Harry
I don’t like the bad man. I’m sorry I burned his face, but he was hitting Mama. She tells me I did the right thing and calls me her little hero, but now we have to live in a smelly cave. I try to be brave like Papa is, but when Mama cries, I cry, too.
The ugly man knows I don’t like dogs. He showed me dogs when they brought us to an old tower, and they barked at me. I didn’t like that. I don’t like the way the ugly man looks at me, either.
They made us go down long, winding stairs, deep into the earth, and then locked the door. Mama says we’re in prison. She says we aren’t bad people, we are good, and that the really bad people made the prison. Someday Papa will come and rescue us so we can leave.
The ugly man keeps saying he will burn Mama and eat me, but I am more afraid of the dogs than him. He is short like me. I will burn him, too, if he gets too close, and I think he knows it. He looks mean, but afraid. I’ve seen Napoleon. Napoleon is never afraid, not even of dogs.
It is very boring here. Mama has helped make me a knight out of old rags and a horse that rolls on wheels she cut from a walking stick, so I play soldier. I saw soldiers with Papa. It’s hard to remember, because it was very long ago. When I get tired of my toys, there is nowhere to go and no one to play with. Mama works with furnaces and pots and curly tubes. Nasty juice drips out the end.
She says the world is made up of just a few things, and she is trying to boil smelly soups down to those things. I don’t know why. Grown-ups are boring. I want a boy to play with.
My hands hurt because I burned them melting the bad man. I still have bandages. The bandages make Mama feel better. She calls them magic ribbons and tells me to keep them on. Sometimes I can use them to pick up hot things. She calls me a big word I can’t remember, but she says it means “helper.”
Here is what I remember about Papa. He is very tall, like a giant, and very strong. He can lift me up and hold me upside down. He tickles. He laughs when he’s with me, and never cries. Ever. He had a gun that Napoleon gave him. I wasn’t allowed to touch it.
Sometimes he kisses Mama.
He took me to fun places in Paris, and once we saw the sun shine through a magnifying glass and set off a cannon. I covered my ears. I had to promise not to tell Mama that we’d gone there. Once I went down a chimney and found candy, and we slept in a church.
We have fun when we’re with Papa.
Mama said he ran away to protect us, which I don’t understand. I wish he would come. My eyes hurt down here, because it’s always smoky. I sleep a lot, but when I wake up it is always night.
I dream about dogs and the burned man.
I want a house with windows someday. I will live there with Mama and Papa, and Mama promises they will only let good people inside.
Each evening, Mama does something to her bowls of drips. She says she can’t finish, because then they wouldn’t need us anymore. I don’t understand. I wish we could just go away.
Mama says she has a plan. She has asked the ugly man, whose name is Auric, to fetch some powders from the big city and bring them here. She says she can’t finish without more colored powders. So Auric went away, which is good. The burned man went away, too. But other men keep our door locked and feed us bad food.
Mama tells me stories when we lie on the floor to sleep. She knows lots and lots of stories. They are good ones about gods and goddesses and heroes and princesses.
One of my favorite stories is about a knight named Roland. He was the bravest knight in all of France, and the favorite of the king. One day an army was chasing the king, and Roland and his men stayed behind so the king could run away. Roland and his men were attacked by thousands of soldiers. Roland had a great sword and fought for hours. But finally the sword broke.
Roland also had a great horn. He put the horn to his mouth and he blew a big sound. It was like the biggest sound in the world. He blew and he blew and he blew, asking the king to come back and help him. The king did, but it was too late. Roland was dead. The king cried.
I wish I had a great horn. I would blow and blow and blow.
I would blow until Papa came and took us somewhere bright.