Duality by Rowan Erlking (classic books for 13 year olds txt) 📕

“Everything comes in pairs.” is an old Maldos saying. It was considered a sign of perfection. Everyone had two eyes, two hands, two nostrils—the things that offended usually came single—including the mouth which was the cause of a great deal of trouble in most circumstances. Even the animals came in pairs: male and female. It was said that even the gods were paired. So when the fraternal twins, Bernum and Malkia, were born to the Pharmacist in Yapan Township they were praised as the highest blessings from the gods, and their beautiful mother the most wonderful woman alive.

     Bernum looked just like his father. He had chocolate colored eyes, dark rich skin, high cheekbones and curly black hair already sprouting on his scalp. Malkia was just like her mother. Slightly fairer than her brother, her chin was a little pointier and her nose a little button of a thing. Everyone said she would be a beauty when she was grown, someday drawing the eyes of men everywhere she went. But their parents were merely glad they were healthy and happy babies.

But the saying about pairs also had a double meaning. After all, as everything came in a pair, single things were never actually single. That is to say, with every singular blessing that came into the world, they believed there was an equally bad curse to counter it. So, three years after Bernum and Malkia were born, the Pharmacist had another child brought into his household, Dennik—a baby boy who when he arrived, his mother left the world. And worse, where Bernum and Malkia were considered the sign of absolute perfection, Dennik was the epitome of imbalanced.

Dennik’s right hand had only a thumb and forefinger. His left hand looked like someone had crushed it in a fist, all the fingers scrunched together uselessly, hardly able to move. He also had a clubfoot at the end of his left leg. But the rest of him was perfect, his bright eyes smiling almost immediately upon seeing his father, brother and sister; which was why the day he arrived and his mother died, Bernum and Malkia fell in love with him. And their father—he wrapped that baby up and took care of him with all his heart, praying to the gods for help that one day his son would be cured.

Unfortunately not everyone saw little Dennik that way.

“He’s a demon!” shrieked the Pharmacist’s mother who arrived in Yapan from Yodanna to help take care of the now motherless children, glaring at the child’s crushed hand as it cooed and pawed his father’s face with his bent fingers. “You should kill it!”

“It is my child,” the Pharmacist answered, pulling his bald headed boy back with a protective hand.

“It is deformed!” she screamed at him, her face flushing dark. “Either you drown that beast or I will never enter your house again!”

Blinking his chocolate eyes at her, the Pharmacist replied in his usual soft manner, “Very well, Mother. You may leave.”

Puffing and huffing, the Pharmacist’s mother stomped out of Yapan.

And she wasn’t the only one to say the baby was a demon. His wife’s mother was worse. When she visited to act as replacement-mother for the children, she actually took up the baby when he was napping to strangle him for the death of her daughter. Luckily Bernum and Malkia were playing near by and saw her. Malkia screamed on the top of her high-pitched lungs, calling her father upstairs from the shop, and Bernum ran up to his grandmother, biting her on the arm. Neither grandmother returned after that day.

Over the course of the first few months of the baby’s life, the Pharmacist hired around twenty different nannies, though none were suitable in the long run. They were more than glad to take care of Bernum and Malkia, thrilled to be in the presence of such innocent perfection, but when left alone with Dennik they all turned out just as likely kill him and pretend it was an accident as the grandmothers. There were a number of close calls. The twins stopped one from drowning Dennik in the bath. Another time they caught Dennik when one nanny purposely dropped him down the stairs. There was even a nanny that almost put Dennik in the stock pot to boil him, but Bernum turned the boiling water on her instead while Malkia pulled her baby brother away by his little arms. Regularly nannies’ voices carried on the wind that the ‘demon’ had cursed them all.

That was why the Pharmacist then hired a housekeeper to tend to the household duties while he took the children with him into the shop during the day. She did all the shopping, the cleaning, the cooking, and the mending. He paid her for her work and inspected every detail to make sure she did not try to poison the baby’s clothes, bedding or food. And for the next two years that arrangement was all the family knew. They never went out. They remained in the house, in the shop, and in the yard. And because business died down after the birth of Dennik, most of the patrons terrified of the ‘demon’ child and only came in desperation for the Pharmacist’s excellent medicines, they lived on a meager income.

Perhaps the Pharmacist and his children would have remained isolated for the rest of their lives if not for one man who decided to swallow his fear and visit.

He knocked on the door to the pharmacy, yet not stepping in. “Hello?”

The Pharmacist peered over the pharmacy counter at the head that peeked in. It was the schoolmaster, Beyan, a man trained in the Kibilla Township at the Master School of Higher Learning. He had been living in Yapan for some time now, married with a child of his own. Darker than most Maldos men, his smile gleamed white along with the glitter of hope in his eyes. He was wringing his hands.

“You can come in,” the Pharmacist said after a while.

Nodding and bowing, Beyan the schoolmaster took one step into the pharmacy, looking around as if searching for deadly spiders. “I’m sorry to barge in like this—”

“You’re not barging in,” the Pharmacist replied, walking around the back of the counter along the wall that was stuffed with shelves upon shelves of herb packets in wooden drawers, labeled for easy access. He put away one, tucking it inside before shoving the small drawer closed. There was a prescription on the table near the register he had been filling.

