Chapter 1: The Stranger
10 years later…
Samoht Narez jolted up in his bed, clutching his forehead as a bolt of poem shot through it. This was not the first time this had happened, but it had never been this bad before. (These bolts of poem caused him to spurt out sonnets, which often were partially accurate predictions of the future). He yelped when the surface beneath him began to heat up.
"Get up!" he heard his aunt, Carnation Inafro, shout from outside the oven. Samoht muttered a sonnet under his breath as he leaped out of the oven like his pants were on fire. Which they were, almost.
"What did you say, boy?" his aunt shrieked again.
"Nothing, Aunt Carnation," Samoht murmured.
"Speak up, boy," she said, slapping him. "You were spouting those ridiculous sonnets again, weren't you? Back into the oven for you," she said, shoving the skinny boy in the direction of said oven.
"No! I promise I won't do it again! Please. Not the oven again," Samoht pleaded, but his aunt merely shoved him into the oven and slammed the door, locking him in.
"And no food for you for the rest of the day either," she yelled as her husband and son came torpedoing down the stairs like a herd of bison.
"Ha, has the little sonnet-spouting wonder gotten himself locked up again?" asked the son. "Now who's going to make us breakfast, clean my room and do my homework?"
"Do your own homework," Samoht yelled from inside his oven.
His aunt turned the heat on for the oven. "That'll teach you to keep your mouth shut," she snapped sadistically as Samoht screamed in pain.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. The Inafros turned as one and hurried to assume some semblance of normality, leaving Samoht alone in the oven. Carnation opened the door.
There stood a tall, dark-haired man, clothed entirely in black. He stared at the Inafros, with his dark eyes, which seemed to draw a person into them and cause them to reveal all their wrongdoings.
"I have come to collect my son," he said smoothly.
"Well I'm sorry, but he's ah, detained at the moment," Carnation said unpleasantly.
The man's wand was instantly in his hand, pointing at the woman's face. "You will bring him here this instant," he said.
"Oh, yes, um, just a moment," said Carnation, as she quivered in fear. She walked into the kitchen, unaware that the dark-haired man was following her. She opened the oven door and a heavily burned Samoht tumbled out. Carnation immediately found herself several metres off the floor.
"What have you done to my son?" he asked in a deadly calm voice.
"He was being rude," said Carnation boldly. "He needed to be punished."
The man went over to his son and inspected the damage. The boy opened his dark eyes and said, "Who are you?"
"I'm your father, Samoht," the man said softly. "Don't you remember me?"
"I have no parents," Samoht replied. "I always have lived here. With my relatives."
Samoht had never had any recollection of his parents or that fateful day when he received the scar. It was assumed that when the killing curse backfired and left him the scar, it had also wiped his memory. Therefore his last name, Narez, came from his own imagination and was not his actual last name.
"You've only lived here since you were one. Before that you lived with me and your mother, but then your mother disappeared one day and on your first birthday she came back and—and tried to kill you," said the man who said he was Samoht's father. "I'm here to take you back home."
"Neverland is not like China because there are no Chinese people. There are Mexicans and Europeans, but no Asians. Neverland is selectively racist," Samoht responded.
Samoht's father looked at him oddly as Carnation gasped. "He said something strange that's not in sonnet form!" she said.
Samoht's father glared at her. "Shut up," he told her. He turned back to his son. "You're right. How did you remember that, though?"
"I don't know," said Samoht. "What's your name?"
"I am Aspen Lang. You're Samoht Lang," Samoht's father said proudly.
"I like Narez better," said Samoht as he stood. "When are we leaving?"
Aspen smiled at him. "Right now," he said.
They walked outside and apparated away, leaving Carnation suspended near the ceiling.