by A Van Wyck
He couldn’t help glancing side-long at everyone he passed and he felt eyes lingering on him in turn. Every open doorway and window was transformed into an empty eye socket from which unseen stares tracked him. He could feel the hostility in the air. He tried to walk a little faster but the uneven cobbles were rough on his bare and bruised feet and he hobbled along.
A lame dog, patches of fur missing from scabbed flesh, limped from an alley in front of him. He felt a deep swell of pity and stopped, wondering what he could do to help. It swung its head in his direction and growled, black lips lifting from grey flecked gums. He retreated a hasty step but the mongrel darted away, disappearing across the street with its three legged gait. An old woman, sitting on the steps of a dilapidated tenement nearby, the squat pipe in her hand billowing foul smoke, cackled at him with brown and broken teeth. It seemed a knowing sound, full of malice. He hurried on.
There were more people now. And even a few stalls. Though it bore only the faintest resemblance to the market the keeper had guided him through this morning. But he didn’t have the keeper with him now and he didn’t have the priest’s knack for navigating a crowd either.
“Watch it!” a man spat at him angrily, though their accidental contact couldn’t have hurt him nearly as much as it had Marco, who felt like someone had taken a hammer to his elbow.
“Sorry,” he tried to say but something knocked him heavily in the back and he stumbled.
“Oi! Careful, you!”
“Sorry,” he apologized to the man, this time getting the word out before someone rammed a laden barrow into his ankle. He gasped and hopped away.
“Out of the way, brat!” the boy, not much older than himself, screamed at him. The loud barrow pusher disappeared into the crowd without slowing.
Someone grabbed him by the ear and he hobbled painfully as merciless fingers dragged at him.
“One side, boy,” a woman’s voice said irritably, releasing his ear.
“Move, you!” a burly voice growled behind him, arriving along with a rough shove between the shoulder blades.
There was a horrifying moment when he almost sprawled on the ground. The image of droves of indifferent feet slowly pounding him into the cobbles marched through his mind. He stumbled a couple of steps but the press of bodies kept him upright. Those he clutched at in his panic rained curses down on him. Someone slapped him hard across the back of the head.
Throwing up his arms, he pushed through the crowd. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he chanted, driving with his legs. He couldn’t really see where he was going but moving seemed a better idea than just standing there waiting for the next person to step on him. He burst into a space of miraculous calm. Hesitantly, he lowered his arms peeking from between his elbows. He’d pushed through to the side of the street and into the gap between two stalls. He sighed in relief.
He watched as the woman behind the stall to his right plunged her arm into a bucket of water and came up holding a striped eel. Its mouth gaped, straining open as she skewered it, working its ribboned length onto a sharp stick, which she added to the dozen others slowly browning on a grill. Its struggles quickly ceased. He swallowed hard. But he hadn’t eaten since that morning and, especially after emptying his stomach so recently… the smell wafting from the grill was mouthwatering in a most disconcerting fashion. He looked away.
The stall to his left was a fruit vendor, though the produce looked exceedingly poor. Spotted bananas shared space with wilting cabbages, wooden carrots and wrinkled apples. Seeing them, he grabbed at the front of his robes, feeling the bulge of the inside pocket. It was still there. The apple the kind lady from the market had given him this morning. It looked much more appetizing than the poor examples on the vendor’s table. He took a big bite. It crunched deliciously.
“Thief!”
He glanced up. The fat vendor had jumped up, screaming. His cheeks flamed red and his huge mustache humped like a caterpillar.
“Thief!” the man bellowed again, sending spittle flying in all directions. He lunged across the table.
Marco danced out of the way of the grasping hand.
“No!” he yelled around a mouthful of apple. “No, it’s mine! I brought it with me!”
Or that’s what he tried to say. The vendor drowned him out, grabbing wildly at the air between them with arms that were just slightly too short. The man’s neck was turning purple. From under the table the vendor drew a stout wooden kosh.
His eyes shot wide at the sight of it. The vendor was shimmying out from behind the stall, hampered by a generous gut. Wrinkled apples rolled across the ground.
He cast around wildly. They’d attracted an audience. People had stopped to stare openly. Some wore eager expressions. A man across the street had found a length of wood and was now wading through the crowd toward him. Scattered encouragement sounded from the gathered throng.
He bolted.
Someone close to the stall made a grab for him. He ducked beneath the grasping hand and then he was pushing through the crowd, bouncing from person to person and dodging around legs whenever he could, paying no attention to all the startled oaths. Excited shouts caught up to him from behind. The vendor had found friends. He was never going to lose them in the crowd. He wasn’t tall enough for them to see but that hardly mattered. They just had to follow the trail of angry people he’d bumped. And they had the better shoving power. Eventually they’d catch up to him.
An alley appeared to his left. Its relatively clear length beckoned and he darted for it. With a less obstructed path, he rose onto his toes and sprinted, putting some real distance between him and his pursuers. He chanced a look over his shoulder. The vendor must not have wanted to wander far from his stall but his theatrics had inspired a handful of others who apparently had nothing better to do. The two in the lead were young men with grins on their faces. And their legs were longer than his. He threw himself into his run but the events of the day had sapped him. Already he could feel pain pulling at his side and his legs were leaden beneath him. They were going to catch him. He rounded a corner.
