The Cherry Pits

Trigger warning: physical violence, substance abuse.

I was talking to my sister the other day. We're both a little tired and a little grey. We don't get to chat often, so we go on for hours. Inevitably the conversation bends to why our parents acted that way.

“Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to make the best of being back in Blacktowers. I thought I escaped when I joined the corp. But the more time I spend in my duties and hiking around the village, the more I find myself reluctantly amazed by this place. Why did father always take us far away on our fun-filled tours?”

Mysti's laugh always felt like sunshine on my face. “So fun! We had to behave as if we were in the queen's court whether we were at the beach or a horse race. I don't know, I never considered it before. Would you like me to obliquely ask him the next time I see her grace?”

I lived a furlong from my childhood home, and rarely saw my prickly parents outside of work chores. My sister, the only member of my family who wasn't a bore, regularly traveled across three counties to tutor the royal brats. She somehow managed to fulfill her filial duties during visits, something I failed to do without causing an uproar.

“I mean, remember that cherry orchard in Uxats? There's the four of us piled in the back of a wagon for three hours in the hot sun, silent as a gnat. We properly pick cherries for an hour, then we pile in and bump along three hours back. Did you know there's eight stone fruit orchards a few minutes away, down in the platte? No, don't ask him, he gets insufferable when we bring up the past.”

This time her laugh snapped through the talking stone like a whip crack. “There we were, in full court dress, out with the peasants with our little paper sacks. I sweat all the way through my petticoat in the heat of the summer. But that trick Jown did with the cherry pits got us our payback!”

My mood darkened at the mention of my brother. It's been years since we spoke to each other. He thought I was a coward and a traitor for taking a position as a bursar. I thought I had shed quite enough blood to prove my honor. I changed the subject and bugged her for details on her new lover.

--

Like most nights, I struggled to sleep as the darkness spread sadness into my heart. I whisked down a third whiskey and let my mind fall apart. What was bothering me? I wondered back forty years to that cart.

My father was a low level toady in her majesty's court. He put on airs like a bellows, but we were quite poor due to the same man's mismanagement of everything about his life.

We lived across the street from the squalid part of town until we children rose to fame and bought mother and father a semi decent house with a semi retired servant.

Father was frustrated at his inability to rise higher, and unable to see that it was his own temper and rigidity that kept him exactly where he was.

He was more of a sergeant than a father. He had pushed us all to vicariously succeed in court beyond his abilities, and we all had. And he hated us for it.

Court manners were drilled into us so hard that I even thought in rhymes unless I drank. Father trained us in the ancient arts early morning and late into the night and brutally punished us for every failure.

None of us ever showed a glimmer of magic. Father had a bit; that's the only reason he had a tenuous position in court. His craftsmanship was magnificent, if not truly magical, but everything else about the man was repugnant.

Magic would have meant instant success, instant movement up in court and private tutoring. Possibly a title for the family someday.

I had it, but I hid it so hard it took all my might. I would not make that evil man rich and famous. Father would not win. Father did not own me.

I can hear music in everything, everywhere, all the time. Everyone thought it was father's discipline that made me the second mightiest warrior in the Tremoni War. It was the music. The music in the steel. The music in my rage. The music in the blood.

But I never went to court until Syren, the eldest, wrote an aria. I never met royalty until I broke my hip killing thirty men and lost all my friends and Arewyn, my only love, in the bloodiest battle of the war.

Now I was a hero who took inventory, drank, and pleasured myself, and my father was incensed that I hadn't taken him to court to meet the queen.

These days I listened to the music of the bees, and the apricots, and the sunset, and I tried not to think about blood, and I went to court as little as possible.

And still noone knows I am a wizard, and still father did not win.

--

Focus. Too much whiskey. The cart.

I don't know why we always went far outside of town to have “fun”. Perhaps it was improper for the locals to see the pure children of the mighty court artisan's assistant taking amusement and not being productive.

Regardless, there we were, piled behind the seat in the open wagon with a rough wood floor and no cover. Huddled up trying to get what shade there was in the blistering afternoon sun in full court dress. Whispering and gesturing, lest we get the whip for being unruly.

Jown whispered “Watch this” and belly crawled to the back of the wagon with a sack of cherries in the crook of his arm. He plucked a cherry out of the bag, chewed it with sheer delight for a few minutes, then looked back at me and winked before he spit the cherry pit straight out the back of the wagon.

I watched in disbelief as the pit whipped against the wind, back up the cart and smacked father straight in the cheek. He slapped his face and muttered. “Damned mosquitoes!”

Syren slapped her hand against my face to stifle my giggle. Jown stabbed a warning glare at me before he winked again and put another cherry in his mouth.

He went through half the bag before father lost his mind, drove the cart into a ditch and broke a wheel. We spent two hours playing by the river while father ruined a set of court clothes changing the wheel.

Then I thought of Private Jown being the sole survivor of an ambush. Sergeant Jown throwing a loaded cart at a dozen men. Lieutenant Jown shooting General Branoc in the eye from two thousand yards. A mountain top conveniently toppling between us and wiping out three platoons at the Battle of Wynan.

Yes, Jown was now a general with anger issues and I was now a flunkie who listened to the music of the sunsets and cried over the orphans I've created. But still no one knew. Father still had not won.

I vowed to call my brother on the talking stone soon, and drifted off to sleep.