The Roofrunners

Chapter 1

I'm invisible. Not literally, but I might as well be. No one has ever seen me. Well, except for the Stairman, but he doesn't count. He's not a stranger. 

I live in a mill, but i call it my Castle. It's the biggest place we've ever stayed in and i think it's the best, even though some of the windows are broken and the wood at the first floor is so rotten you can't walk in it. You have to keep real close to the walls, and have good jumping instincts, or else if you fall through, you'll break your neck. At least that's what the Stairman told me.

I live in the mill with my little sister Robyn, who's six, I think. She's really tiny like me, and has these great blue eyes that are ever so adorable, and masses and masses of flowing honey hair, and a real cute button nose. I'm her biological sister and according to my calculations, I must be fourteen. I have the same blue eyes and the same honey hair, but my eyes are always droopy, and my hair is a nest. Whoever my mother was must've given my sister the good genes.

Me and Robyn get along quite well. I mean we should, considering i grew her up. Robyn's first and only home has been the Castle. And she loves it as much as i do. I've tried my best to make it look like a real home, like the one I used to live in. Only that was an orphanage.

 I mean most our windows have curtains that i nicked from someones bin, and when i got to the Castle I washed them real good. We've got beds that Stairman built for us from old crates,and on top I put real mattresses on top that he  found for us. I got some lamps from the clearance shop down by the river, and the owner gave me a life supply of candles  and matches to go with it. She thinks I'm a bum and that Stairman is my dad, but she doesn't know that I live in the Castle, which is far better than any home she  lives in. 

We also have a kitchen with a real sink with pipes that Stairman connected to the river, and it even has hot water 'cos the mill has a water powered heater. We have plates that I got for next to nothing from the clearance shop, and we get our food from our vegetable patch in our Castle garden. Stairman gave us seeds to grow tomatoes and carrots and potatoes and all sorts of things. We even get treats like hot cross buns and bread from the bakery bins, and when no one's looking, I sometimes steal bags of flour from their doorstep to make my own. Stairman taught me to make bread. I make the smooth dough with water from the creek and sugar and yeast from the bakery bins, and then I cook it in an old metal drum from the mill's flour house  and put it over a garden fire, and let me tell you its the best bread I've ever had, even better than the orphanages. 

Even Robyn gets involved. She's real  small and real skinny, and she easily hides in the shadows, so she quickly steals scraps and money from people, and no one ever notices her. We keep the money in an old piggy bank we found, and Stairman buys stuff like ribbons and dresses and wooden toys for Robyn, "so she lives like every other child" according to Stairman. The rest of the money goes for "emergencies", just in case we move, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

Me and Robyn also have a cat. I named her Lady, because when I first found her in the mill, I thought she looked like a little princess, with her elegant white fur and crystal blue eyes. She even looks like she's wearing gloves, 'cos she has these midnight black paws, so I nicknamed her Lady Moon. Lady is the first friend I ever had, even before Stairman. She always catches the mice before they nibble our food, and she protects me from the spiders that creep and crawl all over the place.

Today I'm feeding  Lady fish that I catch from the river. It's real easy, even Robyn can do it. All you do is get a large stick, preferably smaller than you though. You gotta choose a good one, that's sturdy and not rotten,but not fresh either, else it'll break. Next you grab a knife, any knife but its gotta be sharp, real sharp so it can easily cut through the wood. You shave off the wood, and keep shaving 'till you've got a nice, real sharp point, and then the magic; you hold the point over a hot fire until all the moisture evaporates (learnt that from Stairman) and then you've got a real hard, sturdy spear.

I go to the river in our garden and take a few worms with me that Robyn finds, and I  gently place them in the shallow part of the river. I then wait on the bank of the river and make myself small so the fish can't see me. I wait  until a fish appears, tempted by the juicy bait I've placed for them. Then BHAM! out of nowhere I stab my spear into the fish, and its killed instantly by an accurate blow to the brain, and I repeat this process until I've caught until I've got about six fish, enough to feed Lady, me, Robyn and Stairman.

I cook 'em on the garden fire and season them with salt stolen from the bakery and pepper, coriander and chilli flakes that i grew myself. Finally I squeeze fresh lemon juice from the lemon tree growing in our garden. They look and smell amazing and I cant wait to eat them.