In which the conquest doesn't begin, and Wormwood consumes his remaining wishes.
The day starts unforgiving, and from the very first few minutes Wormwood can tell their conquest is already postponed.
Cedric wakes up late. It takes him an unusually long time to get up, even with Wormwood screeching and spitting at the window, trying to intimidate the smug seagull outside.
"Oh, Father sent me the wand-case via night-express mail, how thoughtful," Cedric says, stumbling out of bed to open the window, voice all scratchy from sleep and yet high with delight. He makes to take the package, but the post-bird lets out a loud mew and lunges at his hand. "And... it's pay on delivery. Of course. Just a moment."
As Cedric sets to search his day clothes' pockets for coins, the seagull sneers and makes to step onto the inner windowsill like he owns the place. Wormwood bristles.
"Take another step in here and you can kiss your rectrices goodbye, seagull," he hisses.
"Yeah? Tell that to my night shift, blackbird, I don't care," the impudent retorts. He props the joint of his wing on the package and gestures rudely to Cedric. "And tell this idiot to get a move, will ya? Do I look like I got all day?"
Wormwood shoots forward like a black arrow, and after that it's only the noise of ripped feathers, loud cawing, and window slamming, and no amount of stop it, stop it, dude, chill, I'm just doing my job! is enough to placate the raven's territorial fury.
"Oh, hush," is Cedric's only comment, as he unceremoniously throws the coins out the window for the post-bird to catch. "Shoo, skedaddle, you stupid bird."
The seagull, half his tail lost to Wormwood's bill and talons, flies off yelling the kind of epithets one ever only hears around harbours of a certain fame.
"Hah! Victory is ours," Wormwood caws triumphantly, fluttering in tight circles around Cedric. "I can still hold my ground in a fight, see!"
But the sorcerer just swats at him, covering his eyes and grimacing. "You too, Wormy, settle down... you're giving me motion sickness."
Wormwood, enthusiasm curbed, lands on the footboard and looks up at him critically. Cedric isn't feeling well, and it shows: he looks like he hasn't slept a wink. Cedric was never one to need many hours of sleep to spring up awake and refreshed, and now, as he dresses for the day and climbs the stairs to the workshop, his movements are slow, and he's shivering at every draught in the cold air of the tower. He laments his head is spinning, and a tingle in all his nerves.
"Merlin's Mushrooms, I must be incubating a cold," Cedric whines, hunched over the escritoire, rubbing his temples. Face scrunched up in discomfort, he cranes his neck back to cast a look of longing upon the Family Wand, poised in the centre of his workstation. He pulls the stretchy skin of his face down, until he resembles a ghostly, grotesque mask, moaning wistfully. "Now I can't even try it out, not until I shake this cold off! How bothersome."
"Huh?" Wormwood caws, in a tone interrogative enough to be understood.
"Well, for starters, it would mess up the calibration," Cedric explains, sighing and letting go of his face.
Even if the raven hadn't asked, he would have probably explained anyway. But Wormwood doesn't dislike the thought of the two of them talking... sort of. Therefore he listens, accumulating some more of the knowledge he won't ever use.
The Family Wand, Cedric says, is almost three centuries old. It has been handcrafted by the revered Solomon the Sentient, six generations ago, during the darkest time of Enchancian history.
"Father always says, it might very well be the most peculiar instrument of its kind! It is no plain old wand, you see, those are carved and lacquered and polished until they can catalyse magical energy so precisely that any child can brandish it and scrap up some spell!" he says, impressively, in a single breath. "Oh no, the Family Wand is nothing but a severed branch from one of the rarest wandwood trees―the Silver Yew, nearly extinct―and it's never been primed or shaped, just left to ferment in wand-making solution for a long time, I think longer than any other! Exciting, isn't it?"
The combination of the prime matter's innate magic and an unique catalyst solution have moulded the Family Wand into an instrument of raw and unaltered power. A characteristic that, at least to Cedric's understanding of the process, by definition renders any magical artefact incredibly powerful, but also indomitable.
"Or whimsical, if you will. After all, if it were so straightforward a process, anyone could make a wand like this one, right?" Cedric asks rhetorically, and Wormwood knows to give him a raspy grok sound in answer. Cedric nods at him approvingly, only to wince in pain and cradle his head right after.
