A Wizard
Of Dreams
Myrddin's Heir, Book One
ROBIN CHAMBERS
Robin Chambers 2015
First printed in the United States of America by BRIGHT CHILDREN PRESS
The wizard appearing on the front cover is from an image by JAMES FARLEY, a wizard photographer and a generous friend. www.jamesfarley.co.uk
Cover Typography by WRITE DREAM REPEAT
Book Interior Design by ROBIN CHAMBERS
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
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This edition published in 2017 by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Also Available
Myrddin’s Heir Book 2: Amazing Grace
Myrddin’s Heir Book 3: The Quality of Mercy
Myrddin’s Heir Book 4: Gifts from the Gods
Myrddin’s Heir Book 5: When the Cat’s Away…
Myrddin’s Heir Book 6: In the Nick of Time
Contents
Copyright
Also Available
Dedication
Warning
Foreword
Chapter 1: THE DANCING BEAR
Chapter 2: WHERE’S HE GETTING IT FROM?
Chapter 3: LEARNING TO LIVE WITH IT
Chapter 4: YOU’RE A WEIRDO!
Chapter 5: THE CUNNING PLAN
Chapter 6: GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL
Chapter 7: THE FIRST HURDLE
Chapter 8: ROUGH JUSTICE
Chapter 9: “I BIN WAI[T]IN’ FER YOU, WEIRDO!”
Chapter 10: SHOW AND TELL
Chapter 11: DESIGNER DREAMS
Chapter 12: READING BETWEEN THE LINES
Chapter 13: THE BIGGER THEY ARE …
Chapter 14: USING THE FORCE
Chapter 15: STICKING TO THE RULES
Chapter 16: THE ENJOY-A-BALL HANDICAP STAKES
Chapter 17: WHY DO PEOPLE CARE SO MUCH?
Chapter 18: GORDON THE ENFORCER
Chapter 19: WHERE WAS I?
Chapter 20: FOREVER FRIENDS
Chapter 21: GORDON GETS INVITED
Chapter 22: A LIFE SENTENCE
Chapter 23: SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR
Chapter 24: WE HAVE TO SAVE THEM
Chapter 25: R.I.P.
Chapter 26: REVERSING THE POLARITIES
Chapter 27: A MEETING OF MINDS
Chapter 28: NOW YOU’RE TALKING
Chapter 29: WHY DO PEOPLE DO TERRIBLE THINGS?
Chapter 30: MAKING HIS DAD PROUD
Chapter 31: DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?
Chapter 32: AN UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE
Chapter 33: THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW
Chapter 34: THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
Chapter 35: LET ME IN!
Chapter 36: THE LADY’S NOT FOR BURNING
Chapter. 37: IT RUNS IN OUR BLOOD
Chapter 38: TIME FOR REFLECTION
Chapter 39: WALKING ABROAD
Chapter 40: THE EVIL EYE
Chapter 41: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
Chapter 42: THE HALL OF MIRRORS
Chapter 43: THE TUNNEL OF LOVE
Chapter 44: MY SIXTEEN GREATS GRANDMOTHER
Chapter.45: WHAT SORCERY IS THIS?
Chapter.46: FORENSIC EVIDENCE
Chapter 47: HOME AT LAST
Chapter 48: KEEPING IT QUIET
Chapter. 49: THE KEY TO MABON’S CAIRN
Chapter 50: A WIZARD OF DREAMS
Chapter 51: HIDE AND SEEK
Chapter 52: A MIND OF ITS OWN
Chapter 53: IT’S JUST A MATTER OF TIME
Chapter 54: TALKING THE TORQUE
Chapter 55: HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Chapter 56: LEFT HOLDING THE BABY
Chapter.57: THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE
Chapter 58: A LEAP OF FAITH
Chapter 59: THE FIRST MEETING
Chapter. 60: WE MEET AT LAST
Chapter 61: THE LAKE OF TEARS
Chapter 62: THE WANDERER RETURNS
Chapter 63: HEALING THAT WOUND
Chapter 64: AMAZING GRACE
NOTES
-To Note ...
