The first time he saw the locket he was struck by how out of place it was. It was in a box of jewellery, and while it appeared to be far and away the most tarnished item in there, that wasn't the only reason it stood out. All the other pieces had the look of unwanted gifts, pawned for a hit, but the locket looked like it had stories. He didn't have any need for a locket though, and he was already late. So for six weeks, that was the last he thought of it at all.
For six weeks he continued about his daily routine, oblivious to what he had seen, and the significance it would soon begin having on his life. He went to work, switched off his brain for eight hours, went home, and wondered at the point of it all. He worked to earn money, to allow him to eat, and rent this sorry hovel he called home, and at the weekend to pay for any substance which would give him an escape from this relentless, sisyphean ennui, so that ultimately on Monday he could start the whole soul-destroying cycle again.
Juno had made several attempts to have friends, or even just a shallow social life with vague acquaintances, but they all stopped calling eventually. It wasn’t that he offended them, he was just devoid of social skills, from spending the first fifteen years of his life on the family farm.
_=-=_=-=_
He was ten before he even knew other people existed, besides himself and his parents. Neither of them spoke much, and although they did teach Juno to speak, he never really got the opportunity to converse. When the suited man from the government arrived, speaking so quickly that it sounded like another language, Juno had no idea what to think. He looked more like the Coxcombs than like any of the beasts of the field, so that suggested he was similar to them. He was about to ask the man to repeat himself, when his parents appeared, urgently shambling towards him. One to accost the man, and the other to drag Juno away to his room.
“What were that, father?”
“What were what, lad?”
“That thing in’t dark clothes”.
“Nowt for you to be werryin’ yer ‘ead about”.
“It looked like us!”
“T’int nuthin’ like us, lad. Yer mother’ll see t’it”.
For weeks he’d asked his parents about the man in the black suit, but they always deflected. They’d pretend they hadn’t heard, or couldn’t remember anything about it. But the more they hid the truth, the more desperate Juno became to find it. He’d walked miles every day, since he was old enough to do it. Partly because his parents told him he had to, but mostly because it gave him a brief respite from them. He started walking farther afield, broadening the extent of his world. They’d told him there was nothing out there, but he knew he’d seen something, and he had to know more.
The Coxcomb farm was isolated though. High up on the moors, with nothing for miles around but mist and sheep. Juno took to running, rather than walking, so that he could cover more distance and still be back home soon enough not to arouse suspicion. After six months he simply gave up. He became resigned to the fact that if there really were life beyond the boundaries of the farm, it was beyond his reach. His parents had told him time and again that he had imagined the whole thing, and he wondered if maybe it really had all just been a fantasy.
_=-=_=-=_
He hadn't know that what he felt was loneliness. There had been no word for the feeling, nor any basis for comparison as to what the company of other humans would be like. Now he'd spent time with people, seen how complex and beautiful and confusing they could be, he knew that what he felt was their absence. While the only others in his universe had been his parents, now he was burdened with the knowledge that he was one of several billion, a number so large he couldn't understand or contextualise it, and none of them wanted to spend time with him. As a result of this, on the days when he could find the motivation, he took to learning about humans. Their behaviours and quirks, social cues, common desires and dreams. Eventually he reached a point where he started to explore the concept of family. In his formative years, this was a concept which was completely alien to him. Since he was unaware that any other people existed besides him and his parents, they weren’t family as such, just everyone.
He discovered that to most humans, family is one of the most important aspects of life. He learned that family is where people learn how to be human, how to interact. This, in turn, led to two realisations: firstly, that his parents were responsible for his lack of social skills, so he could potentially learn the skills elsewhere; and secondly that his parents must also at some point have had parents of their own. This was a concept he had never considered before - it was possible that he had family of his own.
