It Was Like A Little Light

By CrimsonStarbird

Four – A Tragic Tale

Their house isn't big, but he's so small that it seems enormous. He must have explored the whole building a hundred times – half of those before he could even walk – and yet every time he manages to find some new secret: a loose floorboard in the upstairs bedroom; a new nook or cranny to hide away in; a dusty trinket that might have been misplaced by some ancient king or might have been slipped into the back of the dresser by his mother when he wasn't looking.

Today, he's allowed to explore the basement for the first time. The air below the trapdoor tastes of mould and mystery. His father goes in first, torch held aloft, brandishing a feather duster like an adventurer's sword, and the boy creeps along behind him, peering with nervous awe around his legs. It's full of boxes from when they moved in; they search through them together and find odd bits of piping that delight the boy as much as a hoard of gold. They flee in pretend terror from a family of spiders, charging up the steps and collapsing at the top and laughing together.

By the time they stumble back into the kitchen, the boy has forgotten all about his newfound treasures, because the walls are covered in balloons and sparkling banners and his mother hands him his favourite: a big bowl of jelly and ice cream. His eyes grow to impossible proportions. He hadn't forgotten it was his birthday – what child does? – but his parents had done an excellent job of pretending that they had.

He seizes the spoon with twice as much enthusiasm as usual – and white light flashes across the plastic. It cracks. The head of the spoon clatters to the floor.

His parents exchange a look that he doesn't notice; it's not the first time this has happened and their hope that it might be the last seems to grow more futile every day. But they say nothing, and when the boy sets down the broken spoon, picks up the bowl in both hands, raises it to his mouth, and begins to slurp the contents down, the tension vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

"That's the way, son," his father laughs, ruffling his hair.

His mother sighs, but she, too, is trying not to smile.

He loves the supermarket. He loves how big everything is, and how colourful, and how even now he only recognizes half the vegetables on display; every season seems to bring something new to the shelves. Ordinary wonders abound in a farming village. Most of all, though, he loves the way that his mother will buy him any one thing he wants if there's money left over that week, and sometimes even if there isn't. He always finds the most peculiar vegetable he can, and she always finds a way of cooking it for him – even if that means investigating which neighbour grew it and requesting family recipes.

That's what he's thinking about as he scampers down the aisle, and he's craning his neck to look at the highest shelves – he doesn't want to miss anything – when he trips and falls face-first into a stack of crates.

There's a flash of white light. Wood shatters like glass hit by a hammer, flung away from his body, and he lands unharmed on the floor, immersed by a waterfall of satsumas. The way they rain down and bounce elastic enchants him, and he doesn't realize this is wrong until he hears his mother sigh. "Oh, Gildarts, what have I told you about being careful?"

She sweeps him up in one arm and sets him on her hip, holding the basket in her other hand, and still she manages a graceful, apologetic bow to the manager dashing towards the disturbance. She's had a lot of practice. "Sir, I'm so sorry. I'll clear this up- I'll buy any that are too bruised to sell-"

"No need to worry, Mrs Clive. Kids will be kids. You carry on with your shopping now, and think no more of it." As he turns back to the mess, he mutters, "But what happened to the crates…?"

She hears, and although she does not offer an explanation, she buys far more satsumas than she needs.

There's no money left over this week.

She doesn't hold his hand on the way back home, either.

When they're shopping in town, the other villagers have started to avoid them. Old family friends pretend not to notice them; they cross over to the other side of the street and disappear into the shops. Those unfortunate enough to make eye-contact quickly find excuses to leave any conversation which comes of it. His mother invites the Mayor and his family for dinner every time she runs into him, but he's never once accepted. Not for as long as her son can remember, at least.

His mother thinks he hasn't noticed this, but he has. He's noticed because it's the same way that the other boys treat him. He never gets to play with them any more, because everyone knows he breaks things. It doesn't matter that cheap toy trucks and foam swords don't survive more than a single round of make-believe adventuring even when he's not there; it's all his fault and everyone agrees. He's not invited, and every time he happens across them, they always seem to be packing up and going home. Sorry, we can play tomorrow, they say, but tomorrow hasn't come yet.

He'd gone after them, once, and found that they hadn't really gone home – they were all playing together in the park. Ever since that time the big kid pushed the roundabout too quickly and he'd been scared and screamed to get off and the roundabout had spontaneously broken, he'd been banned from the park, and the others were eager to remind him of that. He hadn't wanted to ruin the swings and the slides for everyone else, so he'd gone away again.

