The Apprentice, Chapter 1

Fiction

I have been thinking a lot about inspiration today. Why? Well, mainly because I did not feel particularly inspired to write a post. Usually, I am bubbling over with ideas and topics I want to discuss here on the Dice Pool. But I was out late last night. Went to see the Pixies in concert. If you have never seen them live, and you get the opportunity, go! They played wall-to-wall hits.

Anyway, I digress. Inspiration is what I am talking about. Unsurprisingly, I have always drawn inspiration from the writings of fantasy and sci-fi authors. When I was young these included Tolkien, Le Guin, Banks, Asimov, Carroll, Eddings (long before I knew he locked his kids in cages,) Weis and Hickman etcetera etcetera. It is unlikely there is a single person involved in the RPG hobby that is unaffected by the books they read and the ones they read as children.

But when I was in my late teens, I dropped the hobby more-or-less completely. I didn’t have the desire to get involved when I was in university as I was more interested in other pursuits. For a decade or so I didn’t do any role-playing. Instead, I got interested in writing short stories and novels. I think I mentioned here before that I used to take part in the National Novel Writing Month every year. I wrote five full books that way; all fantasy novels.

But I also wrote one before I ever knew about NaNoWriMo. It has gone through a lot of edits over the years and it has had three very different titles. It started off being call “Pitch Springs” but it just didn’t work for me. Then I changed it again to something that just gave the game away too early, like a bad movie trailer. I have changed it again in preparation for sharing the first chapter of it with you, dear reader. It’s just, “the Apprentice” (for now, at least. I welcome feedback on the title, especially as it potentially brings to mind a certain TV show.)

Chapter 1: Of My Birth and My World

I don’t remember it, of course, but I killed my mother as a newborn. How would you feel to discover such a fact? I had always watched the other local children in the arms of smiling women or being scolded by scowling ladies. Either way, I envied them. I wondered constantly why I didn’t have a mother of my own. My father never thought it worth his while to explain to me why I was motherless. Or, perhaps, he had not the emotional resources to have such a conversation with his son. He never even told me that she was dead and buried. I was not aware of it at all until my sister told me. She has never forgiven me for it.

“You made her scream and scream and scream tryin’ to get you out of her. Your huge head…your big ugly turnip…You came out all wrong and she screamed until the very moment you tore your way free, bathed in her blood and wailing. She never even held you, you know. She just faded away as her life’s blood drained. It was the only time I ever saw Poppa weep but once he started he didn’t stop for days. Old Aggie came to collect jars of his tears, said they was magic, mad old biddy.”
I remember answering her, “But…I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to kill her. She was my Momma too! Why would I want to? I was only a wee babby. it wasn’t my fault.”

“It don’t matter whether or not you meant it. You killed her so you’re cursed. You can’t go around killing your own parents and not expect to get cursed, you just can’t.”
So, there you are, Mother-killer and Accursed too. It was a lot to shoulder for a young lad. I was six when Primmy predicted the life of death I had to look forward to. A six-year-old cannot pretend to understand such a concept. Up until that point the worst thing I had to worry about was the neighbour’s mutt.

The Markinson’s had an ancient mongrel bitch which they had whipped and beaten and starved into raving insanity. They let it loose around their farmyard. I would often watch it from our lower field, which looked onto the road and the gate of the Markinson Farm. That hound circled the yard with a high-shouldered, low-headed gait. Clouds of chickens and squawks erupted sometimes as it patrolled, round-and-round all day long. If the Farmer Markinson or one of his huge sons loped stupidly across her path the dog would retreat, tuck-tailed, to the safety of a rotten, upturned wagon, which served as her doghouse. She would watch them until she had the yard to herself again and she could continue her rounds.

I approached the gate once, when I was no more than three or four years old. My sister had thrown a pig’s bladder ball for me to catch. My clumsy, toddler’s efforts inevitably failed me and it came to rest on the dirt road outside Markinson’s gate. At my sister’s cruel urging, I waddled over to retrieve it, oblivious and unwary. The dog hit the iron gate as if magnetised to it; clatter, bark, growl, bark, clatter, clatter, clatter! The terrible din bowled me off my tiny feet. Fear gripped me so tightly that I remember my throat constricting and my bowels loosening. In my memory I can smell the breath of that scarred and enormous monster; it was a sick odour, rotten flesh and shit. Death was upon me, I was certain of it. Of course, death did not come, the gate held and, in the end, the farmer came dashing out of his barn, pitchfork in hand, swinging it at that bitch and shouting nonsense at her. He struck her a glancing blow in the ribs with the shaft and she dashed for the safety of her wagon-house, yelping and yipping.

The damage had been done, however; that hell-hound haunted my nightmares for years afterwards. She was always there at the end of those dreams, breath stinking and teeth tearing me to shreds as my sister stood in that field weeping with laughter. That nightmare sister continued to laugh long after the real Primmy stopped.

