Jim Morgan and the King of Thieves

by James Matlack Raney

  But of his father, the memory was distorted, Lord Lindsay sitting at his desk in the study, his whole body taut, face slicked with sweat, holding out the box to James, but James refused to touch it.

  “My son,” James’s father strained to say the words. “Keep it safe!”

  The visions played over and over in James’s mind until finally he realized he had stopped walking. He was in another clearing, but this one lit by a roaring fire, the salty-sweet smell of cooking meat filling the air. Many more men and women of the same dark hair and skin as the wolf hunter sat about the fires. They wore bright silks of red and blue, and they sang songs in words James had never heard, and danced dances that were not of this land.

  “Oh …” James said aloud, “Gypsies. How nice.” Then he collapsed and all went dark.

  EIGHT

  ames woke with a start in the dark, kicking about wildly until he heard the creak and groan of wooden wheels on a bumpy road and felt the rough wooden floor tilting and jostling beneath him. A light rain pattered the canvas above James’s head and everything about him smelled deeply of steamed cabbage. He was in the back of a covered gypsy wagon.

  James shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He had been dreaming he was back in his father’s study, and in the nightmare, his father had been reaching out to him, trying to tell him something important, something about a treasure and the letter in his little box. But Aunt Margarita and the horrible man with ink-black hair were suddenly chasing him, all the while Hudson was shouting, “Run, Jim! Run!”

  Though James was now awake, the dream still haunted his mind, and his feet still throbbed from the night before. Looking down, James found his shoes removed and his feet wrapped in cloth. He pulled back on one of the bandages, but the blisters and sores were freshly scabbed and they burned like fire when he tried to remove the cloth. Tears of pain rose up behind James’s eyes. To keep from crying, he forced himself to look around and focus on where he was and what he should do next.

  James’s eyes slowly adjusted to darkness beneath the wagon cover, revealing all manner of bizarre artifacts and seemingly worthless junk piled about him: heaps of rags and bundles of sticks beside skeins of silk, broken lanterns and rounds of candle wax, strange stringed instruments and pipes, tambourines and drums, and, hanging to the side, even a monkey in a cage. James inched closer to the monkey, who appeared to be enjoying a small nap on his perch. James tapped on the side of the cage.

  “Hello little monkey,” he whispered. “I imagine you do some tricks or something.” He tapped a little harder, but the monkey was sleeping like a rock. James felt he deserved a little entertainment in light of all the horrors he’d been through, and in a jolt of frustration, he slapped the cage and barked “Wake up!”

  The monkey flew awake, immediately launching itself against the side of the cage with a screeching howl, clawing and biting at James’s fingertips. James cried out in surprise, falling back against the side of the wagon into the pile of rags and sticks with a clatter. Only, the sticks weren’t sticks at all. They were bones, and the rags were the skins of wolves, their yellow-white skulls staring into James’s face with empty eye sockets. James screamed again, scrambling to the middle of the wagon floor, the screeching monkey on one side and the pile of bones and skins on the other.

  A slow cackle, dry as sand, rattled from the front of the wagon. James sucked in a startled breath. The front of the wagon was darker than even where he sat, and he saw no shape or form in the shadows. “Who’s there?” James whimpered. “Show yourself!”

  “I vas here the entire time, young sir,” said the dry, laughing voice. “’Twas not I who failed to show myself, but you who failed to see me.”

  “I didn’t fail anything!” James pouted. “You were spying on me!”

  “I vas vatching you, young sir,” the voice said again. “As I vas all night.”

  James looked back down at his bandaged feet. “You did this?” he asked.

  “I did.”

  James peered into the darkness. He could now barely discern the outline of the figure hunkered in the corner. “I still can hardly see you.”

