Wizard of Jatte by Rowan Erlking (librera reader txt) 📕

“How do they do that?” Kinnerlin asked scrambling onto his lap.

Tolbetan let out a screech at once and tried to shove him off, also climbing for his father’s lap. But in the end his mother drew him into hers. He seemed to smile as if he had gotten the better place after all.

The carpenter just shrugged. “That is the mystery. Maybe when Theissen is older he will be able to tell us what it is like.”

Dalance nodded. “That would be great.”

“What if he won’t tell us?” Alania said. She always seemed to think of the worst scenario, whether it was plausible or not. Her parents used to think it was a failing until one of her brothers had fallen into a ditch near where the Jatte army was building the highway, and had broken his ankle. She was prepared for it and got him out, setting his leg in a splint it before even one of the soldiers had come to help them. Since then they said her pessimism was foresight.

Her father drew in a breath and said, “Let us hope that we lead him with good examples so that he will not keep secrets from us. All right?”

All of his children nodded.

“That is good. Now, off to bed.”

They gave their parents another affectionate hug good night and ran off to their rooms. Blowing out their candles and lamps, shutting their curtains, they climbed under their covers and as a family prepared for the night.

Luckily Alania’s fears were unfounded. When Theissen was a year old, already starting to talk and walk around the time his sister Doreen Strawberry Holkanna Carpenterdotter was born, his personality showed that he was a happy and remarkably unselfish as babies go. He talked up a storm, often to the insects, the tables and chairs, and to other things that he could reach at his height. What is more, they seemed to move, change shape and color just for him as if he had asked it.

There was one morning after his baby sister’s naming day when his mother was going back her household duties when she noticed her son touching her nice white tablecloth with his hands, turning it many colors as if his hands were covered in paint. After that she found his handprints often all over the house like that. It took a few more years for them to be able to get him to turn the furniture back to their shades of brown and their linens back to white. By then Theissen was four, and he also had a younger brother named Kolbran Bartin Lunidark Carpenterson.

Four-year-old Theissen was precocious, but then perhaps he had always been that way. He usually played near his father out in the carpenter shop while his older brothers trained in the trade. While his older brother Tolbetan (now seven years old) was learning how to plane wood, Theissen played with the shavings, often molding them together with the sawdust in his hands as if it were wet sand on the seashore. His brothers tried not to stare, though at times they could not help themselves, leaning over their projects as Theissen created immaturely shaped dolls that moved when he wanted them to. These dolls, of course, were not alive, but they could see that he could make nearly anything take shape and move with a touch. It was his expertise.

Not that Theissen didn’t have his moments of temper tantrum. There were times he wanted things that were not his, and he took them like any child would. The difficult problem was that no one could successfully remove anything out of his reach as punishment. If they set something on a high shelf, he could get it down by causing a small breeze to blow it off, or for the wood it was sitting on to lurch it off.  His mother found it hard to bring him along to the market place, because when he saw a fruit or a toy he wanted he could make it roll after him until they were far enough away that he could take it without her seeing. She often caught him eating the fruit, trying to hide his obviously sticky hands and face. Of course, being the good mother that she was, when she found out, he had quite a scolding.

“Theissen Darol Mukumar! You cannot take what is not yours!”

The boy ducked his head, trying to look innocent and small. He said nothing except to look guilty while his eyes said, but I wanted it.

“It doesn’t matter if you want it. It is not yours unless you buy it.”

He ducked his head lower, hunching down as if to fight, still thinking I wanted it.

“You will go back to the fruit seller, and you are going pay for that fruit.”

By pay for it, his mother meant to apologize and stand around with a broom to sweep their shop since he was only four years old. He paid most people back by hard work (for a child of four).

Unfortunately, Theissen never truly learned his lesson until after he was eight. By that time he had gotten himself into an awful stink with the magician. Caught red handed, the magician said when he dragged Theissen by his ear up to the town sheriff with his complaint. The sheriff then handed Theissen to his father with an affidavit summoning them before the town court.

“I’m sorry, Carpenter. But stealing is stealing, and he is of age to take legal punishment for his actions.” The sheriff turned from the gates of their home with a sad shake of his head. Theissen didn’t even try to look up. He could feel his father’s disapproval without seeing his face.

The carpenter was silent for some time, not budging, not moving. It was after several minutes before Theissen broke down into tears, covering his face with his fingers, sobbing into his hands with real grief.

“So. Is this remorse because you got caught or because you realize that taking something that does not belong to you is wrong?” His father’s voice was calm, deep. If there was any indication that he was angry, it was in his silence.

