Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
I t was clear that Crow desperately wanted to discourage Simeon’s plan. Seated in the hackney, Simeon read the tightness of Crow’s mouth, the narrowing of his eyes, the way his hands kept forming into fists. But to Crow’s credit, he didn’t actually say a word, instead sitting stiffly beside Simeon and staring resolutely ahead.
Simeon wasn’t really in a chatty mood himself, and not just because he was nervous. He also felt trapped. Caged. Due to decisions made by others and by himself. It took all his will to not change shape and fly as far away as his wings would take him.
When they got out of the cab, he decided they may as well meet this challenge with full stomachs, so they stopped for a quick meal of potatoes and pea soup. He remembered back to when he considered this a veritable feast. Now it sat heavily in his stomach as they walked through Bethnal Green.
“But why here ?” It was the first time Crow had spoken since they left the Rook’s Roost.
Simon grabbed his arm and dragged him into a reeking narrow alley. “You’ve told me that your farm is a part of you. That the soil is in your bones.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, London is part of me. The Thames runs through my veins, the soot will never leave my lungs. And that wretched building I called home for over a decade—it was the only home I ever had until our carnival wagon. It made me who I am, love, for better or worse. I may have been born somewhere else, but the foundling home is the beginning for me. The point where my time begins.”
He knew he was making a mess of explaining, mostly because he didn’t understand it himself. But the conviction lay within him that if his plan was going to succeed, he needed to do it here. Where his power was strongest, perhaps.
“Think of a clock or a pocket watch, Crow. The hands sweep ’round and ’round, yeah? But they’re connected at the center. No matter how much the tip of the hand travels, the base remains in one spot, and that’s where the motion comes from.” He didn’t actually know how watches worked. It had to do with springs, he believed. Even once he had the money to buy a watch, he’d had no need for one.
Crow muttered something about digital watches—whatever those were—and motioned for Simeon to continue.
“The foundling home is the center for me.”
“And you think you can work wonders there, even if the Frugises said it wasn’t possible.” Crow crossed his arms.
“The Frugises said that rooks who touch time can’t bring physical objects with them. But what about the books? And I haven’t even done those intentionally. I reckon they don’t know what they’re talking about. Or perhaps they’re lying.”
“This… this scares me.”
“Me too.”
Simeon grabbed him for a kiss. It wouldn’t solve any of their problems or even make them less frightened, but he needed to do it. A reminder that despite everything bad that could happen to them, they loved each other, and that was a joy greater than any other. Crow must have felt the same way, judging how he got into the spirit of things, fiercely returning the kiss and knocking off Simeon’s hat as he tried to tangle fingers in his hair.
Panting, they separated, but only so Simeon could rest his forehead on Crow’s shoulder. “Not the most romantic spot for a snog.”
“I love you, Simeon Bell. Don’t get yourself killed. Or worse. Okay?”
“Deal.”
They walked the final two blocks to the foundling home.
Midday, with sun creeping through clouds, the building still managed to hulk menacingly, like something from a nightmare. It had been a refuge too, though. Simeon had been left here out of desperation, in order to save his life, and although he’d experienced many flavors of misery inside its walls, he’d also survived.
Two small children were seated nearby: a boy of seven or eight and a girl several years younger. She was asleep on his lap, her arms clutching him even in sleep. They were shoeless, filthy, clad in rags. The boy’s eyes were ancient.
“Hang on,” Simeon said to Crow before strolling over to the children.
The boy cowered a bit, but he also flung a protective arm over his sister and jutted his chin.
“D’you have family?” Simeon asked.
“None o’ yer bloody business.”
Simeon smiled at him. “No, it isn’t.” He dug around inside one of his inner pockets and pulled out a small cloth sack, which he held toward the boy. “There’s enough in here for a month or more in a lodging house, I reckon, and to feed the both of you.”
The boy looked suspicious. “Whattaya want from me?”
“Nothing. I was once…. Well, I wasn’t always as lucky as I am now. Lived in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the foundling home. “I want to share a bit of my luck, is all. Take it.”
After a brief hesitation, the boy shot to his feet, dislodging his sister. He snatched the bag, shoved it inside his shirt, and ran off, clutching the girl’s hand. They disappeared in moments.
“But a month from now they’ll be back here,” Crow said when Simeon rejoined him.
