Bobby has a storm shelter in his backyard. Every second Thursday the door leading down into the ground doesn't lead down into the shelter, not down into the dark and the hum of the dehumidifier his parents keep down there. Instead, it takes him to Akhmiman, a desert realm where he is the exiled son of the harvest god and goddess, and it is upon his shoulders to flood the valley and ensure the crops for the coming season. Bobby is ten years old, almost eleven. His parents write him an excuse for missing every second Thursday at school, and the teacher files it away. Sometimes his homeroom teacher, Mrs. Austen, comments on how nice and bronze the little boy looks.

Every once in a while, Mrs. Austen tells a story about when she was a little girl, and from eight years old until the time of her ceasing, she was a princess, and she and her two brothers battled stone golems on a world comprised entirely of a sheer rock face. Cliffworld, they called it, and each time they stood in their Earthen parents' parlor and placed their three little hands upon the globe in the center of the room...when they said the name of their true family's bloodline, Zissige, they were back on Cliffworld, fighting away.

All the children go. Once they go the first time, off on their splendid adventures, it generally doesn't stop until the ceasing, at age fourteen.

Children like me, who simply don't go, are rare. So rare that I'm the only one in the entire school who doesn't have anything special. I can't draw a trapdoor in the air with magical chalk. I don't own a dagger that can heal the faithful. I don't have a giant panther with wings that serves as my transport while I'm serving as Lord of the Floating Gardens. No, that last one was my eldest brother, Grant. He hasn't been back there since he was fourteen, and now he's married with children and looking to see their adventures when they're old enough. But oh, Grant's stories. And the look in his eye while he tells them.

Children like me are called familiars. I would guess because everything we see and do is just that. There's nothing new, nothing strange, no magic. We just don't have any.

My parents think there's something wrong with me, and maybe there is. From age eight, they've been telling me to just be patient, sweetheart. A gryphon will arrive with instructions. Or...perhaps the Grand Archer will open the grandfather clock in the hall and beckon you to come with him (as he did for your Aunt Meg and you remember she was almost twelve when that happened darling now don't lose hope).

I write my own stories. They're not very good. They're about a young boy named Kevin whose older brother is a detective and Kevin wants to be a detective, too. So he winds up helping his brother solve mysteries. And he's pretty good at it.

The other kids think my stories are stupid. They have stories of fighting and/or befriending live dragons, of defeating warlocks in giant games of chess played across living oldwood forests. I have a story about a kid who uncovers the brains behind a bank robbery and gets the key to the city.

I guess they are kind of stupid. They're not very good. But they're the only stories I have. So I write them and put them in the drawer of my desk. Someday I'll decide what to do with them.

At school today, Rory Baker showed the class the scale mail breastplate he wore while holding the Gorvan Pass against an onslaught from an intelligent sea that had decided to take the land from the people who farmed it. He had managed to create a peace, but it was shaky, and he kept checking the crawlspace behind his closet to see when it was time to go back and check on the people. And the sea. And their truce.

As of tonight, my hero has proven a haunted house to be just another house. His brother ruffles his hair and tells him he is proud of him. His parents stand to one side and cannot speak for their joy. As I write the final words of this story and set down my pencil, I'm reaching for a tissue to keep from damaging my words. Because that's what's important. And I wish I understood why.

My name is Calvin Seeley. And I am fourteen years old.