Theissen shook his head, saying nothing.

“You do realize that since you are a registered child of the village now you have to accept punishment for what you have done,” his father said.

Theissen nodded morosely.

“Good.”

Neither father nor son moved from where they stood, though Theissen shifted his feet with discomfort, feeling the weight of his father’s stare on the top of his head. Then he felt his father’s hand.

The touch was gentle. Theissen looked up.

His father had crouched down, staring at the tearstained face of his son, shaking his head sadly. He whispered low, looking Theissen in the eyes. “I don’t know what possessed you to steal from the magician, but you must understand that he has been looking for reasons to have the village elders remove you from us. And I thought after this last summer when you worked for the Fruiters in their groves that you understood that when you steal you aren’t just taking a thing, you are thieving a portion of their hard work and time.”

“I know that, Daddy,” Theissen whispered, looking pleadingly up at his face. “I just….”

He choked and ducked his head again. He could feel his father stroking his head with the same warm love he always held. This disappointment in him was too hard to bear.

“I thought you were trying to be an honorable man,” his father said.

Theissen’s sobs grew louder. “I was trying. I just—”

“I hear a council has been called,” the carpenter’s wife suddenly ran up to them both, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders to keep the chill autumn air from her. She looked down at her son, shaking her head. “I thought you weren’t going to take things anymore. You were doing so well.”

But Theissen could not answer her except to cry more.

He could hear his father sigh, his disappointment obvious. “The trial will be this evening.”

“Oh, dear….”

“What should we do? It is the magician that has charged him, and he will demand the law be followed.”

Theissen looked up at them both. “What will they do?”

Both of his parents looked down at their son pityingly. His father said as his mother closed her eyes to stop the tears that started to swell in them, “Thieves are harshly punished by law. Both of their palms are slashed with a knife, the deepness depending on the value of the object stolen. After that is a year in prison.”

“Oh, no!” Their son pulled his hands behind his back as if to hide them. “I don’t want to!”

“I don’t want them to do it either, son, but if I do not turn you in, the law says that I will take the punishment in your stead, double fold,” said the carpenter. “That leaves your mother and your brothers and sisters to take care of the home alone.”

Theissen stared at his father’s hands. They were rough, strong hands. Gentle hands. Hands that had worked hard to keep his family well fed, protected, and well provided for. Working alongside his father, he knew what hard work a carpenter did. He also knew that a good carpenter needed his hands. If they were cut, that would be end of his father’s trade and his family’s happiness.

“I’ll go,” Theissen murmured, looking at the ground.

He did not see his father’s sorry eyes or the expression on his mother’s face that said he was too young to be so grave. Yet, the council was called and they had to account for their son.

Lumen Village always held open courts. Besides providing witnesses from the public who wanted to defend the guilty or help the innocent, it also sated the much-loved practice of gossip in the small community. With the child wizard brought to account for his stealing by the village magician, nearly everyone who could fit through the door attended the trial.

His parents made sure Theissen washed and had on a clean shirt before he came. They were not allowed to stand with him once they entered the court hall, made to stand to the side of the room while the accuser brought up his case before the village elders.

The magician looked too pleased with himself, dressed in the foreign robes of the northern magicians of Westhaven, the quintessential masters of magic, pacing before elders with an I-told-you-so look in his eyes. He barely even glanced at the boy.

“Wise and judicious Elders of our village, my case is a simple one. We have turned a blind eye long enough to this child’s thievery. One apple, one cake, one pie…compounded into many. I ask you, when is it time we stopped it and saw this menace for what he is?”

“At present all we see is a little boy who has yet to learn the boundaries of property ownership,” one of the elders said with a fond eye on the carpenter’s son.

But a few elders murmured at that, and one villager broke from the crowd.

“He has stolen my wife’s pies, and I have yet to see compensation for any one of them!”

The carpenter and his wife turned to look at Theissen. He ducked his head lower, but then so did his older brothers and half of the village boys. They all had taken a snitch of the Inn’s pies. The Innkeeper’s wife tossed up her head, looking pleased they had at least one person to blame when such snitching had gone on for years.

“It was only once,” Theissen whispered at the ground.

One of the elders shook his head slowly.

Another villager stepped forward with a curt nod to the carpenter. “He once took three rolls from my bakery—”

“I did not!” Theissen suddenly whipped around. “Bread gets dirty when—”

But he cut short when he saw the elders peering more darkly at him. Shrinking back, he tried to make himself appear a little smaller.