The Giant Sorcerer

The Giant Sorcerer by William Whitman

Raphael and Cassandra, living with their Aunt Mary on a small farm near Uniontown, are drawn into a confrontation with the mechanical world when Cassandra, seemingly entranced, is stolen in the night from the orchard path by Mechanus, the Giant Sorcerer, a towering mechanical being who offers her toys and a city of wonders. Raphael, who tries to stop him, is struck down and left alone in the woods. There he meets Empyrean, Chief of All the Eagles in the Sky, who carries him to a mountain council of eagles. In the name of Gea, the Earth Mother, the eagles clothe Raphael in a suit of black feathers and grant him power over earth, air, and sea, naming him Commander of the Elements to fight the coming war between nature and mechanics. Flying with the eagles, Raphael locates the Sorcerer's windowless marble castle on an island in the sea. Using powers granted by Gea, he walks on water, flies, and breathes underwater to scout the castle and seek help from the ocean's inhabitants. He meets Mary Cod and her unruly brood, then a sea horse who serves as Equerry to the Atlantic's President, Albert Right Whale. At an undersea council attended by whales, sharks, and countless sea creatures, Raphael asks for a naval guard around the island. The gathering is interrupted by a diver-like mechanical spy, and the Navy of the Atlantic is sent after it. Guided partway by the sea horse, Raphael finds a hidden undersea entrance to the castle, but discovers the Sorcerer has already fled by submarine with Cassandra, leaving a mocking letter. Raphael escapes the castle via elevator and signals the eagles, who have tracked the submarine to a coastal river leading toward the Sorcerer's city, Mechana. Raphael runs ahead through the forest, encountering a hen partridge, a bear and her cub, who are sympathetic to the forest's plight but resigned to it. He and Empyrean overlook Mechana, a vast mechanical city, and summon a council of forest animals—wolves, bears, moose, mice, a crow, an otter—who scout the city but find little useful information beyond rumors of a walled tower by the river. The animals agree to a seven-day truce and encircle the city while Raphael goes in alone to spy. In the city, Raphael is captured, unresisting, by Mechanus and taken to his walled tower, where he is reunited with Cassandra, who seems strangely listless. The Sorcerer strips Raphael of his feather suit and fears losing his magic, but he and Cassandra are given lavish toys—trains, automobiles, a doll's house—and gradually grow absorbed in this mechanical luxury, quarreling over the toys and forgetting their mission. Mechanus shows them his factories, where mechanicos (mechanical men) are mass-produced on assembly lines, and reveals warehouses of poison gas and death-ray machines intended to exterminate all living things, after which fifty million mechanicos would inherit the earth. He explains he kidnapped Cassandra to study human qualities to perfect his mechanical men, and invites the children to join him in ruling the world. That night, troubled by conscience, Raphael resolves to return to the animals and fight. He tells Cassandra to hide in the tower's cellar during the coming attack. Discovered by Mechanus at the window, he dives out and finds, with relief, that his power to fly has not left him; the Sorcerer lets him go unopposed. Returning to the animals' meeting hill, Raphael finds the truce broken—wolves have killed a deer, and most of the animals, disillusioned, have scattered, leaving only the eagles. Disheartened but resolute, Raphael dismisses the council and determines to destroy the city himself. He summons a great storm, which the Sorcerer's mechanicos counter by capturing the lightning in metal nets, and then floodwaters, which the mechanicos hold back with hastily built walls and drainage works. Seeing the city successfully defending itself, Raphael then calls upon earthquake and volcano. Lava and ash overwhelm Mechana despite the mechanicos' frantic efforts; explosions suggest the gas tanks may have ignited. Fearing he has doomed Cassandra along with the city, Raphael spots a white balloon of surrender above the ruins and halts the eruption just in time. Raphael and the eagles make their way through the wrecked, lava-strewn city to the Sorcerer's tower, where Mechanus and Cassandra await. The Sorcerer formally surrenders. Raphael, uncertain how to deal with his defeated enemy and recognizing the animals have abandoned him, listens as Mechanus argues that machines are indispensable to humanity—providing light, food, transport, medicine, and the goods of civilization—and warns that destroying him might only invite the invention of something worse. Raphael extracts a promise from the Sorcerer never to build another city of mechanicos nor harm the animals or humankind, and in exchange spares his life. The eagles, angered by this mercy, vanish into a cloud shaped like a woman, save for Empyrean, who remains. The Sorcerer departs without further word. Empyrean carries Raphael and Cassandra home through the night, landing them back on the porch of Aunt Mary's house at dawn. The eagle vanishes before Raphael can thank him. Raphael rushes to tell Aunt Mary that he has rescued Cassandra and defeated the Sorcerer, but she, roused from sleep, dismisses his claims as nonsense and tells him to go back to bed, as it is only six o'clock.

By William Whitman · First published 1927 · Genre: Fantasy, Children's Literature, Adventure · 15 chapters · 24,923 words

First lines

Raphael and Cassandra lived with their Aunt Mary in a white house which was tucked away from the road in a group of five elm trees. Behind the house was a white barn with a green door, and beside the barn to the west lay the orchard enclosed by a gray stone wall.

Often Raphael would lean out of the nursery window and wonder what lay beyond the wooded hill that sheltered the little farm from the north wind. There must be, he thought, great cities and seas and mountains. And animals like the tigers and giraffes which chased each other round his bedroom wall paper. Some day he would take Cassie and run away and visit these places. They would see the whole world for themselves.

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children's fantasy · mechanical villain · nature versus technology · magical realism · sister rescue · kidnapping · underwater exploration · talking animals · apocalyptic threat · rural setting · early twentieth century · elemental magic

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The Giant Sorcerer is listed on Textopian as a novella by William Whitman, dated 1927 CE.

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