Published at 21st of February 2024 11:03 pm

Chapter 16 How She Survived

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Upon exiting the alleyway, safe from the prowling hands of the beggars that crowded the path, Patsy turned left and was about to lead Elmer further down the street when all of a sudden someone grabbed hold of his wrist from behind.

Elmer shook and turned around sharply to meet the brown eyes of a boy peering up at him from below. It was the bread-boy.

He let out an exhale, then gently loosened his wrist from the boy’s grip and placed his hands on his knees as he leaned over at him. “What are you doing here?” Elmer clicked his tongue and gestured with his head. “I was amazing back there, right?”

The boy blinked, then abruptly outstretched a chump of bread at him.

“Is that for me?” Elmer chuckled and patted the boy’s cap. “I don’t need it. Keep it. You can say thank you though, I wouldn’t mind that. And besides, it’s just courtesy, or something like that… I guess.” Elmer placed a finger on his chin as he pondered on the correctness of his words for a while. “Well, anyway. Just keep your bread. You probably need it more than I do.”

The boy cocked his head while blinking obliviously, and without saying a thing he pushed the bread once again at Elmer.

Elmer’s shoulders and lips twitched softly as he waved his palms. “Don’t worry about me and keep your bread. You need it.” He kept saying, but the boy kept pushing the bread toward him with an ignorant look all over his face.

“What is this?” said Elmer. “What’s wrong with him? Hello, what’s wrong with you?” Elmer straightened himself and tilted his head at the indifferent expression plastered on the boy’s face.

“He might be deaf.”

Elmer’s eyebrows pressed together as he turned slightly to Patsy whose voice came from behind him. “What?”

“I think he can’t hear you.” Patsy shrugged at Elmer’s querying gaze. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

Elmer turned back to the boy. Really…?

He leaned in closer again, then pointed to his ear and waved his forefinger, and the boy nodded gently after a moment of something Elmer believed to be consideration.

His shoulders slumped then at the boy’s reply and his face turned grim. But he immediately brightened it once again with a smile and patted the boy’s cap.

He took the piece of bread the boy offered him and nodded in thanks, then he watched the boy bow his head before turning around and running off.

Where are his parents…? That thought saddened Elmer, both for the boy, who he watched scurry into a corner, and for himself.

“Are you going to keep standing here all day?!” Patsy suddenly shouted from Elmer’s side, startling him into placing a palm over his ear while he jumped away from her in a frenzy.

As he relaxed a bit from the sudden fright, he clenched his jaw at her. “What did you do that for?” he voiced, letting anger take a slight hold of his tone.

Patsy closed the gap between both of them and poked his nose. “You were lost, I brought you back.” She smiled, weirdly. “Now let’s go, or you don’t want your money any longer? That would be good.” Her smile turned into a grin. “I’ll get to keep it all to myself.”

You will not… Elmer sighed.

“Get a move on then.” He shoved Patsy from her shoulder, wiping away the grin that was on her face as she rolled her eyes. But just as he was about to join her in continuing their walk to the pawnbroker—wherever that was—he took his gaze back behind him down the street where the bread-boy had run, and he found himself standing still again.

“You should not bother,” Patsy said, a bit lukewarmly, as her voice lured Elmer to her. “What good would that possibly bring you?” She raised her shoulders.

Elmer tightened his palm on the piece of bread he held while adjusting his glasses from its rim. “He’s a little boy running around the streets deaf. What good would leaving him to continue such a life bring him?” Meadbray was far more desirable for people like him. If he could help the boy get there then his life would be better. But how?

Patsy placed a hand on her waist as she sloped her body to one side. “So what are you going to do?” Up went her brows as she flayed him with her eyes. “Take him in? Feed him? Become his father?” She snorted. “You can barely take care of one disabled and now you want to have two?”

Elmer inhaled sharply, his lips flattening as he crossed over to Patsy as though he was a scalded cat and grabbed her by her wrist, clenching on it hard like a clamp while she uttered a soft yelp.

“Don’t you dare,” he told her, ripping apart whatever soft tone he’d had and replacing it with a deepened voice. “Don’t you dare refer to Mabel as a disabled. Do you understand me?”

None of the people who trudged about bothered with their apparent stand-off, and they sooner looked like statues as they watched each other with furrowed eyebrows in silence. Elmer’s heart now thumped rapidly in his chest. He’d completely forgotten about the bread-boy.

“Fine,” Patsy was the first one to break the quiet. “I’m sorry. It was not my intention to make you angry.”

