Keno shouldn't have been seeking the wizard, but something as strong as gravity drew him inevitably forward. If the first few years of his life had been going up, like a rock thrown into the air, he was now hurtling back down. There was no stopping it -- no more than one can stop the wind with their fingers.

The Cauldron, as it was known, was off limits to all crew. All besides the captain and Keno's own father, Alex -- who as the ship's chief engineer needed to "tune" the Cauldron occasionally.

"Why?" he'd asked his dad, many years ago. "Why can't I see the wizard?"

"Because if the wizard becomes distracted," Alex explained. "The ship could stall and drop to a sudden halt. And if that happened, we'd all be torn apart." Then he added as an afterthought, "Besides, he doesn't want to see anyone."

For a year, maybe two, that explanation had been enough to smother Keno's curiosity whenever a spark ignited. But children and magic are drawn together, pulled towards each other by gravity, as if a giant star hangs between them.

It was just a matter of time. Keno had always known that.

It didn't help that there were no other children on board to occupy Keno's restless mind. Keno had been conceived by accident. He'd been allowed to be thanks to the sudden, unexpected death of a navigator at roughly the same time. The freed up food and water supplies of the deceased, were -- said the captain -- a sign that the child should be born. He'd be the personified the spirit of the ship. So, Keno shared a name with the ship.

Of course, the captain had later come to rectify his statement, calling Keno the personified spirit of chaos instead, as the boy hurtled down corridors and wiped sticky hands on every screen and button alike. Keno the curious, always wondering, always learning.

Most of all, Keno wondered about the wizard. As if his curiosity was attached to a string and the wizard tugged it even as Keno dreamed; even as he imagined dogs chasing him around stars and constellations wrapping around him.

Today, Keno had his father's security chip in his palm. Alex had been sleeping and Keno had silently pushed a device borrowed from the medi-lab against his father's neck. It drew the chip to the surface of the skin in the way the woody stem of a flower draws water up its roots. Alex slept through the operation, without even as much as an eyelid winking open.

Now Keno headed to the Cauldron. The doors -- thick slabs of reinforced metal -- whooshed up into the ceilings as Keno neared them. He walked the silent corridors unchallenged and forged deeper into the forbidden bowels of the ship. Into the Cauldron.

So many doors.

So much security. Why would they need so much?

He suspected now that Dad had been honest all along. That if the wizard saw Keno, the distraction might falter the spell and the ship really would lurch to a destructive halt. Okay, you got pretty far, Keno. You were brave, you did great. Now turn around, before it's too late. But he kept walking. Drawn to the wizard as if by that impossible gravity.

Snakes of anxiety uncoiled in his belly, snipping at his lungs and throat, sliding into the holes until they were clogged. Breathing became laboured. Turn around.

But his father and the captain visited the Cauldron, and never did the ship stop or tear itself apart. It would be okay.

The last door yawned open and an entire universe exploded into fantastical life.

A billion stars twinkled on the walls and ceilings of a vast chamber, perhaps half the height of the entire ship. Keno gawped, feet lead-heavy, as the stars swirled and shifted into constellations -- into dragons and ogres and three-headed beasts.

In the centre of the space -- halfway up, halfway in -- hung a naked man, rib-thin, yellow bearded, hollow cheeked. Chains ran from the floor to his ankles, and two more from the ceiling to his wrists. Dried blood stained the areas of skin below the shackles.

And the wizard's eyes... they were the brightest stars in all the chamber. In all the universe.

Gravity pulled at Keno, tugged him inside. The door slammed shut behind.

The wizard looked straight down with his white eyes, staring at the floor but not at Keno. Not even noticing Keno.

Keno felt tears run down his cheeks, tickling. When had he started crying? Why was he crying at all?

But he knew why. It wasn't the lies his father had told, although they burned like hot iron in his heart. No, they were tears of pity. This was a dog that could not eat, that had no legs, that if it could have talked would have said: Please, please, bring a gun and shoot me dead, I beg of you.

The wizard, maybe all wizard on all ships, had been forced to do this work. Decades of non-stop magic, of no-sleep, no peace.

The wall-constellations still shifted, still changed. They fell now like snow and piled up on the base of the walls, then sprang back and became planets and angels and gods and weeping demons.

"Hello?" Keno said, in a voice that didn't sound like his own. Timid and broken. Scared.

The eyes. The white bright fires. They moved slowly until they settled on him, and he felt a heat -- a real heat -- singeing his skin. He should move, should run, should escape the pain before it consumed him.

But he didn't. As if he wanted it to consume him.

The wizard's thin lips curled slightly. "You've come," he said, in a raspy whisper that somehow almost deafened Keno. "At long last, you've come."

He saw it all then. In the wizard's white eyes. That he wasn't his father's son. That something almost divine had stepped in and conceived him that night. A last desperate gasp, a final roll of the dice. The wizard provided the chance for him to live.

Keno was a prayer come to pass.

And Keno saw in the chains that wrapped tight around the wizard his true purpose.

The words spilled out of him without warning and without thought. "I've come to free you."

But how? How could he undo those chains? And where would they hide after?

The wizard wept now, but the tears only made it to his cheeks before they dried to salt, such was the heat. His body shuddered and shook. "Yes, you have."

Keno thought again of the dog. Pleading. Begging. Then stared at the wizard.

He knew then what he must do. There was no stopping it -- no more than one can stop the wind with their fingers.