Prologue

Les Shaman Miserables

The chain gang – a torture unlike most of the French ever knew. The horrible slavery endured was painful enough, but when that green-haired, heartless veteran Lyvert was watching over you, the chain gang became positively fatal.

That day, in 1815, two of Lyvert's associates in the police force watched and beat upon five convicts working very hard, so hard that they began to bleed.

"Look down, look down, don't look them in the eye," Lyvert's associates chanted. "Look down, look down, you're here until you die."

"The sun is strong, it's hot as Hell below!" one convict cried, his face contorted in pain. An officer kicked him.

"Look down, look down, there's twenty years to go," the officer sneered.

"I've done no wrong! Sweet Jesus hear my prayer!" another man cried, his clothes torn and his hands clasped together in prayer.

"Look down, look down, Sweet Jesus doesn't care."

"I know she'll wait, I know that she'll be true!" the third convict yelled.

"Look down, look down, they've all forgotten you."

"When I get free, you won't see me here for dust!" the fourth convict threatened. The officers continued to just beat and kick the convicts.

"Look down, look down, don't look them in the eye…"

The fifth convict looked as though he had been on the gang for a very long time, and he was very weathered and dirty. "How long, oh Lord, until you let me die?"

"Look down, look down, you'll always be a slave… look down, look down, you're standing in your grave," the officers echoed.

The various threats and screams stopped. The officers and the convicts looked up to see the hardened face, green hair, and spectacular light green eyes of Lyvert.

All work stopped. Lyvert's black coat and white dress shirt billowed in the brief wind. Lyvert looked to the officers.

"Now bring me prisoner 24601," he asked in an oddly delicate voice. The officers quickly brought him the fifth convict. The convict moved some black hair out of his intense eyes.

"Your time is up and your parole's begun," Lyvert explained. "You know what that means?"

"Yes it means I'm free," the convict sighed, a small smile on his face.

"No! It means you get your yellow of ticket of leave. You are a thief!" Lyvert accused.

"I stole a loaf of bread," the prisoner countered.

"You robbed a house!"

"…I broke a windowpane." The prisoner looked at Lyvert. "My sister's child was close to death. We were starving –"

"You'll starve again!" Lyvert interrupted forcefully. "Unless you learn the meaning of the law!"

"I know the meaning of those nineteen years a slave…" the fifth criminal glared at Lyvert. "Of the law."

Lyvert turned his back to the prisoner. "Five years for what you did, the rest because you tried to run! Yes, 24601 –"

"My name is Jean Paijean!" the prisoner intruded angrily.

Lyvert snickered malevolently and turned back to Jean Paijean. "And I am Lyvert. Do not forget my name – do not forget me, 24601!"

As Lyvert beckoned for the officers and the chain gang to follow him, they chanted, "Look down, look down, you'll always be a slave. Look down, look down, you're standing in your grave…"

Paijean smirked somewhat, and then looked at a puddle of water below him.

"Freedom is mine. The earth is still," Paijean breathed. "I feel the wind… I breathe again. And the sky clears… the world is waking."

Paijean cupped some water from the puddle in his hands, and then drank the fresh water. "Drink from the pool – how clean the taste! Never forget the years, the waste… nor forgive them for what they've done."

"They are the guilty, every one," Paijean sighed, as doors began to open on the houses, and the square filled with people as the sun gently rose.

"The day begins… and now let's see what this new world will do for me!"

Paijean found work with a farmer. There, he toiled diligently with the farmer's other workers, doing much better work than them and doing it faster. However, at the end of the day, the farmer only gave him half salary, as opposed to what the other men received.

"You'll have to go, I'll pay you off for the day. Collect your bits and pieces there and be on your way," the farmer told Paijean as he handed Paijean the coins.

Paijean frowned. "You have given me half what the other men get! This handful of tin wouldn't buy my sweat!"

One of the other workers scowled, looking at the yellow ticket-of-leave. "You broke the law, it's there for people to see. Why should you get the same as honest men like me?"

Paijean saw the sun was beginning to set, and saw an inn, full to the brim with people. He knew he couldn't go there. And there was no way that anyone would let him into their houses.

