S.T.A.N.

"There weren't always dragons in the Valley." Eliza Hack smacked her pointing cane against the top of the small desk next to her as she called out the opening words of her lecture.

A short, stout witch, Eliza knew how to command a room. She was not about to allow the cuffuffle of wizards before her side-line what she had come here to say.

"There is a reason the dragons are here." She continued, waving her cane in the air to maintain attention while authoritatively walking the short distance of the Slade Town Hall stage. Once at the edge, she clicked her heels together, turned, tucked the cane under her arm, and marched back to centre stage. "An excellent reason." She stared fiercely out into the room of wizards, daring any of them to heckle.

When satisfied she had the undivided attention of her audience, she puckered her lips and raised her chin. Her scaffolded bosom heaved in satisfaction as she breathed in the air of her authority through her long, cavernous nostrils.

"Do any of you..." Eliza began and then paused to ensure all ears were secured to her voice, "have any clue..." she raised an eyebrow and waved her cane from left to right over the heads of the waiting wizards... "What. That. Reason. Could. Be?" She fired each word like a bullet. Then, she waited, her puckered lips pulsing in and out in expectation of the answer, or more precisely, the lack thereof.

The hall of wizards slowly shook their heads.

A corner of Eliza's thin-lipped mouth turned slyly upwards.

She whacked her cane against her shin.

Her audience winced.

Eliza smiled.

Behind her, images from Slade Valley, some ten years ago, rippled onto a screen.

"This," she thrust her cane towards the moving picture, "this... is how Slade Valley used to look."

A collective sigh rumbled through the room as the Wizards of Slade remembered their Valley, a lush, pastoral basin of meadows surrounded by numerous waterfalls that flashed down the rolling hillside shimmering with orbs of light and fractal rainbows. A place where the bounty of nature frolicked, roamed, swam, and flew in undulating and vivacious murmuration. Where the harmonies of earth's song danced in a joyous and gracious concerto...

"Now!" Eliza barked, abruptly breaking the nostalgia. "We have a situation." She folded the cane back under her arm and continued to pace back and forth.

The room of wizards nodded in unison.

They most certainly had a situation.

"Let me be quite clear." Eliza halted her pacing, narrowed her eyes, and looked out across the room of swivelling peaked heads. "I am not here to solve your dragon problem. It is not my job to remove them from the Valley. All I have been paid to do is provide you with information to which you have not yet, paid attention." Her eyes grew wide as she spat out the words.

The first rumble of disagreement nervously wafted upwards from the audience in a smattering of coughs, punctuated by the odd "now then" and one brave whisper asking, "Who does she think she is?"

She whacked her cane hard on the little desk to silence the insubordination.

"Tell me then, oh wise wizards of Slade, what are your hypotheses on why there is such a thunder of dragons in your Valley?"

The room of wizards stood stock still.

Not a single eye dared to pivot away from the stage.

With more and more dragons arriving each day, the people of Slade had a veritable infestation on their hands. Hatchlings of all shapes and sizes were cracking their way into the world every few minutes. The vivid range of wildlife that had bountifully filled their Valley was gone, the pastures and meadows... scorched, the rivers and waterfalls... poisoned with excrement and bile.

The townsfolk had only been saved from desecration by their Great Sorcerers, who had conjured a giant, protective, magical shell over the Town of Slade.

"Ahem." A little dithering voice from the back broke the silence.

Eliza's nostrils flared.

She pointed her cane at the source of the noise.

"Speak!" She bellowed, summoning a spotlight to focus on the owner of the small voice... a young wizard.. called Stan.

Stan blinked in the glare from the light, unable to see anybody around or in front of him.

"Go on, Stan." Bea, Stan's friend, nudged him in the ribs to encourage him.

"Ahhhhh." Stan stammered, trying to hide from the light under his large drooping hat.

"Go on." Bea elbowed him again.

"What is your name, Wizard?" The disembodied voice of Eliza Hack snapped at him.

"Stan." Said Stan.

"And.... 'S' 't' 'a' 'n'...." Eliza phonetically said each letter of his name in mockery of it and him. "What IS your hypothesis?"

Bea nudged him again. "Go on... Say what you think. Don't let her intimidate you, Stan. You have an interesting theory."

Staring at the floor, Stan nodded. He lifted his head into the spotlight's glare, took a massive gulp of air, and spoke. "I think a great sorcerer is hiding amongst us. I think that they have enchanted the Valley. I think they are building an army." His thoughts tumbled from him in successive squeaks.

Silence.

Stan looked for Bea for reassurance.

She grasped his arm.

