A Serenade for the Innocent 17 First Envelope

Are you well? I apologize if this is the first time I've ever written a letter to you, mother, for you know what sort of debauched path I have chosen for myself in order to attain my so-called "youthful liberation". I am not here to seek your forgiveness.

I am here to inform you of my death.

Please do not be shocked, mother. Please don't weep for me. I do not deserve your tears, but more than anything, I wish you would not blame my choice to be who I am as your basis for why my death is imminent. I may be an outlaw, a thief, a vagrant, a rogue, or whatever it is the neighbors had plagued you to call me, but know this, I had placed your teachings in my heart and I lived my whole life with pride though I may never meet eye to eye with you or with the Almighty God in heaven due to the shame of my misdeeds for this past few years. I assure you mother, I have not killed anyone in my endeavors to become a modern-day Robin Hood I had always aspired to be. Me being a thief is not the reason why I now face the reaper.

Though I cannot shake the fact that my death is also caused by my useless attempt to be a thief in the side of justice.

Let me recount to you mother, as vividly as I can and as masterful as a maleducated thief like I can ever recount the days leading to my inevitable doom.

It was a rather sunny afternoon as I remembered around August 13 in the year of our Lord 1898 when my group of hooligans received a piece of wondrous news pertaining a certain package that the vain marchioness residing just at the foot of the mountain near our small wooden cabin had received a week prior. Apparently, according to our trusted intelligencer, the marchioness in question had commissioned a rather intricate portrait of herself and will deliver the payment for her vanity trophy within a black carriage that will march towards the mountain roads following the day when we received the news, that being August 14.

The artist who made the said painting expected a hefty price of 10 golden bars. Ten golden bars, mother, can you believe these people? Can you believe the price they are willing to give for a damned painting of themselves? It's disgusting and utterly unbelievable how we let this slide and how we still let them trample over us like we're lower than the cockroaches in their cellars.

Mother, you must understand, this woman is sending a goldmine through her carriage and we are expected to let that slide? No, mother, no, indeed, for that belongs to the folks who are less-endowed compared to us, and you know this had always been the mantra I had lived with since I was but a boy. With that in mind, we needed no more explanation, we decided to raid this carriage and take the gold mines for ourselves and bring it to the people where it belongs.

There were four of us. We were armed and ready. Focused. Determined. Steadfast. We will take that gold today, so we believe, but the day had passed and there were no black carriages in sight. That was when we started to wonder if the trusted intelligencer is a trusted man after all. Either way, we decided to camp near the woods of the mountain path, waiting for this dreaded gold to come.

We didn't even know if it would come in the first place. Still, we persisted; we had been doing this for a long time and this was not the first time information had a tad bit error in its details. I had to admit though, mother, this is the first time we had encountered an error in a schedule, much less from an intelligencer as capable the one who had given us the said information.

Still, we persisted, and as each hour passed without the carriage in sight, we started to argue if staying there in the woodlands was truly worth the effort; and as each moment passed, talks of packing our bags and going back to our cabin started to circulate among the party. However, I decided to wait. And wait we did.

But the damned carriage is still not in sight.
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We are almost done packing our bags and retreating back from whence we came when we finally heard it. Lo and behold there it goes: a black carriage, much bigger than any normal carriages we had ever seen started to hooved from afar. Pulled by four strong stallions, it didn't take a while before it arrived from where my party had camped.

Sure enough, it also didn't take long before our barrage of arrows overwhelmed their speed. Before the coachman could realize it, his carriage had already come to a halt. Thus, from the shadows of the night, we appeared as his screech resounded from the stillness of the night.

Two of the members of my troop tied the coachman while the rest of us opened the carriage to unravel the fruit of our labor. With wide grins on our faces, we opened the humongous black carriage. Within the carriage lies a contraband sealed tightly with a heavy metal lid embossed with intricate imagery of some sort of ancient ritualistic magic accompanied by an alien language none of us are smart enough to understand. The only thing we know is that inside this contraband lays our price and what we saw within is…

Water.

