He was a lot of other things as well, as most people tend to be. If anyone were to meet him, his size would not be the first thing they would comment on. It might not even be mentioned.

What people might comment on would depend on who they were. A member of the upper echelons of society would almost certainly comment on how horribly dirty Faxon Doyle was. A more sensible, hard-working individual would probably overlook the layers of grim that covered the boy in all but the warmest months in favour of commenting on his impossibly long, black hair, or perhaps his unhealthily pale skin. A less critical eye would note the fierce brightness in his large amber eyes and his perpetual, glowing smile. Someone making an attempt at wit would no doubt make a reference to the fact that he was, despite initial impressions, a boy.

No one, except perhaps a very experienced mother, would comment on the fact that Faxon Doyle was small for his age, because if anyone were to meet him, there would be no other children to compare his size to. Certainly no children his own age would be within view.

Craig Doyle wouldn’t have cared what people thought of his son. No one closer to the nobility than a page barely older than Faxon himself had ever had anything to do with Craig Doyle. Had any of the people he dealt with on a regular basis asked about Faxon’s hair, he would have told them that it was a bother to cut it, and it reminded him of the boy’s mother, both of which were perfectly reasonable answers. Comments on the boy’s pale complexion would be met with a cold stare and an emotionless response that the boy had inherited his mother’s poor health, while he privately prayed that no keen eyed customers remarked on Faxon’s lively appearance. Any potential jesters would find out, swiftly and painfully, that Craig Doyle had no sense of humour.

It was all made rather irrelevant by the fact that the people he traded with in Occam, Tara, and the capital Gorsedd, had no idea about the existence of Faxon Doyle.

The people who regularly came to Craig Doyle to trade for his fish knew next to nothing about him except that he had left the country of Arden as a boy of sixteen, after the deaths of his parents, to make his fortune in what was only referred to as “foreign parts” and had returned more than twenty years later, a darker, heavier, and far bitterer man than the charming youth who had left. He never spoke of what had happened in his prolonged absence, and no one ever asked.

Those who had known young Craig Doyle, and those that had known his parents, simply assumed that young Craig had grown up, after a time, and finally returned to his senses and his home. Doyle was a good fisherman, which was all that mattered to the people he traded with.

If Doyle had conducted trades with anyone who was better educated than himself, they might have been interested to know that Doyle had returned to Arden with a small child after the death of the wife he had met in “foreign” parts and settled in a run down little shack far outside of Tara. They might have been interested to know that the shack was next to the ocean that provided Doyle’s livelihood and he spent more time on it than he spent in his ramshackle house, trusting his son to take care of himself during the day. They might have found it curious that he left a small child constantly alone except for during the very late nights, which made travel to Occam and Gorsedd difficult.

Luckily for Doyle, even in Gorsedd, where the king himself lived, no one old enough to have an opinion that mattered had much of an education.

No one ever questioned Craig Doyle.

Craig Doyle woke up before the sun rose. He got off the floor and looked around for his son. It didn’t take long. The small shack consisted of a solitary room that offered little more than shelter from Arden’s cold winters. There was no furniture to offer a hiding place for a small boy. The shack was practically empty except for Doyle, standing in the middle of it, and the pile of blankets he stood on. Pinching the bride of his nose, he sighed and pushed the small door open, ducking down and slipping outside silently, squinting in an attempt to improve his vision.

The little shack was too far from any of the villages for light to be given off by any other buildings. Doyle’s shack was the only building visible by the light of the fading stars in the cloudy, dark sky. The long, wet grass brushed against his bare ankles as he searched the shoreline for sign of his escaped child.

There.

A flicker of movement on the shoreline.

Scowling, Doyle stalked down to the shore. The only noise was that of slight breathing and the lapping of waves on sand and stone. Impatiently, he reached out and grabbed . . . shoulder. Yes, a shoulder, and he pulled the small figure toward him, away from the water. Firmly, he dragged the small boy off the sand and back onto the grass, staring down at him with fierce disapproval.

The boy didn’t say anything, staring serenely up at his father from somewhere behind his hair. The dim light reflected off bright, round amber eyes.

