Chapter 8- Time To Go

He woke up when windowpanes bounced sunlight into his face. The book’s pages folded in awkward creases after being underneath his folded arms. This wasn’t where he usually slept, so it took him a second to gather his bearings and stretch himself awake.

Ichabod was still asleep, surprisingly. It must have been that early.

Might as well surprise him.

He slipped out of the house while the sun was floating close to the skyline with every intention to bring home something special for him. Ichabod said that he hasn’t had a good biscuit in months, and David knew the best place to look. By the time he went out onto the streets, he came to know the world within the market place, the different roads that crisscrossed the huge area like they were randomly carved into it by a child.

It hadn’t snowed in quite some time, so he was able to walk around without worrying about freezing his toes off. The sun warmed up the winding streets with every passing minute, and David was on the move. He knew where the best biscuits were.

The café looked warm and inviting, with the al fresco tables and chairs replaced by colorful windows. And the smell of baked goods was still there. It was too inviting for him to resist. The main question lingered in the back of his head and pushed itself to the front-

How will we get out afterwards?

…We’ll improvise.

He walked in with another customer, after noticing the “welcoming bell” hanging from the top of the door. He had to act quickly or he would be seen.

The whole room was a dining area, with a corner curved off for the cash register and bakery opening. Next to the counter showed any of the possible pastries available for purchase, all kinds of pasties, crumpets, biscuits and tarts lined up and protected by a curved glass that made everything there seem bigger. Continuing past the glass display was a door that read “employees only”.

He would have a better chance with sneaking into the bakery, or so he thought. He snuck in when no one was looking and followed the narrow archway into the heart of the store. Huge ovens, blazing hot, baked the raw dough into floury perfection within minutes. He stood there in a mesmerized trance- he’d never seen anything like it.

Then he saw the tray. Set down on a table too close for him to fight hunger. While the bakers occupied themselves, he slowly grabbed a biscuit, then another, then another, until-

“OY! You! Get your paws of those, you greasy prawn!”

They noticed.

Time to go.

And right before he could take a bite of one of them. Just one bite. But he got so disoriented he ran in the wrong direction. He heard the clomping of boots get closer down the hallway. He was too scared to eat now, so he stuffed the treats into his jacket pocket and searched for another door. He didn’t realize that the hallway was turning to the left, so when he opened it, he was greeted by scared eyes and screams of “thief”.

He would have gone into full out panic mode if he didn’t get that calming feeling again, the warm rush that reached even the tips of his hair. Luckily the counter next to the register was foldable, not solid, so he slipped through and weaved through the long skirts and baggy pants. He almost made it to the corner…

But a policeman had come in for his morning coffee. He never caught an orphan that fast.

“Alright, boy! Who are you?” He held David by the collar in a firm grip.

“Let me go! I have a home!”

“Yeah, right! Maybe in a gutter somewhere! Your name or you’re dead.”

“D-David… Holton sir.”

“Really? What are your parent’s names?”

“Um, well… Ichabod. No mother.”

“I see. One of his ‘guests’, eh?”

David’s logic got lost at that point as he stared with wide, hazel-ing eyes. The Policeman grew a small grin.

 “Have we got here an orphy?”

He shook his head, as if that was going to help.

“Ha-ha! I don’t believe it! I got an orphy ‘ere! What luck! Paul, save the usual for me, I’ll be back soon.”

An old man affirmed him back as he started dragging the boy to the station.

“Say, what were you trying to steal, anyway?”

David was surprisingly calm throughout the whole ordeal.

“Breakfast.”

“You know, it would be nice if you gave me some of what you got. Maybe you won’t be as badly treated as the others.” Clearly the man needed his coffee, otherwise he wasn’t thinking straight.

He didn’t want to do it at first, but-

It was for Ichabod… Oh, when will I see him again?

He gave him two of the biscuits.

“That’s all of them.”

“Good little orphy. You know your place.”

David made sure to time his bites with the officer so he wouldn’t notice.

Even the station didn’t look so bad. The sun reflected off of its low roof, and it looked small even from so close. But it got much bigger when he was shoved in.

Yelling. Crying. Typing. White walls and black bars. David hated the place the moment he was shoved in. His captor left him there in the hands of another policeman, whose hand gripped his arm so hard his fingers felt tingly. There was an area where children and grown-ups waited to be processed where he was forced to sit. Thankfully at some point, the man’s grip was replaced by rusty handcuffs on his wrists.

Soon enough he was forced in front of the dullest man he’d ever seen, whose sole job was to write down everything about each convict.

