“Do you mean the rafters?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “There is a fairy in the rafters.”
Nan was pretty sure fairies were make-believe. But then, so were golems. She cinched the laces on her boots. “I’ll fetch a net.” If there was a fairy, she didn’t want to miss it.
Charlie was waiting in the Nothing Room when Nan arrived with a butterfly net. “It’s still here,” Charlie whispered. He pointed at the rafters near the window.
Nan crept close with her net and peered up at the spot.
“That’s not a fairy,” she said. “It’s just a bird.” She tried hard to not sound disappointed.
Charlie’s eyes widened. “What kind of thing is a bird?” He inched behind her. “Are they very dangerous?”
“Only if you’re a worm.” Nan shot him a look. “You’ve seen birds before—loads of times. They were everywhere before winter.”
“Oh, yes . . .” Charlie grimaced, straining to recall. He shook his head. “That was a very long time ago.”
“I suppose it was to you.” Nan wondered what else Charlie had forgotten about those early months. Did he remember her carrying him in her pocket?
“Maybe you could just remind me about birds a little bit?” he said.
Nan tried to think about how to explain a bird to someone who had never seen one before. “Birds have feathers and beaks, and they can sing.”
Charlie’s face lit up. “Could we ask it to sing ‘Oranges and Lemons’?” This was a song that Toby had taught them. Charlie’s favorite bit was the end when they sang:
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
“Birds don’t sing proper songs,” Nan said. “They sing like this.” She whistled a few notes. To her surprise, the bird looked down at her and whistled back. It sounded very much like the tune of “Oranges and Lemons.”
Charlie was amazed. He tried to whistle, but it didn’t work.
“Don’t worry,” Nan said. “Whistling takes practice. This sort of bird is called a ‘robin redbreast,’ because of the color on its breast. It must be home early from its winter travels.” Nan wasn’t exactly sure where birds went every winter. She figured they hibernated in the mud, like toads—only that didn’t sound quite right. “This must be a mother bird making a nest. Soon she’ll have a little egg, I bet.”
“Oh, yes,” Charlie said. “And then she will eat breakfast.”
“No, this is a different kind of egg. It’s alive. It has a baby bird inside it. And when the bird gets big enough, the egg will crack open and the baby bird will come out.”
Charlie’s eyes widened. “A bird will come out of the egg?”
“It will,” Nan said. “That’s when we’ll know spring is here.”
Charlie blinked at her. “What is a spring?”
Sometimes Nan forgot how much Charlie didn’t know. It could be exhausting. “Spring is when the whole world comes back to life,” she said. “The sun gets warm, trees sprout green leaves, there’s the smell of flowers and fresh dirt, little insects and baby animals come up from the ground. If we’re lucky, we might even get to see a rainbow.” It was hard not to get excited when imagining it. “And don’t forget May Day—that’s the most important holiday of the year. Every climber in London parades through the streets with the Green Man. There’s music and dancing and lucky pennies. The whole city comes to cheer us on. It’s the one day of the year when folks are happy to see us climbers.” Nan tried not to think of whether she would be able to attend this year’s parade—Crudd would certainly be on the lookout, and she could only imagine what he might do if he found her.
The robin cheeped at them and flapped its wings. “We should give her some privacy,” Nan said, and they crept out of the room.
The cold weather returned the following week and brought with it another blanket of snow. But up in the attic, Nan and Charlie had their robin and her nest—a promise that spring was near.
MENDING
The girl sat with the Sweep on a rooftop. He was mending a hole that had appeared in her coat—she had snagged it on a brick while sweeping. “There’s no art so important as that of thread and needle,” he told her, drawing the thread tight. “It’s taking what’s rended and making it whole.”
The girl watched his fingers, quick and delicate. The thimble was her favorite. It had the white shine of scoured moonlight. The Sweep had told her it was made of tin, but she knew the truth. She knew it was silver.
