I knew Will all my life, or at least it seems that way. In fact, I didn't meet him until we were twelve. That autumn, I was expecting an invalid, or an English kid with a chip on his shoulder, who would think he was too good for our farm, or the freak who lived on it. Instead, I met a boy who seemed to notice nothing and everything all at once. He knew instantly to avoid Caradog Pritchard, and that something was off about Branwen, even months before she disappeared on John Rowlands. At the same time, he didn't notice that I wasn't normal, or that he was still recovering from a near death illness. He didn't notice how strange it was to want to be my friend, but that he wanted to was enough. I couldn't tell him the truth, that I wasn't worth it, or send him away.
I knew that Will could do anything, after that first month. Will was still sick then, yet he survived that fire at Pritchard's farm and saved me, too, though to this day I don't know how. He tumbled down a mountain at Happy Valley and landed totally unhurt. It was his knowing, too, that caused it. He simply knew things, not just about plants and animals and stars, although he knew a ridiculous amount about those things, but about people. Maybe all that put together is why I started calling him dewin, wizard, when we were kids, though I honestly can't remember where the name began. It might have had to do with that time at the canyon, when he made the mountain sing. Jane has always said that if there were magic in the world, Will, in that moment, was it.
I knew at that canyon, and on the mountain before that, I was going to lose Will to the Drew kids. They were normal and I wasn't. Will wasn't ordinary either, but his strangeness was in a good direction, not like mine. He was too capable, too likable, too strong, and the Drew kids had known him longer. I thought that he would want to separate himself from me, not be seen with me when other friends were available. But then he just pulled us all together, into one group, and wouldn't put up with Simon and I not liking each other, until we got over it and were friends. That was just part of the magic of Will, too.
I knew, even as a kid, that Will was going to be important. His family, the Drew family, his teachers, and I, we could all feel it. In fact, I often felt like he was already important, in some way that no one understood, to the world outside a Welsh farm and a Buckinghamshire village. He was always the leader, without anyone deciding it. I didn't realize until much later, that after our first meeting in Wales, everyone met up at Will's. We never thought of going anywhere else.
I knew that Will didn't always tell the truth, but I also knew that he never lied. He had secrets he wouldn't tell anyone, but he never made excuses, just said he couldn't tell you. When he did tell you something, though, you knew it was the truth, even when it was something he couldn't logically know. The day he handed me a puppy, oddly named Eirias, and told me it was okay to have a new dog, I believed him. When he told me there was nothing between him and Jane, I trusted him. When he told me that I should suck it up and ask her out myself, because she obviously wanted me to, I took his advice. He turned out to be right on all accounts, of course.
I knew back then that Will would always be around, after all, he was the best man at my wedding and he calmed me down when Jane told me she was pregnant. Or maybe, I just wanted to know that he'd be there. I remember thinking when I made him godfather that it would keep him around, and then wondering why I needed to do anything to make him stay. Maybe it was that he still looked sixteen, when he should have been twenty-three and little Will was born, or that he'd always seemed strangely old, or maybe wise, in spite of that. It was just another mystery of Will. It turns out that I was onto something, all that time ago, because Will's been gone for ten years now, and no one has heard from him.
I know Will will come back. He's my son's godfather, the dewin of Buckinghamshire, and my very best friend. He'll come back someday. He has to.