When the music stopped, the moaning started. The two figures writhing in the encroaching dark at the edge of the firelight knew by now that when he put down his violin, he would take up his tasks with them. Truthfully, he didn't feel like resuming his business; he had been at it for a while now, it was growing late, and his arm hurt from the bear bite.

He lowered his violin, leaned against the log at his back, and gazed up at the darkening sky. The brighter colors were washing away in the black tide of night, the first stars starting to wink into existence.

He felt many eyes upon him there in the forest. From the woods, he could see another pair of stars in the dark - no doubt the bear, watching from the trees and waiting its turn, its glimmering eyes caught in the firelight. Under the open sky, he was certain he could feel God watching him, judging his every sin - and how he had been busy with his bloody work!

What did you expect when you made a twisted creature like me?

And as always, he felt Nadir's eyes upon him, unseen, internal, forever saddened by what his boy had become. Nadir had known, of course, that he was sending him out to a cold, hard world and that world had made him a cold, hard man. Would Nadir even recognize his boy now?

Nadir had forbidden him from killing, prohibited him from hurting others except in self-defense. He had tried to be a good boy, tried to stick to the straight and narrow after fleeing Persia, but the world was a terrifying place, dangerous and merciless, and survival begged compromise.

Onward, through the ruthless, savage terrain to India, he traveled to where he was certain his jewels would fetch a pretty price. He had been more comfortable fighting against an unforgiving landscape that looked to starve him and cut him to ribbons than having one conversation with a member of the human race.

In the bazaars, he stood out with his odd Persian clothing, light skin, and strange mask. He felt the eyes of every crowd drawing to him and he wished to flee but he tried to be brave, fumbling at the watch when he needed a bit of courage, feeling it ticking steadily against his palm. In his hurry to be done with human interaction, he let go of some of his better jewels for far less than what they were worth.

He pressed on, driven out by his fear of humans and their curiosity and hatred of him. He was as strange a sight to the Chinese as they were to him but all of the books he had read about this incredible country did no justice to the real thing. Each region had its own distinct charm and a man could easily get lost in its splendors, let alone an adolescent with a head full of useless dreams and a thirst for beauty.

It was in China he'd picked up quite a few bad habits, even with Nadir's voice still ringing in his ears. While he was always a strange sight no matter where he went his appearance was softened by the fact that he was sometimes the only foreigner around and therefore a curiosity for reasons other than what was hidden beneath his mask.

He had allowed himself to come closer to humanity in China, more easily approached the people there. In a stroke of rare luck, he met a doctor who was willing to tutor him in medicines and eastern techniques in exchange for a lengthy examination of his deformity, even taking a few photographs that the doctor swore to keep for his own scientific use. He was almost pleasantly comfortable with being an object of medical curiosity, as he was interested in the root cause of his disfigurement as well.

When the doctor brought back the photos after they were developed, he saw his image for the first time absent a mirror. While he knew what to expect, the picture weighed on his heart nonetheless; stripped of his finery and artifice, his flesh made bare, he looked like a mockery of a human being - twisted, strange, monstrous.

Perhaps it was this image that drove him to escape into the worst of his indulgences, regardless of the sound of Nadir's imagined admonitions in his mind. He sought refuge from the racing, unkind thoughts that tormented him at all hours in the opium dens of the cities.

The princess had introduced him a few times to hashish and opium, but very rarely and he was never allowed to have his own pipe. Nonetheless, he developed a taste for it as it was a way to derail his runaway thoughts and still his mind. With no formal duties to attend to, with no one to hold him back, with no standards to adhere to, he fully indulged his cravings, spending hours, days, weeks, wrapped in a velvet fog of distant dreams. When the money ran out, his magician's tricks transformed into tools of thievery; no pocket was safe from his nimble fingers.

All good things come to an end and his trance of pleasure was crudely undone one crisp morning. He came down from his castle in the sky to find himself stripped down and in a cage, most likely meant for a dog, somewhere in the back of a dark, small room. Her quickly surmised the den owners had taken advantage of his numbed state, no doubt peered beneath his mask, and had decided for themselves that they had a profitable freak on their hands that they could keep locked up. That was true when he was a child, but he was a grown man now, with years of practice in deadly arts behind him.

When his captors came back, they seemed surprised to find him fully alert. They would soon be surprised by more than just his ability to bounce back quickly from any intoxication.

