The Soceror's Secrets: Backstory of the wizard, Arthur Kirkland

Arthur Kirkland was born in the autumn of 1896, his mother’s last attempt at producing an heir. Three brothers had come before him and none had lived passed the age of two, each claimed by disease and violence the like of which even Radella Kirkland’s magic could not overcome. Their fathers had all been magic users, and as the Mother Kirkland learned through hardship and sorrow, magic blood does not mix well.

Arthur’s father however, had been a scholar with no magical lineage to speak of, traveling through the countryside of England and researching to put together a book of history for the university. He bartered for room and board at the small cottage on the edge of a farming village and wound up getting more than he paid for. The kindly woman he met had long bushy hair the color of straw and eyes of an emerald green so startling that even the forest around her seemed dark and dingy by comparison. She had said she made her living as the village midwife, though of course that was only part of the story. She had proved to be extraordinarily welcoming of him, though her cooking had been horrible. Nine months later, a son arrived, and Radella beamed to see that he was the spitting image of herself.

From birth, Arthur was already healthier than any of his brothers had been, giving his mother new hope for the future of her clan, and sealing her own fate in the process. His magical prowess was clear from infancy, making his simple wooden and stuffed toys appear beside him in his cradle. As he grew older, he could make it rain at will or when his emotions got the best of him, which was a fairly regular occurrence. By the time he was five, he’d created the first of his familiars, a being of concentrated magical energy that took the form of a winged rabbit, no doubt inspired by his mother’s own familiar, which was a winged wolf. He spent many an afternoon summoning the creature he’d conjured and running about the forests and meadows with it by his side, carefree and happy. His evening were spent at his mother’s knee, listening with rapt attention as she taught him of the magic he possessed.

“Our bloodline is very important, Arthur. Our magic gets stronger with each new heir, but should we leave this world before naming someone to take our place, the Kirkland magic will die with us. That is why you must grow and be strong for me. You will inherit all I have to give.” It was among the first things he could remember his mother saying, spoken right alongside her stories of the fae and mystical creatures of the forest, with which Kirklands had always shared a bond. She repeated it to him often, branding it into his mind, though the weight of the words were not really known to him until he was much older.

His mother began getting sick so gradually that the child Arthur hardly noticed. She had been eighty seven years old when she’d had him, though thanks to her magic, she hardly looked a day over twenty five, even years later as Arthur approached his tenth birthday. She had been looking more tired though. Paler and less full of energy. If she knew what was happening to her, she did tell Arthur about it, though her upcoming actions lead him to believe later on that she had been well aware of her situation.

She struck an agreement with the Fae of their forest, giving them offerings of milk, spices, and silver. And then she sent Arthur to live with them. It was tradition, she had said, for Kirkland heirs to study magic with the Fair Folk. Though Arthur loved the fairies, he was hesitant to leave his mother. She was quite insistent, though, guilting him by speaking of all the effort she had gone to to trade for his chance to develop his magic and of how important the tradition was to her. She gifted him with an old tome – her own book of magic – kissed him upon forehead, and sent him along his way to the fairies’ forest. It was the last time Arthur would see his mother.

Arthur spent a long time learning magic with the Fae. Seven years by the human calendar, though in the fairy realm, it had been twice that. It was an effective and time saving way to train. Arthur Kirkland returned to the mortal world in the form of a very young man, but with the magical expertise of someone much older. It was a handy trick for a head start.

He went first to find his mother, but not even the foundation of her house remained. He knew without even asking around that she was dead, for he could sense no lingering trace of her magic. It was saddening that he could not meet with her again, or even pay his respects at her grave, for there was none to be found - the religious people of the town were unlikely to have permitted a pagan like his mother to be buried there. He could feel no real sorrow for her, though, for he had been separated from her for what felt to him like fourteen years. Still, he loved her and owed her much and as a final sign of respect, he placed his hand flat upon the ground where her home had once been. From that spot, a tree began to grown, accelerated by Arthur’s magic. When he stepped away, a fully grown rowan tree, heavy with fruit, stood where his mother once had. Her wand had been made of rowan…It felt appropriate to Arthur.

The young wizard was not left with much in the way of worldly possessions. He still had his mother’s book of magic and a few more he’d written himself while amongst the Fae. He had his own wand, carved from elm and imbibed with magic, and he’d added another familiar, one in the form of a unicorn, powerful and majestic. But he had no home, no money, and no name for himself in this world he hardly remembered. As much magic as he possessed, he could not make bread and shelter appear out of thin air. And besides that, his mother and the Fae had been in firm agreement that magic was a trade, not a shortcut, nor was it something to be flaunted or used dishonestly. There were many people out there that would still happily strap him down and light him on fire.

Thus Arthur’s first job was humble, working for a restaurant in exchange for room and board in the tiny apartment above it. It was quickly discovered that the kitchen was no place for him. Though Arthur had excelled at potion making in his studies, he was a spectacular failure at cooking, something he could not understand. It had never occurred to him that his years among the fair folk would ruin his taste for human food. Quite literally, in fact. He could not discern between properly cooked food and food gone horribly wrong. His mother had been the same way, and though the young Arthur had not known food could taste differently from hers, the horrible taste of it was evident on the face of every one of the rare guests that had ventured into their home.

He waited tables, washed dishes, and greeted the patrons of the restaurant with all the charm and grace he could muster. Which turned out to be rather a lot. In his last year before returning to human civilization, he’d studied from an etiquette book to help in his reintroduction to society. The book he’d found among the Fae had been rather outdated, but Arthur’s old-fashioned manners and gentlemanly ways went over well with the customers and staff alike. He was making a fair wage in tips, enough to buy food and the supplies he needed to ready himself for the switch to a magic-focused way to make a living. He’d chosen potions as his focus, for they were the most readily acceptable among normal humans, passing as tonics and medicine or else superstitious charms, but lacking the threatening theatrics of other magic. He had it all planned out. Maybe a year working like this, saving up, then buying a little place just outside of town, maybe cheating a bit with magic to spruce it up. Selling his potions and continuing his studies in other magics. He was already profound at storm magic and the basics of elemental magic, but he wanted to learn more, learn as much as he could. He wanted to improve his skills at glamour and gather books of magic full of rare spells and travel the world to learn about the magic of other lands. His ambitions were high, but his expectations were naïve.

Nine months after he’d reemerged into the world in which he’d been born, the United Kingdom entered into World War I and Arthur was to receive his first taste of human brutality.

Strictly speaking, Arthur was not supposed to get involved in the wars of normal humans. Or so the Fae had taught him. However his mother had been a proud patriot of England and her early influence had overruled theirs. She’d told the young Arthur about how her great grandmother had conjured the storms which aided in the English defeat of the Spanish Armada and how her own father had been at Waterloo, casting protective spells over British soldiers and scrying over enemy movements. Magic users got involved in the conflict on the enemy side, so why shouldn’t they fight for England’s glory? Combining that with the chance to travel and the fact that it was higher paying than his current job and it would be suspicious if a healthy young man of his age did not enlist, he could not resist the pull. He joined the British Army within a week of the United Kingdom’s entrance into the fray.

He had no previous exposure to battle. He had never even been in a proper fight. He had never fired a gun. But he jumped headfirst into his training for this just as he had done with his training for magic. He let on to no one what he was. He’d left his books in a safety deposit box and had only brought with him notes taken on what he thought would be the most useful spells. The magic he did was in secret –charms and powders for safety and good luck, wards against aggression, spells for favorable weather. In the meantime, he began picking up other useful skills, the main one being language. Since when peace returned he would still want to visit other countries for the purpose of furthering his magic, he made a point of picking up everything that he could. He learned basic German, which the officials thought would be useful for deciphering any intercepted messages, and, though he initially resisted it, he picked up some French as well while he was stationed there. Like any true English patriot, he had a healthy dislike of the French, even though they were the United Kingdom’s allies in this war. He also learned a few new choice English phrases that he had not heard before, thanks to the foul mouthed young men he was now surrounded by.

But he was naïve. So dreadfully naïve. One who has never seen war cannot hope to understand it, and Arthur had never even seen basic human cruelty before, sheltered as he had been in his mother’s rural cottage and then the fairy realm. For all his magic and wisdom, he was no better prepared for the war than the other young men that served beside him. His simple spells were nowhere near what they needed to be to actually be effective. He was in over his head.

The trenches were miserable and terrifying. Sleeping in mud, jumping at every sound, crawling beneath barbed wire with gun fire blaring overhead. It was everything Arthur could do just to keep his head together. He healed the men by his side, masking his magic as first aid, but he could not save them all and the stress of trying was getting to him.

Then came the gas. Poisonous clouds issuing from canisters, choking and blinding everyone within it. At least this was something Arthur was better equipped to handle, summoning his well practiced storm magic to blow the gas towards enemy trenches and rain to wash away what remained. But doing so symbolized his crossing the line between fighting defensively to save British troops and using his magic to kill the enemy. He watched, dumbstruck as German soldiers ran and collapsed after a canister which they had just thrown had been caught by a sudden gust of wind and landed in the middle of them. The men in his squad could not understand why Arthur seemed so affected by what to them was a stroke of good luck.

Arthur national pride and guilt sat upon his shoulders, weighing him down for the remainder of the war. Everything he did, he did for his country, for his fellow Englishmen. But he could not help but think that every offensive step he took was unfair, that his magic was a cheat, that he was cutting short the lives of men just like him who were only doing their duty as citizens. It was nerve wracking. Yet the soldiers in his troop viewed him as a lucky charm. Wounds treated by Arthur Kirkland didn’t get infected. Enemy gunshots had a greater tendency to miss. The weather was always on their side. But Arthur was on the knife’s edge of a breakdown and everyone could see it.

The officers wanted to pull him from battle for the sake of recuperation. They thought he was a loose wire, a boy out of his element who would start making costly errors. But no soldier could be spared. Arthur saw many more battles. At Somme alone, he saw over half of his fellows die, unable to anything about it for the onslaught came so hard and so fast that he had no hope of protecting and healing them all. He waited for the day that others told him would come. The day when he would grow numb to seeing so much death and pain. It did not come. Arthur felt both every life he saved, and every life he took. His only solace was his pride. As much as he suffered for it, he was serving his country, he was putting his magic to use, he was making a difference, though it was not as significant as he would have hoped. His mother would have been proud at least. He was living up to his Kirkland blood. The fact that it made him miserable was irrelevant.

