Jonis by Rowan Erlking (manga ereader TXT) 📕

venison, which sold better than some of their meat. “I understand, sir. The people would rather have me dead.”

The man coughed, trying to hide his surprise at Jonis’s stark understanding. He hefted the sword above the crook in his arm. “Ah, well…yes, actually.”

They crossed to the sidewalk where the village builders had recently laid down stone into the newly developed concrete to make a firmer path. They were planning on paving the roads in cobblestone next so they could reach the status of ‘town’. They were large enough by then, just not developed enough. Smaller towns usually hung onto the ancient ways, often fighting progress. Very few in town even owned an automobile.

“Do you, well, really believe what you said to the patriarch?” Jonis asked with a sober gaze at him. “That…I…could be part of this society. You know, live like a regular person.”

Mr. Farren stopped where he was and smiled at Jonis. “A human? You really want that, don’t you?”

Nodding vigorously, Jonis watched him, holding his breath before speaking. “Are you kidding? To have people no longer look at me and call me a demon, to be treated with regard instead of fear or hate? I think I would trade anything for that!”

“Even your father’s sword?” Mr. Farren asked, lifting his eyebrows in such a way that made him look shrewd. He started his march again.

Jonis swallowed. His eyes had not really been off the sword. “It is a family heirloom, not an ordinary sword. But,” he looked up at Mr. Farren, “if it helps, I would.”

They stopped at the doors to a sizable house. Jonis would almost call it a mansion, but larger more expensive homes stood on the skirts of the town on higher ground. This home was in the center of the village where the roads were still dirt and the house was not so ostentatious. It barely had front garden. The wrought iron fence around it looked so old that it had probably belonged to a Sky Child in the ancient days when their nation was called Westhaven.

“It would help,” Mr. Farren replied. “But you do not have to give it up entirely. Just for now. We can put it away for safe keeping.”

Jonis bowed low before the magistrate, the dirt falling off his head as his hair flopped down. “Then keep it. I will not ask for it until you feel I should have it again.”

The magistrate smiled more genuinely, placing his hand on the hilt. “We’ll seal it up.” He reached into his pocket and drew out brass keys to unlock the door. “I think I have a few spells inside we can use. I dabble a bit in the magic arts. I once wanted to be a magister.”

That was news. Magisters combined science with magic, specializing in spells for warding off demons. But they were also skilled at potions that healed sickness and cured blights. Up until that time, Jonis had no idea that anyone in the village was knowledgeable in the magic arts. It was dying profession, much like the Magic Age was nearly gone. Science was the new magic, and it was rapidly taking over the nation. That was why many magisters those days knew both.

Opening the door, Mr. Farren reached over to the switch on the wall. An electric light came on, buzzing in its onion shaped bulb on the wall. He smiled over at Jonis who was staring at the glowing filament in the bulb with amazement. The man then nudged Jonis in.

Jonis stepped carefully inside the room, feeling even grimier as the dirt on his boots scuffed off on the front mat. It was his first time in a long time for Jonis to be inside a real house. And even then, he had only been in one for two days. The day he was born and the day his mother died. He had lived in a tent with his father ever since.

The walls were covered in wallpaper laced with flowery designs and straight lines. Black and white photographs hung in frames, showing the elderly man with an elderly woman and three young ladies all in a row. There were more paintings than these new printed images, but Jonis stared at the mystery that science had created. It was so amazing to see such a perfect image. The romanticized painting of a younger Mr. Farren hung right next to it with a painting of a young woman whom Jonis assumed was his wife. The front room was full of furniture besides. Divans with velvet seat cushions, tassels on pillows and smooth mahogany tables covered in tatted cloths of bleached muslin and linen with draperies of silk and satin. Jonis’s infant home had been a simple three-room cottage with a thatch roof and white washed walls. If Mr. Farren’s home was not a mansion, then surely it had to be close, for nothing in Jonis’s intense long memory compared to this.

“Do you like it?” Mr. Farren asked.

Jonis drew in a breath and smiled. “Oh yes, sir.”

Mr. Farren grinned with satisfaction and motioned to the right. “Come now. Let’s go upstairs and get you bathed. I’ll call for the housemaid to find you some clothes. The ones you are wearing will have to be burned.”

Turning, Jonis looked up at him. “Why? Are they that dirty?”

With a shrug, Mr. Farren replied, “Though my maids can clean out dirt that bad, it will ease the minds of the townspeople if your clothes are disposed of. If you come clean and changed in the public eye, they will believe that perhaps you are not infected with your father’s ways. Understand?”

That view was not new to Jonis. It was true, people knew little about Cordrils. Fear and superstition drove them. Mr. Farren seemed to understand what he appeared to be was just as important as his true substance. If they were to set people at ease, Jonis would have to look the part.

