Chatterbox: Inkwell

Koffee's NaNoWriMo?? I'll post the first few bits if you guys wanna read and critique...I'll warn you that the beginning is the worst, so that's probably what I need critique on the most *shrugs* Anyways....

Prologue

                October dawned early the year I came to the circus. I remember it clearly, because, without shoes, frosted morning grass is glaringly obvious. I was starving and was willing to sell my soul for a warm place to sleep that night, when I stumbled upon a traveling circus. Night was just seeping into the edges of the sunset, so I stole into one of the ‘stables’ and curled up into the hay. It was so gloriously warm that I fell asleep immediately.

                I woke to sunlight stinging through my eyelids. Blinking them open, I noticed a tall figure above me. I leapt up and tried to make a bolt for the door, but the figure (a woman as long and thin as a pole) grabbed me by my skeletal arm and held on with surprising strength.

                “What’s your name, child?” Her eyes held an unkind air to them, and she regarded me down a roman nose.

                “Syllie, ma’am,” I replied automatically.

                “Excuse me?” her eyebrows took refuge in her hairline, “Silly? As in ridiculous, impractical, and childish?”

                “Pardon me,” I looked at the floor, wishing that she would let go of my arm, “I meant Sylvia.”

                “Ah, Sylvia. Nice name…even if it’s for a…” She thought better of whatever she was going to say, and instead turned to look behind her and call someone else’s name.

                “Korie, darling. Come here, won’t you?” No one answered for a moment, and for a second I believed she had talked to the horse behind her, a handsome painted gelding. Before I could voice my opinion about the likelihood of the horse responding, a girl came around the corner.

                “Yeah, mom?” I had trouble believing this girl was in any way related to the hawk-woman still clutching my arm in a vice-like grip. The girl was fourteen, fifteen maybe, and a long shock of black hair twisted back into a messy bun. Her porcelain skin was unmarred, save the pale freckles that scattered her nose and cheeks. She had piercing eyes that were framed by a generous layer of lashes. She was pretty, and so very unlike her mother I felt like laughing.

                “Have you and Fiona been feeding the orphan children again? I just found another one sleeping in the stable.” She glared accusingly at Korie, who stared back indifferently.

                “Yeah, but not this one. I’ve never seen her before,” Korie looked down at me, and then crouched beside me.

                 “What’s your name?” Though it is practically the same thing her mother asked me, there is a difference in the way she uses her words that makes me relax.

                “Syllie.”

                She smiled. “That’s a nice name; I’ve never heard one like that before. How old are you?”

                I tried to smile back. My mouth doesn’t seem to remember how to, so I say, “I’ll be seven, soon. Mama says that’s lucky.”

                A frown creased her perfect forehead, “Where’s your Mama now, Syllie?”

                “Back home with Dad. But I left, cuz I don’t want to live there no more.”

                “Why don’t you want to live with your parents anymore, Syllie?” The kindness in her voice is what makes me tell the truth.

                “I left cuz Daddy beats me and Mama, and Mama doesn’t care. And they don’t feed me, not that often. They can hardly feed themselves,” I looked at the floor, “Please don’t send me home.”

                “I won’t send you home,” Korie assured me, “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.” She glared at her mother as she takes my hand and jerks me out of the hawk woman’s grasp.

                “You wait till your father hears about this, young lady!” The hawk woman spits her gravelly voice through thin lips.

                “He won’t care, Mom. We can always use an extra hand. All she needs is some food and somewhere to sleep. She can help Simon or something. Lord only knows that he needs someone to keep an eye on him.” The woman just tutted behind us as I followed Korie through a maze of buildings, storage containers, and dung piles. 

                “Syllie,” she said as we walked, “How would you like to be part of a circus?”

  Jake

                No, I’m not going to tell you how I came to the circus. It’s not important. I’ve been here for the last five years, and I’m sixteen now, almost seventeen, so that should fill you in on the parts of my life before this that actually matter.

                I should be a performer. I was made for the stage. I mean, what’s not to love? Charming smile, rockin’ bod, I was practically born to be onstage. But no, I was condemned to work in the stables. Of course, I’m also an ‘apprentice’ for several people. I technically could be a clown, have a minor part in a trapeze act (I said no because never in my whole life will I ever wear spandex), and be a sword/fire eater’s assistant, but Filch has always refused to let me be part of the actual show. My place, he claims, is behind the stage.

                The only bright spot to working in the stables is Syllie. She likes to come to the stables to see the horses. Over the years we’ve become friends. Well, I’d like to be more than that, but she insists that we are just friends if someone asks about “us”, so I have resigned to leave it at that.

                Fiona’s alright, too. She’s Korie’s friend, a trapeze artist with a soft spot for animals. We complain about the tortures of Filch and his henchmen when she comes by to see the horses. She wants to get out of here, though, and she could, I suppose. She’s old enough. Twenty-four in January. Old enough to leave this hell-hole behind. It’s not as if we receive much of an education here, though. If the decent people around here made a run for it, Simon and I would be flipping burgers and manning gas stations, and Syllie and Fiona and Korie would be wearing fishnets and manning street corners.

