The Umbrella

I’ve never liked bikes. I inherited my sister’s as a child, and spent a long summer riding up and down our road until one of the other kids pointed out that it was a girl’s bicycle, which to a young boy was like hearing that the handlebars were laced with poison. I never rode it again, except for an experimental ride in the back garden, where I couldn’t be seen but kept tumbling into the pond.

A ruddy nose emerged in the gap between the curtains. Above, two beady eyes glared at the children who dared to play outside. Then there was a flash. Startled, the children looked towards the window, but it was empty. This would prove to be an unusual day for Andrew Shaw.

The river reflected the city of Northwilde. It fled the mountains and carved dark furrows across the land. It careened through bleak suburbs and crashed into downtown, gathering a scum of polluted refuse and depositing it on slimy banks of discarded fast food wrappers. The squat silhouette of the new bridge jutted out across the water, and the brightest lights in the city had gathered around a twinkling marquee on the shore.

It is an indisputable fact, that heroes and everyday life must never intertwine. However, in every lifetime, unavoidable circumstances conspire to place that fragile world in opposition to the towering ideal of a Venus or Adonis, just as the playwright dashes his doomed cast of players against the rocks of Fate.

It was a pleasant spring morning when Mysto the Munificent arrived at the orphanage. The children had probably seen him coming; the top of his pointed hat always bobbed up and down above the garden wall long before he reached the gate. He walked up the path, his heavy blue robes brushing past thickets of unkempt grass. Reaching the grand old doors, he raised a bony finger and rang the doorbell. A great din arose within.