Nevermor (6 page)

“Those people
from yesterday want to adopt Max.”

To her surprise,
Henry didn’t get angry immediately.  He sat there, letting it soak in.

“But not us,” he
confirmed.

She shook her
head sadly.  “Nora already approved it.  They’re supposed to come back for him
by the end of the month.”

Henry was quiet,
but she could see how his fists were clenched.  She wanted to tell him that
fighting wouldn’t work this time, but she only sat there with her arms around
her knees, looking somber.

“She said
something about me too, didn’t she?” he assumed, his voice unnaturally calm. 
Wren sighed, knowing she had to give in.

“She doesn’t
think she’ll be able to find a place for you after what happened, and if not,
she plans on sending you away to work in the mines.”

“
Damn it
,”
Henry said under his breath, but she was still able to hear.  He was quiet as
he let the anger well up in himself – until he finally burst.  “We have to
leave here.”

“Where are we
going to go, Henry?  Everything is ruined.  No one will want us now!”

“We can live on
our own!”

“We
can’t
!” 
The sharpness of her tone seemed to shock him, but she had finally reached her
limit after all this time, and she could not be stopped.  “You might think that
living on the streets, stealing and picking pockets to survive, will be fun but
what about Max?  That’s no sort of life for a young child.  We’ll be alone in a
sea of faceless orphans and we’ll die that way!  No one cares about us!  No one
wants us!  I’ve been trying to make the best of what we have here, but now—!”

She stopped, not
because she had said everything she needed to say, but because her sobs had
sprung up again, making it impossible for her to go on.  Wren felt alone and
heartbroken.  Even the ones she had tried to keep close seemed far away from
her now.

Wren couldn’t
tell if any of that had gotten through to Henry, because she couldn’t bear to
look at his bruised face.  They sat quietly, hearing the drip from the leaky
faucet echo within the hollow room.  It had a trembling, melancholy sound. 
When he spoke again, she had her answer.

“What about all
those things you used to say about us going somewhere else?” he asked.  “Maybe
there is somewhere that we can go – in the woods, or across the ocean…”

“Those were
fairytales,” she told him, crushing his fantasy beneath the weight of her
words.  “We’re both too old to believe that now.”

Henry didn’t say
anything else, and Wren didn’t look at his expression, but she knew that he was
hurt.  She could hear the gusts of his breath exiting his nostrils as he pouted
angrily.  Then, he abruptly got up and left the washroom, slamming the door
behind him.

Wren let him
leave her, even though she knew he was furious – even though she knew he might
walk out onto the street and never come back.  She didn’t have the energy to
stop him, and maybe it was better this way.  They were all going to be
separated – it was fast-approaching now – and maybe it would be easier if she quietly
gave up her stock in her brothers and let this happen.

Wren sat there
for a long time, even though she was supposed to be back at her chores, but she
stayed for as long as the quiet would last, alone with her fear and sorrow and
self-loathing.

Nothing matters
at all now,
she
thought.
  Nothing at all.

3

That night in
the gloom of the dormitory, Wren could not find sleep for the jungle of worry
that had sprung up around her.  Though she’d told herself that the burden of
her brothers was simply too much to carry anymore, she had been glad to find
that Henry had not fled, but was now sleeping in the bed next to hers.  Max was
still oblivious to his fate, which would be good enough for as long as it
lasted, but Wren could not stop worrying about what was going to happen to
their family.

She kept having
visions of Maxwell crying for her at night after he was taken away, seeking her
but not being able to find her, and then eventually forgetting about her
completely as he grew older.  She imagined Henry in the darkness of a mine
shaft, dirty and alone until falling rocks would take his life before he was
even a man.

And what of
her?  Without them, would she be taken on by an unscrupulous lout who only
wanted to abuse and molest her – or until she was pregnant with her own child
which she would be forced to give up because she couldn’t afford to feed it?

Wren closed her
eyes tightly, trying to shut those images away, but they kept returning,
flashing across her, making her head ache and her stomach churn.

So horrible…

You must stop. 
Just go to sleep.  There is nothing that worrying will do.

The whole ordeal
was exhausting her, and she felt more tired than she had in a long time. 
Taking a deep breath, she gave in and let her eyes flutter to a close.  She
tried to keep herself still and relaxed, looking for some distant island in her
mind, fancying that she heard the melody of a flute serenading her from
somewhere beyond the ocean.

1

Wren was
imagining the gentle sound of waves on a shore, rocking her to sleep.  It was
peaceful for a while with the water sighing as it rose up beautifully and
collapsed on itself, but as she continued to listen, the wind became a roar in
her ears, whipping around her in curling gusts.  There was a sound of thunder
in the distance, grumbling lowly in the heavens, and she knew that a storm was
not far away.

She woke up with
her face in the sand and her gown feeling damp around her legs.  Tiny grains
were stuck to her face, and she passed her fingers over it to brush off the
grit as she sat up with a start, blinking to focus on her surroundings.  It was
night; the moon was enormous above her, taking up most of the space in the sky,
flanked by a million winking stars.

Where am I?

She was certain
that she’d fallen asleep in her bed at the Home.  How could she have woken
at the beach?  She hadn’t even been to the ocean in years – not since she was
very young, and certainly before her parents had cast her off.

I must be
dreaming.
 
Yet everything around her had such vibrant life.  The waves were tossing on the
sea which stretched out for miles ahead of her.  She could smell the salt, feel
the bite of the wind nipping at her.  Wren shivered, rubbing her bare arms
to generate heat.  The moon’s eerie blue glow covered everything, allowing her
to see down the shoreline without need of a lantern.