  “So be it,” the voice said with a sigh, and the sound of a match striking against the wooden floor accompanied a bright orange flame, illuminating the face of an ancient crone. She looked as old as the mountains, her nose large and hooked like a sharp cliff, and her skin dark and craggy from a life lived in the open air. A few wild and brittle gray hairs poked out from beneath the edges of an old, faded red scarf tied about her head. The skin on her long fingers and frail arms clung directly to her old bones. She laughed in her gravelly voice again. “Have you never before seen an old voman, young sir?”

  “Of course I have!” James said indignantly, trying to hide the shock on his face.

  “How your feet feel?”

  “They hurt!” James snapped. “How do you think they feel? Your friend last night, a right brute he was by the way, tromped me through the forest like a bloodhound with not one rest or stop. And that was after he dropped me from his wolf trap nearly twenty feet in the air right on my head! I’m lucky I didn’t break my neck!”

  The old woman said nothing, only staring silently at James for a long moment. James sniffed. If she were expecting any thanks from him, she would find herself waiting for a long time. Saving his life was the least any self-respecting person could have done, and she had done a pitiful job on his feet, he thought unhappily.

  “You dream last night?” the old woman said, changing the subject.

  “No,” James lied. The old gypsy laughed.

  “You are a liar, for I heard your dreams. You call for father. He gave to you a secret, yes? A secret in a box? You would know the secret, but the voman chased you avay before you learn, the voman, and the cold man vith the hair like a crow’s wings.”

  “I…I said all that aloud?” James stared at the old crone with wide eyes, for that had truly been what he had seen in his dream.

  “Not all…I heard your dreams. I heard them, and I saw them.” The woman smiled a crooked smile and pulled something from behind the folds of her wrinkled and tattered dress. She held the spherical glass on the tips of her claw-like fingers, glimmering in the candlelight, casting rainbow droplets on the canvas, on the floor, on James’s face, and in his eyes.

  “Is that…is that a crystal ball?” James asked, beholding its perfectly clear surface. He had heard the maids and the groundskeepers talk about such things before, but Aunt Margarita had always told them to stop speaking about such rubbish. “Does it show you the future?”

  “It shows me…things,” the gypsy said, waving her hand over the ball. “Some things vithin, some vithout, some that have come and gone, and some that no man has yet known.”

  “There’s no such thing as magic,” James said as defiantly as possible, but his eyes were fixed on the glass orb.

  The gypsy cackled again, this time as loudly and gleefully as if James had just told a dirty joke. “This comes from the boy who did not see an old voman right in front of his own face? There are many hidden things in this vorld - treasures that none but those with free hearts might find. Your father knew this vell.”

  “My father? How do you know about my father?”

  “From your dreams, young sir,” she said, and her voice trailed into a whisper and then spoke in words that James had never heard. The clear surface of the crystal ball grew cloudy, and light flashed from within like lightning in a storm.

  “What are you doing?” James demanded, suddenly quite as frightened of the old woman as he had been of the dark-haired man.

  “Silence!” the old woman commanded, her eyes lost in the glow of the crystal ball. James wanted to say something smart to the old hag just then, but the aura emitting from the crystal ball lit the entire wagon with pulsating blue light, and it was all James could do to keep from turning his back and covering his head in fear.

  “The first steps of a journey lie before you now, Son of Earth and Son of Se
a!” the gypsy rasped in a far-away voice. Her eyes sparkled with the blue light of the crystal ball. “The treasure you must find – but the vay is fraught with peril and death! To have any hope of unlocking the treasure, you must first unlock your heart. The chains are heavy and they are strong. But this you must do and fail not!”

  “Son of who?” James asked. “Have you gone completely mad?”

  “Son of Earth and Son of Sea, the treasure you must seek! For more than you know hinges upon the treasure’s fate!” the gypsy cried out in a loud voice that turned James’s insides to prickly crawlers. “Bevare the others that seek it and hold fast to those that come to your aid in the darkest hours…for the hope of your journey is balanced as a feather on its point!”

  With those words the orb’s light went dark, and the old gypsy slumped against the side of wagon, as though her vision had sapped the last of her frail strength.