The thread was soot-black, like his fingers, like her coat. As he sewed, the hole in her coat seemed to disappear. The girl could scarcely believe that it had ever been torn. “Where did you get the thread to match so perfectly?” she asked.
The Sweep pulled at the stitching to test it. “It’s a magic needle,” he said, and bit the string off with his good tooth. “It draws the thread from the air.”
The girl was not sure if he was teasing or telling a truth. The Sweep could be tricky that way. She felt pretty certain that if anything was magic, it should be the silver thimble. She looked at the Sweep’s coat, draped over his crossed legs. It was covered with holes, and one of the tails seemed shorter than the other. “Why don’t you mend yours?” she asked him.
He smiled at her and covered his coat with his hand. “I prefer to feel a breeze when I work.”
“Doesn’t it make you shiver?” She was fairly sure she had caught him shivering before.
“I love a good shiver,” he told her. “The secret to being cozy is always to let one tiny part of yourself feel cold. If every part of you is toasty warm, it’s too much and you’ll feel stifled.”
The girl was not so sure. She wished she could be every part toasty warm. The Sweep put away his magic needle, put away his silver thimble. He gave the girl her coat, which was now better than new. The place where it had ripped was stronger than before—like the tissue of a scar.
The Sweep donned his own coat—so tattered and thin, so full of breeze.
“Are you certain you’re not cold?” the girl asked.
“Someday you will understand,” the Sweep said, which was something he said often.
They took up their brushes and set off for work. The girl was not certain, but she thought she noticed a hole over his breast that had not been there before.
DENT
Nan woke from a dream about the Sweep. He had been mending her coat, as he often did, and she had noticed something about his own clothes—how worn and tattered they had become. With every stitch he gave her, he had lost one of his own.
Warm light shone through the curtains. Nan yawned, stretching like a cat. Outside she could hear wagons and sellers and the faint chirrup of newborn birds.
Nan’s eyes snapped open. “Birds?”
She jumped from her bed. “Charlie!” She ran to the window and pulled back the curtain. There was no frost on the windowpanes. The icicles on the eave were glistening and wet. The whole city looked as if it had been washed clean.
“It’s happened!” she called. “It’s spring!”
For weeks now Charlie had talked of nothing but spring. Just as Nan had predicted, the robin in the Nothing Room had laid an egg, and Charlie was desperate to see it hatch. “Easy, Charles,” Toby had warned him. “A watched bean never sprouts.”
Nan finally made Charlie promise not to go up there until the first thaw—she was afraid he might scare off the mother.
But now, at last, the day had come.
Nan cupped her hands and shouted into the hearth. “Charlieeeeee!” But Charlie did not answer.
Nan found him in the Nothing Room. She supposed she should have looked there first. He was kneeling on the floor, hunched over something small. Next to him was an open pot of paste and torn-up paper. He had made a mess all over the floor. There was no sign of the robin.
“I’ve been calling for you,” Nan said, catching her breath. “It’s spring!”
Charlie looked up at her. His face was tw
isted in pain. He did not seem to care that it was spring. “It . . . won’t go back together,” he said.
Nan stepped closer. She saw what was at his feet. It was the robin’s egg, speckled and blue. But it was not an egg anymore. It was shattered in a dozen places, as if someone had dropped it from the roof.
“Oh, Charlie. What did you do?”
“I saw it move in the nest. I—I—I wanted to hold it,” Charlie stammered. “I didn’t know it would break.” He closed his eyes as if he were crying. But golems have no tears. And his face remained dry. “I didn’t know . . .”
Nan knelt and took the broken egg in her hands. It was heavier than she expected. The outside was sticky. One end had been completely crushed.
“I tried to put it back,” Charlie said. “But the pieces are too small.” He held up his crude, misshapen hands. They were covered with paste and little bits of blackened paper.
Nan stared at the egg in her palm. Through one crack, she saw a matted tuft of down. It twitched with every slowing heartbeat. She pictured the baby bird inside—crushed, gasping. It would die before it had even lived. Nan had seen dead things before. But Charlie had not. “You didn’t mean to break it,” she said. “It was an accident.”
