The Elves of Cintra (Book 2 of The Genesis of Shannara)

Fixit, as the middle child, has no identifiable place or purpose in the family. The older two work with their father, and the younger two are too young to do anything, twins of fourteen months. They don’t live long anyway. They catch something, plague in all likelihood, the two of them sleeping together in a single bed or sharing a fenced-off play area, and they are dead in a week. He can’t remember their names after a while; they aren’t even real to him. Like so much of what is lost, they seem a fragment of a dream.

After they die, his parents start talking about moving somewhere else, although it is never clear exactly where they think they can go that will be any better. Fixit is seven by now and is immersed in his love of mechanics so thoroughly that he is already disappearing in plain sight. There simply isn’t any reason for the others ever to wonder what he is doing; he is always doing the same thing. Because he is now the youngest, he is treated with a deference that his older siblings do not enjoy and is left pretty much alone.

He is smart, and already he is reading old repair manuals and books on various types of engines. By the time he is nine, he has gained a reasonable understanding of solar power, and has begun work on a solar energy collector that can power the lone vehicle they possess but hasn’t worked since the last of the storage cells gave out. He pays some attention to what is going on around him, but mostly he concentrates on his projects.

It’s while he is testing the collector, having taken the casing out into the low hills and away from the house in case anything goes wrong, that one of the renegade militias operating as slavers finds his family, overpowers them, and takes them away. He would never have known that much if he hadn’t seen the smoke from the burning buildings and come running in time to see the trucks disappearing into the distance.

For a few days, he doesn’t know what he should do. He thinks vaguely of going after his parents and his siblings, but has no idea how to do that or even where to look. He stays out in the hills, working on the collector, the concentration the effort requires giving him an excuse not to think about what has happened to his family and what is likely to happen to him. Focused, intense, he completes his work and falls into a deep sleep. When he wakes, he straps the collector to his back and sets out, intending to reach the coast.

He is discovered by a small caravan of families traveling out of the sun-and radiation-blasted heart of the Midwest to look for something better. The caravan could abandon him and go on—not needing another mouth to feed, not particularly interested in acquiring strays—save for the collector.

Impressed by his extraordinary skill at only nine years of age, they decide to take Fixit along.

By the time they reach Seattle, he is ready to go his own way and leaves them in the middle of the night, slipping away along the waterfront. He is living in an abandoned machine shed when Bear discovers him several weeks later, dirty and ragged and starving, the collector in front of him like a shrine as he sits poring through sets of old manuals he has scavenged. Bear, uncertain what to do with him, nevertheless takes him to Hawk, who recognizes his value immediately and invites him into the family.

But he is still the middle child, even in his new family.

He is appreciated when his skills are needed, but otherwise frequently ignored.

It doesn’t help that the others have already staked out positions in the pecking order—Hawk the leader, Bear and Panther the soldiers, Owl the voice of wisdom and reason, Candle the seer, Sparrow wild and unpredictable, and River mysterious.

He is just an average boy, ordinary looking without much in the way of athletic ability or intelligence. They are strong and beautiful and smart, and he envies them all. Sure, he is the one who can fix things, but it is not an ability that generates much excitement. His propensities for wandering off and frequently forgetting what he is supposed to be doing don’t help, either.

They make him the butt of too many jokes. His place in the family is important, but he doesn’t really feel valued for himself.

That changes with the coming of Chalk, a boy his own age and with his own set of problems, a boy even goofier at times than he is. They become fast friends immediately, and suddenly it doesn’t matter so much that the rest frequently despair of them. They value and appreciate each other and occupy the solid middle ground of the family. Fixit with his mechanical skills and Chalk with his artistry are very different on the surface, yet much the same beneath.

But in that private place where even Chalk isn’t allowed to go, Fixit still dreams of doing something that will make the others look at him differently.

Something like Sparrow did in facing down and killing that mutant insect. Something so exciting and wonderful that they will never stop talking about it.

Something heroic and awe inspiring.

Just once.