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Jul 28

The Braille Legacy (completed story version of the musical now up on Ao3)

Chapter 1 under the cut

Prologue 1: Where has the sun gone?

The workshop below the house always smelled of fresh leather and wood shavings, of glue warming over the fire and tools carefully put away after another day’s work. But upstairs, tucked into the small study beside the window, there was another kind of magic.

Books. Shelves and shelves of them.

To three-year-old Louis Braille, they were treasure chests. He couldn’t yet understand every word inside them, but that hardly mattered. His father brought them to life.

“Can we read the story about Candide once more?” Louis would ask, climbing into the enormous chair beside him until he disappeared beneath his father’s arm.

His father always laughed. “Ah— Voltaire? Again? We finished it yesterday.”

“Yes yes! Again.”

There was never any hesitation after his determined and excited little voice asked him to read. A thick volume would come down from the highest shelf—sometimes Shakespeare, full of kings and ghosts and impossible speeches. Sometimes Voltaire, with adventures far beyond the tiny French village Louis knew.

The books themselves fascinated him almost as much as the stories. They were enormous things, their leather bindings worn smooth by years of careful hands, the pages smelling faintly of ink and dust.

His father never simply read them, he performed them. Kings boomed with commanding voices. Villains hissed. Heroes shouted. Old men trembled. Children laughed. He stood, paced the room, gestured dramatically until little Louis dissolved into delighted giggles, convinced the study itself had become castles and forests and storm-tossed seas.

Louis adored every second. And because Louis was Louis— questions spilled from him faster than anyone could answer.

“Why did the king do that? What does that word mean? Can we read another one? What happens after that?”

His mother often smiled from the doorway.

“He’ll wear you out.”

His father would only grin.

“I rather think he’ll wear the books out first.”

“I want to read ALL of them,” Louis would declare with complete seriousness, pointing toward the towering shelves. Every single time, his father answered exactly the same way.

“Then one day,” he’d say, brushing Louis’s messy hair back from his forehead, “you shall.”

Louis believed him. Why wouldn’t he? To him, the world seemed no bigger than the distance between his father’s voice and the next page.

….

The morning everything changed began like any other. The house was alive with work.

His mother prepared the midday meal downstairs while his older siblings hurried about their chores. From the workshop came the steady rhythm of leather being cut and stitched as his father worked on harnesses promised to customers before week’s end.

Louis wandered through the house with restless energy.

“Papa?”

His father didn’t look up. “Hm?”

“Will you read?”

“I’m working, little sparrow.”

“Just one story.”

“I can’t right now, darling.”

Louis rested both hands on the edge of the workbench. “Please?”

His father smiled despite himself.

“This evening.”

“Papa.” Three year old Louis whined dramatically. “One story, pleeeease.”

“Louis.”

“Just one page.”

The leather knife stopped moving. His father sighed, more tired than angry.

“I said not now.” The little boy didn’t move. His father finally glanced over. “I have work to finish.”

“But—”

“Louis.” The sharper tone startled them both. He sighed and continued a little softer. “I cannot read to you every moment of every day— now please, find a way to occupy yourself. I will read this evening, as I have said.”

Louis’s shoulders drooped. “…yes, Papa.”

He turned without another word. His father watched the small boy disappear toward the stairs before returning to the leather in front of him, already regretting the impatience in his voice.

He would make it up to him later. One story before supper. Maybe two.

Now… where had that awl tool he needed go?

…….

Upstairs, the house busked about. Louis wandered into the study almost automatically.

Sunlight poured through the window, catching tiny flecks of dust that floated lazily through the air.

The shelves stood exactly as they always had.

Waiting.

For a while, little Louis pre tended to fence an opponent with the awl he’d snagged from his father’s workshop— pretending it was a tiny sword. He played until his eyes landed on it.

The great leather-bound volume of Voltaire’s works. Their favorite. Far too high for him to reach. He stood beneath it, craning his neck.

“I can do it,” he whispered to himself. He dragged a chair across the floor. The scrape echoed through the quiet room, climbed carefully and reached up— not enough.

Then he grabbed a small wooden stool and placed it on top of the chair. He climbed carefully. Still not enough.

Stretching onto his toes, he reached. His fingers brushed empty air.

Almost.

Just…

…a little…

…higher.

He leaned farther. His fingertips grazed the spine. A triumphant smile spread across his face.

“Got you.” But only barely. The heavy book shifted. Not enough to come into his hands, but enough to come free.

For one impossible second it seemed suspended in the air. Then gravity claimed it.

Louis looked up.

The thick leather volume fell directly at his face and Louis instinctively reached up with both hands to catch it— dropping the awl he still held in the process. With his focus looking up on catching the book he didn’t notice the sharp tool.

The awl fell directly into Louis’s eye. Pain exploded through his face. A millisecond later the book hit his head.

