Page 88 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

throughout the day—they felt hardy enough, so he had a Plan Z. Why go straight

to Z, though?
—

THROWING THE KEY into the fire was the first step of this man’s fever-born plan.
The second step involved the kidnapping of a girl he had seen around. He felt no
ill will toward this girl, and this was in itself unusual, since his desperation had
begun to direct him to linger on the street wishing misfortune upon everyone he

saw. That lady’s maid hurrying out of the jeweler’s shop—he wished she would
lose some item of great value to her mistress, so that he might find it and sell it.
Yes, let the lady’s maid face every punishment for her carelessness, he wouldn’t
spare a single thought for her. As he passed the grand café on his city’s main
boulevard he wished a dapper waiter carrying a breakfast tray would slip and fall

so that he could retrieve the trampled bread rolls. And how would it be if this
time the waiter had slipped and fallen one time too many and was dismissed?
Even better—then I can replace him.
—

THE GIRL he planned to kidnap happened to be a tyrant’s daughter. Hardly
anybody disliked her; she was tall and vague . . . exceedingly vague. Her

tendency toward the impersonal led to conversations that ended with both parties
walking away thinking: “Well, that didn’t go very well.” If you mentioned that
you weren’t having the best day she might tell you about certain trees that drank
from clouds when they couldn’t find enough moisture in the ground beneath
them. She was known as Eirini the Second or Eirini the Fair, since she had a flair
for the judicious distribution of cake, praise, blame, and other sources of strife.

In terms of facial features she didn’t really look like anybody else in her family.
In fact she resembled a man her mother had secretly loved for years, a man her
mother had never so much as spoken to until the day the tyrant decided to have
his wife Eirini the First stoned for adultery. He did give her a chance, one
chance. He asked her to explain why his eyesight kept telling him that his
daughter was in fact the child of another man, but the woman only answered that
there was no explanation.

—

THE MAN EIRINI the First loved heard about the resemblance between himself and
the child and came down to the palace to try to stop the execution. He swore to