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

After some silence, the head of the elders turned to the magician and said, “Do you have witnesses?”

Sweeping back around, his robes and tassels swinging with flair that accompanied his smug face, he nodded slowly and at last met Theissen’s eyes. “Yes. The town crier can testify that he saw my celestial globe fall from the window, slowed by a puff of dust so that it did not break, and then it rolled uphill towards the property owned by the dairyman. Millerswife can testify that she saw my globe covered in dirt, rolling over her front steps and through her chicken yard.”

“He frightened my chickens!” a petite yet shrill woman with a needle like nose with slit thin nostrils said, brusquely nodding so that her tiny head bobbed on her stick thin neck.

The town crier said nothing. He only bowed his head, looking sorry that he had to testify against a little boy.

“And of course there is the boy Yuld Scribeson. He encountered my globe while walking from the records hall down past the dairyman’s home.”

Yuld was a smartly dressed young man of seventeen. He was the town’s law teacher for all the children younger than their budding years. All the young boys and girls looked up at him as he stepped forward, feeling that same sick feeling they got when he started his long drawn out lectures about the history of the succession of kings in Jatte, his favorite topic. He had been Theissen’s teacher only for a short while, and his opinion of the boy was based off of his experience with the other Carpentersons. He thought them simple. His brothers Kinnerlin and Tolbetan knew Yuld too well since they had spent the last two years with the journeyman teacher listening to his lectures. Both rolled their eyes to the rafters in the meeting hall. Dalance sighed also, thinking Yuld a conceited twit with less muscle than a flopping fish.

With a professional, stuffy bow to the elders, Yuld smiled. “Venerated elders, my witness is a sordid tale of disenchantment at witnessing the innocence of youth squandered for mere materialistic satisfaction.”

Someone yawned loudly, on purpose.

Continuing on without notice that he had lost his audience with the word ‘sordid’, Yuld said, “The magic user indeed informs you of the truth. I was returning to my domicile when I encountered a curious occurrence, an occurrence that in all otherwise would be considered impossible. Before me upon the road was a revolving sphere of magnificent workmanship, propelling itself the opposite direction of the gravitational pull of the earth. Too curious to allow such a phenomenon pass such a learned scholar as I am, I was impelled to investigate.

“No sooner had I reached the crest of the hill, I witnessed this peculiarly ordinary looking child reach out and claim this item, peering at it with a rather ill-behaved smile.” Yuld cast a slight glance at Theissen who was watching him with a puzzled expression, mostly attempting to understand all the big words Yuld was saying.

Yuld regarded him disdainfully, finishing with a flick of his wrist. “Then I recognized the incorrigible rogue who hardly pays any attention in my lessons but is often busy stirring things up to cause commotion. Such as the day he sent all my written papers flying right out the window into the rain, disrupting the class order. You know, he seems to take great joy in vexing me.”

“He’s boring,” Theissen muttered.

Several young boys in the crowd burst into laughter. A few young ladies also broke into giggles, Alania nodding with a gaggle of them in agreement. Yuld looked at them with an increased redness to his cheeks and ears, posturing before the one thing his supposed superior intellect could never acquire.

“Silence.” And elder looked disapprovingly on the crowd.

Parents hushed their boys and girls, though the young ladies seemed to silence themselves when they saw the severe looks the village elders directed at them.

“Is that every witness?” the chief elder asked the magician.

With a confident yet somewhat dismayed nod, the magician swept back to the side of the room. “Yes, your eminence.”

Giving him a dismissing nod, the village elders looked down on Theissen.

“Do you have a plea?”

“A what?” Theissen was already shaking, feeling every eye in the room bearing down on him as if they were hammers ramming him into the floor.

One of the elders said more softly, “A plea. Do you claim your innocence? Or do you admit to being guilty?”

Ducking his head again, Theissen looked to the floor. “I did it.”

A murmur rippled through the room, though what they were saying washed in and over the people with a feeling of quiet.

“Then you do not deny you took the magician’s globe?” the elder asked.

Shaking his head with very little motion, Theissen did not remove his eyes from the floor. “No.”

It seemed that the room sighed much in the same way as the carpenter had earlier. It was sad disappointment, almost as if they wished the child had fought, claiming innocence.

“Do you understand the punishment for stealing?” the village elder said.

Theissen nodded, but barely.

“Do you really understand?” the elder asked again.

Theissen looked up. Tears were in his eyes. He lifted his hands up and nodded again. “Yes. You have to cut my hands. Um…I go to prison.”

“No!” Dalance suddenly jumped from the crowd, breaking past the sheriffs. He ran into the space between the elders and his little brother. “It wasn’t his fault! We made him do it!”

A murmur roared through the room now.

Dalance’s face was white. His lips were pale with panic, his own body shaking. He stuck out his own hands. “Punish me! I knew better. All we wanted to do was see the magician’s golden ball. We were only borrowing it. We made Theissen take it.”

“We?” the head elder inquired, arching his neck to look at the several guilty faces on all the young village boys. Several of them hunched their shoulders as if they could suddenly make themselves vanish.

