Faithful Pebble

Part One Hundred and Fourteen

Even in the dark, he could feel IT. The hole. IT devoured the inside of the barn. IT was so deep that the boy couldn't see the bottom. Still, he knew. Most certainly, deep in his gut, the tiniest pickpocket of Warble Heights knew if he followed the corkscrew staircase, he would find IT... the diamond mine he heard so much about. The staircase was a tangle of broken teeth. IT ringed the outside of the barn's interior, sticking to its damp walls like a tongue a throat. He wanted to run to the waned edge and steal a glance over its crumbling brick. He wanted to peak further into the dark, ITs dark. He wanted to see IT, to see if IT would stare back at him.

IT was a loathsome creature. Yet, to the boy, IT was never more fascinating. IT had fangs. IT had claws. IT had a boy-sized gaze that if properly provoked filled with quivering, wet images of a pickpocket not even a tenth of ITs size. Once upon a time, the kitten wondered. Maybe at one time, IT had once been the size of a pickpocket. Maybe, a pickpocket was no bigger than the dragon was twenty years prior. The kitten tried not to think about it, but then the thought pulled at his mind. For a second, he thought of the boy. For the first time...

He imagined him...

It was a foreign thought. It felt almost illegal, illegal to the point he instantly, on reflex sneered back. Fear didn't allow it, not when IT could be nestled beneath his feet, inches, milliseconds, one quivering breath away. His bonds refused him the use of his arms. His pickpocket sized hands couldn't grip the rotten edge and allow him the leverage to lean in closer nor run away. Not that he had anywhere to run.

He sighed, the boy, the kitten, the not-so-monstrous pickpocket. They locked him in there while they, the soldiers, waited outside. The boy turned towards the only light basking into his temporary prison. It seeped dully through two dirty, dry windows, the solitarily ones that cut into the barn's tattered doors. He meandered the four steps lotted to him between the pit's edge and the two loathsome panels. He looked through them to see that the soldiers had gone back to waiting and talking and singing and eating all around that brilliant menacing campfire. They looked as anxious as the boy felt. It had been an hour since they threw him in there and nothing had happened. Yet, their wait, their anticipation was unpleasantly palpable, but for what? For whom did they wait? The kitten didn't know.

The kitten turned and leaned his back against the glass. He grimaced using the wall to slide clumsily to the floor. With his legs stretched out towards the pit and it's darkness, ITs darkness, his eyes soon followed. His lids slid shut. His head nodded. His curls drifted groggily to the floor.

It was the light that woke him, the kitten, the boy, the smallest, tiniest pickpocket of the not-so-monstrous gang of Warble Heights. The light woke him and the sound of two people speaking: two men, no—he scrunched his nose as he leaned in closer. He tried to wipe his eyes, but then he stopped when he remembered that he couldn't. He cursed his bonds. His nose scrunched higher as he listened. It wasn't just two men speaking. There was one more. Was it... was that a girl?

"Do you see that?" One man shouted.

"It's only a rattle," the girl answered.

"I knew it was. It's spoilt of course!"

The kitten turned about just as he started to hear the man's feet scuttle through the window. They began stumping as the man started to cry noisily. The boy carefully leaned his body against the wall. He gathered his balance to rise and peak an eye through the window pane. With his hands behind his back, it was a difficult task. But he did it, careful to mind the stairs and their pit-filled edge. It was hard to see them through the dust, through the light streaking through the glass, yet he could see them, somewhat, two men and a girl. The men were dressed the same. They were fat and wore the same red shirt and white slacks that seemed ill fit for their girth. He could see their ankles as well as their socks and shoes. On their head, they wore peculiar caps with a ball of wool sewn on the top. The boy thought it queer the way the pom-poms seemed to jiggle as one man slumped and cried and the other lowered his head and hid his face behind a trembling umbrella.

The girl wearing a blue dress and a white apron rested a hand on the crying man's arm. In a soft voice, she tried to soothe him, but her cooings only seemed to make matters worse.