The boys always play in the park now. They're there even when they're just racing or playing ball; things they could do in the streets or the fields if they wanted to. There's some part of him that understands that the old lady who hurries across the road when his mother calls to her is simply going to race her toy cars within the boundaries of the park.

He knows it's because of him, too. He's the one they edge away from; the one they warn to stay away from their children. He's the one the Mayor glares at as he informs them in words surely too polite to be a threat that there's no place for magic in the village. He's the one his mother is talking about when she insists that it's just a phase and he'll grow out of it and yes, they'll be stricter on him if that's what it takes, because they can't possibly leave, sir, they've lived here for their whole lives and it's not a curse and they haven't done anything wrong and they can fix this- fix him-

He is always sure to apologize. His mother thinks he doesn't know what he's apologizing for, and it only makes her angrier, but it's the right thing to do, so he does it anyway.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Clive, but your son may not come into the supermarket."

"He won't touch anything, I swear-"

"I want to believe you, Mrs Clive, I really do, but three incidents in one month suggest otherwise! You're welcome to come in, but your boy has to stay outside."

There's a post where they tether pet dogs while their owners are shopping, and that's where she makes him sit, his wrist tied loosely to the post so that he can't wander off. There's a dog already there. It's a little brown one, with floppy ears even larger than its tail, and he sits there and pets it and flaps its ears and strokes its nose and rubs its tummy, and that's much better than shopping, since he never gets to pick any new foods to try any more.

The boys come by, the ones who won't play with him, and when they see him tied to the post they jeer and call him a dog. He doesn't understand why they're laughing. Dogs are great. He'd love to be a dog. Maybe they're jealous.

It's what they call his mother because of him that he doesn't like. The post shatters at this, and the dog he's petting wriggles out of his tightening grip and flees the instant its lead disintegrates. Still, he doesn't get up, because ever since he broke the leg of a boy eight years older without knowing how – without meaning to – and cried over it for three days, he's been determined not to get into any more fights. He doesn't want to hurt anyone. So he sits there, poking at little rocks in the earth and watching them crumble into dust, until the boys get bored of mocking him and his family and move on.

It doesn't matter. It's nothing to be upset about. They always go away if he waits long enough.

Besides, he knows his mother is an adult, and adults are sensible. She won't be upset by little things like name-calling.

The sound of shattering crockery has become commonplace around the house. So too has the cause, if the way his mother shouts his name before she's even turned round – before the shards of blue and white china have so much as settled around his feet – is any indication.

"Gildarts-" she begins, and when she sees those tell-tale fragments, the signature colours of an upmarket manufacturer clashing against the threadbare carpet as if ashamed to be seen with it, her voice rises to a shriek. "You broke the china! You stupid boy! How many times must I tell you that you're only allowed to use the paper cups before you get it into your head-?"

"I was getting it for Uncle Robin!" the boy protests. "I'm sorry, I just thought he'd like… because he gave them to us…"

"It's just a cup, Sylvie," Robin interjects, soothingly; he would have picked up the dustpan and brush himself if the boy hadn't snatched it out from beneath his fingertips and zipped straight back to the damage. "Accidents happen-"

"GET OUT!" she shrieks to the boy, and he drops the brush and runs to his room. He scrambles up the stairs with familiar ease; throws himself not onto his bed but to the floor in the very centre of the room, as far away from everything as possible. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them and wishes that the light still twitching around his hands will disappear, just like his mother wants.

As the bedroom door swings shut, he hears his uncle trying to convince his mother that kids will be kids, and she shrieks again, "No kid is like this! Only mine! What did I ever do to deserve this-?"

His father crouches down in front of him. He used to do this when they were sharing secrets, or preparing for a courageous expedition into the attic or the garden shed, but there's none of that conspiratorial familiarity in his voice now. There hasn't been for a while.

He says, "The Mayor is coming over for a very serious conversation today, Gildarts. You're going to be on your best behaviour. Do you know what that means?"

The boy gives a determined nod, counting the points off on his fingers as he recites them. "It means I'm going to sit in the corner, not speak unless spoken to, and absolutely not touch anything."

"No, Gildarts, your best behaviour."

"Oh! I'm going to be in the basement!"

"That's right. And you're going to stay there and not make a sound until I come and let you out."

"Okay!" he chirrups. And it is okay. He likes the basement. He really does. It's full of boxes he can use to build forts with, and sometimes, if he's lucky, he can find spiders as big as his hand hiding in the bottom of them.