To distract himself from his blooming migraine, he keeps explaining: any sorcerer trying to use this Wand should always be in top shape, because its accuracy relies entirely on the user's ability and concentration. He applies the orange cube to the tip one more time, then starts to lovingly polish the glass case Goodwyn sent.
"This wand has a long long history. It has slain dragons, battled ogres, conjured entire armies, wrecked havoc through enemy ranks!" Cedric says, in that elated high voice. Then, with a light shrug of resignation, he adds, "And... the greatest of instruments does require the greatest of wielding hands, after all."
At this, Wormwood squawks in annoyance: with that attitude, who could ever wield such a thing? He feels so easily vexed today, so much more than usual. It was the seagull, he decides. For sure. Waking up to a seagull in his turf, of all things, has to be one of his least favourite ways to start the day. Second only to meeting a rival raven, probably.
Things get better at breakfast, since Cedric barely touches his. His mother included in the case package a bag of seedy oatmeal with fruit―raisins, Cedric groans, nudging them towards Wormwood―a little bag of jelly-beans―which puts a tender smile on his face for some reason―and homemade rye bread. Wormwood pecks from his plate, and the sorcerer doesn't even pretend to be annoyed. He just keeps looking at the Wand with that faraway gaze, lost in thought someplace Wormwood can't seem to reach.
"How does one actually go about conquering a kingdom?" Cedric muses, out of nowhere, absentmindedly swatting a stray seagull feather from the desk. "Even if I could wield the power...?"
"Easy. You march into the throne room, sit down on the biggest chair, and do away with anyone who wants you to get up," Wormwood tells him through a mouthful of bread. Cedric not only ignores him, but doesn't even remind him to go easy on the bread. The raven bites off more, purely out of spite.
"I think I should wait," he murmurs, quick, as if saying it loud and clear could bring some unknown misfortune on his head. "Right? I can't even use the Wand for now, anyway."
"Excuses, excuses," Wormwood caws, imitating Goodwyn's voice. Startled, Cedric leaps in his chair and throws a look around. The rest, the raven mutters unheard, "What are you, a Royal Sorcerer or a royal scaredy-cat?"
"Oh, don't you quote my father at me now, you smarty-mouth," Cedric huffs, hand on his chest, and it's barely the second time he acknowledges Wormwood's presence since they woke up. "If I want to take a day off, I'll take it."
Wormwood doesn't quite know how or why, but something snaps. At full volume, releasing all of his frustration, he yells at Cedric to put his sorry self to work, that he wasted enough time already, that it's time to get a move, like the darn seagull said. Cedric, of course, can't understand a single word, and resorts to yelling back. It escalates, mountain pebble to avalanche, and rolls down and down, either of them unable to stop it. By lunchtime, they are both exhausted.
"Wormwood, will you please, please pipe down?" Cedric groans, exasperated. "My head's killing me―why are you so cranky this morning?"
"Because you never listen to me!" Wormwood can hear the frustration in his own voice, so near despair that he's almost glad the other can only hear him squawk. "And it's taking you ages to do something so simple! If you could just hear a word I'm saying!"
"Actually, if you must know," Cedric starts to say, in accidental coherence, "I've been thinking of q―"
A familiar knock on the door cuts the end of his sentence off.
"Oh, what now?!" Cedric spats, voice roughed up by all the shouting, cracking into a cough.
"Cedric, you are needed up at the top floor," says Baileywick's prim voice, straight to business. "A broken window caused a minor flood during the night, and there is no time to order a new one before it rains again. Please come quickly."
"Can't you just board it up? I'm in the middle of something," Cedric answers curtly, with a wide encompassing gesture. Baileywick throws an indifferent gaze around the room, taking in the unchanged mess from the day before.
"King's orders," the Stewart need only say, making Cedric twitch upright like someone zapped him with an hex.
"Fine, fine," he mutters, getting up so forcefully the stool rolls off and crashes into the shelving. A book falls spine-down, and stays splayed on the floor. Cedric slams the door in that way that makes it bounce back open, but he doesn't even glance back.
