DISCLAIMER: This story is something completely different that my previous one. Of course, it is related to HP by the fact that everything happens in the magical world, but this is Tom's story so you will not find here neither Harry nor Severus nor other characters from the original HP. Tom Riddle and all facts from his life that you can recognise, belong to JKR. The rest is mine and I also use some ideas and characters from my previous story (f.e. relation between Tom and Dumbledore, Perseus Potter, Vega Starlight).
FALLING STAR
Editor's note:
The memoirs of Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known as Lord Voldemort or You-Know-Who, were being written progressively over twenty years, during different stages of the author's life and in the various forms. Some of them had a character of a typical diary while the others have been compiled from a collection of notes which style was very close to the bald reports.
It has never been author's purpose to present his memoirs to the public opinion and hence their disordered, often not chronological character. To make them easier for the reader, we divided the memoirs into three parts of a completely different form. Within every part we separated chapters describing some closed stages of the author's life.
We hope that you will enjoy the 'Falling Star'.
PART I (written in the 1944-1946)
1.Orphanage
My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.
At least that was written on a small piece of paper, squeezed in a cold, stiff palm of a woman who had given birth to me. My poor mother who... But no, don't let us anticipate events. Then, that frosty, winter night nobody knew who the woman was, found in a dark lane of Liverpool, lying in a stain of frozen blood and clasping in her arms a small bundle. In the bundle, under a layer of dirty rags, a baby was whimpering.
A procedure in such cases was simple: the woman's body was removed and the baby was brought to the orphanage. An old nun who had opened the door to the frozen policemen sighed heavily at the sight of the bundle put, without excessive softness, in her arms and with experience of many years she went to the office, took out a blank form from a drawer and sat at the old desk of oak. She unpacked the bundle and cast a critical glance at a small living thing, still more purple than pink, who was clasping its small fists and sleeping away the first hours of so promising started life.
'A boy...' muttered the nun filling a suitable blank space of the form 'A date of birth...' she looked at the calendar, then at the wooden clock; it was almost 5 o'clock in the morning 'You must have been born tonight,' she muttered to the baby who completely didn't care about it in that moment 'So let it be January 15th, 1927. Mother...'
In those times, what could be thought about the woman who gave birth to a child on the lane of a harbour district, which was a famous haunt of vice? The nun realised, however, that such word as prostitute would not look well in the child's birth certificate. So, in an impulse of nobleness, she wrote only: 'Dead'. And in the blank space labelled 'father' a single word appeared: 'Unknown'.
Of course, it could have happened in a completely different way. I have been carried away by my imagination again... Anyway, that night, my first night on this wonderful world, I had been counted among the lowest social class and in this connection I were to be given in future such beautiful names as waif, foundling and bastard.
But it had to pass several years before I started to understand the full meaning of those words. I daresay, only to make my life still more bitter and unbearable...
*
My first memories are grey, gloomy and full of some vague fear. I remember a great hall crammed with three rows of beds. Even during the day it was dim and horribly cold, a ceiling was hidden somewhere high in the impenetrable darkness and only a strange rustle allowed to suspect that over our heads there were a real kingdom of animals, which my several years old imagination described as the infernal beasts. Only later I discovered that they were common bats and spiders.
I also realised very quickly that the worst beasts are not animal but humans, and especially young humans. There were always a few dozens of boys in our room, at the age from several to eighteen years. It could seem that the common misery would release in that band some ties, a bound of solidarity or at least sympathy. Nothing like that! The older boys treated us, the small ones, as the worst trashes and tested on us the cruel products of their creative imagination. When only the door had closed behind sister Agnes, who always said an evening prayer with us, the room was plunged in darkness and I was bathed in a cold sweat. I knew, as every small boy did, that in a moment our hell would begin.
I will never forget one night. I was four and I still couldn't understand why it all happened to me. I haven't known yet that among the people, like among the animals, the stronger is always right. When I had finally realised that I remembered this lesson for all my life...
But I was going to write about that night. The hall was icy cold. The executioners dragged me out of bed and made my lie down on a stone floor. They smeared me with an ash from the fireplace, told me to eat rat's droppings and at last, one by one, they pissed on me. Then they sat around and didn't allow me to get up for several hours. And when I was lying there, dirty, wet, chattering my teeth with cold, I thought that I would give everything to be as strong as they were. I wanted to make THEM lying on the cold stones, trembling and begging my mercy. And I would be watching them and laughing...
That night, for the first time in my life, I felt a real hatred and greed of revenge.
*
When I was five I met my first friend. He was a young, dark grey rat that I saw one day in the dinning-room when he was slipping among the rows of thin legs, carrying a piece of a rotten apple in his mouth. He wasn't, of course, the only rat in the building but I noticed that one since he had a torn ear.
I began to observe him. He appeared every morning and was running around the hall, hunting for the garbage that had fallen from the tables. I noticed that other rats didn't treat him friendly, they showed their teeth on him and drove him away from food. And yet my Lopear (how I called him) stood up to them. Once I saw him biting off a bit of tail of a black male rat, twice as big as himself.
I started to leave him food under the table and Lopear learned very quickly in which part of the dinning-room he could always find something good. After a month he began to recognise me and ran towards me even when I had sat at the different table. Soon he began to react to his name and one night I was woken up by a gentle tickle on my cheek. I opened my eyes and in the moonlight, falling through a narrow window, I saw two black, glittering eyes that seemed to announce: 'I found you!' Since that night Lopear has slept in my bed.
Yes, I loved that animal with all might of my five years old heart, so eager for affectation I couldn't expect from the humans. And I think that Lopear loved me, too; he was also very lonely in his world.
I suppose I was really happy then, for the first time in my life. And I naively believed that it would last forever...
One night Lopear didn't come. I've been waiting for him for many hours, tossing in my bad and listening intently for a silent scraping of small claws; but no sound disturbed the silence. Finally I fell asleep. In the morning Lopear didn't come for the breakfast. I started to worry. In the evening I was waiting again, and once more in vain. I decided to look for him. Next day I get up at dawn and inspected the whole building, from attic to the cellars. I checked everywhere but I couldn't find him. I was just coming back, desperate, to dormitory when suddenly I heard a soft squeal coming from a pile of dirty cloths, left near the door of a laundry. I moved closer and parted the pile. Lopear was lying on his side, wet, blood stained. He was trembling. He recognised me and he squealed softly again. I took him carefully in my hands and whispered his name. He looked at me with his wise, black eyes, he scraped my palm with his claw and became motionless, his head hang inertly between my fingers. I've been sitting in the dark corridor for a long time, staring at the cooling body of my friend. That was how I became acquainted with Death...
