His father lifted the sack for him to grab. 

“Pick up the pace, boy.” 

“This is amazingly heavy.” Tyler grabbed the sack ample with wood and stowed it in the back of the cart next to the bottles bag. Tyler’s chest quivered nonstop, both excited and anxious. He was going to prove to his parents he was ready to travel on his own. Unfortunately for him, his sister was in her second year at the Division of Global Magic Affairs and therefore couldn’t come with. 

“Remember to follow the road, honey,” his mother uttered. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Agnes. I’m sure the boy can handle it.” His short, brown-haired father had come home for a quick breakfast. He gave Tyler a list of things to get from Wiltshire. 

Tyler knew his father wanted to test whether he was ready. The Academy was not a game. It was the line between life and death. 

A warlock, Tyler thought. He had forgotten how much he wanted to go to the Academy as a kid. Or perhaps he had never wanted to go at all. His fear was undetermined. He had followed nothing to the end before. He always gave up halfway through. 

“Am I really going this year?” He asked. 

“Unfortunately, they are lacking on staff, so the Academy will recruit minors this year.” 

“Things are that bad,” said Tyler. 

“You reap what you sow, boy.” 

Tyler didn’t answer. 

For sixteen and a half years, the Windwood family had lived in the remote Crawley Village in Winchester, eating the very food they nurtured. How he wished to be pampered with servants. Tyler’s father was too modest for those acts. Ray Windwood was a name known all over England. His father was a trader in metals, wood, guns, and other, lesser things. Now it was his turn to live up to his father’s name. 

Somewhere halfway into Wiltshire, the sun set across the green hills and plains, where dark stone roads make the wheels and cart rise. On those roads, young Windwood stopped for a bathroom break. 

During the break, he thought about that man with a curious name in the village of Calne, a man he had never heard of before waited for his father’s work, perhaps a new client of his father’s. He overheard them once talking about guns, rifles, and wine over the telephone. He didn’t much understand grownups’ conversations. 

Tyler went back to the cart, and three men waited covered in torn clothes with wild long hair and armed with rifles to the teeth. One sack was open, and someone or something had scattered the wood all over the place. The tall skinny one dropped the sack with the weapon parts on the floor. The one in the middle with the big black beard and eye patch raised his hand, and the others stopped what they were doing. He whistled to the others.

Tyler assumed the one that resembled a pirate to be the leader. The last one was short, bald, and chubby. 

“Come out, lad. This is our land, our loot,” a croaky voice accompanied the words coming out of the pirate man’s mouth, and when he spoke, the other two remained silent. “The lands outside Calne are ours by right. The sweat of our great-grandparents’ forehead earned it, boy. It is ours, and everything that falls on it belongs to us.” Tyler’s location got exposed within the branches that separated the road from the dirt. 

“You lot are just a bunch of thieves!” Tyler shouted. 

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you to stay on the road?” said the tallest. 

“She did!” Tyler answered. 

“She did!?” The man staggered. “Dammit… you’ve spoiled my joke. You piece of shit.” He ran towards Tyler, pulling at his faded white hair. 

“Let me go! This isn’t yours!” he screamed. 

An extreme blaze embraced his knees, Tyler’s clothes tore through the gravel and he lost a shoe between the bigger stones. Dragging him toward the others, the man picked him up and placed him aboard the cart. 

“Get in there and don’t move.” One of them waved a gun in front of his face. 

The shortest one—the dwarf—moved behind him with ropes in hand. One loop, two, and Tyler’s hands got tied in a matter of seconds. “Do you even know who we are, boy?” asked the other one who was in the front, grabbing the horse’s rein. 

“Poachers,” Tyler said, brittle. 

The man looked over his shoulder, and smiled back to him, switching his attention back on the road ahead. 

“We are the Thunderknyfe Brothers.” 

Tyler did not reply. He lowered his head at his bare knees that were visible through his used torn dark trousers, yet his legs wouldn’t stop aching. The tallest one sat in front of him, and took out a piece of white cloth from his pocket, and dipped it in alcohol. The man squeezed his knee with a tight knot, to which Tyler groaned. 

