The History of Mischief

by Rebecca Higgie

  I think the real History of Mischief was the first book ever made. All other books before then were scrolls. Paper didn’t even exist. Paper was invented in China in the second century. Before then, they used papyrus (plants from Egypt), parchment (animal skin) and vellum (calfskin). I’m happy we make paper from trees and not from animals anymore.

  I write down all of the things I learn. The dates are often different from the History, but historians always get things wrong or argue. Some of them even name the other historians they think are wrong. They argue a lot over Alexander. Some think he was clever, while others think he was cruel and mad.

  None of them know about The History of Mischief. I know something kept secret from the whole world.

  A week later, more books arrive. I write down anything linked to the History, even if it’s wrong. Kay asks what I’ve found.

  ‘I’m still researching,’ I say.

  ‘Then you’ll give me a mischief report, hey?’ she asks.

  ‘If you let us read the fourth history.’

  ‘Deal.’

  The box of origami birds and flowers is full. There are three hundred and sixty-three: one hundred and two paper cranes, eighty-four lotuses, sixty-eight lilies, sixty-two roses, and forty-seven simple flowers. I have so many coloured and fancy-patterned ones that I throw out the ones Theodore and I first made on scrap paper. Except for the first two paper cranes. I keep them in the back of my cupboard.

  Mrs Moran has a veranda around her house. She sits there with Cornelius, even if it’s raining. Sometimes Cornelius sticks his head out and licks the rain. He’s clever, and hides under one of the hanging baskets for protection. I look for the ones that hang completely under the veranda. They’d make perfect nests for the cranes.

  Kay used to leave the keys in a bowl in the kitchen, but since the break-in, she carries them around with her. It’s Thursday night. Kay’s asleep in front of the TV, the keys next to her on the couch. It’s 2 am and the lights at Number 61 are off. I sneak into the living room and take the keys really slowly so they don’t jingle. Kay’s snoring. I think I’m safe for a while.

  I open the front door and run over to Mrs Moran’s house with the box of origami. I quickly put the paper cranes and flowers all over her veranda. I put them in her hanging baskets, on her chair, the table where she puts her tea, and next to Cornelius’ water bowl. There are so many. It looks so bright and colourful, even under the dull street lamp.

  I run back home. I return to the living room, where Kay is still snoring, and leave the keys next to her on the couch. The empty box goes under my bed. I get under the doona where it’s nice and cosy.

  I smile and smile.

  The paper cranes and flowers are still there when we walk to school the next day.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Kay says.

  I shrug.

  I don’t need to make any more origami so at lunch I read a book about codices. Theodore still wants to make paper cranes. He sits on the cushions with me and chats until I tell him to be quiet. He then hums. I can’t read, so I just make cranes with him, even though I don’t need to. He tells me everything he remembers about Greece from a documentary Stephanie let him watch, so I guess I’m still doing mischief research.

  Later, Kay takes me to Guildford Library because the last two books have arrived. There’s one on Diogenes and the Cynics (which were the grumpy philosophers) and one on the burning of libraries (it has a chapter on Alexandria).

  On the way home, we see Mrs Moran sitting on the veranda with Cornelius, who’s batting a paper crane with his paw, and a lady I don’t know. Mrs Moran has a mug of tea in one hand and a golden crane in the other. I remember writing ‘From A. Mischief’ on that one. She grins and waves with the crane in her hand.

  ‘Hello girls!’

  ‘Hello Mrs Moran,’ Kays says. She then pokes me. ‘Say hello!’

  ‘Hello Mrs Moran,’ I say. Then, I feel mischievous. ‘I like your paper birds.’

  ‘Aren’t they marvellous?’ she says. ‘Oh, girls, this is my daughter Helen.’

  Helen looks about Mum’s age. When she smiles, she doesn’t look like she means it. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Helen doesn’t like the paper birds,’ Mrs Moran says. ‘She doesn’t even like the flowers. What a party pooper.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, I just … you know why.’

  ‘She thinks I did all this myself! Can you believe it?’

  ‘Mother, please,’ Helen says.