“Probably.”
“Then why?—”
“For a few weeks, they’ll have a bed and regular meals. A chance to clean up if they want. They’ll have a bit of happiness, yeah?”
Crow stared at him. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”
Simeon grinned and bowed.
And then, truly, it was time.
“Keep your hand on my shoulder, yeah? Don’t let me go.”
“I never will.”
They stood directly in front of the foundling wheel. In a way, it was the womb that had birthed Simeon into the life he led. If time flowed from him like a river, the foundling wheel was the spring that was the source of that river.
He closed his eyes and pictured exactly that: a river of time, running not over and under him, as in the Frugises’ drawing, but from him. Which would mean that he could control it. He hoped so anyway.
Two shapes floated at the very beginning of that river like fishing floats. He followed one of them downstream, but it stopped abruptly and then disappeared. That must have been the woman who’d brought him here when he was an infant. He went back and found the other. It moved quickly through the stream, sometimes going under the surface for what felt like too long but always bobbing back up again. Sometimes it got caught in an eddy and swirled many times before escaping. Sometimes it veered off to the edge where the current was slower. But always it continued forward until… until the stream approached an abrupt drop-off.
Just before the shape could go over the waterfall—the timefall?—he grabbed it and clutched it tightly, and then he opened his eyes.
Someone punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground and making Crow cry out. Simeon scrambled to his feet immediately and took off in pursuit. All he could see of the fleeing figure was that he was tall and skinny, he wore patched clothing, and his short-cropped hair was the color of a raven’s wing.
Weak from the day’s experiences, Simeon was slow in following, and it didn’t help that there were people and carts in the way. He had almost lost his quarry when a tall blond figure streaked past him and darted through the crowd. Simeon followed as closely as he could, thankful that Crow was parting the way before him.
The dark-haired man turned into an alley with Crow only steps behind. Simeon almost tripped over a dead horse in the gutter but managed to keep his footing. He rounded the corner just in time to see Crow tackle the man, sending both of them to the muddy ground.
Then Crow bellowed in pain.
The other man scrambled away from him and then backed away. In his hand, a knife dripped thick blood. Crow remained on the ground, curled into himself.
“No!” Simeon yelled .
The man took a few more steps away. His wide eyes were as dark as a starless night sky. He dropped the blade, flexed oddly… and then struggled out of his shirt and flapped into the sky.
Simeon threw himself to his knees at Crow’s side. “Love, oh gods, love!” He tried to inspect the wound, but Crow’s hands held his stomach tightly. A wide puddle of blood had already spread around him.
“Go get him,” Crow said.
“No, I can’t— Crow, let me help, you’re— Please!”
“I’ll heal. Go.”
“I can’t leave you, you’re?—”
“Go!” As Crow roared, blood trickled from his mouth and he coughed, but that didn’t stop his fierce glare.
Moaning with distress, Simeon changed shape. It took a few seconds to free himself from the prison of his shirt. He gave Crow one last desperate look, but Crow just waved one hand weakly.
Simeon took flight.
He gained altitude as fast as possible and then, once he was a few hundred feet in the air, did a quick loop in search of… there. A dark speck swiftly moving to the north. Simeon followed.
With every flap of his wings he saw Crow lying in that filthy back lane, pumping out his life’s blood. But he reminded himself that he’d seen Crow recover from wounds much worse than that. And since this time it was Simeon’s acts that had brought harm to his beloved, he was bloody well going to make sure those acts weren’t in vain.
Early during their year in the carnival together, Crow had somehow gotten his hands on a book about corvids. It was an American book, so it didn’t discuss rooks, but both he and Simeon had reckoned that since rooks and crows were close cousins, much of the crow information would apply to him. According to the book, crows could fly in excess of twenty-five miles per hour. Not as speedy as a train or car, perhaps, but still pretty fast.
Now Simeon flew faster than that. Fueled by thoughts of his Crow, he pushed himself to his body’s absolute limits. He even considered experimenting to see whether he could move himself in space the same way he had moved Bran, but decided not to risk failure, especially when he was hundreds of feet in the air.
He was gaining on his target.
And he found this situation to be an odd mix: furious with himself and Bran, terrified about Crow’s condition, and in that painful space beyond exhaustion, where every movement felt as if he were being torn apart. And yet it also felt glorious to be hurtling through the air, with the city’s haphazard lanes, the twisting river, and humans’ turmoils far below.
