A Single Feather
by Jeff Gard
When Kevra the Wizard died, the whole magical kingdom descended on the village of Thessbrew for the funeral and, more importantly, to see who would inherit his grimoire of theriomancy, an obscure branch of the arcane arts that one could use to talk to squirrels and other animals.
Still, magic was magic, and one could never have enough books.
Rory did not care about the book. He had come to pay his respects, but there was such a crowd that he couldn’t even see the casket. When he tried to squeeze his way past a couple of centaurs, one of them backhanded him.
“Mind your betters, boy,” said the centaur with a huff.
Rory bit his bottom lip to keep from crying. He hadn’t cried since his father’s funeral.
It had been an ugly cry full of snot and sniffling, great spasms of grief that started in the hollow pit of his stomach. His mother hadn’t said two words. She was off flirting with the landlord, who promised to erase the lingering debts if she would share his bed for a few nights.
They couldn’t even afford a proper casket. Rory had torn some old lumber from the shed housing their forge to make a crude box unworthy of the man who had taught him to shoe a horse and hammer steel into a hardened blade.
“It’s a fine casket,” said a man wearing a robe of raven’s feathers.
Rory had heard of the Wizard Kevra but had never seen him before. Instead of a staff, the wizard had a pole with a birdhouse at one end. A white-breasted nuthatch peeked out from the hole and spat out, “Ha. Ha. Ha.”
That same pole was now thrust into the ground outside Kevra’s cottage. A group of wizards gathered around the birdhouse, where it was rumored that Kevra had hidden his grimoire. The only problem was the simple wooden structure would not easily yield its secrets.
Fierbarre, a master of the elements, summoned lightning to split open the birdhouse, but a stray bolt struck him in the chest and killed him instantly. Drollvrax, the shapeshifter, shrank to the size of a sparrow, and his robes transformed into wings. When he darted toward the opening, he was snatched out of the air by a red-tailed hawk and devoured.
Shamrom, the necromancer, wielded a crooked staff with a skeletal hand at one end, gripping the largest emerald Rory had ever seen.
“Stand back, pretenders! You are too nearsighted in the arcane arts to deal with such an obvious puzzle.”
She drew a strange symbol in the ground. Dirt bubbled as dead earthworms, ants, and spiders emerged and crawled up the pole. The sky darkened with wings and piercing cries. Birds of all shapes and sizes made short work of the invaders inching up the pole. Then they plucked out Shamrom’s eyes.
“Bet she didn’t see that coming,” said one of the centaurs.
“I haven’t seen you around here,” Rory said. “Did you know my father?”
The wizard peered into the coffin. “Once upon a time, we were best friends. My father hated magic and tried to beat the gift out of me, but your father, Edmund, was always there to tend my wounds and offer me sanctuary.”
“Okay,” Rory said skeptically. His father had never mentioned the wizard. Not once.
The wizard handed him a red-orange feather that felt warm to the touch. “I want you to have this phoenix feather.”
“Does it raise the dead?”
“That’s not how magic works.”
Rory flinched as his giggling mother laid her hand on the landlord’s sweating arm. “Maybe it should. If my father were still here, I wouldn’t have to deal with them. Magic that doesn’t solve our problems doesn’t seem like magic at all.”
The wizard fixed his eyes on Rory. The stare was impenetrable and uncomfortable, like the wizard was rooting around Rory’s brain for a specific answer.
“Problems that need magic to solve them aren’t really solvable problems.” The wizard shrugged. “Plus, you should never underestimate the value of a single feather.”
Turned out, phoenix feathers were incredibly rare. Rory sold the feather, paid his father’s debts, and bought the forge outright. However, that didn’t keep his mother from sharing her bed with the landlord.
Rory pulled a metallic feather from his pocket. It was made from battered sheets of copper, tin, and brass. Although he had polished it, the feather seemed dull in the company of centaurs, witches, wizards, fairies, and dryads.
“Ha. Ha. Ha.” The white-breasted nuthatch cocked its head at Rory.
A pair of warblers flitted to the ground, followed by a flycatcher. Then came the thrushes, nightingales, finches, and firetails. Grouse and wild turkey strutted over to see Rory’s gift. Golden eagles and tawny owls cleared a path toward the casket with their great wings.
The crowd cringed and covered its eyes, worried that the birds might do. Even the centaurs backed up, their hooves pawing the ground nervously.
As Rory approached Kevra’s casket, he noticed nobody was crying. Everyone was so busy trying to figure out the magical birdhouse that none had approached the dead wizard.
Rory slid the metallic feather under the wizard’s stiff hands.
The nuthatch retrieved a shrunken fig from its birdhouse. The bird dropped the leathery object in Rory’s hands, and the dried piece of fruit transformed into a thick leather book.
“Impossible,” someone said.
“He’s just a boy,” whispered another scandalized voice.
The crowd watched him, waiting for him to uproot the birdhouse and claim Kevra’s raven feather cloak. A few witches and wizards secretly prepared spells, waiting to challenge him for Kevra’s legacy.
But Rory dropped the grimoire into the casket. He had his own forge and several stepbrothers and sisters, courtesy of his mother and the landlord. All for the price of a single feather. That was magic enough.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff likes to keep his inner demons happy, for they always bring him the best story ideas. When he isn’t writing or teaching students how to write, he enjoys procrastination in all its forms. His stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Arcanist.
