EPILOGUE
The Wizard, the Giant, and the Magic Fruit Trees: A Happy Ending

When we last visited our hero the wizard, he was in sad shape. Vandals and thieves had wrecked his magic fruit trees, and so he conjured up a lava moat to surround the enchanted orchard and keep the intruders away. Unfortunately, the lava moat also kept out the good villagers who came to the orchard to pick fruit (and, not coincidentally, to buy potions from the wizard).

To solve this problem, the wizard invited his friend the giant to live in the orchard. The giant was tall enough and strong enough to jump over the lava moat, so whenever one of the villagers wanted a piece of fruit, he could simply shout his request to the giant and the giant would fetch the fruit for him. This would have been a perfect solution and a happy ending to the story, except for the fact that while the giant was indeed very tall and very strong, he wasn’t particularly smart! The giant followed the wizard’s instructions to the letter—which were simply to serve the villagers’ requests—so when a sneaky young man came up to the giant and asked him to fetch the wizard’s collection of magic scrolls, the giant happily complied and unwittingly gave up all of the wizard’s precious secrets.

The wizard—correctly realizing that the fault was his own, not the giant’s—sat the giant down and set down some better rules for him to follow. “Never trust the villagers,” the wizard said, and explained that the giant should only serve villagers’ requests for fruit. The wizard didn’t bother to list out all the things the giant shouldn’t serve, like scrolls or crystal balls or wands; he knew that if he tried to list out forbidden objects, he would inevitably forget one. No, the better approach was simply to state what was allowed and not what was forbidden.

Furthermore, since the giant had no legitimate need to ever go up into the wizard’s tower, the wizard cast another spell that prevented the giant from entering there. That way, should an even sneakier villager try to break the rules again (“Fetch me the fruit that’s sitting on the wizard’s desk”), the giant would be unable to comply.

With these new rules in place, the giant did a much better job of preventing troublemakers from stealing the wizard’s secrets; the villagers got their fruit faster since the giant wasn’t off running malicious errands to the tower; and the wizard slept better at night and sold more potions.

And they all lived happily ever after.