When Juno first discovered the world outside the farm, he had been completely overwhelmed. He felt as though he had opened a box of secrets and could never close it again, too distracted was he by all the new information - much too much to process all at once, and the more he processed, the more there was to digest. Every answer led to twenty new questions. Discovering the possibility that he had family, and that he may yet be able to learn how to be a human, felt like the first new information which might actually help him make sense of things, rather than confusing him further. Aside from his bedsit, and his office, there was one other place where Juno spent time, and his heart filled with joy at the prospect of going there with a purpose.
_=-=_=-=_
Seven years had passed since the man in the black suit had appeared, and Juno had come to the conclusion that he had imagined it all. There had been no such intrusions since then, and life had continued with the same monotony he was accustomed to. He was more and more aware though, of his parents’ advancing years. He had always been conscious of the fact that they did not move with the same ease and speed that he enjoyed, but in recent months he had noticed that they both seemed to have more difficulty moving about. Juno himself had also increased in strength as he had grown, particularly since he now had to work harder than ever before on the farm, doing the jobs his parents were no longer physically able to carry out. As such, he no longer lived in fear of the beatings he would receive if he failed in his tasks, or disobeyed his parents. Their power over him was waning with their physical strength.
He wondered what would happen to him if their decline continued. He had a grasp of the concept of death, from the gradual turnover of animals on the farm. He watched them get older and more feeble, and eventually the day came where Juno himself was the one who discovered the lifeless body of one of the sheep. He did not know whether the same thing would eventually happen to him or his parents, but the more they declined, the more conscious was the thought in his head. He became increasingly anxious as the future looked less and less certain, and so to combat the thoughts, he began to formulate a plan.
More often than not, his parents now retired earlier than Juno, and once he could hear them snoring, he knew that he was safe to explore the house a little, without fear of being caught. He began taking small amounts of food from the larder - being careful to only take things which would last a while, and whose absence his parents wouldn’t notice. After a little over a week, he had enough food to support him for a few days. He waited for a warm evening, and once he was sure that the only sound was the laboured breathing and snorting of his sleeping parents, he packed the food into his bedsheet, then wrapped it again in his blanket, tied the corners together, and as quietly as he could, snuck out the back door. He inhaled deeply, taking in the smells of the farm through the warm night air, exhaled slowly, and headed down the path to the lower field.
_=-=_=-=_
Juno liked the library almost as much for its appearance as for its contents. Before he went in, he would always sit on the bench opposite for a few minutes and just take in the view. The house where he had grown up, was so uneven and chaotic that it had the appearance of having grown out of the ground on which he stood. The library, in contrast, was made up of straight, deliberate lines, and pronounced angles. Completely symmetrical, and ordained with ornate windows, and otherworldly gargoyles perched under the gables, guardians of the knowledge. Information was not simply contained within the library, it was revered, and protected.
The librarian was the only person with whom Juno regularly exchanged words. Seldom much more than pleasantries, and the occasional interaction about where to find information of specific topics, but he had always been pleasant to Juno, and had not mocked his lack of awareness like the other humans did. They were about the same age, and so Juno saw the librarian as a sort of reference point for things like how to dress, how to hold oneself, and so on. He had always tended to slouch when he was back on the farm, but now he mimicked the librarian’s straight and deliberate posture, and chose clothes similar to the librarian’s own choices. they were not friends, but Juno felt more comfortable around him that anyone else. Or at the very least, less ill-at-ease.
“Good morning, Juno. What would you like to research today?”
“Good morning, Amos. I would like to find out about my family”.
“Well, if they’re local, we might have something in the reference section”.
“I grew up about twenty miles away”.
“Then you might find something. I can help you look, if you like”.
“Thank you. I would like that very much”.
_=-=_=-=_
He had decided to let the food be the decider in how far he went. He would try and forage for supplies along the journey, but once he was down to half of what he had brought, he would turn back and return to the farm. No longer afraid of his parents, he knew that whatever they could do now would be less detrimental to him than running out of food. It was a clear night though, and with a bright moon, he made his way with ease along the moors, particularly as the first several miles were a route he had walked often before. When he reached the furthest point he had ever been, he decided to take a break. He ate some of the dried meat he had brought, and drank some of the water he’d collected from the stream near the house. A shallow ditch in the hillside made a decent shelter, and with the parcel of supplies and clothes as a pillow, and a blanket wrapped around, Juno fell asleep easily, the starry sky distracting him from the thoughts which had raced in his head all day.