Wormwood fumes. Left alone in the middle of the most frustrating, pointless, nerve-wracking discussion of his life, his eyes dart about the workshop for something to destroy before he spontaneously combusts.
In the span of a single beat, as if guided by gravity itself, his slitted eyes fall on the Wand.
Cedric went to conquer it without him, and came back with idiotic doubts and more delays. It needs to go. Wormwood flutters to the desk, landing full on his claws without even attempting to be careful, and full of righteous fury he slaps the glass case over the edge with a flap of his tail. He waits eagerly for the crash―and there is none.
The Wand and its case bounce off the floor, defying physics with a mocking magical chime. Just vaguely, through a wall of frustration, the raven notices the Wand's tip points at the window.
Next thing he knows, he's flying in circles just under the roof, debating with himself if it's high enough to get the magical glass to shatter on the floor.
"Good luck conquering the kingdom without this―!"
Only at the sound of his own voice he processes what he's doing. Glad no one has seen anything, Wormwood comes to ground level again and sets the case down, peeved to no end. Mostly at himself. He was about to actively hinder the conquest, the very same conquest that got him worked up in the first place.
"You win this time, Wand," he says, shoving the glass case with a bit less force. It merely tips over on the desk and, to his surprise, the Family Wand rolls out, unprotected. Eyebrows raised, he touches it with the tip of his talon: nothing, no magical shield of any sorts to prevent him from grabbing it. "Hah! You got played, just like that stupid old Well."
He halts. Now, that's an interesting idea.
Nobody goes in that area, if he hides the Wand there for a while... it will be enough to teach his ungrateful sorcerer a valuable lesson.
Wormwood hops out the door Cedric left open, silver wand grabbed firmly in his talons, just like the gift he brought only the day before. With a final disdainful huff directed at the whole workshop, he leaves the foyer's stone window behind in a determined flap of wings.
He climbs higher and higher into the windy late morning, working his frustration into the strain of muscle it takes him to reach above the low layer of thick grey clouds.
There, unblocked midday sun on his back, he catches an updraught to ride and glides gratefully onto the air's support, like warm hands carrying him, taking him somewhere new, somewhere old, anywhere. A sigh disperses in the quiet ridges of wind, unheard.
When Wormwood dips lower, following the current, the entire kingdom lies in the span of his vision, the way it lies in Cedric's gloved palm in the little illusions he likes to conjure, to remind himself of the ominous schemes that seem to have grown so distant from his mind.
The raven keeps an eye on the sun, and from its slow descent westwards to the faraway green hills, he guesses no more than a couple of hours have passed. He doesn't know if it's due to the mental or physical strain, but he's already tired. There was a time, many years ago, when he could fly for days on end without needing much rest, a time when he was resilient enough to hunt if he so pleased.
Nowadays he doesn't go out as much, preferring the silence and reserve of the lair. He's almost left behind the joy of playing in the air for the sake of it, of discovering the unexplored, the entrancement of reflective surfaces. Already, he thinks as he abandons the warm updraught to make his way back, he's not as fast as he used to be.
Old age looms over him like an immense, unknowable shadow, a white fog of unknown he never wants to explore―and he knows being an ill omen incarnate won't save him from it. Magic has always taken care of his aches, his moulting feathers, the painful dampness in his hollow bones; yet, he knows for a fact that a raven's lifespan―even the companion of a sorcerer―hardly ever reaches three decades.
With the horizon of his life approaching, in a glimpse of clarity as sharp as his eyes looking in the distance, he sees that it's already too late. He'll never be Cedric's Royal Advisor. The fog seems to come out of nowhere, blotting out the horizon, like another ill omen.
He glances down at the wand in his talons, and for a moment he's tempted to drop it again. They have never even discussed how a King would go about electing a bird as his Royal Advisor, nor how he'd listen to the given advice. Cedric probably just meant that he'll decide everything on his own, it suddenly occurs to him.
"Well, good luck," he mutters, so late on the deception it makes him cringe. "He can't even find a spell to snatch a necklace from a child. Even with me as a Royal Advisor, the fool would still be hopeless."
If he were a human, he wouldn't have this problem: he could talk, and all the advice he tries to give daily wouldn't go unheard.
He thinks of the time the Princess got herself changed into a cat―how helpless she was without her human voice, and how freely Cedric spoke of animal-to-human transformation, as if it were the easiest spell in the book.
