Son of the Wizard of AZ

By Terry Wayne Martin

Many people fantasize about growing up in a wizarding family. The reality is quite a bit different than the fantasies. First, it is more awesome! Second, it is much more terrifying.

Dad often said there are wizards around that don't know it and others who could be wizards if only they knew how. Perhaps this reminiscence can help in that regard.

Either way, this is a story that needs to be told.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martian Publishing
• Release date: Nov 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463931592

Terry Wayne Martin

Born in Texas many, many moons ago, I had a very diverse upbringing. Dad was an agnostic metaphysicist that worked for NASA during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs and Mom was a Baptist preacher's kid.No wonder I was raised so crazy/diverse (choose whichever answer fits best).Raised on the science fiction of Heinlein and that generation, that is the sort of thing I generally gravitate toward in my own sci-fi writing. For my other stuff, I cannot place the blame anywhere, yet.I do not have a blog at present but projects I am working on can be found at verbotham.com.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Hints of a Journey to Come

I really did not want to believe it. Closing my eyes, I simply denied that I had seen it, thought it, knew it. Opening my eyes – back to reality – was a blessed relief.

It was a warm-ish evening in early spring and I had stepped out back to light up a smoke and look for the first traces of the fireflies. They sometimes came this early and I might have spotted one, but I was mainly outside to have a smoke; looking for fireflies was just the excuse.

A mild dampness hung in the air under a full moon and I could see some swirling mists, indicating a slight breeze blowing through the field behind our quarter acre yard. It was probably the smallest yard in the historic little village in which we had removed some three years before and the pasture behind us belonged to a farmer wherein he grazed his few head of cattle and a couple of horses as well. And though the mist swirled there, I felt no breeze a mere thirty yards away.

As I watched, I became aware that the mist seemed to be coalescing and moving in a strangely determined manner. And it seemed to grow more substantial by degrees before resuming a mist-like demeanor.

Did the farmer have a white horse? The question played at the edge of my thoughts as I walked closer to the field to see the strange phenomenon a little better. It was definitely looking more like a horse as I drew closer, the mist taking on a more solid appearance.

Then the image changed abruptly – much like when focusing a telescope or binoculars on an object, hazy at first, then manifesting clarity – and there was a white horse just beyond the fence. Had I been at that boundary device, I could have reached across to pet the animal.

My progress toward that fence had halted when it metamorphed and I was just thinking what a large and proud looking steed it was… when the moon glinted off the large horn protruding from its head.

A unicorn!? My thoughts raced between wonder and panic.

Then, ever so calmly, the beast turned to look directly at me and its thought came clearly into my mind: You're not supposed to see me.

And then promptly vanished.

*****

I am certain it did not vanish through any magical artifice beyond that suggestion put into my head. It had simply vanished for me.

It was something I would have found very easy to laugh off, if I had recalled the incident. I doubt that I should have gone about telling everyone there was a unicorn in the pasture – the state has very nice padded facilities for people who believe those sorts of things – but it seemed so much easier on me if I should simply, as the beast itself had directed, forget the incident.

I did not question why, of course, I simply forgot about it.

One does not tempt that world without accepting responsibility.

~~~~

CHAPTER ONE

Where This Journey Began

I had, of course, completely forgotten about the encounter but it must have hovered somewhere near the edges of my consciousness because I picked up a pen while eating breakfast and doodled as I frequently did. Not cute little pictures like my daughters might sketch or outer space battles like my older brother might do, but words. Snippets and ideas, quotes and descriptions, or – as it was the case that morning – the beginning of a poem.

The scene being described did not become apparent to me until later and at the time, I had no clue to what I was describing.

From the mists beyond, I see creep

a single-horned ghostly apparition;

the thought comes go back to sleep

and it slips out of focus…

That was all I doodled and, though I tried to recall, did not know the origin of the thought or the imagery. I puzzled over it a time before shrugging, the last line incomplete. It felt at the time that it was part of a dream incompletely remembered.

After breakfast, I slipped the snippet into a file I keep of interesting notions and ideas for stories. I'm a writer and a great many of us do such things – ideas and concepts gathered together to collect dust until it finds a home in some volume currently being constructed, patched together from old ideas, stitched seamlessly into a new construct.

The thought was put out of my mind shortly as I got back into the volume I had then been currently working on.

I write science fiction – primarily – though I dabble in other genres as well. With my very diverse background, I was liable to conjure stories of practically any type.

Visiting with unicorns, however, was not on my plate just then.

As the creature had requested, I had put it entirely out of my mind.

Still, I felt something stirring deep within… some half-forgotten memory of a place I had been or something I had seen, thought, or otherwise crossed paths with. My dreams became a bit unsettled and I should imagine I was a bit cranky and short with my family for a time.

When whatever was moving in the mental cortex did not manifest, the feeling of its immediacy diminished over time and things fell back into their usual, comfortable pattern.

Then, one night in early autumn, I stepped out back for another smoke and felt the air thick; so thick the moisture gathered rapidly on my skin, plastering my casual shirt to my skin. With the sun set already, the shadows were deepening and a heavy mist hovered a dozen feet above the grass,

Sound familiar?

I did not seem overly familiar to me at the time – not in any ominous way – though I had often seen fog overlaying the field behind our house on many occasions.

Suddenly it seemed that the vapor was coalescing, forming a distinctive shape amidst the void and, moving closer, I was astonished to see the shape of a unicorn appearing out of that gently swirling haze.

In that instant, I remembered the incident from several months before, amazed that I could have forgotten such a thing.

Then, ever so calmly, the beast turned to look directly at me and its thought came clearly into my mind: You're not supposed to see me.

But I stared a moment longer and thought back, "Yes, but I do."

After gazing at me a bit longer, the beast nodded. Oh, I see. You're son of the Wizard of AZ.

I nodded back to the fellow and thought, Yes, I am. If ever you are in need of any service…

After a moment, he snorted but nodded, seemingly amused. Yes. I shall.

As when it had formed, the shape lost cohesion and misted away like most visions on such damp cool evenings.

I returned to the house deeply in my thoughts.