I was often wondering how he had died. He had to be bitten by other rats. But why? Did they smell a human from him? Or maybe Lopear was so different that they didn't want him to live?
*
Felix arrived to the orphanage several months after Lopear's death. His parents and older sisters died in the fire when he was five. For a year Felix have been wandering among various relatives and finally he landed in the orphanage. He got a bed next to mine and only I could hear Felix sobbing for the whole night after the older boys had prepared a 'warm welcome' for him.
In spite of all buffets that the fate had dealt him, Felix showed an unfading optimism. He was cheerful, lively and full of ideas about what he would do when he grew up. He must have believed in a good omen of his name...
We made friends. For me, who had spent all my life in the orphanage, somebody like Felix was a real revelation. It was him who made me realise that a child should have parents and the own home. I could listen for hours his stories about his mother reading him books, his father flying a kite with him, his grandparents inviting him to their hose in the country. And I began to wonder why I didn't have a normal home. Why, as far as I could remember, no one had ever read fairy-tales for ME. Why didn't I have parents?
'They must be dead' said Felix with an expert tone when I asked that question loudly for the first time 'They must have died when you were very small and that's why you don't remember them. And your relatives didn't want you and you landed here. Like I did!' this last sentence he uttered almost with pride.
I believed at once that it was the case. My parents were dead. If they didn't, would they allow me to pass my childhood in the orphanage? Such possibility didn't even enter my head. How little I still knew...
Meanwhile, new duty occurred in our live: school. We were turned six and we have been sent, together will a small group of other orphans, to the Public School for Boys. It was managed by an old mother Ulrica, German origin advocate of a rigorous, Prussian discipline. Every lesson started and ended with a prayer and we have been taught writing, reading and the basis of arithmetic.
I was a good pupil, the best in the class, and that awaked envy of many boys of the 'good families' who treated the fact, that an orphan dared to be superior to them in any respect, as a blow dealt in their dignity and pride. Soon the envy turned into antipathy and then into open hostility. And then my problems began; or I should say ours, since Felix was always on my side, ready to fight with anybody who had called me 'dirty bastard'.
It was there, in the Public School for Boys, where I understood the whole cruel meaning of that word. Bastard... Born out of wedlock... Arnie Giber explained it thoroughly to me when his band caught us one day in the corner of the school yard.
'Your mother didn't even know who your father was' he said in a tone of a friendly conversation 'I think he was a sailor. There are plenty of them in the harbour district.'
'Or maybe he is that old, blind organ-grinder that is wandering here and there with a monkey on his arm?' suggested small, squint-eyed Simon Simpleton.
'Mad Henry?' Arnie shook with laugher 'Yeah, it's possible! Look at Tommy, he has the same crooked teeth!'
'And protruding ears!' Simon caught my ear and pulled it with all strength 'Tommy!' he squeaked shrilly 'Why haven't you introduced us to your daddy?'
'He is not my father!' I screamed shaking with rage 'My parents are dead!'
Arnie's band roared with laugher, singing clamorously 'Tommy, Tommy, grind a barrel-organ'. I saw Felix clenched his fists and it would undoubtedly ended with a fight if mother Ulrica hadn't emerged from the school door, looking at us severely and significantly hitting her palm with a thin rod. Arnie and his acolytes scampered away with panic.
But doubts that had been awakened in my heart by those words didn't disappear. I began to wonder: and if Arnie was right? What did I know about my parents? Nothing. I decided to find out the truth. I mustered up my courage and in the evening I knocked at the door of the office of sister Bertha, a young nun who had charge of the orphanage's archives. She received me warmly and patiently listened to my request.
'All right, let's check it, Tommy' she said and approached a massive, wooden shelf 'Information about your parents should be here.'
From among a thick heap of documents she pulled out a thin, green folder and put in on the desk.
'Let's see...' she muttered opening the folder.
Inside there was a single sheet of yellowish paper.
'This is your birth certificate,' explained sister Bertha reading the lines of text 'Yes, as I expected...' she looked at me with a kindly sympathy 'Your mum died giving birth to you, Tommy.'
I nodded but I was still staring anticipatingly at sister Bertha's face. I didn't know the second part of the truth yet...
The nun interpreted my silence well, she moved uneasily on the chair and made a gesture as to close the folder, but noticing determination in my eyes she sighed and looked at the form. 'There is nothing written about your father here,' she said 'We don't know who he was.'
My heart sank. Sneering words of Arnie were ringing in my ears: 'Nobody wanted you, little bastard!' I couldn't believe it, it couldn't be truth...
Felix tried to comfort me.
'Listen,' he whispered after sister Agnes had switched off the light in dormitory 'It doesn't mean anything. Maybe he has died, too.'
I wanted to believe my friend's words. I knew, however, that it would be naive illusion. It was Arnie who was right.
*
Felix fell ill several days before my eighth birthday. In the beginning doctor thought it was a common cold, quite normal disease in the building where during the frosty, winter nights rime settled on the walls in a thin, lustrous layer.
Felix had a high temperature and violent headaches. After three days he began to cough and after a week he spat blood. He has been closed in an isolated room. He was lying in malignant fever, whining softly and not recognising anybody.
The doctor stated pneumonia. He advised to send Felix to the hospital but the nuns didn't agree. They said he would feel better here... At the same time they looked with a strange sorrow at his wet, feverish face and sister Bertha crossed herself.
I suppose I didn't fully realise the seriousness of situation. Of course, I wasn't a small child and I knew that diseases very often happened to be fatal. Scarcely a month ago three orphans died of measles. But I simply couldn't imagine that Felix would not recover. And even if the fear sprung up somewhere at the bottom of my mind, I pushed it away and switched my thoughts to the splendid visions of the future that my friend had described to me so many times.
In the morning of my birthday Felix's condition improved unexpectedly. He was still coughing and had a fever but he was quite conscious. I was allowed to visit him. He was very weak but the lustre in his eyes seemed to tell me: 'Don't worry. I will be all right.' I wanted to stay with him longer but the nuns told me I couldn't. So I spent the day solitarily but very heartened up. I was sure that before long Felix would be fine.
It was about midnight when I woke up, I don't know why, with a widely beating heart and with a strange, horrible foreboding. I looked at the empty bed of Felix and then I had the impression that the screams were reaching my ears somewhere from downstairs. I got up and silently slipped out of the hall, my teeth were chattering more with fear than with cold. Led by a terrific conviction I ran straight to the isolated room. The door was opened. Felix was struggling in convulsions, wheezing and moaning. From the corners of his mouth blood was dripping mingled with a foamy spit.
