•••

An abandoned house is a decrepit one. This proves the case for the three-story manor that lives atop Mire Hill.  Its staple Victorian pitched roofs have been worn down to Victorian mounds, which sounds like a terrible name for British caramels. Creeping English Ivy has gone rogue, growing far beyond the trellises that had once held it in place. 

The porch is angled, a decision that reads less like an architect's choice and more like a mistake made after a night of drinking. Slats rear up, stabbing at the air. A porch swing, more rust, and broken dreams than anything substantial, wheezes in the breeze.

It saddens me to report the interior fares no better; all three floors are breeding grounds for mold, mites and other pests. Spiders have packed up their webs and moved on, having declared the space too unclean for them to set up roots. Only the lower level is somewhat inhabitable, which is where we find our Crispen Heavensley. He reclines on the green Laz-E-boy he rescued from the trash. 

Despite presenting as someone deeply relaxed, he is anything but. In fact, he is deep in concentration, searching the ether for someone. Do I know the particulars of who this someone is? Yes. Will I disclose them to you? Not right now.

Call me coy, if you feel so inclined; I will not refute such claims.

His brow furrows and one eye peels open, staring into the gaping wound of his roof, where a murder of crows flies and caws overhead. Grey clouds move in, smothering the leftover blue sky from the early morning.

He senses me, narrating this part of the story, and in doing so with such conviction and fact, I am sure he approves of my job unconditionally.

Answering me, he gives a shake of his head, flashes a frown, and thinks: No way. Not you. You couldn't relate a story in full if it were to save the world.

Pshaw, I think to that. I've saved the worlds millions of times, unbeknownst to the humans and the dinosaurs who predated them. Just because a few extinctions slipped through my hand does not mean my work and efforts should go unnoticed or forsaken.

Crispen shakes his head harder. This isn't about you.

This, I cannot argue with. He is right, for once—a rarity for the boy of crows—though, a time will come when the story pivots, and I will be as important as any of the main cast.

Crispen's thoughts scream, That is not the case! You serve a minor role, one that could easily be axed in subsequent drafts.

Pshaw, I think again. How belligerent Crispen has grown up to be! I almost think his leash should have been shorter.

Crispen's lips pull into a tight line. And there it is, your true nature.

My nature is neither here nor there, nor to be discussed within the parameters of these early chapters. Besides, others will decide my nature, not just you, boy of crows - you, who shouldn't have been.

And yet I was.

And yet, I think, you were.

The crows circling overhead release a squawk into the air. Crispen and I part on hostile terms. 

• Father to Son •

He sensed it. Like a ripple on the surface of a lake once placid and now perturbed, all emanating from the same source: Gideon. With his headphones on and Phil Collin's fourth album, But Seriously, supplying him with the music he needed to concentrate, Crispen set about making contact.

He and Gideon, after all, were well acquainted. Both had been born of darkness, complications that none on the Council could have predicted. A human allying themselves with the Refracted, finding love among the abysses and consumed by passionate throes, creating two beings who should never have been. Not even the Eyes of All could see it happening. Like magic itself, Crispen and Gideon one day, just were and they could not be controlled.

The music flooded his ear canals like a rush of water, welcomed as it sought to alleviate the drought his powers experienced every time he'd tried to call on Gideon through the ether.

Soon, he found himself mouthing song lyrics, perfunctory for now, as they served to harness the magic that flowed inside him, unrestrained, white in color, and too much for one body to endure for long durations, though they'd be belted with vigor later for pursuits of pure delight.

He gritted his teeth, dug his nails into the peeling corduroy of the recliner, and stepped into the darkness.

"Gideon," he called out. Each syllable immediately swallowed by the same force that had foiled Crispen's attempts before. Crispen began to sweat, which, on occasions that mattered far less, made his skin dazzle like diamonds and girls flock to him with offerings of cow-shaped creamers and old cassettes, which he took always, with a bow and smile. This time, his sweat was ugly, slimy on his skin, clammy, heavy - a harbinger of what would again be failure.

"Gideon!"

A flicker. In the distance. Crispen froze, focused on that single point, reached out for it with extended fingernails. His brain screamed. The magic boiled in his veins. There, a boy, dark as night, bottling stars, seeking out companionship in the only things he was allowed to touch. Crispen ran.

The light shifted. Two boys, one pale, one dark, two halves of the same whole, being torn apart, the Council of Four at their backs. One drained of his color, leashed, and led away. The other screaming at the top of their lungs, tears flung from his eyes as he experienced sadness and pain and loss all in a single moment that stretched beyond eternity's end.

The Fourth hearing his cries, stepping between Crispen and the Council, vowing to watch after the boy and take his failings and punishments as though they were his own. The Council agreeing. Then darkness, darkness, and more darkness. Crispen probed, tried to find the light again, but it had been smothered.

He fell back, head hitting cushion. A hundred pails sang a song as raindrops fell in through the roof and caught in their empty bottoms. Sighing, he got up, rewound his Walkman so Father to Son could carry his mind to some far less regrettable place, and headed for the kitchen.

Genesis would be there shortly, Peneloper with him. That beastly companion of hers, having finally revealed his true nature, trailing behind them like the magical canine he was. Gideon's magic stained them; he could feel it, sticky and tar-like, following them like a cloud, pressing down, down, down.

He slumped as he ripped open one of his cupboards and set about making a pot of tea, using the rainwater of six pails and tea bags he'd discovered in his pantry that smelled the least like mold. The tea kettle he'd received from Eloisa Batchelor as a thank you gift to repay him for all he'd done for her.