  James sat in silence. The wagon fell into an even deeper black, the candle that had seemed so bright a moment before was now dim compared to the brilliant blue that had been but was now gone. Son of Earth and Sea? Who was that? And what was all that about heavy chains and his heart? As far as James Morgan was concerned there was not one thing wrong with his heart at all – it was everyone else who could use a point in the right direction.

  “Would you mind going over all of that again?” James finally asked. “Or at least the important part? Do you see what exactly the treasure is and how I might find it?”

  The old gypsy crone said nothing, but sat as still as though fast asleep. “Hey!” James shouted, but still the old woman did not stir. “I’m talking to you! You can’t just ignore me like that now! I have questions for you! Look, do you know who I am?”

  The crone’s eyes flew open, their furious rage sending James back against the wall of the wagon, his arms thrown up over his face, as though they could protect him from a Gypsy witch’s magic. “I know who you are meant to be!” she shrieked, pointing a long, bony finger at James’s face. “But you are not yet vorthy! You do not deserve the secret you have been given!” From behind the folds of her clothes the gypsy produced another object, but this one James recognized immediately.

  “That’s my box!” James shouted, exchanging his fear for indignation at seeing his only current possession in a witch’s grasp. “Thief!”

  “Qvite wrong, young sir,” the gypsy hag cackled again. “I vill keep that vich resides in your precious box more safe than any chain or lock!” She waved her hand over the box, speaking more words in the language James had never heard before this day. “This box vill not open now until proper time and place intended by fate…until you are ready for that vich lies vithin!” The small flame on the candle sparked and burned bright blue as the gypsy woman pronounced her curse.

  “Give me back my box, you witch!” James demanded.

  “Here, take it,” the old woman said tiredly, tossing the box into James’s hands. James tugged at the lid. He pulled and pulled until his fingers hurt. Then he slammed it against the floorboards, and even tried to beat it open with his fists (which only cut his tender little hands) but still the box would not open, nor would it break.

  The tears James had been fighting since he woke from his dream spilled hot and angry onto his cheeks. “Make it open! Please! It’s all I have left!”

  “I cannot,” the old woman said flatly. “The curse is more powerful than even she who casts it. The box vill only open at the time it is meant, ven you are ready to use that vich is vithin.”

  James had no idea what to think or do. He put his hands over his face and wept loudly.

  “Fear not, young sir,” the gypsy woman said, this time with some pity in her voice. “Dark days do not last forever. One bright morning, the dawn vill bring the light again. Sleep now, you need your rest. The adventure is only just begun.”

  She waved her hand again, this time toward James’s tear-stained face. James felt suddenly heavy and his eyes closed. This time he slept without dreaming.

  NINE

  he thick pelt flap over the back of the wagon pulled away, letting white light stream over James’s face, startling him awake. He sucked in a quick breath, flying from dead-sleep to wide-awake in an instant, his heart humming. He blinked his eyes in the harsh light and, when they were finally adjusted, found the gypsy hunter staring at him with his dark eyes.

  “London,” he said with a jerk of his head. “Is this not vere you vished to go?”

  “Yes,” James said hesitantly. “Did the old woman tell you that?” James turned his head to the front of the covered wagon, expecting to see the old crone still watching him, but he and the hunter were alone.

  “Old voman?” the gypsy said with a scowl.

  “Yes, the old voman,” James retorted. “Big nose, craggy skin, creepy voice, likes to look in crystal balls and all that? Where’s she gone off to? Probably out scaring the wits out of some more unsuspecting children if I’ve read her right.”

  Though James was quite sure it was impossible, the hunter managed to scowl even deeper, his dark eyebrows closing in low over his black eyes as he bored holes into James’s face with his stare. “An old voman you say? Vith a crooked nose and hair like lifeless straw? And a face as old as the stars in the sky?”

  “Yeah that sounds like her, all right, except you forgot ugly as a toad and mean as a snake.”

