His Father's Son (Story)

I was given away as a souvenir of my childhood. I will always be my father’s son. I can’t escape it. Him being my father at all has shaped my life so that I will never be free yet I’m the freest man in the world. I was given to my lifestyle as a result of my father’s lifestyle, yet I have never been able to honestly complain.  I will always travel. I can understand the need to lead a stable existence, to wake up to walls you know like another layer of clothes and to be lying in a bed which is grooved to fit your body like another limb. But that’s not me. I feel more comfortable as me, as someone who is under their own control. I can go where I want, when I want. I am like a kite with no strings; I have no ties against which to strain. There are always times when I regret, though.1

The sun was low-ish in the sky, and it’s light in the sky was like ink bleeding into the clouds. The cluster of wooden houses was the only place I could see from my vantage point on the hill top. The yellowing ageing of the leaves on the trees declared that the summer was tapering to an end. I had travelled a long way this summer, and this small town drew me to it. I came down the gradually broadening track, which became a road as the village drew near, and reached the first houses as the sun blinked out over the roof tops. The town was, if not busy, at least active. A girl of about 10 smeared in mud led a pig into an adjoining street. Men, women and children weaved in and out of candle shops, rope shops, apothecaries and inns and ladies of the night were a mild awareness in the background, not yet plying their trade shamelessly until the sun was fully down and children were in bed. 2

There were plenty of places to stay, some savoury, others with a slightly shifty air. As I drew closer to what felt like the hub of activity, I came across a smallish place called The Sheep’s Head. It seemed bright and cheerful yet respectable. As I pushed the door open, I felt and smelt the warm air laden with smoke and beer of ages. This always makes me recollect, whether I want to or not. I have pushed open so many inn doors in the years of my life. It always starts like this. The door is always wooden, tarry and sturdy. The air changes every time, but the beer and smoke is always there underneath, like the canvas beneath a painting. Each new inn adds to the memories. I have been in ones where food scents the air, where vomit and sickness is the overpowering stench and where ghastly women daubed in face paint try to lure any man they can with their wiles and their cloying, head-achy scents. A flurry of snowflakes as I enter the room, a stab of cold soon dispersed, or a respite from blistering heat… all these enter with me, but not today. Another inn, another beer, another room, another minstrel- it’s the story of my life, and no matter how I find it, some will be forgotten in the clump of inns, where I have passed and left nothing but coin.3

The innkeeper recommended this candle-maker to me when I enquired after one who would pay an assistant. After a night spent in a pleasant enough inn, I made my way to this door. Travelling is all very well but money and a certain roof are more pressing and practical concerns as the winter threatens. Autumn’s scent had scarcely begun to coat the air, yet summer was long and I wandered further than usual. The door to the shop was unpainted but varnished, and a wooden table bore a forest of candles. I entered the shop. The main area of the shop and the pitted, burnt and waxy counter were well lit but deserted. 4

“Yes?”5

I started when a bodiless voice said this, in a waspish yet rather bored tone. A man of about my age stood up and strolled nonchalantly towards the counter from where he had been stacking shelves in a shadowed spot. 6

“Are you Mr Lett?” To this, I received no reply apart from an arrogant snort through the nose. The man turned his back on me and disappeared into the shadows at the back of the shop. 7

Working with that man was a task I could tell at once I would not relish. He was handsome in a superficial way- blond hair, blue eyes, a strong jaw line- well built, too, although not massively brawny. He had that air of one who’s lips are toying with the impulse to curl derisively and the boredom of those over-inflated individuals who feel they are doing things that are below them, with people that are below them, like a prize stallion with dowdy, dun-coated mountain ponies of half their height but twice their determination and usefulness. That could definitely make for conflict. I could only hope it wouldn’t.8

A waxy apron with a grin on top of it swept into the main part of the shop. 9

“And what can I do for you, good sir?” His voice was friendly and warm. The accent was that of one well brought up and polite, yet friendly and relaxed. A young noble disowned as a child? A runaway? One who had maybe even disowned his own family? Someone like me, I reflected wryly. Or not.10

“I was wondering if you were hiring assistants at the moment?”11

“Not especially, but there’s always room for a hard-working youngster like you. Have you any experience with candle making, or should Tomat show you the ropes?” I gathered that Tomat was my friend who had greeted me so kindly when I came into the shop. Even if I couldn’t tell wax from wick I would probably have said no, but I had made candles as a child, and picked up the craft as I went along. Starting as an apprentice, learning tricks and foibles of the trade. The money earned making candles had taken me further than any horse, any cart, any ship.12

“I wouldn’t describe myself as a master craftsman-” not good to admit weaknesses in front of the boiling pot of hostility next to Mr Lett- “But I have enough experience to work in a shop well.”13

