The Mundane Boy

The town was set on the gentle slope of a hill, facing the east. The nearest airport was five miles away, and so it was that he had to fly here on a carpet, trying hard not to pass out. Ian slowed when he saw the little speck of brown that indicated the town, and tilted his carpet. A strong gale told him that he had messed up something somewhere, so he straightened up, eyes stretched wide against the wind. He tried once more, and this time he darted down towards the sloping earth. 

Benjamin was waiting for him at the landing post, trussed up like a butler from an 80's movie. Or perhaps that was how butlers dressed to this day. 'Hullo, Mr Diaz,' he said, calling him by his wizard father's name. 'Happy journey?'

Ian stared at him for a moment to see if he was kidding. Ian wasn't used to this Harry Potter lifestyle, flying into towns on magic carpets, trying not to fall off, vomit and a scream at the back of your throat. Perhaps that was what happened when you spent seventeen years in the mundane world and suddenly turned up into your wizard parents' life with no warning. 

The farmhouse was a mansion with lush well-kept gardens and a high chain-link fence surrounding the border. His parents weren't home yet ('Sara Finch's party, surely you know who the great Sara Finch is?'), but they had left him friends to play with. 

They sat in the kitchen. A short redhead sinking his teeth into a piece of chocolate cake, a chubby girl who had consumed a can of soda and was opening another, a brown kid with glasses pouring her eyes out on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic and a freckled boy eating a bar of Snickers. They had been there for some time, at first reluctant to touch anything, and finally, bored, trying out all the fancy sugar fare the Diazes had left to their desires. 

Benjamin made the introductions, while Ian stood there, trying hard not to die of the embarrassment. His parents had not deemed it enough to suddenly turn up in their son's peaceful, boring mundane adolescence and invite him to their house with plans of showing off at feasts like a new car model. No, they had to appoint him a random friend group so he didn't get "lonely".

Somehow he survived the introduction. The redhead was Riley, the chubby girl was Nessie, the bookworm was Moza and the freckled boy was Leo. They all smiled at Ian -- the sort of smiles celebrities made when asked a particularly nosy question -- after which Benjamin said, 'You may play within the house, see the farms, watch television, anything you like,' and took his leave. 

The footsteps had scarce faded that Nessie commented, 'We are a little too young to play, though, ain't we?'

Riley laughed. 'Trying English slang, Ness?'

Nessie made a face. 'Don't call me that.'

'It suits you, though,' Moza said, not looking up from her comic. 'Ness, like the Loch Ness monster. You have the looks.'

'Okay, that's just mean,' said the chubby girl. 

Leo spoke up. 'And putting a sleeping guy's hand in icy water isn't?'

Ian almost choked. 'You didn't,' he said, shocked and impressed in equal amounts. 

Nessie raised her shoulders and grinned proudly. 'I did.'

'The Drunken Zombie Pranksters have all done it,' Riley said, swallowing his mouthful of cake. 'I've done it with my sister.'

Moza flipped a page. 'That sounds unnecessarily incestuous.'

'Incense what?' Riley asked. 

'You know, a relationship between --' Moza started, but was interrupted loudly by Leo. 

'Enough, pals. We have a new homie to welcome, don't we?'

All eyes turned on Ian. 'Hey,' he said, trying hard to be casual. Then he was being thumped on the back and cheered on and encouraged to try snacks, and soon he found himself telling his entire story to these total strangers. 

' ... So, in short, yeah, my poor biological parents gave me up to random mundane parents, and then my poor biological parents became rich and now they're rich wizard parents ... and they invited me here... So I'm here, bruh.'

After the storytelling was over, the five of them ran down to check out the farms. They were oceans of purple bulbous flowers that smelled of nectar and vines and fresh paper. "Roushiel" was the name the wizards had for the crop.

An idea came to Riley. 'Hey,' he said, hesitating and mischievous simultaneously, 'how about we, um, sneak out?"

Nessie seemed to like that. 'Outrageous. I'm in.'

'Sounds like fun.' Leo shrugged. 'Moza?'

'Yeah, whatever,' Moza replied, still sulky about Leo taking away her comic book. 

He looked at Ian. 'What about young Mr Diaz, here?'

'It's Molina, actually,' Ian said, but either they didn't hear him or they chose to ignore. The plan was simple: they would go to the back gate, slip in a pound to the guard and then scurry out into the alley, where Riley had parked his truck. Ian was pretty sure bribing watchmen didn't qualify as "sneaking out" but he didn't want to spoil the fun, and thus shut up. 

The watchman was a friendly guy, and let them out. They couldn't go very far, though, because Riley had locked his keys in the truck. So they walked, far as they could, keeping to the cheaper bits of the town to not be tracked. Eventually the sun set and it was time to go. 

      *

A building built in the shape of a dome and lit with silver lavenders at night, Silver Dome lived up to its name. Not only was it a marvel of architecture -- at least in Ian's eyes -- it was also huge, four storeys high, with an in-built restaurant, cafetaria, casino, bowling alley, swimming pool, sauna and massage parlour. 