About this author
Book 2 Chapter 1
For Amy, who makes me happy,
For Linda, who kept in touch,
And for all children who were or are abused
by anyone, anywhere
WARNING
This book will challenge you
HELPFUL HINT
There are notes at the back
SOUND ADVICE
Love Learning
Respect Difference
Protect Your Planet
Foreword
Before beginning this story, Amy and I spent three years in Belize, where we met and became firm friends with a Taiwanese philosopher and his wife. Their English names were Jason and Christine.
Jason was developing a scheme designed to promote the philosophy he had been working on for 20 years to help make the world a better place. I helped Jason with the wording of his philosophy for the English-speaking world.
My three pieces of sound advice -
Love Learning
Respect Difference
Protect Your Planet
– were distilled during the process he and I underwent in finding the right words for his “Three Obligations of Wisdom” in English.
The wording in his final version, when it is published, will be a little different to my choice of words above for this series of books, but the key concepts are the same.
I was convinced that the “Three Obligations of Wisdom” point out a simple way to a better world, and I am happy to help promote Jason’s philosophy.
Robin Chambers
June 2016
Chapter 1
The Dancing Bear
All mothers think their children are special, but Gordon’s mother had proof.
“Ma-ma,” she heard him say when he was just five months old. He was lying on the living room carpet at the time, his rather large head supported by a comfy pillow. “He was looking right at me when he said it,” she told everyone afterwards, with understandable pride. She had dropped to her knees in front of him.
“That’s right, Darling!” she cooed in delight. “Ma-ma.” She pointed to herself: to be sure he grasped the link between those sounds and the loving parent in his line of vision. “Who’s a clever boy, then?”
Gordon beamed back at her. “Da-da,” he announced.
This was too much! Tears of joy welling, she rushed to the sideboard and grabbed a picture of his father. “Yes, Precious!” She held the picture where he could see it clearly. “Da-da.”
Gordon went on smiling. “Zack!” he said. His chubby little left arm came up and smacked into the pillow beside his head. Most of his hand was bunched in a fist, but his index finger pointed at the pillow. “Zack.”
His mother was taken aback for a moment. “No, Sweetheart, PIL-LOW.”
The smile faded from Gordon’s face. “Zack!” he said again, very distinctly. It was as if he was trying to explain something to her, something that should have been obvious. It clearly wasn’t, and he had no idea why.
Well, that was enough progress for one day. “All right, Darling, Zack it is!” After all, there was plenty of time for him to learn to say ‘pillow’.
The smile
returned to Gordon’s chubby face. “Zack,” he said again, and chuckled with delight. He turned and gazed fondly at the pillow next to his head.
Edith drifted happily into the kitchen to put the kettle on. What would all the other mothers say when she told them? “How old is he now? Five months! Goodness, he’s very advanced, isn’t he?” She would smile modestly, and say something like: “Well, they all go at their own pace, don’t they?” The water in the kettle began to rumble.
Back in the living room, Gordon’s teddy sprang into the air. It hovered in front of his delighted face and gave him a cheery wave. Edith could hear him squealing and clapping as she dropped the tea bag into her cup and waited for the kettle to reach boiling point. He was such a happy child! And gifted and talented; that was obvious.
In the living room, Teddy was doing the can can. Zack always knew where Edith was. When she came back with her cup of tea, Teddy would be back on Gordon’s pillow.
There was no point in worrying her before she had to be.
Chapter 2
Where’s He Getting It From?
When he was two and a half, Gordon told his mum he was going to be a palaeontologist. She had to look it up.
They’d found a splendid book on dinosaurs in a shop called The Works. It sold big books at knockdown prices. This one was for grown-ups really, but it had wonderful pictures. Gordon wanted it, so Edith bought it. Conversations with him on the subject of dinosaurs then became unsettling.
