Void of Stars: Thief's Revenge

(This story contains some mentions of domestic abuse, but only a tiny bit)

When I was a baby, my parents were killed. Well, killed is the wrong word. They ceased to exist. And for some reason, I still exist. For some reason, I was spared my parents’ horrible demise. I don’t know why, but I do know whoever made my parents disappear made a big mistake. If they value their own life, or lives, then they should’ve disappeared me too. Because now? I’m not going to stop until I find them and destroy them. I’m Robin, and this is my version of the story.

I was about six when I started hating magic users. The first one I met used me as a slave. But I guess I should start with why I was even in that awful man’s house.

***

I was soo hungry! Wait! There’s some food! I’ll ask that man if I can have some.

“Sir?” I said in my squeaky, three-year-old voice, “Can I have some of that pwease? My mummy and daddy have gone and I’m really hungry.” The old man looked at me and frowned.

“You want some of my food? Well, you’ll have to work for it. Here, have a bit, and you can come with me. None of us are doing well.” He offered me some of his bread and motioned for me to follow him.

He took me to his house and showed me where I could sleep. He also showed me what he wanted me to do for my next meal.

“Here boy, can you dig?” He said, offering me a shovel. I grabbed the shovel and followed him to his small garden. He pointed to some small trees in sacks and then told me to make a hole in each corner of his garden big enough for them. 

When I did that, he marked a spot with his toe and told me to dig one more hole for the last tree. I did it and when I was finished, he gave me some more bread. As I was munching happily on it, he asked me some questions. I didn’t know the answer to most of them, like: where are your parents? How old are you? I told him that I didn’t have a name when he asked me and he made a funny sound, almost like a cow groaning.

“Well,” He said eventually, “I think You should be called Robin. Because you’re flighty and small, but also brown like the robin’s back.” I nodded along, thinking how I was darker than most of the people in the village. Maybe it was all the time I had spent in the sun, wandering around looking for someplace to live. Maybe it was something else.

I finished the bread and asked him for more. He just laughed and shook his head.

***

A couple more years passed like that; I helped him for food and lodging, and he cared for me and acted like the father I never knew. Then, everything changed.

One day the kind old man, whose name was Rooster, didn’t wake up when I poked him. I poked him again, harder, but he didn’t move. And he was quite cold. I got a blanket and draped it over him, covering the toes he always complained about.

I went ot the cupboard to see if there was any food there, but everything was empty. So I went outside into the garden and picked some fruit from the tree in the middle. I wasn’t usually allowed to pick the fruit, Rooster had to do it because I might hurt the tree, but this time I thought it would be ok. Rooster will have a nice breakfast waiting for him when he wakes up. I ate my bit of the fruit and when Rooster still hadn’t woken up, I went outside the front this time, and I went to Rooster’s neighbour, Mrs.Hockley. She didn’t want me in the house, but I was allowed to play in her garden for a bit while she checked on Rooster. I told her everything was fine, he was just sleeping, but she checked anyway.

When she got back, she was crying. At the time I didn’t know why, but she told me I had to find a new place to live.

“Why?” I asked, dropping the stick I had been pretending was a sword.

“Well, Rooster is in a better place, and he can’t take you with him. So you’ll have to find somewhere else to live because I can’t take care of you. I’m sure a big strong boy like you, Robin, will be fine in the big wide world.” She shoved me out of the door and told me not to go back to Rooster’s house because he didn’t want me there any more. I nodded and left, wandering around the streets for a while. Eventually, I got hungry, and a six-year-old couldn’t ignore his stomach, so I tried to find someone to help to get some food. There was a man who sort of looked a bit like Rooster if I squinted, so I asked him if I could help him so I could have some food. He frowned at me and grabbed my arm roughly.

“Thought, you could trick an old man like me, eh? Well I’ll teach you. Come with me, boy.” He dragged me to a sheep’s house and dropped me in there, letting the door slam shut.

“I’ll let you out when I need you to work, tramp.” He started walking away, but I cried out, trying to get him to come back.

