The Ghost of Providence

Chapter Eight

Corbyn

As the school day ended, the shine of noon that once enveloped the sky in layers of red and orange had turned to colours of far fewer blindings. Evening blues muffled the sun’s luster, leaving its shine in pockets and portions.

Shade described the shine of day, and Corbyn was smitten with it. To him, the escape from the screaming sun after school was like the day’s way of letting you know that even when things seemed to darken, you could always find the light of things if only you tried to look — and look he did all down the hill leading up to Highland’s gate. Then some more at the bottom. He’d kept a hopeful outlook throughout the exercise, but when his right leg sunk into a small cavity of mud, he’d changed his mind.

“Really now,” he deadpanned to the sneaky slick. “Is it even worth it?”

Bits of that mud will be in my school shoes forever now.

The sound of ricketed wheels clunking within the woods nearby drew Corbyn from curling his toes in the mess. It was a pleasant sound, like a melody hummed.

He took a moment there by the wood to halt his thought, to listen to that noise a fickle fate brought. Evening winds, the tickler of cows, whistled little ditties as they giggled through boughs. Then, with that gale came a calming wail: the rhythmic rapping of old wheels on ancient earth and the droll trot of two horses due north.

Corbyn shuffled his feet with a slight limp. The melody was familiar enough to elicit a start to the sound. He ran to it before stopping cold in his tracks, an earlier revelation coming to mind as he approached the tree-guarded haunt. I need to be careful, he warned himself as the carriage song drew closer. Vendor Pice may not be the mad old man he seems.

From the treeline came the man in question, his feet dangling over the carriage-top railing. He waved to Corbyn excitedly. “Hey, boy! Long time no see, eh?”

Corbyn rolled his eyes but smiled a little smile anyway. “Ummm, not that long. No.”

Humored hurt took the man’s face as he complained in jest. “It’s been hours, my boy.”

“Well,” Corbyn said. “The day seemed to fly by, today. I was in my own head for most of it.”

“Oh, yeah?” the vendor smirked. “What were you thinking about?”

Corbyn shrugged. His bag felt heavier, he thought. The book in it seemed to weigh twice as much, as if the burden he carried was twice as heavy suddenly.

He looked to the merchant in rags. “I actually thought of you a lot,” he answered, studying the man’s face as he did so. He studied for any sign of surprise or alertness but found no change to that unflappable smile. Either he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, or he’s good at hiding away his thoughts. The latter was a scary thought to Corbyn.

Nothing in the man’s face changed, but moments later it did. A mortified expression stretched his eyes wide and his mouth open. “Boy! You’re much too young to be having thoughts like this for a man my age!”

“Wha—No!” Corbyn realized with a stomp. Mud flew from his shoes as he quickly pointed to the man, his face red. “That’s not what I was talking about!”

The old vendor covered his thin sheet with a hand and batted his greying eyelashes. “Corbyn. Please, don’t look at me like that.”

Corbyn ground his teeth madly and stomped thrice more. “Look at that!” the vendor clapped excitedly. “All that mud’s finally coming off. Do it again!” — and the vendor began to bang his foot against the carriage side. He shouted gleefully with each motion. “Stomp! Stomp! Stomp! Hey, why aren’t you doing it too?”

“...” Corbyn took a deep, steadying breath and climbed the carriage.

***

Who is he? Corbyn considered the mad man beside him thoughtfully. Why did he write it? What’s the connection? How did he know my father? Questions whirled around beneath his tingling scalp — they buzzed like a bee infestation, each one ringing so loud he could hardly think of anything else.

He turned to face the enigma beside him and moved a hand into his bag at the same time he asked a question. “Do you know a lot about books?” Good, start subtle.

His long peppery hair already dangling back from the speed of the horses, Vendor Pice tilted his neck back with it. The man’s pride became so apparent his nose practically punctured the sky. “I am known to have read many things, written many things, and known many things in my time,” the man brought his shoulders back to puff his chest out. “As a youth, I was even taken under the wing of one of the world’s preeminent chroniclers, Hamlin of Auctor.”

When it was obvious Corbyn didn’t follow, the man groaned dramatically. “Hamlin of Auctor? No?!” He sighed and looked to Corbyn with pity. “I know I said that school might not be for you, but more and more I’m beginning to think you need it.”

Corbyn, frustrated, shook his head and clutched a fist. “We never learned about any Hamlin,” he managed through thin lips. “I wanted to ask you about this.” He pulled the book from his bag and laid it out for the merchant. “Do you know it?” he asked simply.

