“Ladd, come along, we’ll be late. They are lighting the balefire for Wizard tonight,” Mercy said.

“That old goat,” replied Ladd, Mercy’s older brother. “I didn’t like him anyway. The way he creeped around, watching all of us. Making his silly predictions.”

“Oh, Ladd, hush,” Mercy cried. “Wizard is powerful. We dare not say things like that. Come, let’s run. We must get to the funeral. Mama is waiting and will be angry with us.”

Ladd and Mercy set off from their hut in the village through the woods toward the funeral pyre. The people of the village were all frightened. They didn’t know that wizards could die. After a session in the street when Wizard was making a series of predictions for his people, he suddenly crumbled and dropped to the dirt. The people left him there for three days. They thought he would rise again. Finally, the medicine woman who served the village examined Wizard and determined that he was dead

Continue reading at Rosemary Carlson, Writer