History

[seventhsimon]

Simon was born to a farmer and his wife, the youngest of seven children, all brothers also names Simon. He was very much the baby of the family, and the brothers Simon were all very close. In fact, there is little of his life that does not seem surrounded by his brothers, their presence and guidance and overall support. Even though he prefers to stay quiet and out of the way, his brothers were all wonderful in all their separate ways, and he could not have asked for a better family. With all of this, however, Simon’s childhood was mostly unremarkable up until the day he discovered his ‘talent.

It had been a dare that had started it. Most of the young boys of the nearby farms all knew of Farmer Cratchett’s secret chest. He never shared what was inside it, and the stories ranged from priceless jewels to magic seeds. Any time anyone asked over it, or him, or anything, really, the old man would give a stink-eye and shuffle back into his house. No one had ever managed to get a glimpse of what was inside the chest, the many had tried to sneak into the old man’s house.

All of his brothers were well on their way to learning a special trade, yet nothing their father had ever taught Simon stuck, and so he was left with only fieldwork, which was less skill and more of a diligent toil. None of his brothers would say anything against it, but he still couldn’t stand the disappointment in his father’s eyes, and the judgement from their nearby neighbors. He just wanted to prove he was worth something: the youngest of seven children who couldn’t hardly learn a trade to save his life.

If he could manage this, what none other in their small community could do, would he not be well-regarded for that?

The plan was elaborate. He spent weeks learning all of Farmer Cratchett’s habits, pacing the span of his house, straining for even the slightest glimpse of the small chest. For all of the effort, it was almost easy. Too easy. Sliding in and out of Farmer Cratchett’s small house, slipping into the tall golden stalks of the fields where none would find him and opening the chest. He wouldn’t learn until later that it had been very carefully hidden away, that its lock was enchanted.

All Simon knew upon opening the chest and looking at the small portrait and the carefully woven snippet of hair is that this was nothing he had been expecting. And he felt awful for it. This was not his treasure to know or see or share. He stayed out quiet, hiding, in the field for a long time.

Late that night, he crept back to Farmer Cratchett’s house to find the old man weeping. Simon stood at the door and knocked, and when the old farmer finally answered the door he offered the chest back to him, and confessed his wrongdoing. He submitted himself to any punishment that the old farmer saw fit. Simon and Farmer Cratchett spoke long until morning, and for a month afterwards, when Simon finished his own family’s fields he went over and helped Farm Cratchett with his.

One of the boys had caught a glimpse of Simon with the old man’s chest the day he stole it, and though they would pester Simon constantly, he would not answer what was within the chest. Eventually they all forgot about it, or simply assumed that the boy had seen wrong and that Simon had never seen the chest in the first place.

After that, Simon was careful what he sought to steal and whom he stole from, and he always returned anything that he had stolen. He had no desire to become a thief in spite of his talent, and was truly contented with the life that he and with his family as it was.

Everything seemed to go back to normal. Occasionally he would show off his ‘talent’, or practice it, but that was rare enough, and it was hardly something he took a particular pride in.

One day their parents finally died of old age, and when that day came they buried them, and chose instead to celebrate the good life and easy death of their parents, before taking up their parent’s labour as their own. Much of Simon’s days were the same, waking before dawn to go out into the fields with his brothers, their pauses at lunchtimes, often filled with playful jokes and gentle ribbing of whoever made their food for that day, continuing until the sun had finally left the sky, retiring for supper and general time spent together. Sometimes, the telling of tales, sometimes just in quiet companionship. Simon loved this life, and his family, and the simplicity, and simply did not long for anything else.

It was a bright, sunny morning. Simon was not long past his sixteenth birthday, and when he walked outside there was a particular lightness to his heart. It seemed as though nothing could go wrong.

And then, of course, everything did. It had been a quiet lunch that day, for it was nearing harvest, and the work was hard under a hot sun. Simon did not know what to think when strangers came upon them, but he answered along with his brothers, curious and confused, and then watched them as they left.

The next thing he knew they were all summoned before the king. The King. His mind was all a whirl until he heard the King’s next question, as to their trades. He smothered a wince, and wondered if his eldest brother who had introduced them all did the same. There was no way he could answer that question and the day end well.

