Shadows Gray

Chapter Twenty-One



“I can’t believe you’re here!” Emme squeals with such delight that I throw my arms back around and hug her for at least the fourth time since she knocked me to the ground.

Joe and Bea have come to join us and I am startled by the sight of my Dad now lying on the ground with his head on Bea’s lap. She even strokes his hair lightly and I wonder what I haven’t noticed when I’m too busy thinking of myself.

Joe has gleefully accepted the offer of my blanket and has mummified himself right by the fire and gone to sleep. Israel lays next to him, not out of the desire to be near a kicking, snoring seven year old all night I suspect, but out of a desire to protect him in a precarious neighborhood.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I answer. “I really thought I’d never see you again.”

“Guess we were close enough after all, huh?” she continues happily. “When we got here I absolutely hated myself for not taking you up on your offer to live together. I felt like such a dope, setting myself up for traveling without my favorite family! I’m so glad we got a second chance.”

“Me too. And you look adorable, by the way.”

Emme looks down at her dress which is pink, her favorite. “Isn’t it pretty? I’m so glad to be back in England!”

“You look like a fairy princess. In a corset.”

“That’s what the boys call me, too.”

“The boys?” At first I think she means Harry and Matthias, and then I grimace. “Oh. Those boys. You’ve been here, what, a day? For crying out loud, Emme.”

“Don’t be disapproving, Sonnet. You have Israel and your dad and even Harry and Matthias. I have a middle aged mom and a little kid. Someone has to bring in food and clothes.”

“You’re right, okay,” I kiss her cheek, nearly sacrificing my eye in the process as it runs into a feather poking out of her jaunty pink bonnet. “I’m sorry. I just wish you wouldn’t. That’s all.”

“Let’s go to sleep. We’ll figure out what to do in the morning.”

I agree and together we settle down, our arms and legs akimbo, mingling with the arms and legs of four others.

It’s a long, restless, cold night, but we sleep as best we can.

********************

“I think my eyelashes are frozen solid. I’m afraid to blink,” Emme says when the sun finally makes its lazy way up in the sky. She does look a little blue.

“I know. What the heck happened to October and November?” I blow on my hands and stiff fingers.

Dad has gone, along with Bea; they’re looking for opportunities and places to sleep that are better than the street. Joe is still sleeping and Israel is too; his arms wrapped in a bear hug around the little bundle of blanket that is Joe. I’d admire his fatherly leanings if I didn’t believe it was more for warmth than for anything else.

“Is it December then? As much as I love London, I do wish we’d been dumped off in June instead. Are we in time for Boxing Day?”

“Boxing Day? What, is that the English Christmas?”

“No, silly, they have Christmas too. It’s just an extra holiday is all. I’m all for extra holidays, aren’t you?”

“If they involve turkey and mashed potatoes, definitely. I’d like to stick my toes in mashed potatoes and gravy right about now. Emme, what are we going to do here?”

“Feeling worried already, ducky? Cheer up, this is London! The possibilities are endless!”

“I need to go check on Prue today, make sure that Sir Halloway hasn’t kicked her to the curb. I appealed to his sense of Christian duty but I think he was only humoring me in case I actually turned out to be somebody.”

“You are somebody: you’re a time traveling witch! You can foresee the future, tell fortunes! Hmm, not a bad profession now that I think of it.” Emme wiggles her eyebrows.

“Except I don’t know a thing about anyone in particular. What am I going to foretell?”

“Oh, there must be something you can think of. You’re better at history than I. Anyway, come on, I need to make water.”

“Make water?” I wrinkle my nose.

“Pee. If you’re going to live here you have to learn the slang, chickadee. Can I leave Joe with Is, do you think?”

“Sure. There’s no better protection than a giant. Help me up, my joints are frozen solid and I’m not sure I can bend my knees.”

