My (Non)Eye is On You

“A childish part of me was hoping that seeing my swollen nose plugged by strips of cotton to stop the bleeding would have sent Sir Pelican into a rage, but my inner child was going to be denied that candy shop. During tutoring and introduction of learning to decipher the twists of strange tongues, he never once asked about the origin of my injuries. I couldn’t even find a raised eyebrow or a worried glance. I was left instead to silently sulk while pretending to care whether or not I guessed the correct verb tenses of an idiotic forest language.

“I had decided I was not going to let Annoying Mute get away with it, eye balls or not, and I could hardly sleep in anticipation of the next morning’s second round.

“Annoying Mute had found me that next morning pacing a line of courtyard grass into a dead patch. When I saw him approaching, I pointed at him and said, ‘Okay, let’s get a few things straight before you start disguising your need to beat up people as a method of teaching. One, talking is generally considered a skill. Some would even reason it as an essential skill in teaching. Two, I am not stupid. I know exactly what you are doing. You have gauged me as some snot nosed child who will have to be made to care about fighting, so you have decided that beating me up would be the quickest way to channel my energy into these lessons. Wow. You are so clever.’

“If he had planned to start the training with another ass kicking, he didn’t show it. Instead, he stood there with his arms cross and waited for me to finish. ‘Lastly, and I am probably going to be killed in effort to keep the following item secret, but why don’t you have eyes?’ I paused. ‘I saw.’

“Annoying Mute raised his left arm up in front of him with his forearm facing me while he arched his right arm back with his fist clenched near his face. It was time to fight. Fight I did. I still spent most of the time on the defense and dodging his swift and powerful jabs with his feet and arms. There would be times, probably by his design, when I would launch an offensive combination. I never during that morning’s training or the subsequent sessions afterwards pondered why I was able to move so fast and with such an agile body (certainly no more than I had during my time running scams for Philip the Fool), but that was made quite easy when all my attacks were either blocked or dodged, and my own dodging always concluded with him landing at least one ear ringing connection.

“Most likely, Annoying Mute had thought he had outsmarted me and his motivational introductory abuse succeeded in angering me into a commitment to beat the tar out of him, but that wasn’t the case. The truth is I had lost my nerve that I had built up the evening before and terror kept my body moving with the utmost desire to not have him touch me. He couldn’t have been human. He had no eyes. I don’t wish you to think that detail erased itself from my consciousness so easily. It was always in the back of my mind when I would show up for those duels. I was not about to believe that a man could fight so efficiently without sight. He probably didn’t even have a mouth. It seemed more and more likely the more I thought about it. I can’t remember when exactly I thought the phrase first, but it stuck with me until I later learned the truth. It made the most sense at the time. Annoying Mute was an unfinished doll, some madman’s play thing that escaped before his details could be carved.”