Oh my god. I have not updated in so long. So long. I have worked so hard on this chapter, that if it is anything less perfect, I think I might actually cry. It might seem short for the time it took, but I have been extremely busy, and I'm still on holiday. I won't start writing again for another few days, when I'm back home and comfortable. A lot of things are revealed in this chapter, and it is very important. Do care to over-analyze it, you might actually find out things I chose not to say aloud.

I checked my follower count, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was risen. Thank you all, for following this story! Its like you're giving me support without saying a word. Though it would be nice if you pmed me (lol) and reassured me that my story wasn't actually complete crap.

I was scared. I was so scared.

I've still got dirt on my shoes and my shirt is untucked. My hands shook violently and I sat on them. The bookshelves of the library only seemed to get larger and larger around me, closing in like predators. A hand covered my mouth, muffling the scream that came of shock. "Relax, its just me."

I break away from the grip; which was just as eager to release me. I turn to face him, breathing heavy and eyes wide. It was the boy from before, the one that had hit Mr. Andersen. He looked just as scruffy as I did, with little bits of dirt sprayed across his clothes and his pants sagging off his hips. It must have been something from that dreadful 'hippie' movement from America that Mrs. Ahlquist kept complaining about. His hair was unkept and looked like it hadn't seen shears in a good few years. His eyes were obscured by his glasses, which were taped together in the middle, just beneath his brow. He gave me a broad smile, one that easily reached the creases of his eyes.
"You were in some trouble there, weren't cha? Glad I came along." He spoke with the strangest accent I'd ever heard. It didn't suit him in the slightest.

I shook my head vigorously and back up against the wall. This boy was strange. He had the same air as father: mysterious, impatient and something else I could put a finger on. He didn't seem harsh, not like father had, but I was scared of him nonetheless. He reached forward and poked my belly. "Yer' so skinny its startin' ta' scare me."
I swatted his hand away and pouted; what right did he have to touch me? He laughed a strange laugh, one that sounded like rusted bells. It made me feel all funny. Was he a wizard, like the ones gran gran told me about in stories? "I'm Rohan. Whats yer' name?"

He kneeled down to my level and held out a hand for me to shake. I puffed my chest out and shook his hand, like I'd seen papa do so many times. "My name is Davide!" I announced, trying to sound bigger than I was. He looked at me funny, before smiling. "Thats a cool name. I'll be yer' big brother from now on, capiche?" He said, in perfect Italian. Was he from Italy too? I hadn't seen anyone else that came from home other than Papa. I nodded and smiled. Perhaps he was not so bad then.

I liked this older brother of mine.

I followed him up to his room, because he said he had grape candy. I like grape candy. I was kind of jealous of how the older kids got their own roms and I had to share mine with three other boys. He opened his door, labeled with 'Rohan' scrawled onto card, revealing a literal mess. There were clothes all over his room, sticking out from the chest of drawers, on his desk, under his bed. His bed was unmade, revealing papers thrown all underneath the covers, and more of them were all over his desk. I turn around and kick his leg. He cries out and falls over onto a pile of mess, clutching his shin. "Wha' wus that for?"
I point a finger angrily at him and put my other hand on my hip. "Being messy is bad! Big bugs are gonna crawl all over your room now!"

He stared at me incredulously for a moment, before laughing and rubbing his shin, and leaning up to pat my head. He had the kind of laugh filled with awkward snorts and chortles and tears that touched the corners of his eyes. "Who told ya' that?" He had the largest grin on his face.
"My gran gran did. She used to make me cakes and teach me my times tables and took me to the zo-" I was already starting to count things on my fingers when Rohan shoved a grape candy into my mouth. "Yeah, yeah, I get it."

He rolled his eyes and sat at his desk, pulling out a pen from his drawer and a notebook from a collapsed pile on the floor. I shut the door quietly behind me and walk up to him. He was drawing a little circle with pointy bits sticking out, stopping to write things on the side in a strange swirly foreign language I didn't understand. I take my candy out of my mouth and touch his cheek with it. He makes a strangled cat noise and falls out of his chair, sending up a flurry of paper. He sits up straight on the floor and rubs his bottom, glaring up at me. "Wha' wus that for?"
I pop the candy back into my mouth. "You're messy."
He mumbled something I couldn't hear, before getting up and going back to what he was doing without another word. I pout and hold my breath, rolling the candy under my tongue. I do this when I'm really mad. After a minute, my face starts to hurt and he still hasn't said anything.

I let my breath out and stick my tongue at him, before a kicking a random pile of clothes. Stupid mess. Why did everything have to be so messy?
I grumbled and moved over to his bed, carefully stepping over notebooks (gran gran said is was bad luck to step on books). I tossed aside the clothes and papers on his bed onto the floor. Rohan gave me a lingering side glance, but no more.

