Rise of the Darklings (5 page)
Read Rise of the Darklings Online
Authors: Paul Crilley
C
Jack and Corrigan
CHAPTER
O
NE
In which Emily sees something she thought belonged in stories and runs afoul of the villainous Mr. Ravenhill.
F
IVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
ON THE FIRST DAY OF
E
MILY’S ADVENTURES
.
O
n the day she found out about the hidden war being fought in the dreary streets of London, Emily woke up praying for snow.
She knew it was selfish, but if it snowed she wouldn’t have to work. She wouldn’t have to trek to Farringdon in the freezing darkness and buy her penny’s worth of watercress. Instead, she could simply crawl back into bed with her younger brother and sleep till sunup.
Emily lay shivering beneath the sheets, staring up at the shadowy black water stains on the ceiling and listening to William’s steady breathing.
Please be snowing
, she thought, closing her eyes tightly.
She repeated these words to herself a few more times,
then slipped out of bed and pushed aside the torn net curtain that covered the window. She wiped away the mist from her breath and stared out onto the street.
Frost winked and glittered in the moonlight, a thin layer of gleaming white that reminded her of the powdered icing on Mr. Warren’s cakes. Disappointment welled up inside her, a heavy weight in her stomach. There was no snow.
She sighed and lifted her coat from the old rocking chair, pulling it around her shoulders as she stepped over the prone bodies of the new tenants. Emily didn’t know who they were. She just knew they paid their money to Mrs. Hobbs yesterday, and the landlady had told them to sleep on the floor in the room she shared with William. That was the way of it in Cheapside. Her ma once said they were actually the lucky ones. Some landladies put fifteen people into a room. Emily had heard that when they did this, people sometimes died in their sleep. They sealed the windows to keep warm and breathed one another’s air until there was nothing left to go around.
For days after she heard this, she used to wake up and listen to make sure William was still breathing.
Thinking of her brother made Emily glance at the bed. William was awake, watching her as she got ready.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” she whispered.
“Had a dream,” he mumbled.
Emily sat down on the edge of the thin mattress. She smoothed the blankets around his thin form, making sure there were no gaps. “A bad one?”
He shrugged beneath the covers. “I dreamt that Ma and Da were back. Ma was making us breakfast, and you and Da were reading stories like you used to. But then they started to fade away. They were shouting for help, but we didn’t do anything.”