“I understand,” Jonis said. He bowed his head and turned to go up the stairs. His feet left tracks of dirt. But instead of getting angry, the elderly gentleman covered a laugh.

Mr. Farren’s eyes smiled as he led Jonis upward with a more tired shuffle and directed him to the wash room.

Jonis stared into the room, having only bathed in the stream nearby or a lake on one of their journeys. In fact, Jonis usually enjoyed the chance he had to use the school’s plumbing, with hot water pumped in. But this room was full of brass pipes that led to three different spouts. There were brass knobs above a porcelain basin where a real bar of store soap rested on the edge. Next to the sink was the bath. Stroking the porcelain with his hands, Jonis peered in the drain. He sighed with relief, knowing that he would not have to carry buckets of the dirty water out of the enormous tub.

“Have you ever used one?” Mr. Farren asked, leaning in with curiosity.

Jonis shook his head. “Not in my lifetime.”

But a memory swam up, nearly drowning his thoughts with how to work the system. Piping was not new to Brein Amon. It was merely new to the common folk. One of his ancestors had pipes in his home. In fact, other memories much more ancient than the piping in their land drew out images from his head about efficient piping systems and marvelously clean water of an even more antiquated civilization not of this world.

Mr. Farren reached over to the knobs. “This letter indicates the hot valve. You turn it clockwise to open the valve. The other one is cold water. I recommend adding cold water first and then adding the hot water. Sometimes the hot water can scald.”

Jonis nodded, reaching for the cold water knob.

“Put in the plug first.” Mr. Farren lifted a chain off the side of the large bathtub and drew up a rubber cork end. He stuffed it into the drain. “When you undress, just leave the clothes on the chair over there. Our maid, Mrs. Days, will collect them. I will have her bring you something to wear.”

Then without another word of instruction, Mr. Farren walked from the room. He only gestured for Jonis to get on with undressing.

With a strong sigh, Jonis looked around the room. He glanced to the floor where his feet had made tracks. With a grimace, he stepped to the tile and picked up the bathroom rug that already had smears of mud on them. He set the rug on the lid of the chamber pot then started to undress completely. By the time he was done, the floor was covered in soil.

The maid came soon after he had climbed into the steaming bath. She averted her eyes and muttered curses under her breath. “…filthy. I have to wash it again. How am I supposed to get those stains out with that…”

She trotted out in a huff.

Jonis peered over the tub edge at the dirt-covered floor.

She returned again after she had taken the clothes to the gardener so it could be burned in the remains of the bonfire. With a broom and dustpan, she swept up the dirt that was on the tile. Then, on her hands and knees, she scrubbed, still muttering curses to herself without even setting eyes on Jonis—which was just as well considering the rising blush on his cheeks as he ducked under the water to hide himself.

“…No consideration for anybody….” The maid grumbled, hefting up the muddy sludge of her cleaning bucket and tottering out the door. She did not slam it, but her silence was deafening.

Jonis did not dare climb out of the bath for a long while. The water itself got murky brown, and he had to drain it and then fill it again to get truly clean. By the time he was done, it was an hour later. He wrapped himself in the only available towel, feeling the water drip off his hair onto his nose, flattening against his forehead.

The maid returned, carrying only a sleeping gown.

“The master says once you are dressed, see him in his study.” She dropped the sleep gown on the chair with a bitter tone.

Jonis decided not to agitate her further and merely bowed, clutching the towel around him. “Yes, Ma’am.”

The woman huffed, trotting away with more gripes on her lips. Jonis decided not to listen, drawing in a breath for courage. He understood that everyone would think the magistrate mad for taking him in, and the maid probably hated him more for making her clean up his dirt trail. In fact, Jonis started to wonder if Mr. Farren would not also be angry at him for soiling his clean home.

 

The study was more difficult to find than Jonis had thought. There were rooms upon rooms in that house, and neither Mr. Farren nor the maid said where that particular room was. After a thorough search upstairs, Jonis headed back downstairs, passing the maid as he went by. He knew there was a quicker way to get accustomed to the house, but he decided not to take it. Touching the hand of the maid would have given him her knowledge, but at what price? A loss of Mr. Farren’s trust. It was not worth it. Touching the maid would make her faint and then later her mood would be even fouler than it was now. No, Jonis realized that if he wanted to be treated like other people, he could not use his extra abilities. He had to live and learn like other people did

So he searched.

But really, all he had to do was go down to the main floor in the first place and walk just around the stairs—which he realized too late. The door was open, and Jonis found Mr. Farren at a desk, squinting through his spectacles at a dusty scroll spread out over work papers. His father’s sword lay on the desk near the edge, still sheathed.

All around the room were books among