Just water, calmly sitting on a rectangular barrel slightly bigger than a bathtub.

There are no 10 gold bars or anything of the like, just an undisturbed water calmly feeding our frustration as the night went on.

Of course, everyone was mad, so was I. We lashed the anger boiling within us for days towards the coachman who's pitifully whimpering on a nearby tree as his entire body remained tied on the log, relishing of the powerlessness of being a clueless prey.

Where is our money? we said. Where is the gold of the people? I followed. Mother, he was so scared, and you must believe me that the soul of the man is still intact upon his body the last time I saw him. He was very well alive and kicking as he ran towards the safety of the village walls, but I did bruise him a bit while my friends wounded him a lot.

We pried on him and we asked; we demanded and we interrogated; we screamed and we whispered; we punish and we reward yet at the end of the day, he only uttered the same response to our question.

I don't know, sir, he pleaded, I am merely a coachman, he cried.

I don't know, sir, he repeated, please, have mercy on me, I am only a coachman, he uttered on repeatedly as each strike broke his spirit.

Alas, we gave up. He wasn't lying; how could he? There are many of us and he's just a lone man waiting for the solace in the wind to come. We let him go and we watched him run towards the night as we fought among one another as to what we will do from here on out. We spent the remainder of our ration for this ambush and what we got in return is just some water probably hailing from a nearby well along with the mansion of the vain marchioness. We could sell the queer metal lid accompanying the water, but aside from that, we got nothing.

It was an utter waste of time. These days, I would ask myself if it truly is worth my time and effort to leave the solitude of our humble home within the grasslands of our home, mother, but I must continue for justice ceases not after one unfortunate expenditure. Though I had to admit, this truly scarred us enough to ruin our morale for the remainder of our short-lived days.

We decided to take the lid with us as we're about to return into our unsightly mossy cabin in the middle of the spruce mountain when one of us suddenly stopped moving in front of the water and just sort of staring at it, doing nothing with his mouth agape—reveling on the unseen wonders lying within the useless water. We asked him as to what is the reason behind his odd behavior of gazing at the water so intently, but he only gave us one answer.

Leader, we must take the water with us, he said. We need to take this water with us, he repeated with much fervor in his voice.

I asked him to voice out the reasoning behind his uncharacteristic behavior when another one of us inquired me to take the water with us while another begged me on his knees that he along would carry the water if that's all it needs to convince me to take I with us.

I walked towards the water and stared at it for a good couple of seconds when I finally understood what they were trying to say; my goodness, I uttered; we do need to take this water with us. I said so mindlessly, mother, as I stared at the crystal clear water, directing my gaze at it with much power of will.

One of us told me what a stupid my decision was to take the water with us; after all, what can one barrel-full of water contribute to our cause when we have an entire river running ceaselessly along with our humble cabin in the spruce mountain.

Mother, you must believe me not to be insane, but there is a power within those water, something I cannot explain, something queer and appalling at the same time that sends a message to all the nerves in my body, commanding me to take it and, mother, I am ashamed to say this but I have become its slave faster than you can read this letter and no matter what sort of reasoning and tantrum my other member would tell me, I would still take the water with me, mother for I do not why, but I am drawn to its malevolent power.

There is something in the water, mother, and it's calling my name.

And so, mother, I hope you still do not find me insane after reading through this letter and I beg of you to continue, mother. Try, mother, with all your might, to believe in what your son had to say for by the time my quilt stops moving I have already ensured my doom. I have divided this letter into three envelopes and if you wish not to continue anymore to read my nonsensical ramblings then know that I will never consider if your fault for ever thinking so, but if you can respect that truth, the final truth, within my words then open the second envelope, mother, please lest burn my letters away and clear yourself of all the sins I have put you through once and for all.

There is something in the water, mother, and I do not feel saf

Chapter end