She looked
around, down the length of the beach, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else,
and she might have scolded
herself
for being out in the middle of the
night.  The beach was empty – with good reason – and she was alone.

Then she heard it
– the familiar sound of the reeds playing that haunting melody.  It was
closer now than it had ever been before, and she knew it was the same song she
had been hearing in her sleep.  It was calling her nearer to it, and how could
she disobey now that it had brought her this far?

Wren began to
walk down the shoreline, her bare feet pressing into the firm, wet sand.  The
eerie notes of the flute drew her closer until she saw the dark silhouette of
some precarious boulders, topped by a small glowing light that drifted to and
fro like a candle flickering in the wind.  She felt that she had seen that
light before.

That was when she
saw him for the first time.  He was only a shadow sitting atop the rocks, but
she was sure that he was the source of the music.  When the song stopped,
she knew he had seen her too.

He slid down and
landed on the sand so agilely that she didn’t hear any disturbance when his
feet touched down.  The light stayed behind, perched on the rocks, and
eventually it died down to nothing and vanished.  The boy approached her in the
moonlight, and as he did, she was gradually able to make him out.

Who is he?
 She wondered
and yet, while she was wary of strangers, she could not help going nearer to
him.  Maybe he could help her.  He could at least tell her where she was so she
could get back to the Home.

They stopped a
few paces from each other, but he didn’t speak, and she wasn’t sure what to say
to him either.  His face was partially hidden by a hood and she could not tell
how old he was or what he looked like, only that he was a few inches taller
than she was.  As Wren looked him over, she realized how unusually he was
dressed.

He was in
doeskin pants and dark leather boots that reached to his knees, but strangest
of all was his long coat that was made entirely of waxy leaves, sewn together
in rows.  The hood was of leaves as well, the points jutting out around
his face like sharp teeth.  The coat was open, and he was wearing no shirt
underneath.  She could see his bare chest, firm and strong,
youthful.

Wren nearly
blushed to see his flesh, but she was much too fascinated by him to turn away
in embarrassment.  He was the only one around, and she needed to focus on
discovering her circumstance.

“Excuse me, but
could you help me?  I seemed to be lost.”

He didn’t
respond immediately and she found herself wondering if he even spoke English.  Clearly,
he was not from the city.  He looked positively wild!  She determined to
herself that this was what he was – a wild boy – though how this could be so
with the gray city spanning so far, she couldn’t say.  Would a boy like
this even know how to speak?  Wren wondered these things, but she got her
answer when he opened his mouth, still giving her a hard stare.

“You’re a girl,”
he said, bewildered.  Even though he spoke English, his accent was different
from hers.  He was definitely not local.

The boy
considered her with utter confusion – she could tell by the tilt of his head,
even though she could not see his face.  She thought it was a very strange
response.

“Yes,” she
admitted, as if her long hair and gown didn’t make it obvious enough that she
was female.  “Do you know how I got here?”

He began to step
closer to her, circling around to get a better look.  She turned in place to
watch him as he did so, unwilling to take her eyes off him.

“You don’t seem
to be a wanderer, so you must be a dreamer, but it’s strange.  You’re a
girl
. 
Very unusual…”

Was he talking
to himself?  If he was talking to her, Wren wasn’t sure how she should respond.

“I’m sorry,” she
said finally, for lack of understanding.  “I don’t know what you mean.”

She examined him
again as he came back to stand in front of her.  His silence made her just a
bit uneasy.  Would he help her, or not?  Wren noticed something protruding from
his side, and her muscles tensed when she realized it was a sword, lashed to a
belt of vines.  She was startled by that, and instinctively took a step
back.

“You have a
sword,” she said as if he needed to be told.  “Please don’t hurt me.  I don’t
have anything.”

“I would never
hurt a girl,” he said solidly as if she had insulted his honor.  She almost
wanted to apologize, but he was speaking again before she got the chance. 
“Besides, I couldn’t harm you if I wanted to.  You’re not really here.”

“What?”

“Look,” he said,
pointing at the ground.  She looked where he directed her but didn’t understand
what he was showing her at first.  All she saw was his long shadow, stretched
across the sand beneath the light of the moon – but it was alone.

I don’t have a
shadow
,
she realized.  It was true.  His was there and, since she was standing in front
of him, hers should have been there as well, but there was nothing.  Wren
looked all around herself, but her shadow was nowhere to be found.

“They don’t
attach themselves to the dreamers,” he said.

“They
what
?”
 His words were so ridiculous that she didn’t understand them.  She felt she
should correct him.  “Shadows don’t attach to things.  They are already
attached.”

Clearly she
thought that she knew more than he did about this, but he didn’t back down.

“A shadow is a
shadow, but
that
is a mimic,” he corrected her, pointing at his shadow,
which didn’t move – except as he moved.  “It’s an imp that attaches to a host.”

He said it so
matter-of-factly that she had trouble doubting him.

“Is it
dangerous?” she asked dumbly, silently hoping that he was right about one not
seeking her out.

“No,” he told
her.  “It’s just damned annoying sometimes.”

He spoke
accusingly, then she saw him smile a little, and she got the impression that he
was talking about her instead of the shadow.  Was she getting on his
nerves?  But she hadn’t done anything!

“Well, I’m glad
I don’t have one then,” she said, her nose in the air.  Who did he think
he was, insulting her like that?  They had only just met.