The vendor gazed upon it as if it were a fun memory. “Ahh, yes,” he smiled. “How could I not know of something I penned myself?”

I knew it!

The old man reflected as he rubbed his chin. “Yes, yes, and I know exactly how you got ahold of it too. I remember giving that book to your father.”

“He asked for it?” Corbyn eyed the book again in his hands. Is there something I don’t get? Da’ wouldn’t have asked for something without reason.

The vendor wagged a finger. “No. Jacob was asking questions about a well-guarded secret — though he didn’t know it at the time. That book was my answer to him.”

“What secret?”

“Do you really wanna know?” the vendor grinned knowingly. “It’s a terribly serious secret, boy. This is a dangerous thing to be knowing, especially for a curious lad like yourself.”

Corbyn nodded his head emphatically, but the vendor held his answer longer still. His flair for drama was frying the boy’s nerves.

“You know,” the man spoke quietly. “It wasn’t that long after Jacob found out that he died.” He held Corbyn’s eyes with his own and the insinuation struck the boy. “So, do you still want to know?”

The old man’s remark may have surprised Corbyn, but he stayed strong in his decision. “Yes, I do,” he responded boldly. “What’s the secret?”

The Vendor seemed to size him up in a new light. He shook his head, chuckled lightly, and smiled strangely. “The secret both Jacob and that book share is one very few know of on this island. It’s called Magic.

“Magic?” Corbyn snorted. “Are you serious?”

The old man stomped a foot. “I hate cynical youths, you know that?”

“Do you expect me that my father believed in fairytales and fantasies?”

Yeah, right.

The vendor nodded. “Yes, he did — though not at first.”

“What changed his mind?” the boy asked curiously.

“You did,” Vendor Pice stated. “He believed in Magic because of you.”

Corbyn tilted his head, ‘how’ — and that mysterious smile blossomed again on that equally mysterious man.

“Do you want me to show you?”

***

Clunk. The carriage wheels rolled over some shifted ground and the shock arrested Corbyn from thought. That’s when he saw the trees and ominous terrain of their route. Dark fringes of shade devoured the path forward, it was so hard to see — yet the horses wound through the cluttered path without a problem. It’s like they can see in the dark.

Wait.

“Where’re you taking me?” he questioned the man. He must have been lost in thought for a while. “This doesn’t look like the route to Brigham.” There were too many trees, too many bumps, and too little voices for a used road. Corbyn grew nervous in his cold seat.

Vendor Pice hummed in thought as he appeared to look around too.

Well, that’s not encouraging.

“I don’t know, boy. I don’t take this anywhere?”

Corbyn frowned. “What do you mean, ‘I don’t take this anywhere’? Is that a question? You’re supposed to be taking me home.” His foot began to tap along the oakwood top.

The old man shrugged. “I don’t know where we're going. I’m not the driver.”

Corbyn squinted. “You’re...not the driver?”

As if the vendor had finally got his point across, he smiled jubilantly and clapped his hands. “Exactly. Fate is the driver of this vehicle.”

“Uh-huh,” Corbyn murmured. He examined the thick woods suspiciously. “And where is fate taking us?” The railing was clenched tighter as his fingers grew tense.

The vendor hummed again. “Someplace secluded, I’m sure.”

Corbyn’s grip grew tighter, his tapping faster. He looked to the man like a mouse might a bird of prey. “Why..?” he asked with a shaken voice. “Why are we doing that?”

A predatory chuckle escaped the man’s mouth and he turned to Corbyn frighteningly. “You wanted to see for yourself right?” The carriage came into a small clearing where Corbyn could finally see how late it was. Fresh moonlight whisked through the skies and into the clearing. Owl hoots and small scitterings echoed from the trees and bushes, but the sound of others was gone — the sound of help gone. We must have rode for hours, Corbyn stewed with regret. Damn.

Both horses stopped at the edge of the small plot, and finally, the music of wheels on earth died out. Corbyn was left alone with the sounds of small animals being preyed upon. He shifted his eyes over to Vendor Pice warily. “I did...but—” The vendor pounced from his seat and lunged for Corbyn then swiftly.

“Give me your money!”

The boy screeched and reached to protect his face, frightened. He screamed for help for a long time. Longer than he should’ve been able to. He’d prepared for the assault, but the contact never came.

He lowered his hands to find the old man rolling around in his seat with a hand over his mouth. Tears streaked from his blue eyes as his hand tried with difficulty to smother his laughs.

Corbyn punched the oak rail beside him. “That’s not funny!”

