The Boy with the Light

Head One

About One Too Worried Family

It was a dark night, a night like every night in Marika. But what was so special about that particular night – the heavy rain falling in a horrible rhythm, the moon shone with its ghostly light, and of course the cold wind who reminded so well about the approaching problem. What problem? Well, Mr. and Mrs. Hovertak knew the answer the best. They love that wind because they are like every normal family in the town of Marika. But today, at this night, they didn’t pay so much attention to the wind, and the moon, and the rain. They were too disturbed to think about these things. Nobody understood what came to Mr. and Mrs. Hovertak at that night. After all, they were well-known magicians and they wouldn’t allow anything to ruin their reputation, because they locked the door of their dark house, shut the shutters and pulled the curtains. The Hovertaks became a quite family that night and nobody in the town heard even a noise from the big mansion on the steep hill. And Mr. Hovertak was grateful for that stillness and Mrs. Hovertak too – they just wiped the hot sweat from their burning foreheads and made one heavy sigh of relief. But it wouldn’t help them at all, the problems just waiting for the Hovertaks and on that night the problem made its big start.
Mr. Hovertak happens to be a very reserved man, though he made black jokes sometimes, it didn’t stop people from respecting him. Even black humor helped Mr. Hovertak to escape from people considering him a boring man. But now no type of humor saved him from circling nervously around the room till he had serious dizziness and he fell in a heap on the black old armchair.
‘That’s it’ he said in his most dark tone, ‘We are doomed, and it may be bad. For the first time, I think to be doomed is actually a bad thing.’
Beside him, Mrs. Hovertak sat in her thoughts, dark and deep, and didn’t listen to her husband at all. She always has been a quiet woman and didn’t like any sort of conversation. Talking never made things better as well as too much of thinking. And in this tense situation, Mrs. Hovertak had reached to the conclusion there was no solution either in talks nor in thoughts. But she still wanted to hit Mrs. Hovertak’s head, it will bring some fresh feeling.
'We must keep this in secret', Mrs. spoke after a big tensive pause and the words were harsh just like a hit on the head.
'If we can, we would die', answered Mr. Hovertak and it wasn’t one of his stupid jokes and the truth itself.
The two magicians sat in a big dark hall, around a fireplace giving on their faces playing glints from the vivid flames. The lights from the fire were slipping through the walls like living creatures, in some way worried just like the silent couple. And then suddenly a cheerful baby cry echoed and the lights trembled and with them the man and the woman too. The Hovertak jumped and held each other and all this for some cheerful cry. Not only but there was a white dove unexpectedly had appeared on the windowpane. And this strange gest made three twitters and after that just flashed away.
The cry and the dove threw the magician into an uncontrolled panic. Mrs. Hovertak started crying and Mr. Hovertak… he didn’t know what to start and what to end. He just said one of his stupid remarks, far away from his joke away. And the words were these:
‘The prophet! The prophet came true! What will do now?’
Mrs. Hovertak hit his husband with all her power on the head. But it didn’t work. How it didn’t work.