last year I abstained
this year I devour
without guilt
which is also an art
this year I devour
without guilt
which is also an art
Once there was a boy who picked up a real gypsy coin.
All the village's children knew that when the red-tented gypsy caravans passed through, and the sky was a starless indigo on a sickle moon night, and the apple blossoms had yet to wither and fruit, the very last caravan with the golden spokes would leave behind a golden coin trail.
But only the eldest of the village children knew that come dawn, all but one of the gypsies' coins could endure the heat of the autumn sun.
The boy knew at once that it would be his.
He knew at once that the coin was made of real gold, solid straight through, because of how heavy it felt in his grasp.
Not three days ago, he'd picked up a merchant wife's gold hair ornament in the streets. Before he could hand it back to her, she'd shrieked at a passing soldier that he'd stolen it, and he'd received ten lashings at the hand of the Warden.
"Twenty, if it had been real," the Warden had whispered to him between the fifth and sixth flick of his whip.
So that was how the boy (with the tanned flank) knew that the gypsy coin reflecting moonlight into his eyes was real, solid gold. It was heavier - much heavier - than the merchant wife's painted barrette.
Whistling, the boy slipped the gypsy coin into his breast pocket, scanned twice up and down the streets for vagrants who specialized in minding other people's business, and wove through the market stalls to show his mother.
Come dawn, the coin endured the heat of the autumn sun.
Come noon, a fat crow dropped a loaf of steaming bread in front of his mother's booth as it dodged the baker's crow-killing rolling pin. (A local legend.)
Come evening, a Delumine trader with a funny hat mistook their fabric swathes for real silk (they were satin, and not even of the higher calibre) and departed with half their stock loaded on the back of his cart. Leaving behind a pouch of coins one silver too generous.
Days and weeks passed.
The boy learned how to distinguish the taste of bruised apples from fresh ones. Oranges fell fat and dazed from the branches of their presumed-barren orange tree. (A local legend.) The winter turned out to be a mild one.
His father returned home from the border war.
Once there was a boy who picked up a real gypsy coin, and the coin gifted him with kindness.
Or so the story goes.
----
"What did it do?" the girl made of starlight asks, and Caine wishes he can laugh and wink and tell her something clever and true.
"Gambler's luck for seven nights." Or -
"The blinding smile of a ferociously beautiful gypsy girl." Or -
"To wake up and realize that everything, all of it, Agenor/the Prince/Raum/the King (but please not Seraphina, the holy one, the burning one) had been a nightmare."
Instead, he turns to her and says: "The gypsy who'd lost it appeared in a burst of silver mist before me and demanded it back. When I refused, he removed the scythe from his side and sliced off my wings in one swift stroke."
His eyes hold her golden ones captive, cold-silver and suddenly corvid. A wave of nausea rends through his body when he rustles his wings without thinking and even that slight action unbalances him.
The gypsy dancers twirl to their finale and clink their glittering bangles together in beats of twos and threes.
The night grows pallid and malleable around them, the shadows bendable, and Caine wonders in his short breath of silence if he has scared her.
(A part of him wonders if this child, who held silence to her heart like a dove, knew enough to know he wouldn't have given her an answer that was clever and true.)
He drops his gaze to the shadows twisting like scarves around her thin ankles. Clearing his throat, he smiles sheepishly and raises his night-black wings, to show her that he still has them. Normal, now. No longer an anomaly.
"Well, I'm afraid the real answer is far less exciting. A gypsy did approach me, but only to tell me that he'd dropped his coin by accident and if I would please hand it back, because he quite needed it to pay for his betrothed's dowry." He grins, then, and looks towards the breathless gypsy girls, now bowing like elegant swans as flowers and trinkets fall in a halo around their hooves.
Softly, he murmurs, "There's not much difference between them and us, is there?"
Caine is careful to keep his gaze from wandering to the three shadows standing between them when he cranes his neck back towards the girl's too-knowing eyes, and awaits her answer.
All the village's children knew that when the red-tented gypsy caravans passed through, and the sky was a starless indigo on a sickle moon night, and the apple blossoms had yet to wither and fruit, the very last caravan with the golden spokes would leave behind a golden coin trail.
But only the eldest of the village children knew that come dawn, all but one of the gypsies' coins could endure the heat of the autumn sun.
The boy knew at once that it would be his.
He knew at once that the coin was made of real gold, solid straight through, because of how heavy it felt in his grasp.
Not three days ago, he'd picked up a merchant wife's gold hair ornament in the streets. Before he could hand it back to her, she'd shrieked at a passing soldier that he'd stolen it, and he'd received ten lashings at the hand of the Warden.
"Twenty, if it had been real," the Warden had whispered to him between the fifth and sixth flick of his whip.
So that was how the boy (with the tanned flank) knew that the gypsy coin reflecting moonlight into his eyes was real, solid gold. It was heavier - much heavier - than the merchant wife's painted barrette.
Whistling, the boy slipped the gypsy coin into his breast pocket, scanned twice up and down the streets for vagrants who specialized in minding other people's business, and wove through the market stalls to show his mother.
Come dawn, the coin endured the heat of the autumn sun.
Come noon, a fat crow dropped a loaf of steaming bread in front of his mother's booth as it dodged the baker's crow-killing rolling pin. (A local legend.)
Come evening, a Delumine trader with a funny hat mistook their fabric swathes for real silk (they were satin, and not even of the higher calibre) and departed with half their stock loaded on the back of his cart. Leaving behind a pouch of coins one silver too generous.
Days and weeks passed.
The boy learned how to distinguish the taste of bruised apples from fresh ones. Oranges fell fat and dazed from the branches of their presumed-barren orange tree. (A local legend.) The winter turned out to be a mild one.
His father returned home from the border war.
Once there was a boy who picked up a real gypsy coin, and the coin gifted him with kindness.
Or so the story goes.
"What did it do?" the girl made of starlight asks, and Caine wishes he can laugh and wink and tell her something clever and true.
"Gambler's luck for seven nights." Or -
"The blinding smile of a ferociously beautiful gypsy girl." Or -
"To wake up and realize that everything, all of it, Agenor/the Prince/Raum/the King (but please not Seraphina, the holy one, the burning one) had been a nightmare."
Instead, he turns to her and says: "The gypsy who'd lost it appeared in a burst of silver mist before me and demanded it back. When I refused, he removed the scythe from his side and sliced off my wings in one swift stroke."
His eyes hold her golden ones captive, cold-silver and suddenly corvid. A wave of nausea rends through his body when he rustles his wings without thinking and even that slight action unbalances him.
The gypsy dancers twirl to their finale and clink their glittering bangles together in beats of twos and threes.
The night grows pallid and malleable around them, the shadows bendable, and Caine wonders in his short breath of silence if he has scared her.
(A part of him wonders if this child, who held silence to her heart like a dove, knew enough to know he wouldn't have given her an answer that was clever and true.)
He drops his gaze to the shadows twisting like scarves around her thin ankles. Clearing his throat, he smiles sheepishly and raises his night-black wings, to show her that he still has them. Normal, now. No longer an anomaly.
"Well, I'm afraid the real answer is far less exciting. A gypsy did approach me, but only to tell me that he'd dropped his coin by accident and if I would please hand it back, because he quite needed it to pay for his betrothed's dowry." He grins, then, and looks towards the breathless gypsy girls, now bowing like elegant swans as flowers and trinkets fall in a halo around their hooves.
Softly, he murmurs, "There's not much difference between them and us, is there?"
Caine is careful to keep his gaze from wandering to the three shadows standing between them when he cranes his neck back towards the girl's too-knowing eyes, and awaits her answer.
