Metaphorosis August 2021

By Gabriel Rosswell and Metaphorosis Magazine

Beautifully written speculative fiction from Metaphorosis magazine.

All the stories from the month, plus author biographies, interviews, and story origins.

Table of Contents

• A Wizard Comes to Shorehaven - L.J. Wetherby
• The Waves In Which We Drown - Rubella Di

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metaphorosis Magazine
• Release date: Aug 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781640762053

Book preview

Metaphorosis

August 2021

edited by

B. Morris Allen

ISSN: 2573-136X (online)

ISBN: 978-1-64076-205-3 (e-book)

ISBN: 978-1-64076-206-0 (paperback)

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from

Metaphorosis Publishing

Neskowin

August 2021

A Wizard Comes to Shorehaven — L.J. Wetherby

The Waves In Which We Drown — Rubella Dithers

Rapunzel Dreams of Elephants — Rachel Delaney Craft

The Nocturnals IV — Mariah Montoya

A Wizard Comes to Shorehaven

L.J. Wetherby

Many years had gone by since a wizard last dwelled in the small seaside town of Shorehaven. It had been so long, in fact, since the town had enjoyed the presence of a wizard, that the people of Shorehaven had begun to forget why a wizard was such a desirable thing for a town to possess.

Children would finish their bedtime prayers with the words, and please send Shorehaven a wizard before too much longer, but the words meant almost nothing to them, and little more to many of their parents. Wizards, as far as the younger generation of Shorehaveners was concerned, were a fantasy; something nice to dream of, but never seriously expected to come to pass.

The townspeople were surprised, then, when a wizard arrived one day. She was of middling height, with long twisting hair that was brown, grey, and white in different places, and wearing long robes the same colours as her hair. She looked very, very tired.

The only question on the town’s lips was whether the wizard had come to stay or she was merely passing through. She spent her first night in a boarding-house, where (to the tremendous disappointment of the proprietor and the other patrons alike) she requested a private room and took all of her meals within it, never venturing out into the common areas. There were many in the boarding house that night who hoped for a chance to converse with the wizard, or at the very least to catch a glimpse of her, and there were many in the boarding house that night who went to bed disappointed.

The following morning, the wizard walked past Marsh’s Stores in town, examining the glass-fronted noticeboard outside the shop and taking down notes in a small leather-bound book that she kept in the pocket of her robe. Then she walked out of town along the north road, towards the coast.

A few Shorehaveners were sufficiently intrigued by the wizard’s arrival that they attempted to follow her out of town, but ill luck befell all who tried. Gordon Harris the baker’s son stepped into a bog and ruined his socks and shoes. Amelia Connor the seamstress got her skirts so badly caught up in a patch of brambles that it took her almost an hour to free herself, and she came home scratched and bleeding. And Ghislaine Willis, who fancied herself something of a hedge-witch, became so lost while trying to follow the wizard that she found herself walking back into town along the south road, miles away from the north road that she’d taken out towards the coast in the first place.

A single cottage sat at the very edge of the cliffs, past the point where the north road ceased to be a road and turned into a path. It had lain empty for many years, almost as many as the town had been without a wizard. The notice announcing that this cottage was for rent was one of the oldest advertisements on the board outside Marsh’s Stores, with its print almost completely faded and its edges yellowed and curled.

The wizard decided almost immediately after viewing it that she would take the cottage. She made one last trip into town, to put down a year’s rent and to purchase some provisions from the store.

By this time, many of the townspeople were curious about the wizard, but everyone who attempted to walk out as far as her cliffside cottage to get a better look at her ran into the same kind of trouble as those who’d followed her out of town the day after her arrival — minor injuries and misfortunes, the sudden loss of their ability to navigate familiar roads, and in some cases a profound urge to turn around and check that they hadn’t left the front door unlocked or a pan boiling dry on the stove. Eventually people started to complain about the situation, lamenting that after so many years of waiting, they should suffer the misfortune of only a very unsociable wizard arriving in Shorehaven.

