Yesteryear Fiction

The Bubblemage
By Amanda Firefox


She was unique among wizards. Merlin wouldn’t take her, couldn’t take the art that she wove into iridescent air seriously. The great, eastern wizard Fareed observed her over a period of days, only to finally turn her out into the sands with a modest sack of supplies, shaking his head at his own inability to instruct her in the ways of harsher elements like fire and ice. The massive dragon of air and film that she wove to life, sparking on the long, flat fields of the northern isles impressed the grand wizard of Rhondubouis, but even he only regarded her art as a curiosity, something from beyond the vale of dreams which no man or woman had ever brought back to the world of mortals before. She stayed on in his tower for several weeks, poring over his tomes, lighting up his long disused library as he gently slipped into silent madness on the magically manicured lawns of his estate, but eventually bid the old wizard goodbye before striking off for other wizards, other lands.

Further south, she found her way into the home of the wizard who lorded over the dark and musky lands of Akadae, but he was no more able to train her or help her polish her art than any of the other men of magic had been. Only his daughter, an apprentice thought incapable of magic and left to clean up after her father as a servant instead, showed any interest in the bubble creations, but it was passing, childlike.

In the end, after time and the journey, the search for a teacher and a place to fit into society had weathered the girlish mage who worked in bubbles into that of a strong and hardened woman, she struck out again, but this time not in search of a person, a people. Instead, she sought a place, a cove where the sea foam was rich with potential, ready to be worked, to be given life. There, she would build her own city, her own people, and lord over it all as her new nation’s grand wizard, the mage whose magic lay in bubbles.


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Amanda Firefox is a fiery little blue-eyed brunette who spends as much time at the beach as she can manage. She doesn't write much, but when she writes, it's almost always about her favorite subject: boys.