The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Prologue

The chubby little boy with tousled red hair crept deeper into the woods beyond the north-end of the canal.  Dressed in dark denim jeans, a green sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo of a popular video game, and brown canvas sneakers, he hopped across a small ravine that ran diagonally from under the treeline to a sharply-defined stone depression where he and his father sometimes launched his model rockets. He was crouched low, nearly a quarter kilometer from his comfortable home's crisply manicured backyard, and moved amongst the waist-high weeds and brambles with the skill of an experienced hunter thrice his age.  This was not his first twilight trip into the gloomy and forbidding acreage beyond the fence of his family's property and, despite his young years and apparent physical softness, the boy traversed the uneven, plant-cluttered terrain with unusual confidence.  The dimming light of approaching nightfall did not bother him in the least.

A wind scented with the stain of oil and machinery blew in fitful puffs up the canal, following a serpentine path north skirting the borders of East Oxfordshire, scattering small flocks of sparrows as evening approached. It was the end of yet another in a series of uneventful days in the canal-side suburbs: hypnotically uninspired and repetitive, predictably safe. 

For the most part, people always felt safe in the historic, white-collar suburban community of Jericho, north of the Oxford city center in Oxfordshire County, south east England.  So far as anyone knew, there was no reason for them to feel otherwise.  And that was just the way those who knew better wanted things.

It just wouldn’t do for people to remember to be frightened of the dark.

Truth be known, the red-haired boy liked the darkness.  It suited his moods.  It fed his quietly furious mania.  It was his armor.  It kept him invisible.  It kept him from the sight of the stern and dour, wheelchair-bound old woman who lived directly across the street from his family's two story brick Victorian.  The old woman's name was Meredith McCrae Chapel and the boy had heard she'd been the victim of a hit and run accident years ago that had stolen the use of her legs from her.  The little boy's name was Oliver Titus Wander and he was a fifth grade student at Oxford's prestigious St. Barnabas Primary School.

Other than that, though, to most people, Oliver Wander was a mystery, a cipher.  He wasn’t much like other children, though, to his credit, he did his best to appear to be like them.  He didn’t want to draw too much attention to himself.  But he was undeniably different, an old soul in a young body, cynical beyond his years.  He wasn’t much predisposed towards smiling.  He didn’t often play with other children and on the odd occasions he did interact with youngsters his own age, the games he played were far more complex than those typically centered around running and jumping and chasing balls.  The games Oliver Wander played were often centered around the different applications of power and discipline over the other children with whom he was engaged.  He didn’t play so much as direct.  He commanded others and put them through their paces.

 Some of the other children’s parents thought he was creepy.

 Elderly Meredith Chapel thought he was evil.

 Oliver Titus Wander and Meredith McCrae Chapel were enemies, each constantly watching the movements of the other, suspicious of one another's motivations and agendas, mistrustful of what they each knew lay beneath the facade of one another's public persona.

 The old woman frequently received mysterious exotic visitors at her grand three-storied 17th century, multi-gabled Normandy mansion.  They arrived in stark, official-looking sedans and tinted-windowed limousines.  It was said the old woman was the retired Head Librarian of the Oxford Central Library over by the Westgate Shopping Center and that, in her youth, she'd once been the Reference Research Curator at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library.  Oliver Wander knew that to be a partial fiction, though.  The old lady had worked for the Directorate of Military Intelligence, MI10, under the aegis of GCHQ, better known as the Government Communications Headquarters.  She had been in the highly secretive "Anomalous Sciences Investigative Chapter".