If he's really lucky, his father even might remember to give him a torch this time.

He watches through a crack in the door as his father tosses an envelope down on the table. "Another letter from your brother."

His mother's response comes without consideration, without energy, just as it always does. "Ignore it."

"This is the third he's sent in a fortnight. You have to write back. The last thing we want is for him to just turn up again-"

"What can I tell him?"

"That… we've got it under control. It's getting better but it's taking time, and we can't travel down to see him right now, since we all need to be here to help with the… lessons."

"What if he sees it as an invitation to come to us?"

"We'll say-"

That's when he pushes the door open and bounds into the room, forgetting, in his eagerness, that he shouldn't have been eavesdropping. "Tell him to come and visit!" he suggests, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I miss Uncle Robin's visits! It feels like I haven't seen him in ages!"

"We could see him all the time if not for you!" his mother shrieks, getting to her feet so quickly that her chair falls over backwards. The boy tries to steady it for her. He doesn't want to let it hit the ground and break, because he knows how much his parents hate things breaking. He's quick enough to reach it and he knows his parents aren't, and even though they're both shouting at him to stop, he wants to help so he tries anyway and this time it's going to be fine – but it isn't fine, and the chair becomes cubes of plywood in his hand.

"SEE?" she bellows. "We could have been a normal family! But you break everything! YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to – I'm trying to make it stop!"

"TRY HARDER!" She seizes a plate from the table and throws it. It hits the wall several feet away from him and shatters, and he stares at it in shock. It's the first plate that he hasn't broken himself, but that doesn't matter, because it's as much his fault as all the ones before and he doesn't need to hear her words to know it.

Not that that stops her from shouting them. "All the other children in the village are normal! All of them! And then there's you! Why is my child the only one who's broken?"

"I don't know- I'm sorry-"

"We were happy before you came along! WE WERE HAPPY!"

His father watches and says nothing. He doesn't stop her as she reaches for a second plate. With bloodshot eyes and shaking hands her aim should be far worse than before, yet this time, the grid of white lines that materializes around his body and slices through the plate like wire-thin lasers is the only thing that saves him from harm.

Shards sink into the door, but he's already running. He always runs when things get this bad; when it's not just stray sparks but horrible, persistent, hateful light blazing around his hands. He goes straight to the basement. There's nothing here to destroy. All the boxes were shredded long ago; the spiders have learnt to flee at the sound of his footsteps. Surrounded by dust and damp and mould, he stares at the rippling patterns of that seething light upon the walls, and he whispers, "Why am I so broken?"

Through the battered basement door, he can hear his mother sobbing.

It's all his fault.

That's why he cries.

It happens all the time, now. Sometimes she throws things: crockery, beer bottles, the rocks and the debris left in the wake of his magic. Sometimes it's a chair leg or a broom. Sometimes there are no weapons to hand, and she slaps him or kicks him or pushes him, stopping only when her hands are dripping blood from hundreds of tiny crisscrossed cuts.

She calls him a monster. She calls him a devil-child. She calls him the reason why she has no life, no money, no friends. She calls him the one who ruined her happy marriage; her promised future. She never did anything but care for him and this is what she gets in return.

She says she tried being patient with him, and it only got worse. She says she has no choice but to take direct action. She'll teach him what happens if he keeps refusing to stop his power. She'll beat that demon out of him. Then he'll be a good child; a normal child; the child she should have had; the child she deserved. It doesn't matter if it takes force, because she'll have her life back.

She hits him every time the two of them are alone in the house. That's most of the time, now. His father leaves early and returns late – too late for his job to fully explain. He doesn't want anything to do with his son. She hits him for that, too.

And that's okay, because everything she says is the truth. It's all his fault. He causes problems for everyone. He hates his power, and he hates that he can't stop it. He hates himself.

"Please, stop," he whimpers. "Please. Stop it."

But it's not her he pleads with. It's the light crawling over his hands, the light which never goes away any more, and he begs it not to hurt her even as she is hurting him.

"This is our chance," his mother says, wringing her scarred and wasted hands. "New neighbours. People who don't know about him. People who I can talk to normally- have a normal relationship with-"

She sounds quite mad, and he doesn't really understand, but he's resolved to be on his best behaviour for their guest regardless; to keep the light wrapped like barbed wire around his fingers firmly under control. It lasts until the doorbell rings and his father drags him from the kitchen. Then, he can't stop his power from lashing out, from cutting deep and drawing blood, even as he's shoved towards the stairs.