“Wait! Mister! Please! I just want some fooooooodd!!” I wailed, trying to get my hand between the gap in the door. He didn’t come back until it was dark, dragging two sheep with him. When he opened the door to put the sheep in the shed, I tried to run for it, but his strong arm snapped out to grab me when I ran past. He pulled me right into his face, sneering at me.

“So, you think you can get past ol’ Diggory, do you? How about I take away all that spirit and hope, and then you can try running away.” I could smell his rancid breath on my face, and I grimaced at the sensation. Suddenly I felt a slight whisper, almost like a tickle, coming from inside my head and a golden string appeared and floated over to Diggory, joining the other golden threads that hadn’t been there before. When he let me go and pushed me into the shed, I felt as if all the fight and life had been taken from me, and I felt their absence like a rock in my head. I tried scratching at it, but the feeling didn’t go away.

***

I spent four more years with Diggory, being poked, prodded and beaten until I did what he wanted me to. Then one day I realised I could take my strings back.

When Diggory came to the shed that day, as soon as I could see his head, and therefore the strings, I reached out with my mind and yanked my threads back. They flew at me and instantly I felt like my missing half had returned. The shocked expression on Diggory’s face was priceless, but I didn’t stick around long enough to memorise it.

I fled over the fields he lived near, and climbed over rocks and streams. I kept running until I could run no more and collapsed at the base of a tree. By this time, I had gotten quite far into a forest and was completely lost. After I had caught my breath, I stood up and looked around. It did nothing to help my sense of direction, but it gave me a minute to think. I realised that I could see a path a little way away, so I walked over to that and looked as far as I could in either direction. The path was very overgrown and I could tell no one alive would remember it. I walked up the slope the path was on, hoping that the higher ground would give me a chance to find out how far I had run.

About an hour later, I came to the top of the hill. It was a really big hill, but it was small enough that trees covered it up to its top. I sighed in defeat and sank against a tree, picking at its bark. Then, I heard a branch snap.

I stood up, trying to look between the trees to find the source of the noise. There was definitely something moving in the trees, but I couldn’t tell what. Then I saw it. A huge bear, heading straight for me. 

I screamed and ran, the sound of thrashing branches fueling my mad dash. Suddenly I tripped, and I could see a tree directly in front of me. I had intended to swerve around it, but now I was rolling right for it. I closed my eyes and prepared for impact. But it never came. I kept rolling for a few feet, but then I stopped, my momentum running out. I stayed still, wondering why I couldn’t hear the bear behind me anymore. I opened my eyes and sat up. I looked behind me, but there was only a black hole. Literally. I slowly got up and looked around the back of the hole. There wasn’t anything there. It was just a hole in the universe. I could hear the bear roaring in fury at having lost his prey, but I wasn’t going to go back up there and apologise. I peeked through the trees, unsure of what I would find this time. 

There was a clearing up ahead, one that I couldn’t have seen from further up the mountain. I walked cautiously towards it, looking down at every step to make sure I wasn’t about to step on a branch or any other noisy thing you find in forests. 

Eventually, I made it to the clearing. It was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, and it had a huge stone building in the middle of it. There was a big tall wall around the building, and that’s where the clearing started. I walked around the wall until I found a rusted gate. I pushed experimentally against it, and it gave. I fell forward a bit, and suddenly one of the stone statues on the wall next to the gate got bumped and it came crashing towards me. I held my hand up, trying to shield myself from the falling abject, but it never touched me. Again, I looked up, and there was nothing there. It had disappeared. I glanced around, trying to find the statue, but it was gone. As if it had never existed. I blinked and shook my head at the weirdness, and pushed the rest of the way through the old gate. At least I might be able to live here, I thought as I walked down the almost totally overgrown path. I had to walk slowly because there were so many stones sticking up at odd angles. Almost as if the ground had tried to push the stones away from it.

