The Stolen Child (2 page)

She could never do that.  A fourteen year old girl wasn't the same thing as a wretched old alcoholic hoping for his next fix.  For her, the police would pay attention.  For her, there would be forms and procedures, and people in suits sitting in glass offices.

She couldn't beg, any more than she could risk the shelters or the soup kitchens.  She felt sure that t
he moment a teenage girl walked in,
thin as a rail and shivering with the cold,
the
re would be phone calls and policies to follow
.  
There would be social services, and foster homes.  
Better the open sky and a rooftop where she could hear the pigeons fighting for roosting space.  
Even the hunger wasn't so bad, when she thought about the alternatives.
 

She dropped down from the wall, pulling her hood down to conceal her face.  Another wave of passengers emerged from the tunnels and she slipped between the press of bodies.  She began to move faster, holding tight to the straps of her backpack with one hand, racing towards the platform below.  A middle-aged man with a sharp haircut and a sharp suit was too busy looking at his phone to notice her.  The man was solidly built, and when they collided she was thrown against the wall, slipping down three steps before she was able to steady herself.  As the man staggered his phone tumbled from his hands, bouncing down the steps.  Rachael saw a spiderweb of cracks fill the tiny screen.
 

Swearing at her, the man
dashed back through the crowd, elbowing a young woman aside as he scrambled to pick up his shattered phone.  Rachael didn't wait for him to turn and look up.  
Leaping to her feet, s
he dashed back up the steps and out onto the street
again
.  At the next underpass she took the steps down and sprinted through the narrow tunnel to the far side of the road.

Secluded in
a side-street
, she leaned back against the wall and
struggled to breathe
.  
With shaking hands she reached into her pocket and pulled out the fat leather wallet that she had lifted from the man's jacket.  The trembling in her fingers was so bad that the first time she tried to open the wallet it fell on the ground, scattering credit cards.  She scooped it up quickly and sifted through the contents.  Accusing eyes stared up at her from a driver's license; a hard, scowling face.  The man couldn't even manage to smile for a photo booth.  She flipped through the debit and credit cards, discarding them all until she found one in bright blue, with the word 'Oyster' emblazoned across the front.  That one she pocketed.  Prepaid rail cards were always a good find.  At the back of the wallet she found a crisp twenty pound note, and a fiver that had been folded up behind the driver's license.  Tucking the money into her sock, she wiped the wallet on her sleeves and dropped it into a sewer grating.  Her heart was still pounding in her chest as she walked away.
 

The MacDonald’s by Kings Cross Station was a narrow, L shaped space, wrapped around the corner of a building.  It was a little past one by the time she got there, and the place was packed with tourists, teens, clean cut suits and yellow jacketed workmen.  She slipped into the crowd and stayed quiet.

As the queue moved forward she was jostled and elbowed, squeezed between the taller men
and women
around her.  She caught glimpses of wrinkled noses and disgusted or pitying glances.  She mumbled her order
to boy behind the counter, trying not to meet his eyes
, and a minute later she was squeezing through the crowded doorway
with
a greasy paper bag clutched to her chest.

It was hard to keep herself from cramming whole handfuls of food into her mouth right there and then.  She forced herself to be patient, tucking the paper bag away in her backpack.  Better to find somewhere quiet, somewhere safe.  From across the street she caught a heavyset man staring at her.  He was leaning against the wall with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of a brown leather jacke
t.  By his heels sat a large brown mastiff, rippling with muscle under mangy fur.  Just like his dog, the man
had an ugly look about him,
his shaved scalp revealing a long and jagged scar
.  She shivered, and chose a different way.

She kept moving, following weaving paths across the streets and buildings, moving up high when she could.  The rain was still coming down heavily, soaking through her jacket and into her backpack.  
T
he craving for food was made worse by having it so close, growing damp in the pouring rain as she ran.  Finally she arrived at
a
familiar
back-street
between an office building and a hair
salon
, with a wooden fence across one end.  
Some empty rubbish bins made an easy step up to the top of the fence
, and from there she could swing across to
the
sill of a bricked up window at the back of the salon.  Holes in the crumbling brickwork formed hand and foot holds, until she could grip the edge of the sloped roof and pull herself up.  Then it was just a matter of bracing herself on the sharply angled black slates and kicking off
across the gap to
land on the roof of the office building.

She almost missed the jump.  The worn down soles of her trainers, all the grip long since gone from the rubber, s
kidded
on the soaking wet slates.  She tumbled, flailing, and her fingers barely snagged the edge of the office roof.  Gripping tight, she tucked her legs up in front of herself and only just managed to soak up the impact with the wall.  For a moment she just held on, the stone parapet tearing at her fingers.  She felt paralysed, unable to make any movement for fear of falling, but sure that any moment now her grip would fail.  At the last moment she kicked out with all the strength her legs had, hauling herself upwards, oblivious to the pain in her hands.  Muscles burning, she dragged her
body
over the edge of the rooftop and collapsed onto the other side.

S
he stared at the sky, drawing ragged breaths, feeling every muscle burn with the strain.  
T
he cold air t
ore
at her lungs
as
the rain wash
ed
over her face.  
S
he flexed her fingers experimentally, and tried to move her arms a little.  Blinking, she shook the water from her eyes.  The rain was finally
easing off
.

S
he rolled over onto her knees and
stood
up
.  It had been a while since she'd
missed
that jump.  She’d been so distracted by
the
hunger that she hadn’t even considered the wet slates.  
Feeling like
kicking herself, she trudged across the rooftop to a familiar hidey-hole beneath a ventilation duct.  The duct was warm, and tucked away beneath it she felt her clothes begin to dry a little.  She undid the hood of her jacket and let her hair spill out.

