by Guy Antibes
Lotto twisted his hands together. “It’s not like that. I think magic led to the death of my parents.” He stood and looked up at the moon. “I’m not used to all of this.” He waved his arms around the clearing. “On the run, not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Before, all I had to do was look through the leavings of the village and I could find enough to exist on.” He looked away from the old lady.
“Do you want to go back to that kind of existence?”
He rose from sitting and walked around. “You know I can’t go back. I know how I used to live and it repels me now.” He waved his arms in the air. “So now I’m a fugitive!” He dropped his hands to his side and looked down.
“From what?” Jessie said, pulling two apples from her pack and throwing one to Lotto.
“Showing my private parts to the girls of Heron’s Pond.” He laughed and then stopped. “I’d think it funny, but it led to us being driven from your home and I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t be. Ever since I had to tell Piffero about his sex disease weeks ago, before you found your stone, I knew he wouldn’t rest until he got rid of me one way or another. Driving me out is not what he wanted to do. A letter with the details sent to a couple of women in the village, whom I trust, will be enough vengeance for me.” She let out a soft laugh. “I have a cousin in Walkington. We can go there and decide where our paths will take us.”
“I won’t learn any magic,” Lotto said, letting his emotions speak. “Somehow magic killed my parents. I don’t know how or why, but they were fleeing from something that magic caused. I won’t touch it.” He had never felt strongly about anything before. Now he had felt anger and fear for his life. He now regretted the simple life that the Moonstone had taken. Lotto knew that his newfound intelligence carried the responsibility of much more work to make his way in the world. He felt so ill equipped to do so and it made him afraid. Magic would only complicate his life and his life had now become more complicated than he wanted it to.
Jessie shrugged. “That’s your choice, Lotto. It’s one of many that you’ll face in your life. Remember your vow not to practice magic may only be temporary, so don’t obssess about it. As for me, I’ll ask around for another village that needs a healer. I know just how much magic to use and that’s not very much. I can only use so much power, and then it takes a long time to recharge, but healing naturally is good enough. It gives you the ability to hear all of the gossip in the village and seeing the babies that I’ve midwifed, grow into healthy children and easing people’s pain.”
“Did you watch me grow up? I wouldn’t call myself a healthy child,” Lotto said, biting into the crunchy flesh of the apple. Lotto tried to remember his childhood and could only find snippets in his memory.
“A sad case. Piffero found a woman to wet-nurse you as you grew up. She left the village when you were eight, just after the time I arrived. Do you remember her? Sarria, I think her name would have been.”
“No. I don’t remember much before a few years ago. I don’t think my mind worked very well.” Perhaps that had caused his gaps. Lotto didn’t mind the loss of the memory of him struggling to stay alive. He never knew love or the feeling of family that other children must have felt.
“I’ll agree with that,” Jessie said. “Piffero had her removed. Likely a mistress. They just let you go wild after that. You didn’t like people to touch you, so no one would take you in. Not long after she left, I built the little shelter at the back of my house and enticed you out of the forest one day.”
“I don’t remember the enticing. All I remember is living in the lean-to and finding some scraps of clothing or a moth-eaten blanket from time to time.”
“I’m sorry, boy. I didn’t want to raise a boy not right in the head, but I couldn’t just let you die. You stayed alive, though, mostly on your own. I did help you when you were sick.”
“Mushrooms,” Lotto said smiling in the dark. Clouds hid the moon.
Jessie repeated, “Mushrooms, and other bad things that you ate.” She sighed. “Now we will certainly part.”
“I can feel her. Even in the darkness she’s there,” Lotto pointed towards the south where he could feel where the princess lived. “What’s the name of the capital?”
“Beckondale.”
“Sounds like a village name,” Lotto said.
“Long ago it started out as a village and a small keep. More people moved north from the Red Kingdom and the name stuck. It’s no village now.”
Lotto had only the half-remembered vision of the dream of his parents to guide him. “What is Beckondale like?”
“A grand place. The castle, no longer a keep, rises on a knoll above a city that spans a whole valley. Cobbles and worked stone pave the streets, so there is no mud in the rain. Houses rise as high as four or five stories. The people dress differently there. When we get to Walkington, you’ll see more of what city life is like. Beckondale is at least ten times the size.”
Lotto shook his head. “I guess I’ll have to see it for myself.”
“Indeed.” Jessie wrapped a cloak about her and lay down on the grass. “I’m sure glad it’s an early summer.”
The moon peeked through the clouds as Lotto lay back, rolling up an old blanket he had hurriedly wrapped his few things up with. He’d spent plenty of nights alone, without any blankets or food, in the woods during the summer nights that he could remember. His mind searched for old memories, but few came. Much of what Jessie had said surprised him. Perhaps those memory lapses were merciful things.
About two weeks later, they stumbled into Walkington. The houses seemed to go forever. On and on. He thought all buildings had thatch roofs, but once through the outskirts of the town, all of the roofs were red with tile or gray with flat rectangular stones. When they got to the center of the city, Jessie pointed out the cobbles. Lotto smiled in amazement at all of the wonders of the town. His world had just expanded and he knew that he’d have to expand along with it. He had no idea how to do that at present. The link with the princess had become stronger as they headed south.
They walked through the center of Walkington and took in the marvelous sights and smells of a market square that put Heron’s Pond to shame. Jessie took him down some side streets and they eventually ended up on the doorstep of a four-story shop. A sign held a ball of yarn. Lotto couldn’t read and it looked like they must have arrived at her cousin, the yarn maker.
“Shori!” Jessie said, hugging a somewhat younger woman than herself, dressed better than anyone would in Heron’s Pond.
“What brings you down to town?” Shori said. She looked up at Lotto and smiled. Lotto thought she might have winked at him. The woman made Lotto feel uncomfortable.
“Burned me out, they did. The headman of the village contracted an unmentionable disease. I hadn’t told his wife yet and he ordered me not to. It’s something I won’t keep secret from a wife. Vengeance without mercy, my dear. Vengeance without mercy. The bum burned me out.”
Shori looked up at Lotto. “This is part of the vengeance, Cousin? You never told me about him?”
“Meet Lotto, formerly the village half-wit of Heron’s Pond.” Jessie held out her hand as if to display Lotto.
He shuffled his feet, something he did regularly in his old role and promptly stopped. He schooled himself to stop and stand still. “Hello.”
“I remember you telling me about him. Doesn’t look like any half-wit I’ve ever seen. Come in, come in.” Shori led them into her shop. Women sat at clattering wheels with baskets of wool at their feet, spinning the yarn.
Lotto sniffed at something in the air.
“Can you smell the lanolin? That’s a substance that comes from the sheep’s wool. We put the yarn through rollers to collect the oil and sell it for putting on the skin and it can waterproof cloth. It’s very popular among the more wealthy folk, and even though we wash the wool, you won’t find any of my girls with chapped hands, winter or summer.”
Lotto had seen spinning wheels
in the village when he peered through windows from time to time, but he’d never seen anything on this scale. He looked back at the clatter of the wheels as they climbed two flights of stairs to the upper floors of the building.
“So can I put you two up for a while?” Shori said.
“Long enough to find another village that needs a healer,” Jessie said. “Lotto here might want to seek his fortune in Beckondale.”
Shori’s eyebrows rose. “What’s in Beckondale that isn’t in Walkington?”
“Princess Restella,” Lotto said without thinking. He shouldn’t have said that and winced once it came out.
“That’s a lofty goal for a village half-wit,” Shori said, jamming her elbow into Jessie and laughing. She gave Lotto a sideways glance.
“It’s quite a story,” Jessie said.
A bell rang out through the shop and the clacking and clattering gradually came to a halt.
“Looks like I’ll be back as soon as I see to the locking up. I have all night to hear it.” Shori’s laughter faded as she walked down the stairs.
~~~
CHAPTER SIX
~
LOTTO GAZED BACK AT WALKINGTON as they stopped at a crossroads. The next turn would take the town out of sight. He breathed a sigh of relief. Shori took all of a week to find a suitable village for Jessie, far to the east close to the border with Oringia. The old lady helped Lotto get some proper clothes and a traveling bag before she left.
He didn’t want to spend any more time around the yarn shop once Jessie took off. Shori had become uncomfortably familiar, so he left the city along with Jessie.
“Thanks for all you’ve done for me,” Lotto said. He gave Jessie a smile, but fear gripped him. He’d never been alone before. No villagers about, no Jessie, just Lotto. For all of his increased thinking power, he felt small and insignificant as he bade the old lady farewell by giving her a hug. He clung to her as if he didn’t want to let of the shreds of his life left behind in Heron’s Pond.
“No thanks to me, young man. Thank you for giving me an excuse to leave intact. I’d rather be in a position to use my bolt hole than be dragged out of bed and hanged from a tree or worse.” She laughed. “If you ever pass through Bareback Ford, look me up.” She wiped an eye and sighed.
“I’ll miss you, boy.” She reached for him and they hugged once more. Jessie sighed and turned east, leaving Lotto standing in the dust.
A horse and cart stopped behind him. “Are you gonna stand there all day, young fella?” the old driver said.
Lotto moved out of the way, but the driver pulled up alongside him. “Where you headed?” the man asked.
“I’m going to Beckondale, sir.”
“Don’t ‘sir’ me. If you’d rather ride than walk, I’ve got a job for ye. I’ve got this fruit that stays better if it be a bit cooler. If you ride beside me, all you have to do is sprinkle water over the cloth on me load as we go. I’m going to Beckondale, meself and it’s a right pain to stop and do the watering. What do ye say?”
Lotto’s loneliness evaporated as he climbed aboard. “I’ll be happy to if you don’t mind telling me about the city. I’ve never been there.”
“I think I can do that.” The man smiled, showing gaps in his teeth.
Lotto had never noticed anyone with an accent before. He remembered the princess’s words and she might have had an accent, but he only really remembered her face.
“Our village healer said that the king paved all the roads in the city,” Lotto said, hoping the man would have more to tell him.
“Aye, that and more…” As they traveled, the old man filled Lotto’s head with all kinds of images. Beckondale Castle on the hill and the towers and spires of the city. He verified that Walkington was little more than a large village compared to the majesty of the capital. From that point, he began to discount the old man’s descriptions and tried to make everything look a little smaller in his mind.
The man wouldn’t stay quiet, and that suited Lotto just fine. He could close his eyes and let his descriptions paint the image of the city in his mind. They slept along the side of the road, even though they passed through towns and villages.
“Don’t want to be tempted to sell too soon. I’ll get twice as much in the city than the common folk along the way are willing to pay,” he said every time they passed an inn. Lotto didn’t mind. He had never slept in a bed. At Shori’s yarn factory, he would start out on the bed and end up on the floor, anyway.
In less than two weeks, the jagged line of the capital lay ahead, dominated by the conical tops of the castle’s towers. Lotto felt excited and afraid at the same time. He sensed that a new life waited for him among the tall buildings and peaked roofs. They traveled for some time through buildings built outside of the city wall.
“And you are?” the guard at the gate asked the old man who gave him his name. “And the boy?”
“I’m Lotto from Heron’s Pond.”
The guard shuffled through a sheaf of paper attached to a flat board. He made a mark. “Go on.”
The cart slid through the guards at the entrance into the walled part of the city. Lotto looked back, as the guards talked to one another and looked directly at him, but it seemed that they let them through.
He looked up at the inside of the thick city wall. Lotto wondered what would happen to all of the buildings outside the walls if an army invaded. A cleared space at least one hundred feet wide spread out from the city wall. He felt proud that he had quickly learned how to count during his time on the road spent with Jessie.
Lotto expected the road to go straight to the castle, but the road zigged and zagged as it flowed through the city. He wondered why, but couldn’t come up with an answer. Another set of guards stopped the cart just before a huge square filled with people and tents. The sounds assaulted him, but he stayed on the cart as the driver walked over to a man in brown velvet robes, open in the summer heat, sitting behind a high desk. Money changed hands and the driver returned with a rolled up parchment.
“My license. Now I can sell my load and head back home. I’ll make enough to see me through the winter and then some. Thanks for your help, but I don’t need it any more. Good luck in the city.”
Lotto thanked him for the ride and the companionship and wandered around the market, taking off in a different direction than the cart.
The sounds and smells came and went as he made his way between the stalls in the marketplace. Vendors sold foods he didn’t recognize by sight or smell. The variety of clothes that people wore astounded him. He bought a meat pie for a price that would have kept him fed for a week at Heron’s Pond. Lotto spotted a lane that led away from the market and wandered towards the castle, drawn by the link that had become even stronger while approached Beckondale. He wandered into a nice neighborhood and sat on a stone bench in a tiny square with a fountain while he finished his meat pie. He leaned over the fountain and reached out his hand to drink some of the water.
A man walked up. “There you are.”
The man seemed to recognize him, but Lotto couldn’t see how that could be the case, since he didn’t know a single person in the huge city.
“Don’t do that. The water from that particular fountain isn’t fit for consumption. If you want something to drink, follow me.”
Lotto let the waters flow through his fingers and washed his face, letting it drip onto his clothes. He had nothing else to do, so he followed the man through a few streets and alleys. Lotto would feel awkward walking at the stranger’s side, so he just followed and stopped when the man entered a shop. He gawked through the window at the books inside, lining shelves from floor to ceiling. He couldn’t read a word, but he knew about books and the knowledge that must be in that shop astounded him.
The man came to the window, pointed to a paper pasted to the window just below him. Lotto looked down to see writing that he didn’t understand. “Are you inquiring about the job as well as looking for a drink?” The man seemed earnest enough. He w
as half a head shorter than Lotto with shoulder length hair, brown and streaked with a bit of gray. Lotto thought his eyes looked intelligent and honest, as far as his limited experience told him. “You look like you need a job.”
“I don’t know anything about a job.”
The man stood at Lotto’s side, looking at the sign. “You can’t read?”
Lotto shook his head. “No. I grew up in a little village and most people there don’t know how to read.”
“Well, the job only requires you to know your letters and I can teach you that. What I really need is a strong back and legs. My back doesn’t let me scamper up and down the ladders anymore and you look like a bright enough lad who seems to be in need of some help around Beckondale. Do you want the job?”
“You don’t know anything about me,” Lotto said. He couldn’t believe he could be so lucky. Jessie found a new healer’s post in a week and now someone offered him a job. Lotto didn’t know how he could say no. “I really need some help. I came to Beckondale without much money and I’ve got a goal, but I have no idea how I’ll achieve it. I’d be happy to give your job a try.”
“That’s the spirit!” The man acted like a friend and not some happenstance acquaintance. How could he go wrong? Lotto thought he’d be cleaning out stables at an inn.
Lotto took a liking to this man. “My name is Lotto. I come from Heron’s Pond.”
“Heron’s Pond?” The man put his hand to his chin as if searching his mind. The look on his face told Lotto that he played with him. “The name of that village has caught my attention recently. Did you see Princess Restella when she visited?” The man seemed to know quite a bit, as if he knew the answers and Lotto’s replies would be interesting.
“She had eleven men with her. Yes, all of the village saw her.”
“Well, well. My name is Mander Hart and I own this bookshop. I’ve only had it for a few years and I found that my ability to buy books is considerably better than it is to climb up and down getting books to sell all day long. That sign has been out for the last three weeks without any interest. If you can learn your letters so you can put books in their proper place, I have a room on the third floor for you and a sufficient salary to keep you fed and entertained, modestly, mind you. How about it?”