Elmer hesitated for a few seconds before he let go of her with a deep exhale, then he took a few steps backward and watched as she rubbed her reddened wrist with a blanched expression.

The silence came again, and this time it nibbled into him. He clicked his tongue and scratched the side of his face. He probably should not have snapped.

“So,” he forced himself to speak, and it worked to pull Patsy’s narrow eyes back to him. “The pawnbroker?”

Patsy squeezed her gaze as she gently rolled her wrist, and Elmer felt like she was waiting for an apology from him. But why should he apologize though? He was not in the wrong. She was the one who had insulted his sister.

She kept raking her eyes at him and it made Elmer uncomfortable. He patted his head through his cap, then dragged the palm down to his face in exasperation. But just as he was about to finally give in to her apparent wishes, Patsy pried her eyes from him and pointed to somewhere down the walkway.

“There,” she said, shutting Elmer up quickly. “The shop’s in that corner.”

And with that, she turned on her feet and walked away, acting as though there had not just been some stiffening tension between them. If she wanted it to be that way, then he had no choice but to act the same.

Elmer sighed and followed her.

…

It did not take long before they arrived at the corner Patsy had pointed at, although a single word had not still escaped from either of their lips. Elmer had never expected himself to want her to talk so badly before. Why was she so silent?

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She turned into the corner, and he followed. Surprisingly, this corner was empty. Was such a thing even possible? Elmer looked around still searching for a beggar or someone of similar status laying around somewhere. Maybe they were hiding. There was no way.

Patsy’s sudden stop prompted Elmer to remove his eyes from his searches and place them upon the low shop before him.

“We’re here,” she said, speaking finally.

The door of the shop was halfway open, as though it was inviting, or rather, tempting them in, and beside it hung three golden balls suspended from an iron bar.

It had a single dusty window, and from it was displayed several collections of belongings. Elmer examined each with widened eyes. From the brooches to the fashion tables to the dresses, he glanced at it all, until his eyes finally stopped on the rows of silver pocket watches.

He swallowed his spit in desire, and he found himself moving closer to the window. If he could just grab one.

The jingle of the shop bell resounded through Elmer’s ears and dragged him unwillingly away from the pocket watches lined up within the window. He looked back at the door and saw Patsy’s back fade into the shop.

She could have said something… Elmer shook his head and walked into the shop as well.

The interior had a dusty air, and was filled with more of the belongings which Elmer had glimpsed from the window, neatly arranged within shelves. But despite how many their vast collections of goods were, the shop was completely empty of people, and there was no place to sit.

Was the owner utterly bad at running a business?

“Oh,” he heard a giddy voice resound from behind the counter spanning the width of the shop. “Customers on a Friday morning? Must I be somewhat out of my mind?”

It was not the owner, it was just the day of the week, Elmer understood that now. But no matter how much he squinted his eyes at the counter, hoping he had not lost his long sightedness as well, he could not still see anyone who was not Patsy. Where had the voice come from?

“Be glad then, Lev.” Elmer watched Patsy as she leaned on the counter cozily. “The great Patsy’s your customer.”

“Patty!” Elmer heard the person exclaim, and shortly after, he saw him pop up from beneath the counter.

It was a young man with shoulder-length thin hair the same color as the brown vest over his white shirt. He had his sleeves rolled up and a smile brightening his dusty face which was nothing but pretty.

“What are you doing here? Or wait.” Lev raised a finger and licked his lips. “Is it my place you intend to stay at tonight? Finally came back, huh?” He chuckled next. “Good for me. With you around I’ll finally be able to get a nice enough sleep for once.”

Elmer’s brows crashed down quickly.

“Shut up.” Patsy waved Lev off. “I’m here to pawn something.”

“Bummer. Who’s that person keeping you away from me, eh?” Lev smacked his lips, then he finally saw Elmer. “Are you a customer as well?” He raised an eyebrow.

Before Elmer could say a word, Patsy replied in his stead. “He’s with me,” she said without looking back.

“Is he?” Lev shifted his nose to one side as he watched Elmer, then he turned back to Patsy. “He looks young. You don’t like young.”

“I never said I liked old either.” Patsy dipped her hand into her pouch as Lev placed a palm over his chest with a gasp.

“You did not just say that Patty. I’m not old.” He eyed her, and Elmer grew tired of listening to their conversation. What was it even?

“I never said you were.” Elmer heard Patsy say one last time before he took himself out of the pawn shop. She was doing the transaction—or whatever it was—he was not needed there.

