Scavenger

Cychwyn ar daith

We left Londlow early the next day. It was warm, with a tiny wind that whipped up strands of the cart-horse’s mane and blew dust in our eyes. Quennel cursed loudly. Morley blinked and said nothing.

I sat in the back of the cart, my lead tied to a large crate that held most of Quennel and Morley’s clothes and possessions. The other luggage included a smaller crate containing two scrawny chickens and a leather trunk. Morley, wedged between the trunk and large crate, held a small canvas bag. Quennel sat on the seat up front, next to the carter [Could I please have an adjective to describe the carter? Pretty please? Just simply 'wrinkled' or 'sprighty' or something that gives a sense of either his appearance or personality.] whom he had hired to drive us to Selseaton.

The cart rattled from side to side, first over the cobblestones of Londlow’s streets, then onto the road [Smooth road? Or bumpy? Is it well maintained or poorly maintained? Is it tarmac or stone or no more than a little dirt path through the grass?] that led out of the city into the countryside. Houses changed to hedges, and we turned onto a smaller road, leaving the traffic behind. [What sort of traffic? I want more of a sense of period. Are there any cars or is it all carts and carriages. People walking with bundles on their shoulders, on their backs. People on horse back?] The way ran ahead, divided into three parts: dusty grey earth rubbed bare by cart wheels and a strip of untouched grass in the middle. [That's better =) But add description earlier than this too.]

Lying on my back, I could see the sky burning bright blue above, like a wide, smooth bowl turned upside down. I was inside the bowl, looking up at the carefully glazed base. Smears of thick white paint – clouds – hung motionless in the blue, making pictures of people and animals within themselves. [Pretty. I like the way the Raven thinks.]

I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling the hot floor of the cart press against my cheek. My charcoal ‘tattoos’ would need to be redone when we got to Selseaton, but even that thought could not change the fact that the sky was beautiful; powerful, omnipresent. Comforting.

The cart jolted; Quennel swore. Lazily but carefully, I reached out with my mind and felt for his thoughts. They were not interesting or even very coherent – a stream of grumbles and feelings: the seat was too hard, the sun too hot, the dust too annoying, and the carter too stupid. Then one solid thought formed: all right for the hybrid, cursed creature. I Sensed him turn and scowl at me. Asleep, lazy beast. [I love this paragraph and the previous one.]

Man, I thought. I like that.

Quennel turned back and I left his mind. At least I get the Sense from being a hybrid, I thought, a little sourly. I get the Sense, just nothing else. I wonder if Quennel would [s]swop[/s] swap – my Sense for his pure [Comma here.] human blood. Yeah, right. Still with my eyes closed, I frowned and rolled onto my side. Bringing my knees up under my chin, I wriggled on the boards to get comfortable, then went to sleep.

---

A sharp poke in my side awakened me a few hours later. The cart had stopped by an inn and the carter was getting down and unhitching the horse. Morley poked me again. ‘Get up.’

‘What’re we stopping for?’ I asked, jumping stiffly down.

‘Drink and a rest.’

‘Do I get either of those?’

‘Rest, yes. Drink, if you’re good.’ Quennel wrapped my lead around his wrist and nodded to Morley. ‘Go and ask the landlord if we can borrow an extra stall.’

‘Stable stall?’

‘Yes, Morley, a stable stall. Say it’s for an exhibit. We can’t take it in with us, after all, can we?’

Morley shrugged and went into the inn. A few minutes later he was back. ‘He says it’s all right, so long as it ain’t anything what’ll scare ’is ’orses.’

‘Well we’re fine there.’ Quennel handed my lead to Morley. ‘Go stable it. I’ll be inside. Make sure that it’s secure. No, wait – stay with it yourself.’

Morley opened his mouth to protest, shut it, bit his lip, and then asked, ‘Can I have a drink first?’

‘If you’re good.’ Quennel laughed and entered the inn. [You have a nasty sense of humour, dear. And it passes to the characters which makes me want to hug them. I know I shouldn't be liking him but anyone with a nice bit of sarcasm intrigues me.]

Morley made a rude gesture at the inn door and led me to the stable, which was a long, thin building joined onto [Maybe attached rather than joined?] the inn at the back. Inside it was light, smelling of hay and leather. A row of stalls ran against the right hand side, and a ladder leading to a hayloft stood at the end.

Morley opened one of the stalls at the end and led me in. He tied my lead to a ring set low in the wall and bolted the low door. Then he hesitated. I blinked owlishly at him. He sighed and said, ‘Behave. If you’re good, then I’ll bring you a drink. If you’re naughty, then you won’t get a drink and Quennel will beat you. Understand?’

