The concave glass spin in a dainty gold setting. Mareth watched it closely with his whiteout eye. The glass cast an eerie green-purple glow which danced strange across the young boy’s too-thin face.

The room was close and filled with smoke puffed from a pipe lolling in the wizard’s mouth. The smoke broke around the spinning light as if nudged aside as a nuisance. He strained to keep his eye open and puffed absently.

“Tree hunnid!” Silas’ voice shattered the low quiet and the boy leaped to his feet standing triumphant in a trench between precarious towers of books.

“Hush,” Mareth voice was the expert combination of soft yet firm.

Silas prowled between the stacks as if hidden, moving toward the door.

“Stay inside, little man.” Mareth’s eye twitched in the odd light and he winced but kept it open.

Silas would not be persuaded. By the faculties all young boy’s have to recognize the room for mischief, he knew without knowing just how little leeway the wizard had to stop him.

“Silas,” Mareth’s tone was a warning that the boy wholly ignored as he breached a gap in the books and reached the heights of the stairs heading toward the outside door.

Mareth ground the pipe between his teeth still struggling to stare into the light of the spinning glass.

“Silas, don’t!” No longer warning, but futile as a hollow threat.

Silas still felt the fear of it, and knew he would have some cause to regret in the future. But what boy knows to think of his future self when in the grips of excitement? He opened the door and slipped through, tripped in his haste, lost a shoe, stumbled into a stranger in the street and bolted without looking back.