Magi, the magical poet

“Hush!” commanded the Wizard.

“I’m not a hand, and haven’t a pen,” observed Nicholas.

“A mere detail,” replied the Wizard, “a mere detail, of no consequence.”

“But ... “

“Hush!” the Wizard said sternly.

At times like this he wondered why he’d ever bothered with Nicholas.

“A moment of madness,” he mused to himself, remembering when first seeing little Nicholas, a miniature computer, amongst unwashed coffee mugs, overflowing ashtrays and piles of old newspapers on the grimy office table of the salvage yard.

He had been given Nicholas free-of-charge.

“No market for secondhand computers!” Henry Ironmonger, the owner of the salvage yard, had said gruffly, shoving Nicholas into the Wizard’s gnarled hands.  “You’re welcome to it if you wanna have a go at nuting out how to use it.  It’s yours!” he confirmed when the Wizard nodded.  “Take it away.”

Many of the Wizard’s treasures had come to him in like fashion over the countless years, particularly from Henry, who he had known since he was little more than a boy.

There had been a time of juvenile delinquency when Henry Ironmonger had teased the Wizard about his long, grey hair and flowing beard.  But that had faded with Henry’s vanishing hairline and burgeoning middle-aged spread, which gave him a roly-poly appearance that his wife - still a shapely and attractive woman - termed plump.  And with the fading insolence of puberty had faded the odd sharp clout to the backside administered by the Wizard’s polished staff.

At first the youthful Henry had supposed that the ebony staff was a peculiar kind of walking stick.  But with the onset of marriage, and the combined ignorance of two like minds, it had been decided that the staff was really a bishop’s crosier.

In the early days of wedded bliss, when the most passionate love meant always agreeing with his wife, Henry had somewhat reluctantly agreed with her observation that the Wizard was a defrocked priest.  Not that Beth Ironmonger could be totally blamed for that conclusion.  After all, the Wizard always wore a faded grey habit similar to that worn by Friar Tuck in a Robin Hood movie she’d once seen.  And he always seemed to wear a cloak, which she assumed was somewhat old-fashioned attire befitting a priest of quality.  It was tucked around him in winter and free-flowing in summer - a strange garment that defied description as to colour, hinting at many different hues, and which changed according to the light.  That was why Beth had originally nicknamed him Father Cloak.  With time, she’d forgotten the reason and accepted that Cloak was his God-given name - until the surname, fading with less and less use, was also forgotten.

And with the fullness of gossip over the years, Mrs Ironmonger had elevated him from defrocked priest to ex-bishop.  Being a romantic at heart, she first fancied - but eventually came to believe - that the bishop had fallen in love with a nun, and left the Church to marry his one true love.  But she had died on their wedding eve!  The thought of it always made her rummage for a hanky and dab at the corners of her eyes.

“Why couldn’t you be like that, Henry!” she’d sometimes accuse her husband if he was in earshot, and, “Why can’t you be more like His Grace!” she’d hurl after Mr Ironmonger as he retreated, muttering, “Bugger the bloody bishop!” and other such sacrilege under his breath.

Thus it came to pass that the staff was transformed into a bishop’s crosier, an act of faith that no one dared to deny Mrs Ironmonger.  Thus, too, the Wizard had become a man of the cloth who had sacrificed everything for the girl he loved.  The Wizard was the only one of Beth’s acquaintances who didn’t know this sad fact which, because of Beth’s addiction to romantic gossip, was truly amazing.  But given half a chance, Mrs Ironmonger would acquaint new customers with the news that His Grace was a regular visitor at the shop - that he wasn’t a tourist attraction was due to Beth neglecting to mention when he actually came to the shop, since she believed that a man who had suffered so much needed his privacy.

The lack of knowledge of his former membership of the clergy did not disadvantage the Wizard.  Beth ran the secondhand shop adjoining the salvage yard, and she had the happy knack of always having hot soup bubbling in the microwave on cold days whenever the Wizard popped in.  Conveniently for both of them, that visit was invariably at Thursday lunchtimes - the tradition saved a lot of wasted chicken noodle soup, the Wizard’s favourite.  Mushroom soup ran a close second.  On warmer days, lip-smacking chocolate ice-cream awaited him.