I nodded and sat down meekly. ‘Yes’m.’

Morley left. I heard him close the stable door. After waiting a minute or two, I reached up and untied my lead. The horse in the stall next to me – a chestnut with a long [Comma here.] thin nose – gave me a cursory glance and then turned back to staring at the wall.

I swung my lead around in the air, enjoying the whitt-whitt-whitt-whitt sound of whirling leather. There was a spider struggling to reach the top of the door. It slipped and swung on its thread, legs waving frantically. I caught it on my finger and stuck its thread on the wall. The spider caught and began to climb. It found a knothole and rested there a moment before continuing its journey. When it reached the sloping ceiling, it scuttled around aimlessly for a bit before settling down. It twitched a front leg triumphantly and began to spin.

I wrapped the end of my lead around my wrist and put my hands on the wall that connected my stall to the empty one next to it. I hoisted myself up and swung a leg over the edge of the stall. It wasn’t thick enough to sit comfortably astride, so very carefully, holding onto the beam that ran above my head to the spine of the roof, I stood up. My bare toes gripped the stall edge; I could just feel the rough wood under my brine-toughened soles.

My next door neighbour turned his head as far as his halter would allow and stared at me, his ears flicking back and forth. Big thing. Danger. Danger? Big thing up. Bird? Big bird thing?

Big thing good, I told him, a grin spreading over my face. I let go of the beam and spread my arms out. Balancing like this reminded me of Da. It had taken him so long to teach me how to balance and somersault and cartwheel. Every member of our family had had to learn, and Da had started early. Handstands first, arithmetic afterwards. Da had despaired over my seeming lack of balance, but I had got there. Eventually.

I took a step forward and another; humming under my breath, then out loud: ‘Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange? Come with us and you will see – this our town of Halloween…’

A longer step and I stuck my leg out to one side. ‘This is Halloween, everybody make a scene. Trick or treat ’till the neighbours gonna die of fright…’

I pivoted around and made a circle in the air with my arms. Then another step and I reached up to touch the ceiling beam. ‘I am the one hiding under your stairs; fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair.’

My feet groped to find my balance, slipping a little. I swayed and recovered again. The stable was quiet; my singing hardly disturbed the dust motes that danced in the rays on sunlight falling through the skylight onto the floor. ‘Halloween, Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…’

I gripped the ceiling beam and carefully lifted my right leg straight up, feeling the muscles stretch as I touched my toes to my right ear. I needed to do this more often; the strain meant that I was out of practise. Balancing on the stall wall, I went through all the exercises that I could. The arabesque penchée wasn’t too difficult, but the fouetté nearly made me fall off. [Maybe describe one of these exercises a little.]

‘Tender lumplings everywhere, life’s no fun without a good scare! That’s our job but we’re not mean, in our town of –’

‘What the hell!’

I froze. Four stable boys stood in the doorway, their eyes sticking out like they had goitre.

There was a long, long silence. Then I slowly lowered my arms to my sides. As if that had been a signal, they rushed forward. I leapt down back into the stall, knees bent, and pressed myself into the back right corner. They stared at me over the door.

‘Gorblimey,’ one breathed.

‘Wha’ is it?’

‘It was singing…’

I took a deep breath. ‘Singing is a very generous term.’

They leaped back, creating a very comic effect. ‘Wha’…’

‘Did it…’

‘I thought…’

I stood up, went to the lower door and looked at them over the top. We stared at each other for a few minutes, then the biggest of the boys slowly reached out a hand. Very quickly and lightly, he touched my arm.

‘Flesh and blood,’ I said.

‘Where?’ He snatched his hand back hurriedly.

I rolled my eyes. ‘No, aswon. I,’ – I pointed to myself – ‘a-am,’ – I spread my fingers wide – ‘flesh and blood.’ I gave a wide, exaggerated smile and blinked my eyes.

They goggled. I pointed to the red-haired one. ‘What have you got in your pockets?’ [This seems a little random. Maybe describe the bulge first or if it's supposed to be a lord of the rings reference, quote exactly.]

Redhead sucked in his lower lip, blinking. ‘You talk funny.’

I hitched myself up and got my elbows over the door. ‘Do not dare to presume that you may talk thus! Do you know who I am?’