It seemed fine. He did his best to be completely unnoticed, blending into the group of them all, so alike in countenance. And it almost worked. The king stopped with the youngest of his brothers and then spoke to reward him, so Simon bowed with all the rest.

And then it all went to hell.

‘Why are you silent? What is your handicraft?’

And the seventh Simon answered: ‘I have no handicraft, O king; I have learnt nothing. I could not manage it. And if I do know how to do anything it is not what might properly be called a real trade—it is rather a sort of performance; but it is one which no one—not the king himself—must watch me doing, and I doubt whether this performance of mine would please your Majesty.’

‘Come, come,’ cried the king; ‘I will have no excuses, what is this trade?’

‘First, sire, give me your royal word that you will not kill me when I have told you. Then you shall hear.’

‘So be it, then; I give you my royal word.’

Then the seventh Simon stepped back a little, cleared his throat, and said: ‘My trade, King Archidej, is of such a kind that the man who follows it in your kingdom generally loses his life and has no hopes of pardon. There is only one thing I can do really well, and that is—to steal, and to hide the smallest scrap of anything I have stolen. Not the deepest vault, even if its lock were enchanted, could prevent my stealing anything out of it that I wished to have.’

When the king heard this he fell into a passion. ‘I will not pardon you, you rascal,’ he cried; ‘I will shut you up in my deepest dungeon on bread and water till you have forgotten such a trade. Indeed, it would be better to put you to death at once, and I’ve a good mind to do so.’

‘Don’t kill me, O king! I am really not as bad as you think. Why, had I chosen, I could have robbed the royal treasury, have bribed your judges to let me off, and built a white marble palace with what was left. But though I know how to steal I don’t do it. You yourself asked me my trade. If you kill me you will break your royal word.’

‘Very well,’ said the king, ‘I will not kill you. I pardon you. But from this hour you shall be shut up in a dark dungeon. Here, guards! away with him to the prison. But you six Simons follow me and be assured of my royal favour.’

What he remembers most, in the half haze of righteous anger and general panicked terror of the next moments, is the sudden heavy weight of chains that binds him still, and the loud, solid thump as the door to his cell shut before him, blocking out the few, remaining rays of the sun.

Most of a year in prison, hungry and starving and wondering if he might again see daylight. Concern for his brothers, and a general lingering fear that slowly faded to despair.

The day he was brought back to the king was the day he thought he would die at last, and as he stood before his King he felt painfully, painfully young and afraid.

His mouth ran as quickly as his mind could push it, stringing together a plan on the fly, straining to do anything that would get him out of the cell longer, of proving his worth somehow. (It was as though he was a talentless child again, but infinitely, infinitely worse.) It works, the words he says. Even though they are crazy and wild and he isn’t quite sure of them himself, even though he has rarely ever before doubted his plans and his wisdom. It seems wild and fantastical and in the week it takes to get to the Island of Busan he has to keep reminding himself to breathe. His brother’s give him worried looks, but he is driven by a strange intensity, and he can feel that they are as well. He is too hesitant to bask in the presence of his family, too afraid it is a sweet morsel he will taste before it is yanked cruelly away from him again.

They arrive, and it as though a preternatural calm has settled over his shoulders. He is at his most humble and flattering when he presents his ‘wares’ to the princess, tempting words dripping off his lips like sweet promises, all humbleness and eagerness at once. Simon knows, from the faraway place where he rests his mind in this calm that he can feel his heart hammering away in his chest, as though his body knows the importance of this moment even his mind cannot yet grasp at it.

She comes aboard with her nurse and at last his brother sinks the ship with all haste as they speed across the ocean floor, and Simon wants to sink to the deck of his brother’s little ship in relief but he cannot. He must keep talking, keep showing off their ‘wares’, keep spinning tales—like those he had once spun at a dinner table, wild and crazy and impossible and lovely—, he must keep her attention for as long as humanly possible. Finally the ship rises again, and as his heartbeat finally begins to slow, the Princess Helena notices. He loses his breath again, as she changes, even knowing he had prepared this, and it is not until she is caught for the final time and back to herself that he breathes again.