"Maybe it's worth looking into," he settles, circling the castle ground.
Out of nowhere, a pang of hunger derails his gloomy thoughts towards more earthly needs.
The Well's clearing, where he made his perennial blackberry grow, reminds him of his intention of hiding the Wand for a while. For the moment, tired of carrying it, he only sets the it on the white marble bench, and turns his attention to the food. He shall revel in eating his fill by himself, not bringing back even a single one.
At first glance, the bramble looks the same. Yet, he thinks, peering closer, something seems different.
It's a bit bigger, to begin with, but that doesn't surprise him much: after all, it's born of magic. It's still a glorious sight, smooth green leaves and tangled vines ripe with huge black fruits, as if the season were nearing Summer Solstice instead of Hallow's Eve. Rather, there is a striking change in the surrounding plants, starting from the grass at its root, dry and yellowed in a span of at least four feet. Wormwood glances up again, to the lush blackberry that sprawls and towers over the drying laurel of the hedge, and the chestnut tree precociously bare of its leaves.
"You eat a lot, don't you?" he notes, almost affectionately, though of course the plant won't answer.
He guesses it needs a lot of sunlight and minerals from the soil, and it's therefore raiding the neighbouring plants of their share and killing them. Simple survival of the fittest, the ravens say.
Wormwood eats most of the berries on the spot, so that he won't be tempted to bring any home. When he glances over at the Well, an image comes to him unasked, of human hands carrying a heap of fruit in their palms. If he were human, he could bring them back... just to eat them right in front of Cedric, if anything. He flutters back to the bench, closing his prehensile foot around the Wand again. If he were human―
"I have more wishes to grant, Royal Advisor," the Well murmurs sweetly, and its call came almost expected, in a way.
It's still there, golden and overly polite in the overcast light of mid afternoon. As he was flying overhead earlier, Wormwood noticed a dense white fog in the distance, and now he can smell it coming closer. There is rarely fog over Enchancia.
He wonders if the Well can predict the future. He wonders if he can use one of his remaining wishes to get a glimpse of the future. He grips the Wand tighter. He wonders if―
"Or should I say, perhaps, Your Majesty?"
Wormwood flies to the stone edge, to look into the inexpressive golden eyes.
"I am but a poor old crow," he says again, threading lightly, opening his wings once more. "What do I have to wish for, beside my bare necessities?"
"All the uses of a great hand," the Well suggests readily. Wormwood flexes his black wing, long remiges preened to impeccable order. "To wield the greatest of instruments."
"Hands would be of no use to me," Wormwood retorts. He glances down at the Wand, still trapped under his clawed foot, and no amount of haughtiness can cover the hesitation in his voice as he speaks, "Human life is nothing to me."
"But human lives are longer," the Well spells out for him, with a slight edge of salesman's pitch. "All the uses of more time would be at your disposal, to use as others waste theirs."
For a moment, the raven falls silent. Somewhere deep in himself, he always knew: Cedric will never make it in time, will never keep his promises. He doesn't even―care, he thinks bitterly, if I roll over and die without having taken my rightful place on―by the throne.
And Wormwood can't even tell him.
Before he knows it, he's given in. He hops back to the glorious bramble, and with his sharp bill he plucks the last vine, heavy with seven dark berries as big as an eyeball. Upon throwing them into the uncanny golden mouth and hearing the faint splash several feet down, his stomach tightens greedily at the waste. Maybe it isn't such a good idea, after all―but his voice is already making the wish.
"I wish I were a human sorcerer of great power," he declares. "A man that this kingdom would fear."
The Well tells him that his wish is granted, and its magic starts working without a moment's notice.
As the golden glow irradiates his feathered body, Wormwood has no time to think or rethink any of his actions, or imagine any of the consequences. All is blinding light that filters through his tense eyelids, through the whole of him, and all is compressed into the painful stretch of magic changing him to his very essence.
When he opens his eyes, all is over, and he's still gasping for breath. He is high up, as if he were flying, but he can feel the ground under his feet. All of him feels different, changed, other.
