Chapter 4: An Honest Day's Wage

Tobias' Bedroom, The Magorian Residence, Quroke Haven Ireland...

The bright rays of the morning sun had once again caught a young Tobias Magorian amid a fretful rest as he opened his hazel eyes to greet the new day. He could still feel his ribs and back hurting following his father taking to beating him for the sake of leaving out a bucket after forcing him to scrub the floors of the house when he'd been the one to piss on them and leave it the day before. Toby rolled his eyes at the memory nearly forgetting about the pain in his upper right jaw and his blackened left eye as he crawled out of bed slowly but surely to get to the loo and relieve the ache in his bladder by way of the call of nature. He had dreaded most mornings, but he was fortunate enough that Dollaran had been elsewhere and as a result, he'd been able to get some measure of sleep even if it had been fretful.

The redhead lad sighed as he reflected on the two years that passed since the death of his beloved mother, whom he had found out had not been his biological mother following her passing but he loved her just the same. It was an odd thing to realize that they had not been blood but her loss had eaten away at him ever since as if he had been. He recalled all too well the sweet sound of her lovely voice when singing in the early morning hours and how she always seemed to make even the mundane of moments pleasant by her sheer disposition alone.

Tobias had fought to keep the tears from coming to his eyes as he pushed down the memory of his beloved mother. She was long gone and wishing would never make it so that she'd return, a fact that he had to get through his head over and over again when finding himself alone and crying in the darkness of his bedroom. He despised Dollaran with every fiber of his being but had been helpless against him. There wasn't much a thirteen-year-old scrawny lad like him could do against a hulking drunken brute anyhow.

Tobias stood over the privy bowl trying his best to ignore the stench of his father's stale urine as it reeked beyond reason, as he finished up his own business and set to work getting dressed as best he could in his worn hand-me-down clothes and boots that his father could no longer fit that had almost been too big for him. He elected to wear a dark red shirt that day with brown suspenders and worn dark brown trousers with high socks and brown boots. He headed out the door with his redhead wild and unkempt at his shoulders and the promise of making a good deal of coin in his future.

The cool morning air nipped at his exposed pale flesh as he moved about walking from the old house and down the beaten path that lead into town among ruins and along the beach. He could already smell the salty sea air and the rank stench of fish and all manner of seafood as he moved about briskly to get to the shop where Mr. Wilkinson had been waiting for his arrival no doubt to begin his work for him.

Mr. Wikinson had been a spry old man given to selling fish and catching it for over twenty-five years. He lived alone for some time due to his wife having died a few years back and his children had gone as far away from Quroke Haven as the sea could carry them. Tobias had been of the same mind once he was old enough to afford to travel by way of purchasing passage on a ship or getting a job on one of the vessels that came in and out of port quite regularly.

Young Tobias had been quite fond of the seafarers and their various stories of the blue horizon and the great deep. He had heard more than a few tales of legends and scoundrels alike that had fueled his imagination as he often had gone to bed envisioning himself having become a Captain in his own right sailing out into the blue horizon and never looking back. He had also gone so far as to see himself in league with the infamous captains of the sea as if he had always been meant to be one of them.

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Mr. Wilkinson's Seafood Shop, Quoke Haven, Ireland....

Toby walked into the old man's shop curling his upper lip and grimacing at the stench of the fish and other seafood that lined the ice-filled barrels that the old man used to showcase his catch of the day or week depending upon how long the ice kept the seafood fresh. The old man had been thin with visibly leathered pale skin and grayish-white hair in unruly curls on top of his head. He wore new-fangled magnifying glasses and dressed in the attire most notable for modest shopkeepers with a dark blue apron due to his handling of fish. His hands were often cold and purple due to his handling of ice and on occasion, he seemed to prefer the cold.

Toby had thought him as strange as everyone else in town had and the fact that his shop had the rancid stench of fish day in and day out wasn't an overall appealing thing despite everyone shopping there for their meals and supplies. The young lad braced himself for his workload and the stench that followed as he was instructed on his first round of deliveries for the old man. He was to make a delivery to Mrs. Templeton and Mr. Stevens on the east side of the isle as they had a good bit of difficulty getting to and from the shop due to their various obligations and ages.

Toby had been well used to trekking in those parts of the island and dutifully picked up the two silver pails of freshly caught fish gaging for a moment due to the stench before readying himself and heading toward his destination. It wasn't an ideal profession for a boy like him carting fish back an forth through town but it was an honest day's wage, something even his late mothers would have been proud of him for earning, unlike his drunken father.