All the Rage

On Feb. 1rst our young friend Rubric received his ration of sugar for the month. He regretted momentarily that it was not a leap year. Then he dropped one piece into weak tea they were also portioning out amid the family.

Ida spied his sugar, along with their brother, just a year younger than her, Kuba who everyone called Kubby, in short because he was short, stout, and in a word chunky.

This would not do.

The sweet would soon be the source of bitter irritation and argument. The eldest could already hear the surfacing of high pitched, infantile whimpering: I wannnnt somme...

That very night, removing the sugar cubes from the cool dark hiding spot with utmost stealth and precaution, he worked alone in a dim lit corner. With a sharp tannery needle and slender thread, he strung his sugar together, one at a time, 3 x 3. Three times, and he made the sign of the cross each time, for fear of breakage, or of his siblings waking, but mercifully the sugar did not crumble, and everyone slept.

Soon he had three squares of nine. These he ingeniously strung to each other, so that every row rotated left/right and forward/back. The children had, most fortuitously, some salvaged colored papers in a box under the bed. This he swiftly extracted, and soundlessly cut into small squares sized to cover each exposed side of the sugar plane.

He moistened the thin paper with lukewarm water and adhered it by the stickiness of the slightly melted sugar. Red on one side, green on another, then blue, yellow and white would have to suffice for the remaining side.

He set it to dry behind him on the floor and dozed.

In the early hours, with everyone else still turned with their back to him in bed, he was delighted to see that the little papers had stuck, and everything still twisted as intended on the little nylon thread he had strung through with the long piercing needle and knotted off.

The twist of the cubes made a little shuffling noise in the dim light as the sugar crystals scrapped slightly against each other. Ida's eyelashes flittered and a sleepy arm reached out from the mattress, almost touching his sleeve: "Whaaattt is itt?"

"Our new toy," he said and gave the 3 x 3 panels a good twisting left/right, back/ forward, till all the colors were very well mixed up and very visible now in the dawn that was creeping in through the window over their bed, with Kubby still asleep in a clump to her far side. In truth, he wasn't old enough to play. He could, by himself only sleep, eat, and waddle about, and do what two-year old's do terribly best: get into everything.

Ida sat up and took the toy, a flushed look of amazement and joy across her face. She could not remember when they had a new plaything, having been hunkered down here for reasons she could not understand. She did not know what a bomb threat was, except that it was Bad.

They could hear their parents getting readied in the small room adjacent. Mother leaned a head in and gave a wayward smile, thin and hopeful, and went to set out some rations for breakfast. Then Father stood in the door, in his work clothes, and immediately picked up on the novel object. He put out a coarse hand and Ida placed the toy in it without hesitation.

"Well done, son," he said gruffly, and behind the flash in his eyes a calculation. Father knew the value of an idea. "I'll hold on to this."

A mixture of pride and dismay filled the twelve-year-old. He did well, but he'd lost his treasure. And now, as Father walked out with it, Ida wailed inconsolably in tantrum, toddler as she was, even if soon going on four.

It was Kubby who quickly found it.

And Father who found him: sucking on the cube, the colored papers stuck to his cheek and teeth. His fingers a sticky sweet guiltless mess.

Somebody got a whooping.

Father spent the next nights with Rubric reconstructing the toy from wood and paint.

The family made a fortune after the war, and Rubric somewhat made a name for himself, with a little help from Kuba.

06.29.2024

Mysterious History challenge @AJAY9979