The magician’s dog is a small terrier thing with coarse wiry hair. The magician calls him Rowan because of the reddish tint to his brown coat. He might weigh as much as twenty pounds soaking wet. Maybe. There’s a bald patch on his left shoulder from a bout with mange a few years back and one of his ears has a notch missing from a scrap with a tomcat.
The dog is the kind of ratty little thing that most people would overlook. The dog doesn’t mind being overlooked, because he has a secret. Not even the magician knows the secret, but that’s not saying much. Lyndon, the magician, is pretty shit at magic.
A better magician would notice the way Rowan’s aura is out of sync with his shape, suggesting some kind of transformation has occurred. Most good magicians would get curious about that and use their skills to discover that Rowan’s true form is human. A lucky one might even recognize that Rowan is none other than the missing-and-presumed-dead King Artis. However, there were only about two or three magicians in the whole world talented enough to reverse Rowan’s curse after they learned his true identity. Lydon, obviously, is not one of them.
He’s good at botany, though. That’s the one thing that reliably pays his rent, and today he’s walking back into town with a basket full of herbs, flowers, and tubers from his hike to the lake. Rowan trots along behind him, tongue lolling.
It was a marvelous walk. Rowan ate some grass, chased five rabbits, almost caught one of them before it disappeared into its little hidey hole, and pissed on too many things to count. His nose and his brain are still full of the smells of the plants and animals between here and there. It’s enough to fill his little doggie dreams for days to come. On days like today, Rowan hardly misses being a man. Men have no idea of all the sensory pleasures they’re missing out on.
“What do you say to an ale?” Lyndon asks the little dog. Rowan heads to the house of Mrs. Malster because his nose tells him that she’s got a fresh batch of ale ready to sell to her neighbors. Lyndon buys them a mug and pours a little of it out into a dish for Rowan. The dog used to have a different name, years ago, but he doesn’t mind Rowan. He’s been called a lot of things, many of them vile. As the dog laps up his drink, his little doggie beard gets coated with foam. This afternoon is just about as good a day as he’s ever had, and that’s saying something considering the hedonism of his former life.
“What’s going, Lydon?” Mrs. Malster asks as he drinks her ale.
“I’m about to do some fresh ointments. I’ve got a little pot of hand cream with your name on it if you’ve got any dinner to go along with this drink.”
“I’ve hardly enough for myself and my lads,” she says, none too pleased at the prospect of making it stretch for one more mouth. Two, if you count Rowan, but she doesn’t. Lyndon’s happy to share his portion with the dog.
Lyndon holds up a big handful of borage and some wild garlic. “You can have these to add to the stew, if that sweetens the deal.”
She grabs them and huffs off inside her little house to add them to the stew pot. As she goes, she mutters about the new taxes and how these days even a good alewife like herself can only afford a bit of bacon once a week. People mutter about taxes a lot these days. Or, maybe it’s just that Rowan never noticed before he got cursed. He’s noticed a lot of new things since that mad witch turned him into a dog.
A bit later, as Lyndon and Rowan share their meal, Rowan can taste a hint of bacon in the porridge. There are no actual chunks of bacon in the stew, but stews like this get refreshed and recycled day after day and he thinks that maybe two days ago there was real bacon in it. There’s still just a tiny bit of grease cooked into the oats. It’s a good meal. It fills his belly up. Just as he’s thinking that a nap in the late afternoon sunshine would be the ideal thing to do next, a man walks up to them.
“Hey, you’re the magician, right?” The man says to Lyndon. The man’s clothes are a little nicer than Lyndon’s and Mrs. Malster’s. They’ve probably only been handed down three times, and the patches are only one or two layers deep mostly. His body is well-muscled from hard work, but his boots are in good condition. The smell of coal and metal from his body fills Rowan’s nostrils. Blacksmith. Good, skilled work. The man certainly has more money than the other two humans have.