The Mayor was a popular person to complain to, because he was ostensibly the most powerful man in town. In his private moments the Mayor would laugh to himself about this assumption, knowing as he did that being the Mayor gave him no power whatsoever — it merely made him responsible for dealing with all the problems that other people couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with themselves.

For the first week, the Mayor listened to the town’s concerns about the new wizard with a solemn expression. He told each of them that he understood why they were worried — that he, too, was interested to learn more about the wizard — but that since it had been such a long time since the town had had any sort of wizard at all, everyone must be very patient. The wizard would reveal herself in her own good time; he was certain of it.

After three weeks had passed and there had been neither sign nor word of the wizard, however, and no further orders placed at Marsh’s Stores, even the Mayor began to lose his patience. He decided that the townsfolk had been respectful enough of the wizard’s privacy: he would force the issue. A wizard could hardly refuse an official visit from the Mayor, after all. And it would have been deeply undignified for the Mayor to have returned from attempting to visit the wizard with his legs scratched to pieces by thorns, his memory strangely absent, his socks and shoes ruined, or his sense of direction temporarily suspended, so he took Leonie with him as insurance.

Leonie was his only child, a quiet and unassuming person of around twenty-four years of age, who possessed a certain subtlety when it came to magic — it was said that Leonie’s mother, who by this time had been dead for almost as long as she’d been alive in the first place, had been a distant relative of the town’s previous wizard. The prestige of this connection had been one of the many reasons the Mayor had married her, and the fact that their only child showed the faintest hint of this familial skill had always been a source of particular pride for him.

Over the years, his child’s ability had manifested on only a few occasions. Once, when the town had been suffering a drought, Leonie had managed to sense a raincloud nearby, tugging it by some unseen means towards the wheat fields that lay beyond the town. And there had been the time when a very young Leonie had managed to calm a rabid dog that was blocking the road to the schoolhouse simply by speaking soothingly to it, in a voice that sounded strangely ethereal, and nothing at all like Leonie’s ordinary speaking voice.

Leonie did not enjoy being the Mayor’s daughter, in spite of the Mayor’s pride. For as long as Leonie could remember, people had watched constantly to see what the Mayor’s daughter might do, and to ensure she comported herself with the same dignity and respect that the Mayor himself assumed. Something deep within Leonie writhed and squirmed away from this attention, seeking out a more dark and private place where it could merely exist, unobserved. The demands of the position sat very uneasily with the Mayor’s daughter, who felt as an adult only very slightly mayoral, and not at all daughterly.

Leonie and the Mayor took their time walking along the north road, for Leonie had been born with one ordinary leg and another that tapered into nothingness halfway down the thigh. Leonie had hardly noticed this difference until the Mayor had made it clear that it was something to be managed carefully; as an adult, Leonie wore a prosthesis so artfully constructed that it was indistinguishable from a full-grown leg in every way, except for the fact that it caused Leonie to walk a little more slowly and carefully than other people. The small amount of magic that Leonie possessed had been very fortunate on the day when the rabid dog had wandered into town, given that running away at any speed had been out of the question.

Leonie could feel the wizard’s presence all along the north road, even before they made it past the edge of the town. The charms and glamours that had prevented curious individuals from trespassing upon the wizard’s hospitality until now were obvious to Leonie, glimmers faintly perceptible to the corner of the eye and easy enough to work around. They arrived at the wizard’s cottage just after midday, picking their way through the nettles and weeds that had grown over the path to the cottage door, which was closed.

The Mayor knocked, with an amount of force and ceremony befitting his status in the town. There was no answer. He knocked again, but still no answer. After his third knock was similarly ignored, he motioned to Leonie. Leonie’s knock was soft, gentle, and hesitating. After it had sounded, the wizard called out.

It’s open. You might as well come in.

The Mayor was old enough to remember a time when this cottage had not stood empty. It had been a pretty place then, full of light, with a lush garden surrounding the house on all sides. Now, even though the new wizard had been in residence for almost a month, it seemed a drear and dingy little hole. The floor had not been swept, half the shelves were bare and lined with a thick layer