I have a dilemma. I am writing a novel with two main characters, each with their own story and the two intertwine. My 'problem' is the style I am using for one of my characters. My intention is to have a definite voice for each character in the narration style. One character is a well-educated young king, whereas the other is a poor little boy of about seven or eight who is possibly mentally retarded. I am writing his chapters accordingly, but in the style, there are quite a few fragments and I do a lot of beginning sentences with 'but' and 'and.' I rather like the idea, but I don't know if I am doing it correctly. Is it hurting rather than helping?
I have excerpts from both characters' introductory chapters, just for comparison's sake. Please vote and tell me why you think it is working or not. I am already a ways into this story and I want to correct it as soon as possible.
Thanks...
~GryphonFledgling
Meirzen excerpt (this is the 'normal' style)
The servant girl stood between two guards that seemed to be over twice her height. She was crying and her shackled hands were reaching out in a plea for mercy. Salim, Meirzen’s head of security, sat before her, his fingers interlaced as they rested on the desk before him. She was moving her lips, making small sounds as if trying to speak, but no words came out. Salim watched her impassively. When she finally broke down and sobbed, it could be seen why she had not spoken: her open mouth showed that her tongue had been cut out. The guards still held her up by her elbows, so her hands were dragged up above her head as she collapsed to her knees as much as the men’s grips would allow.
Salim watched her sob, tapping a quill pen against his nose thoughtfully. She was a pretty little girl, but as she sobbed, grotesque noises wrenched out of her throat. Without a tongue to shape them, the sounds were distorted and unearthly. Salim stared at the little girl, his brow furrowed slightly. At length, he waved his hand to dismiss the guards. The girl revived slightly as they pulled her along and she tried to resist them, to remain in Salim’s office. Her bound hands reached for him and her eyes begged him for mercy, and out of her mouth came desperate cries. Then the door closed behind the guards and the sound was muffled into sobs that still echoed throughout the hall beyond. Salim stared past the door, his eyes unfocused for a time. Then he finally shook himself and laid down the pen. He had ink on his fingers now. Damn it. As if he didn’t already look undone. It was still before dawn and he was not fully groomed, but there were more pressing matters at hand than personal appearances. He sighed and pushed his hair out of his face.
The guards had hardly gone before the door swung in without announcement and Jael and Cullin, the king-prince’s chief advisors, entered. Each nodded their head to the security officer in greeting. He nodded back and waved his hand toward some cushioned chairs as he bent his head to scribble a note onto a sheet of rough paper before him. But the two men stayed standing, watching him silently until he raised his head.
“So? What might you two want at this early hour?”
The two men finally sat. Cullin, the older man, rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, steepling his fingers against his chin.
“What new light have you been able to shed on this mystery?”
Salim glared at him from underneath his unruly locks, which had again fallen into his face. His braids were in horrible disarray; they would most certainly have to be redone and he was hoping that the two advisors would not notice at such an early hour. Jael seemed to be in the same predicament; he was pushing the braids behind his neck where they could not be seen so easily.
“The food was most certainly poisoned, though the king-prince tells us he did not eat any.” Salim leaned back a little in his chair. “His dog did however. She’s in convulsions right now. Seems she knocked the bowl onto the ground and ate what was in it.”
“Mm, we’ve heard about that.” Cullin was smoothing his mustache back with a finger. One stroke on one side, one on the other, two again on the first. Unlike the other two, he seemed to have already had his face shaved this morning, leaving only the thick whiskers on his upper lip. His robes were in order and Salim could almost imagine that he could smell fragrance water. “The king-prince is most upset. He seems to have already forgotten that he was nearly killed. All he keeps asking about is how his dog is faring.”
Salim nodded, though he did so reluctantly and with the hope that it looked sage. He would have liked to have thought that he was the first to know about the dog. But of course the advisors had been the first. They had the most extensive network of spies and informants in the kingdom. Even he, the security commander-in-chief, did not have anything to compare. And the worst part was he didn’t know how to gather such a force. But he did have the security of knowing that he was safe from their spying eyes. Anything he might have done of questionable nature was years in the past. The advisors and their prying eyes couldn’t touch him.