Wallace Oxford had not rented the whole of Silver Dome, though; that was the sort of wealthy even the Diazes couldn't pull off. He had rented the birthday feast suite and that was where the server directed them after checking their invitations (which somehow included Ian). Oxford himself greeted them, a bald old man with newly earned money and a newly seduced girlfriend who coiled around his arm like an anaconda. They exchanged fake PR greetings, until Oxford brought up the subject the whole town was busy gossiping about: Ian.

Whenever Ian had imagined the feast, he had assumed that his parents would be presenting him like a talking monkey, shrieking, 'Look! Look! Our mundane son! Son, jump!' That didn't happen, though. For an unknown reason, the Diazes were very reserved while answering queries -- some of them very prying -- about Ian. As if they hadn't invited him to their wizard town to show him off among their friends.

At half past eleven the guests were seated at the table and the starters were brought in, on floating platters and tureens and glasses. Half the dishes Ian didn't know the names of, and the other half didn't seem to have any names in their first place. Ian, nervous as he was, grabbed the first thing he recognised -- a lettuce salad -- and nursed it for the rest of the course, watching the dancing bears and vampire orchestra Oxford had hired for their entertainment.

It went on like that for some time, until guests grew bored of sitting down and got up, to gossip or dance. The only people who remained on the table were Ian, an elderly woman dozing beside her third goblet of wine, Oxford's young girlfriend and a man earnestly flirting with her. Ian had grown almost comfortable by now, nibbling on chicken nuggets and watching the orchestra; they were either real vampires, or they wore very realistic makeup.

I need water, he thought, as all around him wizards twirled and whirled and fairies laughed from chandeliers. There had only been a few jugs of water on the table and those had been exhausted when the guests tried the Mexican chicken. He got up, trying not to fall, his feet tired from sitting for too long. There was a fountain somewhere nearby, he remembered, and stepped out into the corridor in its search. 

       *

The town had speculations about this son of Mr and Mrs Diaz who had flown in one Friday noon on a lavish red carpet. He was mundane, the Diazes themselves had said, but people didn't believe it. They certainly would, though, if they saw him right now, jumping up and down to retrieve his bow tie from a chuckling pixie. 

Ag pointed a finger at the pixie and whispered a spell, and the pixie was knocked against a wall and lost his grip on the bowtie. He shook his head as if to clear it, shot an ugly look at Ag and flew away before she could shoot one back.

Ian turned around and saw her. He looked too shocked to say much, so Ag started, 'Nasty creatures, aren't they?' The boy was flummoxed. 'Pixies, I mean. You never learnt mythology at school?' she asked politely. That seemed to arouse him.

'No... I mean, yeah, I learnt mythology at school, about pixies as well, but I didn't know that they, you know, existed ... ' He shook his shoulders. ' ... and how they looked like, and stuff...'

The woman pulled up her scarf tighter around her throat. 'I'm Agatha,' she said. Her skin was lightly tanned and her eyes were green. 

'Hey, I'm Ian,' he replied. 'And thanks for, um, defeating that gypsy -- I mean, pixie.' 

'Ah, it was nothing,' Agatha said, waving a carefree hand and taking a step closer to him. 'Always ready to help out tourists. Or are you going to stay after the summer as well?'

'No. Just -- just the summer. Gotta get back to my ... adoptive parents.' Ian wondered why she was talking to him, then realised that, after all, he was the first mundane to enter the town of Roushierra since ages. Who wouldn't be curious?

'Really?' said Agatha. Whoops and cheers rang out from the bowling alley around the corner. Ian had the vague, almost unformed idea that something was wrong before a lightning bolt whipped across his face and he tripped and fell, his skin on fire. There were shouts and yells, hissed spells and running footfalls, a commotion and a fight. Mrs Diaz screamed, 'Don't run, you bitch!' and Mr Diaz said, 'No, Selena, don't!' Glass shattered, like a window breaking, and a chandelier fell, scattering shrieking fairies. Dimly Ian saw someone kneel down beside him, sticking an iron press to his cheek and making him cry out. Dimly he heard a ringing voice say, 'He's okay!' Ian wanted to tell them that he wasn't okay -- his face was on fire -- but his lips wouldn't form the words. Fingers touched his hair. The person moved their mouth to his ear and whispered, 'It's okay.' They sounded almost like Leo.

  *

Dr Finch opened his toolkit and took out the needle. The boy's eyes went big and he swallowed. The doctor injected the needle into his bruised cheek, and deeper, into the flesh. The boy winced. 'There were days when this could have been less painful,' said Finch, holding the needle where it was, 'and a lot more effective as well. Days when a simple touch of a healer's hand could have mended a burn. But those days are gone.' The doctor sighed, and gracefully retrieved the needle. He twirled his fingers in the air, gathering a golden light in his palm, and then released whatever aura there was in them at Ian, who puffed in relief.

