The wizard’s tombstone
Photo of a crumpled orange plastic traffic cone in some long grass next to a grassy path in a field. There is a hedge behind it. Blue sky in the top right hand corner.
This is known locally as The Wizard’s Tombstone, because that’s actually what it is. It’s an interdimensional marker which blends in by taking the form of a common warning sign. So in this dimension it looks like a traffic cone, but in another it would look like something quite different. I can’t help you imagine what, as I am from this dimension and I am not sure what common warning markers look like in other dimensions. Any attempt I make at a description would likely be hopelessly inaccurate.
Let’s think about it a little. Warning markers in this dimension come in a wide variety of types: prickly spines, too good to be true handsome types, unseasonably yellowing leaves, top marks on everything, bottom marks on everything, and switching cat tails. So a warning marker elsewhere could be anything from a pebble to a peach to a piranha.
The problem with warning markers is that, if they’re subtle, we often don’t notice them. Like that time I saw the scaffolding van out front right before I sat down for meditation, yet didn’t take the hint and close the windows. That’s why this one is so obvious: who puts a traffic cone in the middle of a country path, for wizard’s sake? Pigeons, that’s who.
Forty-two pigeons carried this cone from Holmwood village centre on April’s full moon. It was actually quite ingenious as they threaded a long stick through the middle of the cone, and then 23 pigeons carried one side in their claws, and 19 the other side. Thus the cone was carried without much ado to its resting spot here in the hills. The pidgepots put it here so you don’t trip on the inter-dimensional portal which arose at the moment of the wizard’s death.
Not a lot of people know that pigeons, or pidgepots as I like to call them, are the most common wizard familiar. That’s why there are so many of them: those crafty wizards are using them to keep an eye on us. It pays to be nice to pidgepots because then you’re more likely to win the favour of their wizard overlord. You can thank me in a variety of currencies for that important tip.
Those pigeons, and that tombstone, belonged to a wizard named Joy. Her favourite things to wizard about involved Mars (the planet, not the junk food), Danishes (the pastry, not the people), and healing the root system of a variety of woodland plants. She would weave networks as intricately as any haute couture sewing house and in fact, she learnt some of her techniques from an Atelier in Paris in 1676. You will instinctively know a woodland that Joy has been in, for it will feel lusher and more vibrant than others, due to the plants renewed capacity for nourishment via their elegantly stitched root systems.
When Joy would find an old, hollowed out tree, she would climb inside it and learn the story of the tree. The tree would send out its memories in waves, and they would push through Joy like the bands of rings they once were. Joy would stand, or sit, there (depending on tree size) and breathe all the memories in. That’s all magic is, you know: breath. That’s why it matters a great deal what you breathe in: pollution is more than particulate matter.
Once Joy had learned all the tree’s memories, she would weave them into song. Nowadays only the birds carry tree song forwards into eternity, but once humans did so too. Sadly, because modern humans walk about with their headphones on, or natternatternattering to their friends, they aren’t able to hear the songs of trees. The reason I am able to catch so many of these stories and songs, is because I learnt long ago how to listen. Plus, headphones hurt my tinnitus in ways that tree song does not. So do people.
Another job of Joy’s, was to make foxgloves grow extra tall. She also took a particular delight in ensuring that the patterns inside a foxglove bell were subtly different from plant to plant (family members aside). You would be doing her memory a great honour, if, next late spring and early summer, you went and gently peered inside a variety of them to appreciate her handiwork.
Joy died because everything dies in the end, it’s just that wizards take a really long time to do so. The marvellous thing about a wizard’s magic is that it remains detectable as a part of their legacy. So if you want to feel some of Joy’s work, may I commend to you to visit her old stomping grounds of Leith and Holmbury Hills. If you do go, make sure you take off your headphones, silence your internal and external chatter, and listen for the song of the trees and the last of Joy’s magic.
Listen to me read this story: