Nico the Knight: #1 New Beginning

Reading old comics. That was his comfort — his mainstay for relieving anxiety, other than playing piano. But his ears were weary of the headphones, and his back felt strained from the hours he spent hunched over the keyboard. He knew he would have to get up in only five and a half hours, but his brain couldn’t shut down, so he pored over collected black and white volumes of 1980s Spider-Man.

It was especially thrilling to read it while sitting on the wall, defying gravity like the friendly neighborhood superhero would.

Nico shouldn’t have had enough energy to cast the spell, but he’d been testing himself, increasing his endurance. Already a magic prodigy at age 16, already blessed somehow by his unknown biological parents, he was certain that he could master his fortieth spell by the end of the year.

But for now, at 12:35 a.m., his reading was interrupted by a soft, familiar beating on his window. He snapped his fingers, ending the cling spell, hopped down onto his bedroom floor, and shuffled wearily over to see what was the matter. Through the glass, he saw a beach-ball-sized blue eye.

“What’s wrong, Finny?” he said, throwing up the sash and leaning out toward his little brother’s colossal face. The giant kid’s eyes were watery, his expression full of worry. It had been a long time since the boy had left his own building at night to visit the human-scaled house.

“I … um …” Finnian started, a little embarrassed. He wrung his huge hands together. “Can you stay with me tonight?”

Nico sighed. “Finny, you’re 10. You’re getting kind of old for this, you know?”

The giant smiled hopefully, but consternation still showed on his face. That was not a no. “Come on, Nico, please? Just this once?”

Nico chuckled and put his right foot up on the windowsill. He knew “just this once” was not a promise at all, but he loved his little brother, and they both had reason to be bothered this night. With a small leap, he boarded the 65-foot-tall kid’s open hand. “Just as long as we wake up on time, Fin. OK?” he said.

Finnian hugged his human brother tight against his chest and lumbered back over to his huge warehouse of a bedroom, his gigantic slippers putting new, deep footprints in the soft ground of the lawn. When he and Nico entered, he kicked the slippers off and settled down onto his massive bed, slipping underneath his circus-tent-sized covers, lying on his side and setting Nico down on the pillow, next to his face.

Nico lay down and got comfortable, putting his hands behind his head. With his socked feet, he playfully kicked at his giant brother’s hand, which still arched over his position. It was likely Finnian would keep his huge hand over Nico the whole night — a protective instinct the kid had unconsciously developed over the years.

“So what’s bothering you, squirt?” he asked, as if he couldn’t guess.

Finnian absent-mindedly used his free hand to play with his 13-foot-long tresses of bright red hair, which threatened to spill over his sleepy eyes. “I’m just worried about tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t know anyone here. And I haven’t gone to school with humans before.”

“Well, duh, Fin,” Nico said. “I’ve never gone to a school with giants or werewolves or any of the other species that will be there. You’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.” He mostly believed it was true.

“Yeah, but …” Finnian sighed, and the air from it billowed around Nico’s body. “The human kids, and all the other kids your size … will they be scared of me? And what if the other giant kids are mean? It just seems so weird, and so dangerous.”

Nico propped himself up and looked up at his brother’s face. The redhead would have no trouble making friends, he thought. He was friendly enough, smart enough, athletic enough, and the fifth grade girls, he was sure, would get a kick out of his freckles and his kind smile. Why was his brother so worried?

“I’m sure it is dangerous,” he said. “But you know I’ll be there, and if things get crazy, I’ll just put the whole school to sleep and fly you out of there.” His eyes flashed violet with power.

Finnian looked down at his tiny brother with awe. “Could you really do that?” he whispered.

“I could sure try,” Nico said, and smiled as he lay down on his back and shut his eyes. ”It would probably put me in a coma for a month or so,” he thought. ”But I bet I could do it.”

“Goodnight, Nico,” Finnian said, and, gradually, both boys drifted off to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

To the more conservative Western States, a mixed school was considered too dangerous, but as time pressed forward, the different species were seeing more and more that old fears were mostly unfounded. Cherrywood Academy for Boys was one of the first mixed-species schools to be established in the deep forests of the Harrowed Hills. It served humans, dwarves, elves, lizardfolk, werewolves, minotaurs, and, most controversially, giants. A conclave of high-class wizards made up its administration, and they saw to it that every type of child was secure and accommodated at the expensive facility.

