Nicholas and His Spoon

With quiet resolution, Nicholas sat down on the edge of his bed. He could hear the ruckus in the distance and he knew they were coming for him. The thundering of the horses hooves warned of the unwanted excitement that was to come and he looked up at his wooden spoon resting on the table. Would no one come to their senses? Wouldn’t the king in his supposed wisdom see how ridiculous this had all become? He sighed heavily and waited.

It all began when Nicholas was ten. His family lived on the edge of the wood at the far end of the kingdom. They were peasants living, if you could call it that, from day to day. His father was gone from early dawn until late after dark, toiling in the fields of the king. His meager pay offered only the bare minimum in the way of food for this family of four. Nicholas learned at an early age to set the traps his father had made and to visit them regularly to see what they had ensnared. His mother cleaned and prepared the animal hides that they would then barter to the townsfolk for the essentials to survive. The small amount of meat that the wayward rabbit or squirrel would provide was the only meat that they saw on their table. His brother was only four and was just learning how to bait, set, and clean the traps with Nicholas.

Nicholas’ family had settled in the wood, away from the village and its confines. His father resented the control the king had over his life, and living in his village was too much for him to bear. He couldn’t live with the constant presence of the knights, the watchful eyes of authority just waiting for an infraction. Neighbors turning on neighbors in the name of the king. Life was hard enough, and the threat of beatings and being thrown into jail was just adding to the nightmare. So before Nicholas was born, his father built a two room cottage at the very edge of the forest. The forest was dangerous so the already terrified peasants didn’t stray too close its edges. Rumors of ogres, ferocious beasts, and bandits guaranteed a solitary life for Nicholas’ family. They lived a quiet life in their little abode.

They came in the night and surprised the family. His father and mother were startled awake by the thin wooden door crashing in. Splinters flying, the bandits quickly clubbed his father instantly killing the family’s only chance of survival. His mother was next, as she stood screaming. Nicholas cowered behind the table and watched as his brother was gruesomely murdered as well. The bandits rummaged through the room, finding nothing but a few measly animal hides drying near the wall. Two of the three left in disgust, and Nicholas could hear them leave on horseback. A third bandit remained, greedily eating whatever little food there was left on the table, when he spotted the boy hiding by the table. He swooped to grab Nicholas, who wielded the only weapon he had, a long handled wooden spoon. As the wild-eyed beast lunged for Nicholas, he thought to thrust the handle into the bandit’s eye to stop him. The bandit caught his foot on the table leg and fell, full weight, onto the spoon and its long handle. The spoon went into his eye and straight past, directly into the brain of Nicholas’ attacker, and killed him.

Nicholas pushed the body off of him and reclaimed his spoon from the cavity of the deceased bandit. He wiped the cranial remains off on his pants and stood there holding his unusual weapon. The gruesome sight that lie before him made Nicholas physically sick, and he ran outside to catch his breath. His world was destroyed. What would become of him? Whatever pathetic life he lived, he knew it was going to get worse.

Word of the killings came early next morning and Nicholas’ extended family rushed to the scene. His maternal aunt and her family took Nicholas in unwillingly, but they couldn’t leave a boy to fend for himself. They resented another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, and they made their feelings known in harsh tones. He did as he was told, kept his head down, and tried to ignore the things they said. He was a survivor, unfortunately, and he did what he had to do to acclimate himself to his new life.

Days and months went by and Nicholas grew tired of trying to adjust. He couldn’t ignore the fact that he wasn’t wanted. He couldn’t ignore that his whole family was brutally taken from him. And he couldn’t ignore the whispers--whispers of fantastic stories about him. Everywhere he went, children hid behind their mother’s skirts, women quickly shuffled into their homes, and men glared in his direction. He’d heard the rumors, the made-up stories of his true past. He’d murdered a man with only a spoon. They said he not only slays helpless rabbits and squirrels with the spoon, but that he also separates their soft innards off of the pelt with the same. They even went so far as to say that he killed an ogre and scooped its brains out with his wooden weapon. Each story was more ridiculous than the next, but nobody ever dared to accuse him directly of these hideous claims. How could they believe such nonsense? He was only a boy--a boy who committed no crime other than to survive a vicious attack.

After a year or two, Nicholas realized that he would never be accepted. He would always be the outcast, repressed by the repressed. He was fodder for ridicule and scorn by peasants who were hopeless. They, themselves were held down by the king, and they needed someone less fortunate than they to feel better about their own sad lives. Unfortunately for Nicholas, he was the chosen object of attention. As time went on and the stories became more elaborate, Nicholas ran away, back to his old cottage, on every opportunity. The uncle would come to retrieve the boy, forcefully removing him from the cottage, and beat him with a stick all the way home. One day, disgusted by the ungratefulness of this child, his uncle quit retrieving him and Nicholas was left to live alone or to die.