To Troupe or Not To Troupe

He didn't expect to feel this way, not at all. The pure, walking-on-air excitement he'd been feeling for days was being crowded out by something else. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. It was like...falling. But not quite. Or maybe worse.

His friend was snapping his fingers. "Claggy. CLAGGY! You still here? Or are you already a hundred miles away?"

Claggen Tosk blinked. "Sorry, sorry. I'm just thinking about packing."

"I thought you already packed."

"Oh, yeah, sure, I did, but I think I forgot to pack my lucky socks." He didn't want to talk about the strange feeling, mostly because he didn't understand it.

Ivvo Strack was confused. "You have lucky socks? You never told me."

Clag grinned. "'Course not. You would've sucked all the luck out of them." 

Their friend Nattick Plook chuckled. "Yeah, Iv. And you don't need any luck. But Claggy here"--he put his arm around Clag--"never had any luck until a couple days ago."

Clag's luck had indeed arrived very recently, and it had arrived over a shockingly short time span. One day he had a job helping unload a cart for a pleck an hour, a few days later he was in a very, very different situation.

Clag, Nat, and Iv had grown up together in Bluff-by-Sea. If their parents could be believed (mostly their parents were reliable, but Nat's dad was prone to telling some whoppers, as long as he thought they were funny), they'd known each other since before they could talk. Nat's mom once told a visiting uncle how long they'd known each other--"...since before they could talk..."--and Nat's dad had informed everyone listening that that's when things started to go downhill, fast.

They were in their favorite tavern, enjoying their last night together. Clag was to leave the next day, along with the theatre troupe, for the troupe's next stop. It was two days’ travel, by cart, then a week in Lamb's Meadow, first setting up, then performing, then tearing down, and then on to the next stop, and the next, and...

Clag had been somewhat aimless since he finished school; his marks had been, to put it charitably, lackluster. His math teacher, Mr. Fretch (the kids called him Mr. Wretch) had told him he had the academic talent of a sheep with a head injury. Clag knew he wasn't good at math, but the thing about the sheep had seemed a bit harsh. He also wasn't sure Wretch had even been speaking to him, since he'd called him "young Tonk." Clag clung to this hope, though he wasn't sure there actually was anyone at the school named Tonk.

For Clag, the highlight of his time in school had been his one appearance in a school play, "Our Fine and Charming and Not Too Big Town." He had a role that was small, but still provided a few lines, his favorite being "Is that a marmoset on your mantle?" The audience had laughed appreciatively at both performances, and he'd felt something inside him stir, and stir in a good way, not like something stirred when old Wretch had said the thing about the sheep.

In the two years since he'd left school, he'd had a variety of odd jobs: delivering groceries, shoveling nasty muck out of stables, washing dishes, and so on. He'd taken the job unloading carts for the troupe when the small restaurant where he'd been working closed so the family that owned it could take a vacation to Upper Eagleton, a scenic town from which, it was said, the view of Lower Eagleton was splendid. 

The troupe also needed a couple of local lads to fill non-speaking roles; they hired for these roles at each stop. It didn't make sense to pay the travel and food expenses for someone who would, say, shamble onto stage with a flagon of wine, or perhaps simply stand in the background trying not to fidget or giggle. To his great disappointment, Clag had learned of this after the spots were filled. Luck was on his side, though: one of the young men, Erdlep Teckel, was dragged bodily from the small theater by his father, who was shouting something about the evils of "the performin' business".

Clag's string of luck was only getting started. During the second rehearsal for the show—he'd learned the inside term was "walk-through"—there was some disagreement between the actor playing one of the larger roles and the Director, a fierce-looking woman named Finelli Blingmon. Clag hadn't understood exactly what was going on, but it seemed the actor—in fact, most of the actors—thought the Director was being unreasonable about something. In a fit of rage, the Director had fired the poor man, who'd told her she couldn't fire him because he quit. When one of the other actors asked "Who'll replace him, then?" (Clag thought the fellow sounded hopeful), Finelli, still enraged, looked wildly around the room, pointed to Clag, and said, “He will." She told Clag he had exactly one day to memorize his lines.

Clag may not have had a head for math, but he had a freakish talent for memorizing words, and had already learned nearly all the lines for every part. After the Director stormed out, he'd sheepishly asked one of the other actors if all the words were written down somewhere so he could study them. One of the others slapped a stack of papers against Clag's chest as the troupe stomped out. The last one out said, "Tomorrow you'll have to do your lines double-quick, so it won't be a walk-through, it'll be a trot-through." The others snickered unkindly.