Redhead sputtered, ‘I… you…’

‘I am Doctor John Carter, loved up and down County General for generations! I cut patients open and diagnose them after they’ve been chewed up by runaway alligators!’ I thrust my head forward and glared at the boys who had retreated to the opposite wall by now. ‘I get stabbed in the back and held at gunpoint! I angst about my family and date nurses and sew up schizophrenics and –’

‘And just what is going on here?’ Quennel demanded. He strode forward; the boys gulped, began to stammer excuses and I dropped down into a crouch on the floor.

‘We didn’t do nothing, sir…’

‘We was just lookin’…’

‘We heard it…’

‘Then it just started gabblin’…’

‘What is it, never saw anything like it…’

‘It says it’s a doctor – is it a doctor, sir?’ [Do the boys back towards the door at this point? Or do they perhaps approach the stall door again?]

Quennel yanked the stall door open and pulled me up by my collar. He gripped my chin and turned my face up towards him. I looked at the floor and refused to meet his eyes. He frowned, then said to the boys, ‘Did you do anything to it? No,’ – sarcastically – ‘of course you didn’t.’

‘We didn’t, honest!’

Quennel flapped a hand at them. ‘Go away. If you fiddle with ’er again, I’ll see that you all loose your jobs.’

‘Oooh, sir!’

‘Believe me, I will.’

‘Yes, sir.’ They left reluctantly, looking back and whispering.

Quennel tightened his grip. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘did you do?’

‘Nothing.’

He pressed my collar against my throat, his fingers digging into my neck. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing. I just… did ballet exercises and… and talked.’

‘Talked? Talked about what?’

‘TV,’ I muttered.

‘What?’

‘TV,’ I said, louder.

Quennel pushed his face close to mine. ‘Talk properly,’ he said, each consonant sharp with precision.

‘I am. You just don’t know what TV is.’ [I'm intrigued. And your dialogue has been excellent by the way. And I very much enjoyed the stable scene. It felt fast but not exactly rushed, more action-packed and it was good.]

Quennel released my collar and hit me smartly across the face. I stumbled back into the far corner, my hand pressed against my cheek.

‘Don’t speak to me like that again.’ Quennel pointed a finger at me. ‘Do you hear? Don’t you ever speak to me like that again.’

‘Yes. I mean, no…’

‘No what?’

‘No, master.’

‘Good.’ He opened the door and went out, bolting it shut after him.

I stared up at the ceiling. The spider had begun a web, weaving and gluing silk like the whole world depended on it.

Overall comments:

This is a really good chapter, Twit. You have some lovely characterization for the Raven and your dialogue, as always, is humourous and enjoyable. However, there could be minor improvements to your setting. I'm trying to gauge your period at the moment and finding it rather difficult. The mention of TV threw me off entirely but I've got a feeling that this is a period of your creation. That it's generally set in the past but the Raven exists in a time of her own. That intrigues me. Perhaps there will be more hints as to that?

Hope this helps a little,

Heather xx

(I'll post my critique of the next chapter either later today or tomorrow.)

Arhosfeydd

We slept that night at another inn. This one was bigger and cleaner, but after what had happened at the last inn, Quennel wasn’t ready to entrust his hybrid to the stables again. [Would the Raven rather stay in the stables or a room? I think you should bring that in.]

‘A quiet room,’ he said to the landlord. ‘Do you have one near the back? So that people don’t get…’ He trailed off and nodded sagely.

The landlord didn’t seem to appreciate sage gestures. ‘So that what?’ he demanded. ‘I keep a respectable inn, I do, and if you’re going to make trouble –’

‘Nothing of the kind.’ Quennel leaned forward confidentially. The landlord had come out to our cart per Quennel’s request, and was leaning against the side. Quennel attempted to take his arm, but the landlord shrugged him off.

‘Look,’ Quennel said. ‘I got a hybrid. You can see that.’

The landlord looked down at me and wrinkled his nose. ‘Ugly thing, ain’t it?’

‘It may not win any beauty prizes, but it’ll win me a fortune. So I don’t want to leave it in your stable, do I? What if something happens to it?’

‘My stable –’

‘Is one of the finest around, I don’t doubt. But I like to keep an eye on it, so I’ll keep it in my room, and all’ll be fine. Just so long as our room is quiet and out of the way, see?’

The landlord saw. He shrugged. ‘Just don’t make no trouble, and I won’t say nothing.’

Cor, I thought. His negatives leave something to be desired.