It was one thing to speak from your heart to a room full of peers and elders; it was another to receive their judgement.

"As if...." One Wizard called out. "In a town full of wizards, witches, and all types of fae... as if nobody would notice an evil sorcerer with the power to build an army of dragons!"

The room collapsed in laughter.

"Honestly, Stan!" Jeered, a goofy-looking Wizard stood nearby.

"Oh, Stan... the next thing you will be telling us is that little old Slade is at the centre of some sort of coup to take down the dark forces of Parenthialism..."

The room howled.

Stan shrank, chameleon-like, into the collar of his dark crimson robe.

"SIIIIIILLLLLEEEENCEEEEE!" Eliza Hack's voice boomed over the top of the laughter.

The compliance to her command was deafening in its immediacy.

"Why is that wizards are always so quick to hypothesise grand wonderous notions for their misfortune?" She shook her head and lowered her voice. "THISSSS..." she hissed... " ...is your problem. Stan's idea is..." she jabbed her cane towards the malignancy of Wizards in front of her, "a classic case in point."

There were a few mutterings of discontent from the wings of the room. Nothing more than what you would expect at a public gathering, but they were sufficient to trigger Eliza.

She started to shout.

"The books you read, all the old scrolls and texts from thousands of years ago, that each of you spends hours every day poring over... they are all so archaic... so out of date...and yet, you all still, stubbornly, insist on dwelling on every word they say... You read these books looking for answers that you will never find. Each of you is as guilty as the next, trying to fix the problems of a modern world with crazy theories, myths, and magic from bygone times. It is no wonder you have a dragon infestation... no wonder at all!"

She paused, breathed slowly in and out, and attempted to regain some composure.

"What you are all missing..." she continued, now keenly aware of her elocution, "is that the dragon is an animal first and foremost... an animal that nests. An animal with needs, wants, desires, and above all else... CARNAL instincts." As she growled these last words, she flung her arms out in non-verbal exclamation.

"Oh... dear... God...." Still holding on to Stan's now trembling arm, Bea whispered in a sharp trill. "Where is she going with this?"

Stan could not reply. Petrified by his recent infamy, all he wanted to do was get out of the room as quickly and discreetly as possible.

Bea looked behind her, then wished she hadn't. Her Gramps, who had been comfortably dozing through most of the proceedings, was awake and actively straining to hear what was being said.

"WhooooooaaarGHHHHHHHHHHHoooooooooooaaaarrrrrrrrrgHHH"

One hundred twenty decibels of dragon grunt blasted into the room.

It was a sound with which they were all familiar. It was why every tinker, tailor, or candlestick maker in the town of Slade sold ear defenders.

"That," began Eliza Hack, "is not JUST the noise one of your dragons make... it is the RUTTING sound of the Great Horned Bluetail."

Eliza played the sound of the growl again.

"WhooooooaaarGHHHHHHHHHHHoooooooooooaaaarrrrrrrrrgHHH"

The room of wizards shrank backward, covering their ears with their hands, and pulling the brims of their hats down over their blushing faces. Before them, Eliza Hack bristled as though energised by the almighty din.

"Isn't it marvellous!" She exclaimed. "Such a virile sound." She sucked air in through her teeth and exhaled it in a groan. "Has any animal ever made a more potent, intoxicating sound than that created by the Great Horned Bluetail on the cusp of fornication?"

"Eh?" Bea felt Gramps crook prod at the back of her ankles. She stared forwards, pretending not to have noticed or heard anything from him.

Eliza looked down into the pit of wizards. Their doughy faces all awkwardly trying to shy away from her intense gaze.

"Ha!" A snort of a laugh escaped from her. Then another, and another. She tried to control herself between each snort until she had no choice but to hold on to the small desk. "On this stage... Ha!... You will have heard many magical ways of reclaiming your Valley from the Dragons. Ha Ha... cough, cough... Ha Ha. Ohhhhh mighty wizards of Slade... with your high and mighty ways... Ha! Ha! Sometimes it is the simplest of solutions that reap the rewards."

She blew a raspberry; nobody knew why, but it fitted the unfolding mania.

With a grip that could have wrung a dragon's neck, Eliza held on to the small desk as her girder-like legs wobbled into the hysteria that was consuming her. As she choked on her humour, she managed to sputter out a few last words, "my advice is this... oh my... your faces... Ha Ha Ha... wizards... fools... Ha Ha Ha... Put some birth control in the water; that will at least stop the hatchlings. Then... in the meantime..." She collapsed in a heap as she shouted out... "Enjoy the show!"