The war finally ended and Arthur returned to England. He had no one awaiting his return and no place in particular to call home. But he did have several years worth of saved wages and a desire to find some place peaceful and quiet and far away from the things he had faced in the war. He retrieved his saved belongings and left the village of his birth, heading east. He bought a cottage home in a wooded area several kilometers on the outskirts of a larger town and roughly 50km south and east of London, where he would not have to hear traffic or have to worry about people seeing signs of his magic. The land he now owned was undeveloped and wild, which was how he wanted it. The home itself was dilapidated, but after his experience in the war, he felt less guilty about blatantly using magic to make it more appealing. He renewed the aged and rotting wood, purged the dirt and grime from the windows and floors, and repaired the roof with nary a hammer nor washbucket. The little house had apparently once been part of an apple farm used for cider, for the basement was large and full of old barrels and processing equipment. A shed had once stood over the exterior exit of the basement and the house and shed had been connected underground. But now, nothing remained of the old farm besides the cottage, rotted equipment, and a few wild growing apple trees around the property. Arthur was able to make the home quite livable with magic, a little elbow grease, and a few coats of paint. Unfortunately his funds ran out before he could afford most of the modern comforts, like full indoor plumbing and kitchen appliances. He was lucky he had a refrigerator and a bed, both purchased used. He needed a way to make more funds, but he did not want to get another ordinary human job. He’d had his fill of that.

With his books and the ample plant life that surrounded him now, he had all that he needed to begin as a potion-maker, just as he had intended before the war. The biggest issue would be making a name for himself so that he would have a market to sell to. He’d chosen to live away from the city, so he could not count on people walking by. Nor had he met any fellow magic users to sell to. He had little choice but to advertise his services. He hammered a sign post into his front yard and put up a few signs in the neighboring town, all baring the same statement along with his address.

He hated feeling like a snake oil dealer, but it was the only way to subtly pedal his magical services.

Arthur was barely able to scrape a living for those first few years. Many people did not have the finances to spare to try out his potions and tonics, even with a guarantee of their effectiveness, and Arthur could only produce the potions he could create from local ingredients. He did not have the money to purchase more exotic herbs. Every day, he would go out into the forest to gather ingredients. He worked mostly with plants, but occasionally would have to catch and butcher a bird or a bat for vital ingredients, a chore he didn’t really care for, but was necessary to his practice. If someone requested a cure for colic, he couldn’t very well prepare it without powdered bone of songbird. He could not afford to turn down any paying jobs.

After a while, he began to make stable sales. He could prepare certain potions in advance without the worry that they would go unsold. He counted solely on word of mouth. One mother would tell another that Arthur Kirkland’s balm really worked on her child’s bruises and abrasions. A sailor would tell his fellows that he caught more fish when he dusted his boat with a powder prepared by the young Kirkland. Arthur still was not living free of financial worry by any means, but he had reached the point where he could at least buy fresh bread rather than bread that was three days old. Not that he could really discern the difference by taste, but the fresh bread was much easier to chew.

He was gradually able to upgrade his home with the things he could not achieve with magic. He was able to put in indoor plumbing and replace his ancient stove. He bought seeds and bulbs of exotic plants and began a garden of his own to save him the cost of having to buy his rarer potion ingredients. Even walking around the neighboring town was good for business. People knew Arthur was a veteran of the world war, yet he still looked young and vibrant despite the fact that he must surely be going on thirty years old. If that didn’t speak of how well his tonics and medicines worked, then what did?

Then, across the pond, the stock market crash hit, taking the United Kingdom’s already struggling economy with it. Suddenly it became more financially prudent to wait for a fever to break as opposed to buying one of Arthur’s cures. Fishermen were losing their boats and farmers were losing their land, so neither was in need of Arthur’s assistance anymore. Were it not for those wild apple trees, Arthur might have had to resort to more desperate means for his survival.

Improvements to his home ceased. He struggled to find business. He spent his days and nights studying, experimenting, trying to come up with new and better potions. He had some successes, but the business simply wasn’t there. Even his wealthier former customers were feeling the pinch of the economy and refusing to part with what they had. Necessity proved to be a big motivator, and Arthur turned to magical means to make up for what his finances lacked. His magic took on a very domestic quality. He was back to stale bread, so he tinkered with his spells until he was able to magically make the bread fresh again. He cast spells over the apple trees to keep them baring fruit year round, though in winter Arthur would have to defrost the apples by the fireplace, which too, was enchanted to make the firewood last. He learned how to repair his clothes, protect his home from winter’s cold, and defend his meager garden from the animals of the surrounding forest. Many of the spells he used for these tasks were modifications of his mother’s old spells. Having been a confident youth, he had not believed he would need such domestic spells, for surely he would be able to afford all the basic luxuries. Now he was very much grateful for them.

Arthur’s saving grace came in the form of an unlikely visitor. A glowing creature, that he recognized immediately as a familiar, but one that was not his own. It held the form of a stork and in its beak was a letter. Or more specifically, a potion request.

Arthur’s name had finally reached fellow magic users.

It was not a particularly difficult or expensive request, but its arrival showed more significance than the simple financial gain that was to be had. Arthur had still never met a fellow wizard, but they had started to hear of him. Every magic user had their own focused skills, so for Arthur to be introduced among them as an accomplished potion maker, well it was a very big step. He had to wonder if his newly mastered domestic spells would have a market among other magic users as well, but his pride smashed down that idea. He would not be known as the wizard authority on penny pinching and household spells. Besides, he had a suspicion that those wizards who had trained with relatives rather than the Fae were already well aware of such spells. Though of course, their skills wouldn’t be as diversified or advanced as Arthur’s.

Requests from fellow magic users trickled in. Some challenged him, forcing him to spend a few days calculating and experimenting before he could submit a potion or other mixture which he found acceptable. A few such fellow magic users became regular customers. And then correspondents. Arthur wouldn’t go so far as to call any of the wizards and witches he worked with “friends” but they were the keys to helping Arthur broaden his magical abilities. He began to trade for magical insight, herbs, and spells. He would send off instructions for one spell, and receive instructions for another. He’d tell a witch in Finland how to restore rotted wood, and she would tell him how to keep soil from freezing. He sent seeds from his native plants to a potion maker in Mexico, and received gifts of rare flower bulbs in return. He sometimes he would receive tips on how to improve his spells, returning the favor when his opinion was sought. He was referred to more sorcerers, extending his reach further and further across the globe.

He catalogued everything, becoming nearly obsessed with it, rarely going into town anymore except for basic needs and to sell to his few remaining customers. Every time he received a new spell or new information, he would recopy it in the appropriate book, indexing it for easy reference, for the number of spells he was bartering for were quickly becoming too much to keep in his head. He had to build shelves to store all the new information, keeping them safe and protected from light in the basement. Here and there, he would complete whole volumes, then recopy them, bind them, and trade them for more books to add to his growing library. All in all, this was much more efficient than trading spell by spell, though he did continue to do it that way, too. Some of the books he received were old and tattered and few were in English, thus furthering Arthur’s resolve to study language. But that was one of the few things he could not do on his own. The few language study books he’d acquired could only get him so far. He needed to travel, to speak and absorb, but that was yet out of his financial reach. He could not use magic to relocate himself and he wasn’t even sure there was a wizard out there who could.

There were always some things that he kept to himself, though. He would only ever give instruction on the simplest of potions and never his biggest sellers. And he kept his storm magic secrets private. Sharing with fellow wizards for mutual improvement was one thing, but one always had to maintain an advantage, a few secrets that were their own and not to be shared. It was the same with his correspondents. He knew not to ask for help with specialized skills. If he wanted to learn those, he would have to do so on his own.

Arthur had morals which he stuck by as well. More than once, he received requests for poisons, or potions to bring on madness or to manipulate. He refused all of these. The Fae had been strict about avoiding dark magic, as had his mother, though the adult Arthur wondered if her approval of using magic to sink Spanish ships had been threading the line. Occasionally he would receive black magic in his bartering that he did not seek out. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle these situations. He didn’t want to reject the offers and offend his patrons and the sources of his magical growth. But he didn’t want to cross that line either. So when he received such a spell, he would humbly accept, file it away, and continue with the barter process. Sometimes his book trades ended the same way and he would suddenly find himself in possession of a collection of dark arts. One such book was particularly disturbing, focused upon the transfiguration of living things. It was complex and highly painful if the pictures were any indication. But Arthur, closet librarian that he had become, could not throw a book away, no matter how he doubted that he would ever use it. So he frowned at it and stuck it on a high shelf where it would be out of the way.

His life continued on that way for several years. Arthur obsessed with work and distanced himself from people in general. The vast majority of his socialization was in the form of his letters and those were far from personal. Even in town, his conversations in the market or bookstore were limited to idle prattle about the weather or the upturn in the economy. Part of it was Arthur’s own preference for isolation, but part of it was also that Arthur’s retained youth would start to draw suspicion. He was over forty years old now, but still had the appearance of being in his early twenties. The more he stayed out of sight, the better.

His choice to remain antisocial was not due to a particularly strong dislike of people, but rather the knowledge of how fragile they were. In the war, even when he was most frightened, Arthur had been confident that he would survive. The magic that flowed through him gave him vitality that normal men did not possess. He was charmed, he could endure more than other humans could, he had magic that he could use to heal himself and potions to prevent sickness. The others did not have that. He’d grown close to some of the soldier’s he’d fought with. Shared a pint with them, exchanged jokes. And they’d fallen like flies, so easily brought down, and it took everything Arthur had been able to muster to save them when saving was even possible. He’d hated that. And he knew it would be the same for the rest of his life. Already, those he’d known as young and vibrant when he’d moved to this area were growing old and worn. He’d had to watch enough lives blink out. He didn’t want to spend his life watching it in slow motion to all the people around him.

Arthur’s life was on a gradual upturn, at least as far as he was concerned. He now had a network of correspondents all over the world, though they were mostly concentrated in Europe. The language barrier limited him some, a fact he was well aware of and was actively seeking to improve upon. As much as he could at least, seeing as he had no one to actively speak the languages with. He picked up books in town on beginning Russian and Spanish, and from them he was able to pick up the rudimentary skills to at least read and write simple letters, enough to make his sales.

His business was now conducted almost exclusively with fellow magic users, where he did not have to disguise his magical potions as tonics and medicine. A few loyal customers remained in town, those who had been buying from Arthur all their lives and had grown used to being able to settle their sore joints or allergies with Arthur’s remedies. But Arthur’s appearance was now highly suspicious, having lived near the town for twenty years and yet he looked as if he had not aged a day. His rare trips into town were now down in disguise, using magic to change his hair to red and dot his skin with a few freckles, claiming himself to be Arthur Kirkland’s nephew who had come to learn the trade. It was more than a temporary means of hiding. The book he had from his mother had warned that his long life would mean regular relocation or changing his identity. Since Arthur had worked so hard for the home he had, moving wasn’t an option. Thus he began the transition from Arthur Kirkland to Ignatius Kirkland, a name apparently difficult for the local townspeople, who nearly all resorted to calling him “Iggy” despite his protests. He supposed it was his own fault for choosing such an old fashioned name.

Of course, those he dealt with among the magic users were well aware of the dual identity.