“I am,” Lyndon replies. At the same moment, Mrs. Malster makes a kind of “huh” sound deep in her throat like she’s almost, but not quite, ready to argue that title. She remembers the sleeping spell she asked him for to cure a bout of insomnia. She ended up sleeping for a week and almost got buried alive, because her family thought she had died. She stops herself from sharing that story, because Lyndon’s hand cream is the only thing that keeps her chapped hands from bleeding in the winter. So she doesn’t want to outright insult him.
“Good,” the man says. “I need a spell.” He looks at Mrs. Malster and hesitates. “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”
Once they’re inside of Lyndon’s little shop, Rowan goes behind the curtain that separates the work area from the sleep area of the small room. He burrows into the blankets to sleep off the full belly and ale, but before he nods off, he hears the blacksmith talking to Lyndon about how he needs a love spell.
The next day, as Lyndon works on the spell, Rowan remembers his wife. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, of course. His father’s idea to seal an alliance with the neighboring kingdom of Pencombe. Pencombe and Gateswic, united in matrimony. Oh glorious day! The wedding had been expensive, the bride haughty, and Rowan itchy. His most treasured memory of his wedding night was getting out of the heavily brocaded cloth-of-gold garments and plopping naked on his bed. Alone.
Things only got worse from there. His new wife, Bruga, was needy and demanding, always wanting him to dine with her, to talk about matters of state, to try and impregnate her. It was all a massive bore. He avoided her every chance he got, running off to go on a hunt or to see one of his mistresses. Of course none of those mistresses truly cared about him. If they had, a visit to one of them would have fixed his curse years ago. No, he realized that all they ever wanted him for was his money, the weasels.
Smoke poofs up from a bowl in front of Lyndon. The smell of singed eyebrows fills the room. “Hmm…” he says. He pokes at the mixture he’s created. Then he says, “I think that was right.”
Rowan does not share his optimism. But, what does he know about magic? Even less than Lyndon, and that’s saying something.
That night, after the two of them share their dinner, Lyndon opens a book a local apothecary loaned him. He thumbs through the index, then turns to the section about herbal remedies. Rowan jumps up on Lydon’s bench and plops down beside the magician, so his side is pressed against the man’s leg. Lyndon reaches down to pet the dog as he begins to read out loud. “A preparation of pomegranates for the treatment of loose bowels and stomach worms…”
Lyndon often reads to his dog. He doesn’t have any expectation that Rowan understands, but Rowan has learned a few things. For starters, he’s learned that most of the people who write these books have a fascination with bowels. As Lydon reads, he scratches Rowan gently along his back bone. He uses the perfect amount of pressure. Wedged between the arm of the chair and the magician, Rowan is warm and comfortable. He’d rather be here than in his old drafty castle.
The next day, Lyndon packs it up in his basket along with a pot of hand cream. The first place they go is to find the blacksmith. This is the first time Rowan’s been in a blacksmith’s shop and he’s surprised to see that most of it is missing walls. It’s more of a big roof than anything else, with just a small section in the back closed off with walls. After a few moments inside, he starts to see the logic to it, though. Between the acrid smells, the smoke, and the sweaty armpit smell from the blacksmith, he’s relieved there’s a lot of open air to thin it all out.
Lyndon sits down on a stool and the blacksmith comes over to him.
“How does it work?”
Lyndon holds out a bundle wrapped in cloth. “Inside there’s a bottle, a candle, and a twig from an apple tree. The bottle is a special potion for you to drink, but don’t drink it until there’s a full moon. You have to stand out in the moonlight and drink it while you stand on your left foot and raise your right arm in the air. Then, when you get home, light the candle and go to bed with the stick under your pillow. Oh, and you need to get some hair from the woman. Wrap her hair around the stick.”
The blacksmith doesn’t like this last part. “How am I supposed to get her hair?”
“I don’t know,” Lyndon shrugs. “I can’t do everything for you.”
“This is bullshit,” the blacksmith says. His right hand tightens on his hammer, and Rowan gets a bad feeling about where things are going.
Lyndon doesn’t pay any attention to the threat. He holds out his hand, palm up. “Of course, if you don’t want to try it, I can take it back.”