“Yes.” Charlie nodded slowly. “Only . . . an accident still feels very bad.”
“In some ways, accidents feel even worse than if you’d done them on purpose,” Nan said.
Charlie shifted on his knees. “Can I . . . hold my accident?” He wasn’t looking at Nan but at the egg. Nan eyed his large, clumsy fingers—still sticky with paste. She feared he might break it even more. “Here,” she said, and gave him the egg.
He held it in his open hands, gently. So gently. “I’m sorry,” Charlie whispered, and he closed his eyes.
Nan couldn’t bear to look at him, but she also could not look away. She knew it was worse for Charlie. He was hunched over the broken egg—his accident—silently sobbing. She had never seen him like this. She desperately wanted to fix it, to fix him. But some things could not be repaired.
And then, a change in the air.
First was the smell—a flinty spark, as though someone had struck a match. Nan looked at Charlie—at his hands—and saw that they were smoldering. His dark fingers crackled and began to glow red and then white. Smoke billowed from his open hands. Holding the egg in one open palm, he stroked the shattered egg with the thumb of his other hand.
“Charlie,” Nan said, shielding her face from the heat. “What are you doing?” She would have grabbed his arm but was afraid of hurting herself, of hurting the egg. “Stop—you’ll burn the house down. CHARLIE!”
Charlie started as if woken from a dream. “Wh-wh-where are we?” His hands were dark again, cupped over the egg—smoke trailing from his fingers. The air in the room had cooled.
Nan knelt beside him. “You started burning up.” She put a hand on his shoulder, which was warm and crumbly. “Why?”
Charlie met her gaze and shook his head. “I . . . I don’t know.” He looked down at his hands, still cupped around the egg, and pulled them apart to reveal the cracked shell. There was a black scorch mark where his thumb had touched it.
And then Nan saw something that snatched the breath from her breast—
The egg moved.
It was only a small movement. But it had happened. She knew it. A moment later, the egg moved again, rocking to one side.
“Charlie,” she whispered, very quietly. Like someone afraid to break a spell. “The egg . . . it’s moving.”
It was moving. Twitching slightly from side to side, as if something inside it was fighting to get out. The egg rolled to one side and then—Crack! A little chip of shell broke away to reveal a tiny black beak. The beak pecked at the morning air and then—
Cheep!
Charlie jumped so high he nearly dropped the egg.
“Come on,” Nan whispered. “You can do it.” She clutched Charlie’s arm, and together they watched the tiny bird push its head free.
Cheep! Cheep!
The bird was ugly. Babies always are. It had matted tufts of wet down and a pink body. Its eyes were swollen shut. But it was also beautiful.
“It’s a miracle,” Nan said.
The bird cheeped again as it shook itself free of the shell and stretched its wings. One wing was twisted and wouldn’t open right. But the bird was alive.
It half hopped, half fell along Charlie’s open palm. Charlie raised his hand to his face, and the bird pecked at his chin.
“I think you have a new friend,” Nan said. She blinked and found she was crying. She had seen countless birds in her life and never once thought of them. But this bird was different. This bird was Charlie’s.
“Hello, new friend,” Charlie said.
Cheep! the bird said.
Nan sat down next to him. “What are you going to name it?”
Charlie peered closely at the bird, who peered right back. “He is my Accident. I will call him that.”
“That’s not a proper name.” Nan thought for a moment. “What about just ‘Dent’?”
Charlie held the bird up. “Do you want to be called ‘Dent’?”
Cheep!
Charlie and Nan spent the rest of the day caring for Dent. Charlie had ruined Dent’s old nest, and so they made a new home out of crumpled paper and a tureen. Charlie fed him sips of water from a thimble.
There was something Nan did not notice until later in the day. All the time they worked on Dent’s nest, Charlie kept one hand down at his side. And later that evening, when Nan happened to brush against the thumb of that hand, she noticed that it felt different. It wasn’t crumbly and warm. It was cold and hard . . . like a dead stone.