So it was that Clag landed a large part in the production. He hadn't really understood what the play was about, to be honest; to him, it seemed mostly to be about a mixed-up prince, Hilmete, living somewhere called Dansland. He played Loponius, a close friend and advisor to Closetus, the King. After the first performance, two things were clear: Clag loved being on stage even more than he'd dared hope, and the Director had, quite accidentally, made a shockingly good choice. Clag was wonderfully talented. She'd offered Clag a permanent job traveling with the troupe, and Clag had accepted faster than a hungry dog will swallow a nice bit of crispy bacon. 

Clag felt as if he'd been magically transported to Upper Eagleton, if not floating above it somewhere. He especially enjoyed performing his death scene: Hilmete stabbed Loponius while he hid behind a curtain. "What vile injustice is this?" he would cry, "Neither stalker nor creeper am I! You have pierced my duodenum, and I am surely a goner."

"Something may smell stinky in Dansland," Clag muttered to himself after the first performance, borrowing a line from the play, "but things are sweet for me."

He came back to himself in the tavern; Iv was telling the story of when he'd dared Clag to tell Isella Mooker she had the prettiest brown eyes he'd ever seen. It was certainly not a high point for Clag: Isella's eyes were actually green-blue, depending on the light. She'd stormed off in indignation while Iv and Nat hooted and howled a short distance away.

Clag reminded them he'd tried to make up for his humiliation by writing her a poem: "Green No Blue No Green". Lately, he and Isella had ben sneaking off to dark corners together, though it was unclear whether the poem had anything to do with it. When he'd told her he was leaving, her mouth dropped open. As a tear started to run down her face, she had yelled "green-blue, you sheep-brain!" and stormed off.

The server stopped at their table with the largest mug of ale any of them had ever seen. "Compliments of the manager," she said, smiling, and set the enormous thing down in front of Clag. She turned to his friends: "Not a free drop for you two dung-shovelers." She marched off to laughs from all three.

There were more reminiscences, of course: the time Nat convinced Clag that a particular cow actually loved to be ridden, the time they snuck into the bakery in the middle of the night and made off with boxes of cookies, the time Iv saved Nat from drowning. Why Nat was in the water when he couldn't swim wasn't at all clear, but they agreed Iv had saved him. There were differences of opinion, though, on whether Clag then saved Iv. "I was fine, I tell ya, I was just dunkin' my head in the water to clean off Nat's slobber," Iv protested.

They went quiet when Mr. Wretch tottered past their table. The old man shocked them: "Oh, bless me," he said, "if it isn't young Tonk." Clag thought he smiled at them, though it could've been an indigestion-related grimace. "Wonderful that you'll be joining the performing troupe. I always knew you'd turn out well, and look! What a success story!" The three managed to stay quiet until he was a few feet away before dissolving in laughter, pounding the table and howling.

As the gathering broke up, the falling-but-worse feeling started to creep back. He began to think--really think--about leaving his family and friends. 

As he walked home, he thought about his family. His father had always encouraged him to take chances; this was the reason, really, he'd been in the school play. His mum had made sure he took responsibility for himself; she'd made him work to pay off the vet's bill for the cow he'd tried to ride. He learned later there actually was no vet's bill, but when his mum had learned of the incident, she felt Clag ought to be held to account for...for...well, for something, for Gluff's sake.

Then there was his sister. She had given him grief almost every day of his life; but then there were the times she'd stood up for him in front of other kids. She'd always said the same thing after these encounters: "You might be a sheep-brain, but you're a Tosk sheep-brain. Don't forget it." For better or worse, Clag never saw the accidental irony in those sentences.

He stopped dead still for a moment when the falling-but-worse feeling temporarily immobilized him.

He let himself in--his family was asleep--and climbed the old, rickety stairs, avoiding creaks by staying to the right on the fourth, seventh, and eighth, and to the left on the second and fifth.

He lit an oil lamp and looked around his room. Most of what he owned was already packed, but the box of paper, the new pen, and the ink bottle his parents had given him were still on the desk. "Write us, dear," his mother had said. "Tell us all about the wonderful places you go and the people you meet." His sister had suggested he ask someone for spelling help if his sheep-brain wasn't up to it. His father hadn't said anything and had to leave the room because he'd gotten something in his eye.

He took out a sheet of paper, dipped the pen in the ink, and paused. I s'pose I'll have to pay for that giant mug of ale now, he thought. "Dear Miss Blingmon," he wrote, "I regret that I cannot join your troupe as planned."