Nico was there on scholarship. In fact, his scholarship was so impressive that it covered his brother, too, who was a talented child in his own right, just in different ways.

But Nico was special, and any wizard worth his salt recognized it about the boy after only a few minutes with him. On the outside, he seemed like a normal 16-year-old of medium height and build, fit but not exceptionally athletic, smart but not valedictorian material. He had olive skin, short-cropped dark brown hair and dusky, intense facial features that showed his Mediterranean lineage.

But if you looked closer, into his strange purple eyes, you saw the powerful mystic entity within. On each of his earlobes, also in purple, was tattooed a seven-pointed star — markings he’d borne since he was a baby. His specific family background was totally unknown, and he had been part of a small mixed adopted family since he was a toddler. His giant brother had joined the family when Nico was eight years old and Finnian was two, and they had been thick as thieves since.

It was apparent as they parted ways at the school’s gate, the elementary school being a separate campus from the high school. Finnian, even though he’d coached himself all morning to be cool, to show off his nice clothes and his football skills and his love of Superman, couldn’t help tearing up as he watched his older brother’s tiny form walk away.

Nico, too, felt apprehensive as he walked along the human path toward the campus shuttle. For all his celebrated magic might, he still suffered the requisite insecurities of adolescence. Would he be able to make friends? Would anybody like him? He wasn’t afraid of the other species so much as he was afraid of the normal pitfalls of high school life. Being a new kid was tough.

By first period, he’d managed to say “Hi” to a couple people, who responded politely, but coldly, as they already had their own groups of friends. By second period, he’d bumped into a burly minotaur on the electronic inter-classroom walkway who honestly didn’t mind the accident, but despite himself Nico had beat a hasty retreat accompanied by the insensitive jeers of passersby. By third period …

Well, third period was P.E. Negative experience, Nico thought, was par for the course in the gym at his old school. It was a tired cliché, but P.E. tended to be built on a foundation of humiliation, even for someone who was moderately good at sports.

The worst thing was dressing out, which, of course, he had to do on the first day. In a mixed species setting, it was an especially bizarre situation, and the human-scaled side of the locker room was attached to the giant side, which he thought was only an invitation to disaster. Now, he was surrounded by teenagers with tails and horns in various stages of undress, and several meters away, the giants, too, were getting ready for the class.

“Nice earrings, dude,” he heard a gruff voice say as he pulled on his gym shorts. Whenever he dressed out, he adopted a mentality of isolation. It was like going into a trance.

“I said nice purple earrings, pretty boy.” A tall, heavy set human with a burr haircut stepped toward Nico and gave him a light shove. It knocked him off guard, and he had to steady himself on the door of his locker. He turned toward the boy and made a “not impressed face” at him. Why couldn’t he just get ready and go to class in peace?

The big guy was smirking, about to shove Nico again, when a booming voice rang out. “Come on, Lenny. Don’t mess up the guy’s first day.”

Lenny looked up with a little bit of fright, and Nico, too, followed his gaze upward to the concerned look of a truly massive individual. Even though the giant section was in a room sunken into the ground to reduce the perceived height difference, this guy’s torso towered over them like a multi-story building.

”And what a torso it is,” Nico thought as he glanced over the shirtless, majorly muscular titan, then darted his eyes away. But the image was already burnt into his memory. The guy looked to be a junior or senior football player. He had dark skin, insanely broad shoulders, cannonball biceps, and a round, friendly face that, for now, was bent down in a frown. His superjock appearance was offset by a thick pair of Harry Potter glasses perched on his broad nose, but overall, the guy was still intimidating. Lenny backed off and minded his own business.

“Thanks, guy,” Nico muttered, unsure what to say, avoiding eye contact as he spoke.

“No problem,” the giant boomed, but then did something a little strange. Right after Nico finished slipping on his gym shoes, he turned around and was shocked to find that the giant had bent down nearer and was staring very closely at him. Surprise and embarrassment registered on the humongous boy’s face, knowing that he’d been caught in the act. He straightened up, saying, “Um, excuse me. See you in class,” and quickly stomped away from the human-scaled area.

