Two thousand, one hundred and five days. That’s how long it had been since my birth. I was five years old and more than a three quarters of the way to turning six when everything around me began to change. Let me tell you a bit about myself, about what I was like back then.

I was a rather simple child. I would play in the field that sat encased within all the buildings of the orphanage. I would stare outside, past the invisible wall that kept us locked within, into the dense forest just beyond. I did this every day, wondering what freedom tasted like. What freedom felt like? What freedom sounded like?

Every day I would sigh as I absent mindedly played soccer with the other children. I would always be thinking about the outside. What was past that wall that so many had tried to scale, break, dig beneath, and yet all had failed. Why was I here? I was born to one of the women that lived in the orphanage. She was twenty years old but never acted as my mother, leaving that to the people designated as the proper caregivers.

I would often make trouble for myself, telling stories of what I thought may lay outside of the orphanage to the other children. These stories would always send some kind of rumor floating around and eventually, as it always had, the rumors would be traced back to me and I would be sent to bed without supper.

One particular day, on a night where supper had been refused to me once again, I laid in my bed and stared at the ceiling for hours. I slowly examined the wood that hung above my bed, supporting the floor above it. The chips and notches in the wood were too many to count, yet they were all easily unified by the soft, swirling grain of the deep oak wood.

That night, just outside my window as the sun was falling deep beneath the horizon to wherever it went at night, something large cast a shadow down into the courtyard. It was the first of its kind that I had seen. Its massive body blotted out parts of the sun as it soared through the sky, free like the air I breathed. It was free. This thing, that fell through the sky yet seemed to constantly move forward, had the one thing that held itself barely out of reach of my young hands.

“I wish… I was free…”

As those words tumbled out of my mouth a quick silence fell across my world. Sleepiness immediately began tugging at my eyelids, and without reason to resist, I fell into the most coma-like sleep I had ever slept.

For me, it was seconds, but to the caregivers it was days. Those days quickly turned into a week before my body was carried into the Headmistress’ office. The Headmistress was a nice, old lady with a light gray bun and had apparently been at the orphanage ever since it was founded, which was a long time ago. As soon as I was placed in her office and the caregivers left the room, my eyes shot open and an excruciating pain ripped itself through my entire body.

A shout tore my lips apart, and beside me sat the Headmistress with a look of slight amusement. The burning agony soon subsided and my eyes began to puff red from involuntary tears that had fallen onto my cheeks from the pain.

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“I see you’re done now, boy.” The Headmistress whispered. Her voice was soft and melodious, but it seemed as if it pounded through his head like a hammer. From where I was seated I stared up at her, “Why does it hurt…?” I mumbled as I rubbed at my shoulders. “Can you fix me?”

The headmistress laughed gently and nodded. “Yes, I can fix you, but first you need to do something for me.” She stood from the chair next to him and walked over to her desk, rummaging through different drawers. After a minute or two she came back and sat herself beside him once more. “I need you to tell me what you wished for.” The smile that had been playing at her lips slipped but she quickly pulled it back together as she opened the book.

“Um…” I whispered. The night before was a bit hazy, but I did remember wishing for something. It was something very vague, easily misinterpreted. “I think… I wished for freedom.” I nodded and scratched the back of my head, remembering the previous night. “I saw something. It was big. Big enough to cover half of the sun. And it flew through the air as if I had thrown a stone across the pond.” The words came tumbling out of my mouth as the Headmistress nodded, flipping slowly through the small pamphlet.

“I see…” Her soft voice just barely passed her lips. She had been staring at one page for a particularly long amount of time before shaking her head and moving on. After a few minutes of look, she finally found something. “I see.” The words were dry and seemed slightly surprised.

“Well, my boy, it seems your wish for freedom has gotten you something very close to that. Let me… explain something to you. Many children here at the orphanage, myself included along with the rest of the first generation, make wishes. They hope and dream for something so much that it becomes a part of them. But these hopes and dreams are not always well founded, and nature will twist them around in unforeseen ways. You have been lucky. Nature was merciful and has given you much. You, my boy, are a shapeshifter. The only one currently living, as a matter of fact.”

After her whole speech, I was given time to think about my circumstances. This was a lot of pressure for a five year old! I couldn’t believe that a wish was actually granted. Albeit not in the most obvious of ways, but it had been granted! I slowly began nodding my head. “Ma’am, are there other kids who made wishes?” The headmistress nodded at my question. I stared at the ground, waiting through the silence. “So now what?”

It was explained to me that I would change housing units and would receive a primary education within one of the large buildings he had not previously been allowed into. Also, I would be denied all access to playing with, talking to or seeing any of the children I had previously played with. I, from that point on, would be taught how to properly use my wish.

From that moment forwards, my journey began, and boy was I prepared.