He thinks that he feels, perhaps, the supporting hands of his brothers holding him up, and it is only the concerned eyes of the Princess Helena hovering above him that make him realize he has near fallen like a puppet with its strings cut. He moves to raise a hand and shake his head, brushing the concern away when he finally falls into sleep, his body desperate for rest.

The last, rather whimsical, thought in his head as his brother’s concerned faces are shuttered by black is that Princess Helena would make a very compassionate queen.

The journey ends, and as the King rushes out to try and win Princess Helena’s favor, Simon’s mind wanders back to the poor soldiers of Busan with a distanced empathy. He does not wish them to suffer unjustly.

There is a rush for the wedding, once the Princess Helena accepts, and Simon finds himself sailing back, this time with a letter for the King of Busan. It seems almost as if his brothers can feel his haste, for the journey seems shorter, somehow, and when they reach the soldiers in time to stop their execution Simon cannot hide his relief.

The King of Busan honors them all, and the first night he spends in royal opulent apartments he breaks down in quiet, almost-hysterical laughter. This former enemy-King—from whom he had stolen a treasure most precious—welcomes him and his brothers with all hospitality, while his own King—to whom Simon had been faithful all his life—imprisons him despite his lack of crime, and is kept only from killing him by the royal word he had just moment prior extracted.

The King is overjoyed and kind and wishes to lavish upon them all gifts in his gratefulness, and Simon cannot find it in himself to hate at this moment a man so lost in love. It doesn’t shake the feeling of being used, and wronged, but it is enough that he can put it aside for the moment.

His eldest brother speaks and this time King Archidej pardons him as though nothing before had happened, and invites them all to his wedding feast. Simon cannot decide whether he wants to laugh or to cry. He feels so drained.

Life goes back to normal, as much as it ever could, and yet the events itch at him from under his skin, and where before he took joy in the beautiful gold of their family’s field and his honest toil, it seems tainted somehow. Every moment serves to remind him of how close he had been to losing it all, how unjust it had been that he, in his honest labour, had first been imprisoned with such passion and then dismissed of charge with such carelessness. It rankles, until eventually he cannot bear to stay, even though years have passed and he is a full man grown.

It is ridiculous. He should be far past this by now. It is with some sadness that he finally parts with his brothers, promising to return one he has found some peace in his soul.

And what travels! He goes far and wide to kingdoms he had never before heard or dreamt of, filled with new stories and new marvels, quests he had aided in and feats he and seen completed. Finally, it seems at last that in all these wonders he as found some rest, and it is with eagerness that he makes the trips to return home, only to find the lands increasingly quiet and undefinably wrong.

It is well into midmorning when he makes it to his farm of a home, and yet there is no sight or sound of his brothers in the field. When he enters the farmhouse it is silent, with his brothers nowhere to be found, and so thick a layer of dust he does not think it has been disturbed in some time. He looks outside the window once, and catches what he had not before. The fields stand stock-still, they do not sway with breeze or the weight of their own bounty. It is more a painting than a growing thing, and Simon weeps. In this moment he knows he has lost them, all of them, his family, be it to death or sleep or some strange thing of both.

In his travels, he had heard faint rumors of this happening, kingdoms and sultanates and realms simply falling into sleep or disappearing entirely, homes suddenly lost and stories fading away. It was just that none of them had been his.

He wanders, aimless and pointless, until he stumbles across his brother’s boat. He is no great mariner as his brother is— was… is, but he is a Simon, and he is his brother’s kin, and it is enough. Perhaps the boat misses it’s creator as much as he does. He finally settles on a shore, and would have set the thing up in flames, yet he cannot bring himself to destroy this last remnant of his family’s labors. He casts it adrift, and with a solemn salute turns and does not look back. He wanders even more, until he stumbles into live fields again. Fields of growing things, and not frozen memories.

The town is quaint, familiar and unfamiliar both. He loves it and hates it, but it is now his home for the time being, and the fields nearby he has come to consider his simply because he works them as he had once worked his own fields. In some small way it feels like a defeat, and those are the days he heads back into Märchenstraße again, seeking something other than the well-worn path of his own grief and miserable thoughts.

Märchen is a home, for now.