  ‘Anyway, girls, would you like a cup of tea?’

  Kay says ‘no thank you’ and we go home.

  On Saturday, I read the new books (they don’t have many new facts) and flick through the old ones while Kay listens to her podcasts, cleans the bathroom and sleeps.

  At dinner, I present Kay with my report. I give as much detail as I can, checking my notes, so she won’t have any reason to say I didn’t do enough research. She gets us both a bowl of ice-cream as I finish my report.

  Finally, I ask, ‘So, can we read the next history please?’

  Kay looks tired but smiles. ‘Sure.’

  A. Mischief the One-Hundred and Twenty-Third

  Wieliczka, Poland 1436–1489

  As I placed my foot on the first rung of the worn wooden ladder, stepping back into the abyss, I felt immediate calm. Soft light and shadow danced from below as I went further down into the heart of the earth. I hadn’t wanted to leave the mine, but when the doctor discovered I hadn’t been aboveground in two years, he prescribed sunlight and a small vacation. I spent my enforced holiday at the nearest inn, blacking out all the windows.

  A barrel slowly passed me as it was winched up to the surface on a set of pulleys. The familiar creak of the ropes made me smile.

  ‘Serafin!’

  As I stepped off the ladder, the miners below secured the winch and patted me on the back.

  ‘Welcome back!’ one of them said cheerfully. He crossed himself. ‘We missed you, old man. The boys have had a terrible time with the horses.’

  I sighed. This didn’t surprise me. ‘Did I miss anything?’

  ‘Not unless you count the dragon,’ he laughed.

  The other miner went suddenly dark, scowling at his friend fiercely.

  ‘What … oh … sorry,’ he said to me sheepishly.

  I shoved past him and descended deeper, heading for the stables. The mention of a dragon set it off again – that hum, that wicked sound from the History. I’d left the book in the stables, hoping it wouldn’t be there when I returned. The thing had been with me for almost fifty years. What a fool I’d been to think it would abandon me after so long.

  Each level down, the hum grew. It was reminding me: You are back. But don’t forget before.

  I went down a sloped corridor, another set of worn steps, and out into an expansive cavern. Miners, carpenters, engineers, penitents, doctors, cooks and horse-handlers like myself crossed at this large intersection, nodding our greetings as we found the corridor or shaft that would lead us to our work. There were over three hundred of us in this underground kingdom. Truly, there was no place like the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Corridors tunnelled haphazardly down into the earth as miners followed the salt wherever it went. Some areas were so low and narrow, one had to get on hands and knees and crawl. In others, the caverns were taller than buildings, and wooden archways and stairs wound around the walls. I went down a corridor that sagged, like it laboured under the weight of the earth above. The walls bulged like they were riddled with gout.

  I then had to take a boat over our biggest brine lake, a body of water as vast as any lake aboveground. Among all the fears of living down here, few were greater than smashing through rock and breaking into a lake. Flooding killed men every year. But as I watched its lightly rippling surface twinkling in the light from the tallow lamps, I couldn’t help but admire the lake’s beauty. There were worse ways of dying here.

  Once past the lake, I descended a staircase that wound down a wide shaft. Then I followed th
e wooden gutters that snaked around the mine, draining brine from leaking walls and lakes. Pine and fir stakes held up the ceilings, supported the walls, and arched in bridges over brine lakes. Since wood became as hard as rock when exposed to salt it was used in the carts, winches and horse mill that hauled the greatest salt deposits to the surface. Metal corroded too quickly, only finding a place in the pickaxes.

  I then noticed something. Three new crosses carved in an overhead beam. Markers of the dead. I touched those few I hadn’t seen before. I often wondered if they would carve a cross for a Jewish man like me, or if they’d afford me a marker in Hebrew. At the start and end of every shift, the miners crossed themselves. They crossed themselves for me, when they saw me start work. It annoyed me as a boy. Now I saw it as a sign of affection. I was one of them.