The older man gave up trying to hide it. He let his giggles roll from his mouth loudly, hysterically — and annoyingly to Corbyn. He might not have really been attacked, but the scare was enough for him to jump from the carriage and put some distance between the two.

Vendor Pice sat up and rolled his eyes. “Relax,” he flicked a tear away and chuckled. “I’m not going to kill you.”

Arms crossed in front of him, Corbyn huffed. “Could’ve fooled me. You brought me all the way out to the middle of nowhere and expect me to believe you won’t kill me?” He sniffed angrily. “Take me back.”

The vendor craned his neck around the empty clearing, the echo of birds, and the darkness between the trees, and raised a brow at the boy. “You’re in the middle of nowhere, you tell me what to do, and you expect me to believe I won’t kill you? Shut up.”

Corbyn quieted down but grumbled something about doing it because he wanted to, not because he was told to. Either way, his mumbles were ignored.

“Good,” the old man grinned. “I’m sorry about scaring you, really. But I had to for your first lesson, you see?” He held the book up and Corbyn saw it then — a mark on the binding where he’d held it before. He stepped forward slowly to examine it. He could just be trying to get me closer.

Corbyn closed the distance by only a body’s length and squinted his eyes. He wanted to see it from where he was — and he could. It was a blurry figure in the dark, but Corbyn saw the difference clearly. There was a scorch mark that hadn’t been there before, like the binding had been set against the length of a hot coal poker. He took a step forward and the image became even clearer. Then he saw that the blur was actually several burn marks the size of four thin fingers.

Corbyn’s bottom lip dropped and he lurched forward again, his caution caught between curiosity and disbelief. The old man laughed and threw the book at him. He barely caught it before it his face and leered at the merchant for the close call.

The man ignored him. “You were asking if I thought it was real, right?” He nodded his head to the book in Corbyn’s hand. “What do you think my answer is, now that you can see it first hand?”

The boy examined the markings in wonder. “I did this..?” his voice cracked in awe.

“Oh, yes,” the old man smiled. Fire seemed to dance in his eyes — and they reminded Corbyn of Olivur’s. Not the colour, though they swam in the same blue. It was that disturbing pride that was the same — that lust for power and change.

Corbyn peeked at the man, doubtful. “And how’d I do this?”

The old man didn’t answer for a while.

He turned his vision over to some part in the woods. Corbyn followed his line of sight just in time to see an owl snatch a mouse from his hidy-hole. Pice looked back to him and the boy could see something grand play behind those blue-eyed curtains like some grand play. Corbyn saw a great, ambitious smile grow from the corners of the man’s lips as he gave an answer to his question.

“Magic,” he whispered, and a powerful gale swept the word around the clearing with trembling force. “That, boy—” the old man pointed to the burnt book in his hands. “That is Magic.” He grinned madly. “But do you want to see something even better? Do you want to try real magic?”

Corbyn eagerly nodded along like a baby duck eating corn.

“Then relax,” the vendor smiled. “Close your eyes. Breath.” When Corbyn had done as was told, the man continued on. “Do you remember how it felt whenever you were scared or frustrated or just angry? That tingle of heat against your skin that never quite felt normal?”

Corbyn didn’t answer for a time because he truly did. The description opened a floodgate of moments exactly so. He remembered that awful fire in the shop. He’d always felt like the incident was his fault. He’d just never known how.

He remembered his fight in the water with Hugh — how the water boiled and popped, and the burn across his cousin’s chest. He remembered reading the book in the library — how it grew hot to touch as he grew frustrated with the mystery.

“Yes,” he hummed, his eyes closed. “It felt like my hands were burning.”

“Remember those moments and concentrate. Focus on your palms. Do you feel it tingle?” Corbyn nodded. “Good. Now slowly move that feeling up slowly, one digit at a time until you feel a tingle across your whole hand.”

Corbyn did, but he began to feel funny. “It hurts,” he hissed. “It burns!”

“Keep going! Let it consume your hands. That isn’t pain you’re feeling. It’s power!”

Corbyn let the process continue even despite the pain. He let it go even as his arms began to shake, and tears rolled from his eyes. “It hurts,” he cried.

“You’re almost done,” the vendor encouraged. “Now’s the most important part,” he said silently, soothingly. “I’m going to have you open your eyes in just a moment, but I need you to stay calm. Don’t panic at what you see. It’s not going to hurt you, do you understand? It’s just going to look scary.” Corbyn nodded once again. I’ve come too far to take my trust back now.

“Now, take a deep breath — feel it go as far into your lungs as you can...good. Open your eyes.”

