On a crisp spring morning, while the birds sang their delight at the retreat of the frost and the very air seemed to glow with the coming of the new warmth, a wizard stepped from his small cabin in the heart of the forest.

            He stretched in the early light and yawned, a huge yawn that drew air to the very bottom of his lungs. His coat, a deep, battered navy color, had once been quite fashionable, but had long since fallen before the onslaught of time. It was covered with cuts and patches and—

            “Would you stop doing that?”

            The wizard’s voice rang through the air and brought silence to the woods. He waited for a second, and then frowned. His face was darkened by the sun, with long hair tha—

            “See, you’re doing it again.”

            The silence continued. There was an air of confusion in the leaves.

            “Just stop describing me. They probably don’t care. My hair is black, the coat is blue, and I need to patch this sleeve.” He frowned at the sleeve in question and plucked at a dangling string. “But, honestly, the rest of it they’ll figure out or you can throw in as necessary.”

            Though he liked to talk to himself, the wizard was very talented and perceptive. Unfortunately, he had no idea about the trials and tribulations that he was about to go through.

            He looked into the forest. “Really? Trials and tribulations? Foreshadowing with all the skill of a brick, that’s you. And let’s face it, you don’t know any more about the future than I do, so you should stop talking about it.”

            The foolish wizard seemed unaware that narrators have a right to talk about the future because they know it already. Only the arrogant would assume otherwise.

            “Really? Then tell me what’s going to happen. Go ahead. Use specifics.”

            The wizard stood in his blue coat and tapped his foot against the ground. His arms were crossed over his chest and he occasionally peered into the sky.

            “I thought so.” He stepped off the porch and began weaving his way through the wood. His feet made a slight crunching sound against the snowy remnant of the winter. He ran into a tree.

            The wizard wiped a bit of blood off his lip and glared into the sky. “Now that was just petty.”

            Those who criticize the way their stories are told are often clumsy. It’s a well-known fact. And only rude characters try to improve their stories when the narrator would be doing just fine if left alone.

            He spread his hands. “Okay. Whatever, you’re the narrator, go ahead. But you’re obviously not omniscient. I never said you weren’t a narrator, I just said you weren’t very good.”

            And then, very suddenly, a dragon appeared between the trees.

            The wizard stared at the dragon and the dragon stared back. The dragon narrowed his eyes and a fleck of fire appeared around his lips.

            “What the hell am I doing here?” he asked.

            The wizard shook his head slowly, hands spread against his side, eyes wide enough that the whites reflected the early morning light. “I don’t know. Have you ever made a narrator mad at you?”

            “What? Wait, you can understand me?”

            “Apparently, for the course of this story, yes.”

            “Very strange. I’ve never actually chatted with a wizard before.”

            “And I never have with a dragon. Always interesting to increase one’s experiences.”

            “I’d say the same but I’d really rather eat you.” The dragon looked side to side and then snorted. “This is really very strange. What did you say I’m doing here?”

            The wizard shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I think I’ve made a narrator mad.”

            The dragon’s eyes narrowed even more. “Really. That tells me nothing.”

            “She’s incompetent.”

            The dragon without a word dove at the magician, rage in his eyes.

            The dragon shook himself all over and then looked into the forest, neck frill bristling as though ready for an attack. “What the hell was that? I attacked you. But I didn’t. Because I had absolutely no desire to attack you at that point in time, so I didn’t, but I did. What the hell was that, wizard?”

            The wizard leaned against a tree, breathing heavily. “That’s the narrator. She doesn’t like me. But you can hear her too?”

            “It wasn’t exactly hearing. More of a . . . compulsion I felt no actual need to follow. Wizard, this is your fault and you will fix it because I feel absolutely no need to fight you or help you, and if you think—“

            The wizard spread his hands. “I want her gone as much as you do. If you think I like—“

            Just then, a very large bird, flying high above the forest and suffering a major heart attack, plummeted through the leafy green foliage and straight onto the wizard’s head in a secret dive-bomb attack that broke his neck.

            Or it would have, if the wizard had not move at the last moment, his hand flashing up. The words of a spell so old it had been forgotten by the trees rattled out of his throat. Light flashed at his hands and the bird froze at the height of his head while he crouched under it, staring up. He licked his lips and looked at the dragon, who stared in rapt fascination at the dead, floating bird.

            “I heard her this time,” the dragon said. “I’ve never . . . heard them before.”

            “Yeah.” The wizard slowly straightened. “She’s getting better.”

            “What’s the word for what she can do? Limited omniscience?”

            “But she doesn’t know anything. Things just happen.”

            The dragon sighed. “This would only happen to a wizard.”

            “You’re here too.”

            “Wizard, I’m blaming you for that.”

            “Dragon, I don’t care. Do you have any ideas of how to get out of this?”

            “I should just fly out of here and home and leave you with her.”

            A huge tree by the dragon’s head cracked as its root system, weakened by the melted water of the spring snows, began to loosen from its hold in the damp earth. The dragon’s ears shifted to the sound and then the whole body, wedged in the trees of the forest and extremely limited in mobility, froze.

             When the dragon spoke next, his voice was extremely low, as though that would prevent me from hearing him.

            “This is very frightening wizard.”

            The wizard nodded, a brief jerk of the head. “Yes.”

            “Follow me.”