Not long after they brought it home, Edith found him studying one of the pages. She was impressed by the sheer size of the creature in the picture. “That’s a big one!” she said.
“It’s a diplodocus,” he told her.
She peered at the label: yes, that’s what it was. “How did you know its name?” she asked him curiously.
“Zack told me.”
She was going along with Zack for the moment, largely because she didn’t have a choice. “It’s huge,” she said. “They must have been scary.”
“No,” he said. “They were herbivorous.” Such a big word in such a little mouth. She looked more closely at the text and there it was: “herbivorous”. “It means ‘plant-eating’” he told her.
“What else do you know about it?” she asked him. She took the book for a moment and scanned the page. He ticked the facts off on his fingers.
“It lived from 155 to 145 million years ago, it was 90 feet long and it weighed up to 20 tons. Its neck was 26 feet long, 5 feet longer than its body! Its tail was almost as long as its neck and its body put together - 45 feet!”
His eyes shone. “Its head was tiny in comparison, only 2 feet long. Isn’t that amazing? It used its tail like a whip. It had feet like an elephant, with 5 toes on each foot.”
“You know a lot about them,” she said slowly, handing the book back.
He grinned at her. “That’s why I’m going to be a palaeontologist.”
She told her husband about Gordon’s creepily exact reporting of the written text in his dinosaur book. “He’s a bright kid,” Victor Bennett said breezily. “He watches all the Nature programmes. He must be getting it from somewhere.”
“That’s what’s worrying me,” Edith thought, but she kept it to herself.
That night, when Gordon drifted easily and deeply asleep, Zack took his hand and flew with him to the Jurassic Era. It was filled with amazing sights and sounds and creatures that Gordon had no names for yet, but they soaked his senses with wonder.
The absolute highlight was watching a peaceful diplodocus grazing on the waving grasses of a prehistoric plain.
NOTES
PALAEONTOLOGY
Chapter 3
Learning To Live With It
Edith got used to three-way conversations between her son, herself and Zack. It was unnerving the way he always paused for Zack to reply to questions, and uncanny how often he came out with a reply to something Zack had apparently said.
They were watching Animal Planet together one day, in the latter half of his third year. Gordon loved animals of all description, extant as well as extinct. The programme happened to be about chimpanzees.
“I do like monkeys, don’t you?” Edith said. She plopped herself down on the sofa beside Gordon.
“Smarty-pants!” Gordon replied.
“I BEG your pardon?!” his mother said, caught off-guard.
“Zack,” Gordon explained. “He says they’re apes, not monkeys.”
“I think he’s right,” Edith replied faintly. “I’m not sure I know what the difference is between apes and monkeys.”
“What is the difference between apes and monkeys?” Gordon said without taking his eyes from the screen.
“I just told you I don’t … Oh!” she stopped. Her son had held his hand up.
“Sorry, Mum, just a mo.” Edith waited. She had taught Gordon that it was rude to interrupt when someone else was speaking. She wasn’t about to break her own rule.
“Oh yes, you’re right” Gordon said. He pointed at the screen.
“What about?” his mum asked.
“Apes don’t have tails.”
“I think I did know that,” Edith said in her own defence.
“Say again” Gordon said.
“I think I did know that.”
“Oh good. That’s another long word for my collection!”
“What is?”
“Prehensile,” Gordon told her. It means ‘capable of grasping or holding on’.”
“That’s right, it does,” his mum agreed. “I expect you’ll need long words like that when you’re a palaeontologist.” She was quite pleased with that comment. Zack wasn’t the only one who knew things.
There was a brief pause. “Long like that one, but not that one,” Gordon said.
“Why not ‘that one’?” his mum asked indignantly. It was high time Zack cut her some slack.
“Why not that one?” Gordon repeated. His mum opened her mouth, and then closed it again, having realised the question wasn’t directed at her.
