Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
S imeon and Crow were out in the garden again, and Simeon had just kicked a marble faun. “I should have bloody known. I did bloody know: don’t go asking questions if you don’t want to hear the answers.”
As soon as Lydia had announced his parents’ prophecy, he’d once again gone all fizz-brained. He’d almost leapt through the window in a hysterical attempt to escape, but Crow had held him back and said he’d accompany Simeon to the garden instead. The Frugises said something about getting ready for dinner. More details about his history would be forthcoming later. In the meantime, he was assaulting statuary. At least he wasn’t crying.
Crow had opted for the less violent approach of examining the flowers growing in a stone urn. “I think Gram had these too. Funny to think she grew— will grow the same things almost a hundred years from now and on a different continent.”
Simeon, who couldn’t care less about flowers just then, gave the defenseless faun another kick. “Why have I suddenly turned into a pigeon-livered noddle? ”
“I don’t know what that means, and you’re gonna break your toe if you keep that up.”
Although Simeon’s foot was starting to hurt, he kicked the poor faun once more for good measure before settling heavily onto a stone bench. Crow sat near him, pressing their bodies together at shoulder and thigh. Simeon had to acknowledge that the solid warmth of him felt good.
For a long time they silently watched the flutterings of songbirds. The wall blocked off many sounds, and only a few voices carried from the street. Mayfair was a lot quieter than his old stomping grounds. He might even have found it stifling to live here after a time.
“It’s going to rain,” said Crow.
“Now you’re a prognosticator?”
“Farmer. I can smell it. And feel it, I guess, on my skin. Barometric pressure changes, I think.” Crow lifted one arm and they stared at the back of his hand as if it might be getting ready to do something extraordinary. It wasn’t. He let it drop.
“Rains a lot here,” remarked Simeon. “Sometimes it felt as if I didn’t dry out for months on end. Wasn’t so bad during the day when I was moving about, but it could be horrid at night.” He shivered at the memory despite the current warm temperature.
“I didn’t mind the rain so much as a kid,” Crow replied, “except when it really came down and flooded everything. The winter chill could be pretty miserable, though. My bedroom was upstairs, and it got so cold sometimes that Aunt Helen and I called it the North Pole. I’d sleep with a hot water bottle and about a thousand quilts, and that was fine. But man, getting up before dawn and having to venture through the frozen wasteland to get dressed? Not fun.”
Despite what he was saying, Crow wore a small smile and his eyes were soft. Maybe he was remembering that his grandmother had sewed him those quilts and that once he got dressed and went downstairs, she’d have a big hot breakfast waiting for him.
They sat on the bench awhile longer. Before too long, clouds began to form and soon the blue sky was gone entirely, replaced by a gray that was much more familiar.
“I’m not like this,” Simeon said quietly. “Cowardly and… confused in my head.”
Crow bumped their shoulders together. “Nothing cowardly about you. As for confused…. Well, maybe I can play Dr. Freud for a minute?”
“Who?”
“He was…. Jeez, I don’t even know if he has published anything yet. Well, eventually he’s going to be famous. He said that we all have a lot of weird stuff going on in the depths of our mind—stuff we’re not aware of, but it affects our behavior anyway. So when we’re experiencing anxiety, it’s probably because things are extra stormy in here.” He tapped his own head.
That made sense, although it was unsettling. It was a bit like being controlled by someone else. “So what’s my storm about, Doctor? I’ve known all my life that I was a grubby orphan.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know you were a rook until pretty recently. I think you sort of put off dealing with that when you were helping me face the demons—’cause fair enough—and then you kept trying to put it off afterward. But you can’t keep a lid on that box forever. And now that we’re back on your familiar ground, with all the old associations, that lid fell off.”
“I’m bloody Pandora,” Simeon muttered. A raindrop fell on him, and then another, and he and Crow started back inside.
