An American Wizard

Denver, USA.
Aug. 1989

There was a sharp rat-a-tat on his bedroom door.

“Time to get up, Jacky.” and after a short pause, “Happy birthday!”

His grandmother didn't bother coming in to check that Jak got up. Jak always got up when called. He was a good kid.

He climbed out of bed, took off his night-shirt, and went to look at himself in the mirror. It had become part of his morning ritual.

He blinked to clear the sleep from his eyes, shivering slightly as an image left over from the dream flashed briefly and threateningly in the depths of his memory.

Jak wasn’t sure how long he had been having the dreams. He thought the dreams had started sometime when he was three or four, after the house fire that had nearly killed his parents, and left his father so scared. The dreams had faded almost immediately upon awaking in the past. Crazy dreams, people flying, doing magical things. Impossible things.

Jak had been told that he hadn’t been home when the fire broke out, he had been visiting his grandmother at the time and had ended up living with her.

Sometimes he thought he remembered the fire, like he had been there, but that had to be a dream too, didn’t it?

Maybe he had always dreamed, but had only recently come by the ability to remember his dreams. On the other hand, perhaps the remembering of his dreams had also been the beginning of the end of his sanity.

He often wondered how he had managed not to give himself away in the past few months. After he first began to remember his dreams clearly and had started seeing strange things even when awake, things that made him feel sure his mind was slipping. Any anomalies in his behavior must have been written off to his age. His grandmother was always telling him how lucky he was to be eleven, he wasn’t sure just why she thought this, but now he was in a position to agree with her. At eleven, it was entirely appropriate to be a little bit inquisitive and more than a little odd. It was even possible to get away with being a little too clever by half, as long as he didn't overdo it.

It was difficult to be sure, because he didn't want to interrogate his grandmother too explicitly, but he had figured out that his parents must have been working for the government, it must be the government, even at the time of the fire. They was always traveling and many times strangely dressed people were with them when they returned.

He looked at himself closely in the mirror as he put on his cloths, looking for signs of maturity, as well as his slipping sanity. What did crazy people look like anyway? He also kept an eye on the street outside his bedroom window, his parents never missed his birthday.

Straightening up from tying his shoes he spotted his mother and father coming down the sidewalk, his fathers limp was unmistakable, her grace impeccable. They was alone, and had no bags, his father had promised him a special surprise for his eleventh birthday.

As Jak raised his bedroom window to greet them, and another of the events that had made him doubt his sanity occurred. An owl with a letter clamped firmly in its beak flew through the window, surprising him so badly that he fell to the floor.