“Name?” He sounded dull and monotonous.

“David, sir.” He sounded chipper than the rest of the culprits, like he wasn’t serious at all.

“Date of birth?”

David shrugged his shoulders. “Sometime a while ago.”

The man gave him an exasperated look and wrote down “twelve”. They always looked that age.

“Where are you from?”

He had to think about that. “First the orphanage-”

The man perked up. His job might be easier. All he’d need was the name of the-

“Then the streets.”

“Oh.” The man turned his head down again. He’d have to fill out another few entry forms for him if he had been on the streets.

“Hair, eye color?” He said aloud to himself. He was prone to doing that.

“Oh, um, brown hair and brown eyes.” At least that was what David thought.

“Uh, boy that’s not brown. Your eyes have a different shade. And your hair isn’t brown either.”

“What are you talking about-?”

The policeman showed him a dirty mirror, and it didn’t show the way he thought he looked. There were strands of golden yellow trickling over the strands of brown, like his hair had been dipped in gold dust. His eyes developed complete strands of blue and gold in them, turning them completely hazel. It was spreading to those places, yet he felt fine. In fact, too fine. He didn’t like the station but it didn’t scare him one bit.

“Put him in cell 3.”

He was freed of the restraints and shoved into a medium-sized prison cell, filled already with 10 other boys that looked strangely at him. He was the only one that sat on the cold bench and stared down at all of the others.

“Well, what is it? What are you looking at?”

Must be about my eyes. He shrugged away the stares. He was already used to it.

Most of them looked tiny and vulnerable, holding themselves in tight bundles and protecting themselves with eyes as big as shields.

They just sat in different side of the room. It felt like forever before one of the bigger boys asked: “Aren’t you scared?”

He turned to him, brushing his dirty blonde bangs away. “Scared of what?”

“Scared of getting sent to a… an orphanage?”

While the other boys shuttered, a chill ran down his spine. He didn’t realize the consequences of the situation. Was he getting sent back?!

Yet, he was unnaturally calm about the whole situation. A cool chill blew in through the window, high above climbing distance. He didn’t mind. It felt like a calming breeze.

“No. Not really.”

“You’re not?”  Another boy moved towards him in interest.

Another boy peeped in. “Have you been there before?”

“Well… yes.”

The other boys came closer, but not all at once. The braver, bigger ones –some even bigger than David- sat near the bench, the others curled up at his feet. He could tell that they wouldn’t hurt him. If they tried, he wouldn’t hesitate to defend. They were scared.

“What’s it like?”

“Um, well…”

Should I say the truth and scare the wits out of the kids? Or lie? Hmm…

“It feels…safe.”

“Safe? How?” Another boy perked up, his hat covering most of his head.

“Well, you’re covered by a roof each night. They give you meals. You can play all you want. All you’d have to do is recite a few silly rules to get on their good side.”

The boys didn’t stir one bit. They weren’t buying his lie.

“Well, then why did you leave?”

David took his eyes away from the group as he gathered up one more lie.

“Because…” He drew a grin at the corner of his mouth. He hadn’t told a story in what felt like forever, let alone one that could be real.

“I was adopted.”

They didn’t expect that.

“You were?”

“Who adopted you?”

“What was it like, living with a family?”

The questions rose up like waves. All he could do was quiet them down.

“Quiet, you slouches. I’ll answer all of them in time.”

For the next few hours, from midday on, he told the biggest story he ever improvised. Turns out he had been “adopted” by a rich couple and they were all driven home in one of those fancy new cars, with plush seats and the smell of sharp cologne and sweet perfume wafting through the cabin. They arrived at the wealthiest part of London, with high buildings, bright lights and fancy green bushes instead of grass. He enjoyed the most scrumptious meals, with pasties that melted on his tongue, bathed in the warmest water and slept in goose down pillows and heavy sheets. Even he began to sigh at the fantasy- who wouldn’t?

Then, on the second day, he overheard his “Parents” talk about his future; where he will go to school; when he will grow up to get a degree; what job he’ll have, what kind of girl he’ll marry, where he would end up living and working. Like all of the other boys hearing the story, he never wanted to grow up. He didn’t want anything to do with that stuff, even with the sweets and comfy sheets.

“So what did you do?”

“When they came in to tell me, I didn’t want to do any of that. They didn’t give me much of a choice. So I ran away, down the stairs, past the guard at the door and out here.”

“Aren’t your parents looking for you?”