Doyle’s fierce expression faded into one of exhaustion as he let Faxon’s shoulder go with a sigh. He crouched down and carefully parted the hair that hung in front of Faxon’s tiny face so he could stare into his son’s eyes without anything blocking his view. “What have I told you about wandering around by yourself, Faxon?”

The boy smiled at Doyle guilelessly and didn’t answer.

“Faxon . . .”

The boy giggled and wrapped his arms around his father’s neck.

Doyle sighed softly, letting the boy dangle from his neck. “I don’t want you going far from the house without me, Faxon.”

“The beach’s not far from the house.”

“I don’t want you going anywhere without me when it’s still dark out. What in Adwirel’s name possessed you to go out at this time of day, anyway?”

“You always go out around now. I wanted to see you, Da.”

Inwardly, Doyle groaned. “That’s very nice, boy, but there’s a big difference between you and me. You can see me at night. Now I have to go out and fish and you have to go back to sleep. Understand?”

“But - ”

“None of that. This is not open to discussion, Faxon. You do what I tell you.”

“Yes Da.”

“Good boy. Now, back you go. You get lots of sleep, and when it’s properly day, you stay inside, okay? No wandering off. There’s dangerous things out there.”

Faxon slid off his father’s neck, landing softly on the ground. His hair fell back over his face as he tilted his head up to smile at his father. “I understand, Da.”

“Good boy. Go on, then.” He gave his son a gentle shove and watched as the boy padded back silently to the small house, slipping inside after waving cheerfully to his father.

Doyle watched carefully to make sure the boy was inside before he gathered his nets and got into his small, flat boat. He untied it and let it drift out with the current as he settled back to wait until he arrived in deep waters.

Back in the shack, Faxon lay on the floor, the picture of innocence and obedience, and slept.

It was dark.

It was always dark, here. Not the dark of late night, where there was some relief provided by the shining stars, the moon, and their reflection on the slow waves of water out beyond the beach. This was darkness that was the complete opposite of light. Sunlight, moonlight, starlight, none of them ever touched this place. It was beyond their reach, far beyond anything they ever touched.

He never knew how he knew this. It was just there, in this place, like the names of the trees or fishes or flowers were when he was outside of it.

In this place, something told him that he was the only one able to bring light to the endless darkness. He wanted more than anything to make this empty, sad place glow with light and life, but he could never remember how to do it.

Once, he was certain, he had known, and been able to bring light to the darkness with more ease than he breathed.

He wondered why he’d forgotten.

Sometimes when he came here, he was alone. He’d wander pointlessly in the darkness, meandering from one point to the other, with his hands outstretched. Usually his hands would contact something as he went. The smooth surface of marble, icy cold, the curving form of a metal stand, the empty and long-dead torches. In his mind’s eye, he could see how it was all supposed to look, beneath the darkness, and knew everything about what he touched as his fingers gently contacted a new surface. It had once been a hall, a great hall, and there had been more people in there than he had ever seen in all his life. Except . . . except . . .

They weren’t people, after all. They were something else, things that had been people once, some of them. And they were all very sad. He knew that even when he had been able to remember how to light the hall, it had been a sad place. No one who was happy ever stayed there. They would pass through, briefly, and he would tell them what to do. He had controlled them all, they had all come to him, bowed before him like a king, and he would tell them where to go. And they would leave. The happy ones and the sad ones. The only ones who stayed behind were the lost. Someone had forgotten to give them instructions before they got there, he was sure.

Sometimes when he was in the dark place, he could hear their voices.

He never understood what they were saying. But it made him hurt to hear them.

He was always glad to leave, when the voices were there with him.

The voices, and the people who weren’t people who had gone through there, once, had all been afraid of him. They had been more afraid of him than anything else. He could remember that. No one had ever been happy to see him. They simply feared.

He didn’t like knowing that people were afraid of him.

He didn’t like being in the dark place. It was far beyond him to bring happiness and light to the darkness. If he had ever been able to do both, he had forgotten long ago. Now, all he could do was wait until he was allowed to leave the darkness.