The dark speck in the distance gradually became larger. And then larger still. It attempted a turn, a dive, a rise, but Simeon matched him movement for movement until they were flying abreast and Simeon could see the rook’s telltale pale skin around the base of his beak.
With a savage cry, Simeon angled to one side and collided with the other bird.
Twisting together, talon to talon and wing against wing, they somersaulted downward. Simeon lost all coherent thought as they tumbled, aware only of the need to defeat this other creature.
They landed on soft ground with a flapping thud, still entwined and too done in to accomplish anything but lie there, unmoving.
Simeon recovered first. He changed into human shape and lunged for the bird, only to end up gripping a struggling man’s upper arms, his back to Simeon .
“Bran!” Simeon rasped, barely able to speak.
The other man went still. Simeon couldn’t tell whether it was out of voluntary compliance or because he lacked the strength to continue. “What did you do to me?” Bran sounded as if he might be close to crying.
“Can you— Bloody hell. Please. Just bleeding talk with me. I’m Si— I’m your brother.”
Bran made a noisy intake of breath and twisted in Simeon’s grip, trying to look over a shoulder to see him. “No.”
“You’re Bran Frugis. Or were, anyhow. Dunno what you’re going by nowadays. I was Lewis. The last time you saw me, I was an infant.”
Simeon took a gamble and let him go. Bran stumbled back a few feet and they stood there, staring at each other in, Simeon saw now, a churchyard. A trio of crows perched on a nearby grave marker, watching them carefully. The church itself was small and low-roofed, with narrow arched windows framed by yellowish stone. Fortunately, they appeared to be in the countryside somewhere, and there was nobody nearby to take note of a pair of naked black-haired men among the graves.
Bran’s resemblance to Simeon was unmistakable. Black eyes and hair, pale skin, broad shoulders. The slightly sharp nose and full lips were the same ones Simeon saw every time he looked in a mirror. However, while Simeon’s face was unmarked, an old scar left a pale path through Bran’s left eyebrow. He was also much thinner.
“I have no brother,” said Bran.
“We both know that’s untrue. Just bloody look at us.”
“You can’t…. What did you do to me? How did you—” Bran broke off with a helpless sort of groan.
“It’s a very long tale.”
Simeon hadn’t actually planned what he’d do if he, in fact, successfully found Bran. That lack of foresight was his own fault entirely, and he’d bathe in regret over it later. He hadn’t time for that right now.
In as calm a voice as he could manage under the circumstances, he continued speaking. “You stabbed my mate and we’ve left him?—”
“He—you…. I was attacked!”
“I understand how it felt that way. We didn’t mean you harm, though. I’ve been looking for you. But now Crow’s hurt, and we need to get back to him.”
Bran shook his head. “I don’t need to do any such thing.” He had a surprisingly upper-crust accent.
Simeon was too tired and desperate to do anything but resort to threats. “If you don’t come back with me, I’ll only drag you to me again. You can’t escape me. And we certainly can’t stay here.”
Finally noticing something other than Simeon, Bran glanced down at his own nudity and then scanned their surroundings. “Where are we?”
“Dunno, do I? North of London.” Simeon reminded himself to remain calm. “Have you enough energy left to fly back to Bethnal Green? I don’t fancy walking back like this.”
“I don’t want to go to Bethnal Green.”
“Nobody does, mate, but that’s where we left Crow.”
“Who?”
“The man you chived.” Simeon firmed his jaw. “The man I love.”
Something flashed across Bran’s face, too fast for Simeon to interpret it, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t disgust. “He attacked me.”
“Not looking to place blame. But we need to help him.”
“Will anyone else be lying in wait for me?”
“No.”
After a long moment, Bran squared his shoulders. “Very well. But I shall want full explanations of… everything. ”
“You’ll get ’em.”
Simeon prepared to change shape, but before he could, Bran spoke again. “I remember you. I saw you when I was arriving—” He stopped, tightening his mouth.
“When you were arriving at the Castle. Yeah.”
“But you were— I don’t understand.”
“There’s a lot of that going ’round.”
Bran opened his mouth, shut it again, and gave a slight shrug. He changed shape, as did Simeon, and together they took wing toward London.