  I heard the horse mill creaking as I approached the stables. The stables housed twenty horses that lived and worked belowground with us. Five were driving the biggest mill in the mine, a winch that wound ropes as thick as a man’s torso to pull salt blocks to the surface. The horses calmed as they felt my presence. The men who monitored them did not. I saw them stiffen. They knew something was wrong. Whatever this talk of a dragon meant, they knew. They offered only meekly mumbled welcomes.

  I ignored them and went to the stables. Most of the horses were gone, no doubt pulling carts to the various shafts that brought the salt up to the surface, or here to the mill. There were three mares resting. A boy, only a little older than me when I started, groomed their manes. He bowed nervously. I snatched the brush from him.

  My day passed in the heavy silence of my men creeping around me. Eventually, a familiar voice, its deep timbre wry yet gentle, sounded behind me.

  ‘I could’ve mined an entire mountain in the time you’ve spent grooming those horses.’

  It was Władysław.

  ‘It hasn’t been done properly in a week,’ I snapped and continued brushing the horses who’d returned after the main shift of the day.

  Władysław watched me for a moment.

  ‘You’re upset.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Someone mentioned the dragon, didn’t they?’

  Ignored him still.

  He sighed. ‘Come, sit down. I brought dinner.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ I said, but he took me by the shoulders and sat me down. He placed a small box with bread and stew in my lap. He sat and nudged me. Though a full foot taller than me, he tried to make himself smaller, resting his elbows on his knees and slumping forward. Władysław was an imposing figure, a frontline miner who spent his days digging into virgin rock. He smiled at me gently. Sadly.

  I looked away.

  ‘It’s nothing, you know,’ he said. ‘Just Lolek. He’s convinced there’s a dragon on the lower levels.’

  Lolek led the penitents, the men who burned off the deadly methane gas that leached out of the rock and hung above our heads.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why else? The poor bastard’s mad. His men aren’t helping. Ulryk’s been roaring like a dragon all week.’

  My hand went to my pocket. I felt the little wooden dragon hidden there. A child’s toy. My only possession from life before.

  Władysław’s voice jolted me back.

  ‘Lolek’s given Ulryk double shifts as punishment but he still does it.’

  I got along with most of the men in the mine, but Władysław and Ulryk were the only ones I considered friends. We had all been in the mine for decades, longer than the rest. We were permanent fixtures, some joked, as old as the rock itself. Even our long beards matched, though Ulryk hadn’t been able to grow his back since the accident. Ulryk was another penitent. The long pole he lit and poked into the caverns to burn off methane was his constant companion. His face was partly melted, burnt when methane had built up too much and exploded in his face. Yet he laughed constantly, always playing games. He’d make a better mischief than me. I tried giving the History to him once, but he flipped through it only to find blank pages.

  ‘Give it back to me when you’ve written your great opus,’ he said. ‘Tales of Serafin, Handler of Horses, Miserable Old Bastard.’

  That night, after Władysław left, I went up to my bed in the loft. I banished everyone else to the stables below with the horses. Many of the miners went back to the surface after their shift, but there were a number of us who stayed for months, even years, on end.

  I let out a sigh as I settled into bed. Talk of dragons aside, I was home. Not even the History beneath my mattress, with its gentle humming, could ruin that.

  I sunk into the mine. My mischief took me into the rock. I swam in the brine lakes. Like Yingtai some nine hundred years ago, I knew how to feel the earth, how to be one with it. While she shaped the trees above, I snaked through rock below. That was all I could do. I had no magic in me. And I was fine with that.

  I used my mischief to follow Ulryk as he finished his double shift, listening to him hum some happy tune. He extinguished his pole-mounted torch and took a small lamp back up to the middle level to sleep.

  I lingered in this new cavern. It was full of a darkness without shape or end. As I drifted off to sleep in the stables, I dreamt of finding dragon eggs, smooth oval things, ready to split open. I dreamt of Feliks.

  I don’t recall how I found the History. I just remember, suddenly, the feelings and experiences of so many people blooming in my mind. My first memories were theirs. I caught my reflection in a window. I was a boy. Black hair, face pale and freckled, with startling green eyes. But I was also a slave who outran time, a woman who shaped forests, a princess who turned limestone to salt. I experienced all those memories as my own. I knew a dozen languages before I could fully speak. I was one hundred and twenty-two souls in a tiny boy who had yet to form his own identity.

