Stay Gold
By: Sukhroop Singh
Tags: Short Story, Fiction

The father threaded his way through the opening and closing gaps of the sand dunes. He drew long breaths as if it were a self-satisfactory habit, like drugs, or smoking cigarettes. In his arms stayed a dangerously minimalistic supply of apples of bright reds and tinted greens, contained in a small basket. His clothing was ragged, betraying the father to the sniping wind, but what would draw your attention on first sight of this man was his eyes. Bagshot was their name, drained from a full life the likes of which was common. Their borders purple, their insides restrained, and their message clear.

At the father’s side was a young man, of that age ordinarily dreading of anti-climax, when one finally settled and life became little more than a routine. This man’s eyes, however, were hopeful, and that was what pushed the group through the rough terrains.

The group was reaching a slight bend, the road far past them and signs of life even further down, when a noise sounded close to them. They halted, and their eyes traveled around suspiciously. After some time, they assumed the best and resumed walking.

Then the same resounding crack went off, and a large puddle of red, that dreaded color representing everything bad in its characteristic threatening sense, appeared on the father’s arm. The young man shrieked immaturely and fumbled for herbs, but the red was uncontrollable. It spread across the entire canvas, a canvas that was never white, and soon the canvas fell on its stand. The father fell.

The next few moments were a blur, and all that Tarom remembered about that night was his father’s last word and the apples flying through the air.

“Look for magic, son. Look for it, feel for it, and maybe it will come. Taste freedom.”

Then Tarom was taken through the threshold, never to enter back into that stage that passes by so quickly we never categorize it — childhood innocence.

Tarom was lying awake on his bed. His hands unconsciously spun a small red apple, an action in reality difficult to perform, as golden shackles bit his arms, restricting any free movement. They were representative of his enslavement, unjust as it was.

His mind, however, was far from the material world. He was thinking of his father, and attempting to remember his father’s assumably contorted face in his last, small scene in life’s short story. As he could not adequately perform this, he instead reminisced on his father’s last words, specifically the last two.

Taste freedom, he’d said. But how? How did one taste freedom? It wasn’t possible! He was thinking about this for the past years, and he now decided that more thought regarding it would create more harm than help. So his mind instead drifted to the vultures who captured his father and enslaved him. They were true cowards, and their faults ran through his mind like school track stars.

This shouldn’t have happened! Tarom’s heart suddenly pulsed with anger. I should be living right now, with… with parties, and drinking, and, and… friends!

His mind raced with thoughts of injustice, and then he heard a click.

He examined the entire room, but nothing seemed out of place. And so he pricked his ears for the sound to come again. It didn’t. After listening for a time, he finally thought that he needed rest. He closed his eyes, but then he heard the click again, along with a sound of metal banging on the floor. He opened his eyes and a strange feeling came over him. It was as if something was … missing. He slowly looked down at his golden shackles.

They were no longer on his hands!

He leaped up and punched the air. He was free! Oh, how great it felt! He was FREE!

After he calmed down, he realized what he needed to do. His mind drifted back to his father, and he thought of what his father would have done. Images of that scene appeared in his mind, but what resonated in Tarom’s abstract at that moment were the apples in his father’s basket.

Hope glinted in his dark, deep-set eyes. The joy radiating from Tarom at that time was so immense… He now thought of notions ranging on the positive spectrum, and a smile creased his face like it had not for most of his abnormal childhood years.

He jumped off the bed and ran to the shed door. He pulled it open and sprinted as fast and as quietly as he could to the apple orchard.

When he reached it he pushed open the metal gate and then cringed in fear as the gate hit the fence. A loud clanging noise echoed across the farm grounds, one most probably rousing someone that Tarom surely did not want to rise. However, he didn’t look back to see if anyone was watching him. His only concern at the moment was that apple — the thought of it consumed him. It was as if his entire life being rested on that apple, a sad sort of depression, one that the victim is blind to in objectivity.

It was a moonless night, prompting Tarom to blindly reach up into the branches. Finally, he grabbed hold of one of the branches and tore the apple off. He immediately took a large bite.

It was better than he thought it would be. It was so many things at once — it was crunchy, it was sweet…but most of all, it tasted of the good things in life — of freedom.

He finished the apple in three swift bites and then stood for a couple of seconds, savoring the feeling of freedom and knowledge. The sensation of it all coursed through him. He felt that all was good with the world.

As he exited the orchard that night, Tarom felt invincible, more alive than he had in a long time. Little did he know that the farm owner’s son, a boy of no more than five or six, was carefully tucked away behind a thicket, and witnessed the entire scene.

A couple of days later, the slaves were retreating toward their shed. As one of the guards put his shackles back on him, Tarom thought of something, a thought that brought that same wrinkled smile to his face.

“What’ch yer smiling ‘bout there, yer great lump?” the guard asked.

Tarom dropped his smile.

“Exactly,” the guard said with a low chuckle.

