The Fledgling Necromancer

I

Sometimes spells work wonders, transform the terrain (hearts & minds), move obstinate mountains, transfix the masses, or lull the world to sleep. Sometimes they do nothing. The lamenting necromancer knew the “do nothing” spells all too well. This is why he was constantly forlorn. Every time the ineffective and ineffectual spells did nothing but fizzle out in front of him in a cloud of feeble “poof”, the necromancer slammed his fists down on his table of magical books, manuscripts, and arcane scrolls. “Blasted dumb spells!” he cursed in solitude. “When will you work? When will you transform my world?” The cursing was usually followed by a dejected walk through the woods and some psychoactive tea. When the tea took effect, the lament briefly disintegrated. His body felt numb, calm, happy. On some occasions, his body felt practically non-existent.

II

The intoxicated state eventually died. When the tide of memories washed the pebbles of his personality back into the sea of lamentations, the necromancer disconcertingly realized that the callused hand of reality had just slapped him upside the head. The necromancer then scampered back to his library of alchemical texts to commence his work for another day. He avidly studied the mystical formulae of dead hermeticists, rosicrucians, wizards, and other technicians of the soul. For hours and hours, he sat motionless like a rapt corpse, staring at the sigils of masters. At the end of the day, he always tried to influence his environment with indecipherable words. “Moo-lock, Moo-lock, Moloch, Moloch,” he intoned. “Mu, Mu, Mu, Moloch.” His efforts were always fruitless. Frustrated and fatigued, the necromancer always returned to the ancient woods behind his cabin. Then, by a small fire of singing flames, he drugged himself with the psychoactive tea. Lamentations very briefly vanished. Narcotic ecstasy very briefly emerged.

III

On his fifty-third birthday, the necromancer discovered a dead blue jay on a trail of multicolored leaves. The bird was missing his left foot. His wings were bedraggled and stained with dirt. Compassionately, the necromancer cradled the dead bird in his wrinkled hands and walked it back to his lonely cabin. In an old, worn-out shoebox, the necromancer placed the lifeless blue jay. For the rest of the day, the necromancer watched the motionless form and deeply contemplated the silence between them. He tried to imagine the life it once experienced, the trees it once cavorted in, the nests it once made, and the worms it once devoured and relished. When the to-be-expected feeling of sorrowful dejection reached its daily climax within him, the necromancer reached for his sacred pot of tea. Before he fell asleep, the necromancer put some of the tea on the cold beak of the dead blue jay.

IV

The fluttering of cold wings woke up a flummoxed necromancer. The blue jay was outside of the shoebox, knocking into dusty pieces of furniture, maniacally swerving this way and that. The exultant bird even knocked over the necromancer’s copy of the “Sefer Yetzirah,” a cabalistic text purportedly able to give life to clay, dirt, or anything inanimate. The necromancer didn’t know what to say or think as he watched the winged creature explore his home. Before the necromancer could say a word, the blue jay miraculously spoke:

“You have given me life. Your marvelous tea courses through my veins. What nectar! Where do you keep it? Please give me more. More! More! The tea is the elixir of immortality. Say…do you have a spare bedroom?”

For the rest of his days on earth, the necromancer gave his precious tea to a vexing little blue jay. The blue jay constantly got in the necromancer’s way and demanded gratuitous things from him. This irked him to no end.

V

He should have known. He should have known the tea had revivifying properties that could raise the dead. He should have known magic works in the subtle and halcyon state of calm liquids. He should have known that a depressant for a man is a stimulant for a bird. He should have studied harder. He should’ve been more careful.