‘All right, bring it in.’ The landlord led the way into the inn. Morley and Quennel shielded me from the eyes of the other customers, and we passed through the main room safely. Up a flight of stairs to a short corridor and the landlord opened a door to a room. [I think extend this a little. Does she try to see the other customers and the rest of the inn as they pass or is she complacent? Also, is she still on the lead at this point and does it maybe itch a bit? Is the inn warm or cold? What's the temperature outside? Describe the change as they enter, describe the doors of the inn maybe, the staircase. Give your reader something to imagine. Does it smell of ale? Is it a noisy, rough sort of place or quiet and neat?]

Morley dumped our bags on the floor, and the landlord said, pointing, ‘Water jug, bed, window… For [Small f.] thruppence.’

‘Where?’ I said.

The landlord actually jumped. ‘You never said it talked!’

‘You didn’t ask.’ Quennel gave my lead a jerk. ‘Where what?’

‘Where’s the four thruppence?’ I blinked at the landlord. ‘Kind landlord sir said water jug, bed, window, four thruppence. Water jug, bed, window,’ I pointed at each one in turn. ‘I don’t see four thruppence. Are they under the pillow?’ I made a dive at the bed, but Quennel hauled me back.

‘The thruppence is your payment!’ the landlord snapped. ‘Thruppence for one night and one night only.’

Quennel fished around in his pocket and handed him the small silver coin. ‘Don’t mind the hybrid. Half the time, what it says doesn’t mean anything.’

The landlord frowned, said curtly, ‘Well, mind you keep it under control,’ and left, closing the door with perhaps more vigour than was necessary.

Quennel tugged on my lead again to get my attention. ‘Try an’ use your loaf for once, eh, Raven?’

I wanted to say, Speaking of which, when’s dinner? [Hehe. I love her sense of humour nd her playful pushing. They really do think her stupid, how fun.] but decided against it. Quennel had been pushed as far as he could tonight and he was tired and sore from the long ride. A tired and sore Quennel was not a Quennel that allowed his exhibits back-chat.

Morley said, ‘What about a drink and something to eat?’

‘You stay here and watch the hybrid. I’ll bring you both something up.’ Quennel went to the water jug and splashed his face. He tied my lead to the bed rail and then went out the door.

Morley sat on the bed and began to take his boots off. [What sort of boots? Nice boots or rather old boots? Does Quennel keep all the money to himself or does he share it out a bit? And do his socks have holes in perhaps? Do his feet smell?] I sat on the floor, rested my head against the straw-stuffed mattress and flexed my shoulders.

Morley began to whistle softly under his breath. I recognized the tune and joined in, cheerfully out of tune. ‘Elizabeth Harley was a-going to church, to church, to church, Elizabeth Harley was a-going to church for to-o be wed.’

‘You’re out of tune,’ Morley said irritably.

‘And you’re out of sorts.’ I twisted around and grinned at him.

He hmphed. ‘You’ve cheered up since the last stop.’

‘I bounce,’ I told him sweetly. ‘And that was noon. Now it’s the evening. That was in a stable. Now it’s in a proper room. That was just after Quennel socked me round the ear. Now I’m untouched – so far. That was when –’ [Haha. She really is the loveable little rogue.]

‘Shut up.’

I blinked pathetically. Morley began whistling again. I sat back against the bed and began playing with my fingers.

Quennel came back about half an hour later, bearing cakes and ale.

‘Can’t you stay with it now?’ Morley asked, chewing bread and mutton together in his mouth.

‘I’m still busy downstairs. And anyway, what d’yu want to do down there? All the serving girls are either men or fat and old. Though I suppose that means they can’t afford to be choosy.’

Morley stared at Quennel’s grinning face and said, ‘Shut the hell up.’ He folded up his bit of meat in the bread, got off the bed and went to the door.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Quennel sounded outraged.

‘Going downstairs to the fat and ugly serving maids.’ Morley slammed the door.

Quennel yanked it open again. ‘Morley!’ he yelled. Morley evidently ignored him, and Quennel came and sat down sulkily on the bed.

‘You annoyed him a bit too much,’ I observed, digging a bit of gristle out between my teeth.

Quennel ignored my comment and instead shoved a hunk of bread in his mouth.

It was dark by the time I’d finished my own dinner. Morley still wasn’t back, and Quennel was still cross and silent. I polished off the stray crumbs and curled up on the floor. I could hear the sounds of festivity in the room below: the landlord demanding that someone pay their bill, a violin squawking a few notes, some drunk trying to start off a catch with his friends. I rested my head on my hand and went to sleep.