An hour later, they had passed the meadows and neared a small cottage in the woods. On the outskirts of the beautiful home, smaller than his own, Tyler saw a man in the distance signalling a girl to go into the house. 

“Good morning, gentlemen,” said the shirtless man in a gravelly voice. He was carrying an axe on his shoulder as he had been cutting logs. 

“Good morning, sir. Name is Clement. Jeremiah is the tall one, and Dan is the dwarf of the family. We are just passing through.” 

The man approached the cart, and Tyler saw him squeeze the axe handle. “What about the boy?” 

Jeremiah spoke, “The little devil is our little brother, Mat—” 

“The name is Tyler, sir,” he said immediately, pointing to the others with his eyes. 

“Name is William.” He turned his back on them. “You lot lost? The road to Calne is far down the road—” he grabbed the axe with his two hands and made a quick turn. The axe swung towards Clement’s stomach. A violent whistle resonated with a deafening power, driving the birds away from the area. Tyler soon found himself covered with what was once William. He couldn’t move. His legs trembled. His heart was pounding, telling him to run. But he stood still, awaiting his turn. 

Dan laughed in a fruity voice as Jeremiah and Clement got out of the cart when they heard the girlish screams coming out from the house. The fact that they took over a house that was not theirs, instead of camping, just to rest, made him sick to his stomach. Tyler was the last to get off the cart. Jeremiah took him to one room in the cottage. 

“Hey, kid,” the man called and hit him in the face with his rifle’s wooden stock. 

The hours passed, and there were no traces of other people inside the cottage when Tyler came around. He could pull out one of his hands from the ropes with an abrupt force. He groaned as he used his hands with red wrists to untie the ropes of his feet. 

Everything was quiet outside. It was not a good sign. Tyler went to the keyless door and opened it slightly. It creaked. His heart skipped a beat. He closed his eyes, prepared to be caught. When he found the courage to look outside, the men had not moved from the ground; they seemed to be in a deep slumber. 

Near the two doors of the rooms were the goods from the cart. Among the utility flasks in one sack, a brown crystal bottle with many letters stood out. He passed silently through the squeaky boards of the old cottage towards the third bag where the powerful anaesthetic lay. Among the men’s snoring, Tyler placed drops into their water gourds and put everything back in place. He went outside, night had fallen, and to his surprise the cart and the horse were nowhere to be seen. Had they hidden it so that he would not escape? He went back to his room and waited for dawn. 

“Brat, wake up,” said Clement. 

“What is—?” 

“Here.” 

Tyler slapped the man’s hand with the gourd in rejection. “You will not poison me!” he shouted. 

“You fool, look,” Clement took a sip. “It’s water. Not the fresh kind, though. A bit sweeter.” He went to the corner of the room and pulled out the nearby chair to sit in front of Tyler. 

“I want nothing from you.” 

“Understandable.” He drank again. “You tried to escape last night, didn’t cha.”

“What? No—” 

“You think I didn’t notice the used chloroform bottle?” 

Tyler swallowed. They had discovered the plan. Maybe he should have tied up his hands last night. 

No. 

No matter how he disguised it, they would know he tried to escape. That was impossible to do for one person. “What about the girl?” 

“What girl? Oh, you mean the woman next door? She is taking a nap, permanently.” A wide grin split open from cheek to cheek. A sweet breath exploded, mixed with an 100 unpleasant odour in Tyler’s face. Tyler responded with a smile in return, as the man blinked constantly, and his movements became slower. 

“It’s already five minutes,” Tyler said. 

“W-What?” 

“Didn’t you notice the water was a little sweet? I spoiled all the containers, including the goods that were to be sold in town.” 

The man looked at the water while heading towards the door. As they left the room, Jeremiah and Dan were already on the floor unconscious. Clement turned his back to face Tyler before falling to the ground like a stone.