A Wizard Passed Through Today. Children Wept.

A wizard walked through the village today, hooded in a red robe, his destination uncertain. One who dared look upon his face gasped he saw no eyes. But none who saw the wizard pass felt unprobed. In his wake cold fingers penetrated their bodies as his spirit ripples within. No one could explain why but the feeling of doom afterwards was overpowering. Children wept.

Rumor had it he came out of the Forbidden Forest, a place so terrifying even animals refuse to enter. Whatever business the wizard had it had to have been foul. Was he to meet the Dark Lord, ruler of the forest? Had he gone to practice his witchcraft at an unholy temple? Some even whispered he opened the gates to Hell, leaving us first to be swallowed. Try as we might to shake it, it was the last story that held us most fast, gripping our minds and flailing the weak among us.

We live on the edge of the Forbidden Forest in fascinated fear. Try as we might to resist, it holds us in a trance, thrilled at the danger yet curious to its nature. Other villages mock us for our foolishness but they do not understand we are held in the forest's orbit as much as the moon is to the earth. I suppose I would say the same thing were I them. No way to see the inner shackles that claim us but to be here - to shiver here - is to feel the wonder of its power. Our lives have no direction but what it gives us.

Is that direction doom? We hear those sounding the warning bells but dismiss them as hysterical. Occasionally grave words are spoken in deep suspicion but never with full commitment. Some prefer to believe because we live so near to the Dark Lord's domain without destruction that we have his blessing. I would hazard to guess he would like us to think that. But the Dark Lord will do what the Dark Lord will do, we as meaningless as falling leaves in the wind.

So what was the wizard's business? Our empty lives were gratefully stirred by this Important Traveler. We felt as the focal point of the world while he sauntered in his deliberate steps. News of the wizard's movements spread like the plague. But none will approach the wizard lest his wormy tongue speak wrongly of them. First he lulls to you to sleep with hissed blessings longed for but never to be in our lives, then he injects poison words of doubt into the heart that kills all but the strongest. Oh, that the wizard did not be!

None dare ask the wizard of his dark dealings yet we hang on his every footstep. The question that crawls up inside us, eating us like a worm, leaving us hooked like a helpless fish is this: "What does the wizard know?" What does he know of the outside world? What does he know of the impenetrable Forest? And most of all: What does he know of us? That's our true prison: what might he reveal we never dare admit to ourselves? In this way we are chained.

But the wizard roams freely in his mystical powers, feeling the sway and movements of the land, his eyes gazing upon sights never imagined in a villager's lost life. A fool with more sand than salt once tried to step in the wizard's path, boasting of no fear. But the wizard whispered in his ear, leaving the man wailing in descending madness. We villagers are born in a hut, scrape to survive each and every day without meaning or purpose then die as if we never existed. Only the wizard knows why - and he's not talking.

What is life that we should live at the mercy of these eyeless men of evil? How is it they came to rule this world? Is man so weak the worst of us can take the throne unchallenged? I feel to answer these questions is to become a wizard I fear to be.