I pulled up the cover up and over the pillow, fixing the side and corners until it was as neat as gran gran had taught me to make it. I picked up some of the clothes that I threw down earlier, I put them on the bed and started folding them. The pants were straight forward enough, but I got stuck. Turning to him, I asked, "How do you old shirts?"
"Sleeves first." He waved his pen around in the air a bit as a makeshift tutorial, before going back to writing, without so much as a glance at me. I flipped the shirt over and put the sleeves in and pulled the bottom up. I folded the sides in before deciding that it looked about right. I take the pile of folded clothes and carry them over slowly to his chest of drawers, pulling out the messy clothes and putting the neat ones in. I turned around and looked at the remaining piles of mess on the floor, wincing. This would take a very long time.

I smack the back of his head with a towel. "Brother!"
"Wha' wus that for?" He turns around and gives me a glare (if looks could kill..), which is the first time hes taken his eyes off his work in the past hour. "I cleaned your room." I stand proudly in front of my masterpiece with my hands on my hips and a grin on my lips. He stares at the room with wide eyes, before turning back to me and saying softly, "Ya' didn't have ta' do that, ya' know."

I stare at him straight in the eye. "Gran gran said if you want to be friends with someone, you have to do nice things for him! And papa said mafia men have to polite!"
He looks at me with the most shocked expression on his face. I scratch my cheek. "What?"
He stares at me funny, with his eyebrows pointing in, making his pasty forehead look like creased paper. "Davide, do ya' know what 'mafiya' means?" The word sounded funny in his accent.
I shrugged and rolled my tongue against the inside of my cheeks - I wanted another candy. "I dunno."
He looked away for a moment, mumbling something I couldn't hear. Why did he look so cross? Did I do something wrong? Did I put clothes in the wrong place? Oh why did he have to label his drawers in Swedish! Reading the language was much harder than speaking it.

"Davide."

I snap out of my thoughts. "Yes?"
He gave me a smile filled with too much sweetness. "Do ya' care if I look in yer' head fur a bit?"
I shake my head and grin. "Of course not! Family don't keep secrets from each other, right?" Maybe he was one of those gypsy folk that read minds, like gran gran had told me about. Though I never expected to find one so far north.
He gave me a sad smile, one that looked to old, before lowering his hand and gently placing his finger on the space between my brows and saying something in a language I did't know.

October 31st, 1963.

Today was the first time James died. He was just over a year old.
It was a malfunction; an aftereffect of a improperly done spell.

He died two more times after that. The second time was an accident. The third: murder.

The killer was fairly obvious.

James sobbed. Tiny little hiccups with tears down his face and endless trembling. I held my brother tightly in my lap, burying my face in his unruly mop of blonde hair. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." I mumble quietly, more to myself than to him. That little boy had gone through something no human should ever have to go through. God, it made me so mad. That bastard, Feliciano, how could he do stab his own son in the back? How?
There were so many things James saw but never understood. So many things he heard but never listened to.

The way his father would occasionally stare at the wall with nothing but a grin on his face. The way he would glare daggers at Shirley, his wife, like she was Satan herself. The way he screamed and abused his family and his colleagues... A clear case of insanity.
There were things no little boy should ever have to see. I heard a knock at the door and I looked up. "Come in."
Mrs. Ahlquist came in, her stern demeanor broken only by the slight widening of her eyes. She looked at me strangely, nudging her head in the direction of James, no, Davide. 'What happened?' I pushed his head deeper into my shoulder, blocking his ears and his sobs. "Mr. Andersen tried to assault him. I barely got there in time."

Her face hardened. She walked closely up to the bed and sat down my Davide, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. The boy abruptly broke away from and starting crying Mrs. Ahlquist, curling into a little ball. Preferring to hug Mrs. Ahlquist over me? Ouch. That hurt. The woman was slightly put off by the sudden embrace, but she gently hugged him and whispered comforting words into his ears. She looked more gentle than I'd ever seen her before. Perhaps she used to have children of her own. Somehow she managed to make the boy stop crying long enough to take him downstairs for dinner.

I get up and leave my room, walking silently to the library, reflecting on what I just saw. Perhaps Mrs. Ahlquist wasn't really the horrible person everyone made her out to be. Or maybe she just had a soft spot for the quirky little child who had yet to hit his growth spurt.

Davide liked books, I think. Much more than the average seven year old, it seemed. I mutter a swear under my breath when I realize what I'm doing. Since when had I been reduced to comforting crying little boys with their problems? Last I checked, I was made of sterner stuff. If Davide he didn't have a constant shit storm of magic following his every move, I wouldn't even care to remember his name. But now... Jesus, damn, what am I supposed to do?