"And now I know how freedom feels," Paijean shook his head. "The jailer always at your heels – it is the law! This piece of paper in my hand, that makes me cursed throughout the land – it is the law! Like a cur, I walk the street, the dirt beneath their feet."

Paijean sat down on a stoop, in front of a darkened house, when the Bishop Marco of Digne emerges from the doorway. Marco pushed a blonde strand of hair out of his eyes to see the weary Paijean.

"Come in sir, for you are weary," the bishop invited Paijean. "And the night is cold out there. Though our lives are very humble, what we have, we have to share…"

Marco led Paijean into his house, and sat him down at the table.

"There is wine here to revive you, there is bread to make you strong. There's a bed to rest till morning – rest from pain and rest from wrong." At first, Paijean was very conscious of how much he ate, but Bishop Marco insisted that he eat his fill – so Paijean did.

Paijean watched Bishop Marco take to his room, and Paijean looked at the table.

"He let me eat my fill… I had the lion's share," Paijean realized. "The silver in my hand cost twice what I had earned in all those nineteen years – that lifetime of despair, yet he trusted me."

Paijean snickered. "The old fool trusted me – he'd done his bit of good. I played the grateful serf, and thanked him as I should… but when the house was still, I got up in the night."

Paijean took a fine silver goblet off the table and stuck it in his pocket. "Took the silver – and took my flight!"

Paijean ran out of the house, towards nowhere in particular, when two constables grabbed Paijean and led him back to Bishop Marco's house. They knocked on the door, and the good bishop answered.

"Tell the reverence your story," the first constable instructed.

"Let us see if he's impressed," the second continued.

"You were lodging here last night…"

"You were Bishop Marco's guest."

"And then out of Christian goodness," the first constable pointed out, "when he learned about your plight…"

The second officer turned toward Bishop Marco. "You maintain he made a present of this silver?"

"That is right," Bishop Marco nodded. He turned to Jean Paijean. "But my friend, you left so early… surely something slipped your mind."

Bishop Marco gave Paijean two silver candlesticks, exquisitely designed and worth more than Paijean had ever made in his life. "You forgot I gave these also. Would you leave the best behind?"

"So, Messieurs, you may release him," Bishop Marco told the constables. "For this man has spoken true. I commend you for your duty, and God's blessing be with you."

Now the bishop turned to Jean Paijean, his eyes colder than before. "But remember this my brother, see in this some higher plan – you must use this precious silver to become an honest man. By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness – I have bought your soul for God!"

The Bishop of Digne retreated to inside his house, and Paijean became frantic.

"What have I done, Sweet Jesus, what have I done? Become a thief in the night, become a dog on the run…" Paijean looked at the brick ground. "And I have fallen so far! And is the hour so late that nothing remains but the cry of my hate – the cries in the dark that nobody hears – here where I stand at the turning of the years? If there's another way to go, I missed it twenty long years ago! My life was a war that could never be won; they gave me a number and murdered Paijean, when they chained me and left me for dead… just for stealing a mouthful of bread!"

Remembering was painful for Jean Paijean, so he sat back down on the street. "Yet why did I allow that man to touch my soul and teach me love? He treated me like any other, he gave me his trust… he called me brother. My life he claims for God above – can such things be? For I had come to hate the world – the world that always hated me."

Paijean felt a tear drip down his face. "Take an eye for an eye! Turn your heart into stone! This is all I have lived for; this is all I have known! One word from him and I'd be back, beneath the leash, upon the rack. Instead he offers me my freedom. I feel my shame inside me like a knife – he told me that I have a soul, how does he know? What spirit comes to move my life? Is there another way to go?"

"I am reaching, but I fall," Paijean continued, standing up, clutching his yellow ticket-of-leave furiously. "And the night is closing in… and I stare into the void, to the whirlpool of my sin. I'll escape now from the world – from the world of Jean Paijean –" Paijean tore his yellow ticket-of-leave in half. "Jean Paijean is nothing now! Another story must begin!"

Paijean tore up his yellow ticket-of-leave into many pieces and left them in his palm, scattering them as he walked.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King or Les Miserables...