“Not really. They could get another boy very easily. Meanwhile, a Nun actually helped me find a place to stay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but then that place just happened to be that same orphanage.”

“Oh, how terrible!”

“Yeah. That’s horrible.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” He pushed away the sympathy with a scoff. “I broke out of there too.”

“You DID?!” “You can DO that?!”

“Shhh! You want the other guards to hear?”

They immediately shut up. The guards had been passing by each of the six cells. Theirs was the quietest, the others full of yelling, a lot of screaming, cursing and crying.

“Sorry. What happened?”

“Well, me and some of my mates found a secret passageway, in the catacombs. We snuck through a whole dark room filled with nothing else but dead people.”

A hushed silence fell amongst the boys. They feared death too. Soon the neighboring cells got quiet as they clamored to hear David’s story.

“W-what happened next?”

“Oh, wait until you hear this. The priests heard us coming up from the other side, and some tried to catch us while we were still in the catacombs. But we were too fast.”

  David could see that one of the younger policemen leaned against the bars to hear the rest of the story, his keys dangling loosely from his pocket.

Then David got a crazy idea.

“Well, what happened next?”

“Well, I was the fastest of all of them, so I got away. The other ones, they weren’t so lucky.”

“They got caught?!”

“No, but they would have been if it wasn’t for me.”

Some of the kids were getting bored. Time to spice it up again.

“What did you do?”

“I… turned back to those grubby men with their claw-like hands,” He got up to demonstrate, “lowered my head like a bull, and rammed head on into one of the Priests, sending him head over heels to the ground.”

Those bored kids perked up again and turned as David moved the action to the other side of the cell, closer towards the bars, closer to that younger policeman.

“Then I knocked the other one down with my fists.” He moved like he was dueling with fists, jabbing and thrusting his arms with each step around the cell. Even the guard was mesmerized.

He turned back to them with another grin. “Then the orphanage’s guards came to take us away.”

“Oh, guards eh?” What’d ya do?” Now the policeman was interested. David saw the keys sticking out of his left pocket. He knew just what to do.

“Well, one of them tried to pin me down, like this.” He flattened himself down right by the guard’s feet.

“He had my arms held, his face leering over me. I was trapped, or so I thought.”

“Did any of the other boys help you?”

“Well, one tried, but the other forced him to leave me. That traitor thought I was a lost cause.”

The Guard leaned in closer to see how he would escape. The keys twinkled in the setting sky.

   “So I aimed one steady kick, and gave him a ‘nutcracker’.” He smiled as he said that. Oliver taught him that during one of the fights.

   They all started to laugh as David positioned himself against the bars and leaned in with his left arm. The man was still laughing and David had big enough pockets in his pants.

Weird how there’s only a few keys for all the locks, on such a big chain.

“There I am, facing this behemoth of a man, and he’s still whimpering for his Mum. Like a big baby.” They all laugh again.

“He throws two at my head. I twist down, swing to his right and run around him and straight out into the outside.”

The boys looked extremely awed until the guard piped up: “How did you get caught again?”

He expected to hear some petty theft, like what David really got caught for.

David immediately turned around and with a smug smile replied: “I stole the Judge’s wallet. Then another policeman’s hat. Didn’t see the other one on the horse, though. As he grabbed me by the collar from so far up, he swept me clear off my feet.”

The guard looked mighty impressed as David sat back down on the bench with a grin still on his face. Meanwhile, the policeman left the bars to ask his colleagues where his key-chain went.

   The children wanted to hear more about David’s crazy life, but he didn’t have much more to say. So he asked about theirs. Some of them came from the slums of London, others from the outskirts. They all became groups like David had before, but they didn’t meddle with the politics; they went wherever they wanted, stole anything, and ate anything edible. But they wanted to be free again, to be “lost”, out in that world, even if it meant just surviving.

“What’s the reason why you want that?”

The oldest boy there, only a few years older than him, named Tony said it first.

“Because you only have yourself and your mates. You might be lost, but you’re never alone.”

David knew that just as well as them. It was what he wanted to hear.

By the time they became friendlier, joking about the fat policemen and the stupid “codfishes”, there was a rap on the bars. Night had settled in by that point.

“Nun’s here. Boys, come say a prayer with the Sister.”

You could feel the rumble of hundreds of boys raced up to the bars. Tony pulled David up with them as he saw a Nun glide next to each cell. He heard the first one’s say a special prayer for prisoners, as well as the Nun bless them.

Then the second cell. Then their cell. And that’s when he realized-

No way.

