The Demons in the Abyss

A sweet Robber

The night was chilly and silent. The cool breeze of winter was flowing all through the village. These breezes take birth into the vastness of Himalayas so townfolks used call them the daughters of Himalayas. Though it was always cold in here but in the winter a single person need at least two woollen sweaters to cover his body. Dhudesar was a village sat just below the great Himalayas, protected and nurtured by Himalayas. The people of village slept in their beds with their wives and kids without a single worry as they knew the great mountains of Himalayas are there to save them from the yetis, to protect them from any kind of mishapening.

Into the darkness, a boy was hiding behind a pole just as big as a giant leg. His chest move up and down as he took heavy breaths. He was shivering with cold but his father always told him, ‘No matter what, always march forward. Always forward’. He took few heavy breaths, searched the area with his blue eyes for any humanly presence, looked at the Himalayas covered with white snow for blessings and jumped inside the building from the open window. It was his usual time and entrance into the great library. His father was a shoemaker, all he could do is to make shoes out of leather and tell the stories he heard from his father and grandfather but the kid wanted more, he believed there is more outside these walls of the village and there is more beyond these mountains of Himalayas. The only thing that could help him to kill his curiosity was the books but as his father was only a shoemaker who could feed his family for two times a day, could not lend him money to spend it on some kind of books which were much worst than a demon for him. ‘Books rotten one’s mind kid’ all he could say when the boy asked him for money to take a book on rent. So he found his own kind of solution to kill his curiosity, to sneak inside the library when darkness surrounds the village and the lazy old librarian snore like a drunk bastard.

He cleaned the dust off his woolen sweater. The library smelled as usual, the smell of old papers mixed with the smell of rat’s piss. A dim blue light spread across the hall of the library which was enough for him to read the title of the books. Few days back when few people were engaged in a serious discussion with the wise one, the boy heard the name of a book which ignited an undying curiosity in his 15 year old mind. “What was the name of the book the old guy mentioned while telling the story?” the boy whispered to himself and closed his eyes in order to search the name into the wilderness of his brain. One could clearly see the fine line of tension on his forehead and suddenly his blue eyes sparkled with shining and he murmured, “Beyond the talking trees”. Finally he remembered. He looked into the vast library. It has thousands of books stacked inside many shelves but he had drawn a map of the library inside his mind. He knew which book to find in what shelve much better than the old librarian whose hairs go gray from black while working into the library.

“so the robber is back again.” he heard a hard voice. He wasn’t scared as the voice was familiar to him.

“How do you always know that i am sneaked inside? don’t you have to sleep or something?” the boy said.

“Owls don’t sleep in nights kid.” the voice echoed into the library.

“yeah yeah! i know. so what do you do in nights, read books?” the boy said and laughed.

“Not really. But i know things much more than any author can know.” a big figure came out of a book shelf which was a home for the owl. An ordinary kid would have wetted his pants if he had seen the disproportionally large eyes in comparison to a small skull. It had a conspicuous circles of feathers around its yellow eyes which were shining in the dim blue light. The people in the village said, ‘owl is the only bird which had a binocular vision’ meaning a type of vision in which an animal having two eyes is able to perceive a single three-dimensional image of its surroundings. The owl was different as compared to other birds, it had forward facing eyes which helped it in low-light haunting. It had white feathers all over its body. It rubbed its hawk like beak on the wooden shelve and asked, “So, which book you need this time?”