TBE Chapter 21
“Why are you laughing?!” Robert asked after he chewed and swallowed the hamburger bite that he made.
“It’s because both of you cried at the same time. Is it because the burger’s delicious?” Ezekiel asked while laughing.
“It’s delicious! But I did not cry! I was just surprised at how big a bite I made. How do you eat these sticks?” Robert asked while pointing at the French fries.
Ezekiel then demonstrated by dipping a couple of French Fries into the bowl of ketchup and eating it. His brothers copied him again and their eyes went wide again at the flavor of the food.
“Yum, yum!” Luke said loudly.
Then they didn’t talk anymore and got busy demolishing the burger and fries. After lunch, Ezekiel cleaned up his brothers using his Prestidigitation spell. He also cleaned their clothes and repaired them using the Mending cantrip then he asked them to take a nap.
After an hour, Robert woke up first so Ezekiel asked Robert to run to the butcher again so they could sell the corpses of the wolves.
“Tell the butcher, there are five corpses. If he’s interested in them, he can come and get them but if the butcher doesn’t want them, just return home,” He instructed Robert.
Ezekiel then woke up Luke since he didn’t want to leave the kid alone in their shack then they went to the place where he could dump the wolves. When he heard that Robert, the butcher, and his men were about to arrive, he immediately retrieved the corpses of the wolves from his 4th tab space and put them into the ground.
“Zeke! Your brother told me that you killed five wolves using magic!” The butcher said then he laughed. Clearly, they thought that Robert was just spouting some imaginary adventure nonsense.
That was one of the reasons why Ezekiel was not telling Robert to lie since he knew that the adults wouldn’t believe him if the kid told the truth.
“There they are. We were roaming the forest in search of fruits and berries and games that we can hunt and those wolves dare to attack us,” Ezekiel said proudly making sure that he sounded extremely boastful since that would allow the butcher and his men to treat him as a kid and possibly came out with their own explanation of how he killed the wolves.
More than likely, they would think that he killed the animals using traps since that was what he had been saying all the time.
“How are you killing them, boy? The only injuries we can find are the heads,” One of the butcher’s men said but Ezekiel didn’t answer.
“You don’t have to answer that Zeke. It’s the boy’s trade secret so don’t ask him questions,” The butcher told the man.
“Since the corpses are intact, we can get the skins whole. I’ll purchase the lot from you for 3 silver coins. What do you say?” The butcher asked.
Since Ezekiel didn’t know what he could get for those animal corpses, he just nodded. The butcher and his men began loading the corpses into their cart. After that, the butcher and his men started walking beside the cart that was being pulled by the horse towards the village market.
“Can we join you? We need to go to the village since I’m learning my letters from Mr. Duvon,” Ezekiel asked the burly butcher and the man just nodded.
Ezekiel then shamelessly climbed the cart with his brothers and sat beside the corpses of the wolves.
“Hey, Rona will have a hard time pulling the cart if you and your brothers are riding as well,” One of the butcher’s men said.
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“What are you talking about? We’re so tiny and we barely weigh anything. If people fed us and made us fit, we would walk without any complaint,” Ezekiel said.
The man blushed and grumbled but let them be. Based on the man’s reaction when Ezekiel pointed out how they looked, there was really a story behind why they allowed the three brothers to become malnourished.
He planned to ask Mr. Duvon about that since the old tutor was beginning to get close to him.
When they arrived at the village, Ezekiel and his two brothers leaped down from the cart and thanked the butcher. The butcher just nodded and continued to his shop. One of the butcher’s men stumbled when he overheard Luke say that his brother’s flying magic board was better than the cart.
Ezekiel and his two brothers arrived at Mr. Duvon’s house. He knocked on the door and Mr. Duvon opened it.
“Why are you so late today?” The old tutor asked.
It was Robert who answered.
“My brother killed five wolves with magic and we had to ask the butcher to come and get the dead bodies so he can give us coins that my brother uses to buy delicious food for us!”
Robert then ran past the old tutor towards the courtyard followed by Luke and they started playing some sort of tag game.
“The imagination of kids is wonderful,” Mr. Duvon said and Ezekiel just smiled.
Ezekiel and his tutor entered the house but he told the old teacher to give him a couple of minutes since he had to instruct his brothers about something. When he arrived at the courtyard where Robert and Luke were playing, he gave their toys to them then he entered the living room where Mr. Duvon was waiting.
“Teacher, before we start may I ask you something?” Ezekiel asked.
The old tutor looked at him curiously.
“I had an accident inside the forest and my memory is a little fuzzy. Can you tell me why the villagers disregarded me and my brother to the point that we became malnourished? I’m not angry or anything since I can support our family now but from my recollection, although admittedly those recollections are very little, villagers were supposed to take care of their own.”
“My you’re beginning to sound very polite and highly educated. I commend you for that and I’m praising myself as well since I’m your teacher,” Mr. Duvon said then he paused a bit, deeply thinking about Ezekiel’s question, and then the old tutor continued.
“When your father brought your mother to the village, she was pregnant with you, and at first everyone welcomed her since your father was an original citizen of the village we also treated her as one of ours but your mother was a bit.. odd. She had certain behavior that everyone found a little weird and your father kept explaining that she had hit her head during their travel. But soon somebody accused her of being a witch and when your parents perished deep inside the forest, everyone just ignored you three. It’s one of our failings and we knew it so we kept ignoring you three since we didn’t want to acknowledge our failure. It wasn’t right but now I’m glad that you’re old and capable enough now to survive. I personally don’t expect you to have any respect for any of us here and I apologize for what we did to you three but I’m not asking you to forgive any of us since if I’m in your situation, I will not forgive us either. The best thing that we can do for you right now is to make sure that no one will bother you,” The old tutor said and after a while, he continued explaining.
“Some of the adults are aware that some of our youths attempted to bully you but we made a stop to that and even the last one was met with swift punishment to the boy who initiated that. Right now, you’re beginning to earn respect through the animals that you’ve hunted in the forest but the villagers will not change their treatment of you. It’s best that you’ve decided to depart this village.”
“Thank you, sir, for being honest with me. Once, I’ve learned my letters and my brothers and I are healthy enough we will travel to some other place possibly to a city.”
Ezekiel now knew why those bullies didn’t bother him and his brothers anymore. The fact that the villagers would still treat them indifferently, his resolve to move away from this place solidified. He would just wait until his level was higher and all their bodies were healthier, then they could move. He would also use the time to gather more coins using the forest as his excuse for gathering resources.
After that discussion, the lessons began and after three hours, Ezekiel learned a lot of things. He estimated that if he continue with the tutoring session at least three times a week, he should be proficient enough in reading and writing the language used by the villagers in a month.
Before Ezekiel and his brothers left, he asked his teacher to be patient with him since he could only afford the tutoring session around three times a week due to the fact that he would need to enter the forest to earn coins and Mr. Duvon said that he understood and that he could come anytime any day. It was his payment for the healing potion that Ezekiel gave the tutor even though the old man already gave him a gold coin.
On their journey toward their home, Ezekiel allowed his brother to ride the Tenser’s Floating Disk again and they stopped in the well for him to fill the three plastic gallons to make sure that the water barrel in their home was always full.