Things continued that way for another couple of years until one day when there was a sudden knock upon Arthur’s door. Assuming it was one of his regulars come for more pain relief potion, he dawned his disguise and answered under the identity of Iggy. He blinked at the middle aged woman who stood before him, recognizing her as a citizen of the village who had been there as long as he had, though he couldn’t remember her ever buying anything from him. He politely asked how he could help her.

“Your uncle….” She had mumbled lowly, clearly feeling uncomfortable but still seeming determined. “He is a veteran of the war, yes?” Arthur continued to look confused, but nodded. “I have heard,” she continued, “From my brother who was in the war as well…that a soldier by the name Kirkland was…a very lucky charm among his troop. And very good at treating the sick and injured. I always thought that might have Mr. Arthur, but I never asked…”

Arthur hadn’t the slightest clue where this was going and chose to be ambiguous. “Madam, Kirkland is not such a rare name that there might not have been another who served for England. But I suppose it’s possible that was him. He doesn’t like to talk about the war much,” he added, just in case she was here for something annoying like a newspaper article or just general gossip. She did not look deterred.

“Please,” she said, wringing her hands together at her waist. “I don’t mean to be a bother, but I must ask. Does Mr. Arthur have…” She seemed to struggle with finding the right word and chose to rephrase instead. “Can he protect soldiers?”

Arthur was a bit broadsided, having not expected such a question, and the honest answer came to his tongue first as a result. “He can… At least he did in the war. But it was hardly a guarantee-“ He was cut off when she suddenly reached out, clinging to Arthur’s clothes and making him sputter indignantly. “I say, madam, would you-“

“Please,” she interrupted. “I need Mr. Arthur’s skills, magic, whatever it is!” She sobbed and turned her eyes downward. “Both of my sons are in the Royal Marines! There is talk of another war brewing! And if it does, my boys will be sent to fight! Please, let me talk to Mr. Arthur, ask him to give me something to protect my sons!”

The young wizard was at a loss of how to handle the distraught mother, let alone how he was supposed to let her talk to his supposedly older self. As much as his magic had advanced, he still could not be in two places at once, nor was he sure he could come up with a spell to make himself look older on the spot. Very awkwardly, he patted the woman on the shoulder. His lack of interaction with other people over the years were coming back to bite him now. It wasn’t that he wasn’t moved by her plea, for he was, but he had never tried to protect someone he had not even met before. He could make small tokens that served as good luck and could be passed on, but if what the woman was right and there was another war on the horizon (and from what he had been reading in the papers, it was not a worry without cause), then such a simple spell would be of no use. Even the spells he had used as a soldier directly on his fellows had proved too often to be no match for a well aimed shot. But he was having a hard time telling the poor woman that he didn’t think he could help her.

“I….My uncle isn’t seeing anyone right now. But I will tell him everything you said. I…I am sure that he will look into the matter. Perhaps he can find or create something to help you.”

She beamed at him, tears in the corners of her eyes and words of thanks issuing from her. She finally turned to leave and Arthur heaved a sigh, turning back into the house. She would be back in two weeks, so he had at least that long to try to find some way of filling this request.

He had improved upon some of his protective spells since the war, making them stronger and longer lasting. But he wasn’t sure how they could stand up on a battlefield and he didn’t know how to cast them over someone hundreds of kilometers away. He set to work, choosing the right spells, tinkering with them, enforcing them and making them stronger. Then he had to determine how to morph them into a charm, which could then be placed on an object and thus passed on from one person to another. There was a lot of trial and error, some nights where Arthur didn’t sleep much, and a few orders for other spells and potions that got pushed aside for the time being. Since potions were Arthur’s strong suit, they had the most potential for assisting him. For ten days he tried, more than once having to restart from scratch. But finally he found a method that he had high hopes for. He brewed a potion of protection which was an updated version of the one he had once slipped into the canteens of the men he served with. He cast upon it every defensive spell that he knew. More ingredients were added to change the qualities of the potion, changing it from something that had to be ingested for effect, to something that transferred its effect to the things it touched. In the brew, Arthur dropped a few simple copper coins and let them bubble in the mixture overnight.

When he fished them out the next morning, they had taken on a purplish sheen, like the look of oil on water, but where otherwise unchanged. To test it, Arthur affixed one of the coins to a collar and put the collar onto a rabbit who had otherwise been destined to be made into potion ingredients and possibly dinner. For the first part of the experiment, Arthur tied the rabbit’s collar to a tree in the woods and left it for a day. When he returned and the rabbit had not been eaten by a wolf or fox or hawk, he took it as a positive sign.

He felt guilty about the next part of the experiment before he even began it. Of course he had intended for the rabbit to die ever since he had caught it, but he didn’t relish the thought of trying to hurt it just to see if he could. He tied it to a lead again and with his pistol, fired three shots at it. Every one of them missed, leaving the poor creature terrified but unharmed. As one, final test, Arthur took it to the edge of town, along a stretch of road that had gotten rather busy over the years for it connected London to the coast. He set the rabbit down and used a spark from his wand to scare it into running into the street. He almost couldn’t watch. But he did, standing and marveling at how every car missed the fleeing creature as it ran to the woods on the far side. He nodded, satisfied that work was successful. The rabbit had earned its pardon from the stewpot and Arthur didn’t even try to reclaim the protective coin from it.

The next day when the village mother arrived, Arthur (disguised again of course) handed her two of the coins he had enchanted and told her to have her sons put it around their necks alongside their dog tags. He didn’t give her any false ideas, telling her quite plainly that it was strong magic, but could not protect them from everything and that he could not be certain how long the magic would last. He advised her to tell her sons to watch for when the sheen upon the coins faded and that she should come back for replacements when that happened. She said she understood and thanked him heartily, paying him a handsome fee that he thought was really beyond her means, but she would not accept a lower price.

Since the potion was already made and Arthur wanted to test his spells further, he soaked more coins in the brew and made note of the procedure he had used to concoct it, in case he should ever need to repeat it. He set all of the enchanted coins aside, save for one which he sent to one of his correspondents across the pond, for he thought it might be a good idea to have someone else help him to test the charm. He could not have predicted just how quickly word of his latest product would spread, both among the magical and non magical sector.

Within the month, Britain was in another war. And more and more people paid visit to Arthur’s home, wanting to purchase the charmed coins for their sons and fathers, husbands and nephews, people who were already traveling for miles to obtain them. Request were soon coming in from his magical patrons as well, for it seemed that his correspondent had gushed rather overtly about the quality of the spell. Before a week was up, he was already having to make more potion to keep up with the demand.

For the first time in his life, money was not an issue. His funds swelled thanks to the new charm and he was able to add all the comforts to his home that had been denied him before. His roof was replaced, he had new flooring and updated appliances, furniture and cookware. He was finally able to turn his house into the home he had always wanted it to be. Ironically, as he made his improvements, the clock was ticking for when he would leave his home.

He flatly refused to take part in the war beyond selling his charms. His loyalty to England made him refuse to sell to enemy countries, but he could not fight again. Especially not now, when his powers had grown so. If put in a situation where his life was on the line, he would surely do whatever it took to survive. He did not want to see his magic used like that again. And he did not want to see the moments where his magic failed and those around him died. The pressure to more directly join the war effort was on though. He heard the whisperings when in town. Why didn’t the magician (for who could deny that’s what he was after the charms he produced) and his nephew join the fight? With their abilities, surely they could secure a victory for the United Kingdom? Arthur wished they would understand that it was not that simple, but he did not bother trying to explain it. He knew that it was beyond what they could see.

Two years after the war began, Arthur had secured more money than he could have imagined and the first coins he sold had yet to lose their magic. He sold off the last of his charms as well as whatever potions he had remaining, and packed up his bags. He spread the rumor that both Arthur and Ignatius Kirkland were enlisting, but that was of course only a ruse. Now that he had a bit of wealth, it seemed the time to follow through on his plans to travel while at the same time escaping the whispers and questions about his duty to the nation. He would still be able to keep up with his sales to fellow magic users, for familiars could find him where ever he might happen to be, so it would be unlikely that he would fully deplete the money he had saved. He also kept one of the original coins he had made on hand, so that he could watch for when the magic faded from it. Of course, with a world war going on, his travel destinations were limited. He brushed up on his spells for concealment and spells that would allow him to easily blend in with those around him. With this, he was able to interact without arousing too much suspicion. Being a wizard was very likely the only way he could have stole away on ships and planes and infiltrate into nations that were not one hundred percent friendly to travelers from Britain at that point in time.

It was a journey in pursuit of greater knowledge. Language and culture and the magic of foreign places. He avoided central Europe for obvious reasons, not wanting to get pulled into the fighting. The pacific was largely out of the question as well. He went first to Iberian peninsula, to the countryside villages of Spain and Portugal, staying well out of local politics and professing himself to be a scholar to anyone who asked and then subtly bewitching them to forget they had ever even seen him. He improved his hold of the languages, finally having a chance to practice them. By the time he relocated a year and a half later, he had a conversational understanding of both Spanish and Portuguese, had added a few more spells to his repertoire, and had collected seeds of local plants that held the potential for future use. He crossed the Atlantic next, spending a year each in the United States and Canada. Here, for the first time, he met actual fellow magic users, though it was only in passing. He traded with them and collected a few handy trinkets to add to his collection. He was starting to feel a bit like a magpie, the way he hoarded and collected all the books and charms that he could get his hands on.

The war had just come to a close and Arthur was returning to Europe to finish out his travel plans. He stopped off in his home town to drop off the items he collected and to check on his home. While there, he spread the news that Arthur Kirkland had died of sickness during the war, thus easing his transition into his new identity while at the same time not implying that his protective spells did not work. Not that he would be sticking around to use the identity of Ignatius in the immediate future, but it would be all set up when he returned, whenever that might be.

When he opened the door to his home the first time upon his return, he nearly tripped over the pile of notes in his doorway, all having apparently been pushed under the door. They were letters of thanks and gratitude, stories of soldiers who had been lone survivors of grenade blasts or who had charged the beaches of Normandy and survived hails of gunfire and who claimed it was due to Arthur’s charms. The wizard could not help the smile of pride that spread over his face as he read them, feeling that he had perhaps served better in this aspect than he ever had as a soldier. He saved every one of those letters.

With renewed peace, Arthur resumed his travels. For ten years, he journeyed, researching and learning and experiencing what the world had to offer. He went to Italy and Greece, to Russia and China. He spent time in India and Australia, as well as Egypt and the Middle East. All the time, he expanded his knowledge, picked up languages, and explored new magics with which he was previously unfamiliar. It was glorious and humbling at the same time. Arthur was now nearly sixty years old, and he had only scratched the surface of what there was to discover. He could double his lifespan and still not come close to seeing everything.

In the spring of 1956, he returned home, his wanderlust sated, and settled into a quiet, private life, delving into and sorting through all that he had gathered on his journey.

