“Well, whatever,” he muttered, “you clean yourself up first and I'll take my bath afterward. I'll be back shortly. Don't leave the room until I return, okay?” I nodded, though I had no clue why he thought I would go wandering off myself. He seemed content with my answer and closed the door to leave me to my bath.
When I finished and left the bathroom, Hawke was gone, but the lady from downstairs was waiting with a hairbrush. “A preety yung think like you needs to be vell kempt,” she said with a big smile, and she proceeded to help me try and tame the unruly mess that sat on my head.
“Such a bewteeful deep black, you vill be so lovely vhen you grow up,” the landlady cooed softly as she ran the brush through my hair what felt like the hundredth time. I had never paid much attention to my looks; it had always seemed pointless. My deep tan was simply part of working outside for so many hours, though I was the only slave on the compound that had black hair and did hold some small sort of pride in that. To hear someone else compliment me on it, I couldn't help but grin.
Hawke returned sometime later with a couple new bulging sacks, which he quickly deposited on the bed. The innkeep woman had left a short time before, leaving my hair silk smooth and shining in the room's candlelight thanks to a dose of oil she had combed in. I had already donned my plum robe again, now feeling comfortable closing it tightly without fear of getting it dirty. Hawke nodded approvingly at me.
“One always takes little things like bathing for granted until they go without them for awhile,” he mused. Taking one of his new satchels in hand, he made his way to the washroom. “Dinner should be ready by the time I'm done,” he called over his shoulder. “Make sure you're ready!”
It was maybe a half-hour later that we were finally both cleaned up and seated downstairs in the inn's quaint dining area. Hawke looked like a new man, his hair neatly combed and parted so it fell down either side of his head. He'd taken a razor to the stubble I had been so accustomed to seeing on him, making him look much younger than I thought he was; he couldn't have been much older than twenty.
He'd also switched into a strange gown after his bath comprising of a large white shirt that opened in the middle but had been cinched closed with a sash, as well as a pleated kilt that extended down until it almost dragged on the floor. The deep crimson dye of the kilt reminded me of blood and made me fidget. I had switched back to the orange robe for our dinner, even after Hawke suggested the plum-colored one instead multiple times.
In front of us lay several large dishes of food I had never gotten to try before. Some I could identify from my former master's table, but I had almost never so much as gotten to smell those; tasting his food was punished with severe tongue scalding, so few slaves had been daring enough to ever try it.
Here, though, Hawke encouraged me to have as much of each plate as I liked. Between the mashed potatoes, the crisp roasted duck, the piles of peas and the sweet milk, I couldn't decide which I liked better. Compared to hard bread and thin broth, each and every one was a delicacy I felt almost guilty tasting.
“Now, Micasa, we have to talk about what's going to happen to you,” Hawke started saying when we were nearing the end of the meal. I had a face full of mashed potatoes and ended up spraying quite a bit on him when I tried to respond, but he seemed more amused at that than upset.
“Just keep eating and hear me out,” he said while he dabbed his face clean. “Now, the question is what you want to do from here. There aren't a lot of options for someone as young as you, but if you wanted to, I could find you someone to apprentice under learning a trade like sewing or–”
“Can't I stay with you?” I cut him off before he could finish his thought. “I don't want to be with someone strange.” He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“I…don't know if that would be the best idea, Micasa,” he responded slowly. His eyes drifted towards the wall, and he weighed each word as he spoke on. “I have a lot of business I need to tend to, and I couldn't guarantee your safety.” He paused for a moment, then added quietly, almost to himself, “I don't even know if I can guarantee my own safety, for that matter.”
“But you beat up the overseers!” I pointed out, “I don't think even demons could beat you! Please, you're the nicest adult I've ever met!” I pounded my small fists on the table, like that would somehow embellish my reasoning in any way.
Hawke leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face briskly, looking hard into my eyes. After what must have been minutes of silence, he closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, Micasa, I think the best thing would be to send you to an orphanage. Changirah is a nice town, better protected than most out here. There are plenty of opportunities to be had. With a few more years, you could make something of yourself.”
I could feel the heat rising in my face but stubbornly looked at the ground and forced myself not to show my disappointment. After all the kindness he had shown me, I wasn't ready to give up the one person who had given me so much. Hawke let out a hefty sigh from the other side of the table and leaned across it, tilting my chin up softly.
“Hey, it won't be so bad. Here, I'll tell you what – take this little trinket to remember me by.” He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out something wrapped in a plain handkerchief, which he slid across the table and set in front of me. I curiously pulled back the cloth to find a crystal a bit smaller than my fist, milky white in color. Even in my sadness, I couldn't hold back a cry of delight.
“Is that a shinestone!?” I exclaimed in hushed awe. I had seen such crystals before in my old master's possession. Supposedly they were very rare stones that gave off light when touched with bare skin. According to some of the handmaids, the stronger the glow was, the luckier you would be in life. I almost couldn't contain my excitement as I stretched my finger towards the crystal, and a squeal of happiness escaped on its own as the rock radiated a soft blue glow when I touched it – it was the real deal.
