The Youngest Mage [Completed]

Part I--Prologue

Dalbreath awoke early, and snuck along the upper hall, went down the stairs, then out the door, through the mansion garden, through the outer hedge, and over the fields to the Old Flowers Road. He liked to go out under the Winter Tree during the early light of dawn, for it was then that the Winter Tree, the wondrous tree of the Mother Blessing, the only tree of its kind on the planet moon of Avalon, it was then that it dropped its dead leaves, which disintegrated on the way down, falling as a fine spicy dust on the Great Mound under the wide canopy of the Winter Tree on this spring morning. Dalbreath loved to stand under the great tree with his face pointed up to the sky just as the spicy dust came raining down from above. It was from this spice of the tree that his imagination grew and grew.

He would shut his eyes when he heard the dust falling. It made him laugh and laugh when the leaf dust hit his face. Usually the rain of leaf dust lasted only a minute or two. He could never resist the temptation to open his eyes just a tiny bit. Often he would imagine there was a beautiful lady up there pouring the dust out from a magic cauldron.

His mother sometimes scolded him for going out so early, but deep inside she knew it was perfectly harmless. She knew he had a deep seated need for the world to be more magical, and so she let him have his little adventures. Had she known where it would lead him one day she might have kept him home with her, forever.

After waiting for half an hour for the dust to come down on this particular day he looked around, and that's when he saw her. "It must be her," he whispered. The lady was as white as the blossoms of the Winter Tree, which give the Winter Tree its name. Dalbreath felt summoned that morning. He walked self-consciously toward the White Lady.

"Are you willing to be brave?" She asked Dalbreath him as he stood before her.

"Yes . . ." he said, but then couldn't think of what to call her."

"Mother Blessing will do," she assured him.

"Mother Blessing," he said. "I think I will be very brave."

She smiled and nodded with approval. "Good, I want you to enroll in Mage School in the fall."

"I can't be a Mage, I'm only five years old," said Dalbreath.

"Why is that so important? Age should never be a factor in such matters," said the Mother Blessing.

Dalbreath looked horrified. "Nobody in my family has ever been a Mage, ever."

The Mother Blessing began to disappear in that moment, but when she was almost gone she said, "You will."

Dalbreath was sad and hopeful at the same time as he walked home that day, but he kept this adventure to himself for several days, and did not even tell his nanny Leanha, which was highly unusual for him, because he generally told her everything.