Nevermor (3 page)

“Everything is
alright,” she told him.  “It’s the same as it was yesterday.  We’re all
together and we’re safe.”

“When are you
going to stop pretending that you’re alright?” Henry asked abruptly from his
bed on the other side of her.

Judging by his
intolerant tone, this burst had been welling up inside him for several
minutes.  His eyes were blazing in the dim light, and she would have to put out
those flames.

“I’m fine.  I’m just
tired,” she told him.

“You’re upset
about today!” he accused.

“I’m not,” she
insisted firmly, trying to calm him down before he got too loud and disturbed
the others.  “It’s been a long day, and we need our sleep for tomorrow.”

“That’s a lie,
and you know it.  You wish those people had wanted to take us home.”

Perhaps she had
– wolf eyes and all – but at the same time, she was glad to have avoided that
fate.  She did not, however, intend to explain all of this to Henry.  It was
beyond him.

“I never stop
wishing for that,” she admitted.  “But it hasn’t happened yet, and we have to
accept that.”

Henry twisted
onto his back, his movements swift and restless.  “We don’t have to be here,
you know,” he growled angrily, but his voice was subdued now.  “We can leave
whenever we want.  We can go find our
real
parents and make them take us
back.”

They don’t want
us, Henry!
 
Even if she had screamed it at him, she didn’t think that he would have gotten
it through his head.  Wren resolved not to think about their parents, even
though the subject had come up, but only promised herself that she would be a
better mother herself – someday.

“Life isn’t so
bad here, Henry,” she said instead.

“It gets worse
every day,” he complained for the sake of the argument.

At times like
this, Wren wasn’t sure of what to do with him.  It seemed like everything she
said made him angrier – made their situation worse.  No matter what she said,
she couldn’t win, and likewise he wouldn’t relent.

She did the only
thing she could do.

“You’re going to
upset the others,” she told him sternly.  It was avoiding the subject, but it
was true.  Some of the other children were already starting to stir in their
beds, wondering why he was raising his voice.

Henry and Wren
stared at each other in a silent battle, and then he gave up with an angry
huff.  She could practically see the smoke venting out his nose and ears as if
he were a disgruntled dragon.

“Well, you’re
upsetting
me
,” he said sullenly, but he quieted down.  Henry rolled over
in his bed to ignore her, leaving her with a feeling of guilt in the pit of her
stomach.  It seemed that she couldn’t do right by both of her brothers at the
same time.

Wren sighed into
the cool air, wondering if anyone would ever be bothered to console her as she
tried to do for them.  Would she ever get back the effort that she put forth?

“Tell me a
story,” Max requested, seeming to have already forgotten about Henry’s outburst
– or perhaps his existence altogether.

Wren began to
feel more discouraged at that.  She had once been full of stories for them and
the other orphans.  She’d thought that it would make their sad, lonely lives
more tolerable if they could imagine that their hum-drum activities had some
sort of fantastic significance – such as the coal dust being the scattered
remains of evil fairies, and if they did not clean it up quickly, then the
creatures would come back to life and curse them all.  She had also told them
stories of the adventures they might have if they left the orphanage, but had
stopped long ago because she thought Henry and some of the others were becoming
too deeply influenced by them.  She feared that they might actually try to run
away in search of a train that would take them to a mystical circus.  Now, she
kept all her fantasy ideas to herself.

She gathered Max
closer and rested her head against his, all the while staring up at the ceiling
to remind herself of where she was.  They only had this reality now.  She could
not afford to get lost.

“I don’t know
any stories,” she told him, and she recognized the defeated sound of her own
voice.  Before he could beg, she began to hum a quiet lullaby, and that seemed
to work well enough.  The boy was still.

Wren closed her
eyes and tried to shut down her swirling thoughts – to lose herself in the
melody of her own tune.  Tomorrow was a workday at the mill, and she knew she
needed to be rested for the long hours ahead of her.

Keeping her eyes
shut, Wren finally fell asleep to the distant sound of a flute which crept in
to mesh with her own song, calling her through the veil of a secret world.

1

That night, Wren
dreamed of flying.

It was fairly
common for her to visit the sky in her dreams, soaring freely across the
heavens, but this time was different.  Her venture was in the dead of night,
beneath a dark sky and over a black ocean.  She flew low over the water, which
was deep and endless, and the only light she could see was a small, dancing orb
that frequently darted away from her.

She had tried to
follow the light, but it always slipped away, as if purposefully trying to lose
her.  Eventually, she had lost it completely.  She was left alone in the
darkness.  After that, she could not find her way to wherever she was going,
and also had no memory of what she had been looking for.  She had gotten
nowhere before she had woken up in her bed, where the daylight was peeking in
through the window beyond the cloudy haze of morning.

After pulling
herself out of the thin blankets, she was still drowsy, the vivid dream having
drained the life from her.  It was as if she had indeed flown across the ocean
in a single night and returned to her bed only when she had not found what
she’d been looking for.  The sound of a song played on wooden reeds was
lingering in her ears, along with the notion of swirling whispers, and it left
her feeling muddled.

Once she had
embraced the day, she found that it began the same way as the one before it –
as if she had expected it to change because of a dream.  She was still an
orphan at Miss Nora’s, and as such, certain things were expected of her.  She
had to help usher the rest of the children out of bed and make sure they got
themselves ready.  Sometimes she had to help Nora with breakfast as well since
the woman didn’t believe in bringing in outside help for tasks like that.  All
of them, even the young children, had jobs at the Home.

