Posted by Bowen Cates on 3/6/2008, 4:09 pm
24.207.121.197
A Tale of Entwinement
By Bowen Cates
Chapter 1: Which Starts The Wheel Turning
Canada, British Columbia, Bowen Island, 662 Cates hill Lane, 2007, Tuesday August 22nd, 10:37pm standard British Columbian time.
Theodore wrapped his arms around the trunk of the tree; it was his favorite place in the whole world, away from everyone and everything in it. He wanted to scream into the sky and hear the echo fade away into nothing, to grind all his anger into the bark of his perch and make it stay there, forever encased in sap like the remains of some prehistoric insect.
It wasn’t fair! Why should his brother make fun of him? Just because Theodore liked to be alone and read? Just because he preferred the fictional to the real! He pounded the tree trunk. And then stopped, catching himself “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you, I really didn’t”.
He burst into tears, knowing if he went down that it would only make things worse, he didn’t understand how events could have gone so wrong! The day had started out with such promise! He had woken up with a wonderful feeling.
He had looked himself over in the mirror and smiled “you’re fourteen today” he’d informed it, addressing his reflection “and today is going to be the best day ever!” what a rotten liar he had turned out to be.
His mom had made his favorite breakfast: waffles with loads of maple syrup. And they had planed to go to the movies to see a film. The theater was doing a theme week of just really old movies and he had been looking forward to seeing ‘House Boat’.
Just as they were getting ready to go, his dad had suggested that as they had finished breakfast early Theodore should open a couple of presents before they left.
He had agreed to this idea very readily, and his mom had brought out a big package wrapped up in dark red paper, the color rich people always had their carpeting.
Theodore had inspected the whole thing before opening it, wanting to be as much like his role model as possible. His brother, Matt was getting impatient and told him to “hurry up and open the damn thing” but he was grinning, as if he knew what was inside and wanted to see his brother’s reaction Theodore took no notice but slowly began to undo the ribbon.
He gasped
It was an entire set of Sherlock Holmes stories, each in a separate book with color illustrations. He flipped the first one open eagerly, it was thicker then most of the other ones ‘The Sign Of The Four’ its spine declared proudly in gold letters.
“Oh thank you, thank you!” he had shouted with glee as his parents’ faces broke out in wide grins.
Then everything had gone wrong. Matt grabbed the book out of his brother’s hands “cool” he had said smiling, but his grin had changed somehow, to which one which harbored no good intentions.
“Give it back Matt!” Theodore had Begged desperately
“No, I only want to see it”
“Matthew, give your brother back his book, please”
“Ah come on dad, I only want to see,” he had taunted, waving it just out of Theodore’s grasp.
“Matt!” cried his mother “give it back; it’s his birthday for gods sake!”
But too late, Theodore lunged for it and with a blood curdling Rip his precious book sailed though the air, shedding pages as it soared past the partly open door and landed with a ‘squelch’ in the mud by the front steps.
“I hate you!” Theodore had yelled and the, swiping what was left of his book from the puddle, had crawled up his tree as fast as he could manage.
His mother had tried to get him to come down “now Teddy dear, we’ll get you another book, they sell them separately too, we can get you another one exactly the same.”
But he had been too upset to listen, his birthday had been ruined. His father had said that they would have a wonderful time, that “you didn’t need other kids to have a birthday you’d remember till you were 92”
Now it was all burning before him, nothing was good anymore, he didn’t even care about the movie. He had been waiting for months, dropping hints as to what would be his dream birthday gift.
He loved those “stupid old dust mops” as Matt called them. Theodore had been getting them out from the library over and over again for the past year, he could even recite the beginnings of some of his favorites. For two seconds he had been the happiest child on earth, but then, as always, his stupid brother had had to ruin it because he wanted to get a rise out of his younger sibling.
Now, hours later, Theodore was still holding the book to his chest, half of it was gone and most of the stuff left was illegible because of the layers of dirt coating the pages.
He could still hear his parents’ arguing, they had long ago sent Matt up to his room. Another time Theodore would have thought that to be the funniest thing: a 17 year old being grounded.
Right now though, no punishment seemed sufficient.
He suppressed a fresh wave of sobs and began to climb down the tree, it was getting dark, the shaded outline of the house and garden, the splotches of light from the kitchen windows…it all looked so picturesque.
“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman, I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name…” he began to recite, as he got closer to the ground.
He was about ten branches from the garden path when he heard it…people talking…people talking in the garden just below his tree; he immediately began to pull himself back up.
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