THE WINTERCHILD | onc 2021

i. rarity

I was a prodigy from my first howl.

As an Allinos, there was nothing else for me to be. Magyk ruled our bloodline with such force that no child was immune to it. Our family was a rarity among mages — even the most powerful Seryntor could birth a powerless dud. But never an Allinos. Our blood denied such hereditary weakness.

Yet within my rare family, I was a rarity: a winterchild. The Allinos name had a long, storied history of summerchildren — mages with hands of roaring fire, eyes of glorious light, and golden tongues of honeyed whispers. We were experts at fire magyk, emboldened in daylight, unbeatable when kissed by summer suns. In time, practice fed myth and begot tradition. The occasional mother would ill-time her moon's blood and bear an Allinos in the autumn. But no winterchild had been born in the family for centuries — until me.

I never knew if Mama had timed my birth with intention, or if, as the commoners would say, I was a happy accident. After all, she had first given the family two healthy summerchildren — Kanos in Juna and Kanal in Agut. By the time Mama realized I would be a child of Decime, my Allinos father was one-month slain. In her desperation, she summoned instead his autumnchild sister and her own sister, a Tairean winterchild. The Academy was displeased that the battlegrounds, fresh from the loss of my Allinos father, would lack the might of the famed Ferika Jau Tairean as well. But we mages were keenly aware of our mortality. The martyrs of now were always worth sacrificing in favor of the potentials of tomorrows.

So my birth was thus attended: my mother, howling; my two summer brothers, cowering; my aunt Aenalik, in trepidation; and finally, my aunt Ferika, her hands tremoring with her own wintermagyk at the ready. Taireans were no strangers to winterchildren, but this was the one delicate, unpredictable part of magyk: no one knew what long-held traditions could be upset by the combination of bloodlines.

As the winter moon hit its apex, I burst forth from my mother's womb with a keening wail. All babes yowl to greet the cold dawn of their first breath, true. But my scream reverberated through my family's bones to steal the flames from all the house's candles. Aunt Aenalik soon restored the lights with a snap of her fingers, and Aunt Ferika focused her energies on me.

The pale blue energy of wintermagyk swirled around her uttered spell: "Timora." As her magyk enveloped my newborn body, I quieted, soothed by the familiar, even if I knew not how to name it yet. Aunt Ferika retrieved me to place in my mother's arms, and the gentle reprieve of a mother's comfort proved enough calm to save us all from newborn magyk outbursts.

But, as she would tell me many years later, when Aunt Ferika locked eyes with Aenalik, their eyes swirled not with the joy of new life but a deep, abiding fear.