Alex’s prediction turned out to be correct. After his first performance, parents brought him to the local religious center, where the priest after verifying their story sent a messenger to their higher-ups. For him this was good enough and the following events would be out of his influence anyway.

The downside was that after they returned home, his mother refused to let him out of her hands, to not speak out of her sight. Especially annoying it became after the news of the ‘miracle’ quickly spread through the village or the town they lived in and people kept coming over with gifts to congratulate and to suck up to the proud couple.

At first Alex found it hilarious, but soon it became tiring and only after he persuaded his mother to put him to bed, he could finally rest.

To Alex’s disappointment, nothing out of the ordinary happened during the next few weeks. After the waves of visitors receded only the guy in command from the local church came over regularly. Alex, of course, spent his waking hours mostly sitting in a meditative posture, pretending to be praying while actually cultivating the force of nature. The main good news were that his brother was not around so he was safe, at least for now.

Fortunately the local priest was not a total idiot and assumed the role of Alex’s first teacher. Obviously the first thing to teach was the language and soon everyone in household was astonished for the second time. The child who was not even three months old could easily remember meanings of words and began to form sentences right from the bat.

While burping out the phrase ‘Lord, guide us!’ could be just some unbelievable coincidence of him copying his pious mother and the physical advancement might have been a miracle of nature, the learning ability Alex displayed could only be ‘explained’ by the Divine intervention.

There was a day when everyone suddenly became distressed, when the child suddenly stopped talking and refused to open his eyes or even move, but the next day everything returned to normal again.

Actually that was the day when priest taught Alex the names of his family members. They lived in a settlement called ‘Stone village’, therefore every villager had ‘Stone’ as their family name. It was a bit weird, but he could live with it. While he couldn’t figure out from which side exactly Henrietta was his grandmother, he found it amusing that both his father and the eldest brother were called Bill.

But to his great horror Alex learned that his name in this life was ‘Alfons’. Of course, he did hear his parents repeat this word previously, but he never could imagine that someone might have a thought to name their child that way.

‘Why don’t you directly kick me in the balls and be done with it? Just kill me, you damn bastards!’ Alex thought at the time.

Luckily he quickly came to his senses and remembered what happened the last time he died on purpose. Thus all the suicidal ideas were thrown out and Alex decided to simply change his name as soon as he was old enough.

Learning from his experiences in his previous life, as soon as he could, Alex asked his mother to read him some books out loud. While he didn’t expect much from his simple parents, it came as a light shock that not only there were no books at home, the two even didn’t know how to read.

Thus Alex’s request was passed on to Daniel, the local priest – his first teacher, and the old man began to dutifully read the only book they had in the whole village – The Holy Book of Prayers. It was something like the bible to these people except it only contained prayers and even then only several, while in comparison in the Christian bible one could find some educational information and read it to pass the time.

And there lie the problem – listening to someone reading The Holy Book of Prayers was basically the same as listening to someone praying out loud and it quickly became unbearable, thus Alex soon began to have suicidal thoughts once again.

But then he realized – if he intended to climb up in this world, these prayers could serve as an early key to open many doors. Therefore, holding back his annoyance, Alex did his best to memorize the praying chants and two weeks later he could already recite most of them. Of course, it sounded a bit funny when he did it in his baby-voice, but surrounding people listened to him very seriously and those who knew the prayers chanted alongside of him while others soundlessly moved lips and pretended to chant.

At first Alex also wanted to attempted to learn how to read. Unfortunately his sight was still not developed enough and he had to postpone the idea and return to listening. He also came to conclusion that he shouldn’t rush things too much since everything he had done so far was already nothing short of a miracle.

One morning, approximately a month after his first performance, Alex was woken up by Daniel’s sudden arrival. While it was normal for the old priest to come over every day, this time it was obviously too early since even the sun was not up yet.

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While Alex wasn’t fluent in the local language yet and was not even close, from his mother he understood that Daniel informed his higher-ups about the wondrous child that has been born and was waiting for the reply. During the last night the messenger finally returned with an order to bring Alex over to meet someone from the higher ranked clergy as soon as possible.

‘These people really are not very smart.’ Alex thought to himself observing the storm of chaos the news created at home.

Theoretically everyone should’ve been prepared for this development, but his family members ran around like headless chickens until Daniel put an end to it. He barked out few commands and Alex’s parents and grandmother obediently complied.

Within an hour they gathered a heap of belongings, mostly clothing, and packed everything in few large sacks. Then the luggage and Alex were loaded in a wagon and, after a long collective prayer led by Daniel and performed by a crowd of people who for some reason all gathered, they finally hit the road. ‘Them’ being Alex, his both parents and the half dead looking messenger named Gilbert who was not allowed to rest at all.

