The Ghost of Providence

Chapter Six

Corbyn

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There was something tenuous about the air at the shoemaker’s shop. That’s what people thought as they passed by.

Behind the yellow door, delicate whumps petered through the cracks of its wood-lain way. It was the first thing the neighbors noticed. As shopmen went to flip their window signs over, many would stop and listen sadly to the unending kisses of iron slag and cowhide coming from the shop next door. For along the street of Brigham that morning, they were the earliest sound…

“The hell are people doing up at this hour?”

To Corbyn however, the bustle of waking life outside was late. Perhaps because he hadn’t yet gone to sleep, he recognized the time as yesterday’s still.

He rubbed his tired eyes and set his equipment aside. Hammers, owls, threads, knives, soles, and insoles — a cobbler had more tools than you’d think, and every one of them lay in spattered heaps. “You really just insist on staying a mess, don’t you?” Corbyn ribbed to the unorganized mess facing him. “Do I need to straighten you out again? I swear I will.” He looked to the clock in the yet dusty corner of the workshop and yelped in fright.

It’s five o’clock!

With one scathing glare to the mess, he pointed his finger to it and shook the digit as he departed. “When I get back I’ll have words for you, you hear me?! You better start shaping up!”

Through the hallway, Corbyn sped along wood-panels till he reached his room. There, he was quick to pry his mock and grimy, workman uniform from his skin to be placed beside the bed, which was the only tidy thing to be found lately. As he gripped another uniform from the floor, he eyed the bed with beady greed. “I swear to you too now, you sweet thing” he whispered longingly at the feathered down. “I will sleep with you one of these days. I swear I will. So be prepared,” he warned the lonely bundle.

Warnings aside, Corbyn turned his focus to the clothes in hand. Swiftly, white buttons were buttoned, beige slacks were belted, a black vest was donned, and leather shoes were put on. He wet his hair, gave it a comb, reached for his bag, and was ready to leave home.

Off fast feet and hungry legs, Corbyn pedaled through the house, the door, and then up the street as well. As he pressed up the road, a few shopkeepers offered their condolences and well-wishes still, unaware of the knife they were to his empty stomach.

He ignored them largely, as he had for weeks. And with a deaf ear to the surrounding clamor, Corbyn pursued his destination doggedly, albeit with wandering eyes.

The smell of baked bread wafted from the bakery next door, attracting the earliest commotions, and Corbyn’s interest as well. “One of these days I’ll eat too,” he swore.

Past the crowded bakery, his head would swivel around at the views of early life elsewhere too. He’d grown unaccustomed to their sight, what with his tenure at the cobbler’s keep, but he saw them now keenly — the boutiques and quaint eateries, the old Harrowbird manufacturing haunts, leased out to new owners like Corbyn’s father after the Magic Man’s ascendance, and the rickety pub as well, which he could finally see open and busy.

The pub was an odd place to Corbyn. Typically a Brigham hub, Gully folk often joined the rank of mirthful drunks after the fishing season, newly flush and easily excitable. Plats too would come down to slum with the rest when their wallets were particularly thin, and Corbyn noticed more and more of these types come and go as the years passed.

“I guess nobody’s safe from the Shift”, he mumbled thoughtfully. “At least, not forever.“

He turned his focus onto the path forward then and grumbled something glum about his destination. “Highland School...is it even worth it?” To wake up at the ass crack of dawn and abscond into wearisome greetings just to be taught things he already knew. “It’s dreadful. And far.”

It was a long way from Brigham to Highland. If Corbyn were to walk the whole way, he’d have needed to wake up even earlier to make it to school by the time classes began. Thankfully, his father seemed to have made plans for the trip before he left - passed, I guess.

Every morning he was to leave the house at five o’clock and hitch a ride to the Plats. That was what the letter said anyway.

Speaking of a ride...

Just over the northern knolls of the territory, a lone carriage awaited his arrival on the far side of a low-rising hill. The man wielding the reins to two beautiful, white horses turned to the boy as if he’d heard him approach. He did so every time as well, though the thought bewildered Corbyn. “What kind of ears does he have?” he wondered aloud.

“Good morning, boy!”

“Good Morning, Vendor Pice!”

Corbyn drew close to the carriage and peeked at the strange man and his eccentric trappings—the one, really. “Just a dress still, huh?” he asked the man in jest as he paced over to the backside of the carriage. He lifted the canvas and placed his bag beside one of the many peculiar oddities the merchant ‘sold’. “Who buys this crap?” he mumbled as sour notes hit his nose. “The smell alone...”