In my first years our farm was my world. My father had little or no time for us children so we were largely left to our own devices. Equally, my sister, for reasons I believe I have already illustrated, wanted little to do with me, murderer that I was. I spent a great deal of time on my own, exploring my world, spying on beasts of land and air. I saw their whole lives, I thought. I saw their births; lambing season was a harrowing time for a small child. As many of the wee sheep died screaming or disappeared down the gullets of wolves as survived to make it to market or to our table. Their screams; I often fancy I can hear them even now, even when I know there is not a living sheep within earshot. I hated it and wandered even further in those days to escape it. Out in the far top field I walked and spotted burrowing moles and hiding hedgehogs, egg-full nests and forgotten feathers. I watched the rodents raid the nests and kestrels catch the rodents; I once saw a wild-cat tear the wings off a kestrel just before it was shot itself by Cunard, the poacher. Cunard was a satisfied man that day.

Of course, I told my father that evening at the supper table, what I had seen. He was indignant. My father was a great believer in law and living by it. Justice also, was important to him. I heard, a week later when the local magistrate was invited to our home for a spiced lamb dinner, that the poacher’s cabin had been searched after my father had reported what I saw. Of course they discovered not only the wild-cat but a whole locker full of ill-gotten gains.

“This is a good lesson, boy!” I recall the magistrate said to me, “You steal and you will be punished appropriately. We took old Cunard’s right hand. He’ll find it difficult to cock a crossbow now!” This, obviously had a profound effect on me, instilling in me the very sense of law and justice my father wished it to. I learned much later that old Cunard the no-longer-poacher passed away in agony and delirium when his stump festered and a fever took him.

My father worked hard. He worked so very hard that, as I have explained, my sister and I would often go days without ever seeing him. He relied on Primmy on those days to take care of us; make sure we ate food, donned proper clothing; washed ourselves. She was five years my senior and usually perfectly capable of doing this for us. But I will admit that it often occurred to me to ask where my father had gone. Why did he leave us, his own two children to fend for ourselves? Why was I to be left eating nothing but porridge for three meals a day when I knew that he could cook us something so much better? Why did I have to put up with the incessant bullying and psychic torture at the hands of Primula when, were my father there, he would have put a stop to it as soon as it began?
The answer is the same to all of the questions above: because he was a small farmer who lived from month to month and could not afford to pay himself anything extra, never mind a farmhand. It was a harder life than I had any concept of at that age. So, obviously, I asked why he couldn’t be there for me. Invariably, my sister would answer that my father had gone away because he could no longer bear to be near me, that the very stench of me drove him to violent thoughts and that he was afraid at all times that he might smash my child’s skull in the stove’s heavy, glossy, black door or hold me face down in the muddy water trough out in the back yard or throw me over the fence to face my worst nightmare, the Markinson bitch.

I didn’t believe her. At least, I mostly didn’t. My father did always have a certain bubbling anger under his surface calm. I was often able to see it in behind his eyes; I think many people could see it, in fact, for I happened to know that he intimidated many of our neighbours and acquaintances.

Once, when Primmy’s employer, Grey Greta came to our house to demand money back from Primmy for allegedly missed hours of work, I got to see the effect he had on others.

Grey Greta was a contemptible old bag of bones at her best but on that day she was very much at her worst, her greediest and her most spiteful. She knew, as everyone in the area did, that Father spent most of his day and very often his night too, out on the farm working to see his children fed and his house maintained. I am certain that, armed with this knowledge, she came that day to take advantage of my father’s absence. I don’t recall exactly what drove her all the way out to our house to collect Primmy’s couple of schillings back off her but I later heard that the woman was an inveterate gambler. Apparently she regularly stayed up till the birds awoke with a bunch of the other village women in the common room of the inn playing some friendly hands of Bruschian Luck. Perhaps that night, the Luck had not been hers. Anyway, the point of this aside was to illuminate exactly how intimidating my father was capable of being, not to describe the inadequacies of Grey Greta.

The dreadful old harridan had come in our back door and was sitting at our kitchen table with her feet up on a stool and her hand in a jar of crackers when I returned from one of my jaunts. I recall it was early evening, but must have been summer as it was still bright outside. My sister, who had finished work for the day, was fussing around Greta, clearly trying to make a good impression by wiping surfaces and tidying away crockery and scraps of food. Indeed, Father had been missing for a couple of days by then and we had no reason to expect him home that evening so the place was, perhaps, not quite as clean as it should have been.
“Scrawny little beast, aincha?” said Grey Greta, looking, with some disgust, in my direction. Now, at this point in life I was timid and had no means to defend myself but I remember thinking how unfair such an assessment was coming from Grey Greta, the under-stuffed scarecrow. Of course, I did not say it. Instead, Primmy decided to side with her repulsive boss, “Oh, he is, and ever so lazy as well, Ma’am.” I glared at her, hurt and confused. I should never have expected anything better from her though. Still, as I have mentioned, Primmy was far from clever and had just given Greta the opening she was looking for.
“Must run in the family, Prim, eh?” said Grey Greta. Primmy stood, visibly shaking for a moment and stared at the floor, smiling all the while. “You see, I haven’t come on no social call like the ladies in St Frackasburg. I’m ‘ere for a reason, young Sharpetzi, ain’t I?”