For twelve more years, he held on to the identity of Ignatius Kirkland as he quietly whittled away his time in his lonely little cottage. He made further improvements to his home, updating and redecorating as technology and styles changed. He had lost many of his regular customers in the town during his years of traveling, but he had invested the money left over from his journey well and was able to make do without the patronage of the community as long as he retained his customers among magic users. He had even created another familiar to help him keep up with his sales, one that, in true patriot form, took on the shape of a lion. He had briefly attempted to regain regular business, but the times had changed and people were no longer interested in homemade medicine and tonics except as a novelty. Which was really fine with Arthur. He had no problem simply blending into the community as the quiet bachelor on the edge of town who kept mostly to himself.

In 1968, he changed his identity again. Or more accurately, he settled back into his old one, or very close to it. He was now Arthur Ignatius Kirkland, supposed son of the redhead he had once disguised himself as. He stopped altering his appearance all together, knowing that anyone left in the town who remembered the young Arthur would merely think that he bore a resemblance to him, not that he was actually him. The town had grown and developed so much since Arthur had moved there that people were unlikely to really take note of him anymore anyway. Its population had quadrupled, and it had gained many new shops, clubs, and restaurants. His land still retained its secluded nature though, and that was enough to make Arthur happy. He didn’t even have any neighbors to speak of.

That was, until the summer of 1969, when, for the first time ever, he saw smoke rising from the chimney of the house closest to him, another old farmhouse a little less than a kilometer away that was in general disrepair. The house had been a part of the distant backdrop of Arthur’s own home for so long, dark and empty thing that it was, that the possibility of anyone actually moving in there had not really occurred to him. Had he been a more social and outgoing person, he probably would have gone over to introduce himself. Since he was not, he merely frowned at the distant shapes of people and retreated back inside his home, quite content to keep to himself.

He’d put the new arrivals out of his mind, only hearing through the grapevine in town that they were a French family who were not particularly well off. He had almost forgotten about them completely as he went about his daily routine, tending to the garden of exotic plants that had become quite sizable over the years. He was crouched low to the ground, carefully weeding around his Madonna Lilies, when a shadow loomed over him, blocking his light. He blinked and looked up to see a little girl standing there, delicate waves of golden hair silhouetted in the morning sun. She had to have been quite the light footed and stealthy thing to have snuck up on him, for he had had no clue to her presence before that moment. She wore a dress of sky blue, frilly and with a decidedly homemade look to it. The color of it matched her eyes perfectly. She was staring at him, chewing her lips thoughtfully. He blinked at her, confusion evident upon his face. He had little to no experience with children. He would have been better prepared to suddenly find himself faced with a werewolf or demon. At least those he’d studied about.

“Er….” He muttered awkwardly. She was still staring at him, lightly bouncing on the heels of her sandaled feet. She had to be the girl from the neighboring cottage, Arthur lived too far out for her to be from anywhere else. What sort of parents would let a girl this young wander off on her own? There were wild animals and poisonous plants out here after all. Nevermind that most of the poisonous plants were in Arthur’s own garden. Perhaps he should walk her back over to her home… “Eh…do your mother and father know that you’ve wandered off?”

She tilted her head and Arthur couldn’t tell if she was contemplating answering him or simply didn’t understand him. She was supposed to be French after all, maybe she hadn’t learned English yet. He could have asked her again in French, but he didn’t want to encourage her to make a habit of wandering to his place by letting on that he knew the language. She remained mute, offering no answer to his question. He sighed and dusted the dirt from his hands, readying to just take her by the hand and lead her back.

She smiled quite suddenly, bright and cheerful, and raised her finger to point at him. “Sourcils-prince~!” she declared.

Arthur deadpanned, having no idea how he was supposed to respond to being referred to as “Prince Eyebrows.” He hardly had time to even consider an answer when the girl suddenly threw her arms around him, knocking him backwards onto the flowerbed. Flailing and sputtering indignantly, he glared up at her. She was seated upon his torso, legs straddling him and beaming down as if she had made some great discovery. “Je suis Marianne. J'ai décidé que je t'aime bien~!”

He frowned and pushed her down to his lap so that he could sit up, rubbing his back like the old man he secretly was. “I’m quite flattered, Miss Marianne, but honestly, you are a bit young for me. Why don’t you just run along ho-“ He was interrupted when she suddenly threw her arms in the air, triumphantly giving a little cheer.

“Vous comprenez le français!”

Outfoxed by a little girl, Arthur shot her another glare. “And you understand English, Missy.”

She gave a non-committal shrug, still smirking at him. She reached forward and poked him on the nose. “Vous êtes mignon quand vous boudez.”

“I am not pouting!” he said, swatting her hand away. “Enough of this nonsense, you are going home.” He pushed her off and stood, taking her by the hand and leading her on the walk back to her place. She really didn’t seem bothered, playfully skipping along as she held on to his hand.






((“Sourcils-prince~!” = “Prince Eyebrows~”

“Je suis Marianne. J'ai décidé que je t'aime bien~!” = “I am Marianne. I've decided that I like you.”

“Vous comprenez le français!” = “You understand French!”

“Vous êtes mignon quand vous boudez.” = “You are cute when you pout.”))

Arthur hadn’t the slightest clue what to do with the sudden and intense interest the little French girl had taken in him. He supposed it would cute if it were not also exceedingly annoying. Several times a week, she would sneak over to his place. He would be walking towards town and suddenly find her following behind him, taking wide strides to step into his footprints. He’d look out the window overlooking his garden and nearly have a heart attack as he saw her about to take a bite of one of the poisonous fruits from his garden. More than once he’d walked by his bedroom, only to stop and stare, for she had managed to sneak in and take a nap upon his bed.

He’d discussed the matter with her parents. Or tried to, anyway. They claimed not to speak a word of English, though Arthur suspected otherwise. They nodded politely and made a show of sweetly chastising the girl, and ultimately nothing would come of it. “Elle vous aime, Monsieur Arthur. Il n'y a pas d'enfants pour elle de jouer avec, vous savez.” Was the usual response that he would get, but he didn’t see why he had to be her source of entertainment just because there were no other children nearby. There was a park on the other side of town, why couldn’t they take her there?

Now that he had neighbors and one of them had taken to stalking him, Arthur had to be a bit more careful about his magic. He would send his familiars out with his sales and letters during the day, when their light would not stand out so much, or else in the middle of the night when they were less likely to be seen. Marianne seemed determined to sneak up on him when he was least expecting it, though, as if she knew there was something else to him. She discovered the external entrance to the basement and walked in on Arthur while he was brewing a potion, boldly declaring that “Il sent comme un magasin de fleurs brûle ici”. He rushed her out of there, not wanting her nosing in his magical books and items. He sealed off the external entrance the next day with a stone wall created by magic and which only he knew how to open. Or so he believed. Marianne still had a knack for sneaking into his home and Arthur could not quite fathom how she was doing it. It should not have been so difficult for a wizard of over seventy years to keep a mere child out of his house.

Remarkably, though, he grew used to her intermittent presence over time. He got her to speak English by refusing to acknowledge whatever she said if it was in French, though she tested him by saying more and more outlandish and offensive things in her native tongue in an effort to get a rise out of him. It was one of the few battles Arthur actually won, since after six months of trying to keep the girl away, he had essentially given up. He had even taken to preparing two cups of tea in the evenings, for she nearly always appeared then. She didn’t like the drink initially, but Arthur catered to her a bit by adding milk and honey. It was not out of liking the girl by any means, so he insisted both to himself and to her, but merely that if she was going to be lurking about, he’d rather she be calmly drinking tea in his kitchen as opposed to getting into mischief around the house.

Months progressed to years and Arthur watched as the rosy cheeked little Marianne grew. She adored teasing him, considering it a victory every time she succeeded in making him flustered. More than once, Arthur wished she’d been a boy, because then he could at least guiltlessly retaliate. The few occasions when he did snap back at her with insults and mean words, she would dissolve into tears and Arthur would be forced to hurriedly and genuinely apologize. Nine times out of ten, the tears had been an act, as Marianne was all too quick to point out, lifting her face from where it had been buried in her hands and snickering at him. She held the advantage, and she knew it well, exploiting every one of Arthur’s weaknesses. “Sourcils-Prince est un vrai gentleman~” she would tease, slipping into French just to add insult to injury.

Bickering was a constant between them, Marianne forever trying to pry Arthur from the stuffy shell that he had hidden himself in. She was twelve now, and had become quite the expert in pushing Arthur’s buttons, for it seemed to be the only way to bring out his liveliness. He flatly refused when she invited him to the little party at her parent’s house, nor would he agree to walk with her into town. “You are a child, Marianne. Openly socializing with you in public is far from proper.”

She pouted at him over her teacup, swinging her legs beneath the kitchen table. “Are all magicians as boring as you are?”

Arthur nearly choked on his tea. “Mag-Magician?!” he stammered. “Wh-Why whatever would give you the impression that I’m-“

“Oh, come on, Monsieur Arthur, I am not blind or an idiot!” she said, frowning at him. “You do not work a real job, you have flowers in your garden that I know should not be able to grow here, your basement looks like something out of a story book, and I sometimes see glowing creatures leaping through your roof late at night. You are a magician! Or a wizard or whatever you want to call yourself.” She huffed, crossing her arms. “And the fact that you didn’t think I knew means that you must think me stupid.”

Faced with the undeniable fact that he was caught, protesting seemed like it would do him little good. “Well…. Well what if I am?! It’s not the sort of thing you advertise, you know! And despite what you may think, my being a sorcerer does not mean it is my responsibility to entertain you.”

She frowned and tilted her head at him, a look that Arthur had grown familiar with that meant Marianne’s gears were fast at work. “So you admit it then. You do know magic.”

He met her frown with one of his own. “You’re the clever one, don’t you already have it all figured out?” He crossed his own arms. “So what if I do?”

She was on him in an instant, flinging her arms around his neck just like she had when they had first met. “Show me~!” she said insistently. “I want to see it for myself! Do magic for me!”

“Why the hell should I?” he said, meeting her glowing smile with a glower, still clearly bitter about being discovered and mentally cursing himself for not being more careful. If only he had gone the extra mile early on to ensure that she couldn’t follow him around so.

“Please, mon Sourcils-Prince~” she cooed sweetly, pressing a kiss to his cheek before he could shrink away from it.

He narrowed his eyes, locking his frown upon her. “You are quite the manipulative little twerp.”

She grinned and shrugged. “I do what I must, Monsieur.”

“And stop calling me Prince Eyebrows.”

“I shall when either you lose your princely ways, or when your eyebrows stop taking over your face.” He gave her a sour look, to which she only smiled more.

He put on his coat and lead the way outside into the cool evening air, Marianne happily trotting along behind him, quite proud of herself for dragging the wizard out into the open. Arthur knew he should not be giving into the demands. In fact he should have been scouring through his magic books for a spell to make her forget her discovery. But she was a child, and the wizard could not find it in him to cast spell upon her like that, particularly when he knew that no one would believe her if she told his secret anyway. So he decided to humor her, at least this once, though he made it quite clear to her that he was not her trained ape that she could call upon for entertainment whenever she wished.

