“Alright! Has anyone seen that bloody wizard Shanahan?”
The patrons of the bar turn and blink at the sudden shout. For most of us, loud noises before midday only worsens the hangovers we’re already drinking to forget. Framed in the morning light streaming in through the door, a young woman stands with her hands on her hips. She does not look happy to see us.
“Give us a rest, Moll!” comes a weary voice from the tables – or possibly the woodchips on the floor. “It ain’t barely noon yet!”
The young woman snorts.
“You listen to me, boys. He’s hiding out here somewhere. If any of you seen him, you come tell me, right quick. Madam Whitford might even give you a discount with one of the girls.”
The bar returns to the welcome gloom as the working girl slams the door behind her. Beside me, a young man in a deep, heavy hood sighs and picks up his bottle. As his head snaps back, there’s a shock of curly gold hair, and a glimpse of a pale, handsome face.
“Oi, ain’t you..?”
The young man tries to readjust his hood. His shoulders slump as he looks down at the bottle between his hands.
“Yep,” he mutters. “The great wizard Shanahan, mage of the court, enchanter extraordinaire, keeper of secrets beyond mortal ken… Or something like that.”
“What’d he do, then?” asks a nearby sailor, the tattoos in his face twisting up in confusion. “He ain’t much, is he?”
“Oh, you’d never believe it, he-”
The wizard waves me to silence and throws back his hood. He looks around at the bar patrons with the wild pride of a bad drunk.
“I’ll tell the story, thank you! I can do that much, right?”
Shrugs and mutters from the patrons of the bar. The bard won’t wake up till midday and we ain’t got nothing better to listen to.
“My name is Elias Fillius Shanahan, youngest ever mage to be recognised by the Academy.”
The wizard takes a swig from the bottle then slams it back down onto the bar.
“And I was magnificent. Top of my class. A prodigy. That’s – that’s what they called me, right? I wasn’t going to be stuffed into some classroom with a bunch of skulls and dusty old books. I was special. Was gonna change the whole way we do magic in this continent. Don’t you get fed up with these, these stuck-up old fossils, sitting in their towers looking down on people?”
“Yeah!” comes a ragged cheer from a farmer in the crowd. Not sure if he means it but Shanahan smiles and waves the bottle again.
“They were jealous of me, they were. All the old mages. They knew I had their measure. Knew I was going to bring practical magic to the commoners.”
There’s a low growl from across the bar. Shanahan jerks upright.
“No, not you lads, though,” he stutters. “You’re all honest working men, am I right? Salt of the earth, or sea or – whatever.”
Someone laughs. He shakes himself and continues.
“Anyway, I was destined for greatness, you get me? Entire Kingdoms would know my name, men would fear me, women would want me, bards would sing about my amazing adventures.”
“So, what happened?” asked the sailor. There was a crowd gathering now, fishermen and farmers and lumpers from down by the wharf. Seeing he had an audience, Shanahan smiles at the crowd – a good smile too, his teeth are shiny and everything – and orders a fresh bottle from the barkeep.
The wizard uncorks the bottle with his teeth and spits the stopper into the corner before taking a swig.
“Decided to start at Duke Mosman’s court,” he replies. “Swamp Keep, that’s what they call it. They’re not wrong. Half the duchy is rivers and marshes. Peasants live on those wooden houses – you know, the ones with stilts, right above the water? Mosquitoes everywhere. That’s where the problem was.”
“Yeah, nothin’ comes out of Swamp Keep ‘cept mud and measles.”
Shanahan turns, pointing wildly at the tipsy worker lying with his face across the bar.
“Yes! That’s it, right? I was – was gonna fix it. Practical magic. Gonna fix everything. So I go to the Duke, he’s not a bad sort, he knows what it’s like to be looked down on by the other old geezers who call themselves nobles. He gives me a chance. Tells me that the biggest problem they have is fever. The mosquitoes, see? Always getting in at night, biting children and babes, making them sick. Poor blighters looked about as poxy as a whore after the navy visits port.”
Another ripple of laughter and a few guilty looks from the younger sailors.