"Up," hisses his father. "To your room. Make a sound, and you won't eat for a week."

A terrified nod, and then he's in his bedroom and he hears the key clicking in the lock. He's up here because yesterday the basement finally surrendered to the unintentional beating it had taken from its prisoner over time, and half the ceiling collapsed. His parents dragged a tarpaulin across the hole in the living room floor; got their cover story about home renovations straight. It was only afterwards that they ventured down the stairs to see if his power had saved his life as well as damaging their home.

With that no longer usable, he's once again in his old bedroom. There's nothing here but the sheets he's been using to sleep in upon the floor, and some old bits of pipe whose purpose he can no longer remember. He curls up into a ball, watching the sparks from his feet eat slowly away at the bedsheet, and because there's nothing else to do, he listens.

"…afternoon! I'm Liz, your new neighbour! Oh, and this is Maxi; the girls are out exploring the village and I couldn't just leave him on his own in a new house. Don't worry, he's fully house-trained…"

He pushes the singed sheet away half-heartedly, but when cracks begin to appear in the floor instead, he pulls it back towards him, wrapping it around himself and feeling utterly miserable.

"…couldn't believe how cheap this place was! Such a great location! The previous owners seemed so desperate to sell; we couldn't believe our luck! I was terrified it was going to be haunted, or that the neighbours were dreadful or something, but you two are lovely and I haven't met any ghosts yet!"

His father laughs nervously; his mother doesn't manage anything at all. That's when he stops listening to their conversation, though, because he can hear something scrabbling at the far side of his door. And panting. And growling a canine growl.

He scrambles to his feet and presses his eye to the keyhole. There's a dog outside the door. A little one, with droopy chocolate ears and a white belly. It's sniffing at the base of the door, and when he drops back down to the ground, he can see its cute nose blocking out the light. He wants to open the door and cuddle it so badly. There's nothing stopping him – his power has already broken the lock through that one brief contact. But he did promise he would stay here, and that he wouldn't make a sound…

The animal loses interest in the closed door and wanders away. It's probably for the best, he knows that, but-

"No, no, no!" he whispers, pushing open the door. He stays low to the ground, creeping along on all fours, and he scoops up the strange dog before it can nose open the door at the end of the corridor. "That's mummy and daddy's room! You can't go in there! I'm not allowed in there, so you're definitely not allowed!"

The dog wriggles in his arms and licks his nose. He beams at it – then seems to remember where he is all at once. He shuffles back down the corridor, gently shooing the dog along ahead of him. "You can come in my room, with me," he assures it. "What are you doing here, anyway? Did you wander into the house? Are you on your own? Oh, have you been abandoned? That's okay! You can come and live here with me!"

The dog yelps in agreement, and he freezes, glancing towards the stairs. There's no pause in the conversation from below, however, and he thinks they might have got away with it. He's about to carry on when the words he overhears give him pause.

"…Elise is twelve, and Lottie is nine. How about you? Got any kids?"

"No," says his mother. "It's just the two of us here."

"Oh, right! Sorry, it's just that I saw the toys on the windowsill and thought you must have had a little boy-"

"No, they're my nephew's. He's always leaving his things here-"

Another animal yelp. Louder, this time. Hurt. He glances down to find that he's gripping his canine friend far too tightly – and worse, far worse, there are lines of light spreading across its fur.

"I'm sorry!" he gasps, pushing the dog out of his arms and stumbling backwards. "I didn't mean to… I'm really sorry…" At its black and baleful look, he sighs. "I don't think I can adopt you after all. I'll just end up hurting you. I think it would be better if you just wandered back to wherever you came from… you don't want to be around me. No, go on."

Vainly, he shoos the dog towards the stairs. After a disinterested glance, it proceeds to ignore both him and the stairs in favour of the forbidden temptation that is his parents' bedroom.

"No, you really mustn't!" he whispers. "If you go in there you'll probably break something and they really don't like it when that happens… I mean it!"

As the dog nudges the door open, he leaps forwards, grabbing it before it can go any further. It flinches and snaps at him – and that's when he loses his balance. He reaches in slow-motion for the banister, but white light flashes and it breaks off in his hand. He's falling now, with the terrified dog held close to his chest; tumbling head over heels down stairs which explode when he hits them and shake what remains of the house to its foundations-

He lands flat on his back. He's unharmed; the same can't be said for the stairs, which will never be used again. He doesn't care about himself or the house, though – he only cares about the dog, which is standing on his chest, yapping madly in time to its frantic metronome of a tail. "You're alright!" he beams at it.

