The Scholar, the Sphinx, and the Threads of Fate

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Le Havre, France. 1854.

“Professor Shakpana’s Eccentricities Emporium: A Menagerie of the Mind. Illuminating Lantern Show at sundown.”

.

That was what the sign stated above the platform. The platform unfurled like a tongue from the side of a blood-red wagon, a pop-out theater, with small oil lanterns dotted along the edge of the stage. The wagon itself was not so impressive, a rickety, wooden box upon spiderweb-spoke wheels, but behind the platform, the display within the wagon was a curious collection of bottles, jars, cases, potted plants, jewelry, and wrapped bundles. A roll of white linen hung at the top of the opening in the wagon’s side, ready to drop down as a makeshift screen for the “lantern show,” and the special projective lantern could be spotted next to the exhibition of exotic oddities.

The most striking aspect of the emporium, however, was the staggeringly tall man in the blue-and-gray suit with the cerulean top hat accentuated by a long obsidian feather. A necklace of seashells and animal teeth dangled from his neck, a bizarre adornment for his otherwise sophisticated appearance. He held a polished, black cane, topped with the ivory carving of a human skull. Despite the macabre details of his attire, he had an enticing smile of brilliant white teeth, set in a slender dark face. Slick ebony hair was tied back by a blue ribbon at the nape of his neck, and penetrating brown eyes—although, one or two of the passing onlookers would swear his eyes appeared a deep wine-red—looked out among the gathering crowd, ensnaring everyone’s interest with his hypnotic gaze.

“Welcome, one and all, to my emporium of secrets and revelations,” the man announced, his voice resonating with the depth of a kettle drum. “Come, come, don’t be shy. Marvel at our wares from around the world. From the farthest reaches of the East, to the mystical lands of the deserts and savannahs, we have collected the rarest commodities of your dreams, and your nightmares. Bones from the man-eating Bunyip of the waters of Australia…oil from the glands of a corocotta, a creature with the head of a hyena and the body of a lion…the feather of a griffin, said to cure blindness…even bottled lightning collected from the Impundulu, the great Lightning Bird. As the sun sets, we will present our light show, recounting tales of wonders and mystery, set to the melodies of our finest musician. I promise you, you have never seen a show like this before, and you will find yourself viewing the world in a whole new way afterwards.”

The man’s proclamation was enticing a crowd to gather around, curious eyes and ears hungry for the oddities he offered. The people of Le Havre had witnessed many new merchants and entrepreneurs from all over Europe come through their city in recent years, in response to the incredible industrial growth the northern French city had experienced. Only six years earlier, in 1848, the railway had opened Le Havre to a whole new world of travel and imports, as well as the docks and warehouses. This was the dawn of a prosperous age for the city, attracting all manners of men: Anglo-Saxon, Polish, Italian, and North African, which the gathering crowd assumed the man on the stage to be.

The man smiled as he beckoned the interested clientele to come up to the wagon. “Tell Professor Shakpana what it is you seek, what miracle you require--no matter if your problem is trivial or dire. Or, if you prefer a more tender hand, the lovely Lyssa is at your command.”

With that, the professor flourished his hand to his right, and from around the back of the wagon, a tall lithe woman, with flowing curls of russet hair and alabaster skin, glided forth. Her image was strikingly different from Professor Shakpana—perhaps it was because his darker tones made her lightness all the paler by comparison—she was a walking, breathing marble statue. Her dress was off gold with flecks of brown, a gauzy mockery of a serval’s skin, and a similar feline intensity glistened in her chartreuse eyes.

Those eyes captivated all men who dared to look into them and filled every woman with inexplicable envy. Lyssa had a craving for capturing eyes. While some might say they are windows to the soul, eyes were doors to the soul for her, allowing her complete access into minds and hearts—and twisting them into whatever knots of distortion she devised. This was why, when her eyes fell upon one in the audience who refused to allow her entry—a young man who was looking distractedly away—she felt a ravenous hunger to know what was behind that boy’s ocular door. She passed right in front of him, pausing ever so slightly and tilting her head as to shake him from his reverie.

The young man glanced up at her, and his eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. He was surprised—no, he was confused, as if her awareness of him was unexpected. He must have been about eighteen years in age, unless his lean frame and head of thick dark-brown hair made him look younger than he truly was. Lyssa gazed into his chestnut brown eyes, hunting for the youthful innocent, the lovesick poet, or the over-eager adventurer so common in these naïve fawns.

She was surprised to find absolutely nothing. Empty eyes holding no path, no direction, no passion or wonder. Perhaps this one was already broken, drained of his exuberance by hardship, loss and pain? No, because that would have been reflected in his eyes. Sadness and anger were more palpable than happiness and bliss. But this boy’s soul, it was nothing, startlingly nothing. After all, any living thing has something, no matter how meek or small. It was almost as if…this boy wasn’t complete…a vacant vessel.

somethingHow unusual, she thought. Oooh, I do think the professor will like to cure this one.

How unusualOooh, I do think the professor will like to cure this one. She looked over her shoulder at the Professor, who was already eying the odd young man. He sensed the peculiarity too, and a crooked, wolfish grin was twisting the corners of his mouth upwards.

