The Seed Thief

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Lulu opened her eyes at the noise of forest birds. Blinking her puffy eyes, she wondered why she saw the bed’s legs instead of the ceiling and soon realized.

She’d rolled off the bed in her sleep again.

“Ahh…”

Lulu groaned as she got up. After reading all night, she couldn’t overcome the drowsiness that came over when the sky brightened at dawn. If so, she would have stayed in bed, but why had she awoken on the floor?

“Where’s my book?”

Lulu looked around for the book she’d been reading before falling asleep. But finding a book among the hundreds lying on the floor was difficult.

Staggering up, Lulu pushed away the books strewn on the floor with her feet, causing the dust to rise from the old floor.

“Cough, cough! Keuk!”

Inhaling a mouthful of dust, Lulu let out a desperate cough as though she were about die.

Then, a thud!

The ground shook from afar, racing to Lulu’s house. It was a fearful sound for anyone, but Lulu didn’t change her expression at all as she tried to calm her breath.

Soon, a dark shadow fell on the window. Lulu shouted at the giant figure that quickly covered the window.

“I’m fine! Don’t even think about coming in!”

At that moment, a boulder appeared outside the window instantly. It was a frightening sight, but Lulu wasn’t surprised. As the creature that rushed towards her was the golem she had created with magic, a stone-built humanoid.

When Lulu tripped over a stacked book a few months ago, the golem tried to enter her house after hearing a noise, smashing all the wooden stairs in the old house. Lulu had yet to repair the stairs, so she had to jump whenever she went outside. But if the golem tried to enter again, even the remaining stairs would be destroyed.

While Lulu barely calmed her cough, the golem peeped inside and shook its stony head. As if it was saying, ‘Is your room still as messy as ever?’

“I’m going to clean it up!”

Lulu yelled at the golem’s action. The golem just shrugged its shoulders.

“Hey! You!”

Lulu frowned at the golem. Shouldn’t it show utmost respect and awe toward the creator who had collected rolling rocks in the forest, giving them life?

When making the golem, she put a feather of a cheeky eagle that lived nearby as one of the ingredients, and it seemed to blend in with the golem’s personality.

“Maybe I should break it down.”

As she muttered, the golem quickly turned around and fled into the forest. Lulu let out a bitter smile at the sight. Of course, how could she do that? It was one of the few precious beings that could interact with her.

Lulu searched for her book on the floor again. After a while, a thick book fell out from the crumpled blankets stuck in the corner of the floor. The book Lulu had fallen asleep reading.

“How to make Homunculus…”

Lulu murmured the title of the book engraved with faded gold letters. It was a book she’d been rereading obsessively for the past few months.

Homunculus. A creature made of magic.

Although it was the same magical being as the golem, there was a significant difference. A golem is a ‘humanoid’ whereas a homunculus is an actual ‘human.’

It was the most advanced magic Lulu had been failing for months.

“When on earth can I succeed?”

Lulu wanted to create a homunculus. More precisely, she wanted someone to live with and talk to.

The goal was easy to accomplish, though. She could go to the village below the forest where many humans resided.

‘But…’

Lulu looked at the mirror covered in thick dust in the corner of the room. Her red hair was tangled hopelessly, and her face was barely visible in the blurred reflection.

Not just the head. Her tattered clothes were covered with burnt marks from chemical and magic experiments. And her hands calloused from digging for herbs and minerals.

Staring at her reflection, Lulu fell back onto the bed. It was pathetic, even to her.

A villager she encountered long ago screamed in terror, “It’s the forest witch!,” before running away. Even the old woman on the outskirts of the village, who occasionally interacted with her, couldn’t hide her disgust when looking at Lulu.

Whenever she met their gazes, Lulu knew. No one would stay by her side.

If she had been alone since birth, Lulu would have never known loneliness, even if people had shunned her. But Lulu knew the joy of living with others.

Thanks to the forest witch who picked her up and raised her.

* * *

“I’ll call you Lulu,” said the forest witch, her first words to Lulu.

Thus the red-haired, red-eyed child who had been abandoned in the forest got a name.

“It’s the name of a cat I used to have. He also had red fur like you.”

Lulu simply nodded. She was too young to realize that Lulu was not a name given to ordinary people. As she was just grateful to the grandma who appeared out of nowhere, giving her food and drink when she crouched down, clutching her hungry stomach.

The forest witch stroked little Lulu’s head, saying many times as if regretting.

“I wish you had come to me sooner.”