Nodding, Dalance lowered his head. “Some of us…um, well….”

It was clear he had not meant to snitch on the others that had participated in the heist. Of course, it was too late now.

Lifting his chin, Dalance drew in his courage. “It doesn’t matter. I am his older brother. I should have stopped him. I am responsible.”

Kinnerlin drew up his chest as if he was about to do the same, but his mother clamped a hand on his shoulder to pull him back. Tolbetan cringed, not wanting to move forward, still thinking about the cuts the guilty would get on his hands.

And so was Dalance. He raised his palms higher, offering them up. “It was my fault. I will take his punishment.”

The magician’s face changed into disgust, then he violently shook his head. “This is preposterous! Even if other children goaded this beast into it, the child that stole is the one to be punished.”

Dalance clenched his teeth in a glare, stepping nearer his brother to protect him.

“I’m afraid we would have to agree,” one of the village elders said.

Whipping around, Dalance looked at his father for help, but the man’s gaze was firm. His eyes said he also agreed, though he was not happy about it.

Turning once again to the elders, Dalance offered his palms up once more. “If Theissen is to be punished, then punish me too. He cannot be punished alone.”

Little hands clenched the side of his shirt. Dalance looked down at his brother who clutched him with staring eyes swimming with tears and gratitude. He rubbed his hand over Theissen’s head and smiled. He definitely would not let his brother go to prison alone.

“Accepted,” the chief elder said.

Already the bailiff approached them, taking firm steps across the room. The carpenter lowered his head, unable to interfere with the law. His wife clutched him close, sobbing into his shoulder.

“You understand what the punishment for thieving entails?” the chief elder asked before the bailiff drew his knife.

Dalance nodded. Theissen clenched his brother close to him.

With a grieving nod, the chief elder looked to the bailiff to carry out the punishment. “Because you are not adults, your prison term will only be for one night. However, I cannot stop the cuts. This may prevent you from continuing in the profession of carpenter. And for that, we are truly sorry. You had a promising future.”

But Theissen’s suddenly eyes grew wide, looking from elder to his brother. “What? No! You were going to leave on your journey soon!”

With a pained smile, Dalance seemed to give just a passing thought to his emergence into the field of carpentry as a journeyman.

“I don’t want you to be cut!” Theissen shouted, reaching out towards the bailiff.

“It is the law,” Dalance said, glancing back at his father, who had closed his eyes now. “And I want to be a man of honor like our father.”

“But—”

“It is my fault,” Dalance said, holding out both hands to the bailiff, feeling the man take a firm hold of his wrists. “I should have done better.”

It was a firm swipe. The knife wasn’t even bloody. Only the look on Dalance’s face told Theissen that his hands had been sliced. Dalance tried to duck his hands back so that his brother did not have to see them bleed, wincing as the bailiff reached out for Theissen’s wrists. Most expected Theissen to struggle. He half looked ready to, but after his moment’s hesitation, he stuck out his hands, palms up, and closed his eyes.

That swipe was less deep. However, Theissen opened his eyes and stared at his bleeding palms. He inhaled then exhaled with a resigned sigh. Never again. He learned his lesson.

“Now escort them to their cell.” The chief elder looked drained. All of them did.

The carpenter and his wife would not be allowed to see their sons until after their imprisonment was over. They turned with sorrow while the sheriffs ushered the watching crowd out the door. Alania resisted, holding Kolbran’s hand as her brother wailed questions, asking why Dalance and Theissen were not coming home. Doreen followed them, staring back at her brothers with horror. Her other brothers watched with guilt, knowing they like Dalance and the other village boys had wanted to see the celestial globe as much as anyone had. They even whispered that maybe they should all cut their hands as punishment, but none of them actually meant it.

Theissen and Dalance clutched bleeding hand to bleeding hand, led away to their cell.

Theissen cried when he saw the bare room they had to sleep in that night, though Dalance squared his jaw and marched them both in. The walls were layered stone. There were no beds. Straw lay on the floor, which was dirty though pleasantly dry. The guards set a plate of food out for them, a small piece of potato each and a handful of stewed beans with a pitcher of water. They didn’t touch it until their stomachs gurgled from hunger, but by then it was quite late and Theissen was already nodding off against his brother’s side as they rested against the wall in the hay.

Dalance awoke the morning after wishing to stretch out his sore muscles then check his wrapped palms to see how much damage was truly done. Secretly he had hoped he could still handle his carpentry tools for ornate woodcarving—his family’s specialty. However, he doubted he could with the way it had hurt when they cut him. He had pretended for Theissen that it hadn’t hurt much, but in truth the cuts were very deep.

The dim light that streamed in from the small barred window so thick and slanted that it proved no one escaped from that prison cell was barely enough to see inside. The lamplights were out, and the guard had obviously gone home to sleep in his bed. The new guard was resting against his desk with his eyes closed. Lifting the bandages, Dalance peered at his bloodstained palms. Then he blinked, raising his palm higher