–––

The next day could have been a mirror image of the first: hot, dusty and boring. The only difference was that we arrived at Selseaton, instead of another inn, at the end of it.

The light was fading from the sky, colouring it a pale pearly grey near the horizon and fading into lavender, light blue and eventually a deep, soft blue like faded cloth higher up. A few tiny stars poked their way through. What is the point of stars? I thought, squirming in a vain effort to get a semblance of comfort. My behind was numb enough to have a bone marrow test without anaesthetic. For beauty, sure. They exist just to be beautiful? Can anything do that? [I love this paragraph.]

The carter clicked encouragingly to his horse. ‘’ey oop, girl. Nearly ’ome now.’

The horse’s pace quickened slightly, and the cart rattled over the cobbled streets. I leaned over the edge of the cart and stared down. Cobbles, cobbles everywhere but never a stone to throw. I supposed you could make a pun out of that, if you were clever.

A few shops [You need an apostrophe.] windows were lit from within by a glowing candle, showing the black silhouette of a watchmaker or printer or bookbinder working late, bent over a desk with a jeweller’s glass in their eye. Something scuttled in the gutter-shadows, claws scratching on stone.

Morley shuffled deeper into his cloak and mumbled complaints to himself. I sighed and rotated my ankles. ‘Are we there yet?’

‘In the next street,’ Quennel said. He gave my lead a tiny tug. ‘So stop complaining.’

‘’mnot. I’ve been good. I have been good, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, you’ve been good.’

The cart turned into the next street. It was very dark by now, and the only light came from a lamp hanging above the door of one of the buildings further down. It was at this building that we stopped. Quennel got down, and Morley and I followed.

I stretched my arms out from the shoulder and executed a very stiff and probably very sloppy pirouette. ‘Ee-ee, stiff!’

‘Oi.’ The cart driver turned and nodded at our luggage. ‘If you want that, then take it.’

‘All right, all right. Morley take this stuff in.’ Quennel went to the front of the cart and began digging in his pocket for the fare.

Morley shoved the leather trunk into my arms and taking the large crate in one hand and my lead in the other, knocked on the door.

After a moment, it was opened by a woman in a white cap. She peered at Morley, looked past him to the cart and then reeled in her gaze, snagging her hook on me. Her mouth opened to the size of a shilling and she said, ‘Oh!’

‘Please’m,’ I said, grinning widely and stupidly, ‘we’re here to fix your plumbing.’

‘Good evening, ma’am,’ Morley said, gritting his teeth. ‘I think we’re stayin’ here and all?’

‘Oh! Oh, yes – yes of course. Come in.’ She held the door wide and we managed to squeeze past her into the hall.

Quennel was close behind, bowing to the lady. ‘Good evening, ma’am… I think Pace is expecting us?’

‘Yes, yes he is. If you put your…’ She paused, and looked at me again, chewing on her lower lip.

‘Hybrid?’ Quennel suggested. ‘Luggage?’

‘Hybrid? Oh my…’ She stared, then gave a little laugh. ‘A hybrid! My word, that’s something. Yes, put the hybrid in the back room. Your luggage can go upstairs and…’ She opened a door and yelled, ‘Pace! It’s Mister Quennel and, Pace –’

A shortish, red-haired man almost bounced out of the door. ‘Ah, Mister Quennel, Mister Quennel, Mister Quennel…’

‘And hybrid, plus Morley,’ I chipped in.

The redhead – Pace – clapped Quennel on the shoulder. ‘They talk and talk, don’t they, these freaks?’

‘Yes.’ Quennel shifted under Pace’s hand, uncomfortable, yet wishing to appear polite. ‘How many do you own?’

‘Own? Oh, I don’t own any. I’m just their manager, you understand. They’re their own bosses, free to leave at any time they want. Only they don’t, of course.’ He grinned. ‘Though a hybrid’s something different entirely – entirely different.’

‘Yes,’ Quennel said again, looking as though he were trying not to squirm.

‘Well, then.’ Pace beamed affably. ‘Why don’t you let your servant take the hybrid into the back room and you come in and sit down and have a drink? Thirsty thing, travelling.’

‘I’m not his –’ Morley began indignantly, but Pace had already gone back into the room. I could see a fire burning and a flask and glasses set out on a table beside some very comfortable looking chairs.

Quennel shrugged and grinned wryly. ‘Go to, servant. Raven, [I think this is the first time he has called her by the name. Why? Is there a particular reason he does so here? And is the Raven surprised?] behave yourself.’

