Orphans.

Chapter One

Everyone, who was anyone, knew about the spell that Larry Lir had to live under.

There was an air of Celtic mysticism about him that cloaked his wiry frame, and which helped to endear him to so many people, but in particular, his native Irish folk. The name Lir, was of course, an old Irish one, and Larry was aware of the legend that had grown up around the old Irish folktale - The Children of Lir. Though he himself hadn't been transformed into a beautiful swan like the fabled Children of Lir, he was nonetheless, perhaps because of his name and heritage, under a spell that was every bit as frightening, as astonishing, and as enchanting as his more famous predecessors. The spell could be broken, he knew that, but only if the right circumstances prevailed. His father had carried the same spell, and his grandfather, and both had broken the spell upon them, the secret of how to do so passed down from generation to generation.

But Larry, had a problem that was unique to his unfortunate circumstances. His father was dead. His mother too. Both gone.

Murdered!

Larry stared at his haunted eyes through his bedroom mirror. A beard would be nice, he told himself. Even if he was just a mere boy of twelve years of age. He laughed softly, chiding himself for his foolishness. The laugh flattened his features, making him lose the tough, pugnacious look, that he sometimes adopted. His features were not unappealing, he had a steady Shamrock green gaze, a long nose, unkempt red hair that sometimes appeared blond when the sun shined a certain way, and a strand of his hair fell like a narrow waterfall over his boulder-like forehead. He had inherited the arms of his mother, long and sinewy. He had the shoulders of his father and uncles, broad, uncompromising. There was at times a commanding, sometimes intimidating, look about him that he capitalized on in his work. He was a boy who knew his own strengths, and the special powers and gifts he had inherited. He knew he could do things no other twelve year old could, but then Larry Lir was no ordinary boy. Some would have called his powers magical, others mysterious. But more about that later!

The mysticism hung around him like an ancient cloak. "Yeah, a beard would be nice," he muttered to himself. It would add a layer, a distinguished look to his angular features, somewhat like that Sherlock Holmes character he'd once read about.

A late Indian summer breeze wafted through the bay window of his home, reminding him of the busy morning that he had lined up. His home was big, lavish almost. Thormanby House hung precariously to the clifftops of Howth, supported by deep bedrock, iron posts, and concrete stilts. Below many of the windows at the rear of the house lay the expanse of Dublin Bay, and in the distance the familiar twin towers of Ringsend belched smoke, and were stacked like lighthouse beacons, the Poolbeg lighthouse a mere pinprick by comparison. The smooth glass look of the water was broken, every now and then, by the wake of the ferries which rolled in from Holyhead and Liverpool. The house had a somewhat wild look like his unkempt hair. Giant rhododendrons, tangled undergrowth and creeper gave his home a mature look. Tall oak trees provided some shade from the blasting rays of the sun, or in winter, from the harshness of the wind and rain. He never tired of the view, hail or shine. On a good day, the Wicklow Mountains winked back at him; reminding him of how lucky he had been that his parents had left him such a place to live.

Though gone now a few years, the memory of his parents haunted him. His eyes closed in pain as he recalled the sweet smile of his mother and the proud look in his father's eyes. They had been robbed of life, and from that one terrible moment, Larry knew his whole world had turned upside-down. Inside-out. Everything changed utterly.

His thoughts turned inwards. The fable of the Children of Lir. Some Irish folk held the belief that the nine hundred year spell cast upon the swans mirrored the experience of the Irish people. A people conquered and held under British rule for nine hundred years. It was a parallel that Larry often found intriguing. The yolk of British rule had finally been broken following the 1916 Easter Rising, and when Yeats had uttered his immortal words: "All has changed...changed utterly," Lir understood what the poet had meant. Sure hadn't everything changed utterly in his own life.