"But it isn't old," the crying man shouted. "It's new, I tell you— I bought it yesterday—my nice new rattle!" His voice rose to a deafening scream. One that caused the boy to gasp in alarm, in fear of the soldiers that could come and investigate, in fear of IT which he just as quickly lost thought of.

The boy paused as he finally took in the setting about the strange characters. The fire pit was gone. The clearing was the same, but any traces of the soldier's camp had vanished. The boy's eyebrows crinkled as he leaned against the glass trying to see if Snow White's poison tree had also disappeared, but even as he smashed his face against the warm material, he couldn't spy it. All he could see was the other man try his best to fold himself up into his umbrella. He ended up rolling over huddled in the item with only his head sticking out.

The angry man saw this and sputtered. He was not appeased in the slightest. "Of course," he declared. "This means you agree to have a battle."

"I suppose so." The other man sulkily replied. He crawled out of the umbrella. "Only, she must help us to dress up for it, you know."

The girl dipped her head in exasperation. Keeping her face stubbornly hidden from the kitten's point of view, she did just that. The men tattled off into the woods and returned with a splatter of random things that the boy had no clue as to where they got it and the girl proceeded to dress them in bolsters and blankets and rugs and pots and pans and dish covers and — the umbrella man clutched his umbrella and the angry man a coal scuttle.

"You know," the angry man said getting to his feet, marching to one end of the clearing. He glared. "It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle - to get one's head cut off."

The umbrella man put a helmet on promptly and grimaced at the girl. "Do I look pale?" The helmet was a sauce pan.

"Yes, a little," the girl replied.

The umbrella man paled furiously while the other huffed and proceeded to complain about aches of his own. He rolled his eyes and the girl stifled a giggle.

"If you two aren't feeling well, then you better not fight today," she said.

Yet the angry man baulked. His frown seeped deeper than the lump of his stomach. "We must have a bit of a fight, but I don't care about going on long. What's the time now?"

The umbrella man looked at his watch. "Half past four," he said.

"Let's fight 'til six and then have dinner." The angry man scratched his nose with the tip of his coal scuttle.

"Very well," the other replied, rather sadly, "and she can watch us—you'd better not come very close," he added. "I generally hit everything I can see — when I get really excited."

"And I hit everything within reach," cried the angry man. "Whether, I can see it or not!"

The girl laughed, the blue of her dress trembled as she did. "And all about a rattle?"

The angry man pouted. "I wouldn't have minded it so much if it hadn't been a new one. You should stand over there and you over there. The angry man pointed in the direction of Snow White's tree and the girl expressly went. Her hair covered her face the entire time. The boy squinted ignoring as the umbrella man obeyed his brother's second command and sulked solemnly to the other side of the clearing opposite him. He waved his umbrella half heartedly. His brother did also in answer with his coal scuttle "Quick," he seethed. "It's getting as dark as IT can."

"And dark," the umbrella man agreed.

It was getting dark. It was getting so dark, so suddenly the child scrunched in the mine's main entrance shivered in growing freight. He wondered if a thunderstorm was brewing. "What a thick black cloud that is?" The girl cried suddenly. "And how fast it comes! Why, I do believe ITs got wings!"

And it did have wings. The kitten saw it rumble through the forest trees and into the clearing. ITs gigantic cloud like wings flapped hard enough to whip the surrounding vegetation into a panicked frenzy. The boy watched with widening eyes as it swooped over the two men running away into the woods then veered towards the tree and the mine's entrance.

"It's the crow, " the girl cried. Then finally, she turned, her face basked in golden light. Her eyes dipped in clear cyan blue flashed in his direction, wide in desperate horror. Her mouth opened mouthing words that glued the boy to the filthy window pane. He watched them, tried to read them as suddenly the crow swooped down and gobbled the girl, dress and all, then turned towards the boy.

He had no time. In seconds, the cloud burrowed from the tree to the barn breaking the window, the door and the boy's careful balance. His foot felt a pebble snag his ankle and twist, then like a pebble, he was thrown across the small landing and over it's unprotected edge. Draped in the cloud, blinded by it's darkness, ITs darkness, he didn't see when he hit the bottom, but he felt it. It was soft. It felt like he landed on a pit of feathers. They were sticky.

— Calla