to get me to the city. It was said that the stagecoach was aiming to get an infrastructure put in place so that routes could become more frequent. This then making it easier for people to travel, but they were some years away from that, as with many things. It made me look up into the sky and wonder when mortals would invent wings.
The journey was to take a few days, and I had to say that the idea of being sat dressed as a man with a single rat as my companion didn't exactly fill me with joy. But then Pan was not exactly the type of person that you vexed, and I seemed to have an uncanny ability to be able to do it on a regular basis. To be honest, those questions of my future with him became more and more frequent, wondering if there was anyone out there for me?
But then I would remember the long hours of pleasure he could give me with his tongue, and stopped questioning it long enough to get in the carriage where my journey began yet again. Yet time was a funny thing to an immortal, as in some instances it seemed to go by in a blink of an eye and others it was painfully slow.
Like this journey, that gave me endless hours to reflect on life, yet again. On what I had gained and what I had lost.
But more than anything it made me wonder…
Who was I to…
Lose my heart to next?
Six
BROKEN HEARTED DEATH
25th March 1603
China.
Now why in the dickens rats from China? I had questioned this for a while now and still did. Ever since following the silk roads all the way to the nearest port, where I caught the first merchant ship I could from Caffa before crossing the Black Sea. Then from there I made it to Constantinople, to Messina before bribing my way onto another ship to take me as far as Marseille. Once there, I once again found myself on a carriage, until the last ship of my journey could take me from Calais to the port of Southampton. In short, my journey had been long enough to question, why the rats?
Pan had said they were lucky, these black rats from China known as the Rattus Rattus. Now these cousins to the larger brown rat were also known as little geniuses by my kind. Of course, this was because we could communicate with them on a basic level, and as such, there was a great deal to be learned from the smart little rodent. Now, rodent in itself came from the word, ‘Rodere’, which meant, ‘To gnaw’, and gnaw they most certainly could. They could eat their way through lead, concrete or even the sun-baked clay bricks of adobe.
They could also climb almost vertical walls and fit into spaces a quarter inch thick, making me wonder if Pan needed them for a job of some kind. Did he need them to fit into somewhere tiny and that was why he picked the little geniuses? I mean, these guys were that savvy that they would literally problem solve a situation, making a nest and creating an escape route just in case. They could also adapt to their environments at the drop of a capotain, not that I would drop one, for I had wanted to buy one of those hats for months now.
But back to these little darling black rats, and well, they hadn’t exactly been hard to find, for, let’s just say that it would only take two rats making butter with one’s tail, continuously for three years to lead to a population of over three million… granted that would be a lot of fucking and butter churning, which we all knew involved a lot of vigorous, circular movements, hence the saying. So, they were not exactly hard to locate.
Of course, I had questioned Pan on the reason for this mission, but his answer had been vague. Good pets and what not. Then he would swiftly speak of the next job, and one where he would be paid enough that we could finally settle. A payoff so large he said, that we could afford a nice big townhouse in the city. Although, when I had mentioned I'd much rather have one in the country, he scoffed at that.
To be honest, he scoffed at a lot of things I said.
But like I said, there had been much to think about during my time crossing