Whenever he woke up, Faxon Doyle would spend several minutes feeling certain that he had gone blind in his sleep. Then, slowly, things would right themselves, and he’d be staring at the sloping beams of his father’s small shack, with the smoked fish hanging on long ropes, dangling just above his head. He would shake off the temporary blindness and would get to his feet, stretching violently from side to side with bone-cracking precision. Then, he would go to the far corner of the shack, and find one of the small fish that his father couldn’t use in trade.

The small fish would be his breakfast.

Faxon would sit back down among the rough bags that made up his bedding and munch away at the small smoked fish industriously. He would suck the delicate bones clean of meat, scrape the scales and charcoal out from under his broken fingernails and lick it away, and then he’d break every one of the tiny bones in half, sucking at the broken ends industriously. Faxon got everything he could from the little fish. He was only allowed the one, but he was good at making it last.

It never occurred to Faxon to try and sneak a second fish, or even a third. More than one fish wouldn’t be part of the ritual.

After he had finished the fish, he would return the fragments of bone to the sea. In the warmest seasons, when the sun was hot and out in the sky for almost the entire day, Faxon would follow the remains of the fish into the ocean and splash around. He would remain in the salt water that was icy even when the sun made the air itself sizzle until his skin puckered and went red. Then, he would get out of the water and wander back up to the shack. There, he would roll about in the long, dry grasses, frequently scratching himself in his serious attempts to dry his small body. He usually ended up with almost as much dirt on his body as there had been before he had gone into the water. His hair made itself into a comfortable nest for bugs, with enough broken bits of grass and leaves to provide several birds with new nests.

Whether it was warm or not, Faxon would always go and find the small stone well his father had dug, and would haul the bucket up. From there he would fill the ladle that always rested in the bucket and drink. He did this three times, regardless of how thirsty he was. Before leaving the well, he would always conscientiously lower it to where it had rested before.

If his father was having a particularly successful time at sea, Faxon would then settle by the fire and methodically gut the fish that Craig Doyle had not been able to attend to. He would not smoke them – he wasn’t allowed to touch the fire pit. He would gather the guts in a bucket and take them up to the well, lowering them down into the cool darkness as well. On very special occasions, his father would use these to make stew.

Having disposed of all his duties for the day, Faxon would then find a stick. It was always the same stick – he kept it near the well, hidden in the grass. It was a long stick, with two points at the end. He would twist it in his hands, and spin with it, three times, before throwing it up in the air. He would then get on his knees and search for where it had fallen. On finding the stick, Faxon would look at where the two points were facing, and set out in that direction.

Faxon Doyle was a creature of ritual, although he had never heard the word before in his short young life. Every day was the same, including his innocent disobedience of his father. It was unthinkable that anything would hurt him. Nothing had ever hurt him before, after all.

Faxon enjoyed nothing more than the part of his day that was devoted to exploring. Today he tramped cheerfully through part of the forest, the tree branches shading him from the majority of the sun’s bright rays. He would frequently stop, bending down so his nose touched the ground, to watch a brightly coloured beetle wander past, inspect a butterfly on a flower, or an unusually shaped rock. He would see things besides bugs as he went – colourful song birds, furtive tree-climbing rodents, small animals with soft fur making their home in the underbrush, elegant deer, massive moose. He delighted in seeing every one and would always approach them, slowly, with his small hands outstretched. They never tried to escape the small boy, or harm him.

Any observer from one of the nearby villages would have murmured things about magic, or changelings, unable to recognize the quiet charisma in the boy that drew animals to him. It was the same thing that, oddly enough, would have made people back away from him nervously, if his father ever allowed him to meet any.

When the animals invariably lost interest in Faxon and wandered away, he would continue, occasionally altering his direction in accordance with something only he could see. Eventually, his meandering exploration brought him out of the forest and into an open field full of large boxes on legs, with bees swarming out of them and buzzing about in small clouds.

Curious, Faxon approached and sat down by one of the boxes, pulling up several strands of grass and chewing on them absently as he examined one of the legs. Several swarms of bees descended and hovered around him curiously. He sneezed as one passed his nose, then settled back to watch the buzzing yellow and black blurs, grass dropping from his mouth.