As they started discussing this or that regarding their newly-captured treasure, he decided to explore the powers of his voice. He was stunned by how easily he was able to manipulate them just by altering his tone. He had done things like this before, once when trying to steal a kiss from an odalisque and again to put the Persian court to sleep, but now he let his voice run free, testing and reveling in his powers.

With just a few honeyed words, he turned the two into his personal servants, docile and helpless to disobey him. They unlocked the cage. They fetched him his clothes. They brought back his satchel, his violin, and most importantly, his three treasures - the mirror, the pocket watch, the ring.

When he was dressed and ready to leave, he glanced at the two who sought to imprison him, standing before him with glazed eyes, beholden to his voice and awaiting his commands. He wasn't sure what to do with them; after all Nadir had said not to kill…

The limits of his fidelity to the oath he swore were further stressed and strained as he crossed back into Russia. When he saw his two former captors, how could he deny himself this incredible opportunity?

At the Makaryev fair at Nijni-Novgorod, he picked up a few coins fiddling on the street, scanning the crowds for any sign of jade-green eyes. Instead he spotted something he would recognize anywhere - his cage, the one he had lived in as a child. To see it sent a jolt of pure electricity racing from the crown of his head down through his spine. Oh, was it a dream? He had to know if it was true or just another apparition conjured by his desperate mind…

No, he would know it anywhere; it was real enough. Although he rarely got to see the exterior of it when he was a child, and the years had worn it down, he still recognized the scrolling embellishments, the faded red and gold paint, the comfortable dimensions, the familiar bars…

From a distance, he could see a figure within it, laying on the hay-covered floor. His heart seized wondering what poor creature was now trapped inside…

His curiosity was soon satisfied; his former captors, Raito and Sylvester, came to the door of the cage, whips and pistols as always in their hands. Seeing them again after so long still sent an ice cold wave of fear cascading through his gut but then he saw how they had aged, how they seemed so weak. And he knew his own strengths.

He watched as they snatched up a chain and, yelling in their crude way, pulled and prodded a bear from the cage. Its black fur was tatty from neglect and, although it was small enough to still be an adolescent, it was emaciated, its skin hanging loose. It had chains on its legs and a tight leather muzzle biting into its snout. There was no light in the pathetic creature's eyes, only numb resignation.

He kept to the shadows and to the crowd cover, riveted to his former captors' new act for the rest of the fair's few remaining days. The bear was forced to stand on its hind legs, balance on barrels, do demeaning tricks, and there was always a whip on its back. He felt every lash against his own marked skin. His boiling anger turned to cold resolve and a terrible, black joy that he couldn't resist plunging headlong into began winding around his heart.

Soon enough, the pilgrims dispersed, the crowds moved on, the travelers went on the road. He followed at a safe distance as to not be seen but close enough to keep up with the slow-moving carriage. The others on the road peeled away until it was just their wagon, the cage rattling along behind it. How he knew these roads well! These trees and rocks practically knew him by name - if only he had one.

When there was just their carriage on the road, he decided it was finally time to play. It was a beautiful summer day, clear skies above and sun falling through the tree branches like golden drops. He at last emerged from the trees and the shadows and walked at an easy pace behind the wagon, waiting for them to notice.

Eventually, they stopped and Raito hopped down to take a piss by the side of the road. He stopped too, standing quite a ways back but close enough to be spotted. It took the old monster long enough to realize he wasn't alone. He gave a startled yelp to see the lone, tall figure wrapped in a black cloak standing several paces behind their wagon. He waited and watched as Raito called for Sylvester. As that old man's face appeared from the driver's seat, it fell upon seeing him.

Did they know it was him? He wanted to leave no room for doubt. He raised the brim of his hat, certain his eyes were lit under the shade. Seeing their faces drain of color brought a smile to his lips - his terrifying, maddening smile. Oh, he felt his heart leap with unbridled joy to see a wave of panicked realization wash over them! He completed the verification by bringing out his violin and playing a joyful, jaunty tune, full of the thrill of happiness he felt and the rush of untold satisfaction of the revenge that lay before him. He laughed as they screamed and shouted and scrambled, whipping their old, tired horse, driving it on in a mad rush until they thought they were free of him.

