"Young master! Young master? Oh- Master Sparrow please come out!"
Sparrow giggled. It was a perfect spot, a cubbyhole in the wall between the dining room and the study. He had no idea why it was there, all he knew was he could fit (and thereby hide) and sneak a snack or two by slipping in and out of the little door in the wall that he had discovered while running through the dining room.
"Master Sparrow, please! You must have your bath and lessons before the general gets here!"
Sparrow scrunched up his face and stuck his tongue out. He didn't like the general. He always messed up Sparrow's hair and slapped him on the back with his big meaty hand. Plus, he always smoked a big Cigar around father and made everyone cough.
But he was always really nice to Tarri-sair, Big brother Tarri.
"Now Bander," he would say, being the loudest person in the room as he apparently liked to be. "When you enter the service I'll make you a sergeant, just because you're a great guy."
Tarri always shook his head. "No sir, I'll start as a Foot Soldier and work up if I can, as did all my forefathers." Tarri would then manage to pry himself from the mammoth grip and stand by his father's bedside. Then the general would sit back down muttering something about ungratefulness.
"Young master, please! We're beginning to get worried!"
Sparrow giggled again. If I can hide here long enough, I won't have to hear the general call me 'twig'. Sparrow had been given the name 'Rowan' but his home name, Sparrow, was what he liked best. He wished it could be his name all the time. There were people with given and home names that were the same, he was sure of it.
"Rowan," the general had said, "A great tree, Ha! More like a twig! Ha ha!"
Sparrow scrunched up his face again. I'm definitely staying here.
"Come now Master Sparrow! This is getting a bit irritating!"
Sparrow giggled again, and right at that moment, the back of the cubbyhole swung open and from the sudden sea of light Tarri jumped into frame and shouted "Boo!"
Sparrow squealed and laughed as Tarri pulled him out of the cubbyhole and held him upside down by his ankles with his arms dangling below him and the bottom of his shirt rolled down (or up had he been upright) to his armpits.
"It was a food transport for the scholar king Artwit Rowan Wiltwyre, 25th Wiltwyre King of Aldrean, our eight-greats grandfather and your namesake, for his late nights in the study. Two doors." He flipped him over, uprighting him and placing him on his shoulders. Setting the view of the study bookshelves and the open food transport right-side-up. "And you would know that if you quit running from your lessons, you silly little thing."
Sparrow continued laughing, as his journey to his brother's shoulders had paused his giggles, and sunk his hands into Tarri's thick, inky curls for support. It was easy to tell that the pair were brothers, they were near carbon copies of each other. They had the same green eyes, skin the color of walnut shells and curled black hair as the mark of the woodland gypsies. The gypsy looks came from their mother and though she had died years before of a long illness, the servants all claimed she still roamed the castle, in the shape of the boys' eyes, and hair, and smiles. From their father, they had both gotten a desert tribesmen's tall, lean build and large, somewhat awkward feet and hands.
It was with these awkward feet that Tarri made to leave the study, after closing the food transport door, with a giddy Sparrow on his shoulders. Before they reached the door, however, Miss Hatty, the househead, rushed in, no doubt called in by Sparrow's incessant laughter, followed by two frazzled handmaids. When Miss Hatty saw the pair, her worried, disheveled countenance morphed into an irritated but relaxed disposition.