As Faxon sat, laughing softly, enchanted by the swarm, another figure approached, vaguely visible through the small, fat bee-bodies. It was tall, appeared to be composed almost entirely of knees and elbows, and had a shock of bright red, messy hair. The bees seemed to hesitate for a moment before leaving Faxon and going to buzz back into their boxes, or around the approaching figure.

Faxon drew his knees up to his chin, watching curiously through his hair. The redhead, a boy in clothing that had probably been very fine, once, stared back at Faxon from behind a pair of thick glasses.

Finally, Faxon lifted his hand and gave a little wave. “Hello.”

The other continued to stare blankly for several minutes. “Do you like bees?” he said, finally.

Faxon nodded wildly. “Yes! They go buzz. And fly. Buzzfly.” He lifted both hands and flapped them, under his hair.

The boy walked slowly over to one of the boxes, opening it, and the bees around him darted inside. He fussed with something inside for a few minutes before looking up. He seemed surprised that Faxon was still sitting amiably on the grass. “What are you?”

“I’m a boy,” Faxon said, simply, and got to his feet. He parted the hair over his face and held a hand out. “Faxon Doyle.”

The other stared at the hand in blank confusion before slowly putting his own hand out, taking Faxon’s. “I’m Dmitri Ardon.” His hand was sticky. Faxon pumped it eagerly, beaming up at Dmitri. “Do you live around here?” Dmitri asked, slowly, as he tried to extract his hand from Faxon’s strong grip.

Instantly, Faxon dropped Dmitri’s hand and spun around to face the little bit of ocean that was just visible through the trees, in a different direction than he had come. He pointed. “I live down there. By the beach.”

His hand freed, Dmitri continued his inspection of the bee-boxes as he spoke absently to Faxon. “How come I’ve never seen you around here before?”

Faxon shrugged. “I’ve never been up this way before. Do you live around here?”

Dmitri actually looked up, staring at Faxon blankly. “I live here.”

“Here?” Faxon made a sweeping gesture, looking down at the bee-boxes.

“Not here here.” Dmitri frowned at Faxon and turned, pointing to a large house in the distance.

Faxon gaped. “What, all by yourself?”

“No.” Dmitri shook his head, going back to work with the bees. “With my parents. And Tor, and Jay, and Phoenix, and Whimsey.”

“Who’re they?”

“My sibs . . .”

“What, all of them?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Cor,” Faxon sounded suitably impressed as he peered around Dmitri’s shoulder, smiling at the bees. “Hello fuzzy bees.”

“How come I’ve never seen you at school?” Dmitri asked as he pulled out a bit of honeycomb, offering it to Faxon.

“School?” Faxon asked uncertainly as he took the honeycomb, turning it over in his hands.

“School. Where you go to learn things.”

Faxon shook his head blankly as he lifted the honeycomb to his mouth and licked it curiously, a startled expression crossing his face.

“My Granda wants everyone to go to school,” Dmitri said with a frown.

“Does he live in the big house?” Faxon asked, temporarily pulling his attention away from the honeycomb.

“No!” Dmitri shook his head. “He lives at the palace, of course.”

“Of course . . .”

“So you live just down there, and you’ve never been up here before, and you’ve never been to school?”

“Guess not!” Faxon said with a bright smile as he sucked at his fingers.

“Do you live all by yourself down there?”

“No!” Faxon laughed. “I live with my da.”

“Just the one? And no mother?”

“Mm,” Faxon licked the last bit of honey from his fingertips. “She died when I was little.”

“Do you think your da maybe didn’t want you to come up here?”

Faxon blinked, wiping his fingers on his shorts. “Why?”

“Well, I read this book once, where this sorcerer, he kept this prince locked in a tower, and never let him out to see anyone – ”

“What’s a sorcerer?”

“Someone who does magic.”

Faxon laughed. “Well, Da’s not a magic doing guy, and I’m not a prince, so it’s probably not that.”

“Oh . . .”

Faxon beamed up at Dmitri, patting the top of one of the bee-boxes absently.

“So . . . d’you want to see my house?”

“Sure!” Faxon beamed, nodding brightly.

Dmitri finished with his bees and wandered back to the house, with Faxon bouncing around him the entire way.

This wasn’t part of the daily ritual.

It probably would be in the future, though.