Free To Kill a Sorcerer by Greg Mongrain

You almost sliced it off. There was blood everywhere. And after you were holding it in your other hand for a while, it was healed.”
    “I did not almost slice it off, King James,” I said, tickling his side. “You’re the one telling stories.”
    It had become automatic for me to deflect or deny any suggestion that I was different from them. I knew I was not doing a very good job of keeping my secret.
    Marguerite stared at me the way she sometimes did, her long brown hair spread out over the straw, her big eyes heavy with the fatigue of a long day’s work.
    “You can tell us the truth, Sebastian,” she said.
    Lightning flashed, a hot, close sizzle. For a moment, lines of fire sliced through the cracks in the shutters, throwing the left side of Marguerite’s face into ghostly, blazing relief.
    “There’s nothing to tell.”
    “I heard Momma and Papa talking the day you didn’t break your leg falling out of the apple tree.”
    “I told you—”
    “Yes, you told us he heard it wrong, and you didn’t really break your leg. And why shouldn’t we believe you? After all, how could you really break your leg, but be healed by the time Papa brought you home?”
    “You’ve answered your own question. It isn’t possible. Since my leg was not broken when we got back, it could not have been broken in the first place.”
    I could tell she did not believe a word of it.
    A steady icy draft wafted over us. James’s teeth chattered, and Marguerite shivered violently. My poor dears! What a terrible discomfort they endured.
    “Come on, then,” I said. I rolled over James and took the middle position. This put James on the side of the door, exposing him to the drafts. I swathed him in my long coat and pulled him against my side, draping my arm along his back. Marguerite scooted against me, pressed her head to my shoulder, and like James, wrapped her arm and leg around me.
    Though the strange engine inside me operated automatically, it responded to certain commands. I thought about raising my temperature. In moments, my skin blazed as if I were in the grip of fever, and my body became a coal against which my brother and sister could huddle.
    After a couple of minutes, their trembling ceased.
    “You know, it scared Momma and Papa when that happened,” Marguerite said softly, her breath on my cheek. “That’s what I remember most about listening to them talking that night. Papa was scared. I could hear it in his voice.”
    “But I was fine.”
    “That’s not what he was afraid of. He said that if you were different, really different, people might fear you and hate you.”
    “But if I am invincible,” I said, feeling James’s arm tighten around me, “why should that worry Mother and Father?”
    “Are you, Sebastian? Are you invincible?”
    “Oh, Margie!” I crushed them to me and kissed their foreheads. “These are all just stories. There’s nothing different about me.” I leaned up, made sure they were both well covered, then settled back and pulled them tightly to me. “Now keep still, both of you. We need to get some sleep. We have a lot of work tomorrow.” Rain began to tap the roof with a fat, heavy tattoo.
    Marguerite stared at me. I knew what she was thinking: she had never seen me tired. I pretended to be, but always sensed she could tell I was faking. She would never stop questioning me, and neither would James. Eventually, I would have to admit to certain truths.
    Because when I fell out of the apple tree that day, I had snapped my leg in half. The time I was fixing Father’s boots, I had almost sliced my thumb off.
    And both times, my body had miraculously healed itself.
    There were other things they didn’t know about, like swimming in the River Arun and keeping my head under water for an hour, or going one month without food and drink and feeling fine.
    And not sleeping. Though my mind required rest, my body did not, so I always remained conscious of everything around me.
    As I lay in the dark,