At first, it seemed hardly necessary to alert the Archduke and his wife of the young master's tales. Of course his tutors would never accuse the boy of lying, eleven is a reasonable age to believe in faerie tales, but when young Aleksander produced evidence of his folly, his caretakers had no choice but to tell Ferdinand that his son was being contacted by an unknown writer.

The Archduke scoffed. How could his son Alek, who was under constant surveillance, be in contact with an anonymous source? The post was regularly checked by staff, and even if a servant slipped them to the boy during the day without his parent's notice, someone must have noticed him doing so. But there the letter was, in a pale yellow envelope with a strange red wax seal. It was a small case, couldn't possibly hold anything harmful, and upon reading the message himself, the Archduke dismissed it as a joke.

However, there was still the question of how it got to the young master, letters don't just appear in young boy's hands, and none of Alek's tutors recalled a servant bringing him the message during the day. When questioned the boy said it he found it by his window, which he had left open the night before. At first the patient father told his son that the servant who delivered the message was not to take any blame, and that he could tell the truth, but still the boy insisted that he had found it upon waking up.

Then the Archduke lost his temper, and began a questioning of the staff to see which would endanger his son so. The letter itself was of no harm, but what if it had been filled with a harmful substance? Or a packaged bomb? No, the idea that a stranger could get so close to his son disturbed Ferdinand to no end. Alek was given a consequence; no walker lessons until he confessed the identity of the servant. The boy, grumpy at the injustice of it all, remained locked in his room for the remainder of the evening, which he would have usually spent with Master Klopp, the Master of Mechanics.

The next morning Alek did something he had never done before, and actually snuck out of his room to wake his parents. The only thing that stopped them from sending him back was the pale yellow envelope he waved in his left hand. This one contained the same script as the last.

The parents began to worry. They demanded the boy stop his folly and tell them who was giving him the letters.

"An owl, father," he said, after having dressed and been fed.

Ferdinand looked at his wife, then back to his son. Sophie sighed, and reached for Alek's hand across the table.

"Darling, you know how much I detest fibbing. I want you to be serious. Tell us who gave you that piece of paper."

Alek snatched his hand away, averting his gaze. The frustration building in the back of his eyes was becoming overwhelming. He took a moment to steady his voice, as his father so often did, and looked his mother full in the face.

"I am not lying," he said, trying his hardest not to whine like a child, "A big horned owl gave it to me."

"Son, if you do not abandon this foolishness we will be very cross with you," The father intervened, "It is very important you tell us exactly how you came across this letter."

The boy looked down again, then back up at his father's unforgiving gaze.

"I stayed up after the servants left," he admitted, shame evident on his face, "And I was going to play with my tin soldiers…" he trailed off, remembering to late that he wanted to remove that little detail, "But then I heard a tapping on the window, as if someone wanted to be let in."

At this the color drained from Sophie's face. Ferdinand shot up from his seat and alerted the guards. No one listened to the boy's continued story, even as he trailed behind his parents like a duckling.

That night armed guards stood by the boy's windows. Their stern faces made drifting off quite difficult, and Alek was a bit embarrassed to have them see him in his pajamas, but eventually he managed to block their silhouettes from his mind.

It just wasn't fair, why did no one believe him? He was hardly young enough to make up stories anymore. Not like those days where he swore that he had managed to make a spoon move without touching it, or when he claimed the horses were making fun of him. Those distant memories came back to him now. He wondered why he so desperately wanted people to believe his lies all those years ago. He hated lying, especially to his mother, but for some reason his young brain had thoroughly convinced itself that these things had happened.

His thoughts were interrupted by a light tapping noise. The boy dared to raise his head, and found that both guards had fallen asleep. Cautiously, he crossed the floor to the window, there a great grey owl was rapping the glass with a talon. In its yellow beak he could see yet another of the letters.

"Go away!" he whispered violently to the bird, and tried to effectively shoo it without waking the guards. The beast only persisted, giving him an almost irritable look as it tapped away at his window.

Alek looked at the guards who snoozed against the walls. If this bird kept at it they would wake up, and tell his father the truth. Maybe he should let the bird in, just to show them that his story was genuine.

Carefully, he undid the latch, and let the window creak open. The bird hopped inside, shook out its feathers, and dropped the letter on the windowsill. Then, as the horned owl had done, it prepared to leap into flight.

"Wait!" Alek called to it, and tried to wake the guards.

They did not move a muscle, as if in a drug induced sleep.

In a desperate attempt to prove his honesty, Alek tried to grab the bird. He managed to get a fist full of feathers and a scratch on his finger for his troubles. As soon as the beast flapped out of sight, the guards twitched awake. They took one look at Alek's hands and pointed their rifles out the window. Neither of them thought to look at the sky.

Ferdinand was outraged, of course, but immensely worried as well. Who would go through all this trouble just to get a nonsensical letter to his son? Was this some sort of plot? An attempt to kidnap Alek? Who could possibly profit from this idiocy?

But in the back of his mind his solemn disbelief was trickling into doubt. What if there was some truth to this madness? Darwinist creations often made their way into Clanker nations undetected, was it so strange that Alek's stalker could use birds to communicate?

Ferdinand re-read the letters, despite his better judgment. There had to be some hidden meaning to all this.

It was pure nonsense of course, but had an elegance to it. As if the writer truly believed in his own lies. But how could he? It was just too ridiculous.

Over time, more letters would come. More mysterious birds in the night, all of them carrying the same message. It became an obsession of the Archduke, who took it upon himself to read every letter closely. Each one was addressed to Alek, who was getting increasingly more curious about them. They tried changing his bedroom, only to have the birds unerringly come to the right window. The Archduke hired gunmen to scare off or kill the owls, only to have them dodge the bullets effortlessly and find Alek wherever he slept. Finally, Ferdinand gave up, and as if in a fit of madness, read the letter aloud to his son.

"We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry."