Great Minds: And Even Greater Mind Games

ESSELLE:

Father's arms were no thicker in width than the spyglass he extended from one eye. From the church balcony that he and I crept atop, the height revealed a cityscape of Ristic's crawling markets—little more than bobbing heads of silk-stocking nobs, all decorated in netted veils and colorful caps. They appeared like rings of infinite hues, packed together in strips of cobblestone that weaved through shops and stalls.

I smiled at the sight through missing teeth—spun in circles with my arms outstretched, pieced into woven rags of dirtied beige. Of course, the breeze that kissed my chin from way up here was far too fresh for me to think about the ways in which my garb did not match theirs.

The little girls below wore the luridest of gowns—silk, chiffon, and lace all layered in textures and patterns and stamped in gems and jewels and brooches. Perhaps one could not see from way up here, where Father and my head nearly bit through milky clouds, but the girls down there wore coiled locks that spun out in wiry ribbons. They paraded miniature dogs, roped to one side of hose-covered legs with leashes of crocodile leather, dyed to match the bows they tied atop their crowns. And they rode carriages of gold and silver rims, ebony spokes, velvet drapes, plush seats. Gaudy things.

We were no longer in Port—and far from Roane—we were in Ristic, with a capital "R" for "rich nobs." Father kept hunting the crowds through his fisheye and jolted to the sound of church bells clamoring behind us.

"I think I have it, Essie," he said, his eye attached to the lens like it had been glued there. "Yes, I see it! At the corner of Winston and the Village—go! Go!"

The last of his words had not yet parted from his tongue before I found myself ripping down stairs of creaking wood and through doors of forged steel. My little feet—tucked into a pair of ill-fitted poulaines—bounded across a bridge of mossy stone and paths of cobble, winning me looks and shouts of contempt from the nobles who were now eye-level. I squeezed between standers, pushed through walkers, and surpassed other runners, only to halt at the corner of Winston and Ristic, where Father had pointed a mere moment ago.

No part of the scene felt out of place. Merchants and customers bartered. Other merchants bellowed their daily deals and stock. Nobs passed by wearing garments of merit, shooting me their looks of yuck. I refrained from shooting the same looks back.

And then I spotted him. A young boy wearing a whistle of gold—caked in mole-sized diamonds—around his neck. He held one arm above his head, clutched to the hand of his father that dragged him past a stall of parchment. The boy's eyes wandered from one stall to the next, and to everything between that laid before him on the street. Including me. They held at me, looking down at my shoes and up at my temples, confused but too young to judge the rags, my unkempt hair, the toes that poked through holes at the tips of my poulaines.

I sidestepped, so that my shoulder might touch his in passing. His father, still lugging him, appeared rushed to leave, with hurried steps and brisk pulls that nearly lifted the boy's feet from the cobblestone path. It was a good thing they were hurried, an additional distraction.

At the graze of my bony shoulder to the boy's slightly fatter one, all movement seemed to slow, like the streets flooded with water and market-goers dragged along the bottom of a fishbowl. All except me, for I remained light on my feet. So light that I snagged the whistle and pulled it over the boy's head whilst his eyes were consumed in a blink, whilst our shoulders touched.

Only when I had it in my grasp, did time resume—when I clutched it tight enough so that even a sliver of chain wouldn't poke through the cracks between my fingers. Whatever had engulfed and slowed the market-goers drained. And the boy, oblivious to any absent weight around his neck, carried on in the baby strides he hurried to keep up with his father—his father who lugged him away.

I froze at the center of the path, bumping shoulders and feet with the crowds that kept migrating past me. Though my head soon began to pound and grip molded the whistle's spires into the flesh of my palm, all I could think was that time favored me in those moments between heartbeats. Not the rich boy, but me, as it nearly slowed to a stop.

➸

I wandered up and down the cobble paths until nightfall, dodging city guards and getting my mitts on all kinds of things. When the sun began its descent below the horizon, turning everything a buttery gold before shrouding the streets in utter black, the markets began to grow sparse. For in heaps, nobs hitched private and public carriages back to their homesteads.

I was not quite ready to go home. I never was.

"Hey!" A guard shouted from behind me, snatching my bicep. I winced, for he grabbed me in the same spot as yesterday—or the day before—or the day before the day before. Smack over the black and blue, he squeezed and pain shot through me. His tugging worsened the pressure, as we headed for the prison cart. "A problem again, are we? You know the rules, wharf—no waifs in the Village," he muttered. And with a shove into the wooden cage, I fell against the others. Two handfuls of beggars, all crammed into one space built for four at best.

The smell was positively foul.

The guard eyed me through the bars and clicked his tongue. "I can't imagine you've grown fond of our little nightly run-ins, Lassie." I stared at him blankly. "Hmmm," clicking his tongue again, he said, "Well, you know what they say about monkeys," and slammed the cage door shut. In moments, the wagon departed to Roane—Beggar's Row as they called it.

The guard had been right about one thing, I was certainly a wharf—a down-and-out, a guttersnipe, a vagrant. I was poor as could be, and anyone could see it. But the rest, he had no clue of, and a waif, I was not. I had a father. I had a father and a pound of loot shoved up the lining of my skirt. And the prison-cart was my trusty ride home—the only wagon in the city that did not entail a levy.

LYEWKIN:

Even in the night, when mother hid each retch of bile 'neath closed doors, washroom walls, and running water, I could hear her, rustling around—her footfall rampant. I could practically hear the sweat dripping down from her temples—hear the trembling of her legs as she squatted at the fore of our crummy washroom privy of stone and wood. I'd squint my eyes with every torturous muffled heave that invited itself to my side of the walls between us.

Though it didn't do me much good.

Then I'd wake to her hollowed eyes, sunken more and more each day, aloft bags that carved a "U" into her cheeks. Her skin had been stripped of its pigment—had become more of a filmy green. Far grayer than anything. The kind of hue of a gloomy day.

If I took her into the city, the children would run to a distance and point, like she were one of the life-eaters one read of in make-believe tales. I knew she could see them, laughing and pointing, so I quit aiding her through the markets.

She quit weaving threads into tapestries, crafting patterns, selling them in Port. I quit urging her to leave bed—figured the strength she might keep wasn't worth the fight of getting her onto her feet.

To be the man of the household at six years of age… oh—but I was still a boy. Still scared to peel her clothes, or bathe her in soaps, or lay her head back onto the bolster pushed up against her bedpost. And today, when I awoke, I thought she had passed in her sleep. For I prodded at her, and she didn't wake up. It took several minutes of weeping for her fingers to twitch, eyelids to quiver, and chest-heaving to resume.

When they did, I sat back in the wicker chair at her bedside, vowing today the day I would gather my courage to visit him—the moneyed stranger I'd only met in my dreams or heard of in tales of Mother's past.

A myth of a man. A ghost if I didn't know better.

I left her bedside and passed through our halls of dampened walls and dirty floorboards. "Where're you off to in such a hurry?" Came a voice drawling from behind. I turned to see Godwin, a carbon copy of myself in all but face and blood, biting through the skin of a Harvey.

Godwin always had a casual coolness to him, didn't he?

"Ristic," I called out before turning on my heel to sally forth towards the door.

"Ristic?" He echoed, not quite believing it. "What for? A set of delicate silks and a glazed mug, or something?" He laughed, wiping a spatter of apple-juice from 'neath his nose. One could tell we were only boys by the way we joked about blue-blooded nobs. Perhaps we'd grow to resent them, but for now, we found humor in their gaudy hose.

"Close," I snickered, my humor short-lived, "I'm going to find him."

Godwin knew who I spoke of. He had to, for his smile dropped in less than a beat. "What—why?" He stuttered. "How do you even plan to?"

I shook my head, doing the best I could to bury my own doubt. "I have his name," I shrugged, "It's a start."

"I'd dodge the guards if I were you. They lock the waifs into cages."

"I'm not a waif."

"You'll look like one, wandering the Village all alone… in clothes like that." His eyes darted to my boots.

"Whatever… Anyways, he owes us. Don't you think so?"

Godwin shook his head and blew a breath with wide eyes. "I do envy your courage, Mate. Begging like that to a nob, even if it is him…" With that, he disappeared into the room we shared since the death of his kinfolk—since the day he moved into Mum's shanty. Godwin had become rather frank these past years. Sometimes he'd spit the truth when no one asked for it. As nettling as it could be, his candor, it led to a shared trust between us.

And that was a rare quality to behold in a city like ours—trust.

➸

When asking Ristic folk of whether or not they knew of a Diamond, they only met my eyes with cheekish grins and gaping mouths. Some stared in skepticism. But all of them—in one way or another—gave disdainful indications that everyone knew of the Diamonds, and anyone that didn't wasn't anyone at all.

They'd flick their fingers in less-than-helpful scattered directions, sometimes adding, "You'll never make it past the gate, wharf," and bellied laughs.

I ignored them, trudging along a cobble path, past homesteads larger than ten of my Port shanties molded together—their grass lawns greener than ripened kiwis and pebble paths smoother than rose petals.

