When a mother dies, it shatters the home. When the home is already broken, then her death kills the family. When a young boy is all that survives, it’s as if the family never was to begin with.
Leo buried his mother on a cold day in fall. He literally buried his mother: he dug the grave in the Gray City’s public cemetery. They were so poor he couldn't afford a casket, had to get the groundskeeper to help him lower the sheet-wrapped body into the earth. He lingered over the hole as he threw the earth back in. It felt wrong and sick, what he was doing to her, even though she was dead.
He gave back the shovel and left. It started to rain.
The next days were a blur. Well, no, they did not blur in his mind, he knew everything that happened he just didn’t care. He stole the day after the burial. He was hungry, but the grocer called the Watch anyway. The Officer of the Watch was harsh at first but then softened when he found the death certificate that Leo kept in his pocket. The judge asked questions that Leo did not know the answer to. Who is your father, where do you live, is there any relatives. When he did not respond, she got frustrated.
“Young man, I cannot help you if you don’t let me,” she said from way high up on her throne of a chair. Leo liked the fancy hammer she had. He giggled when she sat back abruptly and her robes folded in an odd pattern. The courtroom couldn’t help but chuckle. The judge softened, and conferred with the Officer of the Watch for a moment. Leo drifted away until she said “son, how old are you?”
“I am 12. And a half.” Everyone was shocked silent, Leo thought maybe he hadn’t addressed her properly, “your ladyship.”
Another chuckle. The judge and the Officer talked some more. Leo was getting increasingly self-conscious, and so stopped paying attention.
The next he noticed he was in an orphanage. Only for a few days until it was shut down, but he learned all the children’s names, and even played with some of them. The kind woman they called “Sister Ruth”, and she watched over them. Some Officers came by and she went with them, then other officers came and took all the children to the market. The market was a big, busy, colorful place they had been once or twice before. The children stood one by one all alone on a stage while a loud man talked very fast to the crowd below. One by one the children left, each with a different person, or a different family. Some people left with a whole bunch of children. Leo hardly noticed when it was his turn to stand on stage and look out at the faces yelling and smirking with teeth sharp and eyes wild as the loud man yelled and the yells pushed him into the crowd where a tall stern man grasped his shoulder and led him away. He was thrust into a fancy automobile and the stern man got in the front and told his driver to go home. At the word Leo woke up and looked around. They were driving out of the city.
“Hi, what’s your name?” Said the girl who sat across from him. Leo hadn’t noticed her until now, but she was painfully beautiful. He forgot everything he had ever known before as he gazed into her eyes.
“I’m Leo,” he said, “who are you?”
The little girl puffed up with pride as much as she could “I am Gwen Smithson of House Greenwood!” she grew a little less beautiful as she acted haughty, and she knew it. She lowered her aspect again and said “and I am glad to meet you, Leo.”
When she said his name, he thought he could be happy, even if she was the daughter of the stern man who had just bought him as a slave.