~~~~

CHAPTER TWO

Backing Up a Little

One might wonder how a person could be the offspring of a wizard and not be completely attuned to that aspect of the universe.

The answer is simple: life goes on.

In this world, magic is a thing not normally encountered and – unless something is utilized often – one loses such abilities. And, need I point out, Dad was the wizard, not I. Sure, I've done a few things in my youth but nothing on any scale called wizardly. In modern parlance, I would not have been invited to Hogwarts or any other wizarding school.

Still…

*****

Before we get too far along in this portion of the tale, you will need to get Rowling's version of the wizarding world out of your mind. The magic I saw was nothing like the fantasy version touted in her books. It was much more casual – in some respects – and far more terrifying than anything she imagined – in other respects.

Terrifying in that there was no fictional barrier to the madness; one could not simply close the book when things got a little out of hand. Reality, even tinged with magic, is still very much reality. Perhaps even more so.

The need for spells and wands and Latin (of all the crazy things) are plot devices she used to populate her tales. The cute thing of the wand choses the wizard is a pleasant plot device, nothing more. And even toward the end of the series, she was having many do magic without the use of wand or spell, thus seeming to put that bit of fanciful artifice in its place. Such tools may assist the student in grasping some control of the energies but they are and of themselves entirely useless; a student still leaning on wands and words will never get very far in real magic.

Today we even have schools of magic popping up around the world. Of course they do not teach real magic, offering only a playtime variety of the wizarding world according to the famous fiction. It is a start, of course, but not the sort we need.

Still, there are perhaps more people open to the appearance of magic now, which is a good thing, but would they know what it looked like unless the wizard were armed with a wand and wearing some form of medieval robes and uttering Latin phrases?

Why would a practice that predated the birth of the Latin language use that for their spells? It is an artifice, of course, something to tell the reader that it is very, very old; as if two thousand years was really such a long time ago.

No, there was no need for wands or words. The real power was the intent.

Intent alone is what summons the magic.

And while it might be true that the use of wands and spells can help the novice attune themselves to the magic, one would be doing a grievous disservice to imply that any of those trappings were actually required in order to perform magic.

Summoning the proper energies within – and most energies are, after all, vibrational in nature – can be assisted by using a chant or a cadenced spoken passage to align oneself with the wavelength of the emotion required to perform the magic. Some find song lyrics work best as music is finely attuned to emotions, after all. Directing the flow of such energies might at first be facilitated with a wand or other contrivance to point with. However, once one has learned to access such vibrations within oneself, the wand or any spoken words become superfluous.

And many of the best natural wizards do not rely on any of the usual props even at the start of their wizarding.

Dad was very much one of those.

His grasp of the vibrational natures of the universe well already fairly well developed before he ventured into wizarding. He seemed to have had a very singular background.

*****

Any of you familiar with the writings of John Dalmas may have come across the mention of my father the wizard in the pages of his novels. There were a couple in which he was mentioned rather obliquely, describing some of the adventures in which they shared.

Yes, Dalmas – in real life John Jones – was a friend of the family and he often would share his current writing projects with our family. He and Dad would spend many late nights sitting up and discussing realities. And, yes, there are more than just the one you are familiar with. Trust me on that one.

He even co-authored a novel with Dad called The Playmasters which touched on a lot of the fanciful stuff but many of the realest adventures did not make it into the pages of the stories as, even they two would admit, were just a bit too far-out for the normal reader.

John's books on The Regiment – a lovely gritty beginning of a very philosophical science fiction series – was based on a game matrix he and Dad had developed with the aid of my younger brother, who was credited in the book for designing the chart John used. There were many other plots, tales, and concepts derived from the talks they had and I was always happy to see so many of them turn up in John's books. It is quite a gift to be able to turn a deep philosophical discussion into a gripping bit of fiction. He was gifted in that regard.

One book in particular, however, described the wizard in our family with a bit more of