I rushed into the room and ran towards the bed. The nuns tried to turn me out but I clang to the metal bars with all my strength, staring with disbelief at the Felix's face, grey and twisted in a horrible grimace. And suddenly, as if he had felt my persistent, piercing glance, Felix opened his eyes and turned them towards me. They were dim and vacant but I knew he had recognised me. And I was sized with black despair since in one moment I understood that Felix was dying. This expression of his eyes... this silent farewell...I saw it before...
I shuddered and looked at the bed. My friend was lying motionless, his glazy, dead eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His hands were still clenched on a crumpled sheet. The nuns crossed themselves and began to whisper prayers.
I silently slipped out of the room and moved along the corridor like a sleepwaker, not even knowing where I was going. Suddenly the door of a laundry loomed in front of me and next to it a heap of dirty cloths. I slumped on the floor, buried myself in the rugs and finally I gave a loose to all my despair. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and together with them all plans and dreams were evaporating that we used to devise with Felix.
I was alone again.
*
The winter passed and the whole world seemed to come to life but I was still remaining in a strange stupor, indifferent to everything that was happening around me. It wasn't even despair. I wept all tears for Felix the night of his death and when I scrambled up from the heap of dirty cloths in the morning, my heart was empty and burnt with all feelings.
Even the pranks of Arnie Giber were sliding off me like water and that made him only more furious. There wasn't a day he didn't play some nasty trick on me. And since I still seemed not to notice them, murderous twinkles were flickering in Arnie's brow eyes more and more frequently.
On afternoon of May I was coming back from the school when suddenly someone sprang at me from behind, twisted my arms and crammed a dirty sack on my head. I heard a muffled laugher and a cold voice that I knew only too well whispered to my ear.
'Wait, Tommy. Now I will read you a lesson you will remember to the end of your life.'
Several hands grabbed my arms and legs and, still gurgling, Arnie's band carried me triumphantly towards the bay. After a few minutes I heard a silent ripple of water and an acrid smell of the rotten fishes reached my nose. We were obviously somewhere near the harbour.
They threw me on the ground and somebody sat on my back, pressing my sack-covered head in the wet sand. I must have been Arnie himself since very close by I heard his voice, full of malicious satisfaction.
'Well, little bastard,' he drawled with a false sweetness 'Finally at home.'
He laughed nastily and so did the rest of his companions.
'Show Tommy his mother's bed!' called Arnie.
The hands grabbed me again and cast impetuously on something wet, slimy and stinking of fish. The band was roaring with laugher.
'Comfortably, little bastard?' squeaked Simon Simpleton 'A pile of garbage is a splendid place for such a trash like you!'
And suddenly I was overcome with rage, wild and uncontrollable. I was surprised myself. For the first time in my life I really wanted to kill. I was ready to assail Arnie and the rest and strangled them with my bare hands. I sprang to my feet but I slipped on the clammy garbage at once and fell on my back, raising another storm of laugher. I clenched my fits on the sticky grease and I cast two handfuls of it towards the voices. Judging by a roar of fury it hit Simon right in face.
'You stinker!' he screamed shrilly 'I will...'
But I have never found out what Simon had wanted to propose me because suddenly a hoarse, man's voice spoke from behind.
'What on earth is going on here ?!'
A deadly silence fell and then I heard turmoil and the whole band bolted.
'Damned cowards!' a stranger shouted after them.
I took off the sack from my head and looked curiously at the man. He was about sixty, had a straggly, grey hair and glasses with the metal rims. He was short and thin and his waxy skin resembled a yellowish parchment. It was difficult to believe that Arnie had been frightened of such a frail looking old man.
I stood up and tried to get out of the heap of garbage but again my feet slipped each in different direction and I fell on my knees with a loud smack. The man turned away and looked at me with concern.
'Be careful, boy' he said 'Wait, get hold of this.'
He rose his black walking-stick and moved its tip towards me. I caught it and finally managed to get out of the stinking grease. I felt horribly. The rage has already evaporated from me leaving only shame and humiliation. I realised I must have been looking the very picture of misery.
The stranger, however, seemed not to notice my state. His keen, green eyes were scanning my face but they expressed kindness and goodwill.
'What did young Giber wanted with you?' he asked not taking his eyes off me; I jumped at the sound of the name 'Yes, I know this raw lad,' smiled the stranger interpreting my surprise properly 'His parents visit sometimes my bookshop. But their son opens the book only when he is forced to do it.'
His eyes rested on a leather shabby bag that I had on my back all the time.
'A colleague from school?' he asked.
I nodded. I really appreciated his help but that moment I was dreaming only of one thing: to flee as fast as I could and wash out a crust of a sticky dirt. I was sure I was stinking awfully.
The stranger looked at me and nodded.
'I believe you would like to wash yourself before you come back home,' he said with sympathy and I asked myself a question whether this mysterious old man can read in mind 'My bookshop is on the embankment, five minutes walk from here. You can tidy yourself there.'
And not even waiting for my answer he went towards the harbour. For a moment I was standing undecided, wondering whether not to flee in the opposite direction. But a vision of a way back to the orphanage in that state seemed loathsome enough to make me change my mind and follow the old man.
A bookshop 'Golden Quill' didn't look impressively. It was a small room almost completely crammed with the high shelves full of books. In the air a smell of the old papers was hovering and another, strange aroma which source I couldn't place. Narrow door in the back part of the room led to a small flat of the stranger.
When I washed out fish garbage of me and changed into the cloths that the old man had taken out from a large, wooden chest, he showed my a chair near the small table on which he was just putting cups and a kettle with a boiling water.
'Sit down, boy' he smiled heartily to me and pointed at the chair once more since I was still staying in the doorway staring with amazement at two porcelain cups. 'We will have a cup of tea.'
For the first time in my life somebody invited me for the afternoon tea. I was sitting at the table bewildered but in the same time burning shame and fear were rising in my heart. What will happen if that man finds out that I am a simple boy from the orphanage? He will chuck me out for sure. I felt an unpleasant cramp in my stomach at the very thought.
But he was not going to ask me any question. Only when I was preparing to go out, muttering thanks for his help and hospitality, he looked intently at me and smiled slightly.
'I'm glad I could help you, boy,' he said in his hoarse voice 'But you didn't tell me your name.'
'Tom...' I stuttered out, blushing.
The old man nodded, not taking his piercing eyes off me.
'It's nice to meet you, Tom,' he said shaking my rigid hand 'My name is Elias Homer.'