            The dragon laboriously moved out of the trees, and away from the loosening tree, and then eeled down the path. The wizard followed, pulling the battered blue coat around his thin frame.

            The dragon sniffed the air when they arrived at a fork in the road, and turned down the right hand path. “What else can you tell me about this narrator? Why do you think it’s a she? And how did this start? Because, if we compile all our information, we might be able to put a stop to this.” He shook his head. “This is so strange. So horribly strange. A narrator! Wait, can you still understand me?”

            The wizard nodded, but walked mutely at the side of the dragon, his throat so tight from terror that he could not speak.

            The dragon plodded along, watching the wizard from the corner of his eye. Finally, the wizard made an intricate, arcane gesture that traced green fire in the air and coughed painfully.

            The dragon stopped. “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah.” The wizard’s voice rasped against his throat. “That just took a while to break.”

            “We’re here at least.”

            “Here?”

            The wizard moved around the dragon’s massive shoulder and peered at the cottage that had appeared between the trees. “It looks just like my house.”

            “But it’s not. Go in and get this situation resolved before something worse happens.”

            “Worse like what?”

            The dragon stretched his jaw and the foot long fangs flashed in the sun. “Did she mention trials? Or tribulations? Or catastrophes?”

            The wizard went very pale. He looked at the house. “Those may have come up. What is this place?”

            “It’s a house. This is a huge favor, by the way. Don’t tell her how you found it or she’ll kill me.”

            “You mean the . . . ” the wizard gestured upward.

            “No, I mean the . . . ” the dragon tipped his head toward the cottage.

            The wizard frowned. “Is she a—“

            “Moron, don’t say it! Just shut up, and go in. What she doesn’t know she can’t stop.”

            The wizard looked out at the forest, which seemed so innocent this morning and now held such menace. Then he dashed to the door of the cottage.

            The wood of the door was plain and weathered and his hand against it made a rapid rat-tatty noise, like the beating of a panicked heart. An older woman with bright blue eyes opened the door the second time he knocked and glared out at him.

            “You are a bloody wizard, and I don’t like bloody wizards, and you can just go away right now.”

            “Please, I have a horrible problem and I was told—“

            “I told you to go away, and that is the only person that you have to be worrying about right now, sonny.”

            He frowned. “Is she making you say that?”

            The woman returned the expression. “What?”

            The wizard’s next words came out all in a rush. “I can hear my narrator and I kind of insulted her and now I’m pretty sure she’s going to kill me as soon as she can sneak it in around the fact that I can hear her.”

            The woman’s eyes narrowed. “And you came to a—“

            “Please, I’m fairly sure she doesn’t know yet. Please help me.”

            The door widened. The woman wore a plain grey dress and a white blouse with a mustard stain on the edge. She looked the wizard in the eye and opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she was and what she was not going to do for him because she didn’t like him at all.

            She closed her mouth and looked beyond the page with the eyes of an owl, wide, empty, unblinking.

            “Well, that was very strange.”

            The wizard was out of breath again. “Yes.”

            She shoved the door open. It scraped slightly against the wood of the floor. “Come in quickly.”

            The wizard stumbled in, and collapsed into a dark wooden chair, next to the dark wooden table.

            “Are you stopping her statements, or just deflecting them?”

            His eyes had dark circles around them. “Well, since I still hear it, I assume that I’m only deflecting them. But it’s only a matter of time before she gets one past me. And I can only assume that means the worst. I need to get rid of the narrator. Please help me.” He was about to detail exactly how a random middle-aged woman in a cottage in the forest could possibly help him when he stuffed his fist into his mouth and curled over it, eyes locked on an imaginary point in the table, rocking slowly, shoulders shaking.

            She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You can’t remove narrators, boy. To not have one would kill you more thoroughly that anything she can do to you.”

            “Hopeless then. Hopeless.” He was rocking.

            “Not really. You can’t get rid of her, but she shouldn’t be this pushy anyway. I’ll push her back. But you have to give me something in return. Something big.”

            He looked up at her through desperate eyes. “What?”

            “A favor. I don’t know yet what I want.”

            He looked into the corners of the cottage, where the dark shadows seemed to gather for his death. “Deal.”

            The woman smiled. “Deal.” She gathered up her skirts and straightened. “Narrator,” she said, in a loud, authoritative voice. “I am a witch. And I’m telling you right now to leave this boy alone. Be silent. Cease your authorial intrusion, or I will crawl right out of this tale and rip the story out of you and it will never be yours again. Stories belong to the characters first, and trying to kill them off this quickly is just rude. Do you understand me?” She looked directly at me and I could see all her teeth flash in her perfect mouth.

            Ring of her voice receded. The cottage was silent. She waited another second, and smiled.

            “I think that that satisfies that,” she told the wizard.

            “It’s that easy?”

            “Well, it wouldn’t have worked if you had done it. Now, sonny, get out of my cottage and get on your merry way and try to avoid tribulations. Oh, and remember that you owe me a favor.”

            The wizard thanked her, nodded his head and left. The witched watched him from the doorway and the smile never faded from her face, thought it grew more wicked and more dangerous as he moved through the trees.

            So the witch was left with a favor, and the wizard walked away to his adventures (which probably had trials, but tribulations are always rather hit or miss) and the narrator, if she used authorial intrusion, kept it to herself.