Crispen had been quite sure he'd done nothing for the simpering Eloisa aside from hear her out the morning she'd presented him with the kettle. Before that, they'd never spoken or crossed paths. Such had been the way of his interactions with the females of Potter Oaks. They never talked to him until they did, usually thrusting a gift into his arms, and then it was as if they'd always been well acquainted.

The exception was, of course, Miss Auttsley, who early on deemed him too sickly to find attractive, and who seemed immune to any hysterical bouts of fawning, swooning, preening, pouting, balking, simpering, or sycophantic flattery. She viewed him with an interest, purely scientific, stemming from an innate sense of yearning to discover who she was, who she really was. And so grateful was he, so enamored by her indifference, that he obliged her curiosity, revealing himself before the Council's agreed upon time, and thus drawing their ire.

At the very thought of the Council, a man stepped from the shadow of Crispen's wheezing refrigerator, presenting himself as all mysterious figures are apt to do - draped in darkness, shrouded in a hood of mystique which he paired with wrinkled jeans. He was also slouched, his hoodie stained with chocolate bits.

The kettle whistled, steam pouring from its spout. "Care for some?" Crispen maneuvered the kettle off the stove, putting an end to its siren song, and started filling two chipped cups.

His guest shook his head, a smattering of reddish-brown hair, the same as the stubble along the man's jaw, slipping free of the hood's shadow. "How is she?"

Crispen set his jaw, bobbing a tea bag up and down, a red hue leeching out of it and coloring the water pink. "You've sensed it too, undoubtedly?"

The man took a step forward, heavy boots, thick with tread and melting snow, scuffed the tile floor. "He'll stop at nothing to get to her."

Crispen nodded. "Just as you stopped at nothing to protect her." The words stopped the man dead.

The next time he spoke, he did so with the strain in his voice of someone well-met with regret. "It wasn't enough." The man balled a scarred, tan hand into a fist. "I have to go." He reached into his pocket to pull out a silver flask. Flicking back the top, he took a protracted sip. Once finished, the man wiped his mouth along his sleeve, put away his flask, and turned. "Council business. They've got me running ragged since they blame me for all this happening."

Crispen gripped his teacup. "They're rethinking the arrangement, aren't they?" The man stiffened. Crispen stared into his cup, swirling the water around with the tip of his finger. "They want to confine me to the Rose, yes? Gideon, being the only other one like me in existence, has shown them a Refracted, when gifted with magic, is not to be trusted. And so, I'm not to be trusted."

The man held out his hands, blue strands, like silk, weaving a portal at his front. "He shouldn't even have magic. They drained him." Crispen couldn't read the man's aura - he was too good at concealing it, along with his thoughts, from prying eyes and impeccable ears, but Crispen didn't need such skills to know there was something more at work here, something far worse than a Refracted with a vendetta and recently acquired magic.

The man's portal complete, he stepped one foot through.

"She reminds me of you," Crispen said, and this, again, stopped the man dead. Crispen didn't mean to dredge up old memories, but he wanted to repay the man for the kindness he'd shown him so long ago. "She's sensible, incorrigible. Hates school, always belligerent when it comes to the curriculum and the teachers. Mr. Howell specifically."

The man snorted. "Arthur Howell is a pious, old windbag who would claim his farts were an integral part of the worlds' history."

Crispen smiled. The man turned, gave him a sideways glance, and as he did, Crispen spied the good humor of the past hidden in his gaze, long-buried beneath endless trials and life-threatening errands.

"Take care of her, Crispen."

"And what of the Council? You can't bear the burden forever. And once they have their noose around her neck, they'll keep tightening it until--" 

The man sighed. "She'll figure it out. She's not like me."

The man stepped through the portal, and in a single blink was gone. Crispen sighed, took the tea to his mouth, and swallowed it in one gulp. Tasting little of the mold, he deemed it worthy of his guests. He ransacked another cabinet nearest him, riffled around behind several black and white spotted cow creamers, and retrieved a box of stale cookies.

The box itself was covered in dust and cobwebs, the actual shortbreads not so much, so he set about offering them to his guests as well, wiping off a silver platter and lining them up in neat little rows, brushing off dust and cobwebs when needed. He had no sooner concluded gathering such offerings as a good host is oft to do, when the doorbell trilled. Genesis flew down from the hole in the roof and took to perching on his shoulder. He offered the bird one of the cookies.

To Crispen's surprise, the usually gluttonous bird refused, and instead, turned to him, expression grim. "Gideon's gifted Miss Auttsley a star."

Crispen frowned, the doorbell buzzing at his back as the eldest Luric, no doubt, sought immediate entrance. Dogs hated the rain, magical dogs more so, as their drenched stank tended to linger, and their sense of smell, far more sensitive, amplified the odor to unbearable levels of awful. "So." Crispen's hand closed around the cookie; it crumbled, and sifted through his fingers like sand. "He wishes to make her remember."

Genesis nodded. "And I'm afraid she will. She's far too hungry to be in the know."

"Then," Crispen responded, taking up the tray and turning toward the door, "we ought to do our part and prepare her for his arrival."

Genesis nodded and Crispen peeled back the door. Peneloper stood there, waterlogged but in good spirits, Chant draped over her like a sopping blanket.

"He," she said, shifting her weight as Chant threatened to slide off her, "he's not one for the rain." Looking at her sneakers, she huffed. "It's not fair. I passed out first, then halfway up the hill, he just collapsed. Wasn't even polite enough to warn us first."

Crispen chuckled and stepped aside, allowing both to take refuge inside the still dilapidated, though now happily occupied—by real flesh and blood guests, to boot—house on Mire Hill.