Unzipping her backpack, she pulled out the now sodden paper bag.  
Her
burger was damp, the bread all mushy on one side, but she hardly cared.  She forced down mouthful after mouthful, any other thought obliterated by the simple ecstasy of food.  She devoured a box of fries just as quickly, washing it all down with sips of water from a plastic bottle.  Finally she eyed the second burger she'd bought.  Fighting temptation, she tucked it away for later.

Delving into her pack once more, she produced a bundle of plastic bags which she carefully unwrapped.  Inside was a large pad of stiff white paper, somewhat wrinkled with damp despite the plastic, and a small bundle of pencils.  Resting the pad on one knee, she picked out a soft pencil and began to sketch.  
B
old lines swe
pt
across the page, picking out the rough shape of the river, bulbous and grey, the North Bank skyline rising like crooked teeth above it.

Hours passed as she lost herself in the movements of the pencil on the paper.  
When the sun finally showed itself from behind the thick blanket of cloud, it was long past noon.  Her legs were numb, pins and needles sparking as she moved them for the first time in hours.
 

She looked down at the page again, seeing the whole drawing for the first time.  She had half a mind just to scrap it, but instead she closed the sketchbook and carefully wrapped it up again.  The battered pages were filled with abandoned pieces, never quite as good as she wished they could be.  In the plastic bag lay another four sketchbooks, their pages all filled with the results of an endless succession of empty days.  They were
warped by the
damp and mostly falling apart, but she kept them all the same.

She crawled out from the space under the vent and stood up to stretch her sore muscles.  As she stood, her eyes took in the rooftop and she stopped dead, clutching her bag to her chest in alarm.

The boy was perched on the far edge of the roof,
crouched low, his
feet balanced on the parapet.  There were holes in his jeans and he wore boots that must have come from an army surplus store.  
The tails of a
long black coat w
ere
bunched around his
heels
.  The way he perched, he looked a little like a bird.

His look of astonishment mirrored her own.  For a moment they both stared at each other, not moving, not breathing.  Then, unable to help herself, she glanced away.  
It was only for an instant, her
eyes sear
ching
for a way down, wanting to be sure of an escape.  When she looked back to the boy, her breath caught in her throat.  He had vanished.  It had only been an instant that she had looked away, but already he was gone.  
S
he heard a flutter of wings.  
Startled p
igeons taking flight.

She ran to the edge of the roof and looked down, sure he must have jumped off.  It was three stories, a hard drop even with a hang from the edge; she'd done it herself, once or twice, but it had frightened the life out of her every time.

The street was empty.  There was no sign of him at all.

The clouds gathered beneath the city like foam on the waves of a stormy sea.  Arsha stood at the railing, the cold air running over her thickly gloved hands as bright sunlight warmed her face.  
H
er goggles
were
pushed up over her forehead, the leather strap
pulling
her hair back.  
S
he closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the city.  The creak of the wires, the hollow booming of the wind against the canvas balloons, the soft humming of the lightning crackling through the floatstones.

Sunlight scattered off the myriad windows, off the brass and steel of the railings and support struts.  Wind hammered at the wood-panelled walls of the many structures that had been lashed, bolted, and welded together over the years, to form a single vast and labyrinthine mass, suspended high above the clouds.

Ships dotted the skyline around her, fat bellied galleons and trade cogs drifting on the breeze as they waited for permission to dock.  Here on the upper decks it was still quiet, the university only barely creaking to life as students slouched towards the first lectures of the day, but down at the docks she knew it would be a riot of activity as ship after ship was unloaded, their cargoes whisked away to the storehouses before filtering up to the
shops and cafés of the merchant districts
.

She heard the sound of a door closing.  Her father's footsteps were slow and solid as he crossed the observation deck towards her.

“
I t
hought I might find you out here.”

His hands settled on her shoulders, and he leaned down to plant a kiss on
the top of her
head.  She smiled up at him.  He was clean shaven, his hair neatly combed and waxed.  That meant he had a meeting today, probably with the dean
and
the bursars.

“Morning, Daddy.  Are they making you sign things?”

“A final review of procedures, for the arch-dean.  Just formalities.  We'll still be setting off early tomorrow.”

“They'd better not try to change anything
now
.  You've been planning this for months.”

“They all take months of planning sweetheart, and a lot of paperwork.  But it's mostly just saying the same thing in a dozen different ways, so that everyone will agree that you meant it when you said it.  Even if you didn't.”

“Like, 'I,
Professor Rishi Chandra,
promise
not to do anything
incredibly
silly or dangerous whilst running around the middle of an uncharted jungle exploring ancient Ur ruins that no one's seen for a thousand years'?”

He laughed.

“Yeah, I've been telling them that one for years.”

“But you still make me stay at the camp,” she added, scowling. “Taking stupid risks is my prerogative.  Keeping you safe is my job.  At least until you're sixteen.”

“That's not even a year.  What difference is a year going to make?”

A look of uncertainty flashed across his face.

“You forgot again, didn't you?” she said, grinning.

Creases lined his face as he squeezed his eyes shut.

“You can't be fifteen already.”

“And three months.”  She stuck her tongue out, laughing at his pained expression.  “You
got
me a holographer,
remember?
”

“No... That was your fourteenth, surely...”

She shook her head.

“Fourteenth was the new sending stone.  You had it engraved.”

He nodded.

“So,” he sighed, “apart from embarrassing your old man, what are your plans for the morning,
young
lady?”

“I'm supposed to meet Shani after her first lecture, so we can go down and wait for
Milima and Abasi
at the docks.”