“I'll love this forever! Thank you Hawke!” I snatched the shinestone in my hand and ran around the table to engulf him in a massive hug, my sadness replaced with pure and simple joy for a bit. Hawke, on the other hand, was looking at the glowing crystal as if he had never seen it act like that.
“Glad you like it so much,” he finally said. “Just take care not to show it off too often. I wouldn't want someone trying to steal it from you.”
I nodded, knowing that others would be jealous of my new treasure and that I had a responsibility to protect it. I quickly whisked it back into the handkerchief Hawke had put it in and slipped the bundle deep into the pockets of my robe. A couple reassuring pats and I was certain it was as safe as houses.
Even with the gift lifting my spirits, there was a somber silence between us as we retired to our upstairs room. Hawke drew the curtain hanging in the middle of the room, hiding us from one another. I couldn't even properly enjoy my first night's sleep in my own feather bed, tossing and turning while the worries of where I would end up come the morrow filled my thoughts. As a result, I spent most of the night dozing in and out of nightmares.
I was startled out of one of these fits in the early morning to the sound of a pounding at the door. I looked over to see Hawke pulling at the doorknob as he twisted it to no avail.
“A-apologies, suh!” came the meek and muffled sound of some poor boy on the other side, accompanied by a constant thudding. It sounded like the boy was throwing himself bodily into the door. “The lock seems t'be stuck!”
“No worries,” called back Hawke. “I just hope we don't have to bust our way out. Seems like such a waste of a good door.”
I finally shook off enough of my sleepiness to remember forcing the lock shut in the middle of the night after one of my nightmares, terrified that someone would burst in and take me back to the plantation.
“Sorry, I did that Hawke! I'll get it!” I cried out as I hopped out of the bed, snagging one of my hairpins from the nightstand as I darted to the lock.
Hawke watched carefully as I pi
cked the lock free again with a few deft wiggles of my pin. The door flew immediately, and Hawke and I were just able to jump out of the way as the boy on the other side collapsed onto the floor.
Hawke stared at me with an unreadable expression. “Micasa, you locked the door by yourself? Where did you get a key to the room? I had the only one in my pocket all night.”
“Oh, I just used my hairpin like always.”
“You…you can lock and unlock anything with just your hairpin?”
“Yep!”
His face scrunched up in thought for a second, then he took a breath. “Right, change of plans. Get your things together. We're leaving after breakfast.”
Chapter 3: The Sandwich Man
I had seen caravans before on the rare occasion they passed by the plantation to do business, but getting to ride in one was a treat completely new to me. Hawke had bought us passage to a town he called Sapir but told me it would take us days to get there. Clutching my meager possessions consisting of one spare robe wrapped around my shinestone that I had moved from my pocket, I watched as the countryside passed at a leisurely pace from the inside of our horse-drawn carriage. I had been sorely tempted to try and pet the horse, but one dirty look from the driver was all it took to make sure I reined in that curiosity.
“Micasa,” Hawke said late our first afternoon, as we clacked across a bridge spanning a narrow stream shortly after lunch, “you were wondering why I call myself by your former master's name before. You really want to know the reason?”
I was already sitting in rapt attention before he finished his sentence and nodded vigorously.
“Here, then,” he said, “pull out your shinestone and I'll try and explain as best as I can.”
I fished out the stone from the depths of my bunched up robe, holding it out triumphantly as it exuded its soft blue light.
“That glow you see is from an energy your body gives off,” Hawke stated. “Most people who know about this energy call it essence.”
“I heard the brighter it glows, the luckier you are,” I told him. Hawke laughed a little at this.
“Not quite, though how bright it glows does depend on who's holding it. For the average person, it's very dim, barely any different from the stone just sitting out on its own. Yours, you see, is actually fairly noticeable. It means you have a stronger essence than most people.”
It was my turn to laugh. Even as young as I was, I knew I wasn't very strong at all. Plenty of the other slaves could lift more than twice what I could. Being told I was strong in any sense was just silly to me, and I told him this.
“It's true!” he insisted, “There's much more to your essence than how much you can lift. Here, hand me the shinestone and I'll show you why I handled it with a handkerchief before.”
I offered up the crystal to him, and no sooner did he snatch it from my fingers that it began to radiate a brilliant orange light. It could have easily passed for a lantern in the dark, and I let out an involuntary gasp of surprise.
“Your essence is the measure of your potential as a person,” he explained. “Er, that is, it's what some people call their soul. It holds your memories, your skills, your likes and dislikes – all of these things are stored in your essence. It's not just your body, but also your essence that makes you unique from everyone else.”
He tossed something onto the seat next to me. I picked it up, puzzled to find it was a simple padlock.
“I grabbed this before we got on the caravan,” he said. “You said you can lock and unlock anything with your hairpin, right?”
“I can do it with lots of things,” I admitted. “I just always have a hairpin on me.”
“That's fine, just use whatever and undo that lock.”