“Yada yada yada, yeah, yeah, yeah, get your ass up here so we can go.”

Corbyn smiled despite himself and closed the beige back. He climbed up the carriage’s right side and sat beside the driver and the puzzling sheet he garbed himself with. The man noticed his disgust and harrumphed softly. “What do you know about fashion, eh? Look at you.”

Corbyn gave his uniform a once-over and shared the man’s opinion, though found the comparison disagreeable. “This is for school,” he emphasized the slacks. “And how does that even compare to your dress.”

The vendor scoffed as he flung the reins and thereby the horses forward. “Dress?” He uttered the word as if it were a joke. “This is a cloth for distinguished men.”

Corbyn shrugged his shoulders and smirked from beside the man. “I mean, I guess it makes you distinguishable. It certainly stands out.”

The man cast an eye Corbyn’s way. “It’s not crossdressing,” he stressed, unamused.

Corbyn placed his elbow along the railing’s right side and held up a little grin with his hand. “Someone sounds defensive.”

“Bah. I defend my honor, boy. For I am a man. A man in men’s clothing.”

Corbyn chuckled. “I didn’t say anything about crossdressing, old man.”

“...It was implied in your eyes,” the man said with a grip that had grown a tad tighter along the reins and a vein that popped just along his temple.

“Oh, you got that from my eyes?”

“I did...”

He looked to the merchant with amusement. “What else can you see from my eyes, if they say so much?”

The vendor dropped the rope, and the horses surprisingly continued correctly without direction. He stooped down closer to the boy and gazed at him with azure eyes of a spine-chilling blue. “Boy, have you ever heard that eyes are the windows to the soul?”

Corbyn gulped at the sudden change of temper. “Somewhere, I’m sure.”

The handsome man smiled with sinister, white teeth and a menacing tilt. “Do you want to test it?”

Corbyn hesitated, though nodded anyway in the face of growing agitation, curiosity overpowered concern as it did in many aspects of his character.

“I see. Well then let's try it out then shall we?” Corbyn nodded surely this time and the vendor’s hooded eyes closed a touch. “I see a smart, inquisitive boy,” he began. “Whose smarmy sarcasm is misplaced on some poor man’s attire.”

Corbyn rolled his eyes and the trader smirked.

“There’s a sadness to it too. These are wandering, green eyes—at a loss, perhaps with a loss. They’re unsure of the present and disillusioned with the future. Why is that, I wonder? What are you so disappointed with?”

Corbyn answered the man mechanically as if he were struck under some hypnotic spell. “School isn’t what I thought it would be.”

The vendor hummed thoughtfully. “Yes. I imagine a mind like yours isn’t content with organized education. You crave more.”

Corbyn nodded unconsciously, not quite in control of his own responses. The man’s eyes seemed to drag the truth from him in uncomfortable compulsion. But as he took up the reins once again, eye contact broke and the spell followed with it.

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Corbyn woke from whatever stupor he’d been placed in with heavy breaths he hadn’t known he’d been holding and a trail of sweat across his back. “What the hell was that?” he questioned the man sharply.

“That?” The man repeated. “I just looked at your eyes and told you what I saw.”

“No,” Corbyn shook his head relentlessly. “ What was that?”

The vendor chortled. “I guess you can call it magic.”

“Magic?”

The vendor asserted a lighthearted nod. “I would say so. What would you call it?”

“An asshole messing with my head,” Corbyn muttered, disgruntled and discomforted.

The man cast an amused look his way and laughed in his bothered face. “Was I right though?”

Corbyn looked to the poorly dressed man, the infuriating smile he held, and glowered at the question. He answered with a tired shrug, whatever sparing energy he’d had before sapped from his limbs.

Vendor Pice carried the conversation further with another question. “What’s wrong with Highland?”

Corbyn sighed to the side as he observed the rolling terrains pass by, and answered the man beneath a growing headache. “It’s just—I thought it was my dream, but...”

“You want more, right?”

Corbyn nodded, and the strange man grunted, seemingly in agreeance with the sentiment.

“Dreams are baffling in that way,” the vendor started with serious airs. “They’re hopes woven together in imaginative quilts. We cling to them fondly so that we might find warmth in them, but really, they offer little heat. They are thin veils of comfort, easily torn and lightly stuffed. Once we finally pull the veil back, they reveal the hollowed bundles that they are. Dreams are just empty promises, you see?”

