Chronicles of Wizard Prang
by Stafford Beer

Contents

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Wizard Prang put down his sharpest knife and the pair of chopsticks he was sharpening, and went to open the door.

Blodwyn had come to visit him. He had not seen her with a bicycle before.

'Come in,' he welcomed her. 'I have just made some tea.'

They took some tea and Blodwyn explained about the bike.

'Bob Amser saw me passing. He always is, I mean does. Seems you asked him to look out for two cycle wheels for some invention you were planning. He found the old bike, and the wheels were on it. He said I might as well ride it here as carry the wheels!'

They took off the wheels, and the wizard put them in his store beside the supply of logs. He hoped very much that Blodwyn would not press him on the nature of his proposed invention, because he had totally forgotten what it was. It would be written down on a piece of paper somewhere, he thought.

Blodwyn stayed for nearly three hours. Wizard Prang knew that he would now be capable of the extremely tricky spell that he had been putting off.

Blodwyn looked as blonde and neat as she always did.

'Do I look dishevelled?' asked the wizard.

'You always looked dishevelled,' answered Blodwyn, but her voice was kind.

Perny spent most of the day sitting in a tree two miles away. It was a favourite spot when she was really working hard. She had that week mastered a particular stage of her apprenticeship and needed to exercise her new power. Anyway, this was why Wizard Prang had said he would take her out that night to dine at a Chinese restaurant. The nearest one was thirty two miles away, but that doesn't mean much to wizards intent on food.

Wizard Prang was even more threatened by rice than he was by toast. It was, however, Perny's evening, and her choice. Perny was an omnivore. At least the wizard liked shrimps. He loved them.

When Perny came into the room she was carrying a bicycle saddle. The haft was gleaming like the family silver and the leather was soft and glowing.

'Look what I've found,' she said. 'Remember asking me to look out for a bicycle saddle?'

'Why, yes,' the wizard lied.

'Well, I came back by the back path, and someone had dumped a wheel less bike down there. I've spent more than an hour cleaning it up!'

'Thank you so much,' said the wizard.

He realized that he would have to start some sort of file for bits of paper with ideas for contraptions on them.

Perny peered at Wizard Prang through half closed eyes.

'A woman was here today.' Her voice came slowly, as if from a distance. Her eyes shut altogether. She paused. ‘I think it was Blodwyn!'

'Right first time' said the wizard heartily: 'Congratulations'.

They prepared to leave.

'Don't sulk,' said Wizard Prang. 'It's your celebration.'

Perny wandered out to look at the stream while Wizard Prang got ready. She squatted by the water's edge, noticing the vortices created by sharp stones, entrapped twigs. She changed the direction of a swirl by identifying with it rather than by exerting power.

Perny was growing up. It (whatever "it" maybe) was getting dark. Wizard Prang had not appeared. She found him sitting in his accustomed chair, dressed in a parka against the night air, which a Canadian shishya had given him. Perny loved the parka, which was made of wool, and had big squares of dark green and black woven into it.

Perny liked to think of herself as a shishya too, rather than as an "apprentice" still less as a "pupil", or (even worse) a "disciple".

'Shishya,' Wizard Prang had whispered to her in the middle of one night.

'What are you calling me?' she asked.

'The word is Sanskrit,' the wizard said. 'Stop worrying about whether you are my apprentice, or my pupil, or my disciple.'

She was worrying. It was true.

'It's not the nouns that are worrying you, as you suspect,' the wizard said tenderly. 'It's the possessive pronoun my. You are not "my" anything. Forget it and go to sleep!'

Perny trusted the wizard, and in some way understood his disclaimer. But if not apprentice, pupil, disciple ... what? She was sleepy, but that made the bothersome issue sharper.

'OK,' she said (and how he wished she hadn't): 'what does this Sanskrit word Shishya actually mean?'

'One who is to be taught,' said Wizard Prang.

Now he was sitting in his accustomed chair, wearing his Canadian parka with his head locked onto his left shoulder. He looked struck down, a latter day Job.

'Hello Perny,' he said from the side of his mouth. 'I can't come. I'm totally stuck.'

Perny inspected him closely.

'You are all tense,' she said. 'Relax.'

Perny disentangled the wizard's beard from the zip fastener of his parka. He got up sheepishly.

She said: 'Have you practiced your chopsticks? You know what happened to your shrimp last time. A waiter skidded on one, and you had to cure a broken leg and severe concussion before he realized he had fallen. You were exhausted for a week.'

'I don't know how you remember all these trivia. Take a look at these.'

The Wizard produced his sharpened chopsticks with a flourish, and made stabbing motions at the air. Perny thought for a split second that a speared shrimp had appeared on one of then but she blinked and it wasn't there.

'My sainted aunt,' she said. 'Are you planning to use those things?'

'Certainly,' he answered grandly.

'They'll throw you out,' said Perny.

Chapter Five

Table of Contents

Chapter Seven