Okay, Corbyn urged himself nervously. Open your eyes… He couldn’t. Okay, maybe just one more deep breath? Yeah, just to be sure.

It took several more breaths and another minute of coaxing from the vendor for him to finally open his eyes. When he did, he did so quickly and closed them just as fast. He laughed, though it rang a note panicky. “I must be seeing things,” he said mostly to himself. “It looked like my hands were actually on fire.”

He opened them again to a deluge of red light and a noise he’d hoped was his imagination. “Ha-ha,” his scared laugh returned. “So I wasn’t seeing things.”

“You’re handling this surprisingly well, you know that? My first time was a disaster, boy — truly a horror show. This is a much more welcome response to burning flesh,” Vendor Pice proudly cheered.

But Corbyn barely registered what the man had said. He was entranced by the hot-red flames along his hands and up to his forearms. They were bright tongues of fire dancing under moonlight. If he weren’t so intimidated by the sight, he may have even admired how beautiful they tangoed with his fingers — how they followed his hands with each step and twist. Instead, he wanted them gone.

“So, how do I get it to stop?” he wondered to the merchant, who threw his arms forward as if the answer were obvious.

“Just will it to stop and it’ll stop. It’s your power; you control it.”

Corbyn focused on dissipating the sensation and watched as the flames receded into his skin.

“...Where does it go?”

“Who knows? Maybe it creeps back into your soul.”

They stopped talking for a while after that. Corbyn took the time to stew in the experience. Vendor Pice pulled a snake from the grass and tossed it around.

“Magic is real.” Corbyn finally said. There was such liberation in saying it out loud. It finally felt real.

“Yup!”

“I can use Magic.”

“Well, not as well as I could’ve at your age, but yup!”

Finally, Corbyn turned to the incessantly childish man. “So you can use it too?”

The phrase seemed to strike the old, ever-happy-go-lucky man in a way Corbyn hadn’t expected. For just a moment, the man was crestfallen. Pained.

His eyes sunk back into his face, his ever-upward chin dived down, and his fingers finally let the beaten snake go. The change lasted only the time it took for the snake to hit the ground, but Corbyn saw it nonetheless. It was hard to hide things from ever-observing eyes.

“...Not like I used to,” he kicked the snake away and sighed.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to...well.”

The man smoothed his dress down. “No, it’s quite alright,” he chuckled once again. All things once alive must eventually die.”

Again, silence returned to the clearing...but then Corbyn had an idea. “Do you think you think you could teach me? How to use Magic, I mean.”

Vendor Pice didn't answer immediately. He quietly turned around to face the trees behind him. Corbyn could see the man’s shoulders shake. He could hear him whisper and giggle to the moon. But then he thought maybe the dark had blurred his vision, maybe the wind had tickled his ears. For when the man turned back once again, he looked as he always had, albeit reluctant.

“I don’t know, boy. You’re asking for lessons, but I’m a Vendor, you see? It’s quite a dilemma because I do wish so strongly to give you these lessons...but you have nothing to pay me with” He made a sour face. “It would set a bad precedence.”

Corbyn kicked a loose rock. He didn’t argue. I have nothing, he wallowed. “How did da’ pay you?”

“...he did some favors for me,” the old man spoke ominously. “That’s really what I do. I trade favors for favors.”

“What kind of favors?” It was Corbyn’s turn to cover himself.

Vendor Pice rolled his eyes. “Shut it, boy. I’m always here and there and never anywhere when I need to be there. So, sometimes I have my customers go about the island and do things I don’t feel like doing.”

“I can do that!”

“There’s only one condition, boy,” the vendor warned with authority to his tone. “If I ask you to do something, you will do it without question. If you can agree to this, then I will teach you all that I know about Magic.”

There was a foreboding lilt to his smile that Corbyn refused to see. He was desperate after all. Instead, he looked to his feet and kicked another rock.

So I’d be an errand boy?

It was a proposition he’d normally scoff at but...

It’s not just for Da’, but me as well.

As he considered the deal, Corbyn noticed a stir in the grass. There, among the parched grasses and bowed flowers at his feet, he witnessed a hiss and a slither, a sly creature, beaten but unforgiving. It was the snake, he realized.

Corbyn didn’t bring attention to it and it ignored him as well. Theirs was the smallest exchange, a cursory glance before parted ways, but Corbyn would’ve sworn by anything that the snake had some manner of sympathy there in its jaded eyes.

A clap brought his attention back to the vendor, who looked both annoyed and impatient. “How do you answer?”

The man offered his hand forward. Corbyn gripped it in a handshake.

“I say, deal.”