It took me a couple seconds of fiddling, but the lock popped open nonetheless. Hawke nodded, then stepped towards me and used some loose string from his bag to tie the shinestone to my wrist, where it sat idly shining.
“Now, force the lock shut the same way you did to our door at the inn, and pay attention to the stone.”
Forcing a lock open was fairly easy for me, but to lock something in a way that couldn't be undone with its key was much trickier. As I worked the lock, I was caught by surprise as the soft blue of the shinestone intensified until it was almost purple.
Hawke clapped his hands together and let out a guffaw. “I knew it! You have a talent!”
“A talent?” I was thoroughly confused.
“Here, I've got a book that will explain things to you,” he said, reaching into his seemingly endless bag of supplies and pulling out a thin hardback with a hand-drawn picture of a man making food. “It's a classic children's book. I made sure to have Fern grab a copy just for you.”
He handed the book to me, but I simply stared at it puzzled.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“I can't read,” I replied plainly, looking up at him.
“…Right, I knew that,” he said too-casually. “I'll teach you in time, but for now, let me read it to you. It's called The Sandwich Man.” I giggled at the name as he seated himself next to me and flipped it open. He began:
There was a boy, all full of joy
Who made a sandwich grand.
And as he grew, the village knew
He'd be a Sandwich Man!
Honeyed ham or leg of lamb,
Wet dirt or branch of pine,
It mattered not what things he got,
He made a sandwich fine!
And as word spread, like fresh baked bread,
His reputation grew.
The Lord Ordained himself proclaimed
To taste one with his stew!
His loyal slave to 'wich Man gave
The best ingredients.
When it was made, farewell he bade
And stole it off at once!
Late that night by candlelight
The Lord began to dine,
But then he gasped, his throat he clasped
and perished in his wine!
“Poison!” they cried, Sandwich Man tried
To fight the law of land,
But still he failed, and so was gaoled,
poor foolish Sandwich Man!
The final picture was of the Sandwich Man behind bars, frowning while somehow still looking disturbingly cute. As Hawke closed the book, I looked up at him.
“Are you saying I'm gonna kill someone?” I asked in a squeak.
“What!? Nononononononono,” he waved his hands as if trying to shoo the notion away. “Just…no. That's not what I was going for. The story is usually told by parents as a warning about doing things without thinking. The Sandwich Man didn't check the ingredients he was given and ended up poisoning the Lord Ordained without meaning to. Mothers and fathers always warn to 'remember the Sandwich Man,' like saying 'think before you do something.'
“That's not the most important part, though. What's important is why the Sandwich Man could make a sandwich out of dirt, or pine branches, or even poison, and people would still enjoy it.”
“Is that the 'talent' you were talking about before?” I asked.
“Yes and no. A talent is something you can do better than most other people. Usually, it's dependent on how you grew up, what you think and feel. Someone who has never seen a horse will likely not have a talent for horseshoeing. Your lock handling talent was likely born from being in manacles for so long and playing with them constantly. The next step after that is what the Sandwich Man has in the story: a power.”
Hawke returned to his knapsack, this time pulling out a simple lantern and some matches. After lighting the lantern, he sat holding it between us.
“Now watch this,” he instructed, and before I could ask what I was looking for, the flame began to flicker. At first, I thought there was simply a draft inside the cabin, but then I saw the way the flame stretched out, how it swayed back and forth, almost like it were dancing. I was so entranced, I didn't realize that Hawke had opened the lantern and shoved his hand
in.
I cried out, afraid he was going to burn himself, but instead he pulled his hand out with the flame still burning in his palm. I watched, hypnotized with wonder, as the little fire slowly crawled up his arm, around his back, and down his other arm. Once in his opposite palm, he gingerly set it back into the lantern and closed the shutter. For a final show, Hawke snapped his fingers, and the flame went out in a puff of smoke.
“A talent is something concrete,” he started as if nothing strange had just happened. “Make a candle, bake a cake, grow really good cabbage, these types of things are talents. When you start using your essence to expand the range of that talent, it becomes a power.”
“You can make fire dance…!” I whispered breathlessly.
“Well, sort of,” he said, scratching his head. “Working fire like this is a power, but it's not my power.”
“You can use other people's powers? Could you use mine!?” I got excited at the prospect of watching Hawke work with the locks too. He laughed, shaking his head.
“You can't lend another person your power, if that's what you're asking. It's part of your essence; it'd be like trying to give someone your arm to use. My real power does, however, let me learn how to use other people's powers.”
“So you can learn how to lock things like me then! I want to see!” I grabbed the lock to give him another demonstration, but he put his hand on mine and stopped me.
“Er, that's where things get complicated,” Hawke said. “Even more than they already are. You see, Micasa, someone has stolen my essence.”
“But you just showed me the shinestone. It was so bright!” I argued.
“I got some back, true, but that's only a little bit of it. Remember what I said about your essence 'remembering' what makes you unique? Well, there are people out there that can rip those memories out of you.”
Broken Soul (The Scholar's Legacy Book 1) Page 4