“Pssst!”
The urgent hiss startled him and he lost his stride.
“Turn around!”
He felt a hand on his neck and then he was being hauled backwards by his robes. He stumbled as his heel struck something hard and he tumbled into semi darkness. There was a rustle of cloth and the darkness was made complete.
“What–?”
“Shush!”
A small hand clamped over his mouth. He felt someone crouching over him in the dark. He thought to struggle but the sound of running footsteps rounding the corner froze him. He rolled his eyes madly. He and whoever held him captive were inside a large wooded crate. He could make out the wooden grain in the dim light that penetrated the burlap sack that had been drawn across the open end. He lay completely still, trying desperately to silence his breathing. The insistent hand covering his mouth helped. He listened intently.
“Where’d he go? D’you see him?”
“He came round here, din’ he?”
“Did he double back?”
“No time. Musta gone over the wall.”
“Bloody monkey!”
“Come on, let’s go round! Maybe we can still catch him on the other side.”
Running footsteps faded away into the distance and still he didn’t move.
“Wow,” the voice hovering over him said excitedly. “That was close.”
The burlap sack was twitched to one side.
Hunched over him, one hand still pressed to his mouth, was a girl about his own age. She grinned madly down at him. One of her front teeth was missing.
“Mpff!” he said.
She took her hand away.
“Huh?”
“Knee…” he wheezed.
“Oh,” she said, “sorry.”
And moved her knee.
* * *
The salt slick rocks were a collection of jagged ridges that cut into his sore feet a litt
le. Farther out, waves crashed into them, geysers of white spume erupting from the violent contact. He’d seen the sea just this morning. But the docile waves, quietly lapping beneath the docks, had looked nothing like this. The sound was mesmerizing. He had trouble dragging his eyes away. The tide, she’d said. Of course he knew about the tide. But knowing was a far cry from seeing.
“Hey!”
A handful of icy seawater splashed his face, making him gasp. She frowned at him from where she crouched, up to her knees and elbows in one of the little rock pools.
“If you don’t stop daydreaming,” she said, her serious tone spoiled a little by the way her missing tooth caused her to whistle her s-es, “you’re going to bed hungry.”
She’d introduced herself as Sunny.
“You know,” she’d explained, dangling one of her greasy tresses under his nose, “as in sun?”
There might have been red hair under all that grime and dirt once. Now, there was no way to tell.
“Sunny,” he tried again, “I keep telling you–”
“I’m not taking you to the Temple.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“That’s not a reason!”
“Says who?”
“Everyone!”
“Everyone who?”
“What… Everyone!”
“I haven’t met everyone.”
“But…”
“No. Now get busy.”
At a loss for how to convince her, he sat back down, sinking up to his knees in the cold water. The bottoms of his wet robes stirred up a storm of sand and the whirling grains sparkled in the shallow water. He picked up the stick she’d given him, eyeing the black-green half-shells stuck to the edge of the rock pool. He reached down.
“No,” she stopped him without looking up from her own endeavors, “only take the ones near the bottom. The ones that have breathed air will make you sick.”
Sighing, he reached deeper, trying to lever the stick under one of the shiny shells. He might as well try digging a brick from a solid wall with his bare hands.
“You have to surprise them,” she coached. “Don’t wriggle around so much. Otherwise they hold on tighter. Just see where the best place is,” she said, taking careful aim with her own stick, “and then go all at once.”
In one quick move, she popped one of the shelled creatures off its perch.
“Easy,” she smiled in triumph. “You try.”
They all looked exactly the same and none of them had any best places that he could see. So he chose one at random. He positioned his stick, concentrating, and heaved. Water spayed. He sat with his eyes closed as it dripped from him. Sunny collapsed into hopeless giggles. He shook his head, scattering droplets. Sand crunched as he gritted his teeth.
“You’re the worst at this!” she laughed.
Wiping the stinging salt from his eyes, he spotted something slowly settling back to the bottom of the pool. He grabbed at it.
“Aha!” he flourished the black shell.
“Alright,” she said. “Now use the stick to get it out of the shell,” she instructed. “Like this…” She stabbed her stick into her own shell, wriggling it in under the featureless creature inside and scraping it loose. He tried to copy her. It was a lot harder than it looked. And he felt sorry for the little mollusk. It moved too slowly to be said to struggle but he was sure this wasn’t good for it.
“And now,” she said when he’d managed and tipped her head back, sucking the slimy creature out of its shell. Swallowing, she tossed the empty husk over her shoulder where it clattered noisily on the rocks. She fixed him with an expectant gaze. He regarded the vaguely beige creature slowly squirming in its shell. He wasn’t sure he could eat this.
His stomach growled.
Easy for you to say, he thought at his stomach, you don’t have eyes.