“Very well, then. Five golds per month’s the pay, here at seven hours in the morning, home at five, an hour for lunch, twenty minutes break to be taken when you need, unless we’re busy…” He motioned me to come through to the back of the shop as he told me the various rules and pointed briefly to where things were. Tomat looked filthy, acid poison at me as the old man turned round.14

The back of the shop was larger than first expected from the front. I guessed that it must take up two shop’s space- there would only be a wall on the street beyond, or possibly a stall. Large vats of wax and tallow dominated the shadowy space. The floor was like a blotched image, of the type the ancients used to create, a huge melted smear of deformed wax that could be a horse or a crippled woman or a scream in physical form. Shelves and boxes clung to the walls and cluttered the floor, and the paraphernalia of candle making, mysterious and bizarre to those not in the know, lay around, on wooden benches and on the edges of tubs. A girl with her back to me was holding a rack of half-made candles, drippy, white and weak as yet but growing with every dip. She turned partially as we entered, but kept dipping the candles. 15

“This is Flistre. Been here almost as long as me, it feels like! You can make a start by doing some more of those candles. Just ask if you’ve got any problems.”16

With that, he swept out.17

I mutely picked up a rack which was lying around and began to thread some wick through the holes. I was on the point of dipping my first candles for Mr Lett when a rough hand flicked me  round and the voice of Tomat said18

“What do you think you’re doing? Get your own! Lett doesn’t like lazy pricks!” I didn’t know how to reply to that. I was trying to decide whether to reply by asking the simple question of where the necessary equipment was and admitting my inferiority or yell right back at him. Why did I feel as if asking a simple question, within my first ten minutes of work, would allow him to make me feel inferior? How could I come to this within a minute of entering my work place? I was aware that the gap between his aggressive greeting and my reply was on the verge of uncomfortably long, when Flistre charged to the rescue, pointing me in the direction of the necessaries and scolding Tomat for being hot-headed. Scolded- gently. There was no mistake in the way she said it- they were more than just colleagues. Something inside me sank. Was he really that irresistible? Not only was he arrogant- he had this to flaunt in my face, what he had that I didn’t. Mutely, I slouched over to the tarry chest and took what I needed. I could hear his flattering, which went with wandering hands in my mind’s eye, her flushed giggling- their kissing. I refused to look. This job would be full of very long days.19

I perused the shops and buildings of the town. My spirits were grimly determined. The morning had been long and not overly pleasant thanks to my kissing colleagues. I hate not knowing where to look. Why do I always feel this way, as though my presence itself is an insult? Couples express their undying love in front of me, by their own choice, where anyone can see. If they don’t want to be looked at, go somewhere else. So why do I still feel like the wrong piece of the puzzle? I came to a cobbled square with a primly proud square of scrubby grass displaying a monument in the centre. I wandered over to it, suspecting with a dark suspicion of what it would say. They all do. Strategically placed. No. They are to be expected. Because it’s not me who shouldn’t have to look at them. I don’t have to go there at all. But I can feel it reeling me in. I could only ever be pulled in.20

“Unknown and unnamed are all the victims of the atrocities of Sahn Trey and his evil armies, but all have relatives who have been murdered, raped or tortured, or who have simply never been seen since. In loving, painful memory.”21

The twinge from reading that was deeper than any inn door. It was the rotted strand of weed at the bottom of a stagnant pond which will always drag down any innocent who comes the wrong way. Not like me, then. Dark red is what I remember. It’s how I felt. It’s the blood in the dark. 22

“In it’s right place, I suppose. It’s good to think of my sister. Just so painful to see in the town centre every day a stab which reminds me of how she- died.”23

I looked up. Flistre stood next to me, and I looked at her properly for the first time. Her eyes were closed for a moment in respect. When they opened, they were like chips of blue ice. But that made them sound cold. No. Like the sky. Like the sky in spring, so far from today. Today, the sky was a pastel, diluted, subtle shade of blue. A sky like that becomes the scent of autumn, the clean douse of cold, but not her eyes.24

“I’m sorry” was all I could muster. How pathetic. This beautiful, complex creature already confused me. She could love someone like Tomat. She was a wonder to behold, seeming so innocent but plainly not, from what she had just told me. I knew it then.25

She broke the silence, before I had to think of something insignificant to say about her loss.26

“I hope you don’t mind Tomat. He’s a good person, really. He comes across as so arrogant… but he’s a joker when you get to know him, honestly. His father was murdered and his mother was raped by Trey’s devil spawn. I think he wears a sort of outer shell. He’ll warm to you, give him time. How was the morning?”27

“You know how it is in a new place, I suppose… I’ll get used to it in no time, especially with companions like you and Tomat.” I could feel the lie in the last word of that. I don’t think she did. We walked through the streets together. Her charisma seemed to rub off on me, to make me see the town through happier eyes. Company, such a wonderful thing. 28

