I began as an acrobat. I mean in my real life, not this second, idiot return to boyhood. Before aught else, the acrobats taught me how to fall.
It was the most important lesson in my life. How to fall. For falls will come. When they do, wisdom is this: to save oneself by surrendering to the motion, Not by grabbing, not by screaming, not by flailing.
When I first saw the miller he hid behind trees, sneaking towards Marcus and the band. He looked sensibly frightened. And yet he smiled as I ran past, clearly wishing I'd stop and chat, pass the time. I had no time for chat. I had to get away before Marcus learned I'd given the prisoner a knife. If he didn't get the blade in his eager crotch, he'd come after me.
So I ran past the miller. wondering what the idiot was up to. He'd get his liver sliced for sure, the corpse sold to the darkrobes of Plutarch. Or else be beaten, tied tight, sold off to the Martians.
But days later when I returned, there the Miller stood, the master of the glade. While the death-stink of the former owners wafted through the trees. I wondered then: was he secretly dangerous? He looked big; but peaceful as a plow horse giving a child a ride on its back.
True, I trailed Barnaby in the storm to regain the miserable pile of pennies gathered by Marcus's chicken-thieves. But I also followed in fascination. Watching as Barnaby walked through a lightning storm arguing with a magic cat, a somber ghost.
I have the insight of the old man that once I was, for all I now scarce have beard. And looking at Barnaby, I saw a fellow who knew how to fall. To wander down roads or over cliffs, into haunted castles, and tumble and roll, laughing for the adventure.
I, Mercutio of the Moon, greatest thief in all the Land of Saints, who at eighty years of age stole the elixir of youth from the altar of St. Cronos Himself, only to drink it and became an ignorant boy again... recognized in Barnaby the miller's son a master tumbler on life's roads.
What could I do but follow behind?
YOU ARE READING
Barnaby the Wanderer
FantasyBeing the astonishing adventures of a widow's son journeying the Land of Saints, with a magic cat, a dark ghost and the map of a cursed tower; and what became thereof.
