Chapter 1.8 - In which Percy is a bad influence

Percy

Month 9, Day 27, Monday 1:35 a.m.

Percy scratched at the edge of the tattoo, but no artificial edge peeled up. He licked one of his fingers, then regretted it because of the bitter, dirty taste, but still used the wet digit to rub at the black lines on his skin.

Percy stared at it in astonishment, turning his skin to better catch the light. It didn’t hurt or have any texture.

“Oh, Radiant Maiden,” his mom muttered, her eyes fluttering toward the ceiling as if to ask the angel for help. “Percival Irving, I cannot believe you,” she said, her voice low and deep, but quickly rising in both volume and pitch. “Out all night, and what were you doing? Do you think I don’t recognize the smell of a pub? Let me smell your breath. Were you drinking? Did you get drunk and get a tattoo!?”

Percy kept staring at the inside of his wrist, his mother’s voice becoming background noise. That was quite dangerous, as any sign that someone wasn’t properly listening to her was a cause for anger all on its own, but he couldn’t help it. Could he have woken, concussed from his collision with the wall, wandered off and gotten a tattoo, and then passed out again? Was the place he woke even the same alley he originally passed out in?

Percy couldn’t be totally sure. Most of Gilbratha’s alleys looked much the same to him, and he hadn’t been paying particular attention to his exact location when he took out the talisman.

By this point, his mother had taken off her slipper and was hitting him about the shoulders with it. It didn’t hurt, but Percy still flinched away from each blow. One poorly judged attempt to get away from her bumped him into the end table next to the couch and sent the lantern tottering over the edge.

Percy’s hand flashed out and he grabbed the lantern by the handle, the movement so smooth that the flame didn’t even sputter. He looked at his mom, and she looked silently back at him, lowering her slipper.

He couldn’t help but grin. He worked with his father to train his reflexes for situations exactly like this, but most of the time it didn’t work out. It felt nice to win for once.

Lysander shook her head slowly, giving him a supremely unimpressed look. “Is this that rebellious period during puberty that people keep talking about? You really do everythingto the best of your ability.”

Aethelwulf skipped past her to get a better look at Percy’s wrist. “Whoa, awesome! A butterfly!”

Gideon padded out of the hallway, one of his long socks bunched around his ankle, the other disappearing under the hem of his long sleep shirt. Apparently, he was not as sound a sleeper as Percy had hoped. “Mommy, I had a dream that Percy got stomped by a horse!” Gideon whined, face scrunching up with the onset of tears.

“I’m fine,” Percy assured him. “Right here, not stomped by any horses.”

This did not reassure Gideon, and as their mother was drawn away to comfort the boy, the front door opened and Percy’s dad stepped through.

The man looked weary, but he perked up somewhat at finding all of his children home. “Quiet down, children. I could hear you all from down the street.” Percy thought it was most likely his dad had heard his mom from down the street, but wisely kept that thought silent. “Percy. What happened?” his dad asked.

Lysander piped up before anyone else could respond. “Percy was out drinking, and he got a tattoo!” she said with a kind of vindictive triumph.

Percy shot her a glare, and she stuck out her tongue at him.

Their dad blinked, his eyes roving over Percy as if to find evidence of this statement.

Percy shook his head frantically, tugging to retrieve his wrist from Aethelwulf’s grasp. “No, that’s not what happened. It’s kind of complicated—”

Aethelwulf flounced over to their dad, holding up her arms for him to pick her up. “I want a tattoo, too!” she announced. “A butterfly, just like Percy’s. On my cheek!”

Percy’s mom shot him a fiery death glare. “See what kind of influence you’re being for your siblings, Percy!”

“You can’t get a tattoo on your cheek, Aethelwulf,” Lysander informed her. “Only criminals do that.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, Lysander! Percy, tell her! Tell her I can get a tattoo on my cheek if I want to!”

Their mom’s glare only grew stronger, and she began muttering as she held Gideon close while bouncing and patting his back. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear what the neighbors say when Aethelwulf starts telling all their children how she’s going to get a face tattoo, to be just like her brother.”

“Are you hurt, Percy?” his dad asked, stepping closer and speaking softly over his wife’s muttering and his daughters’ argument.

“Not badly,” Percy assured him. “I’m sorry for worrying you. And please don’t listen to anything Lysander says.” As the others drew his parents’ attention, Percy escaped to the washroom.

The Irvings couldn’t afford one of those magic chamberpots, so they had a normal toilet that flushed into a secondary chamber if they poured a few pints of water in fast enough to push the bowl’s contents through the u-bend. Their sink ran on water that was collected and filtered from the roof. The heating spell on their water chamber was failing, which was a problem when a family of six shared a single washroom—especially when three of those people were women with long, kinky hair that needed to be combed and styled while wet. But at this time of night, the heating spell should have had enough time to work.

Percy undressed, stepped into the tub, and turned the handle for the shower spigot, which sprinkled him with a weak stream of water that felt glorious on his skin, as long as he kept it away from the bump on his forehead. Percy didn’t indulge for long, mostly from long-standing habit formed of needing to vacate the washroom for another.

However, he did take special care to clean his wounds, as well as to run a comb through his hair to ensure no moths remains trapped in its coils. Hopefully, the potions he had taken at the copper station would keep him from getting sick, because an illness would just be delicious icing upon the shit cake of this day.

As Percy climbed out of the tub, a large towel wrapped around his body, he gathered up his putrid clothes for the wash basket. Habitually, he checked his pockets, and pulled out the good luck talisman.

He held it up in front of his face, eyes wide. It was obviously empty, the fabric crumpled in on itself. But what was most strange was how tattered and aged it looked. The silk fabric was thin and frayed, and even the gold embroidery was dull. “How did this get back in my pocket?” Percy muttered. He distinctly remembered throwing it away before he tried to run from the moths.

Was it possible that he really had woken up, found the sachet and returned it to his pocket, and then gone on some sort of brain-damaged bender? Because, while it seemed unlikely that no one had robbed him while he was unconscious, it seemed even more unlikely that some random person would have found him passed out and tucked the obviously valuable piece of fabric into his pocket, but not helped him in any other way.

But even that wouldn’t explain why it looked so tattered.

Author Note: Little siblings are the bane of teenage boys everywhere.