alexpgp | LJI F&R 1: Unfinished business...

Taking the shortcut had been a mistake.

Two of Malon's boys held me by my arms while the other three beat Lascaux. It was easy work. I was a lightweight—Lascaux's name for me was Feather, short for “feathermerchant”—while Lascaux himself was old and feeble. The fact that one of Lascaux's assailants was using a club just made things worse. When they were finished with Lascaux, the three bruisers turned their attention to me.

I redoubled my attempts to break free of the boys holding me, but it was no use. The goons holding me were good at their job and, I suspect, quite experienced. The guy with the club stepped up to me and stopped about an arm's length away. He said nothing, but reached out toward me with his club-wielding arm as if he was about to bestow a knighthood, or something. Then I heard (more than felt) a sharp “crack” and everything suddenly went black.

When I recovered consciousness, it was dark, and our assailants were gone. There was a painful, sticky lump on the right side of my head, but my immediate concern turned to Lascaux, whose body I saw by the light of the moon. It was lying motionless by the side of the track. I skittered to his side, and a muffled moan escaped his lips as I touched him.

“Master Lascaux?” I said, “Are you all right?”

When there was no answer, I gently turned the old man's head toward the moon, so I could see his face. When I did this, Lascaux opened his eyes and looked at me—glared, actually, and for a second, I thought he was about to chew me out for something I had done or failed to do. Despite his injuries, the extent of which I had yet to determine, his eyes blazed like meteors in the night sky.

“Feather...,” gasped Lascaux, who said my name as if there was more to say, but it had taken all of his strength to utter just those two syllables.

“Master,” I said. “Where does it hurt? What can I do to help?”

In response, Lascaux gripped my shirtfront and drew me close. His mouth opened, and closed again. Then I saw the light fade from his eyes, and his grip relaxed. I touched his neck and listened to his chest. Nothing.

The old man was dead.

I cradled Lascaux's head and shoulders the rest of the night and cried, mostly. With the sunrise, I dragged and rolled Lascaux as far away from the track as I could and began collecting rocks to place around and on the body. By the time the sun had reached its zenith, I was finished. Nobody had passed by; nobody knew we were there.

I retraced my steps to a creek I had found while collecting rocks and washed my hands and face. As I wiped the water away with my dirty shirt—noticing only then that there were bloodstains where Lascaux had grabbed it—my mind flashed through the dozen or so years I had spent with the old man, who was the closest thing I had to family in this world.

I was—had been—Lascaux's "apprentice," unofficially. An apprentice to what, you might ask? Good question. When asked his occupation, the old man always unhesitatingly answered, "Artist!" If pressed for detail—what kind of artist—he would add, usually with a bow and a sweep of his arm, "My medium of expression is the business of living." The way he said it always made people believe they had been made privy to a secret of great significance, and nobody ever questioned Lescaux's explanation.

I became his apprentice when I tried, unsuccessfully, to steal three small sterling silver cups of his, which he had used to perform, in front of a crowd of townspeople, various small miracles with small red balls that appeared and disappeared at will. Though I thought I had gotten away clean with my booty, in fact he followed me to see what I would do, and he never tired of telling me—particularly when I was trying his patience—that, had he not surreptitiously observed me, in the back of an alley, trying for hours to reproduce those miracles, he would have let the law have its way with me when I finally gave up and tried to sell the cups to a silversmith, who looked at the cups—and then at my rags—and promptly summoned the constables to take me into custody. "You don't give up," observed Lescaux, whom I had begun to address as 'Master', "and that's a rare thing in a boy.",

Over the years, he taught me a variety of things, all designed to to achieve two goals. Using Lascaux's words, "The first thing is to be as honest as possible with yourself. The second thing is to be as deceitful as necessary with others." There were days he trusted nobody, and days he trusted everybody (though he always cut the cards, figuratively if not literally).

My education was far from systematic, but it was thorough. Lascaux taught me to read and write. He taught me to memorize things that normal people would consider impossible to memorize. He taught me to manipulate small objects (such as cups and balls) in the manner of carnival magicians.

He taught me other things as well, from how to turn a man's greed and moral weakness against him, to more active methods, such as picking his pocket or making sure that nothing—not even cutting the cards—will save him if he chooses to sit across from you at the table.

As I turned from the stream, I could not help but think that, in the end, none of his knowledge had been of use to him the night before, nor had mine made me capable of rendering any aid.

When I regained the track, I took stock of my situation. The track joined the main road somewhere up ahead, and that road led away from the town, to places I had never been to before. Behind me was that dirty little town, where there was a fellow named Malon and a number of young me who did his bidding, including beating an old man to death.

Every fiber screamed that I should run, not walk, toward the road and the big, wide world and the opportunities that it offered. Instead, I turned back along the path Lescaux and I had taken the night before, and began retracing my steps toward the town.

I felt I had to do something.

[To: Part 2. Second thoughts.]