It was the sun which woke him - an unusual sensation as he had always had thick curtains, and most days of his life he’d been up before the sunrise anyway. He breathed in the fresh morning air, again taking in the smells and noticing how much more pleasant they were here than on the farm. At this, he realised that his parents would by now be aware that he was gone. He had no idea how they would react. He felt a sudden panic, the likes of which had seldom experienced. A wave of nausea was quickly joined by a feeling of cold, clammy skin, and a shortness of breath so profound that it immediately worsened the other feelings. Juno fell to his knees, and then lay his head down on the grass. It was still wet with dew, and he found the feeling refreshing and calming. As he lay, his breath slowly returned to normal, and he realised that he was not in fact dying. After a brief bite from his supplies, he felt the colour return to his face, and determined to set out again. Everything from this point on was new. It was exciting and terrifying in equal measure, and Juno realised that for the first time in his life, he felt as though he was in control of his destiny.
_=-=_=-=_
The search brought about little information, but what few facts he was able to obtain, overwhelmed Juno with a fervour he had never experienced. The archives contained a will, from one of his ancestors, seemingly brought to the library for archiving when no living relatives had been found. It mentioned a locket, and was accompanied by a photograph of it, which immediately stirred up a feeling of familiarity in Juno, which he couldn’t quite place. None of the other effects were stored with the will, and the ancestor in question had died in poverty, so there was little else of interest. Most interesting of all though, was a birth certificate. Quite why it was in the library was quite unclear, but the location, dates, and names of the parents seemed to suggest something Juno had never even considered as a possibility. He had a sister.
As he stepped out of the library, back into the street, he felt lighter, as though gravity had been turned down. His steps felt easier, and he was so lost in the feeling that he almost missed noticing the pawn shop. He walked past it every day on his way to work, but as it was the one place of interest on his route, it had a particular lure that often caught his attention. Not for the first time that day, he struggled to catch his breath. The realisation hit him like a physical force, and he checked the window for the box he’d seen weeks ago. With a shaky hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the photograph. It was a perfect match. Before he really had time to register it, he was standing outside the shop again, his wallet two hundred pounds lighter, and in his had the weight of his family legacy. He did not know what the locket signified, but he knew it was a link to the family he had never known. The first part of a puzzle.
_=-=_=-=_
The first thing he was aware of on waking, was that everything ached. He tried to sit up, but the effort simply drew attention to other aches and pains. he lifted his hands to his face and saw they were old and gnarled. Veins he did not know he had, were clearly visible, save for the points where they were hidden by liver spots.
“It’s ok, Juno. Just rest. You don’t need to move, just listen”.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“I’m Louis. I’m sorry this is confusing, but we have very little time. You need to listen carefully”.
“Ok”.
“In a few minutes you’ll wake up again, back in your own body. Hopefully you have the locket by now. You have to pass it on”.
“To whom?”
“Your descendants”.
“I don’t have any”.
“Then you must find them, and pass it down. Always to the next generation. Everything depends on it”.
“I will try”.
“We’re losing him”.
“Do you think he understood?”
“Let’s hope so”.
“Wait, don’t go. Who are you?”
“No time, Juno. Just remember - always down, never across. We’re counting on you”.
The room faded, and Juno woke up again. The pain was gone. He was clutching the locket tight to his chest. He had no idea whether it had been a dream or not. He wasn’t sure it mattered - it fit with his plans anyway.
He got out of bed, fuelled up on coffee, and opened the front door, ready to head back to the library. For the first time in his life, Juno Coxcomb stepped out into the world, filled with purpose.