The large brocade curtains of the town hall stage swung shut, joining together the two 15-foot halves of the golden embroidered Slade Coat of Arms, a dragon holding a battle axe. Eliza Hack's muted cackle continued from behind the drapery as though she were haunting them from beyond. The room of wizards stared, dumbfounded, as their sovereign crest swung to a halt, and Eliza's laugh gradually trailed off into the distance.

To what had they all just borne witness?

Bea was one of the first to move. 'Enjoy the show!'... She thought she might barf! Eliza Hack had to be the worst guest speaker the Town Committee had invited to speak on the subject of dragons to date. She turned to Stan, "Thank God that one is over." The words were barely out of her mouth before Stan had darted for the door.

Gramps prodded at her again with his crook. She leaned in, praying he wouldn't ask what Eliza had been saying.

Of course... he did...

"What was that she said? Something about dragons on the crest of annihilation?"

"Errr... No Gramps... nothing like that."

"Well, what then? Eh? Eh?"

Despite his insistence, Bea did not have the stomach to start talking about Great Horned Bluetail rutting with her Grandfather. "Let's go, Gramps. I need some air." Ignoring his questions, she leaned in to help wrestle him up, which was no mean feat given that, although now more or less bent double, Gramps had once been nearly seven feet tall. A giant amongst the Wizards of Slade.

"I don't know why everyone started laughing at that comment about Parenthialism." Gramps chunnered as he found his feet and lent against his crook.

Oh... here we go again. Bea, used to her Grandfather's near-daily ravings, shook her head and grabbed his arm to steady him.

"Don't you find it weird that not one of the lectures has broached that subject? Like all things Parenthialist, it hangs about us all, persistently unspoken of, like an invisible mammoth in the room. Why won't we wizards entertain the premise that there is evil in it? Eh? Eh?"

Gramps wobbled forwards. Bea kept her arms stretched towards him in readiness to catch him if needed.

"These Dragons weren't here before Parenthialism, were they? No. The world brings about a new order of magical governance, licenses of practice, restricted spell books, protected elements, rules for this, and guidelines for that... and suddenly... we have lost our Valley to a dragon infestation."

"Well... " Bea had long conceded that there was indeed synchronicity of events between the dragon's arrival and the advent of Parenthialism, but, like many people, she could appreciate that sometimes stuff happened at the same time without it necessarily being causal. She looked at Gramps... was now the time to go over all that again?

The decision turned out, as it often did, to be moot. Gramps had started and, regardless, was going to finish. Even the prospect of shaky and treacherous passage over the highly polished tiled floor of the Town Hall reception wasn't enough to steal his attention.

"They want rid of us." He looked about him shiftily, fearing the walls had ears, before lowering his voice to nearly a whisper. "We don't fit the mold, Bea. They want your mother out of office. She is too powerful to be controlled by them, and they don't like that. They see her as a usurper... a threat to their control."

Bea sighed. How many times could she try and tell Gramps that he had this so wrong? As Mayor of Slade, her mother often had tea with the High Council; she helped them write their regulated spell books; she believed discipline around magic would lead to a safer future. She was not against Parenthialism, quite the opposite... she was all for it.

Before magical governance, many innocent folk had died at the hands of the dabblers and experimenters. Bea's mother, Esme Maden, had campaigned to end the recklessness of these feral magicians. Her political rallies even included the strapline "Magic Needs Governance." Gramps, however, had never been able to reconcile his daughter's involvement with the Parenthialist movement and chose instead to believe that it was all a cover so she could bring down the system from the inside.

Bea decided to try and make light of the conversation.

"You are only against Parenthialism because it has stopped you from making your Buddyhooch. One too many restricted items on the ingredients list. People were growing extra limbs, Gramps. I know you loved it, but the stuff was addictive. Wizard Wick still has toes coming out of his ears."

"Bahhh... that daft old Wizard deserved to have them coming out of his mouth... that's where his foot usually ends up! Don't make light of it, Bea! Mark my words... First my hooch, and then what? We are going to need licenses to breathe. Those Dragons are here to stop our free spirits. They have made us prisoners already. Soon you will only be able to do magic if your name is Hornberger and you are under seventy."

And there it was... Gramps's real problem with Parenthialism... his long-standing feud with the Great Wizard - Stevelack Hornberger, Magical Minister (Deputised) of the World High Council. A wizard originally from Slade who had climbed the political ranks swiftly. A wizard who had once dated his daughter.

"I know that Wizard's game... He has everyone under a spell believing his ways are better for them. It's the biggest con I have ever known. Mark my words, he is behind our dragon problem... couldn't bear that your mother has a mind of her own. A mind given to her by me. Now, her only option is to put a giant shell over our town to protect us from him."

