the devil makes woe for idle hands | Glowfic Constellation

my-compass-is-true

Marek is honestly not sure what he's doing with his life, these last few years, even if it does seem to be working somehow. The army felt like a reasonable place to spend his life in, until it suddenly wasn't, and after that and everything else, he was too politically inconvenient for any decent job he was qualified for. But his maternal uncle died without children and left a small farm in a village he only had vague memories of, somewhere out of the way of all the complicated politics, and that seemed as good a place to be as he was likely to find.

Finding things to do without the structure of army life didn't turn out to be difficult at all. There was the house to restore, and the land to find a use for, and neighbors to help with a diverse range of village problems, and sometimes the school needed an extra hand to keep everyone out of trouble, and occasionally so did the police department, and then there was that runaway boy who jumped out of a moving train at night and it just seemed like a much better idea to let him stay at the farm for a few months than to risk him trying that again...

That, skipping over the next couple of years, is why Henryk, the chief of the two-and-a-half-person police station in the unimportant village of Bobowa, is the person who gets a phone call from the Kraków orphanage. There's a girl they really don't want to keep dealing with, all right, that seems odd and the man's tone seems even more odd, but Henryk doesn't need or want to know the details, it's not like he can't predict Marek will say yes. It's urgent? Why would it possibly-- no, it doesn't matter, yes he can go out and get Marek here before noon so someone can tell him whatever this is all about.

The police station being one of the relatively few places in the village with a phone, it's where Marek ends up for his own call with the orphanage director, which he hopes will provide at least a little more information than the "I don't know, a girl, how can they possibly have much trouble with a girl?" he heard from Henryk.

"Hello, this is Marek Dąbrowski. I was asked to call you about a child you wanted to move somewhere quieter?" He's been in occasional contact with the place for a couple of years now, as a place to temporarily keep the occasional stray kid they couldn't figure out what else to do with. He turned out to be good at that, or at least so they said, and he could hardly be worse than some of the stories he'd heard of the other options. Well, most people were doing the best they could with much less than they needed, and he didn't need very much and so could sometimes do better.

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rien-de-rien

"I refuse to wear colours," she says. "I've sorted the clothes in my room into acceptable and unacceptable on that basis. What about school needs figuring out, exactly?"

my-compass-is-true

He's somewhat inured to the strangeness by now. "I won't buy you new clothes because you refuse to wear colors, but if there's enough there, that's fine." Is she the sort to throw a tantrum about his lack of inclination to buy unnecessary things? He wouldn't guess so, but he'll find out. "Theoretically you should be going to school, but I don't think you can and don't think you want to, do you?"

rien-de-rien

"I can teach myself out of a textbook. I've found it to be a necessary skill in the American public school system."

my-compass-is-true

He makes an amused noise. "So they haven't fixed everything either. But yes, I can probably convince the school to count that, if you take some tests to show you're learning. But all the textbooks and all the tests are in Polish, and you should learn it anyway." If she's staying in the country for more than a few weeks - another thing he should ask the orphanage about next time he calls them.

rien-de-rien

"I can do that."

my-compass-is-true

"Good," approving nod. She really seems a perfectly straightforward child, as long as you avoid the difficult topics. Which he really should get back to sometime soon, but the practical issues do need to be settled first. "We'll go to the school tomorrow and get all of that done. Other than that... What do you like doing?"

rien-de-rien

"Witchcraft. Beheading my dolls. Long walks in the graveyard. I'm thinking of writing a novel."

my-compass-is-true

Well, he did walk right into that one... Although he was expecting the witchcraft, and the other ones are all less concerning, if not exactly normal.

"You are such a strange child - but all right. Sounds like we need more notebooks... We do have two graveyards - no, three, but only two of them make for good walks."

He remembers to check the potatoes, which turn out to be done, so he plates up the food for both of them and puts it on the kitchen table. (Unlike in the orphanage his potatoes don't have black spots, he reliably remembers to add salt to the water, the beans aren't nearly as badly overcooked, and she can have real butter to put on everything, but the basic nature of the food is indeed no different.)

rien-de-rien

"Better than the orphanage," is her comment on the food once she tries it. "More notebooks would be appreciated. At home I had a typewriter but I don't expect you to provide one."

my-compass-is-true

"I can ask around for typewriters, but probably won't find one." A used one someone's getting rid of, he doesn't think to specify, because buying a new typewriter for a child is just not the sort of thing anyone does. "And I suppose you're free to behead all the dolls, but what are you going to do when you run out?"

He has a sinking feeling the answer will involve witchcraft.

rien-de-rien

"At home I constructed a little mausoleum for them. I suppose I won't behead these ones until I can offer them a suitable resting place."

my-compass-is-true

"That's... very thoughtful of you." She's so consistent about all of her strangeness! It's really rather impressive.

"I probably have enough woodworking tools to make a mausoleum, if you want to try that?" He offers tentatively. It occurs to him that instead he could not encourage her in doing any of the creepy things she's apparently exclusively interested in, but... it's not as if there's any harm in beheading old dolls, and it's better for pretty much anyone to have something they like doing.

rien-de-rien

"I... would appreciate that," she says, sounding a little surprised.

my-compass-is-true

Oh no, did she think he was going to sit here and do nothing but disapprove of everything she was interested in? She probably did, and not unreasonably so, and he feels bad about it.

"I... You're very strange, I know I keep saying that. But I like you, and I want to find things that will be good for you here."

rien-de-rien

"I'm not accustomed to being liked by anyone outside my family."

my-compass-is-true

Oh no, the poor child... "Now I just want to hug you. Can I?" He doesn't really expect a yes, but what does he know about strange American eleven-year-old girls? Not very much, clearly.

rien-de-rien

"I do not hug."

my-compass-is-true

That gets a smile. So maybe he can predict her a little. "That's fair. So, a mausoleum, and I should show you where the graveyards are... Does anything else look interesting around here?" Not that there is much, when he tries to think about it from her perspective. He doesn't expect her to like gardening, and he's not sure about the forest or the river either, for all that most children enjoy those - but it's still worth asking.

rien-de-rien

"The forest wasn't bad."

my-compass-is-true

"There's an old German bunker in it, up near the high school." Which is a perfectly normal childhood interest, even. The first time he heard about it, he went there to make sure there was nothing likely to explode, but there wasn't, so he left all the interesting junk, random sharp bits of metal and spiders as he found them. "And some bigger forests further away. Do you ride a bike?"

rien-de-rien

(She looks intrigued by the bunker.)

"I can, yes."

my-compass-is-true