Shelley Thomas: The Seven Tales of Trinket

“’Tis the way of things, lass,” said Old Mrs. Pinkett. “Death is but the other side of life.”

Thomas cried, too, after I assured him it was not unseemly for a boy to do so. He’d spent most of his life, when not with his pigs, skulking around our cottage. Eventually, we’d set a place for him at our table each night. I think my mother thought of him as a son. A messy, wild son.

She was buried in a dress of blue cloth that she herself had woven two winters ago, for her hand at weaving was among the finest in the land. ’Twas a glorious shade, like the sky at dawn. With her hair brushed smooth, she looked almost as I wanted to remember her. Mrs. Pinkett, Thomas, and even Thomas’s mother said words for her. But I said nothing. I could not say what was in my heart. I could not ask her if she was at last joining my father, or if he had abandoned her even in death.

Thomas was the one who found the map. He helped me go through my parents’ things. There was not much in the chest. Mostly tools and odd bits of cloth my mother had woven. There was a lovely mirror, small and silver, that we found by the back door of our cottage one winter’s night. And my mother had saved the small velvet bags filled with coins that showed up mysteriously on the porch from time to time. I’d keep the mirror, for my mother had loved it well. Perhaps it was a gift from an admirer. I had wanted to believe it was from my father, but my mother was certain it was not. Why would he leave a gift and disappear? Nay, he’s probably still composing lullabies for dragons, she’d say. Regardless, I would keep it. The velvet bags, though now empty, were of good quality and could be traded possibly. And there, underneath a fine cloak my mother had woven for special occasions, rolled up in a cracked leather canister, was the map.

“Trinket, mayhap the map shows where your father traveled about,” Thomas said.

“Then why did he not take it with him the last time he went?” I asked, although I knew the map had been my father’s. But it helped me to argue with Thomas. I could only know what I was truly thinking when I had to defend one thought against another.

The map was soft and faded, drawn by my father’s own hand in the black ink he always kept a small jar of on the shelf. But the ink in the jar had long since dried up, and the lines on the map had paled to a dirty brown. I traced an imaginary path from our town, through trees, to a far-off castle. Then I drew another, this time down the coast and to the villages by the sea.

“What are you going to do with it?” Thomas asked.

“What do you think?” My fingers trailed yet another direction, over the mountains to the forest.

He looked at me with eyes that widened as he understood my purpose.

“You are not going to follow it!” He spit when he yelled, which made it a good thing that Thomas the Pig Boy yelled very little.

“I am.”

“You are only eleven.”

“Almost twelve. A year older than you.”

“What will you do out there?” Thomas asked, flicking the map with his hand.

“Why, find my father, of course.”

And I will leave this place, and all the pain, behind.

But I did not say this aloud.

Thomas thought for a moment.

“If you go, can I come?”

I could have tortured him by not answering, or by saying no, but I had secretly hoped that he might want to journey with me. I could not imagine that he’d want to go back to spending all his time with his battle-ax of a mother, getting scolded if he breathed too loudly. As for myself, it would be easier to travel with a companion. And Thomas was a fairly brave boy, not to mention my only true friend.

“Could be dangerous, you know. Life on the road will not be easy.”

Thomas’s large brown eyes were already dancing. “Will there be excitement, do you think, and adventure?”

“Aye, mayhap. But if I let you come, you cannot complain,” I said, though I knew he would from time to time. He was Thomas, after all.

Thomas nodded, his eyes alive with thoughts of great escapades.

My own thoughts were more focused. There was a truth I sought.

And I hoped with all my soul I would find it.

“Yes, Thomas,” I said, “you can come with me.”

We’d been traveling for many days and many nights, asking each person we met along the road about the storyteller known as James the Bard. My father.

But of him there was neither word nor memory.

And following the old map was not as easy as it looked. We could not tell how long it would take to get from one place to the next.

“Perhaps beyond this glade, and whatever that is,” Thomas said, pointing to a cluster of what looked like trees on the map, “and over toward the east, we will find that village.”

It sounded like a good plan, and I had none better, so we continued. But it was not a village we stumbled upon as we followed the road and the faded smudges on my father’s map. ’Twas a Gypsy camp. Nestled between two lush groves of trees were exotic caravans and wagons, speckling all the way up the hillside.

Thomas could barely contain his excitement. Gypsies! How fortunate we were to meet with such adventure so early on our journey.

My hand tapped nervously against my britches. Thomas’s mum had given me the old trousers when I agreed to take Thomas along, so grateful she was at having one less mouth to feed. My only dress was rolled up tight in the bottom of my sack. I thought it best to keep it nice for when we met my father.

If we ever found him.

There was but a breath of wind as we approached the strange-looking camp. We walked a few steps. Then a few more.

Thomas’s stomach growled monstrously loud.

When you are first traveling, you learn that few things are as important as food, especially if you are carting around a pig boy with a bottomless stomach. We had run out of the provisions we’d packed, and if we did not get bread soon, I feared Thomas would roast and eat his own foot.

We brushed against the low branches of trees, scuffling and dragging our feet noisily upon the gravel, clearing our throats in order to make our approach known, hoping to be heard, pitied, and fed.

In the space between two heartbeats, the Gypsies surrounded us. Shiny knives poked at us, daring us to move. My back was against Thomas’s, and I could feel his spine shaking in unison with my own.

“Please, we mean you no harm,” I said, my voice close to a sob. Then I took a breath and willed my tears not to fall. Were my father here, I would not want him to see me cower.

“We’re just hungry,” cried Thomas. And he truly cried tears of hunger. ’Twould take a cold, hard heart to ignore the sniffles of a starving boy. And, as bad luck would have it, that was exactly the kind of heart the enormous Gypsy standing in front of us possessed. He also possessed the largest, hairiest eyebrows I had ever seen in my life. I guessed him to be the Gypsy King, for none of the other folk looked near so imposing.

“Bind them!” he bellowed, and the Gypsies grabbed our wrists.

“Wait.” And there, stepping out from behind the Gypsy King, was a dark-eyed girl, her black hair blowing against her cheek in the twilit breeze. She did not yell or shout at the men with knives. There was no command in her tone, yet our arms were instantly released.

She walked over and stood before Thomas and me, her eyes looking deep into ours. My own sniffling embarrassed me. Dragging Thomas along on this quest had been reckless. Surely he would have been better off at home. As for myself, well, though I did not want to lose my life, I had little left but that.