Corvo never knew how strange his family was. Anything can become normal with enough time, and as a boy, with no notion of what a family should be like, he had no reason to suspect. No reason to be suspicious. No reason to wonder if he wasn’t like everyone else.

His mother was a sorceress. Wasn’t everyone’s? She could change the color of her hair with a snap of her fingers and a dart of the hand. When he was hungry, she could conjure food for him from the air; when he was bored, she could fashion an army of toy soldiers for him to play with from a single block of wood. She could do anything, if the desire struck her.

That was normal. A boy’s mother was omnipotent. It had always felt right.

Sometimes, he had to admit, things felt less than moral. There had always been something vaguely unusual about her business, like the time, when he was three, that they were visited by two kind men with clubs inquiring about money:

“You would do well not to shake those sticks so near my son,” his mother said.

“Or what?” said the greasiest, stepping up toward her. He gazed at Corvo with a warm expression. “Maybe we take him back to the hall until the donation’s been made. To keep him safe.”

“Or you will be turned to ash.” She smiled down to Corvo, then back at the men.

The men smiled, too. And so did Corvo. He only stopped smiling when he had to gag and spit the taste of dust from his mouth.

The men disappeared in a puff of smoke.

That day had stick with him as odd. But it had seemed normal enough at the time.

His aunt was also a sorceress. Whose wasn’t? His mother rarely left him alone with anyone besides herself, but as he grew older, his aunt would watch after him when his mother was not around, and more and more she was not around.

His aunt loved games. She would wrestle with him on rugs before hearths or in clearings in forests. They would play with insects together, digging through detritus and finding beetles or crickets to hold and build mud castles for. She could conjure water for his moats and craft towers of dirt as tall as he was in seconds. When he turned five, she gave him a bow with felt arrows, and that was the best gift of all. They spent hours together practicing archery.

But his favorite trick was the fireworks. Whenever they were alone, he would beg her:

“Do the fireworks! Show the fireworks!”

She would laugh and say, “I can’t. Someone might see.” But she couldn’t resist him for long, and he knew it; tugging at her pants, grabbing at her sword, hugging her—he figured out quickly how to convince her to do the things he wanted her to. So she would spit crackling jets of green from her fingertips, to his laughter and cheers.

Mother never did anything fun like fireworks. But he loved her anyway.

His fathers came and went. They entered his memory in brief glimpses. Tall men, strong men, with weapons and armor. A few were kind, although their voices were deep, unfamiliar and intimidating. Others were less enthusiastic to see him. He remembered one who had been talking to his mother for hours at the table in their room. Corvo had found a silver coin hidden beneath the bed and was so excited that he’d rushed from the place he’d been told to stay, yelling for his mother to look—forgetting entirely that she wanted him to keep out of sight.

The man, bearded and in a cape, turned to glare at him. Corvo knew something was wrong immediately. He stared into the man’s dark eyes. The coin dropped from his hands.

“Is this your son?” the man said, voice like gravel beneath a hoof.

Mother stood and swooped Corvo into her arms. He was big by then, but she was strong. She stared at the man.

“He is,” she said.

“You didn’t mention a child.”

“He is not relevant to our business.”

He gave her a long look over, from her chest to her feet.

“He is. He’ll slow us down. This changes our dealings, witch.”

“You would do best to calm yourself at once,” she said.

He took a step toward her. She quickly put Corvo down and commanded him to return to the bedroom. She shut the door with a spell, and this time she held it shut.

He never saw that man again. But that night, when his mother came to fetch him, she brought him a present.

“Here, my little crow,” she said, kneeling to his level. She opened her fist to reveal a small brown mouse within. “I have brought you a pet. Are you old enough to take care of a pet?”

Corvo nodded.

“Good. You must make sure he has water to drink and crumbs to eat every day. And what would you like to name him, I wonder?”

He thought this over. “Moss.”

“Moss the Mouse? Very well. Moss. Take care not to lose him.”

He did. But he was hardly older than a toddler, and on the next long leg of their journey, when they came to a castle on a hill in the realm of Verarszag, an owl swooped silently down on them. White wings fluttered in his face; Moss the Mouse had been held outstretched in Corvo’s hand, so he could see the view, when he was snatched into a cold and vicious beak.

He never saw Moss again.

Strangely, his mother wasn’t nearly so upset as he was.

Most of his fathers lasted longer than the bearded man in the inn. They taught him how to start fires with sticks, to sharpen blades, to fasten on a suit of armor, and ride horses. But regardless of whether the man Corvo had imagined to be his new father stayed briefly or for months, whether he was cruel or kind, his mother would always take him aside, every week, and tell him, “This man is not your father. Your father is dead. You bear his name, and one day you will bear his sword.”

She said it so often that this, too, seemed normal. That anyone had a real father, a permanent father, was hard to believe.

The one thing that he knew was not quite normal was that he never had a home. He and his mother never lingered in one place for long. Sometimes his aunt came with them on their travels, or sometimes they went alone, or with a man. They stayed in mud huts and steel castles. They slept in barns and palaces. Mother always made sure he met the boys wherever they visited. He would ride with them, spar with them, and, when he knew their tongue, read and study with them. He always did well. He was a clear head taller than the other boys his age: strong, athletic, and always well-liked.

But he never had time to make friends. Soon they were on the road again.

There were places he would have liked to stay at forever. The libraries of Verarszag, or the safe and secure walls of great-grandpa’s castle in Skane. But Mother always had business, and she never left him behind, not for more than a day at a time. So it was back to the road.

And while Mother always tried to keep him out of her business, by age five, he had developed quite the talent for falling into it one way or another. It would be many years before he realized that this, too, was not quite normal for a boy.

That was the childhood of a sorceress’ son.