A scream tore itself from his throat.

He lost his balance instantly. The stool slipped from on the chair and tipped him sideways. Louis crashed to the wooden floor as the book and stool landed beside him with deafening thuds

He curled around his face, both of his tiny hands clutching desperately at his eye— instinctively ripping the tool out.

The screaming didn’t stop.

Downstairs, every sound in the house froze.

His father’s knife clattered to the workshop floor. His mother dropped the wooden spoon she was holding.

“What was—”

“Louis!”

His parents and siblings footsteps thundered against the stairs as they raced to reach him.

His father reached the study first.

The overturned stool. The fallen book. And on the floor—

Three-year-old Louis, writhing in agony, one small hand soaked crimson as he clutched desperately at his injured eye.

His father fell to his knees so quickly they struck the floor hard enough to bruise.

“Louis!” He cried, swiping his missing awl tool away from his son. The little boy reached blindly toward the sound of his voice.

“Papa!” His voice broke into another piercing cry. “Ow, Papa! Hurts!”

His father gathered him into his arms, horror draining every trace of color from his face as blood slipped between Louis’s tiny fingers.

Behind him, his wife stopped in the doorway.

One look at her son— and the scream that left her lips nearly matched his.

….

The accident did not steal Louis’s sight all at once. At first, everyone believed it had taken only one eye. That was terrible enough.

The weeks and months and years after the injury settled into a rhythm of hope and disappointment.

The village doctor came often. Then specialists from neighboring towns. Poultices. Medicines. Fresh bandages. Promises to wait. To pray. To let the body heal.

Some mornings seemed encouraging.

Others undid all the progress of the week before.

Louis grew used to the journeys, his small hand wrapped tightly around his father’s as they traveled roads that had once meant adventure but had become all too familiar. He learned to sit patiently while strangers examined his eye, spoke in hushed voices over his head, and tried not to wince when they touched the injury.

It hurt. Often. But children possess an astonishing ability to adapt.

Louis had been remarkably brave through most of it. He cried when the bandages were changed. He whimpered when the pain became too much. But more often than not, he simply reached for someone’s hand and asked for another story.

So his father read to him. Every day. Every chance he had. If Louis could not come to the library, then the library would come to Louis.

Sometimes though, he would bury his face against his mother’s skirts on the carriage ride home, exhausted and hurting.

By four, Louis had learned to turn his head a little farther to compensate for the sight he had lost. He bumped into fewer door frames. He caught himself before reaching for things on the wrong side. When games with the village children became difficult, he simply invented new ones.

If he was frustrated, he rarely stayed that way for long. There was always another question to ask. Another story to hear. Another mystery to solve.

The Braille household, however, had changed forever. The workshop door now bore a sturdy lock. No child crossed its threshold again.

Even with the lock in place, Louis’s father found little comfort. Each evening, after finishing his work, he counted every single tool. The knives. The awls. The punches. The hammers. One. By. One. Then he counted them again, just to be sure.

His family noticed, though no one mentioned it. His guilt had become another resident of the house. Louis noticed only that Papa hugged him a little tighter these days.

….

Then, shortly after his fifth birthday, the headaches began. At first they were easy to dismiss. A child rubbing his good eye after reading by candlelight. Squinting in the afternoon sun. Complaining that his head hurt before asking for another story anyway.

Then came the mornings when he lingered beside windows.

“Why are you standing at the window dear?” his mother asked one afternoon.

Louis frowned.

“…It’s brighter outside than in here.”

She looked around the bright kitchen, then out at the blanket of snow covering the ground. The beaming sun made looking outside at the illuminated world almost too bright to look at.

“Oh, sweetheart.. I suppose you’re right.”

She hadn’t read much more into it. And because five year old Louis’s vision loss came on so gradually, he didn’t realize he was supposed to be seeing anything different— let alone articulate it correctly to his family.

The doctor came again. Then again. The old fear returned to the house. Louis didn’t see the worried expressions exchanged above his head. He only knew everyone had become quieter.

It finally became impossible to ignore anymore on one rainy evening. Their family was gathered in the sitting room. His siblings were drawing and whittling, listening, while their father sat reading— as he always had.

Halfway through the story, Louis interrupted from his spot on his father’s lap.

“Papa?”

“Yes, dear one?”

“Could we please light another candle?” He asked, trying to squint at the book to see the illustrations. His father looked around, confused.

“There are already three lit, my son.”

“…Really?” Louis asked.

Silence settled over the room. His mother’s knitting slipped from her hands. His brother slowly lowered the wooden horse he had been carving. His sisters put down their pencils.

No one spoke. Because his family in understood something that five-year-old Louis did not.

The darkness he was seeing…was not in the room. It was inside his eye.

Within months, the infection that had begun with a single terrible accident reached the only eye he had left.

