He wasn’t there. Her heart fell.
And right down out of the sky, the huge bird landed with an audible thump in the aisle between the rows of seats, just as the ‘bus started to move. He folded his wings and looked about as if he owned the place.
“Lummy!” said one of the boys. “That’s a raven!” He started to get out of his seat.
“No it isn’t,” Mem’sab said firmly. “And no one move except Nan.”
When Mem’sab gave an order like that, no one would even think of moving, so as Neville walked ponderously toward her, Nan crouched down and offered her forearm to him. He hopped up on it, and she got back into her seat, turning to look expectantly at Mem’sab.
“This is not a raven,” their teacher repeated, raking the entire school group with a stern glance. “This is an uncommonly large rook. Correct?”
“Yes, Mem’sab!” the rest of Nan’s schoolmates chorused. Mem’sab eyed the enormous bird for a moment, her brown eyes thoughtful. Mem’sab was not a pretty woman—many people might, in fact, have characterized her as “plain,” with quiet brown hair and eyes, and a complexion more like honest brown pottery than porcelain. Her chin was too firm for beauty; her features too angular and strong. But it was Nan’s fervent hope that one day she might grow up into something like those strong features, for to her mind, Mem’sab was a decidedly handsome woman. Right now, she looked quite formidable, her eyes intent as she gazed at Neville, clearly thinking hard about something.
“Bird—” she addressed the raven directly. “We are going to have to go through a number of situations in which you will not be welcome before we get home. For instance, the inside seats on this very ‘bus—since I think it is going to rain before we get to our stop. Now, what do you propose we do about you?”
Neville cocked his head to one side. “Ork?” he replied.
Now, none of the children found any of this at all peculiar or funny, perhaps because they were used to Mem’sab, Sarah, and Nan treating Grey just like a person. But none of them wanted to volunteer a solution either if it involved actually getting near that nasty-looking beak.
“Oi—I—can put ‘im under me mac, Mem’sab,” Nan offered.
Their teacher frowned. “That’s only good until someone notices you’re carrying something there, Nan,” she replied. “Children, at the next stop, I would like you to divide up and search the ‘bus for a discarded box, please—but be back in a seat when the ’bus moves again.”
Just then the bus pulled up to a stop, and slightly less than twenty very active children swarmed over the vehicle while passengers were loading and unloading. The boys all piled downstairs; they were less encumbered with skirts and could go over or under seats quickly.
The boys hadn’t returned by the time the ‘bus moved, but at the next stop they all came swarming back up again, carrying in triumph the very thing that was needed, a dirtied and scuffed pasteboard hatbox!
As their teacher congratulated them, young Tommy proudly related his story of charming the box from a young shopgirl who had several she was taking home with her because they’d been spoiled. Meanwhile, Nan coaxed Neville into the prize, which was less than a perfect fit. He wasn’t happy about it, but after thinking very hard at him with scenes of him trying to fly to keep up, of conductors chasing him out of the windows of ‘buses, and of policemen finding him under Nan’s mac and trying to take him away, he quorked and obediently hopped into the box, suffering Nan to close the lid down over him and tie it shut. Her nerves quieted down at that moment, and she heaved a sigh of very real relief. Only then did she pay attention to her classmates.
“I owes you, Tommy,” she said earnestly. “Sarah, she said last night she was gonna get a chest’ve Turkish Delight from Sahib’s warehouse for her treat and share it out. You c’n hev my share.”
Tommy went pink with pleasure. “Oh, Nan, you don’t have to—” He was clearly torn between greed and generosity of his own. “Half?” he suggested. “I don’t want to leave you without a treat, too.”
“I got a treat,” she insisted, patting the box happily. “An’ mine’ll last longer nor Turkish Delight. Naw, fair’s fair; you get my share.”
And she settled back into her seat with the pleasant, warm weight of the box and its contents on her lap, Mem’sab casting an amused eye on her from time to time. Neville shifted himself occasionally, and his nails would scrape on the cardboard. He didn’t like being confined, but the darkness was making him sleepy, so he was dozing when the box was on her lap and not being carried.