Corbyn’s shoulders lurched forward, his head slumped a degree. “That’s depressing, old man.”

Eyes locked forward, the vendor shrugged as the boy had before. “Dreams are depressing.”

Corbyn laughed at that. Agreed. He gave his attention back to the man. “What happened? To your dreams, I mean.”

With his question, Corbyn felt young hair rise along his arms. He shifted under the man’s newly quiet countenance. The vendor’s was an eerie silence, like it was a trait he hid behind flamboyance and flair. It was in that moment that Corbyn believed he was finally viewing the real man. Spooky.

“Let me tell you a little tale, boy.” He waited for Corbyn’s go ahead and began a story with thoughtful eloquence.

“There was once a bird who roamed the world, before the Shift, before Providence was even called Providence. It was a long time ago now, when he was just a little thing with dreams larger than the sky he called home. He flew from place to place in pursuit of the new: new findings, new truths—a new life really. And he was carefree because more than anything else: He was plain free.”

The vendor spoke of a bird, but Corbyn saw in the man a demeanor all too engrossed to be a story.

“This bird’s dream was freedom,” the man smiled fondly. “And he was living it, truly.” It was at this point in the tale that the vendor turned from light musings to dark broodings. “But that dream was dashed,” he crunched the word through grit teeth. “Another empty promise in a world filled with them, I suppose. The bird was dragged down to the earth by...family circumstances. They pulled that pitiable thing into the dirt with them, and his dreams turned to nightmares.” He turned to Corbyn with ferocity, with eyes that were truly haunted. “And nightmares, boy. Nightmares are the only dreams that have ever kept their word.”

The merchant shook his head.

“And so for his family, he steeped his wings in dirt, in blood, in agony, until they were ugly and unflappable.” The man gazed up to the sky from his carriage perch. “The bird was never able to fly again after that. He was just a wingless rat, dreaming of the sky once more.” The vendor’s lonesome figure sent a sympathetic pang through Corbyn as the old man closed the curtains to his sad tale.

“Don’t be like the bird, boy. Enjoy your freedom.” Vendor Pice smiled. “What happened to your father is sad, sure,” he admitted with a shrug. “But look at it differently. You are free to pursue your own sky. You are freer than that bird will ever be. So is school your dream? Or is it your father’s?”

Corbyn didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing at all, and Vendor Pice didn’t push him to.

The carriage careened on, up hills and through plains, with horse-powered speed. When they reached the Plats and the school gates after, the sun had finally begun to peak its head and the day was truly alive.

He climbed down from the rickety vehicle, grabbed his leather bag, and left for the gate to Highland, but not before he offered his farewells to the quiet man who just mysteriously smiled and waved back as he left Corbyn to his thoughts.

Out of all the things he’d heard, nobody had spoken about his father’s death like that. It was true in some sense: Corbyn was free to be himself. “I’m the only person I have to answer to now,” he considered with a frown. Corbyn stopped at the gate to pull a beaten book from his bag: ‘The Ghost of Providence’. He gripped it with fresh conviction.

But right now I need answers for da’.

***

Where’s Olivur been, Corbyn wondered. He peeked up from his book for the fourth time in as many minutes. He wasn’t sure what brought the thought about, but now that it had been placed between his ears, it remained.

Where the far leftmost corner of the library used to be a space in which the two boys would each lunch together while catching up on the day, it now housed only the one. And behind the illusion of wisdom that a tall stack of books would make a person appear to be, Corbyn felt anything but wise. He felt ignorant. And lately that ignorance has been accompanied by a great degree of loneliness.

Eyes back to the book in his hands, Corbyn let out a sigh as he read its title once again. “The Ghost of Providence...I don’t get it,” he complained with a furrowed brow. Having given it a chance, he still wasn’t sure why his father had been so fixated on the thing.

The book was an urban legend about some ghost who caused all sorts of strange and unexplainable occurrences around the island over decades. The writer gave depictions of real scenarios that nobody can explain, and attributes their causes to some figment. It was hearsay at best. Debatable.

For example: Why would the ghost want to raze a couple of buildings the Harrowbirds used to own? How was there ice on the oak and holes in the walls? Who would set the Gully on fire? I thought it was a wildfire or an accident. Corbyn furrowed his brow with his last question. That sounds familiar though. Fire had always come to him in strange occurrences as well.