When I passed another nob—trotting atop a steed of picture-perfect poise—he pointed at the largest of them all. A homestead at the peak of a grass hill, with budding flowers and silky paths and every luxury I had never the knowledge to imagine. The hill was bordered by a gate and two guards standing post near its entrance. A carriage and four steeds occupied its peak, at the fore of pillars, balconies, and double-winged doors.

I smiled at the sight, knowing even one steed could fetch a price of which could aid Mum through seasons of bedridden worklessness. The thought alone provided me with the courage I'd been rousing. The courage to traverse the hill's path and come face-to-face with a guard, request him by name.

It was a request met with laughter. The guard turned to his twin, the two partaking in humored expressions before looking down their noses at me. One had aged skin, a lazy posture, and a musket slung over his right shoulder. The other sported a spear, its tip pointed toward the clouds.

"You wish to speak with the head of the Diamond manor?" The guard repeated my words, a half-scoff-half-chuckle escaping thereafter. "Do you even know his forename?"

"I know he is my father," I contested, "By blood." I expected another mocking ha-ha—expected him to turn to his twin with the spear, a mere three paces away. Instead I was met with a pair of squints, scanning my figure from head to toe.

"Do you think he could be speaking in sincerity?" The other guard with the spear queried. "You must admit his features—"

"No, Eamon," the other droned, rolling his eyes in the process. "If we gave credence to every boy claiming to be a Diamond, by blood," he drew out the two words in mockery, "Well, we'd have a line of wharfs running down this hill, wouldn't we?"

"Does the boy have any proof?" Queried the guard with the spear.

They both looked at me.

"Only my word," I said, and they tittered in unison, "But my matter of being here is grave—"

"It's best you scram, kid," the guard with the gun began, "Your Father doesn't much enjoy dirty steppers on his pebbles at the gate." Again, they tittered.

Before falling silent.

The snap of a twig pulled our gazes to the forest. More-so the path that led into it, where a man and his young boy approached from the shadows of canopy leaves.

They were decked out in furs and loaded guns. And one could tell of their rank by the way their chests drew forward as they sauntered down the path—the way their crowns were held high and their necks stretched long like taffy.

At the sight of the men, the guards stiffened. They straightened their backs, pushed the butt of their weapons higher.

And as soon as the father and son—in their pelts and poise—withdrew from the darkness, I stumbled backward. It was like fronting a pond, the rippled blue casting back my own reflection—distorting it slightly, but not enough for it to not look like me. The resemblance of the boy and I... we were like twins. And I could only imagine a year, at most, could separate the two of us in age. The elder must have seen what I did. For he, too, stopped dead in his tracks, pulling the child to his hip in mammoth hands.

"Who is this?" He directed to the guards, who stuttered a reply after momentary pause.

"The boy… claims to be your son, Sir." A nervous titter escaped the guard with the gun. "I told 'im to get lost. The boy was starting on his way—isn't that right?"

Every eye perched on mine, but I was too distracted to reply—distracted by the young boy who stared back at me. He was wiry—seemingly even more-so drowned in furs—and his terracotta skin, his chocolate hair, his pinched-in nose—the resemblance was nigh bizarre. Perhaps the only dissimilarity between us was the way I wore my awe whilst the boy appeared… entirely unamused.

Ditching his son to the path, the other—my father—sallied forth at me, clutching my bicep and dragging my feet, which stumbled backward in attempt to keep pace with his powerful stride. My view of the manor became distanced to where the guards and little boy were none but far-off silhouettes.

"How dare you ridicule me in such a way before my son?!" He spat, throwing my body down at the edge of his estate. My pelvis shattered at the force of its collision with the road, causing tears to welt in both eyes. "And now you cry? Have you no manners, boy?"

"I'm sorry!" I wailed. "I would never have come were it not for my mother." He turned to walk back up the hill, only stopping when I shouted, "Margaret Coates! Her name is Margaret Coates. She's dying."

Though he paused, his back remained facing me. Only when he kept on, did I muster the courage to say, "I know you remember."

In creeping rotation, he turned and stalked me once more—drawing the barrel of his gun below my nose and folding it back, like a pig's snout, with the weapon's front sight. "You climb the path to my estate again," he muttered—voice low and laced with hate, "I'll make quick work of you, boy. I doubt anyone would notice your absence."

My gaze shifted from him to the boy, awaiting his father's return by the gate. It was the last thing I saw before the aluminum barrel of a hunting rifle collided with my temple, and the world around me shattered into utter black.