The Tearsmith

A Lost Tale

Sometimes destiny is an unrecognisable path.

The institute was called Sunnycreek Home.

It stood at the end of a decrepit, dead-end road, in the forgotten outskirts of a little town in the south of the state. It housed unfortunate children like me, none of whom I ever heard call it by its real name.

Everyone called it The Grave, and it didn't take long for me to understand why: everyone who ended up there seemed condemned to a fate of decrepit dead-ends, just like the road that led to it.

I felt like I was living behind bars in The Grave.

I spent every day longing for someone to come and take me away. For someone to look me in the eyes and choose me, over all the other children. For someone to want me as I was, even though I wasn't all that much. But no one had ever chosen me. No one had ever wanted me or even noticed me. I had always been invisible.

Not like Rigel.

Unlike many of us, he hadn't lost his parents. No tragedy had befallen his family when he was little.

They had found him in front of the institute's gates in a wicker basket, with no note and no name, abandoned in the night with only the stars to watch over him like great sleeping giants. He was only a week old.

They named him Rigel after the brightest star in the constellation of Orion, which was shining that night like a diamond web spun on a bed of black velvet. With the surname Wilde, they filled the void of his identity.

For all of us at The Grave, that was where he was born. It was obvious even from his appearance that the night shone through his skin, as pale as the moon, and his black eyes stared with the steadiness of someone unafraid of the dark.

Since childhood, Rigel had been the jewel in The Grave's crown.

'The son of the stars,' the matron before Mrs Fridge had called him. She adored him so much that she taught him to play the piano. She would sit with him for hours, with a patience that never extended to the rest of us, and with note after note she transformed him into an impeccable boy who shone out against the grey walls of the institute.

Rigel seemed as good as he looked. He had perfect teeth and got good grades. The matron would sneak him candy before dinner.

He was the child everybody would have wanted.

But I knew that he wasn't really like that. I had learnt to see beneath, beneath his smiles, his pale lips, the mask of perfection he wore with everybody else.

I knew that he harboured the night within him, and that hidden in the folds of his soul was the darkness he had been plucked from.

Rigel always acted...strangely with me.

I had never been able to explain it. It was as if I had somehow done something to deserve that behaviour, his distant, silent glares. It all started one normal day, I don't even remember exactly when. He knocked into me, and I fell, grazing my knees. I brought my legs up to my chest and brushed the grass away, but when I looked up, I saw no trace of an apology on his face. He just stood there, staring at me, in the shadow of a cracked wall.

Rigel would yank at my clothes, pull my hair, untie the bows at the ends of my braids. The ribbons would flutter to his feet like dead butterflies, and through my tears I would see his lips curl into a cruel smile before he ran away.

But he never touched me.

In all those years, he never once made direct contact with my skin. Just the hems and material of my clothes, my hair...He would pull me over by my sweater, and I ended up with baggy sleeves, but never bruises. It was as if he didn't want to leave any evidence of his guilt on me. Or maybe he just found my freckles disgusting. Maybe he despised me so much that he didn't want to touch me.