Lure Read Free

zeal. Frankie Wilson was a dreadful friend, but since I wasn’t in a position to be choosy, I tolerated him the best I could.
    The year he turned eleven, Frankie traded the tiny weapons of those tin soldiers for a real one. As hunting quickly became his new passion, the two of us stopped spending time together. Frankie died in a hunting mishap less than a year after my own passing. His death was no great loss to the world, I assure you.
    My only other companion during those early years was my dear mother. With my father working long hours at the forge, Mother and I spent many of our summer days together. Away from Father’s disapproving eyes, I would help her and Kate prepare the meals in the kitchen, pull weeds in the vegetable garden, talk to her of my dreams and secret ambitions as she sat and sewed in the parlour, and play cards with her for long hours into the evening while we waited for Father to return from the forge. When the weather was pleasant, we would sometimes take hikes through the forests and fields that surrounded our village. During those walks, Mother would usually pick wildflowers to fill the blue porcelain vase that rested over the hearth in the parlour. As for me, I would bring along the insect net that I had fashioned using a stick, a bit of wire, and an old pair of stockings.
    You would be impressed if you could see what I was able to capture with that crude net. Even by the young age of seven, I had amassed a beautiful collection of insects, each one stuck with three pins to a smooth wooden board that was hidden under my bed. There were butterflies, caterpillars, beetles, spiders, and grasshoppers of all different colours and sizes. Under the guidance of my teacher, Mr. Brown, I hoped to collect over one hundred different specimens. So eager a student was I that Mr. Brown had promised to loan me Mr. Charles Darwin’s great book, On the Origin of Species , the following year at school.
    My mother loved to hear me speak of school and all that I was learning there. I missed my time at the schoolhouse during those summer months. Reading was one of my favourite subjects, regardless of my father’s stern opinions on books. I loved borrowing novels from school and losing myself in the pages of those magical worlds. Treasure Island, Through the Looking Glass , and Gulliver’s Travels were all favourites of mine and I’d spent many lunch hours reading and rereading them. Although I’d never read anything by the formidable Charles Dickens, Mr. Brown had told our class that he was one of the most important authors the world had ever known and that the entire British Empire had been caught up with his stories. I was aching for a copy of one of his books.
    My father, however, held a completely opposite opinion on the subject of learning. To my great dismay, he considered it womanish to sit around idle with a book in one’s hands. As far as he was concerned, education was a dangerous waste of time. He was always grumbling about how the over-educated scientists and intellectuals of the world were ruining society with their plans and inventions. How machines would soon be replacing people and what a crime it was to steal the livelihood from honest working men. Father was determined to have me follow in his footsteps. I was destined to learn his trade and inherit his blacksmith shop. It was the duty, after all, of a family’s only son to carry on where his father left off. Some called it a birthright.
    As for me, I called it a curse.
    The day that Father discovered my secret insect collection was beaten into my memory. I will never forget how his face erupted with a dark purple rage as he crushed all of my painstaking work under his heavy boot. When it was sufficiently ruined, he proceeded to take a switch to my backside. The following morning, before my wounds had the chance to heal, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up the road to where his blacksmith shop stood on Yonge Street. Then he forced me to sit