They couldn't get far from him, not with all of that cargo, not with that weathered steed. He melted back into the darkness, trailing their carriage. He watched as they broke through the woods, easing the wagon off the main road into a clearing to set up camp. They scanned the thoroughfare, looking for any signs of the apparition from before but he was hiding in the bushes, watching from afar.

They hastily set up camp, choosing to huddle inside their wagon instead of sleeping under the stars on such a warm night. He crept close, hiding under the eave of their window, hearing them discuss what they had seen. How he loathed their voices! They went back and forth as to whether what they had seen and heard was real, settling that perhaps they had taken some bad wine, that they knew their former charge was still no doubt a slave to the shah.

He waited until the last light winked out and the sounds of their wretched snoring began, then, smiling, he pressed his bow to his strings and began to play. The candles were lit almost instantly, their frightened faces peering out into the pitch black night. He played and played all night long, knowing they were huddled inside, cowering in fear. He hadn't been this happy in ages and couldn't help laughing, adding his own mirth to his music.

Dawn finally came and he decided to give them a short reprieve. He crouched in his hiding place, watching and waiting for their decision as to their next move. They stayed indoors much of the day. He dared not creep closer while the sun was out and kept to the cool shadows. The poor bear lifted its head from time to time, wrapped in chains, no doubt hungry going so long without being fed.

Soon, soon…

They eventually came out and went searching around but he was well-hidden and knew this game better than they. All they had on their side was brute strength and even that was waning. Darkness came and they packed up into their wagon once more, hiding and waiting for night to pass. With a sigh of heady anticipation, he snuggled his violin beneath his chin and once more began to play.

They had a plan this time; after a few hours of maddening music, Raito burst out of the door, waving a pair of pistols around and firing off a few bullets. One even lightly grazed his right arm; they would never know how lucky they were.

"Come out here, you devil!" Raito screamed wildly into the night. "We always knew you would come back, you dog! Stand out here and face us like the man you pretend to be!"

Sylvester was close behind, another firearm in his hand. The bear, startled by the sounds and the screaming, trembled in the cage.

He laughed once more; how sad and scared they were! He drank it in, throwing his voice all around, driving them deeper into insanity. They fired off more shots until he was certain they were close to emptying their pistols. It was time for him to show himself, anyways. He removed his hat - his wig had been lost a few years back - and his mask. He wanted them to see his face; he had grown uglier over the intervening years but they would surely still recognize him.

"Did you miss me, good messieurs?" He called out to them, stepping from the shadows. Their minds practically unraveled before his eyes with fear as he advanced upon them.

They were too easy to overpower. He wanted to savor his revenge and thus he tied them to a nearby branch, suspended in mild stress positions. He wanted them to be uncomfortable but not have a chance of accidentally hanging themselves or breaking a bone without his blessing.

His bravado faded as he approached the cage. By now, the sun was coming up and dawn's rays shone through the battered bars. What was he feeling? What was this cold snake crawling around in his guts? Was he afraid of being caged again? Was he excited by being so close to the object that contained his entire childhood world?

With shaking hands, he grasped the edge of the bars on the door and peered inside. The pitiful creature within stared back, wondering what fresh hell had come to it. Moved by its sad plight, he felt a rush of energy that allowed him to focus on picking the lock and getting the door open.

Gently, carefully, he took the bear by the chain and eased it out onto the grass. He was shaking with rage and sorrow to see the state it was in.

His first instinct was to get the muzzle off. With nimble fingers, he worked the tight leather until it fell away. Confused, scared, and perhaps animated by the first bit of freedom it had in so long, the bear instantly lunged for his left arm and bit down.

They stood there for several moments, the bear with his arm in its mouth. Whether from weakness or mercy or bewilderment, the bite wasn't very strong although it was firm enough that he heard a crack and suspected he had a light fracture.

The bear looked up at him with deep brown watery eyes, uncertain and afraid. Nature had a common language, that of kindness, and while he wasn't fluent, he did his best. He softly stroked the bear's broad head, using a gentle touch, attempting to convey that yes, he understood very well exactly how it felt.

The bear released his arm almost sheepishly. He gave it an affectionate scratch behind its ear and realized that the poor thing was toothless. Hot, angry awareness lanced through him; those beasts no doubt removed the bear's teeth as another safeguard against being bitten. He now had a good idea as to where to begin with those two.

