Un Souvenir d'Événements

The Devil's Child

When I woke again, I was aware that I was moving. I could hear horses and the regular tread of their hooves against the earth. I heard the creak of wood and the flapping of canvas around me as it caught in the light breeze around me. Breeze. That was an odd sensation, I thought, and the smells around me were new, not the familiar musty ones of the house. Horses too, I had heard them and seen them, but I'd never been this close to one before. At length I slowly opened my eyes and squinted as daylight greeted them for the first time in weeks.

I sat up, finding my leg to now be healing in a splint and my arm in a sling. This set me into a more relaxed state as I thought wherever I was, they were helping me, 'surely they must be nicer than my mother' I had concluded from this alone.

On the contrary, these people made my mother seem like a saint in comparison. It didn't take me long to realise that I was in a large cage which was covered partially by an equally large canvas, one side of which was rolled up.

I looked outside and saw other carriages and cages around me, all travelling alongside mine. I wondered if there were other children in the cages with me, if they were hurt too, but I soon saw that the other cages didn't hold children, but animals. In one was a lion, in another was a tiger and the last one appeared empty until I saw the outline of a large black cat within it which I recognised as a panther.

It didn't take long for the procession to stop after I'd woken up and from there I got to see the other people emerge from their brightly coloured carriages and wagons and begin to settle down. The horses were fed and watered and then the people began to mill about, some siting by their carriages, others talking.

I watched them all curiously until they began to approach me and started to stare. I didn't like it one bit and turned away to hide, but there was nowhere to go. Every side of the canvas that had surrounded me had been rolled up, there was nowhere that they couldn't see me.

They started to jeer and taunt me, saying things worse than my mother ever had. I began to cry at their words, and at the realisation that my mother had been right about people, these were just as she'd described them to be, so why did she send me to them? I cried and begged to be sent home but that only made them laugh more and say crueller things.

A loud voice then silenced them and I recognised it immediately as the man who had visited my house who I thought had been there to help me. I felt safer once I heard this familiar voice and my heart lifted at the thought of help, little did I know just how horrifically wrong I was.

I watched him approach, the crowd parting to let him through, clearly he was a man of importance. He wore a dirty white shirt that had been stained by sweat and dirt from riding and tending to horses and such, dark trousers and a thick belt which housed a pouch that contained a large knife and also a whip. His hair was dark and matted and his eyes were of a similar dark shade. They held something else within them though that I sensed to be even darker, a malice of some kind, and at that point I knew he was no saviour. The hole I had fallen into was getting deeper and my chances of getting back out were becoming slimmer.

I backed away into the bars of the opposite side of the cage as he drew up to them and smiled.

"Well, well, well, it seems my precious devil has risen."

He said with a sickening grin that made my stomach twist in uneasy knots.

"Please Monsieur, I'd like to go home..."

I whispered timidly.

He threw his head back and laughed at me along with the others which made me shrink down even lower.

"Home? Why, this is your home now boy!"

He hit the end of his whip against the bars, making them resonate a deep clang which in turn caused me to jump and the laughter to resume.