Fherwil and the Tunnels of Time Book 1: The Anomaly Awakens

Ben’s old digital clock alarm flashed persistently: 7:00 AM. The sound—a sharp, annoying beep that Ben loathed—seemed to tear through the morning’s tranquility. With a sleepy groan, he stretched a thin arm from under his messy sheets and struck the alarm clock with more force than necessary.

His small room, located in a modest apartment in the town of Río Piedras, was bathed in a pale morning light. The Puerto Rican sun, already strong at this hour, fought to filter through cheap curtains decorated with shooting stars—stars so sun-faded they looked more like blurry smudges. The light barely managed to dissipate the lingering darkness of his dreams, which, as always, had been filled with dazzling spells, deafening applause, and him—Fherwil—at the center of it all.

He got up, dragging his body like... well, like something or other. “Reality won’t live up to my dreams,” he thought. As his first foot hit the floor, “Ouch!” he muttered, complaining at the feel of the cold tile beneath his bare feet. Shuffling along, he reached the small mirror hanging on his closet door—a mirror whose surface was slightly stained by failed potion attempts (which were actually just mixtures of soda and kitchen spices).

He stared at himself with a frown. Ben wasn’t tall; his build was thin, almost lanky, with shoulders slightly hunched from hours spent reading and a shyness that made him shrink a little. His brown hair, an ordinary shade, was tumbled into an indomitable mane that defied any attempt at styling. A rebellious lock constantly fell over his forehead. Beneath that mess, his eyes—deep brown and often sleepy—nevertheless revealed a spark of intelligence and an insatiable curiosity. Faint dark circles hinted beneath them, a testament to nights spent immersed in books or chasing dreams of magical grandeur. In general, he wasn’t the imposing image of a powerful mage he imagined himself to be; he looked more like a perpetual student, a bit disheveled, but with a gaze that promised internal worlds. His eyes, still puffy from sleep, reflected the disappointment of another night without magical revelations.

Ben had always been fascinated by magic. Since he was a child, he didn’t just devour fantasy books—he lived them. He watched wizard movies with gleaming eyes, rewinding VHS tapes until they wore out just to analyze the exact hand movements of the actors. He spent hours practicing clumsy card tricks that always ended with cards scattered on the floor, and hand gestures that, according to him, channeled energy—though they never seemed to channel anything but cramps in his fingers.

He had dubbed himself “Fherwil,” a name he had constructed letter by letter one boring afternoon; a name that sounded mysterious and powerful in his mind. In real life, however, whenever he used it, it only drew timid giggles or confused looks from his few friends.

Today, like so many other days, Ben firmly intended to dedicate time to his “magical studies.” His desk was an organized chaos (or so he liked to believe). Upon it sat several dusty volumes that were his treasures, found at garage sales and the forgotten shelves of second-hand libraries: Spells for Beginners (and the Not-So-Beginners), The Secret History of the World’s Mages (a book of questionable authenticity with coffee stains on the cover), and a rather worn-out manual of illusionism, its corners tucked at the pages for “levitation” and “disappearance.”

With that renewed optimism (a quality that, despite constant failures, inexplicably persisted like a stubborn weed), Ben attempted the levitation spell on page 42.

He held the small gray feather (probably from a pigeon) on his palm. The morning air drifted through the cracked-open window, bringing the scent of café colao from the neighbor’s apartment and the distant sound of the day’s first AMA buses, with their noisy engines and the fssshhh of their air brakes.

—“Okay, Fherwil... concentrate,“—he whispered to himself.

He closed his eyes so tightly his eyelids ached. He furrowed his brow, visualizing the feather floating, light as dust. He murmured the words from the book: “Aerthos... Venti... Sursum...” He put all his intent into it, feeling a slight tingle at the base of his neck. Maybe this time!

He waited a second. Two. He opened one eye.

A long, shaky sigh escaped his lips. It wasn’t just frustration; it was that old, familiar taste of disappointment. He felt a warmth rising up his neck. Who am I kidding? he thought for a fleeting moment. I’m just Ben, the weird book kid.

He shook his head, refusing to accept defeat.

—“No!“—he exclaimed aloud, glaring at the feather as if it were an enemy.—“Float, you cursed feather! I am Fherwil, the... the aspiring master of the arcane arts!”

The feather, indifferent to his drama, remained defiant and unmoved.

After that, the morning continued in a similar fashion. He tried a spell to change the color of an apple (he ended up bruising it because he squeezed it too hard in concentration). He tried an enchantment to find lost objects (he kept searching for his keys for half an hour, only to find them in yesterday’s pants pocket).

Finally, he attempted a conjuration to speak with animals, directing his most mystical gaze at his cat, Mittens, who was curled up on a pile of clean laundry.

—“Mittens... Felis catus... listen to me. What is... what is the secret of the universe?”

Mittens looked at him with her usual feline indifference, yawned to show her tiny teeth, and proceeded to lick a paw. Ben sighed. Not even his cat took him seriously, he thought.

Ben let out another sigh, deeper this time, and slumped into his desk chair, which creaked in protest. Mittens watched him from her throne (the laundry pile) with that feline calm that Ben sometimes found infuriating and other times, comforting.

Mittens was a tabby cat in shades of gray and black, with a few brushstrokes of faded orange that looked like echoes of a distant sun. Her eyes, a piercing greenish-yellow, seemed to have seen it all. And, in a way, they had. They had seen Ben practice his hand movements in front of the mirror until he got cramps. They had seen him whisper to feathers, celebrate with a ridiculous dance the one time a card trick actually worked, and they had seen him fall asleep with his face pressed against an open book on “ancient runes.”

Mittens was not a delicate cat, nor did she have deep cleaning habits. Her fur, occasionally ruffled, carried the subtle scent of Ben’s domestic adventures: a touch of corner dust, a pinch of the mysterious sticky residue found near the desk (likely from a soda spilled weeks ago), and perhaps, on particularly busy days, a loose strand of the instant ramen noodles (chicken flavor) that Ben had eaten for dinner at his desk last night.

Mittens moved with a feline ease and a dignity that Ben envied, navigating the labyrinth of objects scattered across the floor. It was a maze made of forgotten t-shirts, tangled charger cables and headphones coiling like snakes, precarious towers of books and comics, old video game boxes, and the remains of half-finished creative (or magical) projects—like a scattered deck of cards or a spoon slightly bent from a failed attempt at telekinesis.

She was often found curled up on the “clean-but-not-clean-enough-to-put-away” laundry pile, or sleeping peacefully inside an empty cardboard box (that once held a computer part) which had gone un-tossed for weeks because, according to Ben, it “had potential.”

Her whiskers, long and sensitive, twitched slightly as she explored new mounds of clutter. Her tail, sometimes straight and curious, other times waving lazily, was a silent barometer for the chaotic yet familiar atmosphere of their home.

Despite the apparent chaos, Mittens felt comfortable. This mess was her ecosystem. She knew every corner, every obstacle, and had claimed several strategic spots from which to observe her young owner’s peculiar universe. Her purr, a soft motor in the middle of the silence, was the only constant soundtrack to Ben’s failed magical attempts.

By the time the sun was high and streaming through the curtains, warming the dust in the air, Ben’s morale was at rock bottom. Magic seemed like something elusive, an unreachable dream reserved for characters in books and movies. He felt ridiculous: a normal boy from Río Piedras with extravagant fantasies that not even his cat respected.