No Cage for a Crow

Five - Dark Places

And a sound like the descending hordes of Genghis Khan snapped my eyes back open again. Five grubby figures stormed into the room, wiping grease from chins with even greasier sleeves. Flapping and guffawing, they arrayed themselves on the chairs around me, sending up clouds of horsehair and dust.

Startled, I sank down and simply watched them come.

The Wrong Boys had left their hats and mufflers somewhere, and the first thing I noticed was that not all of them were Wrong Boys at all. The smallest one, wielder of the formidable slingshot, had set free a pair of fluffy, ginger-coloured plaits that fell over her ears and to her shoulders. Her state of privation made it difficult to guess her age – no older than twelve, though not younger than eight. She gave me a gap-toothed grin.

An enormous heap of a boy with close-cropped black hair and wide-set eyes grabbed the poker from where it had fallen beside my chair and shoved the tip of it down into the fire. He sucked his thick, red lips with a pensive air.

One with freckles and a pointed chin scratched at a lump of scarring where his left hear had once been, watching me narrowly.

A fourth, delicate and pale, almost effeminate, seated himself primly on the edge of a cushion beside the girl. His long, elegant fingers plucked nervously at the spoiled, once-lovely cravat he wore about his throat. He did not look at me at all.

And I did not look at him for long, either, because the fifth had caught my eye and demanded all of my attention. He of the china-blue eyes and yellow lashes. I had never seen such a person, and if I'd had a little better sense at that age, I should not have stared as I did, shamelessly, gaping like a fish. And, God help me, I should not have said what I did.

'I'm sorry, I...' I stuttered, realising that I must look a complete ass. 'I'm sorry, I...' And then I sabotaged my own attempt with the stupidest, least necessary statement possible. 'I've never met a Negro before.'

He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head with a bemused smile, but with no surprise. 'Is this what you call black?' he intoned, as one who has recited the same words countless times before. 'Don't be daft. The word you want is "albino".'

Perhaps his grasp of the etymology was, indeed, better than my own. Beneath his London patina, he was whiter than I. I began to mumble some reply that doubtless would have placed even greater strain upon his charity, but he cut me off.

'I'm Magpie,' he said. 'On account of, I has something of a fondness for things what shine. Our big 'un's Billy. He don't talk much, and most like in French, when he do.' He pointed to the mountain before the fireplace, who nodded. 'An' this 'ere's Weasel,' he said, indicating the boy with the missing ear. 'An' Dart.' This was the slender boy in the cravat. 'An' our girl 'ere is Snail. What are we to call you?'

As he pointed out each of his compatriots in turn, I noticed that his hands, though by no means black, were much darker than his face, or than me. Not exactly albino, then, though I could not recall the name for the condition that resulted in patchwork skin. Black and white. Perhaps Magpie, then did not refer only to his fondness for sparkle.

I opened my mouth to decline—I had not gotten a real name for any of them and saw no reason why I should give them mine, especially since it would doubtless be appearing soon in the papers—but the girl interrupted me.

'I think she looks like a crow,' she said with a grin and a giggle. 'She's got the beak for it.'

Well, it was objectively true, at least. Not even my own mother—I shied away from the thought of her—had ever suggested to me that I could be thought beautiful, but it was still something of a shock to hear the fact of my prodigious nose announced so bluntly. But perhaps it was well-deserved. The observation was just as true and probably just as unwelcome as my own comment to the boy called Magpie.