I recall watching the proceedings from the space between the sideboard and the wall and hoping that Grey Greta would not decide to pick on me again, that she would just stick to bullying Primmy.

“I been noticin’ you recently, Primula. I been watchin’ you watchin’ them boys out the back, in the yard. I been watchin’ you lollygaggin’ when you should be scrubbin’ and moonin’ when you should be foldin’ too. You shouldn’t be doin’ that, Prim, no you shouldn’t. You’re too young to start thinkin’ with that bit o’ your anatomy.” Here, I remembered being surprised she knew the word.

“But, what you do is your business except if you do it on my time, understand me?” She stuffed a cracker in her gob and stared at Primmy, who flinched away even as she smiled her stupid smile.

“So, I was down the Millers’ Pride and Kassie says to me I should come and get some of my generous pay back off you. Teach you a lesson, like. And I said I should so then I did!” At this Primmy looked up at Grey Greta, still smiling but with tears welling in her doe eyes. The money she brought into the household, while meagre by anyone’s standards, was important to us since most of the crowns Father made went back into the farm. I will credit her for being aware of that fact even then. But she was in no position to negotiate with her boss so she nodded her understanding and marched off towards the stairs to fetch her coins from their hidey-hole. Grey Greta sat and stuffed another cracker into her rotten mouth, watching her go. Just as Primmy passed the front door it opened and Father came in backwards, kicking his boots off into the porch.

“I’m back, Primula! Let’s get some potatoes on the go, eh? I could eat a whole goat, horns and all! Primmy-“ He stopped with his mouth open as he turned to see Primmy’s erstwhile extortionist lounging at our table eating our food. He said nothing; just reached his hand out to place it on Primmy’s shoulder before pulling her in towards him, protectively. Grey Greta rose, pushing back her chair with an embarrassed scrape, and dusted cracker crumbs off of her bodice. She was already flustered.

“Can I help you, Greta?” asked my father. I think it was the first time I had ever heard him use this particular tone of voice; it put me in mind of a dog’s low growl just to let you know that it’s there and is big enough to rip your throat out in one bite. Greta reversed away towards the back door and crashed into the chair which scraped again across the stone floor and then fell over.

“Me? No! No! Mr Sharpetzi, I don’t need nothin.’ I was just passin’ by, like, and thought I should pay you all a visit. Y- y- you…” She fell silent as my father continued to stare at her.

“Thank you for stopping by,” was all he said but what Grey Greta seemed to hear was, “I’m going to cook you your own liver and watch as you eat it.” She simply turned and ran out the back door, still trailing cracker crumbs and, once again, stumbling and almost breaking her neck falling over her chair.

I was impressed and so was Primmy. She idolised Father, of course, but I never saw her look at him like that before. Her eyes had saints and heroes in them when they looked at his face. He was her hero then. I wondered what it must feel like to be anyone’s hero.

In the Western pastures I trod the sheep pellets into the grass as my father’s beasts chewed all around me. I heard a story once of a man who stared into the eyes of a sheep for so long that he stopped the poor creature’s heart. “Untrue!” you might well cry; “Why?” you might wonder. I recall very clearly thinking of this story as I strolled between those sheep and pondered not the veracity of the tale or the reason behind it but the practicalities of it. “How?” was the question I posed those ill-fated animals. “How can a person kill you with just a stare?” The question fascinated me. I was a young lad still when I became obsessed with this idea and it never once occurred to me that it might be nothing more than a story.

“Was it magic? Was the man a sorcerer? A demon in the form of a man? Was it sheer force of will? The superiority of our species over theirs impressed on the sheep in a terrifically lethal way? Whatever it was, I decided that I had to know about it. Bearing in mind that I could not even write my own name at this point in my life you might be able to understand that the likelihood of a lad like me learning anything other than agriculture was almost non-existent.

The Story of the Man Who Killed a Sheep with a Stare was my personal favourite but there were many others. My father would tell these tales as we sat around the hearth in the cold, dark winter evenings. He would sit in his ancient rocking chair, taking his ease with a pipe in one hand and an old cat under the other and do his best to scare us white-haired as he used to say happened to him. In fact he told us the story that he said aged his hair prematurely. Needless to say, it did no such thing to us. This was The Tale of the Dead Count.

To be continued!