I previously posted a version of this story that was not complete. One of my fellow writers and blog readers invited me to a “woodshedding” writer’s group at the end of 2025, where I worked with other writers to improve and complete the story. It was a fun exercise in collaboration.

All the stories from the group, A Writer’s Shindig will post here for the next 6 Sundays. You can read more about our project at A Writer’s Shindig.

---

Now he was the one who banged open the door. Hargin yelped is surprise, spilling his bottle of ink across his parchment. He cursed loudly. “Beagus!” he said, rising from the chair, quill in hand, and steam billowing from his ears. “What have I told you about barging in here like that?”

“Sorry! So sorry!” Beagus said. “I was just excited.”

Hargin softened. “You saw your goose girl, huh?” He put the quill down on the desk. His eyes were cheery now, like he held a secret.

Beagus blushed. “Oh yes!” he said. He felt twisted into a knot.

Hargin laughed. “Try again with the smoke,” the sorcerer said. He plopped back down in his chair at the writing desk. Beagus watched him shuffle several sheets off the desk and drop them in a disarray on the floor. Beagus knew he’d be tidying that up later.

Beagus sat down in the chair at the table, then poured some of the water from the jug into the cup. Then he frowned at what he had done, took the cup to the window, and tossed the contents outside. He couldn’t use Hargin’s water, then he’d only see what Hargin saw. He went back to the table, poured from the jug again. He lit the candle easily—a quick snap, just like his master—then dipped the candle into the cup. Concentrate…down, down, down. He coaxed the flame and it began to fill the cup with smoke. The smoke began to swirl and then descend onto the water, and when he peered into the pictures forming he felt a smile spreading through him. There she was! Edith was dancing, the veiled flowing around her shoulders, and then…there he was! He laughed as he watched this smokey version of himself dance with the bride.

“What do you see?” Hargin asked from behind him.

“I’m gonna marry the goose girl!” Beagus beamed.

He heard Hargin moving across the house. “And what about the princess?” he asked, right above Beagus’s head.

“Oh,” said Beagus, remembering.

“You’re supposed to be looking for the princess!” Hargin said, bopping Beagus on the head with his parchment as he said every word.

Beagus attempted to protect his head from the light blows by putting his arms between himself and Hargin’s parchment. “I’ll look again!” he said, shrinking.

“Bah!” Hargin said. “Before you do, go talk to your goose girl, and get her out of your head!” he said.

Beagus didn’t wait for further instruction before he raced from the house and back down to the pond. Edith was just beginning to round up the geese and take them back to the coop. She shook her stick at them, and they honked in protest. Beagus watched as all the geese eventually waddled into a loose formation. She began to drive them away from the pond, tisk tisking at them as she came towards Beagus.

She noticed him. “Oh! Hello again,” she said.

“Hi!” Beagus said. “I…eh…I came back!”

She laughed at him and shook back her hair from her face. She wiped an arm across her forehead, which Beagus could see was damp with a sweat. “It gets warm sitting in the sun,” she said. “Walk with me to the coop?”

Beagus beamed. “Oh, okay,” he said. “But I’m supposed to be…um…well.” He realized halfway through his sentence that he should not be telling Edith—or anyone—about his divinations.

She waited, clicking at the geese as they milled around her, honking and flapping. “Coming or not?” she asked, as she began to walk. The geese clustered ahead of her as she went, and she swung her stick from side to side, herding them ahead of her. Beagus watched her retreat for a moment, sighing to himself, before running after her. “I’m coming!” he called.

When he caught up to her, she looked sideways at him, her little smirk lighting fires behind his eyes and in his belly. “When will you be a sorcerer?” she asked sweetly.

“Oh I’m a long way from being a sorcerer. I can’t even see the princess in the smoke.” He’d said it without thinking, bewitched by Edith’s presence. He slapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes going wide with panic. “Oh!” he said, as she stared at him in confusion. “Oh! Don’t say anything about it! Please!”

“You’re divining for the princess?” she asked.

He nodded, then shook his head. “No, I mean, yes, but…I’m not supposed to tell.”

“I won’t tell,” Edith said. “Although, if you need to know who the princess prefers for a suitor…”

How had she guessed? Well, it wasn’t exactly what the queen had asked them to divine, but it seemed to Beagus that it should matter. Shouldn’t she want someone who looked at her the way he looked at Edith? “Do you know?” he asked, eagerly. He rubbed his hands together nervously as they walked.