Disoriented, he cannot keep his balance; falling over is a lot more painful than expected. Breathing hard into the yellowing grass, he brings his new human hands in front of his face. They are nothing like he imagined: they are gangly, wrinkled things―with the skin as black and thin as the leather-bound covers of Goodwyn's three generations hand-me-down books, the kind that tears around the corners when Cedric dog-ears them. At the end of his spindly fingers, where Cedric's hands have blunt transparent nails, he has long and grainy arched claws.
All his limbs feel numb and unsteady, and he has to fight with all of them to climb to his feet. He gets impatient at this body's lack of coordination, groaning through alien, dry vocal cords. He refuses to give up, and in the end he manages to stand, undignified on his trembling human legs, like a newborn foal moving his first step. Kings stand and walk, he shouts at himself, so he needs to stand and walk. Breathing in with those huge, brittle lungs, he leans over the Well to see his reflection in the golden slab.
"Wishing Well," the raven asks, in a croaky lisped voice that sends an awful chill down his back, "why do I look like a dragon's grandfather?"
His tongue is big and heavy to move, but he pushes it to the front of his mouth, where he knows humans have two rows of teeth; he finds only battered gum that tastes of raw flesh. He shudders. His aching back, impossible to pull straight no matter how he tries, starts to bead in cold sweat.
"What you see is merely the human equivalent of your age." The Well's sweet voice couldn't sound more hateful to his hard ears. "The age you would be, without all the magical aid you have received. Unfortunately, your wager could cover nothing more."
The leathery face in the reflection twists in a paroxysm of terror. The fruits came from the Well's magic, and he used them to pay for a wish. Loops are always unpredictable, Cedric's voice says in his head, reading to him an interesting passage from some old book he found, you never know what they'll spit out when you create one.
What have I done, he thinks in dismay, barely able to take in his appearance, the sheer pain of existing in this body. If he were a human, he'd have tufts of white hair and no teeth, and these grey wires sprouting from his chin down to the ground―he runs an unsteady hand over the grey hair and battered face of this... this―codger his human equivalent is. He looks older than Cedric's father―this is horrible, it can't do.
"You have one wish remaining," the Well says, offering the solution like a forbidden fruit. The monotone voice takes a thinly veiled edge of greed. "The perfect wager lays at your feet, Your Majesty."
His old withered claws scratching the Well's stone for support as he bends on creaky legs, Wormwood picks up the Family Wand. He must have knocked it down when he grabbed the edge.
This, he thinks in an instant of perfect clarity, staring down at the silver branch in his hand, won't be forgiven. But his hand trembles, and his knees ache, he can barely see and barely breathe. Who could live like this, with the white fog of death looming so close, like a suspended sword over his head? This can't be, it can't be his future.
"My years of raven," he wheezes, his voice shaking with strain and fear as he throws Cedric's wand into the Well's eager mouth, "I wish changed to years of man."
"Your last wish," the Well says, its velvety voice echoing through the empty Queensgrave and somehow as booming as thunder, "has been granted."
A tenfold brighter than the previous one, the golden glow of Wormwood's third wish irradiates him and the whole clearing, shooting skywards like a beam from the depths of the earth. He keeps his eyes open as much as he can, espying with fascination the new, tough flesh filling in his empty skin, galvanized in the returning strength in his limbs.
This new change comes without a single lick of pain, yet his breathing still comes short and quick, through lungs that still feel huge, as strong as a blacksmith's bellows. The Well's light tingles on the swarthy skin of his new human form, the velvety colour of loquat seeds bathed in a golden flame, the same everywhere but his hands and feet, which are pure, charcoal-black.
The face reflected in the mirror-like slab―way too clear and crisp to be a mere reflection―is now smooth and chiseled, with a high aquiline nose reminiscent of his bill, and the bright green eyes he always liked in himself, the mark of his botanical namesake. He looks down, flexing his hands experimentally, inspecting his bare physiognomy down to the onyx-black feet firmly planted in the brittle, yellowed grass. Now, this is more like it, he thinks, between relief and awe.
"Humans usually cover their skin," he tells the Well, schooling his new facial muscles into a dismissive sneer.
"Test your abilities, if you care for such sensibilities," the Well croons in its sing-song voice, spitting out something in a second, brief flash of light. A wand, as black as a moonless night and in the shape of a familiar rough branch, floats into his open hands.