When the group departed, to his own amusement Alex, while trying to look as important as he could, put his tiny palms together and said, “Lord, guide us!”

And then, holding back his laughter, observed the crowd of villagers dropping to their knees and repeating, “Lord, guide us!”

Indeed, as it turned out he was born in a small village that only had around thirty stone houses, similar to the one his family owned. The village was built around a small church that Alex already had the honor to visit and was surrounded by thick forests where most of the villagers hunted, that is – the men. Meanwhile women took care of the households, worked in the small gardens behind their houses and looked after the few livestock they had.

And currently one of the livestock – a gray colored ox was pulling the wagon.

‘I guess the phone didn’t work and you couldn’t call a taxi?’ Alex joked to himself feeling every bump on the road throwing him up and down.

Meanwhile his father sat in the front of the wagon, holding the reins with a stupid smile on his bearded face, mother was praying and Gilbert passed out the moment he got in the wagon, so he slept.

Alex observed his surroundings for a while, but as soon as they left the village, there were only forests on the both sides of the road thus, he quickly lost his interest and began to meditate. Truth to be said there was not much of a road, at least not in the usual sense. From what Alex figured out it seemed that Bill was guiding the wagon along some marked trees, but since everyone considered it ‘normal’, there was no reason to worry.

During the day nothing noteworthy happened and, except for the few deer that they disturbed, Alex didn’t notice any wildlife at all. They passed a couple of villages similar to the one they came from, but only stopped to refill their sheepskins and were back on the road again.

It was late autumn and the air was quite chilly, but the three grownups were wearing pelt coats and Alex was neatly packed in a bundle of cloth, thus no one really felt cold.

Before the nightfall they arrived at another village and Bill drove their wagon directly to the local church where he woke up Gilbert unceremoniously poking him with the shaft of the whip. The guy cursed for a bit, but still got off the wagon and ran inside to meet the local priest who invited them inside for a stay.

Alex already didn’t expect much from the locals, but sleeping on pelts directly on the church’s floor was a bit too rough even for his level of tolerance. Luckily after he demonstrated his signature ‘Lord, guide us!’ to the priest, others left him alone and he could go to sleep.

The next four days were basically the same. No one in the wagon spoke, except for the Elsa who was constantly praying, but Alex was long used to it and it didn’t interfere with his meditation. But the journey did seem to be taking quite a while and at some point he couldn’t hold back his curiosity and asked about its length. The answer was satisfactory – they will arrive in two days.

On the morning of the second day Gilbert finally didn’t fall asleep the moment he got in the wagon. He kept staring to the front as if it would make the wagon that was going at snail’s speed move faster, but maybe it did, because around midday they reached … another village.

At first Alex wanted to curse these people for misleading him, but then realized it was his own fault for relying on something a person living in the woods said. Learning from his previous failure, he inquired in detail where were they going and how long it would take to get there.

Turns out they now arrived at some point that was considered a hub for regional caravans and as soon as they manage to join the next one, they’ll depart to the ‘big’ place. From Gilbert’s description Alex guessed that it was probably the capital of the region or the whole country and was called Serenity. The problem was that they hoped to arrive to Serenity after a month or at least before the winter.

The last six days were already tiring enough, but before Alex got any suicidal thoughts, he was strictly told to not speak unless he was alone with his mother, because from here on they could meet some ‘bad people’. He, of course, was more than fine with it since he hadn’t met any person worth speaking to in this world. On the other hand – if one of those ‘bad people’ killed everyone in this village including him, Alex would not object.

Luckily or not, it didn’t come down to that. After waiting for another six days, what according to Gilbert was a very short time, a merchant caravan traveling to Serenity arrived. Alex was already fed up with the stink in this place and almost cheered out loud when he was brought to a carriage.

Indeed, from now on they would travel in a carriage pulled by horses. Compared to their wagon it almost seemed like Rolls Royce or at least Mercedes, thus he had hard time holding back a wide smile contrary to his father who stood at the side of the carriage looking lost.

Turns out his old man was the only one who thought he’ll accompany his son to the capital. The priest from the Stone village only gave enough travel money for Elsa, Alex and Gilbert and it seemed obvious that the father was only tasked to bring them to the caravan and then drive the wagon back.

Bill argued with Gilbert for a few minutes, but finally backed down when Elsa intervened. Alex watched his father’s sorry figure slowly disappearing in the distance with a pity, but then inwardly shrugged. It didn’t have anything to do with him after all.