"Right... oh look, Gramps... there's Stan..." Thank God, thought Bea. Sometimes a distraction was the only way to stop Gramps' daily road train of thought from veering off into combustible nihilism.

"Eh? Stan? I thought he'd have gone back and buried himself in his books... all that talk of evil sorcerers. You shouldn't encourage him, Bea... he sounds like a madman."

"Right. Nobody would want to sound like a madman, would they?" Sometimes she wondered if she were the only sane person left in Slade.

Stan was skulking in the shadows of the large arched doorway, peering out from behind a life-size statue of the Sorcerer Bladsplott, one of Slade's great visionary pioneers.

They shuffled towards him.

"What are you doing, Stan?" Bea asked as they approached.

"It's worse out there than it was in the hall." Stan squeaked.

"What do you mean?"

"Look... just look... I can't even bring myself..."

Bea sat Gramps down on the bench in the small vestibule at the side of the doorway. Rising, she turned to Stan, wrapped an arm around him, and gave him a gentle, reassuring squeeze. Stan was many things, excitable, nervy, precious, ingenious, high maintenance, but he rarely sensationalised. What was it that had got him trembling in the Town Hall doorway?

Once Stan was marginally calmed, Bea smoothed down her purple velvet robe, straightened her hat, and walked, almost regally, to the open doorway to discover what new crazy lay in wait.

The Town Hall Square was as thick with mischief as it always was. Fae of all variety and persuasion were gathered in groups. Many of them refugees from the Valley, thrown together under the finite space of the Slade protective shell. Each day they came to the Square to discuss their situation. Some stood on crates and soapboxes, others on purpose-built platforms, all spouting out their theories about why they and theirs were doomed.

The theories were as fantastical as the creatures that spoke of them. Conspiracies, lunacy, righteousness, logic, mysticism, and magic... all woven together in a great, evolving tapestry of panic. The only fact that the hotchpotch of wonderment agreed on was that the dragons had made prisoners of them all.

Bea looked around. Searching for what it was that had Stan cowering. As far as she could make out, it was a day like any other. She turned to Stan, "I don't see anything odd... well, nothing odd enough to cause you to be like this."

"Look over near the book bazaar on the corner... look there..." he urged.

Bea took a further step out and looked over to the far right corner where Bart's Book Bazaar's wares were laid out on the pavement. She saw the old Centaur busking with his ukedeedo, a few witches brewing something with a purple haze to it... pretty standard. She took another step down to look around them, and then she saw what had Stan wishing he could be anywhere else.

"Ah." Bea turned and walked back inside.

"Bea...What does she think she is doing now?" Stan was becoming frantic.

"Erm... without actually going down there to hear what she is... err... wailing about...." She screwed her face up as she spoke, "I am not certain we will know."

"I know exactly what she is doing... I am not going out of this building... ever!" Stan's squeak had become shrill.

"Eh... what's going on now? Is it your mother?" Gramps was blunt.

"Oh, God...." Stan slumped down the wall and sat between the magnificently curled stone toes of Sorcerer Bladsplott, his head in his hands.

"Gramps!" Bea hissed at him.

"What? It hardly takes a genius to figure out what is going on... Meredith Tourniquet is always up to something bonkers. Sorry Stan, but really by now, you should have developed a backbone to her dramatics. Unfortunately, it's just who she is."

Stan looked up at Bea and her Gramps. Their large pity-filled eyes were purring down at him. They would never be able to understand how he felt right now. The biggest problem they had was Gramp's aversion to Parenthialism; that was it. A mere difference of opinion around the dinner table. A table around which sat the calm, collected minds of a wise and respectable family—a family all as tall and healthy as athletes with some of the most outstanding scholars in Slade amongst them. Get a backbone? Get a backbone! Gramps's words ricocheted around him like a crashing carriage.

"My mother is naked in the street... again... Wailing at passers-by to cut pieces of flesh from her to feed to the dragons."

"Yes... but nobody will." Assured Gramps, unaware of how his flippancy injured.

Bea sat down next to Stan and rubbed his arm. "Shall we go and talk to her? Get her home."

Stan sighed. "We are going to have to. She will put up a fight, though. You know how she gets when she is in her "Warrior" mode."

Bea nodded. Meredith Tourniquet was a fanatical force who believed that all magic, even governed magic, went against the world's natural order. Irrespective of intent or design, magic was evil because its essence subverted nature.

There were no exceptions to Meredith's piety... books, pictures, people... her son... anything with the slightest sniff of enchantment, she shunned.