I got what I wanted. I know why his aura stinks of magic, I know why it seems so powerful, so similar to mine. It was a simple spell, one I'd mastered years ago. I'd perfected it, compared to the amateur imitation I'd seen just moments ago. But I can't leave him, not after I'd seen what I had.

I sigh quietly, and step into the library. It was easily the largest room in the building, with towering windows that faced the south and west sides of the estate. The bookcases were almost as tall, with ladders connected for the books that couldn't be reached normally. They were made of dark cherry wood, just as the tables that scattered across the library were. The slight smell of old dust and even older books filled my nose. I had a slight feeling of nostalgia. Libraries were so wonderful.

I walk past the tables, my fingers brushing against the cold, polished wood. Quietly, I walk into an empty aisle near the back, where I'd met James earlier. There was still a little bit of dirt on the floor, where it had fallen off of the both of us. Next to the window, a small book lay on the sill. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands. It had a red satin-y cover, with the title embroidered in with bold silver: 'The Horse and His Boy'. I haven't read it before, but the name seemed familiar. It seemed to be done by soem foreign author. I open the book, flipping through its yellowed, rough pages. I found James' bookmark rather earlier on in the book, and somehow, that made crack a smile. Seemed the boy was a slow reader.

I shut the book. Perhaps I would stay with this boy a little bit longer. Perhaps if I erased memories, I could ease his pain a little bit... No. He had a right to his own life. I would only take the rough bits; the bits he was better off not remembering. Perhaps when he was much older, he would start to remember bits of them here and there. But those memories would become mine. I would have to live with them, for however long I was forced to stay in this world. I swallow dryly. That could be anything between another ten years to another thousand.

I make him forget anyway.

Davide was asleep when I snuck into his room later that night. It was far past his bed time, and the three other weasels he shared room with were already sleeping like the dead. Wrapping myself in illusion, I walked over to his bed. The little one was curled into a ball, with the blanket wrapped tightly around himself. He was small for his age; perhaps too small. His hair was unruly and it fell over his forehead in a tousled mess, It was far too pale for someone born so far south. Looking closely enough, I could see tiny threads of orange filtering through, seen only by the moonlight. Perhaps that was just another thing he'd gained from his mother. Perhaps he was lucky to have her northern blood.

Silently, I leaned down, resting my forehead against his. The boy had a slight fever: an aftereffect of the spell I used before. Remembering all that pain in one go was not good for his health, it seemed. Illness would not do him well. Winter was coming, and he was summer-born. I whisper the spell softly into his ears. Little trickles of indigo mist float out of his open lips and into mine. A headache overcame me, and I nearly fell over. The process wasn't even close to over, and it already felt like my head was being split open with Norman war-hammer. Last time that happened to me... well, it wasn't a very pleasant experience.

I let go of him, stumbling backwards blindly. I clutched my head in pain and left the room as quickly as I could. So many thoughts filled my mind; memories I shouldn't have; memories that weren't mine. My legs took me outside, to the old comfort of the trees. I fall to my knees and throw up the remains of a non-existent supper. My throat ached and the taste of bile on my lips only made me feel all the sicker.

The wind rustled the branches above me, leaving me with a chill and a leaf in my hair. The small touch is enough to make me retch again. Acidic blood poured out of my mouth this lip, sizzling the grass it landed on and giving me a burning aftertaste. I try standing up, holding onto the rough bark of the tree so tightly it left splinters deep in my skin. My knees clanged together as I slowly tried to make my way back indoors. I looked up at the stars for a moment of comfort. There were so many of them, twinkling and shining above my head. The sky was black and cold behind them, but not as harsh as I used to think it. The moon, gray and pale with all its craters and holes, stood large and calm amongst the busy stars. I wonder how is must feel to lay my feet on it, like the American man had done just a year before.

I exhale quietly, my breath frosting in the air in front of me. I used to be scared of the sky, when I was little, so many years ago. Much after, the years after my curse, I used to think the stars would mock me. I was so full of rage back then. Now? Now the stars were my companions, the only constant of my ever-changing lives. A hope, when times were unfortunate; a prayer, when the moon turned its back and left the world in darkness. It would be a long night.

At least I hoped it would.

If you're wondering why Rohan sounds like an old fag, well, you'll find out later. It is actually devasting to remember that I have so much of this story left to write. I bet it'll take at least another year, I'm not even joking. Probably more with the rate I update at (though hopefully that will change). If you have questions about anything, please leave me a review! Whether I answer your questions or not, you will get a reply. And if you don't have any questions... Review anyway ;)