*
Several days later, instead of going back to the orphanage, I turned in the embankment and, not even knowing when, I found myself in front of the door of the bookshop 'Golden Quill'. I was standing near a small shop-window, reading the titles of the books put there, when the door opened and Elias Homer appeared, smiling.
'Welcome, Tom' he said inviting me inside 'It's difficult to resist their charm, isn't it?' he pointed at the shelves full of books.
I nodded, once more surprised at a great sagacity of the old man. He was right, it was an unfathomable variety of books that had attracted me to his shop like a magnet. Ever since I learnt reading I devoured every book that fell into my hands. And soon neither the orphanage nor the school could provide me with any new lecture. No wonder that the 'Golden Quill' became a real land of promise for me.
Soon it became a custom that I visited the small bookshop twice a week and for several hours I concealed myself between the shelves, with every read book discovering new, unknown worlds and daydreaming the fascinating adventures of the heroes.
Homer was happy about my passion and he personally looked for the lectures that I could enjoy. With the flushed cheeks I was following the fantastic voyages of Guliver, together with Robinson I was exploring, step by step, his solitary island, I was sailing on the raft with Huck Finn. Then I discovered Alexander Dumas and for half a year I was lost in the ups and downs of the musketeers and in the history of the French Revolution. I tasted a sweetness of vengeance enjoying the revenge of count Monte Christo. I read Goethe, Dostoievski, Tolstoj. And I still wanted more.
Before long Elias Homer became the closest friend of mine. Several weeks after our first meeting I confessed with a shame that I lived in the orphanage. And that noble man not only didn't turn me out but he declared that his bookshop would be always opened for me. He also said something I remembered for many years:
'Tom, it's not important whether you are a son of aristocrat or a poor orphan. It counts what you have in your head and in your heart. And what kind of human you are.'
In future I were to doubt often the truth of these words. They were manifestation of a noble idealism and that's why there was so little place for them in the real world.
Homer was more than a friend, he was a guardian, a mentor, a moral leader. In a way he was a parent to me, a parent I had never had. I could tell him about everything, about all my worries, problems and concerns. And he listened to me attentively and always managed to find the words full of courage and wisdom.
Yes, Elias Homer was an extraordinary man. He opened my eyes to the world and formed my mind. But even he couldn't foresee the future...
*
Summer of 1938 was dry and hot. The world shuddered in a tense foreboding of an imminent disaster. In April the Third Reich marched in Austria and it was commonly believed that Czechoslovakia would be the next victim. Many people said that the beginning of a war was hanging by thread. And that it would be a massacre nobody had ever dreamt about.
Homer was full of anxiety and the worst misgivings. He though that one war in a man's life was still one too many. He was observing attentively the events on the arena of international politics and every day he was more and more gloomy. But he was also a humanist and I'm sure he believed at heart, even against any hope, that a reflection would come and the world would not plunge into a sea of blood.
We were talking about all those alarming things one July night, sitting in the bookshop lit only by the light of a small oil lamp. It was sultry and stifling hot so we left the door opened. Homer sighed heavily and looked at me with his tired, sad eyes.
'The worst crime a human can commit is to take away the life of another human. And they force the whole nations to do that...'
We were sitting in silence, Homer cheerless and thoughtful while I was staring at him like at a source of wisdom. His every word was of great worth for me. I wanted be like him, I wanted to be a good, noble man...
It grew late and Homer sent me home. I bade him good-night and left the bookshop, leaving the door opened as he had asked me to do. I was already on the street but, led by a strange impulse, I turned away once more and saw a profile of the old, tired man, bent over a large book. I was looking at him for several seconds, suddenly I realised it was growing later and without further delay I moved to the orphanage.
Could I foresee that a moment after my leave a violent gust of wind, announcing the approach of a storm, would burst into the small bookshop and knock over the oil lamp standing on the table? That the lamp fell straight on a pile of the old, unique parchments that in a split second would burst into flames? That in a short time fire would spread to the shelves of books, turning the small room into a real hell?
I couldn't. I couldn't. I know I couldn't. But the memory of that terrific night haunts me till today.
I remember that I was already near the gate of the orphanage when I noticed that some people on the street were pointing intently at something in a district of the city I had just come from. I turned round and saw a red glow of the fire over the embankment. I don't know how but I was sure that the 'Golden Quill' was burning. It was the same terrible foreboding that made me run through the orphanage's corridors in the night of Felix's death. I stifled a moan of despair and dashed towards the harbour.
The bookshop was in flames which resisted men' efforts to extinguish them with some fierce and stubborn fury. I pushed through the crowd of gaping spectators, ready to run straight into the mouth of fire, but a stout woman seized my arm.
'Are you mad, child ?!' she cried terrified, clasping me stronger and stronger in response to my attempts to wrench myself free. 'What are you going to do? It's a hell!'
'Where is Homer ?!' I yelled, staring widely around 'Where is Elias Homer !!!'
The people standing close by looked unsteadily first at each other, than at me.
'Did you know him?' asked a tall man with a tone of surprise in his voice.
'Where is he ?!' I screamed with a growing despair.
The people were still looking at me without a word. And though nobody said anything I saw the truth in their eyes.
'Is he...is he dead?' I whispered in a strange voice.
The man nodded with sorrow.
'Unfortunately...' he said dryly 'They said he had been trying to save the books...'
My legs bent over me and I fell to my knees. I wasn't crying, I wasn't screaming, I was only keeping still with my vacant eyes fixed on the dancing flames. I didn't feel anything: neither despair, nor rage, nor grief. I ceased to exist...
*
Somebody had to lead me out of the crowd because when I came to my senses I was sitting on the cold sand with my face turned towards the dark waters of the bay. On the horizon purple flashes were cutting the sky.
Homer... I turned away and fixed my eyes at the smoking ashes of the bookshop. It had burnt down completely. Ruthless fire consumed a valuable collection of books and something that was priceless for me: a life of my friend.
I lied down on the sand and looked at the starry sky. I remembered the old stories about ancient gods who used to place on the firmament the mortals dear to them. Orion, Andromeda, Cassiopeia... If I had their power, three new constellations would appear on the night sky: Homer, Felix, Lopear.
'No,' I thought 'I would like to have powers that would allow me to conquer death. Then I would make all my friends live till today. To know how to stop death, that is a real attribute of divinity.'
A wind blew and the waves splashed on the shore. And only now I fully felt the whole vastness of a suffered loss. I realised that once more I had lost the only close person. And I was left alone again.
