Fools

FOOLS

First of all, my name is Aedan, and my brother Shane and I are orphans. Our parents left us at St. Mary’s Catholic School when I was three, and my brother was just eight months old, or that’s what the school tells us. We have been living here for the past ten years, I am now fourteen, and my brother is eleven. Even though the school has a strict policy about sneaking off to the beautiful Dublin countryside, my brother and I always find a way to. Maybe we should have just stayed at school; things would be a whole lot easier.
“Hey Ade,” that’s what my brother always calls me; I hate the nickname, “Guess what!”
“What do you want Shane?” I said grumpily. “I’m trying to fix the lantern before dusk, or it will be too dark for us to get home.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go home,” Shane said with a frown, “I don’t like it at the school, the beds are hard, and the food is really bad!”
“Where else to you think we’re going to go?” I said with a halfhearted smile.
“I don’t know,” Shane said with a discouraged tone while looking down at his shoes. “Anyways, look what I found! It’s really important!”
I reluctantly got up and started slowly trudging after my brother. Shane has always been the adventurous type. When he was only 6, he found a whole nest of quail eggs, which we cooked up for breakfast the next day. But what he had found shocked me even more than some delicious quail eggs.
When we finally got to the bottom of the last hill, we were at least a kilometer away from the school- good thing it was a weekend so we had plenty of time to get back before curfew. Even though we were more than that away from any civilization, I never expected to see what Shane had found. It was a rock. But it wasn’t just any rock. If you look close enough into the cracks of the rock you could just make out a slight tint of a metallic color. It almost seemed like…GOLD!
St. Mary’s Catholic School was in the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin, Ireland’s capital. I believe that is the most beautiful place on earth, even though I have never been anywhere else. You can hear the River Slaney run through the southern slopes of the mountain. The sweet scent of Furze that is almost invasive in the higher parts of Ireland. And sometime when you’re lucky you can see the rare herds of wild horse that live in the higher meadows of Ireland.
I have always heard rumors that long ago there was much gold in these mountains, and many people have searched, and even died trying to find it. In school they told us that all of the gold had run out, and there was none left to find. Yet I look, with pride in my eyes, at my brother, a normal ten-year-old orphan, with at least 8 ounces of gold in his hands. Suddenly, a life without poverty flashes before my eyes. Beds as soft as the clouds, food that would be worthy of the queen, butlers to wait on us hand and foot, ah, a life of luxury!
“Shane! Where did you find this? Do you know what this is?”
Shane looked a bit startled, but he came around to telling me, “Over by the river, you know I like going down there. I’m not in trouble am I?”
“Shane! This is gold! Gold! We’re rich!” I yelled.
After we got a good night sleep back at the school, we went into town in the morning. I have only been in town twice before, once for my tenth birthday, and once when I fell of my bed and broke my leg. On my tenth birthday a fight broke out in the local bar and while I was walking down the street I got caught in the middle of it, and it was just not a fun time when I broke my leg. So I don’t have very fond memories of this place. But when I walked into the market, smack dab in the middle of the town, it looked totally different. I didn’t know a place could change so much in four years.
When I visited on my tenth birthday, the town looked old, yet lively. It was over one hundred years old but still looked full of life. Traders in the stands would call you over and let you have a free sample of whatever they were selling, soups, carrots, fresh produce, lamb meat, and even some exotic wines. The place was great!
The place I saw that day was no more. There were only two stands, and they looked like they were running out of business, the rest were either boarded up or burned down. It scared me to see the place like this. The feeling of despair and defeat was so palpable in the market, even the homeless dogs where whining on the alleyways of the street.
“I know what we are going to do with the money Shane,” I said with pride in my voice.
“Buy a lot of ice cream! And a whole bunch of lamb legs! Yum, yum, yum!” my brother yelled excitedly.
“Ha-ha we wish! No, we are going to revive the market! Look at this place! It’s horrible.” Shane and I took a look around the barren market. When I looked back at Shane he had a gloom look on him face.