He got the shackles off of its legs and the chain from around its neck and considered, for a moment, getting one of the pistols and ending this sad creature's life. How would it live on its own in the merciless wild, half-starved, toothless, muscles atrophied?

Then he considered that he had survived, had been surviving, and even if it was a form of twisted mercy, couldn't bring himself to do it. He raided the wagon and brought out everything edible inside to provide a feast for the bear, then turned his attentions to his two new projects.

Now as nighttime fell, the satisfaction of the long day indulging his desires left him tired, even sleepy for once in his life. with a sigh, he rose to his feet, prompting more moans and more writhing from the two tied to the tree branch. The fear in their eyes as he approached gave his heart a perverse thrill.

He looked down on these two men, two inhuman monsters who had infused his entire childhood with fear, terror, and hatred. He had made them strip down earlier, lashed them with their own whips, until he split the skin on their fat, mottled bodies so that they hung there caked in dried blood with a crowd of flies buzzing around then. They loomed so large in his memory but they were now just two sad, old, withered human beings. A lifetime of vices had drained them, aged them faster, had made them almost feeble. Nevertheless, he still enjoyed watching them squirm and cry and bleed.

Perhaps it was wrong to exact revenge on such decrepit things but he had to set things right, even if this was the wrong way. He owed it to the frightened, terrorized child he once was. He would heed Nadir's request and would leave them alive. The great booby was right - there was only one demon in this Hell that deserved to have her life extinguished by his hand - but he would let them suffer just a bit more. He lost his childhood to them; what was a few more hours?

Now he turned his attention to the second monolith of his mind - the cage. Why was he still so terrified to approach it and yet felt a deep reverence for it? He went to it, running his hand over the bars as he passed, and unhitched it from the wagon. Grunting and sweating, he dragged it out to the nearby field where he had set the poor old horse free. The old thing was still out in the pasture, half asleep, half puzzled by his strange actions, and flicked its ears in his direction a few times.

Trembling from head to toe, he approached the door at the end. The lock was broken and gone now; he couldn't get trapped inside. He took a deep breath and mounted the small steps, then crawled through the door and sat at the center, staring out from the bars.

How small it seemed now! His whole world had expanded and the inside of his old cage was almost claustrophobic...and yet strangely comforting. He swallowed a lump in his throat, trying to keep the tears from rising in his eyes, and reached out to the bars.

His hand was long and broad, the fingers knotted, almost skeletal, the veins prominent. He remembered in the earliest days of his childhood confinement, when he still didn't understand, he would reach out to the children on the other side and they would take his fingers and bend them around the bars, breaking them. It was a wonder he could do anything at all with his hands! He flexed his fingers, recalling how the shah had broken his hands too. Curious...all of that had seemingly made them stronger.

Without understanding why, he lay down on the hay. It was quite cramped and he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He had expected to confront his memories after coming across those two evil brutes, and he was confident he was prepared to do so, but tears still welled up in his eyes and he struggled to fight them down.

They all came rushing in at once, those things he had kept hidden at the edges of his mind, as if they had spent too much time away from his thoughts and were eager to take the stage once more. Spiraling through time, he went further and further back to his very first memory - a dark room, a single, small window at the top that provided the barest light. Here, his eyes learned to adjust to this perpetual twilight.

A woman - his mother - would open the door at times and force food down his throat as quickly as possible or scrub him clean under a pitcher of cold water. She was terrified of him, and who could blame her? A little monster child who kept pawing at her and grabbing at her, begging for affection. She slipped a crude bit of burlap over his face and hit or pinched him if he tried to remove it; he learned to please her and keep the mask on.

And then one day there was another person in the room with her. That person, a large man with rough hands, tore the coarse mask from his face. This man was so startled by the sight of the deformity, he retched into his misshapen face almost immediately. Vomit poured into his vulnerable open nose and he began retching and crying himself. A few minutes later he was being pushed and pulled from the room. The world opened up - there were other rooms and furniture and light. Everything went so fast, he couldn't understand…

The first and last time he ever saw his mother clearly was when she stood on the stoop of their home, accepting a purse full of coins in exchange for the tiny terror she had birthed. The man shut him away in his first cage and as they trundled down the road into a world that was much bigger and more frightening than he could comprehend, he cried for her. She watched from the front door as he was taken away. In his faded memories, she was blond and a bit thin; she seemed a bit harried or worn through. Her expression changed in his memory; sometimes she was regretful, other times relieved.