PROMISES
Nan could not stop thinking about what had happened in the Nothing Room. The egg had been crushed beyond repair. She had held it in her hands, had felt the bird’s final, trembling heartbeat.
And yet Dent was alive.
He had two eyes that blinked and wings that flapped and feet that hopped. Charlie remained in the attic day and night, tending to his new friend. Dent’s mother—frightened off by Charlie—never returned to the house. But that was fine. Dent had a new mother: He had Charlie.
Dent’s right wing was malformed, and it soon became clear that he would never fly the way a bird was meant to. “If he cannot fly, I will make him a home here in the Nothing Room,” Charlie declared. “So he will be happy.”
“I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do,” Nan explained. “Birds need sunlight and trees and dirt. An attic is no place for a bird. We should leave him in the park—I bet he’d love it there.” It is possible she was jealous.
“A bigger animal might find him and hurt him,” Charlie said. “He belongs here with us.”
And so Charlie set to making a home for Dent. Nan knew he would soon learn how hard it was to keep a wild creature.
But Charlie did not give up. He spent days in the attic, making a “garden” for Dent to play. Every so often he would request that Nan bring him new supplies—a bucket of soil, some fallen leaves, a bundle of twigs from the park, a handful of soft moss.
“It’s no use being glum,” Toby said, shaking black mud from his arm. Nan had come by to pick up some fresh worms for Dent. “That’s just the way of it when you’ve got a new chum. You want to spend all your time with them, and the rest of the world can go hang itself.”
Toby filled an old cigar box with dozens of squiggling worms. The look of them made Nan’s stomach twitch. “Think of how little Newt must have felt when you ran off to live with Charlie.” He hopped up, carrying the worms with him. “Speaking of Newt, did you hear the news?”
“Is he all right?”
“Seems a certain friendly society had him over for tea. When he told them about climbing with Crudd, they were so moved that one old lady offered to adopt him on the spot.”
Nan caught her breath. “Newt’s . . . getting adopted?”
Toby nodded.
“Some old biddy named ‘Lady Wilde.’ She sent a solicitor straightaway to Crudd to negotiate his release. He’ll be little Lord Newt before May Day.”
“A lord?” Nan imagined Newt, his curly hair grown out, wearing a blue satin suit. A train rumbled above them. “That’s wonderful.” She wiped a speck of ash from her eye.
“Like something from a story.” Toby gave her a look. “Though I wouldn’t blame you for wondering what might have happened if you’d gone instead.”
Nan imagined herself in the home of this Lady Wilde—with carriages and balls and private tutors and not another day of work for the rest of her life. “What’s to wonder?” she said. “I doubt a lady would take kindly to a golem moving in with her.” She reached for the box of worms. “And don’t get me started on the dresses.”
Toby held the box fast. “It was a good thing you did, sending him there.” He was looking at her without any trace of a smile. It was the same way he had looked on New Year’s when he had told her about the Sweep. “You probably saved his life.”
Nan held the box under her arm as she walked back to Bloomsbury. She tried not to think about Newt—about what she had possibly given up by helping him. Again she reminded herself that Charlie needed her. But lately he had been so consumed with caring for Dent that she had hardly seen him. Perhaps he needed her less than she thought.
When she got to the captain’s house, she found a notice posted on the front door.
~ Metropolitan Board of Works ~
The Honourable Jas. Higgens, Chairman of the Office of Building, as commissioned by Her Majesty Queen Victoria, hereby identifies that the property at 111 Runcible Street shall be posted for public auction after a three-week holding period. All parties . . .
Nan didn’t bother reading the rest. It was a notice of auction for the captain’s house. Apparently his relations had given up squabbling and were resolved to sell it. She wondered what would happen then—where could she and Charlie live where they would be safe from Crudd? Safe from the world?
Nan decided that she should at least nail the front door shut, just in case anyone came snooping. She tore down the notice and crumpled it into a ball.
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