Was it possible to escape the shackles again? He assumed that it was. He figured he just needed to repeat what he had done a few days earlier. But what had he done?

He recalled feeling strong emotions — feeling sorry for the old man, anger at the farm owner, desire for that apple. So maybe, to activate the magic, he needed to… feel something. But what? He didn’t know. That night he fell asleep and dreamed of apples and orchards.

The next day, Tarom was heading toward the shed after finishing his morning chores when he saw one of the other slaves getting beaten, the whips harder and louder than anything he had ever heard. He immediately ran toward the guard, hatred flooding through him, and before he realized what he was doing punched the guard smack in the face.

Gasps burst from the other slaves, as they stopped what they were doing and stared at Tarom’s outstretched hand and the bloody guard. However, Tarom didn’t care — the anger he felt was unstoppable. It made him unable to think. In one swift movement, he picked up the whip, raised it into the air, and with all his might brought it down on guard’s back. A feeling burned inside him, and he just stood there motionless as the farm owner came rushing toward him.

That night Tarom was lying on his bed shackled, his body still aching and bloody. He thought of what had occurred after the incident with the guard. While his own beating was terrible, he was even more concerned with what happened to the other slave.

He suddenly welled up with anger at the guard, it seemed like it might burst him in an uncomical sense. And then he heard it. A click. He immediately glanced toward his shackles, and that smile wrinkled his face yet again.

They were off! He had done it! He immediately jumped off the bed, and kicked the shackles across the room. He laughed and laughed until he couldn’t anymore. He thanked his father. Finally, he calmed down and realized what he needed to do.

He already had an apple for himself, but what if he could share that sweet taste of freedom with the other slaves? It was an unselfish thought, surely.

And so he exited the shed, but this time carrying a small basket. He moved swiftly toward to the orchard. This time when he reached the gate, he pushed it open slowly.

He dropped the basket and ran toward the apple trees. He stretched up for them, plucking apples in threes and fours in both hands until the basket was full. He picked up the basket and turned to leave when he heard a small voice.

“Are you stealing?”

Tarom froze and instinctively looked toward the thicket. He saw the farm boy standing there. He knew he was in trouble.

“Uh…”

“My dad said it’s not nice to steal.”

“But … we need food…and more of it.”

“But don’t we give you enough food?”

“No. No, you don’t.”

“What? But we have so much food! Why don’t you slaves have any?”

That was when Tarom thought, maybe the boy wasn’t thinking of reporting him after all.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

There was silence afterward. A couple more minutes passed, and Tarom, still holding the apples, turned and ran toward the shed.

When he reached the door of the shed, Tarom realized a problem. How could he help the slaves harness the magic? He brooded on the subject. How had he harnessed his magic?

Surely it was through feeling emotion. Of that he was now certain. But it must be something more… He, however, did not know, and so he plopped down on the wet grass and leaned against the broken shed walls.

After some time, he heard footsteps arriving in his direction, and leaped toward the nearest bush, and bulked down so that the arriver would not know of his presence. He sat behind the bush for some time until, finally, someone appeared. It was the farm owner’s son.

The boy stared around at the shed and bushes, in that curious manner adulthood mysteriously stole through age. The boy then looked down at the basket, and then his eyes pointed toward the bush, as if they knew Tarom was behind them.

And then -

“I know you are there,” the boy quietly said, and so Tarom stepped out from behind the bush.

“Why were you hiding?”

Tarom did not reply.

“It’s okay… what’s wrong?”

And with that, Tarom’s emotional conscious halted, replaced by mere, unconnected thoughts. Thoughts of his father’s death, thoughts of his treatment as a slave, thoughts of his own moral code, and its injustice and rage. He thought out his notion of magic, and how to conquer it. But then he realized that, maybe, he didn’t have the answer, but someone, perhaps a child of moral innocence, did.

“What is your name?”

“S-sam,” he replied.

“Sam, may I ask you a question?”

“Please don’t make it hard.”

Tarom paused for a moment and then laughed. It was a pure laugh, one that didn’t come with any consequences, one that wasn’t even forced.

“I will not make it hard, I promise… Sam, what is magic?”

Tarom immediately felt inherited idiocy uttering that, but he also knew, and learned, that it was the morally correct thing to do.

And then came the boy’s response.

“I think magic is like… doing stuff in weird ways.”

“It is, is it?”

Tarom pushed open the shed door, and woke up the nearest slave. The man woke up groggily, most probably with a sour distaste for Tarom, and sat upright.

“What?”

“What do you dislike?” Tarom questioned abruptly.

The slave stared at him curiously, and then responded.

“The owners.”

“Why?”

“They do mean.”

“And what is mean?”

“What in the WORLD are you doing, son?”

“Making sure you’re feeling.”

“Feelin’ what?”

“Emotions… emotions of anger. Only those emotions that result in bad times will ultimately create excitement for good times. Distaste for bad things creates hope for good things, and if we let that go we may never harness magic. And most people let go.”