“She told me she likes Prince Manford, from Esteria.” Edith said it so confidently, as if she had announced that the sunlight was hot.

“She told you?” Beagus asked.

Edith smiled at him. “She tells me all sorts of things,” Edith said.

They reached the coop. Beagus pondered what the princess was doing confiding in the goose girl as Edith sent the geese through the coop door in ones and twos. Then she lowered the door and smiled at him, again looking just like honey and sunshine. “Will you come see me tomorrow?” she asked

He nodded his head so hard he could feel his cheeks shaking. “Yes, yes, I’ll come to see you tomorrow at the pond.”

“Good!” she said. Then she was off, sauntering down the path to the village.

Beagus couldn’t believe his good luck. He ran back to Hargin’s hut, his heart enflamed by the memory of Edith’s smile. He banged open the door as he entered, wincing as Hargin yelped just as he had before.

“Beagus!” Hargin yelled from the desk.

“Sorry!” Beagus said, his adrenaline and his excitement propelling him across the house to his master’s side. “The princess prefers Prince Manford, from Esteria!”

A smile crept across Hargin’s wrinkled face, a light in his eyes both mischievous and playful. “Did you see that in the smoke?” he asked.

“No Edith said…wait…” He studied Hargin’s features, and when the sorcerer raised as eyebrow, Beagus dared to ask, “Is that what you saw in the smoke? That she would tell me?”

“You see what you see, and I see what I see, remember?” Hargin said. This time the reminder was merry. He gave Beagus a wink. “Why don’t you try to confirm what Edith told you tomorrow, eh? Before you go running down to the pond?”

Beagus laughed, and shook his head. “Will I ever be as good at this as you?” he asked.

Hargin shook with silent chuckles. “You keep looking and we’ll find out,” he said.

Beagus went to his cot in the corner, and laid down on it, watching the sun sink lower out the window of the house. Tomorrow he’d look for the princess, but for now, he’d enjoy thinking about dancing with Edith.

I previously posted a version of this story that was not complete. One of my fellow writers and blog readers invited me to a “woodshedding” writer’s group at the end of 2025, where I worked with other writers to improve and complete the story. It was a fun exercise in collaboration.

All the stories from the group, A Writer’s Shindig will post here for the next 6 Sundays. You can read more about our project at A Writer’s Shindig.

---

Beagus hung his face over the cup before him, willing the smoke from the candle down, down, down into its contents. It danced on the surface of the brown water in the cup before gliding back up, escaping the vessel. Beagus silently cursed for what felt like the hundredth time. He tried again, this time concentrating on the flame. Yes, good, this is good, he thought as he watched the way the flame dipped into the cup. The smoke began filling the vessel, and he doubled his concentration, speaking to the smoke now. Beagus smiled as it responded to his command be heavy and his plea show me what I seek. When the smoke was hovering over the water within the cup, he blew out the flame on the taper and placed it beside him on the table. Then he lifted the cup to his face with two hands and peered into it, watching how the smoke formed shapes and pictures on the surface of the water, staining the surface of the liquid dark as ink. He smiled as he saw a girl dancing, before she was whisked away by friends. They covered her in a veil, presented her as a bride. A slow chuckle burbled from inside him as he imagined it. He, a novice sorcerer, and her, a girl who kept the geese.

The door of the house creaked open before it banged against the wall. He was so startled that his jump of surprise caused the water in the cup to splash up into his face. He could taste the dirt and the smoke in it as it ran over his lips. He blinked the water from his eyes before looking towards the door., Hargin, who was a real sorcerer and his teacher, was hauling in a load of firewood, badly wrapped in a blanket, which he drug across the house. He grunted from the effort as he moved towards the fireplace. He spilled the load all over the floor before he got to the place where a few logs were already neatly stacked. Hargin muttered as he picked up what was left of the load in the blanket, huffing and puffing as he placed them into the stack next to the hearth. Then, finally, he turned and looked right at Beagus, sitting at the table with smoke and water and shock still covering his face.

“What did you see?” Hargin stomped towards the door and closed. The man was huge; Beagus wondered why he hadn’t built a bigger house.

“The goose girl is getting married,” Beagus said.

“To who?” Hargin asked, shutting the door with more force than was probably necessary.

“Oh…” Beagus said. He hadn’t thought it could be anyone other than him.