Sister Agnes?!

He saw her take a longer look at him. He felt her eyes pierce through his changed eyes and lighter hair. Yet she didn’t say a word as she moved on to the other seven cells.

Would she recognize him? Would she just leave him there, to be able to fend for himself? Come to think of it, he would be better off if she left him here. He still had the keys.

The other boys had returned to their spots. Some other boy had taken his spot, but immediately moved away as he approached. But before he could sit, as his back faced the bars, she came back.

“My child- Is that you?”

He wanted to ignore her. He wanted to be left here. He didn’t want to leave. Yet she was his mother, at least that’s what he always thought of her. How could he ignore her?

As he turned and replied “Hello, Sister Agnes,” she saw a David that wasn’t the same little runt that ran away. Through the moonlight she could see he was taller, with lighter hair and a confident stance.

Before she could get a guard to unlock the door, he slipped the oldest boy the keys.

“Go out early in the morning, when the guards are sleeping. There are plenty of places to seek refuge and I’m sure you know them.”

The boy gave a look of shock and awe as he shoved them into his pants pocket.

“W-who are you?”

After this whole time, they never asked for my name! How weird.

He knew he would never see them again, so as he was beckoned out he decided to whisper them some hope.

“I’m Peter Pan. I help boys like you get out of places like this. Good luck.” He gave them a reassuring grin as he walked to the entrance of the cell, the only boy that left when the cell’s guard was awake and watching the door.

The two of them were soon far away from the horrible place.

He was soon tended to by the familiar Nun as his confidence began to drain like the color from his face.

“David, my child! Why did you leave us? Oh, we must get you back to the orphanage! Look at you- you’re filthy! I guess you’ll have to bathe and be barbered tonight. Come, we must go before your bedtime.”

Then he remembered all of the feelings of guilt and shame he had gotten over so long ago. He forgot about the punishments!

 “What about my punishment for leaving?”

She looked down upon his flushed cheeks and bright eyes- the ones she never saw on him before, like a curse for going outside the orphanage. “Punishments? My dear, if you come back with me, you won’t have any punishments to deal with. No paddling, no dungeon, nothing. You’ll be welcomed back with open arms. Like nothing happened.”

He would be forgiven? Like nothing Happened?

No. It wouldn’t be the same. Everything did happen, and in that time he had learned not to trust certain grown-ups. But if he didn’t listen to her- what she might do still scared him.

He immediately tried to distract himself from the walk back with memories of the fun he had before. He thought about how he was going to fight John and maybe chase him far away, so his life could get better. Maybe he would swing him over the big black fence.

It took too soon to reach the towering citadel of cold, grey stone. He didn’t want to go back, but he was forced to- he would rather pick this place than hell.

They arrived at the orphanage late at night, and came in through the big wooden doors with metal rings in the middle. It felt like he was going back into an escapable fortress.

She said nothing more than: “Thank you for choosing the right path, David. You start the Priest’s training as planned tomorrow.” and walked with him up the stairs, beyond the sleeping quarters, where the boys slept in tightly packed rows, to the other bathroom at the Nun’s floor.

The other, more disciplinary Nuns forced him to get into a tub of freezing cold water. As much of a nightmare as that sounds, they also scrubbed him down with a brown soap bar and a hardened piece of wool. It took one to cut his hair down to his scalp, even his beloved bangs, and another to rinse his head of any loose strands. While he wasn’t able to see the results, he felt the cold air sting the top of his head, like the hair was a sort of shield, as he put on starched pajamas that didn’t even fit him well. He was shoved out of the room with a worn-out uniform he was to wear the next day.

His old bed was given to a new boy, a bigger one with as little amount of hair as he did. Instead, he was moved to the one right next to the window, the only one bathed in the light of the outside world; it kept him up at night, as it would to any boy whose nightlight is too strong.

So he looked out again, at the paradise somewhere out there. His family was out there, and they’ll travel the world together. Maybe he’ll even find a blaxburt…

Yet the world mocked him now, instead of beckoned him. The light from the moon covered the roofs and street in a milky white, like a snow that didn’t build up on the walkways and frost the windowpanes. He wondered what Ichabod was thinking…

Oh no. Ichabod! He must be worried sick about me…

And what about Willy? And Johnny? And Oliver?

But most of all, as he pulled the rough sheets over his cold, drained body, he began to wonder what would become of him; whether or not he could keep his own warmth alive. But sleep overtook him before he could think too much about it, and next thing he knew, he was on a familiar tower again.