Escape into the Night

John Frederick Lewis

Whilst Tindle went on to make his fortune, with the invention of the very first takeaway food service: the Waterside Fish and Chippy - and had amassed the funds to purchase three fishing boats and four potato farms with his new income, Jonathon was still circling the villages seeking some honest employment.

Jon had been paid a farthing for scrubbing down the tombstones, and another for cleaning the fox pelts from their sticky entrails. He helped to white-wash the leaning cottages, and run deliveries for the wealthy, whose shopping lists were always too large for their purse. Some even accused him of shortening their change after he had bought for them at the markets, when he knew that he had not.

Tindle’s culinary wares became a favourite of the Euro-peans, even for the fancies who would send their servants to collect the parcels for picnics and passing by carriage stops. He was pronounced that year to be a main merchant of the town which had grown substantially in size, due to its work-force gravitating to his success.

Meanwhile Jonathon had now entirely forgotten his etherial romance, as practicalities had since called his attention to necessity.

Over the months Jon had managed to collect some silver from his very hard working efforts, and being the Sabbath he thought he might treat himself at the Tent of a Thousand and One Whores. The title exaggerated itself, for there were far fewer than a thousand and one - however, to his excitement there were certainly hundreds, and he enjoyed the anticipation of picking one out tremendously.

Today was a special day as Jon was commemorating his twenty-fifth year, and being alone in the world he most naturally sought some suitable company to spend the day with.

He felt fortunate to find them in town - the tent had come from Arabia, it was an impressive, majestic edifice the size of a small cathedral … with many coloured paintings decorating the material around it, gold and silver highlights, swirls and flourishes, squirrels and birds and rabbits in every corner.

This was a place of great happiness to his mind. Crowded with waiting women who took shelter under its high pitched roof, huddled around each other in sections of coloured veils partitioning … yet in the cold - for there were no fires to be lit within this tent as they feared it would alight itself all too quickly. And so all cooking was done outside of it also.

He paid his fee to the doorman, and walked in when the queue permitted. Jon barely noticed that as he approached the women they flinched from him, and many turned away, or covered their faces.

A negress who appeared to be no older than eight or nine approached, holding out her small hand to touch his. This little girl had a thin silk blanket around her shoulders of tangerine, her hair had been braided loosely and the whites of her eyes followed him intently.

He dismissed her from his mind and walked away, for this was but a child - yet he felt a bond with her aloneness, and a completely different impulse arose quite simply in compassion, that he might find a way to extricate her from this sorry crowd.

He doubled back and now offered his hand that she might take his, and this she did. Very simply and quietly he left the thousand tent, walking past the doorman as naturally as he had gone in, but this time with the little slave girl, in his grasp, who followed him into the night.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series