'Why does it happen to me?' I was asking myself 'Why any time I became attached to somebody I have to lose him, sooner or later. Did the fate conspire against me ?! And maybe...' a thought that had entered my feverish mind was so horrible that I shuddered 'Maybe I am the one who draw misfortunes on the others? They die through ME!
I sprang to my feet and pressed my hands to a flushed forehead. It was an explanation. I was an author of all those disasters. I was bringing death.
I KILLED THEM ALL !
I was shaking like in a fever, full of despair and hatred to myself. I was cursed! I didn't want to live any longer, I didn't want to cause a death of anybody else...
I looked once more at the burnt bookshop and moved slowly towards the bay. I reached the shore, the waves washed my feet but I didn't stop. I was walking forward with determination, deeper and deeper. Water has already reached my knees, my waist, my neck... From behind I heard a noise as if something heavy had fallen into the water but it didn't matter to me any more. I closed my eyes and take the next step...
Somebody's hand seized strongly my shoulder and pulled me back. I emerged to the surface, choking and spitting. A strange man muttered something softly and suddenly water around us wasn't water any more but a cloud of a white smoke, in the midst of which we reached the shore without any resistance from the matter.
The stranger turned me gently towards him and looked at me with a deep concern in his piercing, light-blue eyes.
'Mearlin's Beard! Tom!' he said reproachfully 'What did you want to do ?!'
Editor's note:
The memoirs of Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known as Lord Voldemort or You-Know-Who, were being written progressively over twenty years, during different stages of the author's life and in the various forms. Some of them had a character of a typical diary while the others have been compiled from a collection of notes which style was very close to the bald reports.
It has never been author's purpose to present his memoirs to the public opinion and hence their disordered, often not chronological character. To make them easier for the reader, we divided the memoirs into three parts of a completely different form. Within every part we separated chapters describing some closed stages of the author's life.
We hope that you will enjoy the 'Falling Star'.
Kaliope Scribbler
PART I (written in the 1944-1946)
1.Orphanage
My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.
At least that was written on a small piece of paper, squeezed in a cold, stiff palm of a woman who had given birth to me. My poor mother who... But no, don't let us anticipate events. Then, that frosty, winter night nobody knew who the woman was, found in a dark lane of Liverpool, lying in a stain of frozen blood and clasping in her arms a small bundle. In the bundle, under a layer of dirty rags, a baby was whimpering.
A procedure in such cases was simple: the woman's body was removed and the baby was brought to the orphanage. An old nun who had opened the door to the frozen policemen sighed heavily at the sight of the bundle put, without excessive softness, in her arms and with experience of many years she went to the office, took out a blank form from a drawer and sat at the old desk of oak. She unpacked the bundle and cast a critical glance at a small living thing, still more purple than pink, who was clasping its small fists and sleeping away the first hours of so promising started life.
'A boy...' muttered the nun filling a suitable blank space of the form 'A date of birth...' she looked at the calendar, then at the wooden clock; it was almost 5 o'clock in the morning 'You must have been born tonight,' she muttered to the baby who completely didn't care about it in that moment 'So let it be January 15th, 1927. Mother...'
In those times, what could be thought about the woman who gave birth to a child on the lane of a harbour district, which was a famous haunt of vice? The nun realised, however, that such word as prostitute would not look well in the child's birth certificate. So, in an impulse of nobleness, she wrote only: 'Dead'. And in the blank space labelled 'father' a single word appeared: 'Unknown'.
Of course, it could have happened in a completely different way. I have been carried away by my imagination again... Anyway, that night, my first night on this wonderful world, I had been counted among the lowest social class and in this connection I were to be given in future such beautiful names as waif, foundling and bastard.
But it had to pass several years before I started to understand the full meaning of those words. I daresay, only to make my life still more bitter and unbearable...
I also realised very quickly that the worst beasts are not animal but humans, and especially young humans. There were always a few dozens of boys in our room, at the age from several to eighteen years. It could seem that the common misery would release in that band some ties, a bound of solidarity or at least sympathy. Nothing like that! The older boys treated us, the small ones, as the worst trashes and tested on us the cruel products of their creative imagination. When only the door had closed behind sister Agnes, who always said an evening prayer with us, the room was plunged in darkness and I was bathed in a cold sweat. I knew, as every small boy did, that in a moment our hell would begin.
I will never forget one night. I was four and I still couldn't understand why it all happened to me. I haven't known yet that among the people, like among the animals, the stronger is always right. When I had finally realised that I remembered this lesson for all my life...
But I was going to write about that night. The hall was icy cold. The executioners dragged me out of bed and made my lie down on a stone floor. They smeared me with an ash from the fireplace, told me to eat rat's droppings and at last, one by one, they pissed on me. Then they sat around and didn't allow me to get up for several hours. And when I was lying there, dirty, wet, chattering my teeth with cold, I thought that I would give everything to be as strong as they were. I wanted to make THEM lying on the cold stones, trembling and begging my mercy. And I would be watching them and laughing...
That night, for the first time in my life, I felt a real hatred and greed of revenge.
I began to observe him. He appeared every morning and was running around the hall, hunting for the garbage that had fallen from the tables. I noticed that other rats didn't treat him friendly, they showed their teeth on him and drove him away from food. And yet my Lopear (how I called him) stood up to them. Once I saw him biting off a bit of tail of a black male rat, twice as big as himself.
I started to leave him food under the table and Lopear learned very quickly in which part of the dinning-room he could always find something good. After a month he began to recognise me and ran towards me even when I had sat at the different table. Soon he began to react to his name and one night I was woken up by a gentle tickle on my cheek. I opened my eyes and in the moonlight, falling through a narrow window, I saw two black, glittering eyes that seemed to announce: 'I found you!' Since that night Lopear has slept in my bed.
Yes, I loved that animal with all might of my five years old heart, so eager for affectation I couldn't expect from the humans. And I think that Lopear loved me, too; he was also very lonely in his world.
I suppose I was really happy then, for the first time in my life. And I naively believed that it would last forever...
One night Lopear didn't come. I've been waiting for him for many hours, tossing in my bad and listening intently for a silent scraping of small claws; but no sound disturbed the silence. Finally I fell asleep. In the morning Lopear didn't come for the breakfast. I started to worry. In the evening I was waiting again, and once more in vain. I decided to look for him. Next day I get up at dawn and inspected the whole building, from attic to the cellars. I checked everywhere but I couldn't find him. I was just coming back, desperate, to dormitory when suddenly I heard a soft squeal coming from a pile of dirty cloths, left near the door of a laundry. I moved closer and parted the pile. Lopear was lying on his side, wet, blood stained. He was trembling. He recognised me and he squealed softly again. I took him carefully in my hands and whispered his name. He looked at me with his wise, black eyes, he scraped my palm with his claw and became motionless, his head hang inertly between my fingers. I've been sitting in the dark corridor for a long time, staring at the cooling body of my friend. That was how I became acquainted with Death...
