Tales

The Crow-boy

In the fair land of sub-continentia between the northern hills and the southern grassland, there was a large village called Sonton. It had at least two hundred houses, and about fifty shop-houses along the main street. At the end of this street was a roundabout with a lily-pool in the middle, and the great town hall looming over it. The town hall was constructed of stone and some wood, unlike the rest of town, which was constructed of mostly straw and wood or bamboo, with maybe a stone foundation here and there for the richer homes. The town was bustling, and no one had any complete maps of it, because secret back-alleys and hidden shortcuts were always being found, or sometimes, lost. One day someone would be using a cramped alleyway with a secret brick wall entrance where you just have to remove a lose brick to get to work on time, and the next day they would come to find the brick sealed in like it had always been that way. Then people would think them mad for banging on a solid brick wall. Other times people would discover hidden passageways in odd places. For example, there was this one old lady who found that there was a hidden door in her very living room that led underground and all the way to Munford Street. Sometimes people would stumble upon entire hidden avenues that had been abandoned for years. So, as I said before, no one had a complete map, but there were maps of at least the major roads and houses, and people were always drawing and erasing on theirs to mark out shortcuts.

In a small two story, three-room house there lived a boy named Kyle. He had five siblings and his father worked as a stone mason, often going on business trips to other villages in the country to build churches or walls or storehouses or something. Every morning but on Sundays Kyle would get ready for school, pack his lunch and get his books, and then go off to school by himself. He was the oldest, twelve years old, and thus he was the only one who went to school outside of the house to get a greater education than what his mother could teach him. His other siblings (except the two youngest) were home schooled for only two hours every day.

Kyle's school was far on the other side of town. He had to walk through thick traffic, slip through thin passageways, jump across flooded roads, and even climb across straw and tin rooftops to get there. The entrance to the school was through an alley that could just barely fit two people at a time and led into a small walled area decorated with wild ivy and morning glory, which had great wooden doors at one end. The doors were just higher than the wall, and arched at the top, and the saying "Knowledge is Power" was carved in the ancient wood. A few stone steps led up to the entrance, worn by summer rain and bare feet. There Kyle waited as the rest of the school, only about fifty people, gathered in the increasingly cramped space. As the city bells tolled seven, the gates swung open and the students filed in. The doors led to a large courtyard surrounded on the three other sides by a sort of out door hallway with a shingled roof over it, separated from the courtyard only by wooden columns with chipped white paint. Underneath it there were doors leading to various classrooms.

The students dropped their things off at their classrooms, and then gathered in the courtyard for morning assembly. The headmaster gave some remarks, they sang some songs, and then they split for classes. Kyle's first class was mathematics, then he went to his other classes: Science, Histories of sub-continentia, geography, basic magic, Literature, and basic medicines. Then he had P.E. He gathered with his classmates in the center courtyard. The teacher put them into two teams.

"Alright," He said, "Today we're playing Foolish Escape again. You all know the rules, so I won't bother going over them again." He got out an egg shaped blue leather ball with leather straps coming out the smaller end. He set it in the center, stepped back, and yelled, "Go!"

The two teams rushed to the middle, and one of the other team grabbed the ball by the straps. He kept running towards the other side, and when some of Kyle's team started closing in on him, he rolled it across the ground and into the hands of another teammate. They ran to the end and rolled the ball at the wall and it hit an old painted white semicircle. The teacher shouted, "Ten, zero" and the game continued. This time the ball was gotten first by one of Kyle's team members, and they made it about five feet before the other team tagged the ball and they had to give it to them. They made it back about twenty feet, then someone on Kyle's team stole the ball, and immediately rolled it to another teammate. The game continued for a half hour more, and, as usual, no one passed to Kyle. Sometimes they would have the option of making a crazy pass to a teammate over on the other side of the field through a forest of legs that would defiantly miss and be intercepted by the other team, or to pass to Kyle who was right next to them. Then they would make the crazy pass, get it intercepted, and the other team would indefinitely score.