                Simon tromps through the door unceremoniously and interrupts my thoughts.

                “Korie said to tell you that her Dad wants you to brush the horses down. The twins are bringing them back in from the warm-ups.” He runs his hand through his black mop of hair, making the cowlick in the front stand up at an even more awkward angle.

                I curse under my breath, and then say louder, “Why does Filch need me to brush them down? There are plenty of other stable hands around. You, for one. Which horses? Not all of them, I hope.”

                “Hey, hey, hey. I am not only a stable hand,” he juts his skinny chest out; “I am a clown. And the horses were Hank and Nirvana.”

                I don’t say anything for a moment; just let my eyebrows crawl upwards. After a moment I let a smile crack my face, “Because that’s what every 16-year-old guy wants to be, Simon. A clown.”

                “Hey, I am officially eighteen, now. Don’t even try and downplay it. Just cuz you’re a baby doesn’t mean the rest of us are. Now get to work.”

                “Fine,” I shrug my jacket on, “Why were the twins working them anyway? Korie should have been, or Syllie at least.”

                Simon shrugs, “How should I know? I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot me. No one wants that, because the world would be short one amazingly famous person to sign autographs to his adoring fans.”

                I roll my eyes, “Are you gonna help me with the horses or not?”

                He strokes his chin in mock contemplation, “Let me think…” he says slowly, “No.”

                “Fine,” I put my coat the rest of the way on, “I’ll see you later, Simon.” He doesn’t respond because he’s caught sight of himself in the mirror and is trying unsuccessfully to smooth down his ever present cowlick.

                Hunching my shoulders against February, I zip up my jacket and head down to the stables. I can see the twins’ identical blond heads bobbing along between Hank and Nirvana. I roll my eyes to warm them up for the amount of rolling I’ll be doing once I have to actually talk to Briley and Brielle.  Yes, that’s their names. Honestly.

                “Hey, guys,” I try to smile as I approach the twins.

                “We’re girls actually, the last time I checked.” Briley squints her eyes at me as she wrinkles her nose.

                “I know. I was talking to the horses.” Damn. I didn’t mean to be rude to them so quickly. Filch likes us all to get along, not that I give half a rat’s buttock about what he thinks, but it’s never a good thing when anyone fights. We do, after all, practically live together.

                “I can take them now. You don’t need to walk them all the way back in.” I try again. I meet identical pairs of perfect blue eyes. How they manage to put eyeliner on exactly the same every morning is beyond me. And it is rather unnerving with both of them glaring at you, heads tilted opposite ways, identical noses scrunched up, identical expressions of distaste on the disconcertingly beautiful faces.

                “There’s only one of you. There are two horses. We can take them,” Brielle twirls her hair around her fingers when she talks.

                “I can walk two horses at the same time. They’re not going anywhere.” I nod toward Hank’s head, hung low over Briley’s shoulder.

                “We wouldn’t want you to go to all that trouble, Jake,” Brielle tries to smile sweetly at me.

                “I can help him,” a voice behind me makes me turn. “You guys go on ahead to dinner. We’ll take care of the horses.” Syllie grins at me when I catch her eye, then gently wrests Hank’s lead out of Briley’s hand. “We’ll be fine, I promise.” She flashes a dazzling smile at them, and Brielle hands me Nirvana’s lead rope. For some reason, Syllie seems to get on fairly well with the twins.

                “Thanks,” I say as Briley and Brielle leave, “I was afraid I would have to beat them up, and no one wants that. Well,” I correct myself, “no one will say it out loud.” Syllie just smiles. This is not entirely uncommon, seeing as how she’s much more quiet than, say, Korie. But there is some sort of sadness that lingers behind her gray-green eyes.

                “You okay?” I look down at her dark ponytail and resist the urge to put my arm around her.

                “Yeah, I’m fine,” she rubs Hank’s velvet nose with her free hand. “I was just thinking. I’ve been here for, what – almost ten years now? I’ll be seventeen just after you. And it’s not as if we’ve gotten much of an education. Korie tries a bit, and Filch made the Hawk Woman do a little bit, but it’s not as if she tried. She just has to listen to her husband. It’s just- never mind.” I don’t force her to talk more. That’s one thing about Syllie – if you push her to talk more, she only clams up. She’d tell me when she was ready to.

                So we walk in silence back to the stables, neatly tying Hank and Nirvana in their crossties and began combing them out in unison. I toss her a curry comb when I’m finished with it, and she catches it deftly and begins to comb Hank’s painted side.

*grimaces* This really is not my best work. But it's the bits that I'll be editing the most I suppose. That and the next few chapters. After that it sorta-kinda starts to make sense...