The blacksmith jerks his left hand back with the bundle in it, holding it close to his chest like a baby. “No,” he says quickly. “I have to get Winnie to love me. She’s the only one I want.”
“There you go, then” Lyndon says. “But, I have to warn you, the spell can’t make her love you. All it can do is put you in her thoughts and encourage her to think kindly of you. There’s no magic anywhere that can force love. If she has any fondness for you, this will nudge it along.”
“That’s all I need,” the blacksmith said. “She’ll see. I’m the one for her.” He grins, showing three big gaps where teeth used to be. Rowan wonders who this Winnie gal is that she’d see the man of her dreams in that grin. Oh well, he thinks, there’s no accounting for taste.
Rowan has personal experience to vouch for Lyndon’s words of caution. After eight years of marriage, he got his wife so furious that she called in a witch to put a curse on him. The witch took one look at him and said his problem was a cold heart. She said he didn’t care about his wife (true), or his kingdom (also true), or his subjects (which, again, he admitted was accurate).
When his father died and he became king, it only took him three months to realize he despised it. Ruling was the perfect combination of painfully tedious meetings and way too much pressure. To be frank, he was even worse at being a king than Lyndon is at being a magician. Rowan hated it. All that hate spilled over and, if he was being honest, it was no wonder Bruga got sick of him.
So his wife hired a witch and the witch changed him into a ratty little dog. She told him the only way to break the curse was to find true love, and dropped him out the window of a fast moving carriage in the rotten part of the city. For the first two years, he roamed from village to village and tried everything he could think of to make someone fall in love with him. All he got for his trouble was people yelling at him to get out, you stinking dog, and a few sharp kicks to the ribs.
One night he was so hungry, battered, and dejected that he stood on the bridge that went across some great big river near a port town and he stared down at the rushing water wondering how it would feel to just dive in. Would the fall kill him, or would he drown? He reached a paw out and touched the ledge. Two more steps and he’d be in the drink.
Then a voice behind him said, “Oh hello there little doggie. You look hungry.” The dog heard the sound of someone rummaging around in their pockets. “Here we are, I thought I had a bit of cheese left.” Rowan turned around and saw Lyndon crouched down, holding out a rind of cheese. “I could use a little company,” the magician said.
Rowan went to him cautiously. There were plenty of foul men he’d met that seemed nice at first. Rowan gobbled up the cheese and Lyndon smiled at him. “That’s a good little doggie,” he said. “And you’ve only got a moderate case of fleas. I’m sure I can clear that right up. I have a new recipe with fleabane that’s coming along nicely. Come on,” he motioned for Rowan to follow. That’s how a former king became the magician’s dog.
Today, on the way home from the blacksmith, they brought Mrs. Malster her pot of hand cream. She asks how it went with the blacksmith, adding, “What happens if it goes wrong?”
“I’m sure it won’t,” Lyndon says. “A love spell is an easy thing, really. I’ve done them loads of times.”
“And how many of them have worked?”
Lyndon doesn’t pay attention to the question. “I’ve added a bit of orange oil in the hand cream along with the usual lavender,” he says. “Tell me if you like the scent.”
Mrs. Malster smiles at him. She’s got a soft spot for the magician, even though she’d never trust one of his spells. His hand cream is excellent, though, and that’s more important than a spell to her. Her hands get especially sore after laundry day and she’s got a great wash tomorrow. She dabs a bit of the hand cream out of the pot and rubs it in, groaning with pleasure. “That feels better already,” she says. She gives them a bit of stale bread as a bonus.
Their good luck doesn’t last for long, though. Two days after the full moon, the blacksmith charges into the shop with a snarl on his face and his big forge hammer in his hand. “You!” he shouts as he points accusingly at Lyndon. “You ruined it! She hates me now!”
Lydon raises his hands in front of him, as if he could ward off a big hulk of fury like the blacksmith. “No, I’m sure I did it right.”
“She said she dreamed about me,” the blacksmith yells, so mad that he’s literally spitting. “She dreamed that we were husband and wife. She said that I beat her and made her miserable.”
