The Son of Ice and Dusk

Where I meet a principal who goes great lengths to keep me at school

Sometimes, when I'm around other people, it's like the background is drawn with a black sharpie and I'm drawn with a pencil, the outline just sketched and ready to fade away under the soft touch of a rubber.

It's like, if, for a moment, I forget the rules for existing, then it's like I've never been here at all. It's not that the others forget that I'm there — it's that I do.

That was how I felt that day. It was Friday, and the day I was supposed to meet Mister Winter after school.

He didn't tell me explicitly why he organised the meeting, but I knew. Daniel Winter was the only Professor at the Academy of Space and Time.

He would ask me to study there, and, even though I knew the day was going to arrive, I'd never really decided how I was going to spring it on him — the fact that I didn't have any powers.

It was a stroke of luck that I did not inherit any powers, my best friend told me. She once heard in a movie that with powers comes responsibility. And everyone knew Ryan Barnes couldn't be trusted with responsibilities.

I disagreed. I thought it rather sad to live in a world where magic existed, and to know I didn't have any of it.

One thing I'd never told anyone was that I loved magic. Well, the idea of it. There was a time I thought I had inherited powers. I was convinced I could see the future. But my best friend, Risa, sat next to me, and tried every experiment, and in the end, the conclusion was that I was just 'a normal bloke'.

Waiting with me was Mister Bates, my music teacher. The school's waiting room has always been my least favourite place in the whole building. While Mister Bates was talking to me, I tried to pay more attention, but my eyes kept flickering to the school's wallpaper, covered in planets and comets. I always found it a bit childish. As my eyes wandered, I suddenly felt cold all over, as if I was still in the snowy place I'd been in my dream the night before.

I've always had very lucid and realistic dreams. Sometimes, I was living in alternate dimensions and people referred to me as 'Patrick'. Other times, it was someone else who went by that name — my father, most of the time.

In reality, I never knew who my father was. The reason I didn't live amongst the humans was that the Aether Folk couldn't legally adopt. No one said it aloud, but the meaning was — no one will trust a normal kid around magical parents.

The truth was, most normal parents wouldn't trust a magical kid either. Believe me, I speak from experience.

It lasted five years. A man called Lucas Barnes decided he wanted to adopt me, even though he'd been told what I was, when I must have been two or three years old. But I knew Evelyn, his wife, disagreed right from the start.

I'd started being Ryan Barnes when they adopted me, and I keep being Ryan Barnes even now. I had to leave the house when I was eight years old, but the surname was kept for legal purposes.

"Barnes, are you still with me?" Mister Bates asked, which was a bit rude considering that my Attention Deficit and Hyper-activity Disorder made me space out pretty often.

"I was thinking," I bit my lip until I tasted the pungent flavour of a small drop of blood. "Do you think Mister Winter will reject me if he finds out I don't have any magic?"

"I've been to the Aether Realm sometimes. I am familiar with some of the Enchanters' ways," the teacher replied. "You see, even though most magic users start developing their powers around the time they're about ten, there are late bloomers. People who went through trauma of some sort, and so develop later in life. However, every single one of the Enchanters should start manifesting powers after they turn sixteen, and you'll turn sixteen in a few weeks. Do you know what kind of school is the Academy of Space and Time?"