feeling he had for Gwenny that he remembered her. So he can be forgiven for overlooking that Gwenny was wearing a new frock, one that hid—as best as possible—the fact that she was on the cusp of becoming a young woman.
The danger signs were there for anyone who chose to see them. Since The Boy chose not to, however, naturally he was oblivious to them. He did not know that the ravages of time were not about to let up upon Gwenny and her brothers any more than they passed over any other children…except, of course, for him.
But that was a tragedy for another time. Currently we are dwelling upon the tragedy unfolding before us now.
When Gwenny had first voyaged to the Anyplace, the Vagabonds and The Boy had resided underground. She had not been enamored of that living situation, asserting that young boys needed to be surrounded by fresh air and sunshine rather than dirt. So The Boy and the Vagabonds had obediently constructed a house secured high in a tree. They had all moved in there and, even after Gwenny and the original Vagabonds had departed (the former to return to her parents, the latter to be adopted and destroyed), The Boy had continued to reside there as he went about his business gathering new Vagabonds. Upon her return, Gwenny found herself once again the mother of children who needed one more desperately than any other children in existence.
The circumstances were markedly different, though, due to the total absence of The Boy and more than half the Vagabonds.
Gwenny, having arrived in the Anyplace after a dizzying and dazzling flight that fairly took her breath away, met a half dozen new Vagabonds that The Boy had acquired from various points around the world. They were a scruffy lot, and there was something in the eyes of many of them that Gwenny found a bit disturbing. This was due partly to the fact that Gwenny was no longer the young, wide-eyed girl that she had been when she had first come to the Anyplace at The Boy’s behest. The adult eye that resided deep within her head was opening wider and wider, and causing her to look down upon the youngsters that she had formerly looked at directly. Where once they had been lacking merely a mother—a role that Gwenny was more than happy to fill—now she saw they were lacking other things. Compassion. Joy. The sheer thrill of childhood. This new crop of Vagabonds was…
…sinister.
Not all of them. Two of them evoked memories of the gentle, credulous enthusiasm that she had seen in all the Vagabonds of days past. One was a young, skinny, slightly twitchy fellow who took great pride in knowing his name, since it had been on a tag on the shirt he’d been found in: “Irregular.”
The other was very different from Irregular in that he was broad shouldered, even stocky, with an open and eager expression that made him appear so eager to be liked, it was impossible not to like him. He was French, and he was called Porthos. He tended to dress like an oversized dog, with a headdress of floppy fur ears; and he was remarkably strong but was one of those who was easy to bully because he didn’t know his own strength.
Within a day of Gwenny’s arriving, The Boy was gone, and he had taken most of their “sons” with him, leaving behind only Porthos and Irregular.
This action, in and of itself, did not alarm Gwenny. The Anyplace was a place of vast and endless adventure. Many had been the times when The Boy had hustled off on some exploit or another, sometimes gone a day, even two. He would invariably return and strut about, pumping his arms and crowing over his varied and courageous deeds. Gwenny and the family would ooh and aah; and if they did not do so with sufficient enthusiasm, Gwenny would say firmly, “Now, show proper respect to your father, children.” Whereupon they would sustain their oohs and aahs for far longer, allowing The Boy more time to puff and strut.
That was when The Boy was being the father and Gwenny the mother. There were other
Gary Pullin Liisa Ladouceur
The Broken Wheel (v3.1)[htm]