by Guy Antibes
Now, where were the clocks? He didn’t have one in his room. His thoughts were disturbed by a bell. Had he awakened to one? Ricky poked his head out his door and saw inmates locking their cells. He’d have to pay more attention to the ringing.
After consulting his map, Ricky walked into the main building and climbed steps to the third floor, following other inmates. The home felt more like a school than a prison as he walked in the flow of boys and the occasional girl. It felt like a school until someone shoved Ricky in the back and against a wall.
“Watch your step, newbie,” a tall pimple-faced older boy said.
Ricky looked into the dead eyes of the assailant. He nodded and cringed as he noticed the boy’s open palm began to move. Ricky’s head rocked with the slap. He watched the boy saunter down the hall, followed by three sycophants, voicing admiring words about how they put the newbie in his place.
After taking a deep breath, Ricky found the room he sought. When he took a chair in the half-filled room, he noticed a few new aches that would likely turn into bruises. Now he thought of the Home as an Academy filled with Victor Tarantas, bullies around every corner. He frowned at the thought, as the dread that had first consumed him returned.
His right hand curled into a fist. He would watch, wait, and prepare himself for whatever happened. Ricky closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He would not make it through the Home on his terms unless he kept his mind clear and his attitude cool.
A man wearing a moth-eaten black robe sauntered arrogantly into the class. He held a two-foot-long wooden rod in his hand. Ricky could guess what that was used for. He wished he had something like that to fend off the bullies. He figured that he probably knew how to use the rod better than the instructor, who nodded to a few boys and then quickly turned around when he reached the head of the class.
“We have a newbie with us. Hendrico Valian, would you stand and tell us about yourself?”
Ricky hadn’t expected to provide his own introduction. All eyes were on him as he stood up. “I’m Ricky Valian. I grew up in Tossa, and after a certain issue that wasn’t quite right with the law, I ended up here for nine months.”
The instructor stopped Ricky from sitting down by using the rod. “What are you precisely in here for?”
Ricky took a deep breath. “Murder.”
“You are here for just nine months. Was it ruled an accidental death?”
Ricky shook his head. He might as well get it all out in the open now. “A Tossan lord absconded with one of my guardians. He took her to a shantyboat and was about to kill her when I led others to the boat. The Lord threatened my guardian with a sword, but I killed him with a metal switch instead.”
The instructor’s eyes grew large. “You killed a Lord?”
Ricky nodded. “A member of the Council of Notables, Lord Taranta of Tossa.”
“I’ve heard of him,” one of the boys said. “Nasty piece of work.”
The instructor struck a desk with his rod. “I’ll have no talking out of order.” He squinted at Ricky. “Why are you only here for nine months?”
Ricky said ‘Ah…” and nodded. “The Lord attacked me, so it was self-defense. Because I used a metal switch, I am spending a school term in the Juvenile Home.”
“What is a metal switch?” the instructor said.
Ricky smiled. “Something like that rod you’re holding, except it tapers to a point and is more flexible. It’s hard to kill someone with it, but I figured out how to make it work.”
He looked at the other boys to see surprised faces. If his true story would keep a few fights from happening, letting them know an unsavory part of his past might do some good.
“That is enough!” The instructor snapped the rod on a desk. “It is past time to begin today’s lesson.”
Ricky didn’t even know what subject the instructor taught. He made sure he looked straight ahead.
“We will get back to our session. Take a book from the back and practice your reading.”
Ricky followed the boys to books stacked on a table. He grabbed one of them.
“This is a primer,” he said to himself.
“You can read?” the instructor said. “My name is Hisso; I teach basic reading and arithmetic. If you watch yourself, you just might make it through my classes.”
Ricky nodded. “Yes, sir. I can read textbooks in a number of subjects.”
“Then why were you put in this class? I teach boys who can recognize their names and a bit more.”
Ricky shook his head and then remembered to respond verbally. “I don’t know. I spent the last year as a student at Doubli Academy in Tossa.”
“I don’t want you showing off to the rest of my class. Come with me.”
Ricky followed the instructor to the front of the room and waited while the instructor scribbled something on a piece of paper.
“Give this to the Warden’s secretary.” He was about to hand it to Ricky but snatched it back. “Read what I said.”
If the instructor wanted a test, Ricky would comply. He took the note from the inspector's outstretched hand.
“Hendrico Valian says he can read textbooks. If he can, I don’t want him disrupting my class. He is to spend time reading, Master Hisso.” Ricky looked up at the instructor. “Is this sufficient?”
Master Hisso nodded. “It is. You can go now.”
Ricky bowed to the instructor. “Thank you, sir,” he said.
As he walked the hallway, he pulled out the map and found his way to a stairway and descended to the main floor. He showed his note to Warden Sarini’s secretary.
“There isn’t another class at this hour that you can attend,” she said after looking over the Home’s academic schedule. “We have a library that is seldom used. I suppose you can spend your time there.” The secretary took a card from her drawer and wrote a permission slip for the library at that hour. “We’ll make sure you are reading during this class. The library is on your map.”