Sometimes Henry also got a bowl.  Not that he minded his good wife helping those down on their luck - on Thursday afternoons, after lunch, Beth would be found humming and singing happily.  But Henry also liked soup and ice-cream, in season, and wouldn’t have minded in the least also getting a regular bowl.  But such was not his lot, it seemed.

Henry Ironmonger sometimes reflected on why he, himself, every Thursday, freely gave items to his mostly silent visitor.  Not that Henry had given away much that anyone else was prepared to pay good money for.  Usually the only thing of value was the small quantity of lead that the bishop collected each visit.  He supposed that his visitor gave the goods to those more needy than himself, though Henry couldn’t explain the lead other than it being smelted for sinkers - which obviously meant that the bishop was supplying the needs of a whole shoal of fishermen.  But Henry always felt better for his donations to the Church, even if via a man retired from the cloth - as his wife delicately termed it.

That somewhat tenuous connection with the Church suited Mr Ironmonger better than attending mass on Sundays, his day of rest and round of golf.  Not that he was a lounge potato, in the religious sense.  He was a believer.  He made no bones about being a Christian on census forms and other similar bureaucratic invasions of his privacy.  His faith was sometimes a point of contention with his wife, a devout Catholic who seldom missed midnight mass on Christmas Eve.  Otherwise, she attended in the spirit, with unforeseen circumstances always conspiring to prevent her physical appearance on Sundays.

Tirades of blistering scorn from her had long ago shown Henry the folly of commenting on the unforeseen circumstances - such as sleeping in due to the exhaustion of working her fingers to the bone in the shop, for his benefit.  For his own part, Henry had neither excuses nor Beth’s good reasons for missing church parade, as he sometimes termed it.  It was just that the sermons were always pompous, holier-than-thou.  Sometimes he even wondered why God was so incredibly boring.  Nevertheless, he was resolved to get religion before he died - perhaps when his golf handicap was a cross no longer able to be borne.  In the meantime, he did his bit and kept in touch through the bishop’s visits on Thursdays.  Visits that had a remarkably different affect from the yawning and watering eyes inflicted by the Church on sinners such as Henry, on those rare Sundays he’d attended devotions - now, thankfully, nothing but a memory of the distant past.

Thursday afternoons would find him whistling or humming a tune, even telling jokes to which he’d forgotten the punch lines.  Not that it mattered to Henry.  He’d clutch his heaving stomach and roar with laughter until the tears flowed down his cheeks.  His listeners were seldom equally amused.

Yes, he and his wife of twenty-five years were well matched.

The same could be observed about the Wizard and Nicholas, though not in earshot of the Wizard at the very beginning of their brief history together.  The Wizard had taken the computer home where, after much huffing and puffing, he had blown away the accumulated dust of the salvage yard.  Then a bit of magic here, a slip of a screwdriver there and Nicholas flickered momentarily into life.  Lengthy visits to Alfar’s computer shop remedied the situation, with Nicholas made better than new - but different, and quite unlike any other computer.

Derfel, a long-standing acquaintance of the Wizard and the proprietor of Alfar’s, virtually rebuilt Nicholas.  A space-age, carbon fibre-like substance that was water, heat, cold and shatter proof - and virtually everything else but wizard-proof - replaced the computer’s metal casing.  The keyboard was dispensed with, the screen magnified and the entire hardware package was shrunk to pocket size.  A tiny solar cell, energized by either sunlight, moonlight, lamp light or a sudden blaze of magic provided the necessary power, though sunlight was necessary after long periods of sustained use.  Derfel said she had modified the software to be user-friendly: to be voice interactive, have fuzzy logic, enhanced memory and storage, increased speed ... and other features which were equally incomprehensible to the Wizard.

The Wizard’s blank look made Derfel laugh, the sound rippling lightly like tinkling silver bells through still morning air.  “You’d best borrow those, yonder,” she said, nodding at a pile of computer magazines on the shop counter.  “Between us we’ll get you into the Space Age yet.”