The forest witch’s time was running out. She had no desire for an heir, so she had long since stopped interacting with others.

At first, she wanted to take Lulu to the human village, but when she saw the small round face visible through the messy hair, she thought of the villagers she had seen several times and soon dismissed the idea. If she sent Lulu to the village like this, the child would be devoured by the greed of humans who valued appearance.

From that day, Lulu lived with the witch in the forest. The witch only had one year left to spare. During that time, she taught Lulu everything she could about magic.

It was a dedicated teaching. But the witch couldn’t be called a good caregiver for Lulu.

Though the forest witch provided Lulu with food, clothes, and a place to sleep, she didn’t teach Lulu what ordinary people called common sense. It was inevitable because the witch lacked human common sense and saw no value in teaching it.

Lulu had no trouble following the witch’s magic. Every time she did, the forest witch was overjoyed.

“Even if I disappear, my magic will stay with you.”

Usually, it took decades of time and effort to learn someone else’s magic. But Lulu effortlessly followed the forest witch’s magic as if tracing a circle.

Little Lulu was just happy at the praise of the forest witch, not knowing how talented she was. And so she spent all day talking to the forest witch and learning everything she was taught without complaining.

Laughter and conversation continued throughout the day in an old house full of books and objects. At night, Lulu often fell asleep listening to the legends of great mages in the forest witch’s arms.

It was a time when memories were made in Lulu’s life.

As the season started changing, the forest witch’s days numbered. She tried to prolong her time with magic, but no matter how great the witch was, she could not resist death.

Her vision became hazy, making it hard to read books, and climbing a few stairs exhausted her. Gradually, it took longer to open her eyes, and eating became a burden. The forest witch finally knew that the end had come.

She wasn’t afraid of death. Her soul would go to a new world she’d never experienced, and her body would be part of the forest she’d lived her whole life.

There was one thing that bothered her. Lulu.

The child with red eyes and hair was abandoned in the forest without a name because many people were reluctant to the bloody color, which appeared by chance.

On the last day of her breath, the forest witch held Lulu in her arms, sat in the rocking chair in front of the house, and began to sing.

The wind carried the witch’s magic song throughout the forest. Lulu embraced the forest witch while listening to the song. Though it was a small voice singing, Lulu felt like an immense record from thousands of years ago pouring in her.

Overwhelmed by the sound of the vast record, Lulu desperately clung to the forest witch.

The singing continued for a long time, becoming weaker and weaker, until the moment it stopped, the wind blew. At the same time, the forest witch’s body turned to dust and disappeared. Only the forest witch’s clothes remained in Lulu’s arms.

“Where did you go?”

Lulu hugged the clothes and called for the forest witch tearfully. But the usual answer was no longer there. After crying and hugging them for days, Lulu put on clothes that still smelled of the witch.

The sleeves were long, and the hem was a raggedy mess, but Lulu did not care. To her, it was a precious object with the most traces of the forest witch.

From that day, Lulu lived alone in the forest.

Getting food was easy. The field behind her house grew potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, eggplants, and many other vegetables within a few days by using magic.

It wasn’t just vegetables. Birds, rabbits, and fish lived in the small stream running through the forest. Lulu got food with the magic the witch taught. She’d also learned the basics of cooking and food preparation. But Lulu was still young.

Even with all her magic, she couldn’t cut potatoes into bite-sized pieces and fry them in an iron pan. Lulu’s cooking was often as simple as roasting them over a campfire.

As she ate the burnt-outside raw-inside potatoes, Lulu recalled the witch’s cooking. But none of the books the witch had left taught her how to make potatoes taste good.

“I miss you.”

Whether the potatoes were burnt or not, Lulu missed the witch. So she started reading all the magic books in the house, in case there was a spell to bring back a missing person.

Since the witch had taught letters, Lulu could read the book slowly and soon found a spell to summon souls.

After days passed, a massive magic circle surrounding the whole house was completed. Lulu stood in the middle, and then poured all her mana into it without hesitation. Suddenly, the ground shook and the direction of the wind changed. The world fell into darkness the instant the dazzling sun vanished. Lulu felt a hand brushing her hair gently.

It was the hand that had hugged her until the last moment.

However, the joy was short-lived. As soon as the light returned and the world regained stability after shaking, the familiar touch disappeared.

Lulu drew the magic circle again through her tears, but unlike before, the world did not shake. It was a long time later that Lulu found the sentence written in red at the end of the book,  ‘A magic that can only be used once.’