1 Chapter 1: Editor's Note

In September 2011, Professor George Smith of Oregon State University was on a six month sabbatical in Scotland, where he was researching medieval Scottish legends and myths. He was traveling by train from Glasgow to Inverness when he found a book that had been accidentally left behind by a young girl on her way to a boarding school. It was this book, the textbook Magical Wands - A Cornucopia of Wand Lore.

When his sabbatical ended and the Christmas holidays were over, Professor Smith failed to show up for the winter term, during which he was scheduled to teach classes in modern and medieval European literature. Subsequently, it was discovered that he had also failed to return home the previous week as he had originally planned. A few days later, the university notified his family and filed a missing persons report. Further investigations by the Scottish police eventually revealed that Professor Smith had left his Glasgow hotel in early November without paying his bill and had been neither seen nor heard from since.

When a colleague of Professor Smith's was cleaning out his office, she found an unopened package he had mailed to himself from Scotland a few days before he disappeared. Packed inside were two things: this magical textbook and a foreword he had written explaining how he had come across it and his subsequent efforts to find its author.

As acquisition editor for Professor Smith's professional books, the university passed the textbook and his foreword on to me. Clearly it was his intent to republish them upon his return. Although I have previously only published academic books, I felt that the book's content and the potential importance of its discovery made it worthy of publication. But first, I naturally needed to know who held the book's copyright and whether it was available for republication.

Like Professor Smith, I was unable to locate or find any mention of the book's author or The Isle of Skye School of Magick. I was similarly unable to find any mention of the book in the Library of Congress, the British Library, or the National Libraries of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Finally, I could discover no record of Mage Press, which had apparently published the original. After two fruitless years of searching, I finally decided to go ahead with their publication.

As to the book's authenticity, I will leave it up to you to decide whether it is genuine, a work of fiction, or part of an elaborate hoax. As for myself, I am still undecided.

Finally, anyone having knowledge of Professor Smith's whereabouts is requested to please contact the publisher who will pass the information on to Professor Smith's family. They are naturally quite worried and fear that something terrible has happened to him.

Donald Firesmith, 1 April 2014

Acquisition Editor for New Knowledge Academic Press