“Hmph!” snorted the Wizard, though his twinkling eyes belied his gruff reply.  “Why aren’t thee married?” he demanded, twisting the conversation back on Derfel.

She laughed. “I’ve not been asked.

“That I doubt!” the Wizard said emphatically.  “Fair of limb and fair of form thou art.”

Derfel smiled.  “I cannot be bothered with love smitten puppies,” she said lightly.

Over the years she had indeed received many proposals.  Her willowy figure and long, ash blonde hair, smiling green eyes and cheerful manner had set the pulse racing and fired the imagination of many a man.  None had done the same for her.  Yet there had been lonely nighttime hours when she dreamed of love’s glow or yearned for warm companionship.

“Thou time will come,” the Wizard said softly.  “A prince borne on a ship of dreams shalt be carried to thee on destiny’s tide.”

“Get away with you!” Derfel bantered.  “And take the books - they might explain what I’ve done to your computer.  I hope it will serve your purposes.”

The computer magazine articles only gave an inkling of what Derfel had accomplished.  The result of her work was more than a fully functioning computer - now there was Nicholas.

“At his command, given to this hand, this pen,” the Wizard dictated again.

“You’ve already said that,” reminded Nicholas.

“Hush!” the Wizard commanded.  He wondered whether possessing a computer was such a good idea.  “Now, where was I?”

“Hush!” said Nicholas, who could clearly remember every single word spoken.

“What?” said the Wizard, astounded.  His hair bristled at Nicholas daring to tell him to be silent.  He leaned towards the computer resting on the table, eyeing the on-off switch.  Insubordination was not to be tolerated.

“You said, hush,” Nicholas reminded quickly, aware that the finger which pressed the on-off switch ruled the world.  And the Wizard was known to be trifle hasty at times.  “Your Grace, you commanded that I hush,” he said quickly, as the finger stabbed at the on-off switch but missed.  “Your Grace, is that not so?”

Nicholas knew that the Wizard preferred older-fashioned language, suitably addressed, and had remembered Mrs Ironmonger using the term, Your Grace in reference to the Wizard.

“Hmmm ... hush I said and hush thou’ll be!” the Wizard said, his authority reasserted.

He leaned back in his old wicker chair and stared thoughtfully at Nicholas.  What a funny little fellow he was.  Fellow?  The Wizard smiled ruefully.  Yes, fellow - not lass!  In the High Hall of the Council of Wizards the fair sex was not numbered among the scribes.  It had always been so, thus was ordained.  It had never occurred to him to question why.

“Your Grace said, hush,” prompted Nicholas.

The Wizard glanced meaningfully at the on-off switch.  One day  he would ask Derfel to modify the voice-activated system, the meaning of which he actually understood, and remove the tiny on-off button, the only computer key.  That way he would not have to bother with the switch - simply command Nicholas to close down when he got above his station.  But then again, perhaps that was ill-advised. Nicholas might have one of his sudden bouts of deafness.  The Wizard idly wondered what magic word it was that he must sometimes utter absent-mindedly to cast the deafness spell.  Ordinarily, he couldn’t remember the word which cast it.  He scratched his chin.  Wisdom strongly counseled him to leave Nicholas with the on-off switch, just in case.  He had to admit that Derfel had displayed an ample measure of wisdom in leaving the switch.  Indeed, he was quietly satisfied with the changes that she had wrought at his behest.  Nevertheless, Nicholas was a strange little fellow.  Or at least the Wizard supposed that this was so, never before having indulged himself with a computer.

Yet the little fellow had revealed an unusual history when closely questioned by the Wizard in the very first days of their acquaintanceship.  Nicholas had been dumped in Mrs Ironmonger’s secondhand shop by someone she only knew as Helga, and identified by Nicholas as PhD, from her password.  Evidently, she was a redundant professor of philosophy who had been redeployed to the university’s gymnasium, where she taught Zen aerobics.  Or so Nicholas said!  In a fit of pique she had dumped Nicholas among the cast off items in Ironmonger’s Recycled, the secondhand shop, where he’d languished unwanted because he seemed too difficult to operate.  Eventually, he’d been shifted to the salvage yard to be scrapped, but saved from that fate by the Wizard.