Hargin put his hands on his hips, and Beagus thought the sorcerer couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or frown.

“Next time don’t use dirty water,” Hargin said. “You can’t see as well if it’s full of dirt.”

Beagus wondered why he hadn’t thought of that.

“Stack that wood up, and then I’ll show you how to do it,” Hargin said, pointing to the pieces that were still scattered from the door to the hearth. “Again.” The last word was a growl.

“I am getting better,” Beagus said, scurrying to where the logs had spilled across the floor of the cabin. “It took me much less time today to get the smoke to dance on the water.”

Hargin grunted in reply, pouring more water from the jug on the counter. Taking the taper in one hand, and snapped his fingers with the other. A flame sputtered into existence on the wick. He concentrated. The wick sputtered and crackled. Beagus watched Hargin fill the cup with smoke with one try, then peer into it. A laugh escaped him, then he straightened, and stared at his pupil.

Beagus hadn’t managed to stack one log on the pile as Hargin worked.

“You weren’t supposed to be looking for the goose girl. You were supposed to be looking for the princess,” Hargin said.

“I know,” Beagus said. “It’s just that…when I think of marriages, I can’t help myself…”

“What do you know about the goose girl?” Hargin said, interrupting as if he’d never had a young and tender infatuation.

Beagus felt his face flame. “Oh, well, not much…”

Hargin laughed again. “Go and talk to her,” he said.

Beagus beamed. “Do you mean, the wedding I saw…?”

“Ah! None of that!” Hargin said. “I see what I see, and you see what you see. Remember?”

“Oh,” said Beagus, placing one log on the stack. “Yes, I remember.” He hated that rule. He wanted Hargin to tell him what he saw in the smoke so that he knew if he was doing it right. The sorcerer assured him that this would not work the way he wanted it to.

Hargin drank the rest of the water in the jug in a single gulp. “Need more water,” he said.

“I’ll go get it,” Beagus said, though he knew Hargin hadn’t meant for there to be question about who would do the chore.

As he hurried out of the house with the jug, he thought about the goose girl, Edith. She was pretty, as sweet as she was plump. Beagus adored her…from afar. He didn’t have language for how it made him feel to see her chasing the geese from their coop, to the pond, then back to the coop. They honked and pecked, irritated with her, but she always just smiled and talked to them like they were the best of friends. He watched her out of the window of the sorcerer’s hut as often as he could, which ended up being every single morning, and every single evening, much to Hargin’s frustration.

When he reached the well, he fetched the water as quickly as he could. He planned to take the long way back to the hut, the path that went past the pond, just in case she was there with the geese. The jug was heavy, and Beagus knew he should have gone straight home. But the smoke had shown him a wedding, and it was the goose girl’s wedding, and he thought, maybe, just maybe…

Edith, the goose girl, was at the pond, watching the geese on the water, and throwing little pebbles that made ripples across the surface. In Beagus’ excitement, a strangled sound escaped him. She turned, smiled, and said, “Hello.” There was sunlight on her hair, and Beagus felt like a puddle in her presence.

“Hhhhhhh….hi,” Beagus said, kicking himself for being so stupid, as if she too was a sorcerer and put a spell on him that took away his words.

She continued to smile, but the longer he stared, saying nothing, the tighter the smile became. “Eh…what’s your name?” she finally asked.

“Beagus!” he said. The jug was getting heavy.

“The sorcerer’s apprentice?” she asked. She was honey personified.

He snapped his mouth shut, realizing that he’d been standing there drooling like a fool. He nodded vigorously. “I have to get this water back to the sorcerer.”

“Oh,” she said, the smile falling even more. “Okay,” she said. Then she frowned. “Why did you come by the pond with it?” She looked curious, not wary.

“Just…eh, just wanted to see the…geeeeeese,” the words crawled out of him.

“Oh,” said Edith. “I’m Edith,” she offered, picking up another pebble.

“I know,” he said. Then he cursed himself. What if she thought he was a creep?

Instead, this knowledge brought a smile back to her face. “I come here every day,” she said. “You can come visit with me? When you’re not fetching water?” Her words were light, expectant, filled with the light of hope.

“YES!” Beagus said. Too forcefully. “Yes, I can,” he said more calmly.

She laughed, like a bell. “Get back to your master then,” she said, shooing him away with a wave of her hand and a tinkling laugh.

Beagus nearly ran back to the house, propelled by his excitement.