At twelve months, they said nothing. There was no need to say anything.

The man and his wife took the boy back to the mage who had brought him into the world. At first, the old wizard refused to see them. He shook his head gently. The man’s wife begged. Fell to her knees and pleaded. The lawyer-blacksmith tried to pull her up by the arms. But she wouldn’t move. She cried there in front of the mage’s tower for three brutally hot days and three painfully cold nights, the man watching over her the whole time.

On the morning of the fourth day, the mage emerged, on his way to somewhere else, and was alarmed and scared as he stumbled over the candlemaker’s daughter, still waiting there. He could not let this go on any longer.

Your son, he said. He will never be of this world.

Now the man’s wife broke down with fresh tears. The man stared at the mage and said, What do you mean? What does that mean? I know you’re a mage and that’s how you talk, but you can’t say something like that and then just stand there.

The boy’s spirit, the mage explained, what some might call his soul—it is trapped. You can think of it as being inside a small box, and that box is inside another box, and that box in another, and so on.

Is this because of the curse?

Could be. Hard to say. It is possible that the child is afraid to come into the world, or that he is not fully allowed to, owing to the persistent dark energy that was attached to his creation.

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Dark energy. At this phrase, the man’s skin turned cold. He feared. He knew. Something in him had caused all of this. He had no way of proving it, but the man knew it was his fault, could not even look at his wife, afraid that just one look and she would instantly understand.

But if his wife did have any such thoughts she did not betray them. She took the man’s hand in hers and pressed the mage for options. What could they do? Tell us what to do.

The answer, the mage said, may be hidden deep within him. Too deep to retrieve safely. You will never know him. But you will care for him, love him, see that he has everything a child needs.

As soon as the lawyer-blacksmith heard these words, he knew that they were true. He wondered what insurance would cover; he worried about the large deductible, the high cap on out-of-pocket expenses. Ahead of him, the lawyer-blacksmith saw many years of therapists, of special schools, of helpers. No birthday parties. No playdates or friends. No playing baseball with his son.

At sixteen months, the boy stood up once, clapped his hands.

At twenty months, a word: Bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

Then, at two years, more words, all in rapid succession: Mama, baby, Da, sorry.

Why sorry?

Maybe he heard it often.

At three, he said, What’s that? And, Who’s that? And, Where are we going?

When he was five, the lawyer-blacksmith’s son said, Dad is my best friend. He said this from very far away, from a place deep inside himself. The man could barely hear his son. The boy was sitting on the ground and looked confused, and from his mouth came a terrible sound. An old sound, a pain trapped in there. The boy looked out the window at other boys running. He wanted to run. But his legs wouldn’t work right.

His father said, They do work, son. Your legs are just fine.

And the son said, Then why do I feel stuck?

His father said, We will get you unstuck. Those are nice legs, good legs. Don’t be mad at your legs. Look at me. Look at Mommy. We will figure this out. We gave you those legs. We are sorry. I am sorry. But it is not your fault. And you will get to run.

The boy eventually did run. Sort of. It looked funny, and other boys laughed at him. So after a few tries the boy stopped running.

Was the man O.K.? Did he need a moment?

The man was fine.

A glass of water, perhaps?

No, the man said. I’m fine.

Deep breath, O.K.?

In other ways, things were going pretty well. As it turned out, the man did have a talent for blacksmithing. Not a great talent. He would not make swords for knights and princes. But he had something. And people noticed. They started to bring him stuff to smith, and he could smith the heck out of that stuff. He hammered stuff and flattened other stuff and made stuff, stuck stuff in the fire, and stuff. What had started out as a thing on the side turned into a little bit of a cottage industry.

He had time to do this because he had quit his job at the firm and now worked as a lawyer in local government. No bonus, but good benefits. And the hours were so much better. Now the man was home most nights for dinner. He and his wife and son moved to a slightly bigger cottage, just outside the village. The lawyer-blacksmith was still no knight or lord, of course, but he could provide for his family. They were never hungry. Things were fine, mostly, although sometimes when they went down to the village for a harvest festival, other families would look at them, and they hated the way they were looked at. Sympathy, mixed with something else. Something like, I admire you, but don’t touch me or I might catch your plague of misfortune. Sympathy, as in, I sympathize, my heart goes outward to you— outward to you, as in, You over there, stay over there, don’t come any closer. I will admire you from a distance. The man knew that look well. The man’s wife said, Don’t be so hard on people. They mean well. But the man said, Meaning well is for shit. Oh, he knew that look and how he hated that look. The presumptuousness of it. Those other families didn’t say anything. That was the worst part. Except when they did say something. And that was even worse: So inspiring. You must be so strong, selfless. Now, that was a fairy tale. The idea of selfless people. As if their lives were somehow different, as if they didn’t have flaws and urges, didn’t ever want to have a couple of drinks, or three, or ten. As if having a kid like theirs made them into some kind of charmed species, some imaginary fairy-tale type of nonhuman humans, people who never got bored or tired or horny. But the blacksmith-lawyer, as much as he resented these strangers with their heartfelt looks, couldn’t blame them. So he ignored them.

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He was up for a promotion to managing attorney of his department. By now his son was eight. No, closer to ten. Now fifteen. The years were getting away from him. The boy still had no friends, and though it hurt the man every time his son asked why not, it hurt more on the day that his son stopped asking. That was years ago now. Things were still fine. The cottage felt small, so they bought another one. Not great timing, because a month later the blacksmith-lawyer was passed over for the better job. Something about his not having the right attitude. He’d heard back-channel whispers throughout the village that the higher-ups in the department all liked him, but they wondered if he could commit to the additional responsibility. Given, well, his circumstances. They knew he had a kid at home who required extra care. That was all maybe a nice way for them to not say what the problem really was. Maybe that they found it kind of depressing to be around him. They all felt for him, though. His lovely wife, his special-needs kid or whatever. They would never fire him, he knew. He could have a job there for as long as he wanted, doing land surveys on local fiefdoms. Dividing up the realm for lesser lords and vassals, assessing taxes on men far richer than he could ever dream of being. Drawing a steady stream of copper into his accounts. A stable life, a life for his family. That was the right thing to do.