For as long as Laurence could remember he was treated as an auspicious child. The fact that he was born on midnight of the new cycle meant that most people of the village he lived in thought he was lucky. He didn't mind it too much, but it did annoy him when people rubbed his head for good luck.

His father was always busy as the village doctor and priest, while his mother was most often seen looking after those who couldn't look after themselves, namely the needy or the old. The council often said the village would come to a halt without them. Laurence felt proud of his parents, as proud as a boy who was almost six could be.

On Laurence's fourth birthday his father had given him a little red leather book for Laurence to practice writing in, but the book looked so pristine that it would have been a shame for Laurence to ruin it, so he chose to write on bits of paper instead. It was Laurence's favourite possession and he treated it like any other child would treat a stuffed animal.

Laurence was an inquisitive child. He often got into disproportionately large amounts of trouble because his floppy black hair and little red book were seen where they shouldn't have been. Once he was caught peeking in on Mrs Haversham and her next door neighbour having sex. He just wanted to know who was having so much fun that he could hear it two gardens away. Another time he was caught in his father's study, looking at the big medicine book on the desk. When asked how he managed to get in the study in the first place he presented a wooden key to his father and proclaimed that it was a skeleton key able to get through any lock. His father just assumed that he left the door unlocked.

After the incident with the skeleton key, Laurence's father decided to teach Laurence about medicine through the white book in his study. He hoped that by taking away some of the mystique about the areas in the house Laurence wasn't allowed to tread in, the boy would be less interested by them. He was wrong. Laurence simply wanted to know about everything and so, when he wasn't playing with the other children his age or learning about medicine and the body, he was still getting into places he shouldn't and witnessing things no child should see. Laurence was often punished for being caught out by his elders, but more often than not it just made him wilier and more determined not to get caught.

Laurence's fifth birthday was the day he noticed his special ability. He had a fever that day and dreamt strange dreams of artifacts, armours and bizarre weapons. Most of the things in his dreams he could understand how to make but knew that the materials necessary for the creation of his dream objects were mythical. When he woke up the next day he saw a small hammer tattooed on the palm of his right hand. He wondered if everyone got tattoos after they had a fever so he asked his father, but his father frowned at him for a while and then said not to mention it again. Laurence trusted the best doctor he knew and left it be.

After that more odd things started happening. First there was the skeleton key incident where Laurence wanted to get into his father's study so he grabbed a stick, decided it was a key and then it worked like one. Then there was the incident where a group of soldiers came to speak to Laurence's father. One of the soldiers set up a training dummy to practice his sword on. Laurence was obsessed with watching him, as he had never seen a soldier before.

Eventually the soldier saw the young boy watching and asked if he would like a go at fighting the dummy. Laurence was ecstatic and rushed to have a try. He held up a little wooden sword for training children and decided that the sword he was holding was a real, extremely sharp, sword. The boy had a few practice swings in the air to get used to the sword then stepped up to the dummy as his father came out to talk to the rest of the soldiers. Laurence swung the wooden blade as hard as he could,and tried to emulate the form of the soldier he was watching. It didn't go well form-wise, but he cut the dummy in half and left everyone watching lost for words. After that Laurence's father kept him around when there were visitors like the soldiers.

The third incident was when Laurence saw his father's herb bag and decided he wanted a bag that could fit lots of things in it. He went to his mother and got her to make him a little bag of his own or if fine leather. She sewed the bag together and gave it drawstrings so he could tie it round his neck if he wanted to. It was a lovely little bag, just the right size for a little boy to keep all his little toys and his pens in. After a few days he left his red book in a barn just outside the village. He cried and cried until his father helped him find it but when he did he decided he never wanted to lose the book again. He then put the book in the little bag that was one third its size. When his father saw this event he asked how Laurence performed such a feat, but all the little boy could say was "I wanted it to fit, so it did."

The day where everything changed for Laurence was soon after his sixth birthday. His father had shown him the herb garden and explained how the garden itself was a map. The boy was enthralled by the idea of an object that showed the surrounding regions and decided he would make a map of the area surrounding him. So Laurence grabbed a pencil and looked for a piece of parchment to draw it on. He had already decided to make the map out of paper rather than something like plants or a block of wood, simply because he didn't see the point in making something that showed you where you were if you couldn't see it when you wanted to.

Laurence looked up and down but couldn't find any paper that felt right for the map. He was about to give up when he had a thought. "What if I made the map in my book? I have it with me often enough." The thought stuck with him even after he had looked for something else that might work for another hour. Eventually the little boy brought out his most treasured possession and moved pencil to paper.

"I must be really careful about this." Laurence thought as he began his work. He knew that he would have ruined his favourite thing if he messed this map up so he focussed more intently than he had in his entire life and drew. In his mind's eye Laurence could see everything around him in a large circle. He drew the closest things to him and slowly spread the map out. He added the chairs and tables around him, the plants (with their names and uses), the animals and eventually all the people within 100 meters of him, and only when the boy decided that he had added enough details into the map did it truly come into its own. The moment that Laurence completed the map it burst into movement.

All of the people and animals began moving around the map as they were in real life, Laurence could see the dot with his mother's name next to it moving round the garden with his father's dot, he could see the dog owned by the tailor lying in a bush outside, he could even see the plants in the garden sway a little. If Laurence had been paying a bit more attention he would have even seen one of the doorways in his home labelled 'to Babel', but he was too proud of his new creation. Any other person would have been lost for words by this map but Laurence didn't know any better. This happened to the boy often enough. It wouldn't happen every time he tried it or even every five times he did, but every-so-often if he wanted to make something enough or got lucky it would work.