Of everything
Wren had to do in the morning, including getting herself ready for the day, she
found that one of the most difficult was getting Henry to rise.  He was
particularly cranky, especially after a rude awakening, and everyone else had
refused to deal with him.  She was his sister.  It was somehow made her
obligation.

Today, she
waited until she had finished her duties in the kitchen before going after him.

“Henry, get up,”
she said before she’d reached the doorway.  The rest were already downstairs,
dressed and getting their rolls to eat on the way to the factory, and if he
didn’t rise now, there was no way he would get there on time.  “Please don’t be
difficult.  I don’t feel—”

She stopped when
she had come into the room, expecting to see him still asleep there in the
empty dormitory, but he wasn’t there.  The bed was vacant, the sheets disturbed,
and her brother was gone.

He’s awake? 
That’s a surprise.

She wondered why
she hadn’t seen him about, but was pleased that he’d taken some initiative.  If
she had hoped for perfection, however, he wasn’t quite there yet.  He hadn’t
made up his bed.  The sheets were twisted and his pillow was on the floor. 
This wasn’t something that mattered much, but she couldn’t allow any of them to
be so messy.  Miss Nora did keep an eye on things, whether or not she
associated with them much, and she would notice if they didn’t have their room
as neat as they should.

Wren went to the
untidy bed, knowing that Henry would give her one of his looks if she hunted
him down to complain about it.  She would just do it herself and spare them
both the argument.

As she folded
the sheets, she kept imagining how she might have nagged him –
Why can’t
you, for once, just try!
– but she would never say those things.  She was
practiced at keeping them inside.  She tucked the sheet back under the thin
mattress – but halted when she felt an unusual lump there.  Her brow creased as
she settled her hand over the mass and drew it out. 

It was a small
leather coin purse, and it was not Henry’s.  She shook it and heard the jingle
of a few shillings tapping against each other.  Her heart sank as
disappointment took over.

Stealing,
Henry?  How many times have I tried to tell you that we aren’t thieves?  We’re
better than this.

She squeezed the
purse in her hand, trying to decide what she should do with it when a voice
rose up behind her.

“I was going to
do that,” Henry said, speaking of the bed, and Wren froze.  “If you’d leave
things alone every once in a while…”

She hadn’t been
sure of how she wanted to approach this before he came into the room, but she
was suddenly so upset with him that she knew she had to confront him now.  He
started to approach the bed, possibly to take over the task, but dropped off
when she turned to him and held up the item she’d found.  His eyes widened and
he went as white as a ghost.

“What is this?”
she wanted to know, though she didn’t need him to tell her.  It was clear
enough.

“Gimme that!” he
shouted and snatched it out of her hand roughly.  It didn’t do much good for
him to take it from her.  She had already seen it and knew what it meant.

“Henry!  You
have to stop this!” she urged, trying to keep her voice low.  They were alone
in the room, but a loud argument might be heard downstairs.

Henry stared at
her with their father’s firm gaze – the one that was so commonly seen when he
was opposed.

“I’m trying to
help us,” he said, stuffing the purse in his pocket as he reached for his cap. 
“And you
won’t
say anything!”

She was insulted
that he thought she would rat him out to Miss Nora.  She had her loyalty to her
family first.

“You’re going to
get caught,” she tried to reason.  “What happens when the man you’re stealing
from notices and grabs you up?  Do you want to be
hanged
?”

“I’m careful,”
he insisted heatedly.  “Besides, I could get away.”

“Really,
Henry…”  She shook her head.  “It’s pointless!  Everyone will know that the
money isn’t ours if we try to spend it on anything!”

Henry’s lips
tightened like a fist, and she saw the truth in his eyes then.  She could not
control him forever.  The things she had told him – the rules she made and
advice she gave – didn’t matter much anymore.  He was getting old enough to
form his own opinions, and they were clearly different from hers.

“One of us has
to do something,” he accused.  “Since you won’t, it has to be me.”

Henry put his
cap on snuggly and stormed away from her.  Wren only hoped that her words had
sunk in at least a little bit, but she doubted they had.

He has gone so
far away.

Feeling
discouraged and tired, Wren sat down on the bed to collect her thoughts.  She
lowered her head and sighed out in defeat for the moment.  What was her family
coming to?

You can’t give
up on him
,
she encouraged herself.

Yes, yes, I
know.

Wren sighed,
then sat up straight again and regained her composure.  Henry did not know how
he abused her, but she would roll with the punches.  She had no other option. 
She opened her eyes to go on with her life, knowing she could not live in the
darkness forever.

A flash of light
at the corner of her eye drew her attention to the window, but when she turned
toward it, there was nothing.  She was sure that she had seen a circle of light
there.

A spirit light? 
A will-o-wisp?
 
Those were her first thoughts, but she decided she was being too whimsical. 
Perhaps it was a rare glimmer of sunlight shining in against the glass, but it
had reminded Wren of her dream – of the light that had been trying to get away
from her on the sea.

It slipped from
her mind after that.  Her real life was confusing enough.  There was no reason
for her to be chasing fantasies.

2

The line of
orphans dressed in gray ambled down the street in a line, off toward the large
buildings where the smoke billowed out over the Thames.  They knew the way by
heart, and knew also that they shouldn’t be wayward, for being late would
warrant a beating from the overseer.  They wordlessly fell in with the masses
that flooded the streets, marching to their jobs at the factories.