‘Ticking you say?’
‘Yes sir,’ Leyland replied, carefully placing a bundle of towels on the desk before him and then taking three stridesome steps backward, ‘much like a watch that is known for keeping the very wrong type of time, sir; I’ve never heard a more ominous kind of tick, if I may say so, there’s a weight to it.’
Only the old postman’s ingrained sense of politeness had kept him from bolting toward the distant hills at this point, and with a tired sigh he cursed his boyhood elocution lessons.
Wizards were an odd bunch; they tug at the load bearing threads of existence in meek attempts to achieve something that most farmers had a tool for. Why did they want to dabble in so much incendiary hocus pocus? What was there to be gained from summoning bucket carrying brooms and other trademarked tomfoolery? It’s all a load of chaff, Leyland thought to himself, smartarses being smart for smart’s sake, this is exactly why he would never send his children to a school.
‘From whom has this letter come from?’ Delumar the Elder spoke to his visitor in a way that made them unsure if whom was used correctly in this context.
‘Martin the Beleaguered, sir,’ Leyland clipped, ‘Muttering type of fellow, very unwashed.’
‘Ah yes, Martin. You are lucky to have escaped his hovel without affliction of disease, but time will tell, I’m sure. Did he send it along with the towels or are they an addition of handling with care? They’re quite nice.’ slowly unwrapping the swaddled towels Delumar smiled to himself and took a deep puff on his mudwort pipe, exhuming a heady mist of dancing fey and toadstools upon seeing the envelope.
‘Standard addition, sir. The postman’s edict states that we are to take all precautions in seeing that each delivery makes it safely to its destination without scratch nor marring. I am unsure whether that statement refers to me or the letter in this case, but I am glad to have achieved both.’ Taking another stride backward Leyland suddenly noticed how the once flat envelope was expanding far beyond what a normal piece of paper should be able to.
Opening a portal no bigger than a tea cup, Delumar began to write upon some arcane looking kind of parchment and exhaled a tired breath.
‘Thank you for the delivery mr…Leyland was it? My friend is a rather excitable wizard of quite inventive melancholia, he thinks that he has just won a grand victory in a small game that we’ve been playing out for some time–wizard’s chess, you probably would not have heard of it–but he’s a fool,’ finishing his letter and underlining the word checkmate, Delumar placed the folded letter into the portal and steepled his fingers.
‘I’m afraid to inform you that I do not live at this address anymore, ergo you’ll have to return that interesting looking letter to its original sender. Feel free just to dump it into the portal, Martin should hopefully be able to catch it.
Lifting the balloon of a letter from the desk with the fear of a dozen gods, Leyland tenderly moved over to the portal, attempting to keep as much of the dusty smoke inside the envelope as he could. ‘I must say that I normally disavow any use of a portal when delivering mail, and that I find the practice of circumnavigating the post office a quite abhorrent outcome of this day and age…but I am willing to make an exception.’ Seeing that Delumar was in the process of tipping his desk over to be used as a blast shield, Leyland took a calm breath and dropped the letter into the portal.
The mail must be delivered, no matter the cost.
—
Many people across the span of time and history have found great truths within themselves and have passed these down as diminutive sayings from parent to child, hoping that something may one day sink in.
While watching the bilious mustard coloured cloud slowly waft downward, merrily blanketing the city skyline, a farmer by the name of John knelt beside his son and pointed toward the cloud.
‘Now lad, ye see that cloud up there? Well, I’ll tell you this now, and I hope that you’ll remember it till the days yer’ hair grows to be as grey as mine is. Never trust a wizard; don’t trust him if he’s nice, don’t trust him if he offers to buy you a drink, and, hell even if yer’ using the wood from his coffin as a fence post, don’t you ever trust him.’
The boy, coughing for breath, would remember this moment of fatherly advice as the sun became consumed by the cloud mass and his world became a haze of orange, tar smelling, miasma. Wizards, he thought with the embers of admiration growing in his heart, if he became one, if he became the very best one, he could form a union and regulate this kind of malady; make the world safe for peasant AND farmer!
[—]
‘So my boy, and that is how the union of wizards and the ethical practice of magic came into being. The water is cleaner, the roads less addled by smouldering crater, it’s a time of joy and scientific achievement!’
‘Dad, I don’t care…can we go to the park now?’
J. McCray
2021
Sunday Short Stories 