The world faded slowly rather than suddenly. Edges softened. Colors dimmed.

Faces began to disappear into shadows.

The infection grew into a fever, which stole the last of his vision. They spent the long days trying to help him fight it, using damp cloths laid across little foreheads, cool baths that left him more exhausted than before.

Then came a whispered conversations outside bedroom doors. The doctor came and went with medicines that never seemed to help quite enough. His family spent there days in his room, or rotating so that the youngest amongst them was never alone.

…

The morning sunlight had only just begun to creep through the windows, two weeks through the battle against the fever, when Louis stirred.

“…And thus,” his father read warmly, giving the narrator a different voice as always, “the prince discovered that courage is not the absence of fear—”

He noticed a tiny movement beneath the blankets and lowered the book immediately.

“Louis?”

The little boy frowned sleepily. His left eye—the one not hidden beneath the black linen covering—fluttered open.

“Papa…” His voice was rough with sleep.

“There you are.” His father sighed and smiled with unmistakable relief. “I thought you might enjoy waking to a story.”

Louis smiled weakly.

“…Keep reading?”

His older sister chuckled quietly from the chair on the other side of the bed.

“I think that’s the first thing you’ve asked for every morning.” She said, patting his arm. Louis gave the smallest nod. Stories always made everything hurt a little less— it gave his mind something else to focus on.

His father began again. But after only a sentence or two, Louis interrupted.

“…Papa?”

“Yes?”

Louis blinked.

Once.

Then twice.

He rubbed carefully at his uncovered eye.

“What is it?” His father asked, leaning forward. Louis stared toward him, brow furrowing with innocent confusion.

“…where has the sun gone?”

The room fell strangely still. His father smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“It’s still early, little one.”

Louis only blinked harder.

“No…” He squinted with all the determination a five-year-old could muster “It’s.. dark.”

On the other side of the bed, his older sister straightened. He watched Louis blink again. And again.

“…Papa.” Something in her voice made their father look over to her

“I think he means...” her voice trailed off, tears welling in her eyes. Their father’s hesitant smile disappeared.

He leaned closer until his face was only inches away from his young son. Louis frowned, his little hands reaching out towards him.

His father’s heart lurched— the reach was too far right. And so.. so was his gaze. Their father looked quickly toward his eldest daughter.

“Open the curtains. Immediately.”

The girl hurried across the room and threw the curtains wide. Morning sunlight flooded into the bedroom, brilliant and golden, chasing every shadow from the walls.

“There,” his father said gently, forcing calm into his voice. “Can you see me now— can you see the sunlight?”

Louis looked back toward him. He tried so hard. His little face scrunched with concentration. His head tilted. He blinked until his eyelashes trembled.

Come on…

He knew what Papa looked like. He knew his smile. His beard. His kind eyes.

But no matter how hard he stared… Nothing came into focus. The world remained nothing more than barely there shapes swimming in dark night.

But… Papa had said that the sun was shining... His tiny lip began to tremble.

“…Papa?”

“Yes, dear one?”

“I…” His voice cracked. He reached uncertainly toward his own face as though checking for himself. “My eye is open…?”

“It is.” his father whispered.

“…But I.. I still can’t.. see you.” The words barely left his mouth before tears spilled freely down his cheeks.

“I can’t see the sun…” Panic replaced confusion with terrifying speed as he reached out again in the direction of his father. “Papa, I can’t see you!”

His father took hold of him in an instant, gathering Louis into his arms before the little boy could work himself into frightened sobs.

“No, no, I’m here.” He held him tightly against his chest. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Louis buried his face against him, crying openly now, his trembling hands grasping tightly into his father’s shirt. His small voice hiccuped as he said

“I can’t see, Papa…”

His father closed his own eyes for the briefest moment. His own hands trembled.

Then he forced himself to act.

Looking toward his eldest daughter, his voice became steady with effort.

“Monique— Go get your mother.” He commanded. The girl was already halfway to the door. “And send Simon.”

Their oldest son appeared in the hallway almost immediately. Their father met his eyes.

“Run. Fetch Doctor Robert.”

Pierre nodded once before sprinting from the house at full speed, disappearing down the road toward the village.

Inside, the room had become painfully quiet again. Louis’s frightened cries softened into hiccupping sobs against his father’s shoulder. His father rocked him gently, pressing a kiss into his hair over and over.

“It will be all right, dear Louis. It’ll be alright.” he whispered, though he no longer knew whether he was trying to reassure his son…or himself.

And just like that, before his sixth birthday, the little boy who had dreamed of reading every book on his father’s shelves was left in a world without sight.

None of them—not his grieving parents, not his devoted siblings, and certainly not Louis himself—could have imagined that this was not the end of that dream.

Only the beginning

Read the rest here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/88611151/chapters/235095741

#archive of our own #fanfic #louis braille #the braille legacy #jack wolfe