Wormwood, the air starting to bite at his featherless form, tests the grip of his clawed, flexible fingers. The hands are complex to control, and incredibly strong; the Wand, a considerable weight to carry for his raven form, now looks like a small twig ready to snap in his grasp. A few moments pass, and the cold makes itself noticeable in small raised bumps all over him.
"Humans do have terrible insulation," he considers out loud, running the claw-tips of his free hand through the only protection on his skin―the dense black hair on his head, that feel just the same as his raven's feathers.
"Hence, the need for clothes," the Well points out, somewhat surprisingly. Wormwood glances back at it.
"What do you know? You are a Well," he rebuts with unrestrained mocking. Although, it does make sense: out in the cold in his new bare skin, now he understands the need to drape oneself from head to toe in woven thread and animal hide.
"I've been here for a long, long time," the Well says, with the slightest inflection of tone, as if recollecting a past long gone. "I know humans better than most. Their fears, their desires, and the paths they are lead on."
Wormwood elects to ignore the Well and its sudden loquacity, otherwise concerned. For his first magic trick, it doesn't seem such a terrible idea to provide himself with coverage.
He's seen humans wear clothes all his life. Every morning, Cedric's routine is the same, nightgown pulled over his head―seeing how often he gets stuck, there has to be a better way to do it... not that Wormwood was ever able to ask―then from the bottom up, socks, undershirt, breeches, shirt, suspenders, vest, ribbon, robe. He knows the name of each and every garment, and knows the exact shape and function of none.
He needs something simpler. Instinctively, as he dwells on the matter he starts pacing to warm himself up, like Cedric starts doing on the first chilly days of the year. Sometimes, when the winter that follows is so harsh the windows fern over in frost and the old heater gives up on them, he wears an old blue blanket on his shoulders, like a cloak.
"Got it!" He waves the wand, in a movement he knows the shape of but never practiced, swinging it around himself. The gesture is direct, uncoordinated in the way small human children move; all the same, cloth bursts from the tip of his wand like a black waterfall, falling over him.
Ecstatic, he spreads the black fabric wide: he managed to conjure a big, slightly irregular rectangle; he was going for a cape, but this could work as a sheet at best.
With a slightly disappointed sigh, he fashions it around his body the way that covers him the most, until it resembles the cloak he meant it to be. The cloth drapes over his body, covering his feet and the grass around them, hemmed in long jagged fringes that speak to him of his lost plumage. To keep it closed in the front, he marches to the tree and snaps a twig from it, then forcefully threads it through the fabric, as a very crude sewing pin. Wormwood lifts his hands to admire his work, turning slowly on his heels.
He can do magic. He managed to dress himself, on his first try.
"Seems like this wand was in need of a new master, after all," he says out loud, pleased. This time, the Well stays silent.
His theft is the last thing on Wormwood's mind as he relishes in victory, nearly euphoric as he gazes down at the Wand in his hands. Maybe it was meant to be, like Cedric always says. Impatient to use it again, he starts to call to his memory all the spells he can remember.
As his second trick, he sets to conjure a rush of air, like the stroke of huge wings. It takes him only three attempts to create one strong enough to uproot part of the hedge.
"Hah!" he shouts, closing his hand into a fist. "Now, what else have we got...?"
Training himself in wand-wielding is not easy, but he has thirty years of observer's experience to aid him. He remembers every advice Goodwyn has given Cedric, and every theory book he's read.
It occupies most of the afternoon, and by dinnertime Wormwood feels confident he could hold his ground in a fight. If he wishes to study more, though, he needs the books he hasn't yet read.
He glances at castle, stark against the reddening sun, and watches the clouds around it fracture into a scattering of uncharted islands lined in bright pink. The sun melts into bluish fog behind them, sinking behind the castle's towers. It starts to drizzle, and he lowers his eyes before seeing the three black shapes flying in unison above the towers.
Wormwood cleans his feet on the grass, puts the Wand in the folds of his cloak, and assumes he looks presentable. Without a glance behind, he's out of the Well's clearing―which, also unseen, completely dried to a dull yellow―and marching towards the castle.
Wormwood calls himself an old crow ironically.