The Book of Trials || ONC 2019

5k Extra: Hashmarks

The first time Evyne uttered a curse word, they'd been on the run from an angry shopkeeper. She'd been four, her brother seven, and that had marked the fifth town they'd been forced out of. She'd been counting.

They didn't have anyone to provide for them, so they lived on stolen goods alone. Atlas had always been good with his hands, but every once in a while, he would accidentally steal something valuable, and inevitably get caught. That was when they had to run away again, move on to the next town.

One night, the two children sat around the little camp they'd made outside of town, Atlas with a scowl on his face. Evyne matched his expression simply because he was the one wearing it.

"Don't say bad words, Evi," the boy said after they'd finished glaring at one another.

But except for that swear she'd shouted earlier that day, she still didn't know much about how to speak, so she said nothing to Atlas' words.

This was how it was for a long time between the two.

+++

Evyne was ten now, and Atlas thirteen. They now lived in a small shelter they'd made outside a trade town named Gebreda. It was their twenty-eighth home. She was still counting.

After their last flight, which had been particularly rough, Evyne had for once voiced her opinion on their livelihood. She didn't want to keep running, which meant she didn't want to keep stealing. So they would try to make some money on their own.

Atlas had never learned much in the way of trade, but Evyne had always been adept at learning from her surroundings, as they were often her only source of information. She quickly picked up how to knit, and to make bags and purses, and to carve, but her favorite was when she walked into a music shop and tried out several instruments before making a bet with the shopkeeper. If she could learn to play the song of his choice on an instrument he called a lute before the shop closed for the day, she could keep the lute free of charge. Naturally, he'd given her the hardest song he'd known, having listened to her practice all day, but Evyne hadn't expected to be given a lullaby.

And that night, she returned to their little camp with the round, wooden instrument slung over her back, and played until the sun broke the black of the sky.

The next day, they returned to Gebreda and sat together on the side of the street. Evyne played folk music on her new instrument and Atlas sang along, although the two would later argue they'd made more money when Atlas had been silent.

The sun crossed the sky, day to night to day again, and there was never a moment one of the two of them wasn't sitting in that exact spot. The people were amused—even endeared—by the children's performances, and within a week they'd made enough extra money to purchase a tambourine to join their small band. When the people grew tired of their music, they sold small wooden carvings and patchwork satchels, and for a time, they earned enough money to keep them from hunger and thievery.

But just as all other things they'd known to be true, not everything lasted forever. Even when the two played a new set of songs each day, and made different carvings and purse designs to match, the townspeople soon became accustomed to their talents, and the coins spared for their earnings returned to less than the value of food and clothes.

It was not long thereafter, although they hadn't stolen or been accused, that Evyne and Atlas once again packed what they'd gathered and left the streets of their home. They traveled for days, as they always did between towns, before they came upon yet another place to stay.

And there, Evyne took a piece of paper from a bag she'd made and scratched another mark on the page.

This was their twenty-ninth home.