  An unexpected smile split the man’s swarthy face, the yellowish white of his crooked teeth suddenly gleaming in the morning light. “You’ve been meeting vith Baba Yaga! Leave it to me to vander these foreign lands and have brought the old vitch of my country along in my vagon and not have known it all these years.”

  “Baba who?”

  “Baba Yaga is a vitch vith strange powers. She lives in a house that valks about on chicken legs and flies through the sky in a teacup. Sometimes she is friend, sometimes she is trickster, but if she has traveled all this vay to talk to you of that vich is yet to come, then I vould suggest you take it close to heart and do not forget vat she has said!”

  James looked at the gypsy hunter for a long moment. “So, she lives in a house that walks on chicken legs…and flies…in a tea cup?”

  The gypsy hunter nodded happily.

  “Look, I don’t know what exactly your lot drinks around your camp fires, but you should consider quitting it…immediately.”

  The hunter just laughed and helped James down from the wagon. Then the train of gypsies pulled on down the road, leaving James once again by himself.

  “Baba Yaga, what rot,” James said to himself, not quite sure if his memories from the night before had been real or a dream. But when he pulled his box from his tattered pocket and tried to open it, the lid held as tightly as a steel locker. James looked after the wagons as they crawled on into the city and, just for a moment, thought he saw an old woman stick her head out of the back of one of the wagons and laugh.

  It never before occurred to James just how enormous London was nor how vast the number of people the city contained. Usually he and Aunt Margarita only passed through the streets in a carriage, Dame Margarita hardly even glancing out the windows, for she found even the sight of commoners a nuisance.

  However, now that James walked the streets toward his father’s London home, the comfort of his fine carriage replaced by the breaking soles of the shoes on his aching feet, he found the simple streets of London, filled with her simple people, anything but ordinary. The sheer number was enough to overwhelm him, and the variety was unbelievable. He passed by a number of shops simply bubbling over with activity.

  “Turnovers!” shouted a plump, old pastry maker, red in the face and sweating profusely as he called to the passersby. “Hot fresh apple turnovers and cakes!”

  James wanted desperately to buy one - the smell was nearly more than he could resist - but with sudden disappointment he remembered he had no money. James couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t able to get what he wanted, especially not something so trivial as a piece of
bread. The sensation was entirely unfamiliar and decidedly unpleasant.

  Unfortunately for James, the farther he walked from the center of town and the bustling market, the more unpleasant his feelings became.

  “A coin, boy?” plead a haggard old beggar, clawing at James’s arm with filthy fingers. The beggar’s face was sunken, his eyes hollow, the greasy gray hair atop his head hanging like mop threads about his head, and his skin was as dry as cracked earth. “Just a coin for a crust of bread, please!”

  James yanked his arm away from the wretched man. “I don’t have anything!” he shouted, running for the next few steps. After that James walked by a house that was really no more than a shack, the boards so flimsily put together that James could see right through the cracks. An entire flock of children sat on the steps leading up to a door, barely clinging onto its frame by a single hinge. They were the most sullen children that James had ever seen, circles lining their eyes, their cheeks utterly colorless. James stared at them. He wanted to look away, but couldn’t. He’d never seen children like that before.

  James was suddenly anything but curious about these people. He wanted this nightmare to end. As soon as he got to his London manor, he would put on some of his good clothes and send a letter to the king. Hudson said the King might help him, and surely, James thought, the King would know someone who could open his box - no matter what that stupid gypsy hag had blabbered about fate and chains around his heart and all that other rubbish.

  It was early evening when James finally reached his family’s London house. The sun was dipping back behind the buildings of London, half the street still bathing in warming streams of sunlight, long shadows unfurling over the rest. James trudged up the walk toward his family home, his tired feet screaming for rest. James was positive they were bleeding again and his aching body longed for the comfort of his spacious bed. James had no key, but he imagined that the house would be completely empty and he could sneak in through a window, or crawl down through the cellar to get inside.