We find a solitary spot to take care of personal hygiene business and then wander off with no particular destination in mind, other than the vague, gnawing hope of breakfast. My stomach growls. The streets are quieter now than they were last night, though the dank feeling of depression and poverty seems almost worse in the garish light of day. In the dark, you think you imagine some of it, but in the sun there is no imagination necessary; it really is as bad a slum as your mind's eye thought it might be.

There’s garbage in the street and once we almost get hit in the head with something gloppy that someone drops out of their window over us. Judging by the smell, it wasn’t something edible.

“I’ll need to find work,” I say. “I don’t know that I can make a living with singing here.”

“Mmm. You must have other skills. Can you sew?”

“Crookedly.”

“Cook?”

“Terribly.”

“Perhaps you’d best find a rich man to marry you then!”

“Yes, that’s the ticket. An excellent plan, Emme, thank you. Always helpful.”

“Here’s a bakery, let’s go in.” Emme points at a dilapidated shop with a crooked sign advertising breads and biscuits.

“Wait.”

The dingy store with its dirty windows reminds me forlornly of Luke’s photography shop and my step falters. I remember the day we sat there, eating squirrel pie and talking of Rose.

Rose. Where is she now? If Emme traveled the same night we did, couldn’t Rose have as well? Not if she was as far away as the abandoned house – but hadn’t I established quite nicely that she wasn’t there after all?

“What is it?” Emme asks impatiently.

“Just thinking. You haven’t really asked me what happened night before last. I mean, night before last a hundred and some-odd years in the future.”

It’s Emme’s turn to wrinkle her nose. She does that when she’s thinking.

“Well, I suppose I haven’t had much time, have I? Besides, I knew you’d tell me if you wanted me to know.”

“I do want you to know. Mostly because I want you to explain it to me,” I answer ruefully. I tell her all about that night; about seeing Rose in our street in the rain, stealing the Blue Beast and going out to the house, finding myself locked in, and finally so many, many hours later, hearing the door being unlocked. Walking the wrong way and getting lost and farther from home. Israel finding me and bringing me home. I even tell her about the laugh I thought I heard when I was in the room.

“You’re giving me goose bumps, Sonnet,” Emme says when I’m finished with my lurid tale. “Do you really think someone locked you in and then let you out? Why? That seems a little harsh a punishment for a trespasser.”

“I know.”

“If it was Rose you saw and you were right about her living there, maybe it was her who locked you in.”

“Why? “

“You may have scared her. Maybe she has no idea you’re her sister. Maybe she thought you were a deranged lunatic stalker.” Emme shrugs. “I don’t know. How did Israel know where to find you?”

I frown. “I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.”

“Well, let’s think on it some more after a biscuit. There’s a ridiculously cute boy in that shop and I’m going to get us a free breakfast if it’s the last thing I do. Come on, come flirt with me.” She pulls on my elbow.

“I can’t flirt! My flirter is broken. Seriously, you’ll stand a better chance if I just stay out here.”

“Fine then. Stand in the slush. I’ll try to save you some crumbs.”

********************

Emme saves me more than crumbs; she’s managed to use her feminine wiles to convince the young man working at the bakery to give us anything that was broken or had fallen apart or had burnt. We end up with a paper sack of ugly looking biscuits that taste much better than they appear.

“I’m going to stop and ask for directions if I want to find Sir Halloway’s house again,” I muse. “No wonder Israel got lost yesterday, this place really is a maze.”

“Really? I find it quite logical.”

“Oh, please. You’re just happy to be back in England and you’re every bit as lost as I am. What do you think it costs to rent of those carriage-y thingies? You know, one of those ancient taxi services?”

“More than you have, plus some. We’re going to have to walk it. Maybe we’ll pass a shop with a sign out front advertising ‘singing girls wanted!’”

“Yes, that sounds very likely. Right after we pass the one that says ‘free rides to Sir Halloway’s!’”

There’s no choice really but to walk and nothing else to do anyway, and so we walk.