She didn't have time for things like that he wouldn't have her losing more sleep on account of him. He knew from experience she'd look all day through the settlement for the one who'd lost them. She tucked the one she'd found into the box. She waved her hand toward him, and he reluctantly dug the rest out from under his met and handed them over. "Wayne," she said, shifting on the stool to look at him. He didn't try to pretend to be asleep no more she'd dump water on him. She picked it up and looked right at him. Ma blinked, then fixated on something: a card he'd left on the table. Even if it hasn't gobbled her all whole like it did Pa, it's gnawing on her like rats on a barn wall. She sat just staring at the light in the lantern, watching it flicker and dance, and her face seemed more hollow than it had been before, like someone has taken a pickaxe to her cheeks, digging away like rock in the wall. His Ma wore trousers and a buttoning shirt, her hair up, clothing and face smudged. She settled down on the stool, and Wayne cracked an eye. She'd have seen his light go out, of course, but she appreciated the effort he put into pretending. Wayne scrambled to hide the cards under his mat, then he was certain to lay on his mat with his lamp out, pretending to try to sleep with the door open. With relief, like fire on a frigid night, he glanced out the window and saw someone walking on the path, holding up a lantern to illuminate her way. And you could only get lucky so many times. They had to go down, dig at the beast's insides, searchin' for metals, then escape its anger. He'd feel it, anyway, though, the mine, that gaping artery, like a hole in someone's neck, red on the inside and spurting out life like blood and fire. He fumbled the shuffle again as he gathered the cards up, and he did not look out the window. Besides, sometimes folks left stuff in their pockets, like decks of cards. Why wouldn't you want to try them all on that's what clothes was for! It wasn't nothin' weird he just liked it, and what harm did it do? None to nobody. His Ma had caught him a few times and seemed angry, minding why he did it. He didn't mind the work spent half the day trying on all the different clothes, from ones sent by Gramps to the ones sent by young women, pretending to be them. So he did it, while she pushed mine carts. His Ma's old job, what hadn't paid real well. Just under the window was a pile of laundry that Wayne had done for the day. Nobody wanted to live next to it, of course, so Wayne and his Ma did. So.ĭon't think about that, Wayne thought, bumbling his shuffle and spilling his cards all over the table and floor. Uncle Gregor (Wayne kicked the table) hadn't come home one day. No, he worried that, one day, Ma wouldn't come home. Not because she didn't love him Ma was a burst of sweet spring flowers in this sewage pit of a world, and he'd punch anyone who said otherwise. This was a nervous time of day every day, he thought, maybe she wouldn't come home. Rust knew there was nothing else in this little one-windowed home that Uncle Gregor had cared about.īest Wayne had for sitting was a stool, so he sat on that and played with his cards, drawings hands and trying to hide cards in his sleeve as he waited. Wayne kicked the table sometimes, just in case his spirit was watching somewhere, 'cause he'd made that table and maybe it'd make him mad. They had a table built by uncle Gregor, before he got crushed by a billion rocks in a landslide and mushed up into a bloody pulp what couldn't hit people no more. Maybe he could ask Ma to have a little brother.Īnyway, no bed for him no real chairs. You just had to give it something it wanted, like someone else to eat. He could make some friends with something that lived under a bed. The other kids were scared of those things, but Wayne figured those kids just didn't know how to properly negotiate. So beds sounded real nice soft and squishy on top, with someone underneath you could talk to. They hid under your bed and stole the faces of people you knew. Yeah, he'd heard stories from the other kids in the settlement about mistwraiths. Sounded much better than a mat on the ground, especially one he had to share with his mom when nights were cold because they didn't have any coal. A few of other kids in the settlement had them. So this is actually going to be from the prologue of The Lost Metal, which is from Wayne's viewpoint as a little boy. Like I do in Stormlight with flashback characters, we get basically one flashback sequence per book in the Wax and Wayne books. But the Wax and Wayne, it's always been fairly easy because the prologues of each of them are flashbacks to the past. It is always a little bit of a trick to figure out what to read, because I also generally don't want to spoil too much for people who have not read the series. I am going to read to you from Wax and Wayne 4.
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