From there, it was a life lived on the inside of a cage. It was difficult to adjust to but he learned to stay in the center and stay on display - or suffer the consequences. As a creature in a cage that didn't know how to communicate, he assumed he was just a simple animal like the others in the circuses and fairs. They were in cages. They weren't spoken to. They were poked and prodded and forced to perform. Wasn't that all he was?

Then came that priest - meddlesome fool! He was younger, idealistic, and went around the fairs, performing services as needed for those who were of the Catholic faith. This idiot, this imbecile, decided to make him his own little pet project, teaching him how to read and write and speak as if he were a human being. The priest should've known that when he taught his little pet animal to speak that he would ask why he was in a cage!

He remembered that rage that welled up inside of him when he saw the answer - a mirror! He was such a small, half-starved child then and yet the anger over this injustice wiped all rational thought from his mind. His hands shot through the bars and clamped down over the man's throat - the first life he took.

The second life snuffed out in his lethal grip was that man that used to be the third with the two monsters he had tied up back by the fire. He didn't know back then what the man wanted, entering his cage late at night, drunk, putting his hands all over him, but as an adult, he had a better understanding of just what disgusting thing he was after. After a bit of a scuffle, he had done what he needed to do to survive.

And then to Persia...That palace of dreams had come down all around him, mostly because of his own rash actions. From a thing locked away in a room to an animal in a cage to a slave in a palace to a monster in a maze..And now what was he? Not an animal, not a man; not bound, not free. A ghost flitting at the edges of humanity.

There was one person who always treated him with dignity but those memories were the most painful and intrusive. He was too old to bother with his fairytales of being reunited with Nadir and he chastised himself for still believing them. Why, if Nadir had been with him on his travels, he would have frozen his Persian ass off in the Russian winters or complained that the tea in China wasn't up to his standards!

...Even that was a fantasy. Nadir was well-traveled, intelligent, accepting. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have been so unreasonably kind, wouldn't have been able to reach out to a terrible, twisted creature such as himself. Nadir's kindness had probably cost him his freedom, if not his life. With every passing year he grew more certain that he wouldn't see Nadir, and wishing that he was somehow with him again was futile, useless.

A sudden craving for a pipe came on just as strongly as his emotions and he desperately wanted to wipe his troubles away on a welcoming cloud of opium but he committed to putting that behind him too. Hot tears tracked down his misshapen face and he let his sorrows sweep him into his troubled dreams.

When the sun came up on him again, it found him still huddled inside of his old cage. He blinked in the pink and gold light, his muscles a bit sore from being so tightly curled up all night. Slowly, he sat up, brushing the hay from his clothes.

Somehow, he felt stronger, felt as if something had changed within him but he wasn't sure what. He remembered the first time he had taken tea with Nadir, when he told him his grand scheme, an unruly, half-feral child's wildest fantasy...

.

.

"Why don't you kill both of them? If you could so easily do it…"

"One day when I'm stronger...I will kill them both and take their money - all of the money that I've rightfully earned! - and — and buy a bigger cage!"

"A bigger cage? But you would be free then!"

"The cage is to keep the others out!"

.

.

For the last time, he touched the inside of the battered bars. He gathered himself up and exited, stepping into the dew-covered grass. He walked back to where he had left the fire burning, the wagon, the two tied to the tree, but before he was out of view, he spared one backwards glance at his old home. It was so small now, broken, unable to hold anything else inside of it.

Goodbye…

There was quite a commotion back by the wagon. Those two were making a racket, lots of yelping and yelling. Their voices were hoarse; they must've been at it for a while. As he approached the burnt out fire pit and the tree, a black shape quickly dashed away, clumsily crashing through the underbrush. The bear had apparently tried to take its turn with Sylvester; the man had a few claw marks and bruises from the bear's toothless bites on his body.

He had a last chuckle over their distress and then got to work undoing most of their knots. As soon as they were sufficiently undone that the two old men fell on their knees before him, he left them to their own devices. They whimpered and writhed and begged for mercy at his feet but they were already nothing to him, quickly fading from his concerns. He gathered up his satchel, wrapped his cloak around himself once more, and replaced his hat. Taking up his violin, he walked on down the road, playing as he considered his next move.

A cage...