OXFORDSHIRE ENGLAND, 2010
When I turned seven years old, shortly after the birth of my sister, I was unceremoniously shipped off to live with my aunt in a small parish in Oxfordshire. Her cottage lay not far from the Thames, and so there was some forest and marsh about the area, though we were quite landlocked.
To the west could be found the rolling hills of the Cotswolds; they rose up gently from the bucolic meadows of the upper Thames. Stone villages and stately manors with vast, well-maintained gardens speckled the area.
Ivana Estella surpassed my mother Katya’s age by a decade. My aunt defined the very idea of an eccentric wand maker and was perhaps as eccentric as she was brilliant at her craft. She loved unwisely and almost married in her youth. James Cafferty, later Sir James Cafferty, jilted her at the altar on the objection of his parents to his forming a foreign connection.
That unhappy outcome left my aunt bitter, and she would frequently take to wearing her tattered wedding dress around the house for weeks on end. During these bouts of distress, she was particularly apt to use her razor’s strop on my furry legs. She was firm in her belief that the nastiest habits of young boys could well and truly be whipped out of them.
As a young and precocious satyr, I received my fair share of whippings whenever the slightest hint of my essential nature would show up. Satyrs don’t have a puberty in the strictest sense; however, during the early development of our seductive powers, we are prone to long bouts of priapism, which my aunt took great umbrage to.
I can’t say she was particularly wrong in her treatment, as a very long beating tended to reduce what she called my affliction. I soon found a far better solution to the issue. If I focused on my surroundings in every little detail, it would distract me both from the pain of a beating and also the compulsion of my instincts.
Fastidious attention to detail, to sights, sounds, and colours, as well as the practice of focusing on my diction, gave my mind no time to wander into obscene places and thus call down my aunt’s wrath.
My aunt was not abusive for the sake of it, and she showed genuine delight in what she perceived was the efficacy of her remedy. Once I was able to master my impulses, the frequency of my whippings dropped off precipitously, and I found my aunt, though still eccentric, was of a passing warmth in regards to me.
Aunt Ivana would occasionally take on projects, which I assume, in retrospect, was how she earned coin. She would become so consumed with them that I would be quite neglected for weeks and left to my own devices.
In the early years of living with my aunt, I was not permitted to go outside and play. As I got older, shortly after turning eight, I mastered my instincts so well that after a few months of good behaviour, I was suddenly set loose upon the riverside. Though not many people lived near our cottage, I saw them off in the distance, and we exchanged waves. I assumed at the time this was what it was to have friends, so I had quite a few of them.
I spent my days in the willowy treeline of the Thames and in the small wooded areas near the cottage, never wanting to stray too far and risk upsetting my aunt. It had taken quite a bit to earn my free ranging, and so I was determined not to lose it.
Now down some way from our house was a very old stone bridge, and that was really the extent of my playpen, and I was certainly not allowed to cross the bridge to inspect the other side of the river.
Along the bridge were hung gibbets, though I had never seen anyone displayed in them. The practice was not out of style in Oxfordshire by any means. However, we had in the Eldritch world of that area a particularly low rate of crime.
On a spring day, late in the afternoon, I had made my way to the bridge when I noticed a small pair of feet extending down from one of the gibbets, and I cached myself behind some tall weeds on the riverbank and stared in fascination at them.
After some minutes of study, I heard the person in the gibbet sing a mournful song, whose words I didn’t understand, or at least I don’t recall understanding them. I thought they must be in another language. I only spoke Russian and English, as my family had immigrated to the area in 1917 during the revolution.
A soft and pretty voice got lower as I slinked towards it. Like that of a siren, it enticed me to approach it, and I forgot all about my danger of being so near a criminal that the world had seen fit to execute by starvation and exposure.
The cage spun gently, creaking as I sneaked up to it. The dirty shoeless feet of a woman dangled over the edge. I saw that the cage was sealed at the bottom with cross bars. On the ground below it were the stains of her waste, which was by now dried. I assumed she must have been in there for days.