It got a little stranger when P.E. was in full swing. Nico had started school while the class was in the middle of a calisthenics and circuit training unit, and he was enjoying it, feeling as though he might make friends with the couple of guys in line next to him — another human and a clumsy but immensely strong dwarf. Running through a low ropes course, Nico took a bad spill, and as he got up, the P.E. teacher, a werewolf, helped him up, saying, “You OK there, Nico?”

At the mention of his name, Nico noticed, far away on the giants’ side of the track, that the colossal boy he’d met in the locker room had whipped his head around and was now staring at him again, this time with eyes wide open. After they both made eye contact with each other, the giant averted his gaze again and continued his own progress in a stretching circuit. Later on, however, Nico noticed him looking again, and wondered, ”What is this guy’s deal?”

After gym was over, everyone washed off and changed clothes quickly — a not-too-painful first day experience so far, Nico thought. The obnoxious guy from before, Lenny, even apologized to him as he was leaving the athletic center. But Nico still wondered about why that giant jock had been so interested in him. Had he heard about his magic scholarship? Or could it possibly be …

“Hey, your name’s Nico, right?”

In the general noise of thundering footfalls and boisterous conversation, Nico hadn’t noticed that the guy he’d been thinking about had managed to sneak up behind him, and people who pushed 100 feet in height normally couldn’t do that. Nico had been on the raised walkway leading to the lunch room, bored and wishing he could skip lines (he had brought his own lunch after all), when he heard the resonant voice behind him. Turning around, he was thankful for his years of living with a giant brother, because otherwise he might have fallen over backwards from the surprise. A couple other humans near him in line jumped in fright and backed off.

“Yeah, that’s my name. Nico Shawshank. What’s up?” Nico asked warily.

The giant, despite all his extraordinary mass and muscularity, looked kind of nervous. “Well … I was wondering if you’d like to eat lunch with me and my buddies,” he said, and held out his hand. “My name’s Malik.”

Nico was taken aback, and suspicion flared in his mind at first, but he determined that a lunch invitation was something most new kids longed for. Nodding his head and smiling, he stepped off the walkway into the giant’s outstretched palm.

A thrill went through Malik as he brought the human up to his chest level and walked over to the giant section of the dining area. “I’ve actually never held a human in my hand before. Isn’t that weird?” he said. “It … uh … looks like you’re pretty comfortable being carried.”

Nico hadn’t even noticed that he was lounging across the giant hand like it was a comfy couch. “Oh yeah, I have a giant little brother, so it’s all normal to me,” he said, and this made Malik grin amiably.

But then Nico’s hairs stood up on the back of his neck when he saw that they were heading to a table with four other vastly built giant jocks, all of them talking and laughing loudly. It was made even worse when Malik set Nico down onto the table top, and all the conversation suddenly stopped.

He was now standing in the midst of five mountainous young men, leaning toward him like living cliffs and looking upon him with curiosity, awe, and … was he detecting … admiration?

It kind of creeped him out. These guys were each more than twice as big as the house he lived in. First there was Malik, who was looking down at him with a calm smile, the shelf of his big pecs looming above, but then there was this even bigger guy with floppy blond hair and green eyes, staring at him with his mouth hanging open. Next to him was a slightly wiry looking jock with short black hair and pale skin in a soccer jersey, his eyes glued on Nico like he was a rare artifact, and the guy next to him had a similar look on his face — he was a Polynesian looking giant with long black hair, younger seeming than all the others, and his hands fidgeted on the table as though he were resisting reaching out and touching the human. Finally, to Malik’s right sat a tall Caucasian giant with a swimmer’s build, short dirty blond hair, and freckles. This guy’s face was blank as he stared, and he was the first to break the table’s silence.

“Are you … Nico the Knight?” he asked.

A tingle went up the human boy’s spine. If the giant knew that name, then that meant he’d been recognized, but not for his magic.

“You guys have seen my vlog?” he said.

All five gigantic faces smiled down at him with glee.