There are footsteps in the settling dust. Tilting his head awkwardly, he can see three figures approaching. One is in a state of terrified disbelief; that's an expression he has seen remarkably often in his short life. The other two look apoplectic. He's seen that often too. Perhaps he's so accustomed to it that he doesn't pay it as much heed as he should.

"Mummy, look! I found a dog! I think he might have been abandoned – can we keep him? Please?"

She's staring at him. Her mouth forms silent words, and he doesn't think any of them are 'yes'.

"Oh!" he exclaims, rolling over and sitting up to address the woman he doesn't recognize, the dog lolling contentedly in his lap. "Is this your dog? I'm so sorry! He was wandering round on his own so I just assumed he had no owner! You can have him back if he's yours!"

"What… what the hell is he?" she breathes.

He blinks. "A dog. Isn't he?"

"I TOLD YOU TO STAY UPSTAIRS!" his mother howls. "WHY CAN'T YOU DO ONE THING RIGHT? ONE THING! WHY DO YOU HAVE TO RUIN EVERYTHING?"

"I only wanted to stop him from- I'm sorry- I didn't mean to ruin anything-"

It's the thousandth time he's said those words, and he means them just as much as he did the first time, but they have become less and less meaningful to the listener with every iteration, and in the frustration and the terror and the madness of the moment, it all becomes too much. She kicks him viciously in the side. Their guest cries out, and so does he.

Maybe it's the pain, or maybe it's the shock, but any control he might have had over the white light snaps in that moment. It streaks out from him, that blind devastation, and it will level buildings and lash out at passers-by but the closest thing is always the first target, and the closest thing to him right now is the little dog sat in his lap- the one he thought he'd managed to protect-

There's blood running down his front, dripping from his hands. He screams and screams and screams, but it can't change what has happened; what he's done. He doesn't want to look. He doesn't want to think. And the magic that has brought him to this precipice finally grants his wish, and the world dissolves into white silence.

After that, he remembers very little.

There's a building, and it's so unlike anything in the village that he doesn't know if it's real or just another nightmare. Someone has stolen the crescent moon from the sky and imprisoned it within iron scaffolding, and it's populated by men who wear cloth masks, perhaps because they have the faces of demons. "You have to take him off our hands!" a voice is screaming. "It's your job! IT'S WHAT YOU'RE HERE FOR!" But the demons slam the door in their faces. It closes with a hiss of pistons and a near-inaudible click, but it's a slam all the same.

The demons give them sedatives to use on him, though – one small mercy offered to two of their own – and after that, his memories are even more disjointed. Uncle Robin is there, and he cries out for him because Uncle Robin has always been kinder than anyone else, but the world is tugged away again before any response comes. It returns just long enough for him to see the ceiling collapsing and the screams and the blood as the two people who raised him are crushed in front of his eyes, his most lucid moment the one he wanted to see the least. It's an accident, but he's too far gone to accept that; far too far gone.

The night is dark, now. Too dark for him to make out anything except a glowing barrier that he can't destroy. It's mocking him, too little too late, and it only brings back the memories and the pain and the white until he succumbs to it again. It's still there when he returns to this world. The colour of the sky is wrong – through the barrier, everything is gold – but he is seeing more clearly than he has in a while. The strangers do not look like demons this time, but perhaps they ought to, because they are just as cruel. They throw him onto the island and then they are gone.

He's alone. He's been alone before, but never like this. Never with more than a door and a wall between him and his family. Never without hope.

But he's not alone, is he?

There's someone else upon this lonely island. He's strange, and he's quiet, and he's more than a little intimidating, but he never yells, even when things are destroyed. When there are problems, he doesn't get angry about them – he tries to come up with ways around them. He seems to understand that there's no way to make the magic stop, and he treats it as an issue for them to tackle together, rather than a problem that is entirely his fault.

Most importantly, though, he never pushes him away. Not when he's busy, not when he's tired, and not even when the magic is going out of control and there's danger everywhere. He is kind. Being with him feels safe, like his house used to feel in a time almost forgotten.

Yesterday, he would have said with conviction that he was going to be alone forever, isolated by a power that would hurt and kill everyone who came close to him. He still doesn't know if his dangerous magic will ever be fixed, but for the first time in as long as he can remember, he has hope that it might.

He met a man who understands, and sometimes that makes all the difference.