“Magic is a tool, not something to answer to your every whim and problem,” he lectured, though she had said nothing to the contrary. “And it is not a matter of waving your hand and suddenly everything is as you want it. It takes time and study and discipline.” The girl half listened to his speech, quietly smiling in anticipation. She was fairly certain that Arthur liked to hear himself talk. She imagined that was how he kept from being terribly lonely for so many years and suspected it was a hard habit to break.

Stopping near the edge of where the forest began, Arthur gave pause, considering what he should show her. As his eyes fell to the ground, he found his inspiration in the form of an acorn that rested near his feet. He bent down on one knee and picked it up, letting it settle in his palm, brushing the debris from it. Marianne looked at it curiously, but remained quiet as Arthur reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his wand. He expected her to have a comment about the cliché of a magician having a wand, but she did not, merely standing there instead, watching him with interest. Turning his eyes back to the seed, he waved his wand over it, muttering indistinguishable words under his breath.

The acorn slowly began to glow with a greenish gold light and as it did, its shell cracked open and it began to sprout in his hand. Marianne’s eyes grew wide, shining in the light cast by Arthur’s spell. The wizard could not help but smile. The girl called him dull and boring so often that he found it somewhat satisfying to impress her so. The tendrils that were the branches of the tiny tree shone eerily and mystical and spread wider in his hand. The roots did the same and wrapping around his fingers and his palm, drawing sustenance from his magic. The acorn husk fell away and the seedling grew at a steady rate in his hand until it was over a foot in height. Then, with a single syllable uttered by the wizard, the glow died away and the growth stopped, leaving the small, young tree in his hand. He looked up at Marianne again, still smiling to himself. Her eyes were still wide with awe. He wondered what she had expected of him? To pull a rabbit out of a hat or something like that?

For a minute, all was silent, before Arthur reached out with his free hand and nudged her. “Well don’t just stand there, girl. Do you think I want this thing growing on top of my hand forever? Dig a hole. The ground is nice and soft here.”

She blinked, coming out of her apparent trance, and for once did not argue or question him, instead dropping to her knees, finding a stick, and using it to dig into the soil.

Arthur showed Marianne many more magical stunts and displays over the years to come. He summoned storms, shot sparks into the sky, made fire dance, and even showed her his familiars. But even once she had grown into a teenager, rapidly becoming one of the most beautiful women of the village, he would still peek out the window and see her tending to the young oak tree they had planted together, weeding out the roots and keeping the area clear and clean for it to grow.





((“Elle vous aime, Monsieur Arthur. Il n'y a pas d'enfants pour elle de jouer avec, vous savez.” = “She likes you, Mister Arthur. There are no children for her to play with you know.”

“Il sent comme un magasin de fleurs brûle ici.” = “It smells like a burning flower shop in here.”

“Sourcils-Prince est un vrai gentleman~” = “Prince Eyebrows is such a gentleman.”))

Arthur had always fully expected that the interest that Marianne had in him would be something she would grow out of, that she would soon become distracted with boys and pop culture and socializing about town. He thought that time had come when he saw her by chance through a café window as he was visiting the bookstore in town. She held a central position in a group of similar aged boys and girls, holding the attention of all of them as she spoke with a cavalier expression upon her face. She was quite popular as he understood it, beginning to wear short skirts, wearing her hair long, and going out on dates with the boys in town. He was not quite sure how he felt about these changes. Even after all these years, he still bickered with the French Girl and denied having any sort of fondness for her (though anyone who paid attention to his actions could see otherwise), so he should not have cared at all, particularly because he had been expecting it. But he instead felt something that was a mix of protectiveness for the little girl that was disappearing before his eyes and bitterness because he didn’t fully understand it. She was growing and changing and Arthur was exactly as he had been for over half a century, forever a young man with the mind of elder. It reminded him of why he never pursued lasting relationships with others. Change was not as much as factor in his life as it was for others. They grew and moved on, and he was a constant.

Despite her demanding social life, though, Marianne’s visits hardly changed. She still showed up for tea several nights a week and surprised him by stopping over whenever she had a whim to. She did not talk about her school friends or her outings, instead making idle chatter about the weather and the things she was studying and what sort of things Arthur had been up to. It was almost like she was two people: the popular social butterfly and the neighbor girl who remained the only one who paid him any sort of attention. But Arthur was still fully expecting the day to come when she would grow bored with him and his continued refusal to partake in her interests. She had actually bought him a used record player from town and a stack of records to go with it, but for the longest time he merely frowned at the contraption and complained about how it cluttered up his living room. She huffed at him and left without finishing her tea.

During her next visit, he’d managed to figure the machine out enough so that he could quietly play Mozart in the background during their tea. She smiled softly at Arthur’s version of an apology but knew better than to acknowledge it as such, merely making a comment about how of course Arthur would choose to play the oldest music she had gotten for him.

A return to isolation was only a matter of time though, so Arthur believed. A girl like Marianne would never choose to stay in such a place. She would leave, forget about him, forget the magic even existed. And it was better that way. Their strange friendship could not continue without both of them suffering. He did not want to watch as she got old and frail. And he could not imagine anyone who felt the sting of time would want to be around someone who was immune to it. He would not admit it, but he would miss her when she left. In the meantime though, as these thoughts persisted in his mind, he grew more bitter, more quick to argue, and more sulky. Things that did not escape Marianne’s notice.

It was autumn and Arthur was reading beneath one of the wild apple trees, the sun just beginning to set on the horizon. She walked up to him, her arms idly crossed behind her back and her long hair tied up in a messy bun that still managed to flatter her. Marianne stopped a few feet in front of the wizard, wearing a look of resolve upon her face. He blinked up at her, a frown upon his own.

“Why have you been cold to me lately?” she asked bluntly. “Did I do something to offend you and your outdated sense of etiquette?”

He blinked at her before scoffing and returning his eyes to his book. “I have not been cold. This is just me. You ought to be used to it by now.”

Unimpressed by the way he deflected, Marianne leaned over and snatched the book from his hands, ignoring his sputtered protests and dirty looks. “No, you are cold. And distant. I have known you long enough to recognize it. With normal people I would ask those around them about the problem, but with you….I must take the direct route. So why don’t you just tell me?”

His expression was sour and annoyed, not appreciating the tone she took with him, like a parent trying to convince a child to admit to a wrongdoing. “I am neither cold, nor distant, and if I was, it is not something that I would discuss with you!” he snapped, reaching out to take his book back only to have her pull it away. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?! Some party with your school mates or adventure out in the city?!”

She blinked at him, considering each of his words as if they were a piece to a larger puzzle. “Are you saying that I would prefer to be doing these things, or that you would prefer I was doing them?” He glowered at her.

“Stop it. Stop dissecting everything that I say as if I am some interesting specimen to you. I’m tired of it!”

She tilted her head. “Am I no longer allowed to find you interesting?”

He crossed his arms and turned his head, so that she could not search his expression for hidden meaning as he spoke, like she so often did. “It’s high time you start devoting more of you effort to your other interests. A girl such as yourself should be off with those her own age, discovering yourself, growing up. Not pestering the neighbor because he can’t find the sense to tell you to bugger off.”

She frowned at this and rose up to her full height once more, though her gaze remained locked on him. “Growing up and discovering myself, you say? Well, I’m afraid I must admit we actually agree on that point. But I don’t see why I can’t do that and pester my neighbor at the same time. It was the reason I came to find you after all, only to find you sulking about. You are lucky it hasn’t soured my mood. Here.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a small, square packet, tossing it to the wizard. He fumbled as he went to retrieve it.

“What the hell is this?”

“I believe you English call it a French Letter.”

He blinked at it and realized that’s exactly what it was. “Why in God’s name are you giving me a condom?!”

She sighed, looking a tad exasperated. The supposed genius wizard was so clueless at times. To be sure her intentions would not be lost on him, she sank down to the ground to be closer to him as she spoke, straddling his outstretched legs and resting her bottom on his knees. Arthur looked positively flabbergasted by her sudden closeness coupled with the words that were now coming from her lips in a sultry tone. “Because I want you to use it. I want you to help me grow up and discover myself.” She rested her arms upon his shoulders, resisting the urge to smile at the expression upon his face. “Arthur….”

“H-have you gone mad?!” he stammered when he finally found his voice. “Yo-you’re just a child! And I am far too old for you! Do you think I want your family coming after me with pitchforks?!”

“My family…” she said, ignoring his protests and pressing her chest against his. “Believes that I lost my innocence to the bagboy at the grocer’s two years ago. They will not care what I do if they think that is already gone.”

His eyes were wide and perhaps a tad frightened as he stared back at her, keeping his hands firmly on the ground even as hers began to spread over his chest. “Wh-why would you lie about something like that??!” Oh, lord, does that mean she’s still a virgin? he thought, panicky.

As if reading his mind, she gave a mischievous little smirk. “I looked, but I did not find a boy in town I thought deserving of sharing my first experience with me. I found myself constantly comparing them to you. ‘Ah, he is not a gentleman like Arthur. This one hardly has the brains to fill a thimble. Not like Arthur.’ So, if you were the standard by which I judged all men, you might as well be my standard for this as well.” She kissed him, softly on the cheek. Her lips felt like flower petals. The wizard let out a slow breath, his eyes closing for a moment. Marianne smelled like roses in bloom and her pert breasts were soft as they pressed against him. It would be easy to lie back and let her have what she so clearly wanted. But no, she was just a young girl, she didn’t know what she wanted. He put his hands upon her shoulders and gently pushed her back so that he could properly look her in the eye as he spoke.

“Marianne, no…. You should not be asking me for this. You are far too young for me. And you could do better. Shouldn’t your first time be with someone you love? Someone you might actually have a future with?” He frowned sadly. “There is no future with me, Marianne. I cannot take a wife. I cannot blend into society as a normal man could. Don’t you see that? Why would you waste such a gesture on me?”

She frowned back at him, though she made no movement to distance herself. “How old are you really? Forty? You look no older than you did that day I first found you playing in your garden.”

He sighed and turned his eyes from her to a spot on the grass beside them. “I’m eighty-two years old,” he confessed.

Her eyes widened in genuine surprise and then softened. Her lips quirked in a small, sad smile. “That explains a lot, actually. And it’s a bit sorrowful as well. Everyone else grows old… you stay the same. Having magic is a bit of a curse itself, isn’t it?”

His eyes flickered to her before going back to that lonely spot of grass. He told himself he didn’t want her sympathy, but truth was she was the first and only person to see his situation as he did. The first to understand it. He had hidden his near-immortality from the world, and now someone knew. And she did not go on about how wonderful it must be to be young forever. She’d instantly understood what sort of burden it actually was.

