The Life and Adventures of Benjamin Finn

Page 2

I said before that we soldiers told these stories so that was as not to miss home, but in truth I have never truly felt the sense of that word in any place I have visited, and certainly not in Gunk. Yet there it was that I was raised by my shop-keeping parents, who through no fault of their own often struggled to keep other things, such as shoes on our feet and food on our table.

This being the case, my three elder brothers and I had no recourse but to find other sources of sustenance, money and entertainment.

Despite my small hands, I was never the equal of my siblings in what constituted the main form of income for all Finns under the age of fifteen: the picking of pockets. It is possible that even then, though barely eight years old, I had begun to form some sort of moral objection to such activities.

Instead I found my calling as a street performer, standing in the town square telling jokes and falling down repeatedly. 'Did you hear about the man who went through a balverine forest and messed up his trousers?' I would ask the audience. 'No' they would reply. 'He said with fiends like that who needs enemas.' Haha.

Alright, so it wasn't sophisticated - I was only a child after all - but at least it was honest. Or it would have been, had my brothers not taken the opportunity afforded to them by the villagers uncouth laughter to rob them blind.

All this accidental aiding and abetting won me the greatest gift I had ever received. For my eleventh birthday my criminal siblings bought me a beautiful pellet gun, and thus it was that I found my second talent: a rather surprising accuracy with firearms.

It was not long before this ability was put to good use. My brothers set up a fair booth in which they challenged all-comers to pit their target practice skills against young Ben. Having fleeced all the local clods, we soon had to rely on traders, passersby and occasional tours of neighboring villagers, out of which we would more often than not be run out by the local authorities.