Adeodatus was a model child. He was our joy and our terror as a boy, for his mind was as boundlessly curious as his body was energetic, and the combination of the two was a recipe for all manner of mishaps and calamities. It was I who found him attempting with a will to uncover the explosive secret of the Greek mystics, three months shy of his seventh birthday, and intending to deploy it in his game of model armies. He’d come close, and likely in the next hour would have blown up not only the little wooden carvings but himself and a goodly portion of the house as well.