There was, however, some irony in her righteous zeal as Meredith was once considered one of the greatest sorcerers that Slade had ever produced. This fact had many magical people and creatures believing her ferocious anti-magic lifestyle was born from a fear of the power that raged within her.

It was a belief that Meredith vehemently denied.

"Come on, Stan." Bea pulled his arm. "Let's go and see if we can get her to come for a cup of camomile and calm down."

Exhausted, Stan nodded and pushed himself up from the ground using one of Bladsplott's curly feet as leverage. What would he do without Bea? Her calm had always been an enduring anchor amongst the smog and storms of his mother's nuttiness.

"I shall leave my hat and cape here." Said Stan as he started to de-robe. "You know how she gets about symbolism. "Clothes are.." he began.

"... lies to deflect attention from a soul." Bea finished Meredith's phrase. Too often, she had knocked on Stan's door as a child and found his mother naked. It should have traumatised her, but, Bea being Bea, the repetition only served to de-sensitise the shock rather than compound it.

The three of them walked towards the door, down the old stone steps, and into the coursing throng and fever of Slade Town Centre. Music pulsed around the catcalls, preaching, whooping, and incantations, pounding out the rhythm of the many tribal hearts that had come together to shield from the dragons. Hawkers touted their wares amongst the grief-stricken and the righteous. Giants with stalls of the most delicate silk purses boomed out for attention next to fairies flogging dragon's teeth. The smell of ripe clementines from the Square's laden fruit trees curled into the noxious odour of the old witch's carrion flowers. The pungent pink sauce on the lollidog stall fought against the smell of dragon poo, sold at a florin a sack.

It was a day like any other in Slade.

They made their way through the thick, effervescent fug quietly and stoically, mentally preparing for the imminent showdown with Stan's mum.

BANG!!!!

What was that?

Bea and Stan looked about, searching for the source of the noise.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

BANG.

The sound started to come in successive shockwaves.

The square quietened as confusion rumbled through.

BANG!

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

The noise was coming from overhead.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

"LOOK!" Boomed out a giant pointing to the skies.

All eyes looked up to see the shadowy underbelly of multiple dragons landing and clawing their way across Slade's protective shell.

Bang.

BANG.

Bang.

More and more dragons started to land. The dome flashed beneath their clawed feet, struggling to maintain integrity.

Stan and Bea instinctively fell to the floor.

"Eh?" Gramps looked around him, wondering why everyone was hitting the decks.

"Look!" Bea shouted, pointing upwards. "It's the dragons."

"They are attacking. The dome is failing!" A small fairy swooped past them, followed by a gnome, his piston-like legs stomping a furious retreat.

"Run! Run for your lives!"

Bang.

Bang.

BANG.

Screams shot out from everywhere as people crushed past one another. Hooves trampled down on those crouching on the floor, antlers speared through the sides of stalls, ragging them and sending wares, soups, and cauldrons flying. Giants stampeded past, gathering elves up in their arms, taking them to safety. The trolls disappeared down into the ditches at the side of the road, and anybody who had transportation magic left in swirls of colour.

Gramps banged his crook on the floor three times. "Stan... Bea... grab my arm... time to go!"

Bea stood and grabbed Gramps' spare arm. "Stan, come on... Stan!" She called.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Slade was growing darker.

Colder.

"Stan... grab my hand!" Bea screamed as a circle of yellow light started to rise around her legs.

"No... You go! Go... GO!..." Stan's words barely made a sound amongst the shrieks of fae running for their lives.

"No, Stan... come with us..." Bea desperately tried to grab him, to make him leave the square.

"I can't! My mother... I can't leave her!" He looked over towards Meredith, standing like an angel, her arms outstretched to the heavens, her auburn hair cascading all around her still and silent silhouette.

She looked so peaceful.

As though she were in the eye of an unfolding storm.

Gramps' yellow transportation light swirled around him and Bea. Slade Town Hall Square started to dissolve into the magic. Bea watched as Stan, barrelling towards his mother, faded from view. She looked down; the old cobbles of the square were melting away. She looked up and saw the first dragon begin to nose through a crack in the protective Slade shell.

***

Author's Notes.

I hope you enjoyed reading the first chapter of S.T.A.N: The Wizard with the Small Voice and Big Ideas.

Thanks to Samuel Wade (Twitter - @SamuelMakesArt) for the cover artwork.

This chapter will form part of a trilogy of Teen/YA Fantasy Fiction following the adventures of STAN, Bea, Gramps, Meredith, Esme, Eliza Hack, Stevelack Hornberger, and all the magical people and creatures of Slade.