Ricky looked down at the map. The library was in the basement of the main building. He descended one more flight of stairs and found a guard sleeping at a desk inside the library door. He gently shook the man awake.
“Wha?” The guard blinked his eyes.
Ricky presented him with his note. “I am to spend my first hour reading in the library. I suppose that is what this is?”
The guard nodded. “Feel free to browse around. I’m here to maintain order, and since there wasn’t anyone here…”
Ricky wondered why the man was justifying his nap to him. He looked at the dim room. “Why is it so dark?”
“The lamps are over there,” the guard said. “Supposedly whoever built the original castle had his sorcerers light the place up with magic globes.”
“Like this?” Ricky hummed and produced a globe of light. It wouldn’t last very long, but he wondered how the guard would react.
The guard let out an unintelligible sound of wonder. “Just like that, I imagine, but that was centuries ago,” the man said. “You’re a sorcerer? You look too young.”
“I came from a family of sorcerers,” Ricky said. He was an orphan, and almost everything he had learned about magic came from his one year at Doubli Academy.
The guard squinted at Ricky. “Keep your sorcery to yourself, but I’ll let you light your reading up with that. Warden Sarini isn’t wild about young sorcerers in the Home. They cause more trouble than less, but you look like an intelligent boy. Just stay out of sight of the door. I’ve been down here for days without anyone visiting, but we can’t take chances, can we?”
Ricky nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you for the history lesson.”
The guard grunted. “Go on,” he said.
The man would probably return to his slumber as soon as Ricky walked out of sight. It didn’t matter. Ricky soon walked alongside the shelves of books. A few of the shelves had seen heavier use, but most of the volumes were shrouded in dust.
He found some old history books. R
icky pulled one out and found a date nearly three hundred years past. Saganet, his guardian, would have relished reading a history that pre-dated the current dynasty and the Council of Notables.
He sat down and opened the book carefully. The printing wasn’t as precise as current books, but the paper was thick and well enough made to last so long. It took him some time to puzzle old words and phrases. They didn’t speak or write quite the same Parantian as they did now.
Ricky heard footsteps.
“You can’t hear the closing bell down here. It’s time for your next class,” the guard said. “Find something interesting?”
Ricky nodded. “Just an old book,” he said.
“There are plenty of those down here.”
“Would you mind if I spent my time down here cleaning up the books? I feel like I’m going to sneeze at any time.”
“Suit yourself. There’s a closet by my desk with rags. You’ll have to wash them out yourself, but there is a washroom close by with a water pump.”
“I’d best be on my way.”
The guard showed the way out. Ricky looked back at the lonely man and thought what a boring existence. At least if there were inmates down here, he’d have someone to talk to, but the library didn’t look like many people had used it over the years.
On his way up the stairs, he wondered about the source of the books. If they had been there for so long, there must be treasures hidden by the dust of ages.
~
Ricky hurried to his second class. He had to run to Building Four, on the north side of the Home. He walked by classrooms that were more like little gymnasiums rather than the lecture wells at the academy, but the map didn’t show the classroom as being in this building nor did his instructions name the class. Finally, he followed other students outside, emerging through doors in the center of the building. Inmates entered a large shed, and Ricky wondered what he’d be learning.
A grizzled old man with salt-and-pepper hair cut very short stood on a small platform hitting another one of those two-foot rods against his thigh while he waited for the inmates to assemble. Ricky looked around to see a large assortment of boys and girls of all ages.
“We’ll be working along the north wall this morning,” the man said. “Pick your weapon.”
Weapon, thought Ricky? He looked behind and saw the familiar implements of a gardener stacked in barrels and on some tables. Could this be a gardening class? If it was, Ricky didn’t need much training. He served as a gardener at the Academy for a few months, doing all the jobs the gardeners didn’t want to do.
The inmates turned and grabbed an implement or two and passed the man on their way out a door leading outside.
“Young Valian?” the man said to Ricky, armed with a hoe and a hand tool with a claw at one end. He expected to be weeding.
“That’s me, sir,” Ricky said.
“Do you know how to use those?”
Ricky nodded, and then remembered to say, “I do, sir. I’ve done a bit of gardening.”
The man grinned, showing a gap-toothed smile. “Good. The Warden likes inmates to keep the grounds in order. We do it an hour at a time. Work hard, and I’ll go easy on you. Follow the others.”
Ricky passed the man, who whacked Ricky firmly on the bottom, hard. The unexpected pain made him gasp, but he swallowed down the rest of the sound and moved more quickly to escape another strike. If that was easy, Ricky wondered what hard might be.
The rain from the previous day made the ground muddy in places, but underneath other plants, it produced soft soil, making plucking the weeds easy. He went to work and hummed a bit to deal with a recalcitrant weed or two, smiling at the increase in his control that he had gained last spring and summer.
A few more inmates were the objects of the head gardener’s attention. Some of them didn’t get up from the muddy ground immediately, earning another whack from the rod. No one said a word. Ricky looked around trying to find a friendly face, but there weren’t any among this crowd.
