Wild Child

Oliver noted the tower uniform nailed to a tree. The blue and silver robes were a marker of a wizard of rank, but the once beautiful weavings had been shredded like tissue paper and marred with dark blood. This was a sign of the beast.

The people of Sunrise Hill had written to the Silver Tower in desperation. A beast made itself a tyrant they said, rampaging through the temples, prowling the wooded peaks, and working dark, wild magics. Oliver had been summoned after the last academy wizard had ceased communication. He arrived after days of travel at the back of a caravan of merchants. He wasn’t high up enough to have access to the tower amenities but held enough prestige for commoners to help him when he called for it. If he did well enough in this mission he would be elevated from blue robe to violet robe. Finally he would be able to have the privilege of a private bath and restricted tomes of knowledge.

This creature showed intelligence, with a ruthless streak, and a penchant for wild magic. It had executed an elaborate attack on the richest farmer on the hill, stealing all his cattle overnight while he slept. A monster or two always drew attention, but this was above the quests of roaming bands of warriors. When it game to bad magic like this it was time for the tower. They tended to send out the blue robes out on the moderately difficult missions. Dangerous enough that it wasn’t up to the layman to take care of, but not so serious that it meant a worldwide threat.

Perhaps the other reason he had been sent for was due to the fact that Oliver had spent his early childhood here at Sunrise Hill. It was fuzzy in his mind, like trying to recollect a dream. Once he showed promise he was taken from the Child’s Temple to the Silver Tower. Child’s Temples were full of potential students with no one to care for them. The less attachment they had to the outside world the easier it was to train them. Those he had once called brothers and sisters meant nothing to him, and would have left long ago. He was a shy boy who kept away from the others reading books and keeping out of trouble. Despite that his closest sibling of all was Syrabel, the girl who came from the wilds. Her disposition was a whirlwind and her will as strong as stone.

She was something other than human. There were whispers that she was half wild folk, and all evidence pointed to it, what with her tail and sharp teeth. Oliver would have thought it was a childhood imagining if he didn’t have the bite marks to show for it. No one knew why she had appeared on the temple doorsteps, or what she was for that matter. All anyone knew what that she’d been a nuisance since she could walk.

Oliver had loved Syrabel more than anything. No matter how much the temple mothers tried to tame her, her spirit shone through. She was his closest friend, the one he followed everywhere like a devoted puppy. They promised to always stay together.

Something snorted behind him. He turned around to find a large black stallion coming through the foliage. It scraped the ground and flared it’s nostrils This was one of the missing herds the beast had stolen away. Oliver held is ground and dug the sharpened bottom of his staff into the ground. When the horse charged he struck a combination of crystals to activate a defensive spell. The reared against the transparent dome around him to no avail. He took the time to devise a binding spell before wrenching the staff from the ground. Oliver cast the binding spell in the split second before the stallion charged again. It struggled against the bonds, but a quick spell sent it into a stupor.

He looked down at the subdued stallion When he peeled it’s eyelids back he found that the iris was a bright green, as were the veins in the sclera. This was wild magic. From the monster’s behavior it was most likely a rogue wild folk.

Syrabel used open the gates to let the cows out. He would always tell her it was a bad idea, that the farmers wouldn’t like it, but she would laugh and undo the gates anyway. Every time he followed her because he was so excited to see what she would do next. The horses back then were much smaller without all the growth potions the farmers used nowadays. It also made them more docile, which gave him all the more reason to believe it was wild magic that had done this.

He had only seen wild magic done once before. The years turned Syrabel’s high energy and curiosity to cynicism and a tendency for reclusiveness. She disappeared for days, even weeks at a time, only to step back into place with the other children as if she had always been there.

One moonless night she shook him awake.

“I want to show you something.”

They slipped from the temple, Syrabel as silent as a cat, Oliver as clumsy as a baby horse. The journey took them through the village, the farms, and into the forest. Oliver stopped just beyond the trees. The darkness made him see things in the trees; faces shifted as the leaves rustled in the wind.

Syrabel ran into the trees, and the faces vanished. Oliver screamed helplessly, and was about to run for help when a green glow lit up the whole forest. Figures as tall as trees faced him with the heads of animals; deer, boar, wolf, falcon. Syrabel stood in the center of it all, looking down at the orb of raw, unfiltered magic that sat in her hands.

The next morning Oliver awoke in his bed. He thought it had been a dream until he went down to the same spot and found that new trees had sprung up overnight.