“Any word as to how the assassin entered the room?” While Cullin spoke, his young counterpart, more of an apprentice really, Jael, was leaning back in his chair with an ankle resting on the knee of the other leg. Arvin could barely keep the disgust off his face. Such nonchalance was a skill hard-earned or a born-gift. It appears that this young man had gotten it with no effort, whereas Salim had trained himself for years to be so relaxed. A waste really. Jael was the epitome of a hot-headed youth. Why had the gods given him the calmness of body when his mind was rash and hasty?
“He told the guards that he was the physician’s new assistant.”
“I’m sure that gave them no reason to doubt him,” Jael snorted. Salim tried the stare the youth down, but the young man matched him second for second. Cullin broke the hostile silence with a feeble cough.
“Forbes has developed a recent habit of gaining and losing assistants fairly often.”
Salim laughed. Forbes? Hire a bloodthirsty assassin? That little snub-nosed weasel? Cullin could only wish it were so. “Surely just coincidence. Forbes has often developed odd habits like that.”
Cullin smiled ever so subtly, his mustache stretching with his upper lip as his mouth curved. “Coincidence? I think not.” He twisted a thin braid of his hair between a finger and thumb in what would have been an absent motion had his bright green eyes not been fixed on Salim. “I would have thought that you were paid to be equally suspicious.”
Jael snorted, amused, and his counterpart’s gaze swung over towards the noise. The young man was silent under Cullin’s gaze and Salim was free from its intensity for a moment.
“Anyone and everyone are under suspicion, Cullin” he replied, trying to sound firm. “Even the queen-mother herself.”
Cullin nodded in agreement, but it was Jael who spoke.
“Indeed. In fact, it is those most close to the king-prince that are under the most suspicion. Who else would know that he had a dream again last night?”
Very few knew about the king-prince’s nightmares; his mother, Salim, the two chief advisors, Forbes and the two trusted guards that stood at his door each night. It was a subject not often talked about and often caused unease in those select few. There were times when the prince would awake screaming and sometimes go into seizures. It seemed that there was more at work than a mere dream, but none had ventured to explain it. Salim tried to smile.
“Quite so. You have taught him much, Cullin. One day I’ll look up and he’ll be a grown man.”
Cullin’s frozen smile thawed a little with amusement, but beside him, Jael was bristling. Salim allowed himself a small, triumphant smile. The young man - almost boy, really - might be blessed with an attitude of nonchalance, but it disappeared in a hurry when he was riled. And it didn’t seem to need much to accomplish that.
“Have they identified the would-be killer?” Jael asked finally, his teeth clenched.
“Not yet.”
Cullin’s expression was unreadable as he stood. “Well, good morning to you, Salim. We just called on you to see what new developments might have surfaced.”
As if they would get anything new from him. “You shall be among the first to know,” not that they wouldn’t be already.
“Good. Good.”
Then the two advisors were gone, leaving Salim at his desk. He looked down at his hands on the desk and unclasped them from where they had been folded and hissed as the stiff joints protested to their movement. Sighing, he flexed the fingers of his right hand for a moment, patches of skin white and bloodless from the pressure of his left fingers. He hated talking to those men.
Bane excerpt (this is the questionable style)
They were fighting again; his mother and grandmother. So the little boy had come here, into the mill. It was quiet. The grindstones were still. It was dark too. The only light was from one small, high window. It cast a square of light on the ground and flour specks floated in the beam of light. They looked like stars against the blackness of the walls. The boy had tried to catch them, but when his hand went through the light, the flour specks danced away. So now he was watching the hole in the wall.
A mouse lived there. There was a line of droppings running from the hole alongside the grain bins. There were also grains of wheat and corn scattered on the ground. The boy had put them there. He hoped that the mouse would come out. Then he could catch it in the bucket he held in his hands. He had caught lizards like that before.