“So, this is my opportunity! I use practical magic to stop the kids getting sick, and bam! Instant fame. Elias Fillius Shanahan, saviour of the children. Has a good ring to it, doesn’t it, lads?”
He takes another swig, and his bright expression fades, leaving a sad, pale man staring down into the bottle between his fingers.
“O’ course, that’s where it all started going wrong. I made these nets, you see. Mosquito nets, that families could hang over their children’s beds to keep them safe. Beautiful, they were. Just beautiful. I took a type of silk, and then applied an enchantment, very complex, that actually attracted living things and made them to stick to it, that way not only would the kids be safe from mosquitoes, but the families could also scrape off the mosquitoes in the morning and bring the numbers down. The tricky part was adjusting the strength of the enchantment index, didn’t want children getting caught up in the net, see, so I wove and enchantment that inversely modulated the intensity of the spell based upon the strength of the biological aura interacting with it, amazing stuff, even if I say to myself, needed to use Spangler’s Rubric to…”
The wizard trails off as he realizes he’s looking out at a crowd of blank stares.
“Look, I made a magic net that trapped mosquitoes and kept kids safe, got it? The Duke thought it was a great idea, gave me a commendation in front of the whole court, told me he had his eye on me and looked forward to the results. Of course, the moment he said that…”
Shanahan’s face screws up in pain, and he looks back down at his drink.
“What happened?” asks a voice in the crowd.
Shanahan groans and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“You’d never believe it,” he replies. “It was the fish.”
“What?”
“The fish. Every one of those enchanted nets was a priceless gift. An heirloom. A treasure that these peasants could have passed down their family lines, a magical artefact made by the great wizard Shanahan. Instead, they were using the nets to catch fish. Turns out the enchantment worked great on local mullet.”
A pause. The drunks at the bar start chortling into their mugs. The local fishermen look embarrassed.
“Oh, it gets better,” moans Shanahan, taking another swig. “Guess what the mullet eat? Go on, take a wild guess.”
We don’t want to say it. Finally, a voice from the back murmurs.
“The mosquit-”
“The mosquito larvae!” finishes Shanahan, slamming the bottle back down again. “The goddamn mosquito larvae! Once the swamp had been fished out, the mosquito population just, just –”
The wizard waves his hand right up to the roof.
“Whoosh! Took right off. Now the Duke is worried, he’s telling me, Shanahan, he says, you’ve got to fix this right away, the children are getting sicker. So, I sit, and I think to myself, what’s a practical magic solution to this? Then it hits me. Pixies.”
“Pixies?”
“Yes, pixies! Little bastards love eating insects and larvae. Ever watch them zip about in the twilight? Better mosquito hunters than bats, they are. So, I perform a summoning spell, catch myself a queen and some breeding males. They were right angry little blighters, nipping and scratching ‘til I let them go. Then they were happy as a pig in shi-”
The door to the bar swings open. Shanahan yelps like a little girl and hides under the table.
“Delivery!” calls the stocky old carter as he strides in the door. He gives us a confused look when the whole room shushes him.
“Put it round the back, Bruce,” calls the barkeep. “Want to hear the test of this yarn, I do. Go on, you skinny little ratbag, what happened?”
The wizard unfolds from beneath the table and tries to straighten his clothes.
“Yes, right – where was I? Pixies, that’s it. Breed like mad they do, chew through the mosquito population in a few weeks. Problem solved, right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Wrong!” snaps Shanahan, picking up the bottle and waving it around. “Wro-ong! Ravenous little blighters eat the mosquitoes, all right, then they started eating everything else, too! No just the local insects, no, but the bees in the Duke’s hives, then they start on the market gardens and orchards! Enough to break a man’s heart, it is.”
Some of the onlookers start to laugh but are shushed by the others. Shanahan gives them a poisonous look, then his face crumples.
“O Gods help me. By this point the Duke is furious, he’s talking about having the Academy strip me of my credentials. The farmers are banging on my door and the fishermen are complaining that the pixies are starting to bite their kids. Gee, wouldn’t it be great if had nets they could have used for that?!”
Shanahan rolls his eyes and throws his hands up into the air, spilling some of the bottle. At this point he’s far too enraged to notice. Waste of good grog though.