But if Arthur thought that any of this would deter her, he was wrong. “This is why I chose you.” She leaned closer again, ignoring the push of his hands. “You need a connection. I believe you will value the moment and not see it as a simple conquest. Even now, as I am throwing myself at you, you kindly protest with my honest best interest in mind. So what if I shall never become your wife or have your affections all to myself? I am too young, as you said, to worry about such things. I don’t even know that I love you in that way. But I don’t think I will regret this decision.” She kissed his cheek and then turned him to face her so that she could kiss his lips as well. “I know you will be gentle. I know you will be caring. And I know I shall not find another more worthy of this gift than you, mon Sourcils-Prince~.”

And there, in the fading light of an early autumn’s eve, beneath the branches of a wild growing apple tree, Arthur Kirkland relented to her demands.

Two years later, Marianne left the little cottage neighboring the wizard, Arthur Kirkland. Her parents were retiring and moving back to France. She retained ownership of the little house, but her aspirations had finally grown loftier than the town could support. She wanted glamour in her life. She wanted big parties, beautiful people, luxury and fine wine. And she could not get that in the town where she grew up. He only anchor there was the wizard.

He bedded her twice more before she left and both times had been her idea. Once on a cold new year’s eve when both had found themselves depressed by winter’s grip and in need of a little warmth, and again on the night that she announced she was departing for London. She did not ask him to come with her. She did not even expect a visit. Marianne harbored no delusions about what her relationship with Arthur was. He was part of the landscape here, and nothing she could do would change that. There were times when she wished that were not the case. In her teenage girl dreams, she had envisioned what it would be like to share a life with Arthur. In truth, he had imagined the same fantasy. But both knew it was not to be. Arthur would not be uprooted from the home he had made for himself and Marianne would not give up on her dreams of high living. Both had grown to accept the fact.

Her absence was more pronounced than Arthur expected. His life became stagnant. Really, it always had been. But it was only now that the one ever changing aspect of his life was gone that he realized it. He fell back into the same habits he’d had before Marianne came along. He developed new potions and spells. He broadened his contact with other magic users. He began studying yet another language, Mandarin this time. Asian magic was one area he had not been able to penetrate very well. Asian wizards tended to keep to themselves and had a superior view of their own magic. But knowledge of Chinese herbs and other secrets of the orient were worth the effort.

Despite his best efforts though, he was unable to fill the void he now felt from Marianne’s absence with just the promise of new developments in his magic.

He still saw her, from time to time. She could be counted on to take a trip to see him once a month. They would have tea and catch up. Sometimes she would cook for him. Sometimes he would try to cook for her and they would end up ordering take out. They bickered as they always had, like a little old married couple. She would make snide remarks at his expense. He would get indignant. She would laugh at him. It was reliable and familiar, and Arthur would permit himself to believe after she left that he really had enjoyed her company, rather than denying it outright. Every now and again, when he had a necessary trip to London for rarer books and supplies as an excuse, he would stop by and visit her at her loft. She worked as the hostess of a restaurant at first, but as the years went by, her beauty and charisma earned her more glamorous work. She did some modeling for advertisements, mostly for handbags, make-up, and the like. Once or twice when he visited, he would find a man’s razor in her bathroom or a tie hanging in her bedroom, so he knew she was not without suitors. This fact hurt a bit, but he could hardly expect anything else and in any case, it gave him some fodder to use to tease her back.

Years passed. A new decade was came and waned. Arthur grew his collection of magical artifacts and books. He took a trip to Asia, spending a few months each in China, Japan, and Tibet, building his language skills and his knowledge of Asian magic, successfully prying a few secrets from native magic users. He was becoming one of the most extensively learned wizards alive. The time came where his contacts were becoming less and less useful when it came to new magic. Instead, he was sought out as the expert, being paid to share the fruits of his decades of experience. Finances were no longer a worry of his. He made a living essentially by answering his mail.

However there was another problem that was getting harder and harder to ignore. Arthur had reached approximately the age his mother had been when she had died. Even with his extensive knowledge, he was not completely sure of what had finally caused her life to give out. It was different for every wizarding legacy and she had never told him. Not when she was alive, nor in the book she had left to him. Thus worry began to gnaw at him. He still felt perfectly fine. He had a few close brushes in his life where his vitality was tested, but he had never had the fact of his mortality staring him in the face as it did now. If he should grow ill, or suffer accident or hell, even snuff it all at once like a candle going out, then all his work, all his strides for greatness would be for naught. As the designated heir of the Kirkland magic, the future of the lineage relied on him. If he were to die now, it would be lost forever.

It was a very complicated problem. There was only one way to settle it. But the routes to get there went against his rules and way of life. Solitude would be a thing of the past. Peace and quiet would be quickly forgotten. And he, of course, could not even begin without the intimate help of another. His particular social skills did not typically endear himself to another in a way that would get them to agree to what he needed. He couldn’t do as his mother had done and simply seduce a passing stranger. And he knew enough about his mother’s hardships before he had come around to know that finding another magic user in a similar situation would not work. The ghosts of Arthur’s older siblings had haunted his mother’s memories for as long as he could remember. Magic did not mix.

The choice he was left with was obvious. It was the most logical route to take. But he still dreaded pursuing it. It was such an odd request after all. And no small one at that. What if she laughed? What if she turned him flat down? It was asking too much, it really was. But what choice did he have? Who else could he even trust with such a task who also might agree to let Arthur continue on as he would need to without interference? Oh, he would have to swallow his pride just to get the words out.

It was raining and rather blustery on the day Arthur was to visit despite the forecast calling for sun. It was London after all, so this was not quite so unusual, but it made Marianne suspect that Arthur had worked himself into state. The wizard’s moods always seemed to have an effect on the weather. She knew that something was up by the way he had announced he was visiting. Normally it went along the lines of “I’ll be in the city picking up a set of books that I ordered and thought I might stop in if you were not too busy.” But this time it had been considerably more direct. “I need to speak with you,” he had said. It had been serious enough to catch Marianne off guard. The wizard would say no more about it, only that he requested privacy for their discussion. She had outgrown her girlish dreams of Arthur wanting a life with her, so she could not even venture a guess at what he wanted.

She lived in a spacious apartment now. She still did modeling work from time to time, but her main job was as an escort. Rich men would pay her to accompany them to events and fund raisers, using her beauty and charisma to make themselves seem all the more high end. She was charming and classy and always made a good impression on their clients and colleges. No matter what they offered though, she would never agree to extra services once the party was over. She was a woman of standards after all and not that sort of escort.

Tea was ready when Arthur arrived. Marianne only really kept it around for his visits, as these days she had switched to wine as her casual drink of choice. He was unusually quiet as she showed him into her dining area, poured his tea, and sat down opposite of him. His clothes were still wet from the rain, which struck Marianne as strange. A wizard ought to be able dry his clothes easily, yet Arthur was choosing to stay soaked. She frowned. “Whatever is on your mind, you may as well come out with it. This suspicious silence of yours is rather off putting.”

The wizard sighed heavily. He wanted to get the words out and yet was still hesitant to do so. Well…No real sense in postponing it. “Marianne I… I require a particular assistance which I feel only you can help me with. I want…need…a child. Would you consider…Would you carry for me?”

To say that the Frenchwoman was surprised would have been an understatement. “Ah…. You..? You want to have a baby with me?”

He waved his hands as if that could stave off whatever negative impression she surely was already forming. “I would compensate you fully for the service, of course! You could consider it a nine month job! I know you couldn’t really perform your usual work and it would be physically demanding and a huge inconvenience, but I assure you I have it covered! I’ll pay your bills, the medical expenses, and I’ll hold you to no responsibility once the child arrives!”

She frowned at him, her eyebrows starting to furrow. “Why on earth are you asking me for such a thing now? I never figured you the type to even want children, let alone the type to want one to raise on your own. Why do you not just adopt a child if you are in the sudden need for one? Which I do not even understand. You are a century old, why the sudden need for offspring? And what would make you think I would comply with your whim, hm?” Anger was starting to creep into her voice.

“It is not a whim!” he said insistently and a bit guiltily as well. He really needed her to understand that he was serious about this and that it was not a spur of the moment choice. “I’ve been putting this off for far too long. And putting it off any longer threatens the continuation of my line. I need an heir. A child whom to teach my magic. A child that is a Kirkland by birth. I don’t even know how long my lifespan is, but I do know my mother had already had me and died by the time she was my age. If I postpone this any longer, centuries of tradition and power and magic will die when I do. If I don’t pass on my skills to a child of my own, I will singlehandedly wipe out the Kirkland clan!” He voice took on a desperate tone and his eyes held a pleading look. “Marianne, I would not make such a request thoughtlessly.”

She did not look entirely convinced. “You’ve said a lot of things to convince me why you need a child, but I have not heard a whole lot on why you deserve one. ‘Because you need to carry on your lineage’ is not good enough. A child shouldn’t be something of necessity, it is supposed to be a representation of the love between two people! It’s supposed to be something for you to love and cherish! Can you even do that Arthur? Can you give up your solitude and your quiet and your endless hours to tinker around in your basement with potions and whatnot? As far as I know, you’ve never even lived with another human being, let alone been responsible for one!”

“I am not an imbecile, I know what for what I am asking!” he snapped defensively. “I know it is a permanent change and I know that a child would have needs that go beyond what I am used to offering others, but I am willing to do all that I have to!” He frowned at her for a moment, and then his expression softened. He sighed. “Marianne, I knew this would be hard to present to you, but I would trust this to no one else. I would not ask just any woman to have a child with me. You have all the qualities I could ask for in a mother for my child. Grace, class, intellect, beauty…”

“Do not flatter me with your cheap words, Arthur,” she said, yet she smiled slightly despite herself. She had always been drawn in by compliments. The small smile turned sad with her next words. “Besides, if I am understanding you correctly, you are not asking for a mother for your child. You are asking for a womb. Not once have you mentioned me taking on the role of a mother.”

The wizard looked surprised by this response, then guilty. “I did not think you would want such a role… You live an extravagant life that would be vastly altered by the presence of a child.” He lowered his eyes. “Besides…. Kirklands always raise their heirs on their own as single parents. Outside influences are supposed to be kept to a minimum during the critical years of training.”

“Then you intend to raise them free of television and radio and keep them cloistered up in your little cottage?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t. The child would emerge from my training into a world of culture shock. Besides, that isn’t the sort of influence that poses risk.” He looked back at her, his expression one of helplessness. “Having one parent for whom magic is their world and one parent who isn’t magical at all would be akin to having two parents of different species almost. The priorities are different, the lessons they teach are different… And you. You’re a Catholic. Would you even be comfortable watching your child grow up performing pagan rituals? I know you’ve never given me guff about it, but I don’t know how you would feel watching on a daily basis and knowing that you could not pass on your own beliefs and values to the child. And…” he lowered his eyes once more. “I still do not think I could take on a wife. I care for you as much as I have ever cared for anyone, and that is why I can come to you in this time of need… But I fear I would only disappoint you as a husband.”