He had been sitting there for a long time. His legs hurt from crouching and his arms hurt from holding the bucket at the ready. But he could wait. He was very good at waiting. He could sit longer than anyone else he knew. But he couldn’t run very fast. His legs were too short. The one thing he couldn’t wait for was to get bigger. Longer legs would help him run faster. But if he were big, he wouldn’t need to run at all. He could stand and fight.
There was something moving near the hole. The boy froze. He became like a statue, not even breathing. A small, twitching nose poked out of a hole. Whiskers wiggled around it, like spiders’ webs blown by the wind. They were hard to see in the dark, but the boy’s eyes had gotten used to the dark by now. They mouse’s eyes were a bright black. They looked like lizards’ eyes. But the mouse wasn’t a lizard. It was speckled brown and black, with little pink ears and feet and a long, thin tail that was arched above its back.
The boy waited while the mouse looked around and groomed itself with its teeth. He couldn’t move too early or he would miss. The mouse kept moving back into its hole, then poking its head out again. It wasn’t far enough. The boy’s arms were twitching as they held the bucket up. They were tired. But he made them stay still.
The mouse was coming out a little more. It was sniffing the air and the boy feared that it would smell him. But then it shuffled out a little and, almost too quick for the boy to see, ran across the floor. It sped along the grain bin edges, sticking close to them. The boy was glad he had put the grain away from the walls, near the middle of the room. He wouldn’t have been able to catch the mouse against the bins.
Then suddenly the mouse was sitting on its haunches, not an arm’s-length from the boy, nibbling furiously at a nub of corn it held in its paws. The boy watched it for a moment. It was amazing how its little teeth chipped away at the hard corn so easily. It hurt the boy’s teeth when he ground dry corn between his teeth. How could the mouse’s teeth not hurt? They were so much smaller than the boy’s.
Then the bucket came down and the mouse let out a small squeak. The boy could hear it scratching at the inside of the bucket. He had caught it. Carefully, he lay his head down on the ground next to the bucket and lifted the edge ever so slightly. Under the bucket was dark - even darker than the mill around him - and all he could see were quick glimpses of movement. He let the bucket down again as he saw a small nose emerging from the darkness. He reached for a thin slat of wood that lay nearby. He slipped it under the bucket until the bucket rested on it. The mouse would be sitting on top. Now he could turn the bucket over and examine the mouse more carefully.
He turned the bucket deftly. He had perfected this with lizards. He had to do it slowly enough that the mouse did not hurt itself when it fell to the bottom of the bucket. He could hear little scratching noises from inside the bucket and then a soft bump as the mouse landed at the bottom. He had good ears. It was a good thing too. He couldn’t run very fast, but if he heard them coming, he could get a head-start.
The mouse was huddled against the side of the bucket when he pulled the slat off the top. It looked up at him, its nose quivering, then ran about the inside of the bucket. The boy’s brow wrinkled as he watched it. It could run so fast and its legs were even shorter than his.
He watched it for a long time, the bucket held in his lap as he sat cross-legged. The mouse left droppings and little dark puddles behind it a few times and the boy wrinkled his nose. The puddles smelled bad, like sour milk. He would have to wash the bucket out before he could use it again. He tried putting some wheat berries in the bucket, but the mouse ignored him as if looked for a way to get out. It was trying to climb up the sides now. He pushed it back down, his finger touching the soft, brown fur. The mouse sank its teeth into his skin. The boy almost shrieked, but he managed to swallow the sound before it came out. If he scared the mouse any more, it would bite him more. As it was, it was holding onto his finger like an angry dog. It hurt. It felt like wooden splinters being stabbed into his finger. With his other hand, he poked at the mouse until it finally released its hold. Blood dripped from his finger and he could see the little teeth marks. He stuck his finger in his mouth. The blood was salty against his tongue. It made his mouth feel strange, as if it were being dissolved.
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