Dollarbird and I first met when I was just born. I never knew this, but my mother told me I was born sleeping.
‘You were dead,’ she said. ‘Dead as dead. You were dead for a while too and then you woke up and screamed yourself pink.’
I wasn’t dead. It was Dollarbird. He took me away to be in his story and then returned me so I could keep my training to become an Ink Master like him.
Some would think being born dead and coming alive again would make you the special one. It doesn’t. I’m plain Kester Lea Foxworth, nothing special, but not so normal.
I never talked much. People thought I was simple-minded and not all there, which is the truth. I’m never ‘all here’. I’m different, the type of different which makes you more than different – you’re so different you sometimes wonder if you’re even human. You get called a freak and once you hear you’re a freak enough times, it stays with you. It’s not just the disappearing in stories thing. It’s the Robyn Suit, too.
I dropped Kester since I discovered it was a boys’ name and changed it to Robyn. As if being one of Dollarbird’s Ink Kids wasn’t freakish enough, I was born in the wrong skin.
My grandmother, Lola, adored me when I was born a boy, ‘My first grandson,’ she repeated a thousand times over. She dotted on me in those days. ‘All those foolish granddaughters and finally I have a grandson. At last the curse has been rid from me.’
The second I started wearing Dollarbird’s magic, ‘Let’s Dress like Robyn,’ Lola turned her eyes at me, slapped my face and said, ‘You’ve just got ideas in your mind from that wicked bird that always follows you around.’
She tried yanking Robyn’s Mask off me and reached in my throat for the Girl Voice Bird, yet she couldn’t remove the skin Dollarbird had placed over me. No one but Dollarbird could.
My Robyn Skin is payment for being Dollarbird’s Ink Helper. I do whatever he says whenever he says. I follow him like a little shadow into any story he wishes. I follow him and I write the way he tells me to. One day I will do what he does, write with his magic ink and use kids stuck in boring or depressing lives as my actors.
‘It takes years,’ Dollarbird told me. ‘It sounds simple, picking up a pen and writing a few words on blank pages. People don’t understand. You can read a book fast. Your eyes can wander over the pages and you can read a full book within hours, but when you’re in control of that pen, inking words on that paper – it takes years to master the form of Word Art.’
‘I can write for the rest of my life,’ I told him.
‘I’m glad you said that,’ he told me. ‘I truly am as it’s going to take a while. When I say a while, I mean you will be writing from now until the day you die and when you’re not writing you will be daydreaming. The daydreaming starts now. The writing starts later on, when you’re old enough to pick up a pen.’
I nodded.
‘Are you willing to sign your name away?’ Dollarbird asked.
I nodded.
Being five-years-old, my name was a messy scribble, but I signed my name in Dollarbird’s red notebook and there onwards I have been his right hand Ink Master. If it weren’t for that defining moment, my life would have been rather plan and simple, nothing at all special about me. I was born November Ninth in a sleepy town, to a mother who worked at nights, and a father who left.
My little sister was born the special one. Even at four years old I could tell. She was adorable to start with, so pretty everyone called her Princess as she looked as perfect as the flawless Upper Bloods who rule our land. She was smart, too. She was born on a full moon on the twelfth hour of the twelfth of the twelve and not only that, she was born with a vail meaning her water sack was still covering her, which is a lucky thing according to Great Grandma Susan.
The elders of our land said Sunny was very special and she would know things no one else could ever know and one day she will lead her people home. I never understood what they were talking about because Sunny didn’t seem the special leading people home type. She seemed the perfect, child model, type.
While I walked around in red boots and my lucky fox hat on, Sunny walked around in princess dresses and big bow ties. I suppose I should have been walking around in little bow ties and princess dresses also, but even under Robyn’s Skin, it didn’t feel right. I liked my lucky boots and fox hat and a nice pair of overalls dirty at the knees and easy for climbing.
The reason I adore dressing as a Fox is simple. I am a Fox. When you’re a member of the UIS, Universal Ink Society, you have a Human Form and a Creature Form. You can change your form over time, depending how your personality changes. When I was small, I was a Dove. When I grew up, I became a Fox. I plan on staying a Fox for a while.
The two top actors in the stories Dollarbird and I write, Swan and Sydney, they’re both birds. Swan is a Robin and Sydney is a Gold Finch. They used to be close, but now they’re drifting away and changing form. I never thought I would say it, but Swan is becoming more of a Rat than a Robin, a Tame Rat. A Tame Rat can still live in the Cotton Woods with the rest of the UIS members, but a Wild Rat hides in the Black Sky World with the Bats and the Snakes.
I remember the first time I ever met Swan. She was sitting under an apple tree in her step-grandfather’s backyard. It was an apple tree which grew rotten apples. I suppose the tree reflected on the family who planted it. Swan’s mother was a pill sniffer and her father a drug seller. She mostly went unnoticed. It was trouble right from the straight, Swan being a Robin, her mother being an Ex-Starling who transformed into a Bat like her father. Bats and Birds both have wings, but they sure don’t get along.
Swan has never seen my true reflection. I’m a monster in her eyes. That started when I met Sydney, the youngest one of our Story Group. I flew through her window, landed on her bed and screamed, ‘BOO!’
‘You’re not scary enough,’ Sydney told me.
‘I’m not?’
Sydney shook her head. She pointed out things I could work on, long claws, sharp teeth, tall and a lot older. I thought I looked evil enough. Dollarbird handed me his suit and said, ‘You wear this and it shows evil.’
I never understood Dollarbird’s suit. It looked like a regular soldier uniform, only he wore a red armband around his arm with a bent cross on the red. The red was most interesting. Red is the colour of the blood the natives of our land have. It’s a forbidden colour, has been since as long as I can remember. We’re in a war with those Red-Bloods now. I wear a similar suit to Dollarbird when I’m playing Kester. There is no red on the armbands, only royal-blue and instead of a bent cross it’s a Diamond.
I don’t like speaking about Kester. When I play him, it’s not the real me. The real me is when I’m playing Robyn, or some other higher power creation of mine. But back to Swan, in her eyes the real me is a monster. I’m a tall monster living in the skin of an older man like Dollarbird. My face is brunt, my fingers are long claws covered in calk and my skin is covered in scars.
It’s my calk-covered claws I like the most. I can draw many things with these claws. I can draw on anything, anywhere, and whatever I draw comes to life. That’s the way I wrote it in My Story, ‘A monster with claws who can make magic doors.’
I’ve taken Swan to many places. I’ve drawn doors to all coloured walls, Pink Sky, Yellow Sky, Green Sky and even the Rainbow Sky where she roamed with unicorns. I’ve done a lot for her over the years yet she still hates me. I hope one day she looks at me with stunning brown eyes and says, ‘Thank you.’
Until then I’m a monster with a freakish pen and a creative mind with many lives.
Becoming Writer 2016 Anniversary Contest 