Just before they entered the house, Simeon grabbed Crow’s arm and held him back. “I’m going to ask something of you. I shouldn’t ask it. It’s my responsibility, not yours, and I ought to be weathering my mind-storm myself instead of forcing you to deal with it, but I can’t abide, I’m not strong enough, I can’t?—”
“We’re getting rained on,” Crow interrupted gently. “Whatever you want me to do, the answer is yes.”
And damn it all, Simeon had to accept his help. “You talk to the Frugises and find out… whatever else they have to say. About the prophecy and my brother and….” He waved his hands helplessly and realized he wanted his wings very badly right now. “You can tell me later. Right now I need to fly.”
Although Crow glanced up at the sky and looked worried, he nodded. “Okay.”
Simeon let out a long breath. “Thank you, love.”
As soon as Crow was inside, Simeon tore off his clothes and sprouted his feathers. He took off without much grace but with considerable power, flapping up and up until he was inside the clouds—cold and confusing, but he never lost his sense of direction—and then above them, surprised by the last of the day’s sunlight. He was reminded of another figure in Greek mythology—the ill-fated Icarus—but kept on rising.
Beneath him, the clouds were a vast white carpet stretching as far as his sharp eyes could see. No way of knowing where land and sea lay, where rich people lived or poor. It was as if all earthly cares no longer existed. They’d been smothered under a fluffy blanket, and now Crow was free to go wherever he wished. He could remain in this form forever.
Except that Crow was down there on the ground.
Full dark had fallen by the time Simeon landed in the garden. He didn’t bother putting on his now-sodden clothing but instead clutched it in his arms and crept into the kitchen. Very faintly, he could hear Crow and Lydia’s voices, coming perhaps from the parlor. Neither of them sounded upset, which was good he supposed. He tiptoed up the back stairs and down the hall to the room he and Crow shared, and then crawled into bed, pulled the blanket up high, and did an excellent imitation of an ostrich instead of a rook.
“Do you want some dinner?”
Simeon blinked sleepily, smiling as he felt Crow’s fingertips stroke the hair away from his face. “Yeah.”
“I can ask for it to be brought up here or we can go down. I’d recommend clothing if you choose the latter. Not that the Frugises appear to be particularly Victorian in their views about nudity.”
Simeon got out of bed and stretched. “Well, it’s a shame to cover all this, innit? And Edwin and Lydia aren’t half-pretty themselves.”
Crow threw a pillow at him, but Simeon ducked.
Before they ate, Simeon begged needle and thread from a maid and spent a bit of time sewing two secret pockets into his trousers. Experience as a thief had taught him that it was best to tuck very valuable items away. He hid the box in one of the pockets and several coins in the other. Then he and Crow ventured downstairs.
Apparently their hosts had eaten already and were nowhere to be seen, leaving Simeon and Crow alone in the dining room except for occasional incursions by the young maid. The food was tasty and filling and there was good wine as well. They didn’t talk about anything important over the meal, just idle chitchat as rain pelted the windows. Crow shared what little information he had about Dr. Freud, who sounded like an interesting chap, and Simeon described what London looked like from a great height.
After the meal, they were alone in the drawing room, where the maid had offered brandy but they’d declined. She brought them salted nuts and herbal tea, as if they were in danger of starving or dehydrating after the several large meals today. It was all very cozy: the slightly overstuffed sofa easy to sink into, the faint whiffs of flowers, and the glow of the fireplace and gas lamps.
None of which explained why Simeon’s heart felt like a frightened rabbit.
“All right,” he said into the heavy silence. “Enlighten me.”
“They kind of talked a lot. Do you want the full version or CliffsNotes?”
“I take it that’s an abridgment of some sort, and I opt for that. As brief as possible.” Maybe then he could manage without becoming hysterical.
“Got it. I’ll give you the ripping-off-the-Band-Aid version.” Crow took a few deep breaths. “Okay. Your parents both had the same… vision or prophecy or something like that. Part of that time-flying thing. And it said that their son would destroy the rooks.”
“Don’t suppose the prophecy said how this was going to happen?” Simeon closed his eyes.
“Nope. It didn’t even say which son.”
Simeon’s eyes flew open. “My brother,” he whispered.