There were no difficulties with the rest of the journey back to the school; no one saw anything out of the ordinary in a child with a shopworn hatbox, and Neville was no heavier than a couple of schoolbooks.
They walked the last few blocks to the school; the neighbors were used to seeing the children come and go, and there were smiles and nods as the now-thoroughly-weary group trudged their way to the old gates, which were unlocked by Mem’sab to let them all back inside.
True to her word, Sarah had gotten the sweets, and when the others filed in through the front door, she was waiting in the entrance hall, with Grey on her shoulder as usual, to give out their shares as soon as they came in. Nan handed hers over to Tommy without a murmur or a second glance, although she was inordinately fond of sweets—Sarah looked startled, then speculative, as she spotted Nan’s hatbox.
“Sarah, you just gotter see—” Nan began, when Mem’sab interrupted.
“I believe that we need to make a very careful introduction, Nan,” she said, steering Nan deftly down the hall instead of up the stairs. “Sarah, would you and Grey come with us as well? I believe that Nan has found a friend very like Grey for herself—but we are going to have to make sure that they understand that they must at least tolerate one another.”
There was a room on the first floor used for rough-housing on bad days; it had probably been a ballroom when the mansion was in a better neighborhood. Now, other than some ingenious draperies made out of dust sheets, it didn’t have a great deal in it but chests holding battered toys and some chairs pushed up against the walls. For heat, there was an iron stove fitted into the fireplace, this being deemed safer than an open fire. This was where Mem’sab brought them, and sat Sarah and Grey down on the worn wooden floor, with Nan and her hatbox (which was beginning to move as a restless raven stirred inside it) across from her.
“All right, Nan, now you can let him out,” Mem’sab decreed.
Nan had to laugh as Neville popped up like a jack-in-the-box when she took off the lid, his feathers very much disarranged from confinement in the box. He shook himself—then spotted Grey.
Grey was already doing a remarkable imitation of a pinecone, with every feather sticking out, and growling under her breath. Neville roused his own feathers angrily, then looked sharply at Nan.
“No,” she said, in answer to the unspoken question. “You ain’t sharin’ me. Grey is Sarah’s. But you gotter get along, ‘cause Sarah’s the best friend I got, an my friend’s gotter be friends with her friend.”
“You hear that?” Sarah added to Grey, catching the parrot’s beak gently between thumb and forefinger, and turning the parrot’s head to face her. “This is Nan’s special bird friend. He’s going to share our room. But he’ll have his own food and toys and perches, so you aren’t going to lose anything, you see? And you have to be friends, because Nan and I are.”
Both birds clearly thought this over, and it was Grey who graciously made the first move. “Want down,” she said, smoothing her feathers down as Sarah took her off her shoulder and put her down on the floor.
Neville sprang out of his hatbox, and landed within a foot of Grey. And now it was his turn to make a gesture—which he did, with surprising graciousness.
“Ork,” he croaked, then bent his head and offered the nape of his neck to Grey.
Now, in Grey’s case, that gesture could be a ruse, for Nan had known her to offer her neck—supposedly to be scratched—only to whip her head around
and bite an offending finger hard. But Neville couldn’t move his head that fast; his beak was far too ponderous. Furthermore, he was offering the very vulnerable back of his head to a stabbing beak, which was what another raven would have, not a biting beak. Would Grey realize what a grand gesture this was?
Evidently, she did. With great delicacy, she stretched out and preened three or four of Neville’s feathers, as collective breaths were released in sighs of relief.
Truce had been declared.
***
Alliance soon followed. In fact, within a week, the birds were sharing perches (except at bedtime, when each perched on the headboard of their respective girl). It probably helped that Grey was not in the least interested in Neville’s raw meat, and Neville was openly dismissive of Grey’s cooked rice and vegetables. When there is no competition for food and affection, alliance becomes a little easier.