'You will be fine in a month,' Dr Finch said, and before the boy could reply, he continued, 'the scar will go as well.'

Standing at the other side of the bed was Selena Diaz. She had strange, tiny ears like her son's that seemed to fold when she was troubled. If not for them Finch would never have known she was troubled. They exchanged some words about his fee and then the doctor took his leave. 

Selena took a seat and looked at her son. He had woken up this morning for the first time since Silver Dome, totally frightening the maid who, it turned out, had the assumption that the mundane hogging the open-ventilation bedroom was in coma. He hadn't really spoken to anyone, but Selena suspected it was more for the pain it took to speak rather than any personal enmity.

'So,' she said, looking at her son. A dark whip-like bruise ran along the left half of his face and cut into his lips, so that they bled at the least sign of effort. 'How do you feel, Ian?' 

He seemed like he was about to say something sarcastic, then thought better of it and shrugged. 

'I know this is all very confusing for you,' said Selena, 'but please, Ian, try to listen and -- and, just, try,' she swallowed, 'to understand -- and be, um...' She had practised this over with Edgar but now when the time had come, she seemed to have forgotten all the words. '... open-minded,' she finished, knowing that this was the worst possible adjective she could have requested of him. 

There were dark circles under his eyes. He opened his cracked lips to speak but instead winced out of the pain, blood flowing down his chin. She shook a handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to him. Ian closed his mouth and pressed the fabric against his lip. She made a tsk sound. Selena Diaz hated blood.

'The doctor says bleeding is good,' she said, suppressing her gag reflex, 'takes out the bad aura from the system, yeah...'

The pale white handkerchief was now tainted with scarlet. His sleep had been shallow and fitful, so when he stared at her she could see the circles under his eyes. She realised he was nagging her on. 'Yeah, the thing is...' she began, then sighed. There was no point in stalling. 'You're the Chosen One, Ian.'

He continued to stare at her, with a judging kind of look, as if he thought she was kidding. She managed a smile. 'I know it's stupid. Edgar knows it's stupid. Even the High Council of Wizardry knows it's stupid. We stopped believing in prophecy a long time ago. But the Goldens didn't.'

Ian wasn't following her. That was to be expected. 'The Goldens are an organisation that skim the world for unproved prophecies, prove them true and scream to the world, "Luck's real!" Of course, that's not what they'll tell you. They'll tell you they're working towards, shall we say, the "greater good",' she quoted in the air. 

'The Goldens will go to any means to prove a prophecy. And there is one such prophecy that you are the Chosen One and that you will bring glory back to us wizards... but the truth is, Ian,' Selena said, suddenly grasping his hand, 'the truth is, we lost our glory because of our own foolishness, and it is a good thing we lost our glory or we would be enslaving the mundane and ruling the world like some Louis XVI and I'm glad we lost glory. That's how we've survived. What goes up must come down, Ian.' She let go of his hand. 'But some meth-head prophesied the last child blessed from Arthur's Fountain would --' Ian made a sound right then and Selena remembered how little he had learnt at his mundane school. 

'Arthur's Fountain is a fountain in the wizard city Zero that people claimed would bless every unborn child. It was fell one New Year for tax reasons. Big scandal. Apparently some people took the whole "blessed" thing seriously. We went there just five minutes before it was fell, the last ones. Edgar took a picture.' Selena sighed. 

'This Agatha person is probably a Golden, trying to provoke you into doing something heroic. We found out about the prophecy from Sara Finch -- who had a Seer great uncle -- some time before you came. We'd already invited you, and we figured, what's the chance the Goldens have heard about it?' She bowed her eyes. 'Perhaps we were being selfish. After such a long time we had finally found our son and we were just so glad that this time around, we had the money to buy you birthday presents. As a precaution we hired some interns from the Wizard Petrol who could look out for you... you remember Riley and Moza and Nessie and -- what's his name -- Leo, yeah. Your father and I hired them to keep you safe.' She looked up, a blush on her cheeks. 

'We can't send you back to the mundane world now. The Goldens know about the prophecy and they're intent on provoking you into doing "Chosen One" stuff. They'll probably kill you in the attempt, so for the time being you'll have to stay in Roushierra. I'm sorry.'

She did not try to tell him how great Roushierra was, how much fun he would have with his bodyguard friends. Understanding but firm, they had decided, when they planned how they would explain the past few days' happenings to their son.

Ian closed his eyes and seemed to think. He opened them once more and gave a hoarse laugh, barely caring for the pain. It was all too ridiculous. 'Okay,' he said in a voice warbled by blood. 'Okay, I'll stay in Roushierra.'

                 *

Are you okay? he wanted to ask him, but he knew any answer he would get would be a lie. 

He looked at Ian, drank in all his features. His eyes were brown beads set under thin brown eyebrows. He had strange, tiny ears. He looked average -- other than the bruises and scars, of course -- but Leo liked him. And he planned on telling him that.