“Ya, maybe you’re right,” my brother said unhappily, “But if we give it all to the market, what’s left for us?”
“Don’t worry,” I said comfortingly, “We save some under our cushions and when I’m old enough, build a house right here on the lake! The nugget in my pocket is worth plenty more than a small cottage. We can build it together.”
“Really? That’d be so cool!”
“Ya wouldn’t it be. Now let’s go find Mr. McGreggor, he’ll tell us how much this thing’s worth.” And as we walked off toward the single shop with its lights on, on the other side of the street, I imagined what this place could be.
I thought of kids running around playing with their dogs and not a care in the world. People walking down the street happy as can be, shopping with their loved ones. And shop-keeps that have more than enough customers and plenty food and produce for the citizens of the town.
I just finished that uplifting thought when we came to the door of Mr. McGreggor’s Gold Appraisal. The place was ominous; I’m not going to lie. The door looked a thousand years old, and there was copper bracelets and necklaces covered in green rust from years of oxidization. As we walked into the shop, the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was awful. The stench is very hard to describe but if I could I was say something between a dead and rotting animal, with the metallic ting of new steel.
Mr.McGreggor was eerily like his shop. He smelt of bad body odor, like he hadn’t taken a shower in the last ten years. He was old, too, about seventy, wrinkles all over his body, and hair the color of the gray heather bush high up in the mountains we came from. He also had a beard that reached down to his waist. His face looked liked it had a permanent scowl, that might have just been the wrinkles but it looked pretty threatening.
“Oh great, kids,” Mr.McGreggor mumbled under his breath, “How may I help you young fellas?”
“Um, hello. We need you to look at this for us,” I said tentatively. I pulled the rock out from my coat pocket, and Mr. McGreggor’s eyes widen to the size of the rock itself.
“Where did you find this sonny?”
“By the river up in the mountains, sir,” I hesitantly said.
“My my, let me take a look. Hand it here son.”
I reluctantly handed the old man the stone. The look on Shane’s face was almost terror. I think he thought that Mr.McGreggor would steal the rock from us. I almost thought it myself with the greedy look on his face as he brought it closer to his face. But what happened next scared me more. The look of joy and greed faded off his face right when he took a closer look.
“I’m sorry boys, but what you have here isn’t gold, it’s called Fool’s Gold.”
Utter speechlessness.
That is the only way I could describe it. Shane and I both where hit with a wave of disappointment. All the wishes I had for Shane and me, all the dreams I had about the market, down the drain.
“You have to be mistaken sir,” I said with disbelief, “It surely is real gold. Just look at it!”
“I’m sorry son, but this just isn’t the real thing,” said Mr. McGreggor in a patronizing tone, “If you look close enough you can see that this is not gold in color; it is a bright, shiny, yellow color. This rock is also very light in weight. Real gold is not shiny, and it weighs much more than this puny rock.”
I slowly took the rock back from Mr. McGreggor and thanked him kindly for his service. I took Shane’s hand, and with a bit of shame, walked out of the door. As we reached the edge of town, I noticed Shane was crying.
“What’s wrong bud?”
“Well I just really hoped we could get out of the orphanage now. This was our chance! I just wanna throw the rock as far as I can!”
Luckily, I stopped Shane before he could take the rock and hurl it as far as he could. “Whoa, whoa man. Wait a sec!” Shane burst out in tears as I spoke, “We are not gonna get rid of this rock.”
“Why not!?”
“Because now, this stands for our hopes and dreams,” I explained, “All the things that we need to work for, as brothers, and if we work as hard as we can, we can make all those wonderful things we planned, if this was real gold, happen. I don’t know about you, but in my view, this rock, and our love as brothers, is worth more than any amount of gold.”
And with that, Shane blew out his chest, “Rats. Well, as long as we’re together, I guess it’ll be OK. Hey, race you home!”