He shuddered at the memory. Something like that was incredible to his young mind, but he knew now how close he’d come to disaster. He’d never been closer to danger than he had been now. The horse’s eyes were evidence enough that the wild folk remained here. If there was more than one he would have to call in reinforcements to drive them away, maybe relocate them if possible.

Oliver left the horse where it lay and traced back the way it had come. The hoof prints went downhill into the darkest part of the forest where the light barely made it through the canopy. The hill sloped into a ravine carved away by the river. To think the poor animal had been all the way down there with the sharp rock floor and the heavy current.

This was the lair of a wild folk sure enough. Three trees grew so close together that they formed a hut. Bed sheets and clothing hung over a clothesline made of vines. Cows, pigs, and another horse milled around. There were barrels and crates that most likely did not belong to whoever lived in the hut.

Oliver examined the area for traps before setting foot beyond the fence. He threw a rock down on the grass outside the fence, which curled around the stone. All the other plants appeared to be equally as potentially carnivorous.

The front door opened. Sometimes he thought he had imagined her, a girl of impossibilities, yet here she was, with too many teeth and a long tasseled tail. The more he looked at her the more he saw. Forest green eyes, shaggy hair that sprang from her jaw, hands with long sharp nails. She wore a crown of teeth and antlers. This time he wondered what she hid under all her clothes.

Syrabel looked him up and down. “Do come in Olly.” She purred.

Oliver entered despite his better judgement. He put the head of his staff forward so that it could detect any traps before they got to him. The inside of her home was surprisingly quaint. A pot bubbled over a small fire. Small animals lounged where they pleased, a pair of sparrows sat on the window sill, and a snake that warmed itself by the fire. Oliver shooed away a cat sitting on the tree stump stool by the haphazardly made table. One of the legs was noticeably shorter than the others and was propped up on a book.

“Can I get you anything? I’m making rabbit stew, which should be done in a minute.

“Do you have any tea?”

Syrabel laughed. “What, do you want scones and peacock to go with that? The tower’s been spoiling you. Mostly I drink river water.”

She poured out a bucket of ice cold water into a metal cup. The sides were dented with wear, and on the bottom was the name

“I got it digging out of their trash last time I was in town.”

“How is everyone? I wasn’t there for long.”

“Same as ever. Backward, cruel, content to live up their own asses. The temple mothers are obligated to give hospitality, so I’m at the Child’s Temple plenty.” She watched Oliver examine the drink. “Relax Olly, I didn’t do a thing to it.”

“Oliver.”

“Oh, we are being fancy aren’t we?”

They caught up about their pasts. After Oliver had been taken he had been initiated as an apprentice. Apprentices were kept in total isolation from the world for years on end to absorb the ways of the Silver Tower. His teachers showed him the secrets hidden in books and the truths about the world written in the stars. It took a decade of hard work to make it to where he was now.

Syrabel’s story was what he feared. All on her own everyone let her know what they thought of her; a monster that lurked in their midst, something that would be the ultimate downfall of the town if allowed to live. Syrabel had lived as a hermit since she left the temple, but not so much that the temple mother’s could kick her out. Her adventures into civilization were unforgettable raids. With the way she displayed wild magic so carelessly the locals didn’t dare to hunt her.

Syrabel got up to do the dishes. While wiping off a knife with a wet rag, she broached the subject Oliver had dreaded.

“You know, I waited for you. For a long time I thought that you would come down from that tower, you boy wizard and your magic tricks, and I don’t know, take me away somewhere. ” Syrabel raised the knife to the light. “But then you didn’t. You were all I really had you know. When you left it hurt, but the fact that you never came back is what really stung.” She turned to him, knife gripped in hand. “Olly, why did you come here?”

He didn’t answer. Every day the memory of the temple became less meaningful. By the time he became a full wizard and was allowed to come and go, he had no desire to leave.

“Why now? Why not last year? Or a decade ago?” The wild folk pleaded.

Oliver stood up with his staff at the ready. had suspected that Syrabel and the monster were one and the same. The scouts that had picked him up had reportedly tried to take her as well for disposal.

“No one has to get hurt. I can escort you to a safer location.”

“Don’t you see what they’re doing Olly? You’re a tool. You’re nothing to them.”

“Don’t call me that.”

In the morning the clearing was taken back into the woods. There were the remnants of a fight, a bloody knife, a snapped staff, and a misshapen tree with bark that looked suspiciously like a screaming face. Nested in the tree’s roots were gently folded blue and silver robes.