. He visualized his intent—to blast the box to smithereens in a visually stunning display—and willed it to happen.

Nothing happened.

“Boo!” Arthur Penrose japed. A few guys laughed nervously.

“Maybe you have to blood it,” someone suggested.

“Don’t be a moron,” someone else suggested.

“No, seriously,” the first someone rejoined. “You used Blackwood for the handle, right? Well, if the magnet is the filament and the copper wire wrapped around the silver shaft is the glass bulb, then the handle acts as the threaded rod. You’re not getting your power through it because you haven’t offered sacrifice to the wood. Practitioners who use elder sprigs to bless their house first make an offering to the wood by dripping seven drops of blood onto the sprig.”

“Don’t be a moron,” someone else suggested again.

Nick looked to Duchaine. Duchaine shrugged. “It’s worth a shot.”

Nick removed his new athame, pricked the side of his hand and carefully dripped three drops of blood onto the Blackwood handle. He then spoke a blessing over it. When he opened his eyes again Duchaine applied a band aid over the tiny wound.

“This is an historic occasion,” someone said, snapping a Polaroid of Nick with his wand.

No need for that, Nick mused, they already have my photo in the Accords.

This time when he visualized his intent, Nick experienced a curious sensation, an awareness more than a feeling of energy traveling through his seven chakras and gathering around his shoulder, where it traveled down his arm, blood, veins, muscle, tissue and all, until finally passing from his hand into the Blackwood handle attached to the silver shaft. From there, as though sensing it as an extension of his body, Nick felt the concentrated energy resonate up through the winding copper wire. While his personal chi was being filtered into the Wizarding Anti-Nemesis Device, he perceived correspondences responding to the summons; red arcs of light (elemental energies) leapt along the wands shaft towards the magnetic tip, encased in amber.

When he could no longer restrain the pent up energy, Nick uncoiled his will and released.

Like a giant living spider web, shimmering red and vibrating in harmony with his bioplasma, the elemental energy imploded from around the box of parts, jumping from different areas of the room to latch onto the object of Nick’s visualization.

The wand vibrated in his hand as a portion of his energy melded with the elemental magic. He brought his right hand up to help hold the other steady. It was swiftly becoming too much.

Red hot shards of exploded spare parts burst outwards, embedding themselves in the walls and skin of anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way. The box was now completely obliterated. Nick forced the device upward, simultaneously shutting off his will.

As the onslaught died the room plunged into shocking silence, leaving a ringing in the ears and blind spots in the eyes.

Nick looked out upon his warlock brothers and sisters. They were staring in awe.