Flistre had lived in the town all her life. She was like a thread in the fabric of this place, the sights and scents so new to me like family to her. Like home. I could never imagine a place being like that to me. We seemed worlds apart, but I felt a bond there which was strong and straight. A one-way bond, as yet. 29

She nimbly led me out of the town, to a lake. I had seen it from the hill yesterday. Such a pity for the possibility of exploration to be dimmed by the radiance of the girl next to me. We sat on a rock that would be in the shallows in heavy rain. It was like a seat for two. A few feet further… it would have been like our boat, where we could escape. It can only have been half an hour, but that time was enough to show me that Flistre’s spirit was every bit as exquisite as she was. And she thought the same, about this new worker in the candle shop. I would be dead at Tomat’s hands if hatred could kill, when we re-entered the shop. But I didn’t care.30

From then on, the tedium of a simple candle-maker’s was no more. The greasy stench of tallow in the back room was nothing compared to the fizz and crackle of tension between the three of us. Excitement, hate, guilt, something rosier- all made the workshop an exciting place to be. The days and weeks went past. Flistre had to watch her step. Tomat was like a hawk, or like a jealous animal, which didn’t want to share its kill. I couldn’t help feeling as though he wasn’t so different from the latter. Sometimes, I could steal a secret meeting in the evening, if he was travelling to another town, if he was ill… He couldn’t keep his woman a prisoner for ever. I was blind to the fact that I couldn’t keep dodging his dives, though…31

Stupidly, foolishly, blindly, one day it happened. Tomat was on a commission to another town. It was the end of lunch. Giddily, trying to conceal the flush of each other’s touch, Flistre and I sidled guiltily in. I am sure Mr Lett can’t have been totally oblivious to goings on, but he showed no sign of awareness. Flistre was stacking shelves. I went into the workshop, and was stunned by the sudden pain of a vice-like hand, a headlock, and before I knew it, the stench of tallow was in my nose, it’s grey-white mass boiling a hand span or less from my face. I underestimated Tomat’s strength. And that was without the force of injured pride, hate, anger and a million other festering emotions fuelling his grip. His venomous hiss was in my ears, all around, and before long fear was overriding the feelings of half an hour before. 32

“I don’t know why I don’t force your face down, boil it until pretty little you is nothing more than the deformed, ugly outcast that your twisted soul is. Then what would she think of you, eh? Then would that little whore still cheat on me? They did that to my father, before they killed him, and he was an innocent man. You deserve what even I am too kind to give. You deserve-” I was painfully twisted sideways and Flistre’s voice was torn, rent, bruised. Spoilt. 33

“How could I have ever felt ANYTHING for you? How can I have been lying to myself for so long, telling myself you’re a good person, you’ve been through a lot… I’ve had it too, watched the undescribables rape and beat my own sister, my own flesh and blood, I’ve felt the knife and I’ve survived, and I would kill myself the moment I became you! Given half the chance you would have-”34

“Whore!” His smack, a meaty one, rang in the air, and I felt her pain myself. Tomat pushed me to the floor.35

“You should be in the brothel, BOTH of you should work there, scum!”36

One last kick, a heavy right-footed one, doubled me up, and Tomat left.37

Silence. I picked myself up and staggered to her, my beautiful, bruised butterfly with broken wings. She didn’t look up. She was crying silently. We remained, frozen, for a while. Presently, she spoke. Quietly. The composure in her voice eaten away, stripped. 38

“Who are you? Who are you? I don’t know you. I don’t even know your second name. You came here, and you shook my life, and I don’t even know your second name. Yet you’ve shown me a new outlook on life. You’ve opened the blinds, you’ve- changed me. I’m naïve. I’ve seen things… I can’t even speak about them, and I still see the world through rose-tinted spectacles. A civil war… a warlord… it sounds so serious. Killed in his sleep by his own bastard son. Far too kind an end for such an evil man. Sahn Trey, the devil epitomised. I hate it.” She sighed a ragged sigh, and looked up at me. Her cheek was bleeding. Her eye would blacken. I couldn’t stop it inside me. My guilt was not just for Tomat. I was guilty, I had no choice about it, yet it shaped my life. My father’s son. My second name.39

“Trey,” I said.40

I will always be my father’s son. He gave me away as a souvenir of my childhood. It’s a burden that means I will always travel, and never know a home. I never have, not since the night when I atoned my father’s sins the only way I could think how, with the feel of sharp metal in my hand, the night I left my hated home with nothing but the contents of the bag I still carry. I shift it slightly and futilely try to dry my eyes, as I turn my back on the past months. The only companionship and unity I will ever know is the enforced companionship, unity and lifelong faith to the open road before me.41