MY ILLNESS

Blood and bones, veins apop,
what maker lets this be?
Could I have been a criminal
in lives 'fore I was me?

Christ almighty, does it hurt
and sickly do I feel,
what chunks of horrors do I wretch
on unsuspecting fields?

oh, the strife, oh the trouble,
oh, it burns and aches,
whatever substance makes this stop,
I'll sell my sweat to make!

Then it stops, and all at once,
regret takes back its toll
a fool of me's been made again
to see myself so rolled

now it seems but drama trite,
to tell of what's befallen,
I'll never get the trauma right
to soothe like those who've fallen

memory of my fault in plight
it finds my way 'fore long
and makes me guess my Godward slight
that I was born so wrong.

* * *

I sat in that cart for hours, wondering just how far away the other coast really was. Apparently, it was a long ways off – if I wanted to go anywhere fun, I'd have to make the trek. It was that, or head for the glaciers westward. As long as I helped load and offload barrels and boxes, the jockey (whose face and name I never learned) was fine with me staying – but I wasn't given a room to sleep in, and my food was whatever his horse didn't eat. At night, I had plenty of time to myself, so I chose to write about what had happened to me before I worked for The Manager. A stretch of time I feared I'd need to ignore, to make my story beat with your hearts, oh dear Readers. Now I think I might as well, so you can understand who I am, and just what the hell I come from, that's made me this way – and why I'd rather skip town than ever go back too soon.

I wasn't actually born in the house I grew up in, and I've ne'er actually met my birth parents. I know, I called a man 'my father' and a woman 'my mother'. I'll continue to do so, for they were that to me, while they walked. I was never told where I came from – only that as an infant, I was left in the care of a Surgeon and a Teacher. This was because, and don't boo me for getting your hopes up earlier, I was born a cripple. Yes, it's true. I was not gifted with perfect, chiseled physiology like Adonis and every hero of every tale that's ever mattered. Instead, I had a lisp, a terrible limp, and I was considered quite dumb. My language arts were fine, but socially, I couldn't make heads or tails of people – and my facial blindness didn't help.
The Surgeon called my condition, at least physically: "a gaping of the top-mouth, upper lip gap, and a twisting of both feet. Right, far more severe than the left."
I was told it took a broken bone in my right ankle to set it straight, while the left received only a mere slicing at the heel. These deformities were all fixed before I could even walk, though I do recall walking on a four-legged crutch when I was still in diapers. An odd mix of old and young, you could say. It's okay to laugh at that! It really is. I grew up into a healthy kid, with only a slight bending inwards of my right foot, and some scars to show for my survival. My tongue had been clipped underneath, my top-of-mouth sewn down the center – I could still feel the seams as I licked the inside. I also had a little white line down the middle of my upper lip, which faded over time but pulled my mouth into an odd, upside-down 'v' shape. In a mirror, I looked a bit like a cat, or a small dog – big eyes an' all. Well, they're a bit folded from my Thayan side, but you know what I mean. My two front teeth also showed, which never embarrassed me as much as my foot and my weakness of gait. My teeth gave me some problems as well, actually – I had a bit of a snaggle-tooth from one that'd grown in sideways, inside from my left upper canine. Which, by the way, all my canines were surprisingly sharp – until The Surgeon zealously filed them down, trying to make my bite clamp down more cleanly. I've always resented that, actually – I preferred them rather pointed. My ankle had an especially gnarled zipper of whitish, insewn flesh, running all the way from my femur to alongside my inner foot (all the way to the big toe's knuckle). It ran high enough my leg that I needed a sock to cover it. Also, for the record? I was browned mostly by the sun, and very recently – I'd been a bit paler as a child. Not all African people are so dark, mind you! But it definitely made me feel less like my own blood, that's for sure – and that tan was certain to wane again if I kept out of the sun for long enough.
Aside from all that, I was cute enough, though not as strong as the other children. My legs felt like stone at times, and even my arms had a way of locking up when I really needed them. Speech was difficult for me as well, and I felt the tongues I needed to speak were out of reach – nobody was around to teach me Thayan, German, Nordic, or Arabic, which I somehow craved. I did pick up some French, though, and a bit of Japanese from The Manager's associates. You'd be surprised who shows up where, when people have access to travel – now imagine where they stop to sleep, and who's sleeping with them. Makes the whole 'racial purity' argument seem rather thin, doesn't it? Unless, I contend, that they've all kept their hands to themselves, every last one of them. That would suit the Caths just fine, I think, but even they've been known to seed fields outside their own holds. In fact, they were borderline famous for it – a Missionary group was practically a bag of seeds on wheels.
As for English, which was locally colored Celtic, I relied on The Teacher. I wasn't allowed to speak the older words, because nobody knew them quite as well as they had a hundred years ago. Something had shifted, and they'd all begun to forget – many an argument was had over the pronunciation of words, like whether it was 'keltic' or 'seltic'. Seltic sounded too much like salt, or a Scythian, to me. So I stuck with my harder 'c', there. The Teacher had taught me not just how to speak, but how to describe my own sounds, as well – which made them easier to shift. Her manner was strict, yet gallant, and her beautiful way of speaking had me striving to match. By the time I could fully talk, my lisp had developed into an odd replacement for the letter 's': a hiss that was made entirely in my throat, by closing it as tight as I could. I didn't know when I'd started it, or anyone else who could do it – except a traveling fire-breather, who told me I might be "part dragon". The thought excited me, so I was reluctant to part with my neat little trick. It was convincing enough, phonetically, that many people didn't know I HAD a lisp, somehow. But other times, I was laughed at and bullied, and all I could make was a stupid-sounding 'hhh'. I had my head dunked in the pond over it, by two older boys. Like a violent baptism. The few times my siblings felt like being seen with me (which was rarely), they wound up defending me, and getting tired of it fast. I got so used to being disliked (practically on-sight once they knew me) that even when my lisp was coached gone and my legs recovered, I was telling those older boys off at a distance just to run away from them. If you recall, that was the game I previously mentioned, that ended in a barrel. But I left out why they'd bullied me, which I suppose was an attempt to hide my own shame. To make myself sound run-of-the-mill, and that my hazing was boys being boys. It was, and it was crueller than that, too. It was also the reason girls didn't associate with me, for fear our potential children would be born like gnarled roots, all twisted inside of themselves. That was funny enough, though, because we were still young enough to think that happened by kissing. Not that I was ever kissed, at that point. Either way, I was anything but popular (my only friend was The Knight), and what was worse was that I saw their point cleanly. I was a cripple, after all – a no good lamer. At least, compared to them. I do, remember, though, one time they cheered for me – I'd sprinted for the first time and passed the rest of the pack, during a field dash. And I immediately tuckered out and placed last again. But that stoked a craving in me, to run, and told me if I improved, there was love waiting for me – in some form or another.
But I didn't want too much of it. The adults babied me, condescended at me, and I despised that because it threatened my independence. It also made the other kids hate me just a little more, because I got extra snacks and patience. This was, to many of them, better treatment than they'd been given by their own parents. To see those same people smile at me must have been too much to beir, so I didn't want their smiles at all. Not until all were met fairly... even those who'd hated me deserved to be loved. It wasn't until later I'd learn just how much that belief of mine was to be tested.