I was often wondering how he had died. He had to be bitten by other rats. But why? Did they smell a human from him? Or maybe Lopear was so different that they didn't want him to live?
In spite of all buffets that the fate had dealt him, Felix showed an unfading optimism. He was cheerful, lively and full of ideas about what he would do when he grew up. He must have believed in a good omen of his name...
We made friends. For me, who had spent all my life in the orphanage, somebody like Felix was a real revelation. It was him who made me realise that a child should have parents and the own home. I could listen for hours his stories about his mother reading him books, his father flying a kite with him, his grandparents inviting him to their hose in the country. And I began to wonder why I didn't have a normal home. Why, as far as I could remember, no one had ever read fairy-tales for ME. Why didn't I have parents?
'They must be dead' said Felix with an expert tone when I asked that question loudly for the first time 'They must have died when you were very small and that's why you don't remember them. And your relatives didn't want you and you landed here. Like I did!' this last sentence he uttered almost with pride.
I believed at once that it was the case. My parents were dead. If they didn't, would they allow me to pass my childhood in the orphanage? Such possibility didn't even enter my head. How little I still knew...
Meanwhile, new duty occurred in our live: school. We were turned six and we have been sent, together will a small group of other orphans, to the Public School for Boys. It was managed by an old mother Ulrica, German origin advocate of a rigorous, Prussian discipline. Every lesson started and ended with a prayer and we have been taught writing, reading and the basis of arithmetic.
I was a good pupil, the best in the class, and that awaked envy of many boys of the 'good families' who treated the fact, that an orphan dared to be superior to them in any respect, as a blow dealt in their dignity and pride. Soon the envy turned into antipathy and then into open hostility. And then my problems began; or I should say ours, since Felix was always on my side, ready to fight with anybody who had called me 'dirty bastard'.
It was there, in the Public School for Boys, where I understood the whole cruel meaning of that word. Bastard... Born out of wedlock... Arnie Giber explained it thoroughly to me when his band caught us one day in the corner of the school yard.
'Your mother didn't even know who your father was' he said in a tone of a friendly conversation 'I think he was a sailor. There are plenty of them in the harbour district.'
'Or maybe he is that old, blind organ-grinder that is wandering here and there with a monkey on his arm?' suggested small, squint-eyed Simon Simpleton.
'Mad Henry?' Arnie shook with laugher 'Yeah, it's possible! Look at Tommy, he has the same crooked teeth!'
'And protruding ears!' Simon caught my ear and pulled it with all strength 'Tommy!' he squeaked shrilly 'Why haven't you introduced us to your daddy?'
'He is not my father!' I screamed shaking with rage 'My parents are dead!'
Arnie's band roared with laugher, singing clamorously 'Tommy, Tommy, grind a barrel-organ'. I saw Felix clenched his fists and it would undoubtedly ended with a fight if mother Ulrica hadn't emerged from the school door, looking at us severely and significantly hitting her palm with a thin rod. Arnie and his acolytes scampered away with panic.
But doubts that had been awakened in my heart by those words didn't disappear. I began to wonder: and if Arnie was right? What did I know about my parents? Nothing. I decided to find out the truth. I mustered up my courage and in the evening I knocked at the door of the office of sister Bertha, a young nun who had charge of the orphanage's archives. She received me warmly and patiently listened to my request.
'All right, let's check it, Tommy' she said and approached a massive, wooden shelf 'Information about your parents should be here.'
From among a thick heap of documents she pulled out a thin, green folder and put in on the desk.
'Let's see...' she muttered opening the folder.
Inside there was a single sheet of yellowish paper.
'This is your birth certificate,' explained sister Bertha reading the lines of text 'Yes, as I expected...' she looked at me with a kindly sympathy 'Your mum died giving birth to you, Tommy.'
I nodded but I was still staring anticipatingly at sister Bertha's face. I didn't know the second part of the truth yet...
The nun interpreted my silence well, she moved uneasily on the chair and made a gesture as to close the folder, but noticing determination in my eyes she sighed and looked at the form. 'There is nothing written about your father here,' she said 'We don't know who he was.'
My heart sank. Sneering words of Arnie were ringing in my ears: 'Nobody wanted you, little bastard!' I couldn't believe it, it couldn't be truth...
Felix tried to comfort me.
'Listen,' he whispered after sister Agnes had switched off the light in dormitory 'It doesn't mean anything. Maybe he has died, too.'
I wanted to believe my friend's words. I knew, however, that it would be naive illusion. It was Arnie who was right.
Felix had a high temperature and violent headaches. After three days he began to cough and after a week he spat blood. He has been closed in an isolated room. He was lying in malignant fever, whining softly and not recognising anybody.
The doctor stated pneumonia. He advised to send Felix to the hospital but the nuns didn't agree. They said he would feel better here... At the same time they looked with a strange sorrow at his wet, feverish face and sister Bertha crossed herself.
I suppose I didn't fully realise the seriousness of situation. Of course, I wasn't a small child and I knew that diseases very often happened to be fatal. Scarcely a month ago three orphans died of measles. But I simply couldn't imagine that Felix would not recover. And even if the fear sprung up somewhere at the bottom of my mind, I pushed it away and switched my thoughts to the splendid visions of the future that my friend had described to me so many times.
In the morning of my birthday Felix's condition improved unexpectedly. He was still coughing and had a fever but he was quite conscious. I was allowed to visit him. He was very weak but the lustre in his eyes seemed to tell me: 'Don't worry. I will be all right.' I wanted to stay with him longer but the nuns told me I couldn't. So I spent the day solitarily but very heartened up. I was sure that before long Felix would be fine.
It was about midnight when I woke up, I don't know why, with a widely beating heart and with a strange, horrible foreboding. I looked at the empty bed of Felix and then I had the impression that the screams were reaching my ears somewhere from downstairs. I got up and silently slipped out of the hall, my teeth were chattering more with fear than with cold. Led by a terrific conviction I ran straight to the isolated room. The door was opened. Felix was struggling in convulsions, wheezing and moaning. From the corners of his mouth blood was dripping mingled with a foamy spit.