The schoolmaster took another step in, bowing. “All the same, I was not sure you would welcome me since you did not register your children for school this term.”

The Pharmacist merely blinked at him.

“I would assume that is means you do not believe I am fit to teach your children,” Beyan added, taking yet another step towards the pharmacy counter.

Snorting, the Pharmacist swiped up the prescription medicines and wrapped them up in brown paper. “It is unwise to assume anything… considering I don’t even know you.”

Nodding somewhat abashedly, the schoolmaster wrung his hands more tightly. “Yes… But, uh, if that isn’t the case then why didn’t you enroll your children for school? Don’t you want them to be educated?”

The Pharmacist leaned on the counter then beckoned the schoolmaster closer with his hand.

Beyan complied, hunched a bit as he walked in towards the owner of the shop. Still, his eyes searched about for something.

“You ask me why I have not enrolled Bernum and Malkia in the school, and yet you look around my shop as if something will jump out to get you,” the Pharmacist said.

Beyan tensed, cringing.

“You should know why I didn’t enroll them.” Nodding, the Pharmacist continued, “My children are precious to me—all of them. I haven’t let Bernum or Malkia leave the home alone since we were left on our own. And do you know why? Twins are of high value on the black market.”

“I would never—”

But the Pharmacist held his hand up, stopping him. “We haven’t even been to the marketplace in years. I’ve had to hire out for help and keep my children here in the shop to protect them.”

“Are they here now?” Beyan looked around; half eager, half terrified.

“In the other room,” the Pharmacist replied. “I can hear them playing.”

Sighing, Beyan nodded. “I can understand you are worried about the safety of your two children…”

“Three children,” the Pharmacist corrected with some bite.

“…But I assure you when they come to school they will be in my care. I won’t let anything happen to them,” Beyan said.

“And who will take them?” the Pharmacist asked, blinking mildly at him.

The schoolmaster blinked back. “What do you mean?”

Sighing, the Pharmacist replied, “I already told you, I can’t have them walking out on their own. And I can’t take them. The moment I step out people will start throwing things at Dennik.”

Cringing, though not in dismay this time, the schoolmaster tiredly replied, “Then leave him with the housekeeper.”

He watched the Pharmacist lean back from the counter shaking his head. The Pharmacist went to the wall, opened several drawers, and lifted out supplies to make another medicinal cure.

The schoolmaster followed him along the length of the counter. “All right. I see you are not apt to do that. How about another suggestion? I pick them up for school, and then after school I deliver them safely home.”

Halting, the Pharmacist looked at the schoolmaster out of the corner of his eye. “You would do that?”

Beyan nodded hard. “I will take full responsibility.”

“Can I get that in writing?” the Pharmacist asked.

Sighing rather loudly, the schoolmaster nodded, stepping back. “Yes. I will provide the written document when I pick them up tomorrow. We start early.”

“And what of the enrollment fee?” the Pharmacist asked, still peering at him.

Suddenly uncomfortable, Beyan said, “I’m not paid much by the town council, but I am willing to cut your enrollment fee in half for the twins—two for the price of one.”

“And this requires uniforms?” the Pharmacist persisted in asking.

Beyan nodded frankly. “Yes. It is a must that I cannot bend on, even for amazing children such as yours.”

“Hmm.” The Pharmacist set down his supplies and walked to the open back door, calling in. “Bernum. Malkia. Come here.”

The two children raced from the side of Dennik whom they had been entertaining with paper dolls they had made out of the brown paper scraps, telling him funny stories to make him laugh. Dennik rose up with effort, toddling after them on his clubfoot, wondering what it was that called their attention to the shop.

Pointing over the counter to the schoolmaster, the Pharmacist said, “This is Beyan the Schoolmaster. Tomorrow you will be walking to school with him.”

“Riding, actually,” the schoolmaster said with a broad grin, his eyes taking in the ‘marvelous perfection’ that were the twins. He said to them, “I will have a carriage take us. You needn’t walk the distance.”

“You needn’t hire a carriage,” the Pharmacist replied somewhat sternly.

“For them I would do anything,” the schoolmaster replied. “The expense is nothing to the honor.”

“No,” the Pharmacist repeated, his gaze hard. “Bernum and Malkia must be treated like any other children.”

The schoolmaster looked stunned, opening his mouth to protest, but then he caught sight of Dennik in the doorway peeking his curious eyes at him, the boy’s tiny crushed hand scratching under his chin. However the child ducked the same time the schoolmaster did, both defensive reactions.

Bernum frowned. He looked to Malkia who likewise was disappointed in their schoolmaster. Their hopes that he would be different from all the others in the town who had come into the shop and reacted violently to Dennik, dropped immediately. Not one person to date had been different.

“Tomorrow,” the Pharmacist said, taking over the conversation, “you will go with the schoolmaster to school, work hard to learn