Within a remarkably short time, the birds were friends—as unlikely a pair as the street brat and the missionary’s child. Neville had learned that Grey’s curved beak and powerful bite could open an amazing number of things he might want to investigate, and it was clear that no garden snail was going to be safe, come the spring. Grey had discovered that a straight, pointed beak with all the hammerlike force of a raven’s neck muscles behind it could break a hole into a flat surface where her beak couldn’t get a purchase. Shortly afterward, there had ensued a long discussion between Mem’sab and the birds to which neither Nan nor an anxious Sarah were party, concerning a couple of parcels and the inadvisability of birds breaking into unguarded boxes or brightly-wrapped presents…
After the incident with the faux medium and the spirit of the child of one of Mem’sab’s school friends, rumors concerning the unusual abilities Sarah and Nan possessed began to make the rounds of the more Esoteric circles of London. Most knew better than to approach Mem’sab about using her pupils in any way—those who did were generally escorted to the door by one of Sahib’s two formidable school guards, one a Gurkha, the other a Sikh. A few, a very few, of Sahib or Mem’sab’s trusted friends actually met the girls—and occasionally Nan or Sarah were asked to help in some occult difficulty. Nan was called on more often than Sarah, although, had Mem’sab permitted it, Sarah would have been asked to exercise her talent as a genuine medium four times as often as Nan used her abilities.
One day in October, after Mem’sab had turned away yet another importunate friend and her friend, a thin and enthusiastic spinster wearing a rather eccentric turban with a huge ostrich plume ornament on the front, and a great many colored shawls draped all over her in every possible fashion, Nan intercepted her mentor.
“Mem’sab, why is it you keep sendin’ those ladies away?” she asked curiously. “There ain’t—isn’t—no harm in ‘em—least, not that one, anyway. A bit silly,” she added judiciously, “but no harm.”
The wonderful thing about Mem’sab was that when you acted like a child, she treated you like a child—but when you were trying to act like an adult, she treated you as one. Mem’sab regarded her thoughtfully, and answered with great deliberation. “I have some very strong ideas about what children like Sarah—or you—should and should not be asked to do. One of them is that you are not to be trotted out at regular intervals like a music-hall act and required to perform. Another is that until you two are old enough to decide just how public you wish to be, it is my duty to keep you as private as possible. And lastly—” her mouth turned down as if she tasted something very sour. “Tell me something, Nan—do you think that there are nothing but hundreds of ghosts out there, queuing up to every medium, simply burning to tell their relatives how lovely things are on the Other Side?”
Nan thought about that for a moment. “Well,” she said, after giving the question full consideration, “No. If there was, I don’t‘s’p-pose Sarah’d hev a moment of peace. They’d be at her day an’ night, leave alone them as is still alive.”
Mem’sab laughed. “Exactly so. Given that, can you think of any reason why I should encourage Sarah to sit about in a room so thick with incense that it is bound to make her ill when nothing is going to come of it but a headache and hours lost that she could have been using to study, or just to enjoy herself?”
“An’ a gaggle of silly old women fussing at ’er.” Nan snorted. “I see, Mem’sab.”
“And some of the things that you and Sarah are asked to do, I believe are too dangerous,” Mem’sab continued, with just a trace of frown. “And why, if grown men have failed at them, anyone should think I would risk a pair of children—”
She shook herself, and smiled ruefully down at Nan. “Adults can be very foolish—and very selfish.”
Nan just snorted. As if she didn’t know that! Hadn’t her own mother sold her to a pair of brothel keepers? And Neville, perched on her shoulder, made a similarly scornful noise.
“Has he managed any real words yet, Nan?” Mem’sab asked, her attention distracted. She crooked a finger in invitation, and Neville stretched out his head for a scratch under the chin.
“Not yet, Mem’sab—but I kind uv get ideers about what he wants’t‘ tell me.” Nan knew that Mem’sab would know exactly what she was talking about, and she was not disappointed.
“They say that splitting a crow or raven’s tongue gives them clear speech, but I am against anything that would cause Neville pain for so foolish a reason,” Mem’sab said. “And it is excellent exercise for you to understand what is in his mind without words.”