He closed his own eyes. Fought for a moment to unlock his clenched teeth and tipped his head back. It tasted like the sea. It tasted like salt. But mostly it tasted like snot. It would have been bad manners to spit and that was not how he’d been raised. Grimacing, he swallowed quickly. It felt like the small mollusk might be trying to wriggled its way back up his throat. He swallowed again. Hard. Then gasped, coughing.
Another round of giggles greeted his reaction.
“The trick,” she enlightened him delightedly, “is not to chew.”
He glared at her. She could have told him that before. She met his angry expression with a smile.
“Good, huh?”
He frowned.
“You eat this all the time?” The thought was too horrible to contemplate.
“No,” she said, back to her elbows in the water. “Usually only when the pickings have been a bit slim.” She pulled another shell out of the water, quickly pried its occupant loose and swallowed. It clattered to the rocks behind her. “This is better than nothing but you can’t eat a lot of them. Only a handful at once and not every day. Otherwise you get the runs.”
“The runs?”
He’d never heard the word used in that context before. She nodded seriously. With one hand, she made an explosive gesture and accompanied it with a rude noise.
“Oh!”
Embarrassed, he ducked back over the pool, hefting his stick.
“I still can’t believe you ate that apple right in front of him,” she said eventually, admiration and scorn warring in her tone.
“For the last time, I didn’t steal that apple!”
“Yeah.” Disbelief was plain on her face.
“I didn’t!”
“Uh huh.”
“I swear to you, a lady gave it to me in the market this morning! It was mine!”
She shook her head at him disparagingly.
“I’m gonna have to teach you to lie better.”
“I’m not lying!”
“Now see, that was better.”
“I’m not!”
“That was worse again.”
“Aaagh!” he growled in frustration. The stick went flying.
Sunny lifted herself out of the rock pool.
“We’d better get going. The water is almost here.”
He glanced up. The sea had definitely moved closer to them while he hadn’t been looking. He heaved himself up.
His robes were waterlogged and heavy. He wrung them out as best he could but they still stuck wetly to his legs, threatening to trip him and making it difficult to walk as he hurried after Sunny. White sand crusted thickly around the hem before he’d gone ten steps on the beach.
“Where are we going now?”
“Home.”
“The Temple?” he asked hopefully.
“No. Home. Why would I take you to the Temple?”
“Because it’s my home.”
She looked at him askance.
“Are you a priest?”
He wondered if she’d ever seen one before.
“No.”
“Then you don’t live at the Temple,” she stated matter-of-factly. “Everyone knows only priests live at the Temple.”
He thought for a moment.
“Everyone who?” he used her own argument against her.
“Everyone who’s worth listening to.”
He frowned. He should have thought to say that.
“Please?” he resorted to begging. She whirled on him.
“You want me to leave you here?”
She was taller than him but only by two or three fingers worth. Even so, she loomed. He looked left and right. The beach was bleakly deserted. The sea pressed up loudly from behind him. A chill breeze tossed handfuls of sand about and where it touched him it stung. The beach suddenly did not hold the same attraction it had a moment ago. He shook his head tightly.
“Then shut up about it, alright?”
She turned and stomped off up the beach. He had no choice but to hurry after her, his wet robes chaffing. He remained silent and stayed on her heels. He really couldn’t afford her being angry with h
im. Perhaps he should try and change the subject.
“So where is home?”
At first he thought she wouldn’t answer but silence wasn’t her way.
“Anywhere I want,” she said proudly.
“You don’t have a home?”
“Sure I do. Lots.”
“Where are your parents?”
As soon as he said it, he wished he could snatch the words back. But Sunny didn’t seem to mind.
“Never knew my dad,” she said, climbing a steep dune. He struggled up after her, grabbing at handfuls of the sparse grass. She turned to give him a hand. If that was what you called a grip on your robes and a swift pull.
“It was always just me and mama. It wasn’t always bad. Some of her man-friends could be nice. But then, maybe a year ago…”
They skirted what looked like a ramshackle community of rude huts. He trudged behind her in silence, wishing he’d had more sense than to ask.
“The place we were staying was leaky. Mama caught a bad cough that wouldn’t get better. She couldn’t work anymore. After a while she stopped eating. I left the day she stopped breathing.”
“That’s terrible.”
In the Temple, he’d heard of the hardships people suffered. He prayed for them most every day. Hearing about it first hand was different.
“It’s not so bad.”
She led him into a more urban area, with stone buildings and cobbled streets.
“Wasn’t there anyone to take care of you?” he asked, thinking of Justin.
“Mama told me not to trust them. When she was still speaking. She said to stay away from them. My two uncles, I mean. Only, I don’t think they were really my uncles.”
“So there was no one?”
She led them deeper into the maze of buildings, staying away from the main roads.
“Oh, I tried the orphanage for a while. But I didn’t like it, so I ran away.”
“Ran away?”
“Yeah. It’s much better out here, if you know what to look out for.”
“What are you doing?”
She’d clambered up a stack of crates behind a building and was now climbing up a wooden fence toward its roof.