“And you would not disappoint as a father?” she asked, her tone cold. “You are antisocial, a recluse, and obsessive about your work and research.” She huffed and crossed her arms. “And besides, I did not imply that I even wanted to be your wife. I was simply expressing my discomfort with being booted from the picture as soon as the child would be born.”

He shook his head, “Now, I didn’t say that… As if I would want to sever ties with you. I do occasionally need an adult to talk to and if you did not get your need to argue and insult out of your system with me, you would just end up taking it out on your clients and losing business.” He was only partially joking about this. Marianne managed a look of half insult, half amusement. “You would still be able to see us,” he continued. “Just… not as a mother.” He was getting the feeling that this might be a deal breaker, so he quickly pressed on. “I know you think I’m just a selfish, eccentric workaholic, but I swear that the child would become the center of my world. I would give it…the best of everything I have to offer-“

“Would you love it?” she interrupted, raising her voice to speak over his. “I have seen you show fondness, passion, affection, but I don’t know that I have ever seen you love. Not in the over twenty years that I’ve known you. Can you get over your emotional blockage and show the love for it that you have denied every other human being on this planet?”

For a moment, he was like a rabbit caught under a spotlight, his eyes widened in surprise at the question and his mouth agape as he searched an answer. After a few moments of silence, he bit his lip and nodded. “I would. I would love it.”

She considered the few, short words for an exceptionally long time. Finally, she shut her eyes and bowed her head, letting it rest upon her propped up arm in a way that made her long hair look attractively untidy. She smiled. “Alright, but God willing, it should not inherit your eyebrows. That would be frightening on a child.”

He was so overcome by her agreement that he let the insult go without acknowledgement. “Thank you, Marianne.” He reached across the table and clasped her hand in both of his. “I promise that in this I will never disappoint you.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Already you are too serious for parenthood.” She pulled her hand from his grasp and pointed a finger at him. “And don’t you dare think you are going to pass me off as an Auntie or something like that. I will not accept such an old sounding title. The child may call me Big Sister.”

“Big sister? Woman you are nearly thirty years old.”

“Hush yourself, I will never be thirty.”

Alfred Kirkland was born on July 4th, 1991. The most stressful day of his father’s life. He did not know that childbirth was such nerve wracking experience, having been so far removed from others and having no family himself to speak of for most of his life. He had seen Marianne through these last nine months, catered to her as he said he would. He’d watched her belly begin to swell, learning very early on that jokes about her growing size would only have painful results for himself. She had suddenly taken to his cooking in a way she never had before, which was nice at some times and a bit concerning at others. He’d felt the first of the baby’s kicks, smiling in such a way as his hand rested upon Marianne’s stomach that she could not help but smile as well. She did not question his status as a ready parent after that.

When he heard he would be having a son, he took to the preparations straight away, turning his main floor workroom into a nursery and removing the books and supplies that had been there down to the basement. The walls were painted a sky blue and a colorful rug was stretched out over the hardwood floor, giving the place a distinctly cheerful feeling. Years of practice drawing diagrams and figures in his books had given him enough skill to try his hand at a mural. He painted leafy green trees and peaceful forest creatures (including a rabbit with a collar upon its neck and a coin dangling from it) and made the sky above it all literally twinkle with multicolored stars that shown despite the fact that it was a daylight scene. Magic had to find its way in there somewhere of course and Arthur thought that the subtle sparkling lights were a nice touch.

He bought toys and stuffed animals and a crib to put together, which gave him more trouble than a genius wizard such as himself should have had. He put a child lock on the basement door and upon his cabinets, which he realized would hardly be of use if a magical child really wanted to get in them, but felt they served as a deterrent none the less. Marianne thought the whole thing was rather adorable and referred to Arthur’s preparations as “nesting” when they would come up in conversation. Arthur was never quite sure if this was offensive or not.

During the last month of Marianne’s pregnancy, Arthur had pleaded with her to come stay with him, but she had refused the offer, leaving the wizard with little alternative but to go stay with her instead so that he would be near and at hand when the time came. She had no spare beds, so he slept on her couch. She was having difficulty getting around at this point so Arthur helped her as much as he could. The French woman would have been lying if she said she did not enjoy the pampering, though it did come with swollen feet, a deflated self image, and a constant need to pee.

Arthur’s decision to remain close had proved wise, for the day came a week earlier than planned. He’d whisked Marianne off in a cab and now he sat there, wringing his hands as he waited for news. Since Arthur was neither husband nor family and Marianne, in all her current pain, was far to irate with him to lie and call him a boyfriend, the wizard was not allowed into the delivery room. Which was probably for the better. Even he didn’t know how he would handle the first hand stress of childbirth, but he did lurk close by the room, pacing until he heard the first cry.

It was a few hours later, in Marianne’s room, when Arthur got to hold Alfred for the first time. Arthur was already in love, and Marianne could see it. The baby set to crying almost immediately, but Arthur only smiled and said what a healthy set of strong lungs the child had. No doubt inherited from his mother along with those blue eyes. After a few minutes of gentle rocking and shushing and a bottle of formula, the infant calmed down, settling snuggly in the wizard’s arms. Arthur had never looked so content.

The Frenchwoman was tired and worn out, but she stayed awake to watch them, smiling softly to herself and feeling a sense of accomplishment. Not for bringing the child into the world per say, for millions of women had done that before her, but for bringing Arthur into it, which no one else had succeeded in before. Though the child was an accomplishment as well. Not every woman could have produced such a healthy, beautiful boy.

Arthur stayed with Marianne in the hospital overnight and took Alfred home with him the next day. Marianne had signed the formal adoption papers a few days later. She found herself coming to visit Arthur frequently in those first few weeks though. Maternal instincts were hard for even her to ignore and she wanted to make sure that Arthur and Alfred were getting along fine. She was surprised by how well they did. She fully expected Arthur to be overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility that was thrust upon him, particularly because Alfred seemed to be such a fussy baby, crying often and seeming, to Marianne, not to like Arthur at all. But the wizard showed extraordinary levels of patience, more than she would have ever expected of him. He held Alfred and rocked him and sang to him and eventually the baby would stop crying and cuddle up to him, cooing softly. Arthur had been researching his new role as father for months in preparation, devouring book after book on the subject, and though he still had to learn the difference between a hungry cry and a tired cry and the crying that Alfred did for no apparent reason, he was doing well.

Alfred woke during the night so frequently during the first weeks that Arthur moved the crib into his own room. That did seem to help and Arthur liked to think it was because Alfred was drawing comfort from his presence. He didn’t mind the midnight feedings or spending hours rocking the baby to get him to calm down. Though the fact that he didn’t’ have a day job probably helped with that. Alfred was his only responsibility. Even his magical trades and sells were put on hold for the first few months.

Gradually, Alfred began to fuss less and less. By the time he was three months old, he woke infrequently during the night and settled down quickly with a bottle and a lullaby. At least until Arthur attempted to put Alfred’s crib back in his room. Then the crying began again. Arthur didn’t quite understand why. He theorized that maybe the twinkling lights on Alfred’s mural were keeping him awake, so he extinguished them and that seemed to solve the problem. But it was the first hint that things may not go quite to Arthur’s plan.

Alfred was growing playful now. Such a happy, laughing baby that you wouldn’t have known he used to be so fussy. But there was something else causing Arthur to worry. There was no trace of magic in Alfred yet. True, he was still an infant, but Arthur had thought he might be able to at least sense something in him. He dismissed the concerns for a while, telling himself it was too early to fret about such things. But as he began introducing magic to Alfred, it became hard to ignore. Arthur tried to make it fun and wonderful for the boy, creating colorful bubbles and sparks that were cool to the touch and dancing ribbons and yarn. He had thought the child would be delighted by it. But every time he tried, Alfred would begin to cry and Arthur would have to set his wand down and comfort him. In denial about what he already suspected, Arthur told himself it was still just too early. That Alfred would grow and love magic and become even better than Arthur himself one day.

The idea that a son of the Kirkland family would be afraid of magic was really preposterous when you thought about it.

Arthur did not give up trying. Every few weeks was a new attempt. But even the most harmless magic met with tears. Alfred couldn’t even stand to be in the same room when Arthur would do chores with magic. When Alfred was two, Arthur even tried to inspire some positive feelings towards magic by summoning his winged rabbit familiar, the most innocent and child friendly magic he could divine. But though Alfred could watch the colorful talking animals on his cartoons all day if Arthur let him, he was just as afraid of the familiar as he had been with everything else.

Arthur tried not to let it get him down how slow Alfred’s progress was. The boy was right on schedule with non-magical things. He crawled and walked right on time, eager to get his hands into everything. He played happily with Arthur whenever no magic was involved and would listen peacefully when Arthur would read him stories. He was a bright and affectionate child, very talkative even when it was still baby gibberish, and still very much the apple of his father’s eye, despite the worry now gnawing at Arthur for the future of his line.

He would occasionally voice these concerns to Marianne when she would stop in for a visit to dote on Alfred. She called herself Big Sister around him, just as she had said she would. She wasn’t as concerned about Alfred’s hesitancy towards magic as Arthur was, for all she saw when she visited was a happy, smiling child whom she could give sweets and toys. She felt a pang for the life she felt she could have had, raising him with Arthur instead of away from them both, but she could not deny that Arthur was indeed giving the boy the best of what he had to offer.

“He’ll be fine when he’s older,” she said, bouncing Alfred on her knee. “Maybe he just inherited my love for making you fret and has been teasing you this whole time.” Arthur didn’t really find that funny, nor when she began to chatter on in rapid French to Alfred just to annoy him.

There were more aspects to it than Marianne understood, though, and Arthur didn’t want to tell her. It wasn’t just about being a Kirkland heir, being without magic would put Alfred at so many disadvantages. His life, even if he lived to a proper old age, would be so short in comparison to Arthur’s. He would be so much more prone to illness and injury. He would feel the damaging effects of age. And if anyone got it in their head to make a move against the powerful Kirkland clan, Alfred would be an easy target. Surely the boy would turn out to have some magic? How could he be a Kirkland and not? Just thinking about it all was enough to make Arthur wring his hands together anxiously.

He pushed his worries aside as best he could, focusing on the happy times with his son. And there were many to be had. Alfred loved to be outside and Arthur would take him out to play every day that the weather allowed for it. He bought a camera and would snap pictures of Alfred playing in a pile of fall leaves or bundled up and rolling around in the snow or sitting and smiling beneath the apple trees in full blossom. He hung the best of them on his walls.

On nights when the weather was particularly stormy, Alfred would be too frightened to stay alone in his room and Arthur would let him sleep with him instead. This was particularly disheartening for the wizard, for his elemental focus was storm magic and Alfred didn’t even appear to like natural storms. He kept his concerns to himself though, never wanting Alfred to sense his stresses. At least the boy cuddled close to him was a pleasant distraction from them and Arthur would wind up falling asleep, nuzzling softly against Alfred’s soft blond hair, so like his mother’s.