I rushed into the room and ran towards the bed. The nuns tried to turn me out but I clang to the metal bars with all my strength, staring with disbelief at the Felix's face, grey and twisted in a horrible grimace. And suddenly, as if he had felt my persistent, piercing glance, Felix opened his eyes and turned them towards me. They were dim and vacant but I knew he had recognised me. And I was sized with black despair since in one moment I understood that Felix was dying. This expression of his eyes... this silent farewell...I saw it before...
I shuddered and looked at the bed. My friend was lying motionless, his glazy, dead eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His hands were still clenched on a crumpled sheet. The nuns crossed themselves and began to whisper prayers.
I silently slipped out of the room and moved along the corridor like a sleepwaker, not even knowing where I was going. Suddenly the door of a laundry loomed in front of me and next to it a heap of dirty cloths. I slumped on the floor, buried myself in the rugs and finally I gave a loose to all my despair. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and together with them all plans and dreams were evaporating that we used to devise with Felix.
I was alone again.
Even the pranks of Arnie Giber were sliding off me like water and that made him only more furious. There wasn't a day he didn't play some nasty trick on me. And since I still seemed not to notice them, murderous twinkles were flickering in Arnie's brow eyes more and more frequently.
On afternoon of May I was coming back from the school when suddenly someone sprang at me from behind, twisted my arms and crammed a dirty sack on my head. I heard a muffled laugher and a cold voice that I knew only too well whispered to my ear.
'Wait, Tommy. Now I will read you a lesson you will remember to the end of your life.'
Several hands grabbed my arms and legs and, still gurgling, Arnie's band carried me triumphantly towards the bay. After a few minutes I heard a silent ripple of water and an acrid smell of the rotten fishes reached my nose. We were obviously somewhere near the harbour.
They threw me on the ground and somebody sat on my back, pressing my sack-covered head in the wet sand. I must have been Arnie himself since very close by I heard his voice, full of malicious satisfaction.
'Well, little bastard,' he drawled with a false sweetness 'Finally at home.'
He laughed nastily and so did the rest of his companions.
'Show Tommy his mother's bed!' called Arnie.
The hands grabbed me again and cast impetuously on something wet, slimy and stinking of fish. The band was roaring with laugher.
'Comfortably, little bastard?' squeaked Simon Simpleton 'A pile of garbage is a splendid place for such a trash like you!'
And suddenly I was overcome with rage, wild and uncontrollable. I was surprised myself. For the first time in my life I really wanted to kill. I was ready to assail Arnie and the rest and strangled them with my bare hands. I sprang to my feet but I slipped on the clammy garbage at once and fell on my back, raising another storm of laugher. I clenched my fits on the sticky grease and I cast two handfuls of it towards the voices. Judging by a roar of fury it hit Simon right in face.
'You stinker!' he screamed shrilly 'I will...'
But I have never found out what Simon had wanted to propose me because suddenly a hoarse, man's voice spoke from behind.
'What on earth is going on here ?!'
A deadly silence fell and then I heard turmoil and the whole band bolted.
'Damned cowards!' a stranger shouted after them.
I took off the sack from my head and looked curiously at the man. He was about sixty, had a straggly, grey hair and glasses with the metal rims. He was short and thin and his waxy skin resembled a yellowish parchment. It was difficult to believe that Arnie had been frightened of such a frail looking old man.
I stood up and tried to get out of the heap of garbage but again my feet slipped each in different direction and I fell on my knees with a loud smack. The man turned away and looked at me with concern.
'Be careful, boy' he said 'Wait, get hold of this.'
He rose his black walking-stick and moved its tip towards me. I caught it and finally managed to get out of the stinking grease. I felt horribly. The rage has already evaporated from me leaving only shame and humiliation. I realised I must have been looking the very picture of misery.
The stranger, however, seemed not to notice my state. His keen, green eyes were scanning my face but they expressed kindness and goodwill.
'What did young Giber wanted with you?' he asked not taking his eyes off me; I jumped at the sound of the name 'Yes, I know this raw lad,' smiled the stranger interpreting my surprise properly 'His parents visit sometimes my bookshop. But their son opens the book only when he is forced to do it.'
His eyes rested on a leather shabby bag that I had on my back all the time.
'A colleague from school?' he asked.
I nodded. I really appreciated his help but that moment I was dreaming only of one thing: to flee as fast as I could and wash out a crust of a sticky dirt. I was sure I was stinking awfully.
The stranger looked at me and nodded.
'I believe you would like to wash yourself before you come back home,' he said with sympathy and I asked myself a question whether this mysterious old man can read in mind 'My bookshop is on the embankment, five minutes walk from here. You can tidy yourself there.'
And not even waiting for my answer he went towards the harbour. For a moment I was standing undecided, wondering whether not to flee in the opposite direction. But a vision of a way back to the orphanage in that state seemed loathsome enough to make me change my mind and follow the old man.
A bookshop 'Golden Quill' didn't look impressively. It was a small room almost completely crammed with the high shelves full of books. In the air a smell of the old papers was hovering and another, strange aroma which source I couldn't place. Narrow door in the back part of the room led to a small flat of the stranger.
When I washed out fish garbage of me and changed into the cloths that the old man had taken out from a large, wooden chest, he showed my a chair near the small table on which he was just putting cups and a kettle with a boiling water.
'Sit down, boy' he smiled heartily to me and pointed at the chair once more since I was still staying in the doorway staring with amazement at two porcelain cups. 'We will have a cup of tea.'
For the first time in my life somebody invited me for the afternoon tea. I was sitting at the table bewildered but in the same time burning shame and fear were rising in my heart. What will happen if that man finds out that I am a simple boy from the orphanage? He will chuck me out for sure. I felt an unpleasant cramp in my stomach at the very thought.
But he was not going to ask me any question. Only when I was preparing to go out, muttering thanks for his help and hospitality, he looked intently at me and smiled slightly.
'I'm glad I could help you, boy,' he said in his hoarse voice 'But you didn't tell me your name.'
'Tom...' I stuttered out, blushing.
The old man nodded, not taking his piercing eyes off me.
'It's nice to meet you, Tom,' he said shaking my rigid hand 'My name is Elias Homer.'
'Welcome, Tom' he said inviting me inside 'It's difficult to resist their charm, isn't it?' he pointed at the shelves full of books.
I nodded, once more surprised at a great sagacity of the old man. He was right, it was an unfathomable variety of books that had attracted me to his shop like a magnet. Ever since I learnt reading I devoured every book that fell into my hands. And soon neither the orphanage nor the school could provide me with any new lecture. No wonder that the 'Golden Quill' became a real land of promise for me.
