Page 1 of The Trick of It

Prologue

Rhys Caradoc was an only child.

He was an orphan too, of course, but that had never bothered him so much as the other thing. In his estimation, a boy ought to have siblings, and lots of them, to boot.

He did have an uncle. Sort of.

Hughes had been friends with Rhys’s late parents, before they’d been taken by the influenza. Or, at least, that was what Hughes always said. He took care of Rhys, shared his bread and his secrets, and took him along as he walked town to town, making coin where and how they could.

So, that meant it was probably true.

Why else would he want an urchin around? Why else would he teach Rhys how to pick pockets and charm strangers and steal fruit from market stands?

Hughes was his uncle.

That was just the way of things.

And perhaps that was why Hughes had had to get sick and die as well. Perhaps it was because Rhys was meant to be an only child. Only a child. Alone.

He’d stepped on a sharp stone that had cut through his boot when they’d been crossing the Severn, just off the Wales Coast Path. They’d had to take the meadow rather than the trail after the business in Chepstow, and they’d had to do it quickly if they didn’t want to get caught.

Hughes had a map. A tatty, oily map that was very good, by Rhys’s estimation. The river was where it was supposed to be. The ferry was where the map said it was.

The rock, however, was not accounted for. There were no sharp rocks on the map.

As they moved forward into England, by foot and by boat, Hughes had started to limp. His veins had turned black. His skin had gotten hot. And then, of course, he had died.

They all died, in the end.

But he’d left the map behind. The map and stories of the rich pickings and fantastical fixtures of a place called Brighton.

Rhys was only ten. He could not bury his uncle. But he did say goodbye, out loud, before he left him with the morgue at Aust.

Aust.

It sounded like lost, which Rhys was not.

He had a map.

He did notice, some nights when he’d built a fire or found a stable to sleep in, that the map also had Newport on it, back in the opposite direction. He knew he could go back to Newport. But he’d already come this far.

Hughes had to have died for something, hadn’t he?

So Rhys continued. He used what he’d learned. He avoided sharp rocks. He foraged and stole and sneaked for the final month of spring, until finally, he reached the fabled shingle beach of Brighton.

He could read. A little. He saw the sign had the right shape to it, but he asked people just to be sure.

“Is this Brighton?” he’d ask.

“Are you lost, little Welshman?” many would answer.

“Not if I’m in Brighton,” Rhys replied.

He was, though. He’d found it. And it was exactly as magical as Hughes had promised.

All along the beach were warm stones in soft shapes and the lapping of the great, big sea. People wore bright colors and laughed aloud and no matter which direction he started in of a morning, he always saw something spectacular.

One day, it was a man juggling swords. Another, it was puppet shows about kings and knights. Often, it was music. He saw fiddlers and drummers and flautists, and once, a German man in fancy suspenders, playing an instrument that looked like a fireplace bellows and sounded like angels in a choir.