“So, I get to work and try and think of a solution. I can do this. I can rise to the challenge. Nothing is beyond the great wizard Shanahan. Everyone will see what I’m made of. Now, I’ll admit, releasing the pixies wasn’t the best long-term strategy, but I’m intelligent enough to see that releasing more magical creatures will just make the problem worse. So, I hit upon a different solution. Simple. Elegant. A poison.”
“A poison?”
The men at the bar shuffle nervously. You can’t trust a poisoner. Go down that path and you live in fear of every drop that passes your lips. Seeing our expression, the wizard shook his head.
“No, not like that! I’m not talking belladonna or cyanide or anything, I mean a bromide solution. Made from rendered-down seaweed and a few other salts. All perfectly natural. Then I just, you know, gave it a little kick with some magic to create a catalyst that amplifies the sedative effects on the glands in the testes…”
Catching our expression again, his shoulders slump.
“Why do I even bother trying to explain myself? It’s a magic potion to stop the pixies breeding, right? Caught some queens and applied it to their backs. Filthy little minxes, pixie queens. Might breed a hundred times in a day, different male each time. So, every time one of the males gets close, he gets a dose of my decoction, then decides he’s not interested. Don’t need to kill them, get it? Over time, the population will collapse on its own. Another problem solved by practical magic!”
“Don’t tell me,” calls a voice from the crowd. “It didn‘t work!”
“Oh, it worked all right,” growls Shanahan. “Worked a treat didn’t it? With the population under control, the animals start returning to the swamp, everything is going back to normal, the pixies are even getting picked off by the ducks and local fish. But then there’s an angry knocking on my door in the middle of the night.”
“The duke?”
Shanahan chuckles and downs the rest of the bottle, swaying a little as he tries to find the words.
“Nope. It’s the Duchess. You see, there’s a problem with the duke. He’s not, uh… you know.”
“What?”
“You know,” repeats Shanahan, making gestures with his hands and hips. “He’s not, ah, performing his ducal duties, as it were.”
There’s a few sniggers from around the bar.
“Wot, he couldn’t get it up?”
“Not just him,” sighs Shanahan. “The duke is bad enough, but most of the nobles in the court are experiencing similar issues. Here I am, congratulating myself on another victory for practical magic, and it turns out there’s a full-blown epidemic of softwoods across the entire swamp.”
The bar roars with laughter. Duke’s men aren’t here, they can’t stop us having a bit of a laugh. Shanahan belches and scratches his cheek, turning the empty bottle upside-down in case there’s some stray drop left.
“So, I bring my considerable talents to bear. Turn out the nobles in court had one thing in common – well, one other thing – they loved their duck. Roast duck, fried duck, duck stew… Hey, sailor boy, can you guess what the ducks loved to eat?”
The sailor’s tattoos scrunch up, then spread into a look of astonishment as he figures it out.
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” replies Shanahan. “Those bloody pixies. The doses were only tiny, but when a duck eats a hundred pixies, and a nobleman has duck every night…”
By this point Shanahan looks like he’s about to burst into tears, but the bar can’t stop laughing. The barman – he’s an understanding sort of bloke – reaches across the bar and gives Shanahan a fresh bottle.
“That’s why they’re all looking for you, then? It’s a bounty from the duke?”
Shanahan giggles and opens the bottle, taking a deep gulp. Half the bottle spills down his shirt.
“Worse than the duke. But I’ll outsmart ’em. Destined for, destined for greatness, I am. Entire Kingdoms knows my name, don’t they? Men fear me, women want me, b-bards sing about, sing about my amazing-”
He never gets a chance to finish. The door bursts open and three women stand in the door. Moll points an accusing finger at Shanahan.
“There ‘e is! Madam Whitford has a bone to pick with you, wizard! Do you how much money we’ve lost at Swamp Keep now that all the nobles and fishermen ain’t getting it up?”
Shanahan puts his hand over his mouth and tries not to vomit.
“It’s all just, just – a misunderstanding, right?” he begs, holding up the bottle. “M-maybe I can fix it. Just one more try. Practical, uh, p-practical magic, that’s the thing. L-look, I just need a little more time…”
He was still bargaining as they dragged him away.
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