Soon it became a custom that I visited the small bookshop twice a week and for several hours I concealed myself between the shelves, with every read book discovering new, unknown worlds and daydreaming the fascinating adventures of the heroes.
Homer was happy about my passion and he personally looked for the lectures that I could enjoy. With the flushed cheeks I was following the fantastic voyages of Guliver, together with Robinson I was exploring, step by step, his solitary island, I was sailing on the raft with Huck Finn. Then I discovered Alexander Dumas and for half a year I was lost in the ups and downs of the musketeers and in the history of the French Revolution. I tasted a sweetness of vengeance enjoying the revenge of count Monte Christo. I read Goethe, Dostoievski, Tolstoj. And I still wanted more.
Before long Elias Homer became the closest friend of mine. Several weeks after our first meeting I confessed with a shame that I lived in the orphanage. And that noble man not only didn't turn me out but he declared that his bookshop would be always opened for me. He also said something I remembered for many years:
'Tom, it's not important whether you are a son of aristocrat or a poor orphan. It counts what you have in your head and in your heart. And what kind of human you are.'
In future I were to doubt often the truth of these words. They were manifestation of a noble idealism and that's why there was so little place for them in the real world.
Homer was more than a friend, he was a guardian, a mentor, a moral leader. In a way he was a parent to me, a parent I had never had. I could tell him about everything, about all my worries, problems and concerns. And he listened to me attentively and always managed to find the words full of courage and wisdom.
Yes, Elias Homer was an extraordinary man. He opened my eyes to the world and formed my mind. But even he couldn't foresee the future...
Homer was full of anxiety and the worst misgivings. He though that one war in a man's life was still one too many. He was observing attentively the events on the arena of international politics and every day he was more and more gloomy. But he was also a humanist and I'm sure he believed at heart, even against any hope, that a reflection would come and the world would not plunge into a sea of blood.
We were talking about all those alarming things one July night, sitting in the bookshop lit only by the light of a small oil lamp. It was sultry and stifling hot so we left the door opened. Homer sighed heavily and looked at me with his tired, sad eyes.
'The worst crime a human can commit is to take away the life of another human. And they force the whole nations to do that...'
We were sitting in silence, Homer cheerless and thoughtful while I was staring at him like at a source of wisdom. His every word was of great worth for me. I wanted be like him, I wanted to be a good, noble man...
It grew late and Homer sent me home. I bade him good-night and left the bookshop, leaving the door opened as he had asked me to do. I was already on the street but, led by a strange impulse, I turned away once more and saw a profile of the old, tired man, bent over a large book. I was looking at him for several seconds, suddenly I realised it was growing later and without further delay I moved to the orphanage.
Could I foresee that a moment after my leave a violent gust of wind, announcing the approach of a storm, would burst into the small bookshop and knock over the oil lamp standing on the table? That the lamp fell straight on a pile of the old, unique parchments that in a split second would burst into flames? That in a short time fire would spread to the shelves of books, turning the small room into a real hell?
I couldn't. I couldn't. I know I couldn't. But the memory of that terrific night haunts me till today.
I remember that I was already near the gate of the orphanage when I noticed that some people on the street were pointing intently at something in a district of the city I had just come from. I turned round and saw a red glow of the fire over the embankment. I don't know how but I was sure that the 'Golden Quill' was burning. It was the same terrible foreboding that made me run through the orphanage's corridors in the night of Felix's death. I stifled a moan of despair and dashed towards the harbour.
The bookshop was in flames which resisted men' efforts to extinguish them with some fierce and stubborn fury. I pushed through the crowd of gaping spectators, ready to run straight into the mouth of fire, but a stout woman seized my arm.
'Are you mad, child ?!' she cried terrified, clasping me stronger and stronger in response to my attempts to wrench myself free. 'What are you going to do? It's a hell!'
'Where is Homer ?!' I yelled, staring widely around 'Where is Elias Homer !!!'
The people standing close by looked unsteadily first at each other, than at me.
'Did you know him?' asked a tall man with a tone of surprise in his voice.
'Where is he ?!' I screamed with a growing despair.
The people were still looking at me without a word. And though nobody said anything I saw the truth in their eyes.
'Is he...is he dead?' I whispered in a strange voice.
The man nodded with sorrow.
'Unfortunately...' he said dryly 'They said he had been trying to save the books...'
My legs bent over me and I fell to my knees. I wasn't crying, I wasn't screaming, I was only keeping still with my vacant eyes fixed on the dancing flames. I didn't feel anything: neither despair, nor rage, nor grief. I ceased to exist...
Homer... I turned away and fixed my eyes at the smoking ashes of the bookshop. It had burnt down completely. Ruthless fire consumed a valuable collection of books and something that was priceless for me: a life of my friend.
I lied down on the sand and looked at the starry sky. I remembered the old stories about ancient gods who used to place on the firmament the mortals dear to them. Orion, Andromeda, Cassiopeia... If I had their power, three new constellations would appear on the night sky: Homer, Felix, Lopear.
'No,' I thought 'I would like to have powers that would allow me to conquer death. Then I would make all my friends live till today. To know how to stop death, that is a real attribute of divinity.'
A wind blew and the waves splashed on the shore. And only now I fully felt the whole vastness of a suffered loss. I realised that once more I had lost the only close person. And I was left alone again.
'Why does it happen to me?' I was asking myself 'Why any time I became attached to somebody I have to lose him, sooner or later. Did the fate conspire against me ?! And maybe...' a thought that had entered my feverish mind was so horrible that I shuddered 'Maybe I am the one who draw misfortunes on the others? They die through ME!
I sprang to my feet and pressed my hands to a flushed forehead. It was an explanation. I was an author of all those disasters. I was bringing death.
I KILLED THEM ALL !
I was shaking like in a fever, full of despair and hatred to myself. I was cursed! I didn't want to live any longer, I didn't want to cause a death of anybody else...
I looked once more at the burnt bookshop and moved slowly towards the bay. I reached the shore, the waves washed my feet but I didn't stop. I was walking forward with determination, deeper and deeper. Water has already reached my knees, my waist, my neck... From behind I heard a noise as if something heavy had fallen into the water but it didn't matter to me any more. I closed my eyes and take the next step...
Somebody's hand seized strongly my shoulder and pulled me back. I emerged to the surface, choking and spitting. A strange man muttered something softly and suddenly water around us wasn't water any more but a cloud of a white smoke, in the midst of which we reached the shore without any resistance from the matter.
The stranger turned me gently towards him and looked at me with a deep concern in his piercing, light-blue eyes.
'Mearlin's Beard! Tom!' he said reproachfully 'What did you want to do ?!'