Stark naked and grimy, she hummed to herself in the cage. A small, plump sort of woman in her middle age, or at least thirty, with blond hair and close-set eyes. You could see the whites all the way around them like they were bulging from her face.
“Oy, whos this then?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure I was supposed to be talking to her. I wasn’t really allowed to talk to strangers. My aunt instructed me to keep my distance, and that instruction was backed up with many hours of leathery reinforcement.
“Come closer littl’un. We ain’t about to hurt cha, is we?”
“I — I’m not sposed to.”
The woman scoffed. “An’oo says you ain’t sposed to?”
“My aunt, I shouldn’t talk to strange people.”
“Oh, I see; yes, she’s right.” The woman lifted her leg and pushed her arm through the hole in the bottom of the cage.
“The names Molly, they call me Molly the Dolly, and you are?”
I twisted my hoof into the stone of the bridge. I supposed if we knew each other’s names, then we wouldn’t be strangers, and so I shook her hand.
“Nikolai,” I said.
“Oy, Nikky Bikky, it is then. Oor, seeing as yer not caged an’ all, you got any water?”
“No, I haven’t any.” I looked around. It didn’t occur to me then, but there was something profoundly sadistic about gibbeting someone over a river. The Thames was not particularly foul in this area, though I wouldn’t suggest it was clean. But dying of thirst above a river is particularly tantalising.
“See them great big leaves there, on the bank? Hows about you take one and kind of cup it like, and fill it with water?”
I thought about this for a moment. “I not sposed to get dirty though.”
“Choo mean?”
I pointed to my furry legs and cloven hooves, which were not well made for traipsing through the mud. Molly eyed them for a moment. I couldn’t quite tell what was going through her mind, but her lips relaxed, and her shoulders slumped. I felt guilty at having said it. What was some mud on my legs compared to someone dying of thirst?
“I’ll do it!”
Molly perked up, and her eyes smiled. “A decent gentlehoof you are Bikky, kind too.”
Unfortunately, as I approached the river, my hooves kept getting trapped in the muck. The first time my small and unskilled hands spilt more than half of the water before the makeshift cup made it up the bank, onto the bridge, and through the hole to Molly’s lips. I performed four more trips before she had her fill. Though I suspected she wanted more water, I doubted the taste of the Thames encouraged it.
“Listen, Bikky, where’s about you live?”
I innocently pointed down the river. Our cottage wasn’t visible and was at least a kilometre or more down the way. “Not far that way, with my aunt.”
“Oh, an aunt, huh? She fond of cooking this aunt?”
“Not much, really.”
“But surely Bikky with his fat little cheeks gets proper wittles an’ such, no?”
“Some, and bread with butter. Though it’s very dry, the butter helps.”
“What’s she do, this aunt of yours?”
“She makes wands.”
“Wands, you don’t say! I could do with a wand.”
“Are you a sorcerer?” I asked.
“A bit, but not without a wand, see.” Molly held up her dirty hands. Some people can only do magic with a focusing device. They are particularly weak sorcerers and usually find work on the streets or in petty crime. They have just enough power to be better than average at unlocking things or picking pockets.
“My aunt has loads of wands; only they’re very expensive.”
“I see; well, I haven’t any coin at the moment, say — how’s about I just borrow it for a bit? Have you ever seen magic?”
“Yes, my aunt can do it. I can’t, though.”
“Course you can Bikky; you just need the right teachin’ s’all.”
“But I’m a satyr, and I’m not sposed to use my powers.”
“That’s true, you shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing at your age anyway, but anyone can be a sorcerer if they want it bad enough. Run home and bring back some wittles, a wand, and some water, or even better, some ale or wine if you’ve got it. And I’ll teach you!”
This seemed a capital arrangement to my young mind, so I ran home as fast as my hooves could carry me.