  I became mute, trapped in the History, staring at my reflection for days, trying to understand who or what I was. My parents put me to bed. I wouldn’t eat. Then Feliks sat on my bed and put a wooden dragon in my hand. Feliks made me Serafin. Feliks gave me back myself.

  ‘Your name is Serafin. You are three and a half years old. Your favourite food is gingerbread, which Father makes in the bakery downstairs. You like dragons and stories. Maybe you’ve forgotten them, like you’ve forgotten yourself. I’ll tell you again. You shouldn’t be sad, little brother. It’ll be nice to hear them as if they’re new.’

  He motioned down to the wooden dragon. It fit neatly in my palm, like it was made for me. My fingers wrapped around its neck. It had bulging eyes and a long, curved tail. ‘This is your favourite toy. Smok Wawelski, the Dragon of Wawel Hill.’

  He told me the story of the dragon and the founding of our town. King Krakus was looking for a place to build the seat of his realm. He discovered Wawel Hill, a tall mound where he could see his whole kingdom. Below, the hill was full of caves. Fertile fields surrounded the hill and a crystal-clear river wound through them gracefully. The only problem: a giant egg found in the caves. The king was afraid, but his men convinced him it was nothing to worry about. The egg was heavy and thick. It would never hatch.

  A grand castle was built on Wawel Hill, and a village of merchants and farmers sprang up at its base. The city was named Krakow after the wise king. Then one day, a cracking sound came from the caves, loud enough for all to hear. A dragon hatched. It crawled out of the caves, already a giant, and tormented the city. The king promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who could defeat the dragon. Many tried. Many died.

  A cobbler had an idea. He knew the dragon couldn’t resist a juicy plump sheep. He stuffed the carcass of a sheep with sulphur, fluffed its wool so it looked alive, and left it outside the caves. The dragon devoured it immediately. The sulphur burned the dragon’s insides. He flew down to the Vistula River but no amount of water could quench his thirst. His belly swelled and then BANG, he burst! The dragon was no more. The cobbler married King Krakus’ daughter. Krakow was at peace once more.

  ‘When we play
,’ Feliks said, ‘you’re the cobbler and I’m the dragon. I pretend to explode and you always laugh.’

  As Feliks told me the story, I started to understand who I was, separate from the History and its memories.

  ‘I like the story,’ I said. I heard my voice for the first time. I had so many voices before. This little voice, with its ill-formed words: this was my voice now.

  ‘I know, it’s your favourite,’ Feliks said. ‘I think it’s a little sad though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The dragon was just hungry. He didn’t have a brother or friend to help him.’

  ‘But he killed people! He was a bad dragon.’

  ‘He was lonely. Maybe that’s why he was a bad dragon. I was naughty before you were born. Mother always says so. I was lonely. But we’re never lonely, you and me.’

  So Serafin was born again in the things Feliks told me. He told me about the king who was eaten by mice, the glass mountain and the tree of golden apples, gingerbread bees, and stories from the Torah, of Abraham and Moses. Even at ten, I felt disjointed at times, unable to discern between my memories and the histories. Feliks locked eyes with me as if he knew.

  ‘Your name is Serafin. You are ten years old. You have eyes as bright and green as dragon scales. You are fun and you love gingerbread. You are my little brother.’

  There were whispers when I woke in the morning. As the handlers and I led the horses through the mine, rumours were shared with us too. The penitents had found rocks in the new cavern that were not there before. Four rounded rocks, as large as a man, oval and smooth. Dragon eggs, they said, laughing.

  Had I dreamt finding those eggs? Or had I maybe … made them?

  No, it wasn’t possible. I had never been able to wield mischief. Not properly. Since I’d found the History so young, I didn’t really have any abilities for it to magically enhance. I could be one with the mine, feel the life within the rock, but beyond that, nothing. And ever since Feliks, well … I had never tried.