As far as magic was concerned, Arthur kept things small and as unintimidating as they could be, thinking that maybe he could ease Alfred into it gradually. Though this worked for getting Alfred slightly more accepting of his magic – he could at least bare to be in the same room when Alfred started the fireplace going with his magic – the boy showed such an obvious dislike for it that Arthur was losing grip on the hope he had so desperately clung to. He loved Alfred dearly, more than he ever thought he could, but the fact remained that it was still his duty to continue the Kirkland line of magic, and if Alfred couldn’t do it, then Arthur would have to make other plans.

Alfred was nearly four years olds and the rolling spring storms were making for a lot of sleepless nights in the Kirkland household. Like clockwork, Arthur saw the first flashes of lightning behind the curtain of his bedroom window and heard the rolling thunder that followed. In seconds, Alfred’s cries followed. Arthur sighed tiredly and swung his legs over the bed, slipping his slippers on and standing to walk the short distance to Alfred’s room, guided by the light from the child’s nightlight (which was disappointingly, completely electric).

Alfred turned to him as soon as he saw Arthur enter the room, hands going up in the air and beckoning to be picked up as the child sniffed and whimpered. “Shhhh, shhhh…. I’m here, Alfred, it’s alright. It’s just a little rain,” he cooed softly, giving in to the boy’s demands and picking him up. Tiny arms held tight to him and Alfred buried his tear streaked face against Arthur’s neck, quieting a bit but still sniffling. The wizard patted the child on the back and hushed him soothingly, rocking in place a bit. Thunder rumbled again, louder than before. The storm would only be getting worse from here. At least from Alfred’s standpoint. In earlier days, Arthur would have likely been out in the storm, making the lightning dance across the sky and the clouds swirl to music only he could hear. But now, inside and with Alfred’s needful whimpers in his ear, the music was mute.

Knowing it was the only way either of them would sleep that night, Arthur kissed the top of Alfred’s head and brushed his hair back with a hand. “Come on, then.” He turned and carried Alfred to his own room and settled him down in the large bed, curling up beside him and pulling the blankets over the both of them. He was no sooner settled than Alfred clung to him once more, pressing his face against Arthur’s pajama covered chest. The wizard could not help but smile and slipped his arm around his son to hold him close. “There now, is that better?”

Alfred nodded and sniffed once, little fingers curling in Arthur’s clothes. Arthur stroked his hair, humming softly to him in the dark. “Why does the storm bother you so, love? We’ve talked, remember? It’s just noise and light and you’re safe inside. It’s really quite pretty when you give it a chance.”

Alfred shook his head vehemently. “Scary…” he mumbled, pressing closer.

This was a conversation that had been had many times before, always with the same words repeated. None of the progress that Arthur had hoped for had been made, and he was concerned about how to proceed in order to ensure the future of his line. With every day that passed, it became clearer that Alfred would not be willing or able to inherit the Kirkland magic. He was a young child still, yes, but Arthur felt that he should at least be able to sense if Alfred possessed any latent magic. There was no such hint from Alfred.

Arthur sighed and hugged Alfred closer, nuzzling against the soft, blond hair, so like Marianne’s. The boy was starting to settle, though with every rumble of thunder, he would briefly cling tighter, his small hands fisting in Arthur’s pajama top. Arthur hummed lowly, some nameless tune he could vaguely remember his own mother singing. It was an effort to soothe the boy, and it seemed to work. The wizard rubbed the child’s back softly, encouraging him to go back to sleep.

He was going to have to make a decision about what to do next very soon. The idea of giving up on Alfred as his heir was heartbreaking. Not just for what it meant for his line, but for what it meant for the boy as well. He would be so much more susceptible to injury and sickness… and he didn’t even like when Arthur used magic or potions to heal his scrapes and bruises. Even with perfect health, Alfred would still lead a much shorter life and would feel the devastating effects of age. In just a couple of decades, Alfred could already look older than Arthur himself, if the wizard were still around. And the magic-less child of one of Europe’s most powerful wizards would be a defenseless sitting duck if another ever chose to challenge him. There was nothing good to be said for Alfred’s lack of magic. Arthur just couldn’t accept that fate for his son. Not if there was even a glimmer of a chance that he could do anything about it.

But as far as Arthur could realistically see, the best that he could hope for would be that Alfred would come into his own, low level magic. Enough to prolong his life and to make his way, but not what it would take to become the heir of the Kirkland magic. The chances against it were a million to one.

Really, there was only one avenue left to pursue.

He stopped humming, pressing a kiss to the child’s hairline. “Alfred?” he whispered quietly. The boy stirred, near sleep but not quite there yet. “What do you think about having a little brother or a sister?”

Alfred yawned and snuggled closer to him. “Might be fun… I’d have someone to play with…”

Arthur smiled. The sleepy affirmation of a child was hardly much to go on in the decision making progress. But it was a start.

“Non! Absolutely not, Arthur. I am not going to do that again.”

It was a few months later, after Arthur had ample time to process what he was planning. He knew he would meet resistance from Marianne. She was getting older after all, and her career had ceased to progress the way it had before. She still had steady work, but wasn’t landing too many big breaks these days. It was something of a shot to her ego, he knew, and the prospect of taking time off for another pregnancy was not going to look good to her.

“Please, Marianne,” the wizard pleaded, hoping that humbling himself in such a manner would earn him points that would make her reconsider. “Alfred’s prospects of becoming my heir are getting bleaker with each passing day. I can’t even get him to let me heal his scrapes and bruises with magic half the time. He just… doesn’t seem to trust it. Nor can I sense any latent magic in him. I wish the situation was different, but I don’t believe I can take the risk of waiting much longer. I love Alfred, you know that, but… I need another chance at producing an heir to my magical line…”

“Arthur,” Marianne said, her tone one of forced patience as she prepared their tea, her back to him. “It took me nearly a year to lose the weight I put on with Alfred. And I cannot afford taking months off at a time to play as your womb for rent.”

“Maternity clothes need models too, you know,” he offered. The look she shot him was enough to make him shrink back, momentarily fearful that she might actually throw the teapot at him. He decided to try a different argument. “I would fairly compensate you for the time you took off, you know that.”

“It is not about the money, Arthur, it is about my career. I cannot be turning down jobs.”

“You wouldn’t have to turn them all down. It would be a few months until you started showing and you can still do your hand and make up modeling while pregnant. I know for a fact that you were still doing those up until your ninth month when you were carrying Alfred.” Marianne, who was not aware that Arthur knew she had continued to work, pursed her lips. For a moment, she wondered why Arthur had not tried to pay her less for her services if he knew it had not put her completely out of work, but then she remembered that it was Arthur and having that child had meant everything to him. Recalling the days that Arthur tended to her, cooked for her, cleaned for her… made a crack in her wall of resolve against this current plan, but she refused to let that show on her face.

“That is still not the only point, Arthur,” she said, trying to sound stern. “I don’t know that I like the idea of you only wanting another child because Alfred is not what you expected. That could very well happen again, you know.”

Arthur frowned. “Don’t make it sound as if Alfred is some great disappointment to me. It’s not that at all. He’s just not able to follow in my footsteps, as much as I wish he could. And I’m aware that a second child could just as easily have Alfred’s distrust of magic. But since the other option is letting the Kirkland magic die with me, then I don’t see what other choice there is. And I think it best if Alfred could have a full blood sibling if at all possible. Not that I would really trust anyone but you with this task anyway…”

Marianne frowned in response as she set the tea on the table and sat down, but the statement of trust cracked her wall of resolve further still. As if sensing this, Arthur pressed on, ignoring his tea for now and leaning closer to her. “You know that this isn’t an impulse decision for me. And you know I’m a good father. If a second child has Alfred’s distrust of magic, then I’ll have two children, and that will still be wonderful. I’ll address any further problems with my line later. Or maybe…maybe it will mean that my line isn’t meant to continue… But I still must make the effort. I swear that I would make no child suffer for my expectations, Marianne.”

The Frenchwoman furrowed her brows, becoming less and less sure that she could continue to say no. “Well… what of Alfred himself? What does he think of sharing your attention?”

“He loves the idea!” Arthur turned in his seat, calling towards the boy who had been sitting in Marianne’s living room, coloring in front of the television. “Alfred! Come here, son!”

The heard the clutter as Alfred let his crayon fall to the table, and then the pattering of his feet as he ran to answer his father’s summon, eager to join the grownups. Arthur caught Alfred under the arms and lifted him to his lap, broad smile on his own face as the child giggled. “Tell Miss Marianne about how we’ve been talking about you getting a little brother or sister,” he urged.

“Arthur, that’s cheating…” Marianne said with a deeper frown, but little Alfred didn’t seem to hear her or simply wasn’t going to be deterred from getting to join the conversation.

“Daddy says he needs you to help him get a brother or sister for me!” he said, his voice high and excited. “I’d rather have a brother though, if you can do that. I think a brother would be more fun to play with. You’re gonna help, right?!” Alfred looked at Marianne expectantly. She responded by giving the wizard a look of accusation, finding this to be a very unfair move. Arthur just offered a shrug and ruffled Alfred’s hair before pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Alfred continued to stare at Marianne. “It can be my birthday present!” the child added, sure this would sweeten the deal.

“What can I say, Marianne? The boy is very taken with the idea.”

She scowled at Arthur and rested her chin in her hand. “Bastard anglais. Utilisation d'un enfant à me manipuler.” Arthur grinned back at her, finally feeling victorious. The Frenchwoman sighed and let her gaze wander down to the child who was still gazing at her with wide-eyed innocence. “I shall think about it, mon petit enfant.”

Alfred, who was used to this answer often meaning “yes” gave a cheer, throwing his hands up and nearly knocking his father in the chin. “Thank you, Marianne! I’m gonna go draw a picture of what I want him to look like!” He leapt from Arthur’s lap and bounded off excitedly from the living room. Arthur gave a chuckle but quickly changed to clearing his throat instead as he looked back at Marianne, who appeared unamused.

“You should have spoken to me before filling his head like that,” she scolded, folding her arms against her chest.

“Well then you would have fussed about me jumping into things without looking into how he would react,” Arthur replied, taking a sip of his tea. “So how long do you think you will need to think about it?” There was a slight tone of teasing in his voice, for he already knew she had decided.

She glowered at him and blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. “Find the boy a baby sitter for next week. And clear that stupid grin from your face. I don’t intend on allowing you to actually enjoy the process. If I could deny you climax and still have it work, I would.”

He frowned at her, clearly crestfallen. She smirked in response.





((Translation: Bastard anglais. Utilisation d'un enfant à me manipuler. - English Bastard. Using a child to manipulate me.))