Nicolau Obolensky Santos | Second Year | Castelobruxo

Nicolau Obolensky Santos came into this world bathed in a golden glow and welcomed with raucous applause.

The truth was rather more ordinary. The light which gilded the room belonged to a fire that crackled in the almost-unused grate while the applause came from the skies themselves as thunder rolled over the Brazilian landscape and lightning split the sky in two. In the centre of it all, the warm glow gently softened Valentina Petrovna Santos’ hard features, once sculpted into cold ice over years of battling the Russian winters. Crouching in his wife’s shadow, one hand clutched tightly in a death grip, the other laying cold towels over her forehead, Paulo Mariano Santos whispered sweet words of comfort and adoration in Portuguese into his wife’s near deafened ears.

The unlikely pair had met on a night not dissimilar to one on which their first child was born. The thunder which heralded Nicolau’s arrival too was present during their first encounter, though they were not as unlucky as to hear so loudly from within a basement rave in the nation’s heart, Sao Paulo. Valentina, a beautiful, if slightly pink-nosed from sunburn, witch, had only two nights left in the country she had almost fallen in love with and fully planned to treasure it. Paulo, a half-blooded wizard who was visiting his little cousin as celebration for her graduation from USP, had finally given up on his self-imposed role as a “good role model” and was looking forward to a nice, long evening of fun. Of course, neither got their wish as they only truly remembered the first couple hours of the event before each found themselves in their respective accommodations, suffering from raging headaches, all without having even noticed one another.

Both, despite their groggy state, had a duty to see one last part of the region, Paulo for his overjoyed sisterand Valentina for the sheer determination to use all of her time in Brazil effectively. So, off they went, by bus journey, to Cantareira State Park to do one last beautiful hike. Thanks to some twist in fate, or destiny, Maria, his sister, was on the phone with her friends the entire journey, leaving Paulo alone. It could have been miserable had Paulo not gradually begun to chat to another hiker, seemingly as equally exhausted: Valentina. Though neither were prepared to admit it, something had started on that trail.

What followed were postcards. Hundreds sent from Russia, Spain, France, China, each replied to by ones marked from Maringá, Brazil with scrawls of writing slipping over the front and onto the bright pictures. Gossip was exchanged; complaints were described; Maria’s final words to Paulo were painstakingly etched into the card; those same words echoed back in the next postcard from Australia, leaving Paulo unable to hold in his laughter. At the supposed end of a surprise trip Valentina had made for Paulo’s twenty-sixth birthday, Paulo offered something far more valuable than his address: a ring. Granted, it was just a placeholder ring from his cousin in advance of the happy couple picking out matching bands together but, nonetheless, Valentina immediately agreed.

It was a sharp adjustment for Valentina. Despite her ongoing travels, she had never strayed from the Russian mansion she had grown up in for too long, usually returning within two months at her family’s insistence. But her home was in Brazil now, with Paulo and, within only a few years, a little boy and a little girl who filled their house with the giggles Valentina had never heard. Much time was taken over choosing young Nicolau’s and then, to a lesser extent, Sofia’s name, with Paulo offering family names and Valentina continually rejecting them, insisting that they had to have something Russian about them. Eventually, the two were chosen, judged to be close enough to their Slavic counterparts to earn the nicknames, “Kolya” and “Sonya”, names only ever spoken by their mother or between one another.

From the moment the children began to speak, the small house was filled with cheerful, curious choruses of “Que”s, "Что это”s and “What’s this”s. Nicolau was a happy boy, waking each morning with a smile and joyfully explaining all the incredible things he intended to do that day, wiping away the melon juice that would drip from his mouth. The children, barely over a year apart, were as close as siblings could be. They’d play games for hours. Nicolau would roll his eyes and sigh theatrically as he agreed to join Sofia, a hidden grin tugging at the corners of his mouth in excitement. If Nicolau won the ensuing argument, they’d play as beautiful Russian princes and princesses or knights worthy of Arthurian legend. If Sofia won, she would declare herself the Saci, darting away with fits of giggles as her brother chased after her on his “horse”, determined to pull off her bright red cap.

They also attended a small school of similarly magical children. While there, Nicolau made many attempts to win the other children’s loyalty, much to Sofia’s irritation and, eventually, amusement. They learnt enough to sate their immediate curiosity, mostly stories about what the magical village of Vila do Mato was like. However, in reality, their magical education came from the extensive lessons their mother gave, determined that her children would have the same abundance of knowledge when they went to Castelobruxo as she had had when she started at Koldovstoretz.

Alongside these lessons, practically quoted from the memorised words of strict Russian tutors, Valentina told the children about her family, their ancestors and their noble pursuits. Sofia grew largely ambivalent towards this, smiling sweetly at her mother’s stories while secretly greatly preferring her father’s descriptions of what his muggle side had grown up doing, unlike her brother. Nicolau, Kolya, became quickly enthralled. Every tale would have to be repeated at least twice, words stitching together into a beautiful tapestry until they became more promises than history, real versions of the games that filled his days. The Obolenskys were magical. They were powerful. They were seers.

And Nicolau was one too. There was no other explanation for the way he could avoid thrown objects, how he always managed to guess the weather from hours before, the strange feeling he got when having conversations or picking something up that he had seen himself do it before. Even more unmistakably, his dreams from a young age were so vivid: him, grown up, standing before masses, wealthy, powerful, golden.

Kolya Obolensky was destined for greatness.

Nicolau’s first instance of magic, like many important events in his small family’s life, occurred during a thunderstorm. The wind was howling against the window shutters, the storm was getting worse by the minute as rain began to leak through the cover outside their home and, to little Sofia’s horror, the thunder and lightning were deafeningly loud on such small ears as her and her brother’s, both six at the time. In response to the pure chaos outside the house, Sofia was seemingly trying to balance it out with chaos inside the house, yelling and crying and throwing her hands down in her wooden high chair. Nicolau, while similarly scared by the noise above them, was obviously far too grown up to let his fear show and, while his mother and father tried to gently coax Sofia into a calmer state, he sat at the other end of the table and plugged his ears while shutting his eyes.

Of course, with Nicolau a perfect target only a metre and a half into front of the small child, Sofia, previously clutching her fork tightly, heard a sudden crash of thunder and wildly threw the fork forwards, right towards her brother. Nicolau, deaf and blind to the world, didn’t realise this and only when he felt a gentle tap on his shoulder from his mother looked up. Just inches from his face, the plastic fork hovered in the air, spinning slightly from residual momentum. Nicolau blinked twice and, after another second of hovering, the purple fork dropped down onto the table.

When Nicolau was in bed that night, thoroughly pleased about his parent’s joy and pride, he thought back to the event. He had noticed the fork before she threw it, right? He must have known she was going to throw it. He must have predicted it. He knew it was coming. Of course.

Nicolau smiled as he fell asleep that night, dreaming of the years to come.