Rowan doesn’t like the way the blacksmith is leaning forward, looming over the magician. He doesn’t like the way that vein in the blacksmith’s forehead is throbbing, or the stench of fury spraying from his pores. The little dog’s hackles raise and he walks closer with a growl in his throat.
“No,” Lyndon shakes his head. “That can’t be right. He hurries to his work table and flips through the pages of the spell book he used. He shuffles through his bottles of powders and shavings from magical animals until he sniffs one and his eyes go wide. “Oh no,” he says. “They must have mis-labeled the…” but he doesn’t get a chance to finish that sentence because the blacksmith swings at Lyndon’s head with the forge hammer.
The blacksmith’s arm ripples with muscle. The light glints off the deadly hammer’s metal head as it swings, almost as if it’s in slow motion, toward Lyndon’s skull. The little dog leaps…
Rowan knows it’s fruitless. A small dog like him against the blacksmith’s hammer is a non contest. He knows that the only realistic outcome of his leap is that he’s about to turn into mincemeat. This life isn’t the life he always wanted, but it’s been cozy here with Lyndon and it’d be nice if he had a bit more ale, a few more head scratches, to look forward to. But it’s too late for all that now.
All he knows is that Lyndon is the one person in the whole world who’s ever been kind to him for absolutely no reason. Lyndon didn’t have to do anything nice for the ratty dog he found on the bridge, and yet he gave the stinking mongrel dog his last bite of cheese. Lyndon took him home, prepared an herbal bath that got rid of the fleas in short order. Once the fleas were gone, Lyndon let Rowan sleep in the bed with him. Lyndon shared his meals and kept him safe. The magician showed his little dog the kind of affection King Artis only ever dreamed about. Lyndon is a shit magician, but he’s Rowan’s shit magician, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t at least try to save Lyndon.
Rowan knows he’s about to be obliterated, but there’s a chance that a little dog’s corpse flying through the air might distract the blacksmith just enough for Lyndon to get away.
So he leaps.
And then, all three of them are surprised as a full grown man, naked as a jaybird, crashes into the blacksmith’s arm. The weight of a whole man is enough to fling the blacksmith’s arm off course, and his deadly hammer crashes into the wall instead of into Lyndon. The blacksmith topples with the naked man on top of him. Then the blacksmith lets out a girlish squeal, because it’s a shocking thing to suddenly be underneath a naked man who came out of nowhere.
The blacksmith’s anger disappears underneath Rowan’s bare rump. Rowan jumps to his feet and stands between the magician and the blacksmith. Even though he’s returned to the shape of a man, he was never much of a fighter, but he’ll be damned if he backs down now. Luckily, the blacksmith is having none of this. Whatever this is, it’s too weird for him. He grabs his hammer and runs out of the shop without looking back.
As soon as the blacksmith is gone, Lyndon latches the door behind him. He turns to face Rowan, who ducks behind the curtain in the middle of the room to hide his nakedness. He never felt naked as a dog, not really. There was fur to keep everything modest.
“Wow,” Lyndon says. “I never would have guessed my love spell would go so wrong that it would change my dog into a man.”
It takes a special kind of magician to have this kind of experience and reach such an incorrect conclusion.
“Woof,” Rowan says. He decides that once he “learns” to talk, he’s going to encourage Lyndon to focus on his herbalism. Lyndon’s good at plants. He should lean into that and forget the spells. Their life will be better that way.
And in that moment, Rowan realizes he’s made a decision. Let Bruga keep the kingdom. If he’s being honest, she’s better at running it than he ever was. He’s liked his life with Lyndon better than he ever liked being a king. He’s going to stay with Lyndon.
Lyndon comes over and tousles his hair as if he was patting a dog’s head. “Don’t be frightened,” he says. “You’ll get used to being a man. Who knows? You might even like it.”
Ali lives at the foot of the Colorado Rockies with her husband and rescue dog. She has work published or forthcoming in All Worlds Wayfarer, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and Tales From the Magician’s Skull.