“Quork,” said Neville, fairly radiating satisfaction.
***
After that, Nan put her full attention on the task of “understanding what was in Neville’s mind without words.” It proved to be a slippery eel to catch. Sometimes it all seemed as clear as the thoughts in her own mind, and sometimes he was as opaque to her as a brick.
“I dunno how you do it,” she told Sarah one day, when both she and Neville were frustrated by her inability to understand what he wanted. He’d been reduced to flapping heavily across the room and actually pecking at the book he wanted her to read, or rather, to open so that he could look at the pictures. She’d have gone to Mem’sab with her problem, but their mentor was out on errands of her own that day and was not expected back until very late.
Grey cocked her head to one side, and made a little hissing sound that Nan had come to recognize as her “sigh.” She regarded Nan first with one grey-yellow eye, then with the other. It was obvious that she was working up to saying something, and Nan waited, hoping it would be helpful.
“Ree,” Grey said at last. “Lax.”
“She means that you’re trying too hard, both of you,” Sarah added thoughtfully. “That’s why Grey and I always know what the other’s thinking—we don’t try, we don’t even think about it really, we just do. And that’s because we’ve been together for so long that it’s like—like knowing where your own hand is, you see? We don’t have to think about it, we don’t even have to try.”
Nan and Neville turned their heads to meet each other’s eyes. Neville’s eyes were like a pair of shiny jet beads, glittering and knowing. “It’s—hard,” Nan said slowly.
Sarah nodded; Grey’s head bobbed. “I don’t know, Nan. I guess it’s just something you have to figure out for yourself.”
Nan groaned, but she knew that Sarah was right. Neville sighed, sounding so exactly like an exasperated person that both of them laughed.
It wasn’t as if they didn’t have plenty of other things to occupy their time—ordinary lessons, for one thing. Nan had a great deal of catching up to do even to match Sarah. They bent their heads over their books, Nan with grim determination to master the sums that tormented her so. It wasn’t the simple addition and subtraction problems that had her baffled, it was what Miss Bracey called “logic problems,” little stories in which trains moved toward each other, boys did incomprehensible transactions with each other involving trades of chestnuts and marbles and promised apple tarts, and girls stitched miles of apron hems. H
er comprehension was often sidelined by the fact that all these activities seemed more than a little daft. Sarah finished her own work, but bravely kept her company until teatime. By that point, Nan knew she was going to be later than that in finishing.
“Go get yer tea, lovey,” she told the younger child. “I’ll be along in a bit.”
So Sarah left, and she soldiered on past teatime, and finished her pages just when it was beginning to get dark.
She happened to be going downstairs to the kitchen, in search of that tea that she had missed, when she heard the knock at the front door.
At this hour, every single one of the servants was busy, so she answered it herself. It might be something important, or perhaps someone with a message or a parcel.
Somewhat to her surprise, it was a London cabby, who touched his hat to her. “ ‘Scuze me, miss, but is this the Harton School?” he asked.
Nan nodded, getting over her surprise quickly. It must be a message then, either from Mem’sab or Sahib Harton. They sometimes used cabbies as messengers, particularly when they wanted someone from the school brought to them. Usually, it was Sahib wanting Agansing, Selim, or Karamjit. But sometimes it was Nan and Sarah who were wanted.
“Then Oi’ve got a message, an Oi’ve come’t‘fetch a Miss Nan an’ a Miss Sarah.“ He cleared his throat, ostentatiously, and carried on as if he was reciting something he had memorized. “Missus Harton sez to bring the gurrels to ‘er, for she’s got need of ‘em. That’s me—I’m‘t’bring ‘em up’t‘ Number Ten, Berkeley Square.”
Nan nodded, for this was not, by any means, the first time that Mem’sab had sent for them. Although she was loath to make use of their talents, there were times when she had felt the need to—for instance, when they had exposed the woman who had been preying on one of Mem’sab’s old school friends. London cabs were a safe way for the girls to join her; no one thought anything of putting a child in a cab alone, for a tough London cabby was as safe a protector as a mastiff for such a journey.
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