Looking back at the Home from the wall, he found that the different building styles were obvious. Ricky could see the blocky architecture of small windows and simple lines of the former castle with truncated towers at each point. He figured the towers gave archers a better vantage point to shoot invaders. The building that Ricky faced looked much newer with more conventional but plain lines. Windows were larger in the later buildings. On the other side of the grounds stood the north wall. There were no crenellations along the roof. He wondered who had obliterated the original castle wall. Perhaps it extended too far from the buildings. The current wall was thick enough to support the guard who walked along the top, minding the inmates.
Ricky laughed. The wall kept inmates in, not invaders out. It only had to be high, but the rough stone looked like it might provide some foot and handholds. Ricky walked up to the wall to pull out emerging weeds in a section and slapped the blocks.
“What are you grinning for?” the gardener said.
After slapping the wall another time, Ricky told the gardener exactly what he was thinking.
“Are you looking for a way out?”
Ricky shook his head. “I just want to serve my nine months and return to my life in Tossa,” he said. “I’d only complicate things if I tried to escape. It isn’t worth it.”
The gardener placed the rod on Ricky’s shoulder and pressed down, but not too hard. “As long as you remember that and do what you’re told, you just might survive.”
Ricky bowed his head until the man removed the rod. The gardener sought out another victim while Ricky looked around the yard. Despite all the threats, the inmates didn’t look as mistreated as he had expected, but they didn’t look happy. It wasn’t hard to pick up the aura of disappointment and depression that moved through the inmates like a creeping mist, but Ricky didn’t know what they might be like if the environment were much worse.
A bell rang loudly. Ricky raised his gaze and noticed the bells nearly hidden by the overhanging conical roof of one of the castle’s towers. He noticed the other inmates walking back towards the large shack that housed the gardening implements.
He tried to ask another inmate for directions to his third class, but the student treated him as if he were invisible. He washed his hands at one of the two pumps in the shed and hurried back into the building before pulling out his map. Ricky would have to find the destination on his own. The guards just ignored him when he inquired about the class.
The map didn’t show the classroom in the main building, but Ricky finally collared a boy about his age, but shorter.
“I’m looking for the history class,” Ricky said.
The boy, his face dirty, his hair disheveled, sneered. “Newbie, huh?” He peered at Ricky with hooded eyes. “That class was moved last week. It’s in this building, the second floor.” The boy looked up at Ricky and raised the corner of his mouth. “Detention for you,” and ran down the hall.
Ricky finally found a guard who didn’t ignore him. “Main Building, second floor, where it always is!”
The little kid had lied, and that didn’t surprise Ricky at all. By the time he found the right class, the teacher had locked the door. Not knowing what else to do, Ricky sat on the floor opposite the classroom and waited for the hour to pass. Finally, when inmates began to saunter out, Ricky walked in.
“I am sorry I’m late,” Ricky said. “The map didn’t show the class, and a student gave me the wrong instructions.” He produced his map.
“Valian?” the teacher said. “I’m Master Risticca. Sit for a moment.”
Ricky watched the man stack papers. If he didn’t hurry up, Ricky would be late for his last class. He couldn’t believe how badly his first real day at the Home was turning out. He looked at the map. “Is my next class a few doors down?”
Risticca consulted the map again and nodded. “It is. What do you know about history?”
“I studied it last year at Doubli Academy. I’m not a great student, but I learned
a bit.”
“You can read and write, though?”
Ricky nodded.
“Then take one of the books in the back and read the first four chapters by tomorrow. I can’t forgive you for not showing up for class. Take this to the Dean.”
Ricky read the note. It said he earned a demerit for not attending class. Even with the end-of-class lecture, Ricky made it to the arithmetic classroom. He looked at the head of the class and saw Master Hisso’s face. Hisso noticed him and called him up to the front of the class.
“You took arithmetic at your last school?” Hisso said.
“I did. I passed the basic course.”
Hisso snorted. “I want you to talk to the Warden. You’ll have to take another course.”
Ricky waved his demerit slip at him. “I get to see her anyway.”
Hisso shook his head. “Tough first day, huh?”
“It hasn’t gone smoothly, Master Hisso.”
“Maybe I can have you help some of the other students. I’ll mention it to the Warden. See her tomorrow morning. I may get something worked out by then. I hope you enjoyed your time at the library. It’s that or join the detention crew.”
“I’d be happy to read, Master Hisso.”
The teacher stared at Ricky, probably wondering if he had been sarcastic. He rummaged around on his desk and pulled out a printed paper.
“Take this test and then wait for the end of the class.”
The little examination took less than half the class. The rest of the inmates were learning about adding up columns of numbers.
Ricky took his exam up to the front after the other inmates had left. Hisso pulled out an answer key and quickly graded the paper.
“You only missed one.” He scanned the test again. “No sense putting you in here. I don’t know where the warden will put you. This is our only arithmetic class.” Hisso shrugged his shoulders. “That’s her problem, not mine. We might see each other again if the warden lets you help other students. Now go. Report to the warden with your demerit note first thing in the morning.”
Ricky nodded. “Yes, Master Hisso.”