“Yeah. They had two sons, born three years apart. You were probably the younger one, Lydia said. In fact, you were only a few weeks old when they had their vision.”
Simeon pictured this: A black-haired couple sitting in a cottage kitchen with a little boy running around and a newborn swaddled in the woman’s arms. The parents and the older child laughing, the baby smiling up at his mother. Then the father singing in a lovely tenor, a song about a buxom young woman’s beautiful muff, and the mother laughing harder and telling her husband he’d have to watch his tongue when the boys were a bit older.
“What happened then?” Simeon asked.
“They conferred with the rest of the flock. A decision was made—your parents had to kill both children. Just to be safe.” Crow’s expression was grim, his eyes flashing with anger at people who’d likely been dead a century before he was born.
“Just to be safe,” Simeon echoed.
“I’m getting the impression that this flock is pretty, um, practical. If necessary, they’ll make sacrifices for the greater good.”
Right. Like pushing a boy out of a high window to see whether he could fly.
Crow swallowed audibly before continuing. “The entire flock argued about it, but in the end I guess they decided they had no choice. Your parents gave both of you to your grandfather—your father’s father—and he said he’d take care of it. He went off into the woods and came back a while later, alone.”
A grandfather. The potential existence of one hadn’t occurred to Simeon. “He didn’t kill me,” he said, pointing out the obvious.
“Everyone thought he had. Then your mother had a baby girl, and I guess everyone considered that safe enough. She was pregnant again when your family’s cottage burned with everyone inside. There was a blacksmith shop attached to the cottage, and maybe some overlooked embers flared in the forge overnight and….”
That hurt. Simeon knew they were dead, but the details dug into him like a blade. He sighed. “I take it that at some point the flock learned we hadn’t been murdered?”
“There was a local woman in the village—not a rook, but apparently rooks sometimes have various relationships with ordinary humans, like the servants here. Shortly after the fire she got sick, and when she was feverish, said that your grandfather had given you and your brother to her and told her to take you away. And she had—she took you to London. But she was pretty much out of her head when she said this. Nobody could get any details out of her, and they weren’t even sure if what she was saying was true. Then she died. So since the Frugises were in London anyway, they were sort of appointed to keep an eye out for you and your brother.”
“Now instead of Pandora I’m bloody Oedipus instead?” Simeon leaned forward and ran his fingers through his already-messy hair.
Crow remained quiet for a bit, probably allowing Simeon time to process, and then he gave a slight chuckle. “Freud talked about Oedipus. He hypothesized the Oedipus complex. He said little boys fall in love with their mothers, want to get rid of Daddy, are afraid Daddy’ll find out and castrate them, and instead try to be as much like Daddy as possible so someday they’ll hook up with someone just like dear old Mom.”
Simeon stared at him. “That Freud bloke has problems.”
“Yeah, I think he did.”
Maybe it was silly, but the diversion calmed Simeon enough that he could take better stock of what Crow had told him about his family. “If I hadn’t run away from the Frugises that time, would they have killed me? To protect the flock?”
“I dunno. They claim they wouldn’t have, that they were some of those who argued against your murder to begin with. Later they figured that maybe the prophecy just referred to the destruction of your immediate family and so was moot by then. But who knows if any of that’s true.”
Hmm. They were certainly willing to let him die by falling if he wasn’t a rook, so it didn’t seem farfetched that they might also be at peace with his death if he was. But as far as he could tell, they hadn’t attempted to murder him during this visit.
“What about my brother?”
“They never found him. Nobody even knows if he’s alive. Maybe either your grandfather or the lady from the village killed him. It would have been a lot easier to travel to London with one kid instead of two.”
True enough. Simeon leaned his face onto his palms. “Anything else I ought to know?”
“Names. I know your brother’s name and, uh, what your parents called you.”
Bloody hell. “Well?”
“Your brother was Bran Frugis. And you’re Lewis with a W.”
“Like the bloke who wrote Alice ?”
Crow shrugged.
“I’m not, though. I’m Simeon Bell.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I’m going to find my brother.”