“You, young man,” he called, pointing the skull of his cane at the boy. “What mysteries do you seek answers to? What curiosity ails you that the professor can remedy?”

The young man glanced back and forth between the professor and Lyssa, while his hands remained buried in his pockets. His eyes fell to his shoes, soiled with the thousand stains of traversing the wasteland of poverty, and he shook his head.

“Perhaps a thief has stolen your tongue,” the professor said, to which the crowd chuckled. “But I say, what one loses can be then replaced by something all the better. How about the tongue of an Akaname? Five feet long and can clean a floor spotless.” From his display of wares, he snatched and brought forth a sealed jar with a warty pink coil inside, certainly reminiscent of a tongue but the murky greenness of the liquid that it bobbed in made it difficult to tell.

“I think he has a tongue, but it is shy,” Lyssa replied. She brushed away a strand of hair from the young man’s face with one of her slender, flawless fingers. “My expertise is curing shyness.”

The young man narrowed his eyes at her. He did not find this medicine show amusing, these shysters pedaling facetious fibs. If anything, he felt more ill by standing there, these strangers snaring him with their greedy gazes—he knew they had pinned him as some fool who would be willing to part with his money. The joke would be on them, however, since his pockets were as empty as their promises. The only reason he had joined the crowd as the flashy red wagon had rolled by was because something about the wagon itself, the blood-painted vessel that carried the bits and pieces of supposed “enchanted” entities, plucked at a resonating string in his otherwise silent mind.

Two weeks. That was how long, he figured, he had been in Le Havre since he had awoken on the shore of the English Channel a few miles outside the city. Had he been shipwrecked? kidn*pped? Simply taking a stroll, then he fell and hit his head? He couldn’t recall. Indecipherable fragments of memory wafted in his mind for the first few hours as he had trudged along the road towards the city—dark eyes burning into him, an agonizing female cry, birds in cages, demonic shadows—but they had been swept away as he blended into the hustle and bustle of Le Havre. Finding a place to stay and something to eat took priority over wrestling with his wayward mind to retrieve lost memories, so he decided to ask around if anyone needed a worker, as he would do any labor in exchange for shelter and meals. Since the young man couldn’t remember his own name, he chose to introduce himself as Degare, meaning “lost one.” At least his memory of the French language had not disappeared.

Everyone’s reaction to him—or lack thereof—confounded him at first. Degare did his best to be cordial and upstanding, despite his appearance; his clothes were thread-frayed and sullied, yet there was hint that they had once been of fine quality, fashionable even. He also didn’t reflect the misfortune-stricken poor that harbored much of Le Havre’s alleys and docks; aside from being plagued by amnesia and weariness, the young man was healthy and in perfect condition to work. Yet to everyone he spoke to, they would stare blankly at him for a few seconds—or, more accurately, stare right through him—and then turn back to whatever they had been doing, as if blatantly ignoring him. He figured people did not want to bother with him, and as the day wore on he became desperate for someone to acknowledge him. When he walked into a baker’s shop, with warm, fresh loaves sitting on the countertop, Degare picked one up, expecting the baker to ask for payment or to assist him somehow. But the baker, to Degare’s amazement, looked at the loaves, counted them, recounted them, and then called to a back room,

“Marie, didn’t we have twenty loaves out here? Did you sell one and not tell me?”

Degare held out the loaf towards the baker, but still the flour-dusted man did not seem to know he was there. He spat a sharp, “Hey!” to the baker, who finally lifted his eyes towards Degare—and then looked away again, instantly forgetting. Hunger rumbled in Degare’s stomach with a ravenous ferocity, so while the shame of thievery hung around his head like a noose, he turned and left the shop, devouring the loaf as fast as dogs pick meat bones clean. As night trotted in on hooves of darkness, he made his way to the nearest church, hoping that they would take in a lost soul for the night. Again, no one at the church seemed to be aware of his coming or going, so he nestled in among the other homeless who were staying the night in one of the foyers and fell into a light dreamless sleep.

That was how it was for the next two weeks, as Degare could help himself to anyone’s food or wares without consequence and could sleep anywhere without question. He became bold enough to stay at one of the nicer inns, occupying unused rooms for the night by helping himself to the innkeeper’s keys (and putting them back where he found them) and “borrowing” some food and drink from the kitchen, not too much to cause a stir since Degare did not eat much. It gnawed away at him to take advantage of people and leave them confused and sometimes even frustrated and not knowing how they lost things, but it kept Degare’s stomach full and his body warm at night. As Degare traversed the city searching for answers about his predicament, he got a close view of his fellow forgotten and destitute that shivered in the corners and shadows of the slums. While so much of Le Havre was thriving from incoming trade and industrial improvement, the lowly suffered fever, the siren call of alcohol, and gut-grinding hunger. Thus why, when presented with a gaudy medicine show designed to deceive customers out of their hard-won money for nothing more than frivolous fabrications, Degare was less than entertained by Professor Shak-whoever and his angelic assistant—whom he was sure was far more devil than angel. But he was somewhat relieved that someone, finally, acknowledged his presence, and because these two people did, the rest of the crowd was noticing Degare as well.