STORIES FROM RORY No. 5

 

Scarab

They say you should never try to overhear other people’s conversations but this one was irresistible.

I’d known young Timothy had taken the scarab, that strange little beetle made of some unknown (but unbelievably precious) metal, though  you just weren’t sure what.

But it was supposed to bring the owner luck, wasn’t it?

Still, who believes the old wives’ tales?  The others hadn’t noticed it was missing, so where’s the harm?  Gran wouldn’t notice because she’s dead.  Seems I’m the only one who actually recognises the truth.

But what to do?  Wouldn’t it just bring its own bad luck to the boy if I said

anything??

I won’t tell, anyway.  I’ve got too many things already that I’m ashamed of.

No.  I won’t tell.

After the funeral we went back to Gran’s old house where Auntie May had organised a meal outside by the  fountain.   The full moon had cast a bright light  over the proceedings as we settled down to talk about Gran’s childhood and youth  all that time ago and tried so hard to avoid the topic of possible inheritance.  Would the estate be divided among her relatives  or given to one of her innumerable good causes, all involving animals of some kind?  Well, we’d find out tomorrow at the reading of the will.

And so next day we gathered  round, all eager for revelation, sadness seemingly forgotten.

The process was very short.

As the youngest of the grandchildren, Timothy would receive everything.

Not entirely unexpected but still a shock.  But why?

It seems gran had felt, in all her years of growing old, that Timothy was the only one she felt would do something interesting  with her unsought-for millions.

I was still wondering as I reached my front door.  Feeling about in my pocket for my key I felt something unfamiliar.

Of course.  That bringer of good fortune.  The little scarab.

Anne Hill

Harab Scarab

I was excited to be invited to be to join the chess team.

Not that I really knew much about Chess. It would be a break from the norm, I suppose, so I agreed to take up on the invitation.

I didn’t really know what I had let myself in for, as the team were made up of tip-top champions.

It was just luck that a former member had come in, and he asked permission if he could be my guide.

It set off an argument, as he was the crème de la crème of Chess.

However, when the argument passed over, they agreed to allow him to talk me through the game.

I must say that it was unusual for this to happen. Rules is rules, but sometimes it is good to break all the rules.

He whispered to me move the tower block Behind the Queen. I did everything he asked and I actually won the game! It was only by the grace of the guide that I took the challenge, so I felt guilty about it.

Whew! I was glad when the game finished, it was quite daunting to say the least.

All’s well that ends well, and members were happy enough while sitting at the bar drinking.

My guide said to me, “Right, now I am going to give you lessons, and you will be the best chess player ever. “

The lessons were hard but I was a very keen pupil. I learned very quickly and became a member of the local chess club.

I was winning so many sittings and the club began to branch out into other parts of the world.

We had games by moonlight and we were sat underneath a waxing crescent moon.

It was quite humid, so after the game (which I had won) I had a light- bulb moment and suggested that we go for a dip in the nearby fountain to cool off.

I hadn’t realised someone was there, and eavesdropping, listening in. The police were waiting for us as we reached the fountain. I had no idea that dipping in the fountain was outlawed. Oh dear!

We were put into a very dingy cell for the night and fined a great deal of money. I kissed my winnings goodbye.

The scales of justice in this country were unbalanced. I found out, after we had left the country and got back home, that there had been someone else caught by the police – who turned out to be not Police but crooks, and they had collected quite a haul of money from the Chess players that had won.

So, Harab Scarab, the scales have now tipped the right way, and those crooked Police are sitting in jail and have had to forfeit their takings for court costs.

That will teach them to listen at the keyhole, so to speak, and I hope that person is in jail with them!

Josephine Smith

Under the Table

But where was the beetle going to?

She knelt down on the floor to see, threading her way through the rails that held the legs of the dining-chairs stiffly in place. She loved having an adventure in this way, imagining that she was in a cavern, or making her way through the roots of a fairy-tree, or –

She stopped moving, and pulled her legs up tightly behind her. The door of the dining-room had opened. She wasn’t quite sure that she should be in here, and while she believed that what wasn’t forbidden was allowed, she didn’t know if everyone else believed the same thing. Best to be quiet.