Corbyn peered over his shoulder and looked at the sky outside through the tall glass at the top of the library wall behind him, mesmerized by the colours it shone. The frame of the window was curtailed by a bright, blue fabric of taffeta folds. The sky beyond laid light to the room with a peach-red and an august-orange marriage. They reminded him of a time he longed to forget: a time in which wood and leather burned red.

It looked just like that, he thought. The workshop.

Distracted, he hadn’t realized how warm his skin felt across the leather book. It was a stinging heat. As he noticed, he closed the book quickly and set it atop the rest, spooked by the occurrence. The title, which looked back with its eerie orange script, didn’t help.

“The Ghost of Providence, eh?” He combed his hair back and breathed. “Who wrote it?” He hooked a finger along the front cover’s ledge carefully and flipped the book open. The answer to his question was on the first page.

He eyed the name — it struck him with such familiarity. “Pice H.” he mumbled below a pinched forehead. “What’s Vendor Pice’s last name?”

His train of thought was cut short by a great noise of voices. They shouted: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Corbyn got up to arch his head and glance at the disruption to disappointment. He couldn’t see anything. The fight wasn’t happening in the library. The people around him got to whispering and soon found themselves running to the raucous. The noise attracted him as well and so, being of such curious mind, Corbyn began following them out too.

When they exited the library, Corbyn could hear the shouting better. As if a chorus of teenage bloodlust had taken hold of the school walls, they reverberated with the same slogan the students shared: “Fight! Fight! FIght!” They echoed off the walls to join in on the chant in deafening roars.

The noise led the group of students from the library to the courtyard outside. Corbyn found that he quite liked the courtyard after the placements had been posted, but the focus now was on the edge of the yard. There, a large gathering had formed beneath the stone veranda of the hallway outside, between the main building and the library and bordering the courtyard with subtle greys. He and the others from inside toed up to the encirclement with interest. They still couldn’t see what was going on, so Corbyn poked a male figure toward the back. Someone who looked to have been there a while.

“What’s going on?” he asked the older boy.

The male student turned to him and exclaimed. “Oh, it's you! Shadow’s fighting some kid right now!”

That snapped Corbyn to attention. “What?” He brushed by the student and subsequent throng until he had finagled himself through its frenzy and found himself directly within the circle of students. He had taken an elbow and a jeer, but he’d made it to the front somehow, and he was glad he had. It was there that he saw just what the other boy said.

The scuffle looked to be ending by the time Corbyn got there, but he felt as if he worried over nothing. Olivur was fighting, yes, but you couldn’t really call it much of a fight.

“Say it! Say it! Say it!”

Instead of a fight, one would have more accurately described the scene: a torture. Olivur’s adversary was on the ground already, yet his friend continued to inflict pain upon the boy and shout. Corbyn watched, mortified, as his best friend threw punch after punch and a kick every so often at the boy on the ground, already bleeding from his hair down.

“Say it! Say it again! Call me Shadow one more time! I dare you!”

Receiving only a whimper in response, Olivur stopped to look down at the boy who'd insulted him. He spat on the boy and looked up to the cheers of the crowd. Olivur wiped his bloodied fingers against his beige khakis and lifted his chin once again to face the rabid gathering, a crazed smile laced across his lips.

Corbyn scowled. There it is again. That pride.

Olivur’s triumphant features panned around the crowd until he met eyes with Corbyn. His twisted neck halted to allow his cold, blue eyes a vapid stare. The two held eye contact for a long, unspoken moment before Olivur smiled. The way in which his top lip curled to the left to expose his canine made it more than obvious that the smile held ill intent. Olivur let his eyes linger a moment longer. He made his temperament known before he lifted the fancy coat he’d brought out hunting off the stone floor and over his shoulder with a flourish. He sauntered through an opening the crowd made for him and left under deafening applause.

What’s going on with him? Corbyn wondered, befuddled. He was worried that his friend may be going through a dangerous change. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

When he felt a pair of eyes bore into his cheek, Corbyn looked to another side of the circle to find Halle staring at him with much the same expression he no doubt held. He grimaced at her presence though.

Uh-huh, fuck that.

He turned around to face the throng once again and left as quickly as he arrived, weaving through the students before making his way back to the library to pick up his book before the next bell.

He found the further he got from the woman, the better he felt. His feet padded through the halls, each step further chipping away from his funk.

I don’t want to be anywhere near that woman, Corbyn shuddered. Fuck that.