When I finally got to the door, I realised that it would probably be impossible to get them open. They were a heavy wood that looked as if it had replanted its roots and decided to stay as a door forever. Then I remembered what I had done in the forest. I thought about how I could’ve done that because I’m sure the bear didn’t rip the fabric of the world just to let me go. Eventually, and after many failed attempts, I realised all I had to do was REALLY want the hole to open and it would. The tricky part was trying to get it to lead me to the other side of the door. I spent a couple of minutes running into trees and stones before I got it.

I stepped cautiously into the hole, going slowly so I wouldn’t hit my head on anything else. All I felt was a cold rush of air, stale and musty, like an old cabinet. Or, apparently, like an old castle. Because that’s what it was. As I walked carefully around the room I had appeared in, I realised that I could still see a lot of my surroundings because of the green-tinted light coming in from the old windows. I saw a door at the other end of the room, not one as big as the ones outside, but still big enough for a small ten-year-old to fit through.

***

After exploring the castle properly, I found all sorts of things that meant that I could live there. A bow and a bunch of arrows; a sword that I could barely lift; candles and a ladder to light the lamps on the walls. 

Eventually, I came across a library of sorts. I knew whatever I found in there would be priceless and fragile, so I was very careful when I touched anything, especially the books. A lot of them were handwritten and for a mostly uneducated boy (I could thank Rooster for the little education I got), they were undecipherable. But I kept going back and trying to read them. 

At some point, about three years after I had first come across the castle, I could understand some of the writing. I was thrilled at this discovery and started reading right away. I soon discovered that it contained research into magical abilities and limitations and learned that the hole opening was called wormwalking and the way I made the statue disappear (it was me) was called spacing. But I didn’t find much about the ability I seemed to have to pull those strings from people’s heads. And it seemed like the people who wrote these books thought having two abilities was SUPER rare.

One day, when I was sitting in the light of the library lamp, I saw something stuffed under the bookcase. It was really stiff, and when I tried to pull it out, it wouldn’t come. I was afraid of breaking the book, but I wanted to read it. So I found a pole from one of the other rooms near the library and used it as a leaver and waged the bookcase upwards, using my foot to slide the book out carefully. I let the case down gently, not wanting to cause any of the books to fall and break. I blew the thick layer of dust off of the cover of the book, but it was still covered in a grim of some sort. I wiped it off carefully with my sleeve, which was quite a few inches up my arm by now, and read the title: The Sources. I had heard mentions of these Sources, but I had yet to come across any solid explanation. So I started reading.

I had gotten a few chapters in when it started getting REALLY interesting. It explains how all of the magic anyone has ever and will ever possess comes from the sun, moon and stars. Then, it started talking about one almost impossible power. They called it an Absolute Void. They had all the powers known to man and they were the only ones who could possibly affect the sun, moon or stars in any way. They had the power to move them, remove them or completely destroy them. I shivered as I realised that was me. I was the most unique sorcerer known to man. I could finally take away the power of everyone who welds any sort of magic. I started smiling to myself. I could finally get revenge on Diggory, and all of his magical friends who used to come over and mess with me. 

As far as I knew, I was the only decent magic-holder in the world. The idea of taking away everyone’s powers sounded like an ideal world to me. And it didn’t mention anything about my own powers going. But it did look like a couple of pages had been torn out. I flipped past the torn edges, but it looked like the big that had been left was the big that explained how to destroy the Sources. My smile turned into a smirk. There was no way I wasn’t going to learn how to do this. I continued reading the whole book through and then re-read the bit about the Sources and how to remove them. The book said each Source had a unique effect on magic. The sun symbolised control, so removing that would remove the ability to use magic consciously, and would only leave the unconscious use of it. I liked that prospect. Then, the stars symbolised the limitations of magic, so your abilities would be stronger and unlike anything you’d ever experienced. And the moon represents the effect of magic on the world around you. I didn’t get that one as much as the other two, so I decided I shouldn’t mess with it.

I started practising my magic every day, trying to build enough strength to finally get my revenge on all magic users. Little did I know that day would come only two years later.