Puppet

Madman

A familiar scent from my youth roused me, a scent that was both sickly sweet and also nauseating. A disgusting wetness reanimated me. I bolted upright, my eyes, opened and the hound stared at me with a grin. The warmth of the fireplace washed over me. The sounds of cracking logs enchanted me and in the corner sat in a chair whittled from oak sat the mad man who had almost killed me. He inhaled

deeply from his pipe and exhaled the sickly sweet, nauseating aroma and sighed with content.

"Devil grass?"

The man chuckled and slapped his knees with excitement.

"It's not been called that since I was a nipper. You aren't exactly what you seem are you?"

"The same can be said for you. After that dazzling display that nearly ended my life."

"It was dazzling wasn't it." He chuckled to himself and inhaled once more.

"I must admit for a moment back there, I did think you were in fact the hound transformed."

The madman chocked on the devil grass he had inhaled and burst out laughing, almost falling clean off the chair.

"The hound transformed. You hear that boy? Hound transformed. What a hoot."

The hound pined and laid down by the warmth of the fire.

"So, you're not some mad wizard?" I asked.

"Mad wizard." The frail man contemplated the question and chuckled once more.

"Let's say I've had my share of wizards and I don't trust them."

"Wise beyond your years."

I stared at him in silence.

"Oh... You mean that feat of magic outside? You think I'm a wizard?"

"The one and the same and yes what would you call it?"

"Well seen as I saved your life, I don't suppose the harm in telling you. After all, we're now destiny bound you and I, even if you happen to dislike wizards."

He paused, checked around the smoky, haze filled room, and whispered.

"I'm as much as a wizard as I am a, what did you call it, hound transformed."

Knowing he was a talker type, I remained silent.

"You see this great oak is so old that it has grown to abhor violence of all kinds, so when I drew your blood with a weapon fashioned from its roots, it, how do you say it..."

"had something to say about it?"

"Indeed. The lightning display was the oak tree unleashing its wrath on this world."

"And the strange guttural language, the stomping, and curses?"

"Theatrics, my dear boy. What people with limited imaginations perceive to be magic."

"And the hound?" I asked remembering how it had spoken in my mind as clear as the sun rises.

"Just a hound."

The hound whined in response.

"Okay, a magnificent hound, the best hound, my favourite."

"And this?" I asked raising my wrist to the light, the deep laceration had faded to a small barely visible scratch.

"Exactly it was barely a scratch, no need to think you were dying. No need at all."

We stared at each other in silence, my resentment clouded by gratitude and fuelled by distrust when the hound snorted and shook its fur.