Prologue

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That thing was not only old but decidedly too ugly for its own good. However, as it wobbled along the table and dangerously edged the borders, little Sullivan’s heartbeats slowed down as the whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. He reacted as fast as he could, stretching his hand, going on his toes, but sure enough, the fat bibelot crashed in a resounding sound, shattering in tiny millions of pieces. He stood there, petrified, soaking from head to toe and dripping still actually, muttering rains of 'no, no, no'. It definitely couldn't be happening! Not to this particular lion clay!

Things were still crashing around him, kitchen tools flying everywhere with soap and water following behind. Now he could hear loud scratchings coming from the next room, and the little boy was completely overwhelmed. How come the chairs were moving too?

A shriek, coming from the living room followed the sound shortly afterward and the twelve years old boy knew from his mother’s expletives that were nearing dangerously close to his position, that nothing he could do could take him out of the mess he created, albeit unwillingly. Now he wished he had listened to uncle Mance rambling on about that invisibility spell he mastered last month.

“Sullivan Evelyn Lionheart!” she exclaimed –and it was never a good sign for her to use his whole name-. She was already by the door and he was caught in his place, near the large table, like a deer flashed by the light on a crossing road at night.

There were sounds coming from the living room behind her, no doubt that she enchanted the furniture to have them take their respective places and clean up everything that his sudden bright idea had caused.

“How many times must I tell you, no magic inside the house?!”

Her long curly jet-black hair seemed to fight the gravity, lifting with each sound she was pronouncing and the little boy could swear that her usual blue eyes were now being tinted with shades of red and like the dragons she used to talk about in her nighttime stories, she was ready to spit fire on him anytime soon.

He wisely kept his mouth shut not even daring to hold her gaze for long, the worst was yet to come, after all, she had yet to take in the chaos that now reigned in what she called the day before her favorite part of the house, the kitchen.

Looking at him straight still, she opened the little western door and that was when the real state of it dawned on her. Her precious Chinese porcelain laying everywhere, bubble coming down the sink, shattered bowls, cups around the counter. Everything was a scattered mess with soap foam everywhere.

“Sweet Merlin!” she suddenly found her voice again running at his feet were laid the remains of what was once a dashing lion’s figurine. Crouching down, she gently touched the pieces and her voice sad and dejected, completely lacking its previous anger, she reminded, “that was great grandmother’s memento.”

And he knew, his mother had loved her grandmother dearly for she never failed to remind him of this everytime she laid her eyes on this bibelot the late person had once gift her when she was a child.

The pained tone employed affected Sullivan more than any of her outbursts could have and brim with guilt, he tried and failed to come with something, ultimately choosing to remain silent.

No matter if she could easily give it back its original form with just a flicker of her hands, he knew, what hurt his mother more than anything was that he disregarded her feelings completely, which he didn’t, not really and he could only amend this by a sheepish,

“I’m sorry.”

His voice seemed to take Shantelle out of her reveries as she stood up and tapped twice in her hands. Following that, the broken things lying on the floor started to elevate in the air and assembled themselves together before taking back their original places.

Really, this whole mess happened because the young boy was actually trying to do what she had just done now, clean the house in a quicker way using magic. How was he to know that instead of being cleaned the whole thing would actually turn into a load of unreasonable mess?

Plates, forks, knives, bowls, and whatnots regained their usual state of cleanness and their places; foam, and bubbles gathered by the sink and where flushed by the drain. When the whole place looked as good as new once again, his mother’s frown was now turned to him,

“I thought I asked you to wash the dishes. How could you make such a mess in the little amount of time I use to go down the street to buy eggs?” she reproached sternly, one hand on her hip and the other holding the recompose and dashing lion clay in her palm. She was giving him that look which said you better start talking.

“Well…” he started to mumble looking everywhere but her eyes, “I was going to… I was actually already washing you see…” and to prove his point he stretched his hands to show that there were still bubbles on them, “and then I realized that it was the only time I was without my inhibitor.”

“-And you thought yourself wiser than your mother who keeps rambling on and on about not using magic before another inhibitor gets made for you!”

Her temper was rearing its ugly head again so, Sullivan was wise enough to not answer this particular taunt, it would definitely bring more troubles than he could handle!

“You, my friend, got yourself a whole month of punishment. No going out, no tv, no magic at all!... No” she immediately shushed him when he tried to defend himself, “not even to talk to the family! Understood?”

“Yes, mom”, he muttered grudgingly.

“And now you’d take a bath, go in your bedroom and stay there until the morning, you’d be good at school tomorrow… And try making friends this time, good friends” she emphasized.

“I can’t promise anything!” he muttered, turning his heels to the toilet’s direction, lucky to not be heard by his mother. Merlin knows what she would have had to add to that.

He was, he thought, definitely not going to go out of his way to be accepted by the children his age. At the last school, he had ended up fighting with one of the overbearing classmates who used to mock him. It really wasn’t Sullivan’s fault if the inhibitors his mother used to give him -her own leftovers- were all girly things like a bracelet or a heart shape necklace or whatever she thought they were but in reality weren’t. It didn’t mean though, that he would sit idly as others damaged his things without talking back. Added to that that his powers were overwhelming the inhibitors, waves of wild magic were almost every day leaking out from him and damaging things near him. It really didn’t help that no one in the classroom was close to him to handle his emotions enough to let him some kind of respite –not that they knew about his powers anyway, they just thought him an unlucky charm who would attract misfortune- instead he was surrounded by people who would incense him even more!

Really, he wished there was a place such as a school of magic or whatever it was that those tv shows and series were about and not just learning magic by his mother’s sides or one of her family’s member. There, certainly, he could make friends, good friends without trying that hard and mostly he would have playmates his age who would face too, those magic related problems he was facing and not just scorn him for being gloomy and different like every one of his previous classmates were doing when it was, mostly, to keep his emotions at bay that he was always by himself!

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