“Because,” her son said, “dinosaurs didn’t have prehensile tails. It was only millions of years later, when mammals evolved, that you started to get …”
“Hang on, hang on,” his mum said. Her tail was up now; she was in the mood for an argument. “Maybe not tails, but what about claws? They could grasp things in their claws, couldn’t they? Some of them had prehensile claws and toes.” She stared at Gordon and waited for a verdict.
“You’re right” Gordon announced, a few moments later. “He stands corrected.”
“Thank you”, his mum said triumphantly.
A lot of their conversations were like that.
NOTES
EXTANT; HER TAIL WAS UP NOW
Chapter 4
You’re A Weirdo!
Other children were a bit of a problem at first. Gordon couldn’t understand why their attention spans were so short. He got very cross if they messed up any of his playspaces. He had a Lego and constructions-in-general space. Then there was his dinosaur exhibition and related information space. And don’t forget his painting, drawing and colouring-in space.
Shortly after his third birthday, he thumped his friend Nicholas for colouring in a diplodocus in his new dinosaur colouring book. It wasn’t the colouring-in Gordon objected to. That was what the book was for. The problems were (1) Nicholas had failed to keep within the lines, and (2) he had used the wrong colours. Mistakes of that magnitude tried Gordon’s patience beyond its limits.
Shortly before his fourth birthday, Tom turned out to be a lot worse. He was a bit older and bigger than Gordon and had recently moved in next door. His mum, Yvonne, had her work cut out looking after him. His dad was in the army, and away for long stretches of time. With her needing to work to make ends meet, it was a challenge to find babysitters and places to park him.
Edith sympathized with her situation. However, she had heard Tom’s tantrums on the other side of the dividing wall, and was wary of letting him anywhere
near Gordon’s well-organised playspaces. But inevitably she said to Yvonne one day, after a particularly sorry tale of how difficult it could be sometimes, “Well of course if I can be of any help, just ask.”
Shortly afterwards, Tom came round “just for a couple of hours ‘til the babysitter can collect him.” He was dressed in camouflage trousers and shirt, and had brought his toys of choice: an Action Man in combat gear, and a machine gun that pumped out table tennis balls with considerable force.
By now, Gordon was very good at building things. Many of his toys were kits needing careful assembly. When this big boy ran into his living room, he and Zack were putting the finishing touches to an impressive castle with ramparts and a drawbridge. It had already taken more than an hour. Gordon was particularly proud of the crenellations around the guard towers and along the outer walls.
Tom was straight into it, Action Man at the ready. “WHEEEAAAOOOUUU!” he yelled, mowing Gordon down in the first assault. “ATTACKATTACKATTACK!” he howled, his right arm swinging in a perfect arc towards the outer wall. Action Man did a kamikaze dive into the ramparts …
KABOOOOMMM!! Pieces of what had been a fine mediaeval castle were flying in all directions through Gordon’s well-ordered Lego (and constructions-in-general) playspace. All that patient work had been shattered in two seconds of deliberate devastation.
“Now now, Tom!” his mother called out. She followed him into the room at an ineffective distance. “What have I told you about playing too rough in other people’s houses?”
“Please don’t worry Yvonne,” said Gordon’s mum, in a brave attempt to be polite. “No harm done.”
No harm done? Gordon just had time to wonder what reason his mother could have for telling such a fib when the destructive little dynamo was at it again. He hoisted his machine gun and began firing table tennis balls into his mother’s face. “KERPOW! KERPOW! KERPOW!”
Yvonne let out a helpless little giggle. “I don’t know where he gets his energy from,” she confessed, clearly unable to cope. A moment later, however, Tom was flying backwards as if propelled by some unseen force. His tumble turned into a backward roll and his head met the polished floor with a satisfying thud. He landed on his bottom on a pile of bricks - an uncomfortable experience in its own right.
The shock silenced him for a precious second. Then his mouth opened to let out an unsoldierly wail of truly stunning volume. “OH DARLING, WHAT HAPPENED?!” his mother shrieked. She rushed over to him and got a nasty kick on the shins for her pains.