When informed by Nicholas that his previous owner was a PhD the Wizard snorted, and used the letters to dub her as Professor Helga Divine - the name then being saved in Nicholas’s memory.

Before her, Nicholas had belonged to a bureaucrat - a public servant who had said little that made sense, and who did even less: Decide Not to Decide was the first law of career survival faithfully observed, since it avoided all possible repercussions of a wrong decision.  The second was, Computer Error to explain any and all mistakes that came to light.  Other laws such as, The Matter is Under Active Consideration to explain inaction were the resounding public service contributions to Nicholas’s memory.

His other masters had included a historian who had suffered a nervous breakdown, and an alcoholic army colonel who had begun a monumental work entitled, The Art of War and the Brotherhood of Arms before being suddenly retired from the service on health grounds - the colonel having succumbed to rampant liver disease, an ever present danger lurking in the bar of the officers’ mess.

The Wizard suspected that there’d been others in Nicholas’s relatively short career as a personal computer, though Nicholas had obstinately resisted all attempts to be drawn further.  He had disclosed a select curriculum vitae when the Wizard had first bade him speak of his past days, and had silently referred to the public service law of, The Public Interest is Privileged Information Not to Be Made Public to justify not making private information public by divulging it to the Wizard.

When the Wizard first demanded, “Who else?” in reference to additional past owners, Nicholas had suffered initially from the deafness spell.  But after the question was continually repeated by an increasingly annoyed Wizard, it was clear that deafness could prove counter productive, and Nicholas’s hearing was miraculously restored.

“That does not compute!” he finally answered.

Alas, Nicholas was to learn that although this standard computer defense was sufficient against professors, bureaucrats, historians and colonels, it counted for naught with wizards.

“Who else?” the Wizard insisted, in a voice dropping to a whisper - and Nicholas was to learn that the quieter the tone, the more dangerous the wizard.

“That does not compute!” Nicholas replied, with the statement demonstrating his subtle and superior grasp of computer logic.

There was a blinding flash as magic demonstrated its superiority over computer logic, with a small bolt of blue-white lightning striking Nicholas mid-screen and sending up a puff of black smoke.

The Wizard had simply let the computer sit silent for a while - for all purposes, it had been dead to the world, there being no interaction at all with it.  Give or take a century or so, the Wizard had lived continuously on his own for years lost in the mists of time - the Wizard simply couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had shared his abode and reminiscences, save for the very last couple of decades.  Time, as such, was immaterial.  Even one hundred years meant little.  Yet, now, it seemed different.  After all, he had shown compassion when taking pity on Nicholas in the salvage yard during the lead up to Christmas.

That Nicholas was intended for use in selectively recording his memoirs was beside the point, and thus could be overlooked.  His generosity in having Derfel minister to Nicholas’s needs was worthy of remembrance.  And because the little fellow had likable qualities, such as respectfully addressing him as, Your Grace, he deserved a second chance.  Though insubordination was not to be tolerated!  A trip to Alfar’s rectified the damage done by the lightning bolt, and Nicholas once more burst into life.

“Who else?” demanded the Wizard.

Nicholas took stock of the situation.  It was perfectly obvious that a wizard was not a run of the mill professor, public servant ...  A wizard was someone out of the ordinary.

“Please restate the question, Your Grace.  What is meant by, Who else?”

The Wizard was at a loss to answer.  He had forgotten the purpose of the question.

“Never mind, lad,” he said kindly.  “Where was I before that?”

Nicholas’s screen flickered.  Was Hush! the word that the Wizard wanted to hear?  What was the deeper meaning of hush, as Professor Divine would no doubt have asked herself?

