No Cage for a Crow

One - Into the Storm

With the benefit of hindsight, I am forced to admit that the howling heart of a winter storm might not have been the most well-considered moment to run away from home. Of course, adolescents have never been renowned for their unerring wisdom, and I was no exception. All I knew then, the one thought running continuously through my mind as I belted on my dressing gown, stuffed my feet into layers upon layers of stockings and then into my brother's over-sized boots, and threw a heavy woollen coat over all of it, was that I had to get out. It was all my fault, I had ruined everything, and the only thing left was to run.

And so I ran.

I had no plan - as I have said, this was not an intelligent decision. It was an impulse born of powerful emotion, fierce, chaotic, unpleasant, as thoroughly divorced from the guidance of intuition as it was from that of reason.

Divorced from self.

There was a bizarre sensation of separation. I felt I was barely in control of the hands that fumbled at the window latch and scrabbled at the sash. Rain roared against the glass, rushing in immediately to drench my legs as the window slid open. It seemed impossible that no one would come, that no one would hear. But the din of the storm drowned me out perfectly. My fingers, curled around the slick sill, became numb as I stood stone-still, perched on the balls of my feet until the faint sound of the hall clock reached me. The stroke of two broke me from my paralysis. They were not asleep. I could still hear their voices, even if they could not hear my movement. They were not asleep, but they were not coming, either.

I swung one leg outside and ducked through, arms splayed out to brace myself against the walls.

From the hall there came a voice, male, one of my brothers, though over the noise of the storm, I could not have said which.

'Morrigan!'

I did not reply, only leaned back inside to seize a book from the table and heaved it at the door with all my strength. It struck the wall with a thud and fell to the floor in a heap of soggy pages. An unforgiveable abuse of the written word, I realized with a pang. But the voice did not call again, and when I was sure that no siblings were about to intrude, I effected my escape.

At home, escape through a window should have been an easy matter. The ancient, ivied walls of Mycroft House afforded countless hand- and foot-holds, even in the cold and wet; I could have made my way from the first floor to the ground in under a minute, and the stables would have been shelter enough until the storm abated.

This place, though, had never been and never would be home. I had never hated it until that night, but I had always felt like a guest, there, even in the room that they called mine. This place was wet brick, without ivy, without anything to break the fall I recklessly chose to take. It was only luck, or perhaps a miracle, that kept both my legs intact.

I leaned out the window as far as I could and stared down at the little court below, obscured by a haze of water and darkness.

A flicker of doubt made me pause, but then voices rose in anger from somewhere behind me, cementing my blind resolve. I turned myself around and slid out of the safety of my candlelit room, fingers gripping the sill, boots braced against the outer wall.

Leather skidded against brick, and I lost a couple of inches, body slamming against the wall. The breath whooshed out of me, and for a moment, I could only cling. It would not be a terribly long drop, if I were to let go. I had fallen as far before, at home, but at home, such a fall ended in the cuts and scratches offered by the evergreen shrubbery that encircled the house beneath the lowermost windows. The cobblestones here promised much worse.

I recovered, inch by inch, and lowered myself until my toes caught on the slight protrusion of the decorative line of white brick that divided the first storey from the ground. I lowered myself a little further still. There was no convenient ivy, but if I could get my boots to the top of the next window and my hands to the decorative white brick, then my boots to the window sill below and my hands to the top of the window frame, I could jump the rest of the way safely.