Two men. She could see their shoes. One was her father – scruffy suede, worn shiny and thin, her mother had always called them a disgrace. The other – well, his shoes were shiny, too, but deliberately so, mirror-bright, and his trousers had creases you could cut your fingers on. His voice sounded the same, scalpel-like.

“Let me understand precisely what you require of me,” he said. “Your daughter is beginning to display the kind of traits that distinguished your wife – ” He paused, as though waiting for a qualification, like late or ex, but none came, so he simply breathed and continued, “and you are hoping that the sort of education which I can give her will… divert her from that course, and lead her into a more normal path of development?”

Big words, she thought, they always use big words, because they think I don’t understand them – but I do, because I can read… and then she realised that they didn’t know she was there, which meant that they used big words anyway, probably to disguise from themselves the horrible nature of the things they were saying.

She kept still, wondering whether she’d be able to learn anything more about where her mother was, or what had happened to her, because right now she no longer believed any of the stories she’d been told, about having to nurse her grandmother, or visit her aunts, or go on a lecture-tour with book-signings…

“Yeah, that’s it, you got it,” said her father, and she felt betrayed, because he wouldn’t even take into his mouth the simple words that gave away what he intended to have happen to her.

She knew very well what those traits were that distinguished her mother. Her mother had told her how her father – from the best of motives, her mother had said, though whether she really believed that or not was never quite clear – if you love someone enough, you want to believe them, even against all reason – had tried to find a combination of drugs, measured, measured, carefully measured, grain by grain, scruple by scruple (oh, those words she had learned, that seemed to be all to do with weighing things, but meant so much more) to make her happy, to make her normal… They seemed simple, short words, but used like that they still hid so much!

Tucked up in the thicket of the dining-chair legs, she began to understand why they had left the country, why they had come to live in the city, on the fourteenth floor, behind doors that were behind doors that were behind doors – a princess in a tower! Weren’t they always put in towers, princesses? To keep them safe – well, that’s what the men said, anyway. But it wasn’t true, was it? It was just that if they were in a tower they would still look pretty, whereas if you locked them away in a dungeon they would pine and grow pale and get damp and dirty and covered with spider’s webs, and their lovely dresses would rot…

There was some scrabbling on the table above her head. Paper was being unfolded. She knew the sound of paper. She loved the sound of paper when she wrote her stories… Crinkling – the sound of writing – a contract was being signed! Promises, promises, promises in writing! Oh, no – that couldn’t end well! Contracts like that were always made with the Devil in the stories she read!

Still, still, she had to stay still – and she did, while the shoes went away, and the door clattered open and clicked shut, and she was free again.

And now the idea had to come, the light had to go on in her head, the illumination that would change everything.

Her mother had escaped from this prison, from this tower – but had not been able to take her along… She had to escape now, before that man with the mirror-shoes and the scalpel trousers cut the imagination out of her. She would have to dream of her mother, harder and longer than she had ever dreamed, it would be difficult to reach her, but she must try – she must check the phases of the moon, as her mother had always told her to do, because they were important – if she could even see the moon from here – but if not, she knew they printed the phases in diaries, like the big one her father had on his desk – she must know – she must know –

And then, for no reason she knew, all that enthusiasm drained out of her. It was, she thought, like the way they turned off the big fountain in the plaza, before winter came. One moment, the jet sprang up towards the sky, and the next it dribbled wanly, and even the pool into which it had fallen with rainbow splashes, drained down the dark holes, leaving only slimy, cracked tiles.

How could there ever be escape for her?

And that was when she noticed the beetle again. It had turned round, and was crawling back towards her: a playmate, a friend – a sign! For, encountering her outstretched hand, it had paused, unwilling to be forestalled and prevented and captured, and had unfolded what looked like a solid carapace to reveal wings – wings! And now it was fluttering round the room, up, up, out of sight, out of reach!

That, she thought, would be enough to keep her alive – despite education!

Mike Rogers