The fresh air blew away the dust that had filled his nose as soon as he stepped outside, and it was reinvigorating. He stretched his arms and yawned, then he exercised his mouth while he gazed up at the clouds drifting in the sky.

Mabel always used to like looking up at the clouds. Her smile was always on her face then, but now… Elmer stopped exercising his mouth as the image of his sister’s plain face which had lost all of its warmth passed through his mind. His chest tightened and his toes curled within his boots.

Five years, he reminded himself. Five years had passed, and the only option he now had to find a way to help his sister was to become an Ascender.

He put his eyes down at his sweaty palms as he folded and unfolded them in short intervals. He was going to become what he hated the most.

It was the only way, he told himself. He had no other choice, he told himself. To help his sister he had to venture into the sickening world where she had been taken, and the only way to achieve that was to become one of the crazy ones who had access to such a world.

Elmer clenched his fists tight as he recalled the maggot-faced man and the Lost he had seen three nights past, then he swallowed a lump of saliva as his breathing paced. He had to not care what it was that existed in such a world if he was to help Mabel. He had to do whatever it was that was necessary, even if it meant using the tainted power of those Gods.

Although, his hatred for the God of Souls and his pathway had never once wavered deep within Elmer. He would do anything but take his power, and he was going to make sure to kill them all one day—that God and his priests, Elmer thought to himself while flaring his nostrils like a hunting wolf, but only just slightly.

“Elmer,” he heard a tiny voice call out to him, and he snapped back quickly. “What are you doing?” Elmer looked up to see Patsy’s freckled face.

“Nothing.” He sniffled and wiped the back of his palm over his nose. “Are you done?”

“Yes,” she said, then handed him some mint notes and a small paper.

“What’s this?” Elmer asked, wondering about the paper.

“Three hundred mint notes and the address of an Alchemist.”

“Three… Three hundred!” he exclaimed, his mouth falling open afterwards. He had heard the latter of her words, but the former stuck deeper with him. “What did you sell to get three hundred? Did your father really have such an expensive thing? What is it even?” The questions kept coming.

“Don’t ask,” she said, denying all his questions answers while showing her palm to shush him and put his agape expression to a stop.

Elmer sighed. Of course she wasn’t going to tell him. She probably had stolen something else from that mansion.

“Thank you for this,” Elmer said, tapping the paper in his hand. Then, after a short moment of silence, he asked curiously, “Do you not have a place to stay?”

Patsy who had almost begun to walk away turned back sharply at him. “What?” She asked with knitted eyebrows.

“Your conversation with that guy.” Elmer jerked a thumb at the door behind him. “It gave me that impression.” Along with her constant hesitation to leave his place. “So, you really don’t?”

Patsy’s nose squeezed as though she’d perceived the odor of something foul. “Don’t ask,” she replied, rather harshly.

Don’t ask…? Why not…? I’m tired of all the ‘don’t ask’…

“Tell me,” Elmer insisted. “Is that what you’ve been doing to get a place to stay?”

“I said “don’t ask”. What is your problem, huh?” Patsy voiced with a pinched expression and a sharp tone. “How does it bother you?”

Elmer folded his lips as he found the glint of annoyance in her eyes. Maybe he shouldn’t have touched on such a thing.

He sighed remorsefully. “I was just—”

“Or what?” she interrupted him. “Do you want to ask for the same now? Have me pay my debts for sleeping at your place?”

Elmer’s face strained into a frown as he faintly jerked his head to the side.

“No!” he yelled at Patsy and startled her into a slight shuffle backward. “It’s not that. It’s just that if you are going to keep staying at my place then it’s only fair you tell me some things, isn’t it?” That was not it. That was not what he had wanted to say. But as his breath steadied and his mind cleared, he was already done speaking.

Patsy scoffed then hastily dug her hand into her pouch and brought out the bread stick she had kept for Mabel. “Here,” she said as she placed it on Elmer’s chest.

Elmer held the bread in place, glanced at it and back at her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Well, I won’t have to tell you anything now, will I?” She cocked her head with a raised eyebrow and downturned lips. “At least the others won’t ask as many questions as you do. Try to work on that, it puts off ladies.”

As Patsy turned around and slowly walked away, Elmer forced his eyes to the ground with a soft shake of his head, following it with a low exhale before he slapped his temples.

He shouldn’t have done that.

Elmer turned his eyes back to Patsy who was almost fading into a corner away from his sight, but just as he was about to call out to her, his gaze found the words written on the paper she had given him, and his voice caught in his throat.

Wait. What is this…?

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