Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes — page 1 — now for those of you who know anything about blind children you are aware that they make the very best thieves As you can well imagine blind children have incredible senses of smell and they can tell what lies behind a locked door be it fine cloth gold or peanut brittle at fifty paces Moreover their fingers are small enough to slip right through keyholes and their ears keen enough to detect the faintest clicks and clacks of every moving part inside even the most complicated lock Of course the age of great thievery has long since passed today there are few child-thieves left blind or otherwise At one time however the world was simply thick with them This is the story of the greatest thief who ever lived His name as you’ve probably guessed is Peter Nimble As with most infants Peter came into this world with no name at all One morning a group of drunken but good-hearted sailors spotted him bobbing in a basket alongside their ship Perched on the boy’s head was a large raven which had presumably pecked out his eyes Disgusted the sailors killed the bird and delivered the child to the authorities of a nearby port town Though the magistrates had no use for a blind infant a local bylaw required them to at least give the boy a name By silent show of hands they christened him Peter Nimble after a misremembered nursery rhyme With this name and nothing else he was sent off to make his way in the world For the first while he was nursed on the milk of a wounded mother-cat whom he met after crawling beneath the local alehouse The cat permitted baby Peter to live with

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes — page 2 — her in exchange for his picking the lice and ticks from her fur until one tragic day some months later when the alehouse manager discovered them huddled beneath his porch Furious at finding vermin in his establishment the man shoved the whole family into a bag and tossed them into the bay Using his skillful fingers to untie the knot on that bag marked the beginning of Peter’s career Being furless and naturally buoyant he managed to make it back to shore without too much trouble The cats on the other hand did not fare so well Until this point you have been witness to Peter’s rather typical infancy probably not unlike your own But it was only a matter of time before he distinguished himself from the teething masses The first hints of this appeared in Peter’s uncanny gift for survival Since he had no parents to purchase clothes and food for him he found it necessary to take matters into his own hands There is an old saying about how easy it is to take candy from a baby This saying is utterly false anyone who has tried to take anything from a baby knows well what sort of crying kicking and general commotion will ensue It is very easy however for babies to take things from us Despite being blind young Peter had no trouble sniffing out fruit stands and vegetable carts to steal from He would toddle wherever his nose led him and innocently cut his teeth on whatever food he wanted He soon began to pinch other necessities such as clothes bedding and a bandage for his eyes He tried stealing shoes but found that he preferred going barefoot By his third birthday he was an expert in petty theft and a known menace to the vendors More than once he had been caught in the act only to slip away before the constable could be alerted One problem with a life of crime is that it lowers your chances of social advancement Law-abiding citizens take one look at children like Peter and turn the other way never to offer sweets toys or hope of adoption In providing for himself our boy had all but guaranteed that he would grow up parentless and alone All that changed however when he met an enterprising fellow named Mr Seamus Mr Seamus was a tall wiry man with meaty hands and an enormous head Because of his clumsy touch he had been unable to live out his dream of becoming a cat burglar Instead Mr Seamus had taken a career as a beggarmonger A beggarmonger as you might imagine is someone who deals in beggars The man had built up a business of adopting orphans maiming them good and proper and then sending them out into the streets to beg for coins Any child who dared come home empty-handed was throttled and sold to the workhouse All told Mr Seamus had probably gone through about thirty orphans in his career Peter was five years old when the beggarmonger first spied him beside a fruit stand in the market Hullo boy Mr Seamus said upon his approach What’s your name They call me Blind Pete sir the small boy said still too young to know not to talk

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes — page 3 — to strangers Mr Seamus leaned closer for a better look at him It was his experience that blind children made especially successful beggars And where are your parents he asked I don’t have parents the boy answered By now Peter’s hunger was getting the best of him and so he quickly reached a hand behind his back and stole an apple from the fruit cart Mr Seamus glimpsed this action out of the corner of one eye and it nearly took his breath away The boy had stolen the apple not from the top of the stack but from somewhere deep in the middle leaving the outside completely untouched For an ordinary person such a feat would be impossible but for this filthy child it was second nature Mr Seamus knew at once that he was standing before a very gifted thief The man leaned closer eyeing the boy’s delicate fingers Well Pete he said in his sweetest voice My name’s Mr Seamus and I’m ruddy glad we met You see I’m a great important businessman but I’ve got no son to share my riches with Mr Seamus took the apple from Peter’s small hands biting into it as he spoke How would you like he bit again to become my business partner You could live with me in my mansion eat my food and play with my dog Killer What kind of dog is it Peter asked hoping very much it was big enough for him to ride It’s a Siamese Mr Seamus said after thinking a moment Are Siamese big The biggest I suppose he could swallow you whole if he wanted Mr Seamus tossed the apple core into his mouth and swallowed it whole Now what do you say boy There was no mansion There were no riches servants or feasts Killer was real enough but he was missing a leg and quite old and like most old things he hated children Instead of giving Peter rides he spent most of his time limping growling and lapping the drip off his disgusting snout Mr Seamus gave up beggarmongering and never looked back He sold off his other orphans and devoted himself entirely to Peter’s education in thievery For the first year he locked all the boy’s meals inside an old sea chest If Peter wanted to eat he had to pick the lock with his bare fingers This not only taught him valuable burgling skills but also saved Mr Seamus a great deal in expenses The boy went hungry for over two weeks before getting a first meal in his new home When he did finally manage to unlock the chest by stumbling across the McNeery Twist maneuver the scraps were long spoiled But eventually he grew more adept at picking locks until at last he had gone through every one in his master’s collection

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes — page 4 — Mr Seamus also trained Peter in the fine art of sneakery how to creep over floorboards rooftops and even gravel so as not to make a single sound The boy proved a fast learner and soon mastered the gamut of thieving crafts from window-cutting to advanced rope-work By the age of ten Peter Nimble had become the greatest thief the town had ever seen But of course no one actually saw him they only saw the open safes and empty jewelry boxes that he left behind Every night Mr Seamus sent Peter into the town to steal And every sunrise Peter returned to Mr Seamus with a burgle-sack full of loot Worm which is what the man had taken to calling him you done ruddy well Now get out of my sight With that he would lock the boy inside the cellar leaving Killer to stand guard Peter didn’t actually mind the cellar all that much Being blind he didn’t care about the lack of light and sitting down there was far better than looting honest people’s houses Whatever wrongs he may have committed and stealing things is wrong Peter was still a good child who wanted nothing to do with burgling Every morning as he curled up to sleep on the damp cellar floor he would pretend that he could sneak past Killer break into Mr Seamus’s great treasure room and return all of the stolen goods to their rightful owners He would imagine thankful townsfolk rescuing him from cruel Mr Seamus and inviting him to live forever in a big warm house full of food and singing and other joyous children In short he would dream of being happy But this was only a dream and every sunset he would wake once again to the shouts of Mr Seamus and be kicked back outside for another evening of pilfering the possessions of honest citizens And so it went for Peter Nimble He was miserable mistreated and forced to commit misdemeanors day after day season after season year after year until one very special very rainy afternoon when he met a stranger who would change his life forever

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