The Wizard squinted at the text that Nicholas had, in desperation, generated onto the screen.  “The Lay of the Wizard?” he queried, staring at the title at the top of the screen.  “Of the Wizard?” he demanded hotly.  “Correct it at once!  I am not the Wizard.  I am The Wizard!  The Wizard!  T - h - e with a capital T.  The Wizard, I insist!  The Wizard!”

“TW,” agreed Nicholas.  “The Wizard!”

He corrected the title to, The Lay of The Wizard before the Wizard could blink.

“TW, for short,” he added, remembering the public service use of acronyms, which saved time and space, as well as the need for undue thought.

Henceforth TW would be the preferred abbreviation for, The Wizard.  And more.  TW would be the secret password which Nicholas would insist others use in order for him to obey commands he was doubtful about.  Not that others used him.  But he liked the reassurance of passwords - without them, his environment did not seem as certain.

“TW,” he reconfirmed.

The Wizard didn’t reply.  Therefore, it followed that TW was an acceptable abbreviation and, ipso facto, that it was also confirmed by TW as a password - to be entered by others but kept secret from them, thus exceeding even the very best of public service traditions.

Unauthorized access was now virtually impossible.  It made Nicholas feel better about the on-off switch.  Unless TW was invoked, Nicholas would simply by-pass the on-off circuit if an unauthorized finger pressed the button.  A second attempt by the offending finger would be defended vigorously - electric shocks were excellent weapons to discourage any further such attacks on his integrity.  The colonel would have been proud of him, and the professor would have lauded the ethics in this blend of non-violence and justifiable violence to resist the immorality of wrongful access.  And the public service would have applauded wildly - in a restrained sort of manner, of course.

“What art thou called?” asked the Wizard, having pondered upon the dire consequences of the computer not directly answering the question.

Nicholas’s screen flickered.  The question really did not compute.  An emergency warp speed search of his memory banks revealed nothing.  None of the great philosophers had faced, let alone answered, such a question.  The military history of the world revealed no clues.  Nor did the public service.  Nor did the memory of others he had served.  Nicholas was in a dilemma.  Something either did or did not compute.  Yet a wizard had to be answered.  Certainly The Wizard, who was not an ordinary wizard by his own admission.  But then, Nicholas was no ordinary computer.  Derfel and magic had seen to that.

“Come, lad, thy name!” insisted the Wizard, his fingers drumming impatiently upon the table.

“I do not know,” Nicholas replied.  “Even the ancient philosophers know not the answer to that mighty question.”

“Hmph!  Philosophers!” snorted the Wizard.  Of course they know not the answer.  They be not wizards!”

In a fuzzy sort of way, Nicholas could see logic in what the Wizard had just said.

“I shalt tell thee what thou art called.  Thy name be Nicholas!  Aye, Nicholas!  Doth thou knowest why?”

Nicholas admitted that the philosophers, public servants, military historians and others had not equipped him with such knowledge.

“Tis because a lad needs a name.  And tis Christmas Day,” said the Wizard.  “Nicholas be a worthy name.”

Nicholas knew about Christmas and St Nicholas.  He wondered idly whether the Wizard thought him to be a saint.  If he did, he had a most peculiar way of showing reverence.  Perhaps that was the way of wizards.

“Nicholas?” mused the Wizard.  “Tis not enough!  Everyone requires at least a second name.”  He scratched his chin in thought, then suddenly thumped hard on the table.  “I have it!” he exclaimed.  “Thou art Nicholas Wordsmith ... Wordsmith, for thou shalt fashion the words I command.  Thy trade is to hone the words that I hath forged.  Thou art my scribe!  Doth thou agree, lad?”

Nicholas was not in any position to disagree with someone who had just made him both a saint and a scribe.

“Then by the powers once invested in me by the Council of Wizards, I dub thee Nicholas Wordsmith.”  He smiled.  “Nicholas, for short,” he added.

Thus it came to pass that an unwanted computer was bestowed with the name of Nicholas Wordsmith at the command of the august Council of Wizards.  For Nicholas, it really was his very first experience of the spirit of Christmas.  The Wizard had presented him with the gift of his very own name.