The door shut in Morley’s face. The woman in the white cap smiled encouragingly at him and led the way down the hall. [Describe her more. She seems to be more than just a fleeting character so give us a few more details.] She opened a door at the end and said, ‘Put it in here. I’ll feed it later on, when the others have their dinner. We’re eating late tonight, you see.’

Morley nodded and we went into the room together. It was a fairly large room, with panelled walls and a rather threadbare carpet on the floor. There was a fire, and that, along with a candle on the scratched table top, was the only light in the room. The dark blue curtains, patched unevenly with light blue patches [coor=red][Maybe light blue fabric so it doesn't sound repetitive?][/color] and sewn with white thread were drawn tightly together. In front of the fire sat a little girl and two young men. In the chairs behind them sat a man and a woman. They all looked up as we entered. I could feel their eyes, looking, looking, looking. Looking as Morley unclipped my lead and gave me a little push forward. Looking as he shut the door and left. Looking as I looked back at them.

The little girl was a hunchback, the two young men were twins, joined at the hip, and the woman had no arms. The man looked normal.

Okay, I thought. My fellow freaks. Takes one to know one, I suppose. I sat down on the floor, legs crossed, about five feet away from them. From here I could feel the warmth of the fire on my skin, and the gooseflesh on my arms began to settle. And so we stare the night away, waiting for one to talk and always being disappointed. What’ll happen if I get closer to the fire? Will their stares intensify until I simply shrivel up and vanish? Or will they wait until I get close enough and then tip me into the fire? Do freaks have walls around their minds? Or are they simply –

‘G-g-g-good evening,’ the man said. He nodded courteously. ‘What is your n-n-n-n-name?’ [Lovely introduction to the freaks and good place to end it.]

This was a very enjoyable chapter. You're really starting to build on your characters' personalities now though I'd like to see a stronger distinction between Quennel and Morley. Having Morley acting up at te inn was good though, I'm glad he's not always willing to take orders. A bit of back-bone makes a character so much more interesting.

I think there could have been a little more description, particularly with touch and scent. There's a mention at the beginning that the day was hot and yet there is no mention of temperature or its effects later. There is no relief of the inn being cooler or perhaps stuffier (rooms full of people can be dreadful) until they reach their room. There's a fire in this other room and the Raven is considering approaching it so clearly the temperature has dropped; she is no longer hot.

I hope this helps a little,

Heather xx

Craffter busnes

‘I beg your pardon?’

The man sighed and began again. ‘What is your n-n-n-n-name?’

I grinned. His stutter was hilarious. ‘The Raven, the only hybrid out of Kiona.’ [How does she say this? Proudly I'd imagine but does she maybe bow at the same time or grin or yawn? Give us some idea of her actions.]

‘A hybrid?’ The armless woman’s bright blue eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘A real life, honest to goodness hybrid?’

‘Less of the honest to goodness,’ I said, ‘but certainly real.’

‘My, my. Fancy that.’ She lifted a foot and pointed to the fire. ‘Come closer, there’s enough room.’

I scooted a few inches closer. ‘How do you do that?’

‘Do what?’

‘All that with your feet. It looks so weird. But it’s kind of cool.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.’ She looked offended. [Does she maybe tuck her legs under her chair, trying to hide them? Or is she indignantly proud, flexing her feet and showing just how different they are.] ‘I was born this way. I learned how to use my feet like this.’

‘And y-y-y-y-you d-d-d-do it very well,’ the man said, smiling at her.

‘I don’t think you can talk about being different, anyway,’ said the right hand twin. ‘You’re the strangest one in the room.’

‘Thank you,’ I said modestly. ‘I think you’re strange too.’

‘We’re all d-d-d-d-d-d-different,’ the man said peaceably. ‘I’m C-c-c-olb-b-b-by, but I’m st-t-t-taged as Gaub-b-b-bert, the st-t-t-t-uttering Florian rigolo.’

‘Tough luck,’ I said. ‘Either way, you’ve got a b to trip over.’

‘This is Eldreda the Armless W-w-w-w-wonder and these are Lionel and Lynd-d-d-d-don, the One Twin. And this is Frona.’

I blinked at the One Twin. ‘Left blondie – Lionel, right blondie – Lyndon. Gotcha.’

The little girl, Frona, looked up, gave a tiny, tight smile and stared at the floor again.

‘Who called you the Raven?’ Eldreda asked. ‘Your manager?’

‘Master,’ I corrected. ‘He thought it sounded fancy… My hair was longer then as well, when he found me, so it looked blacker.’

‘He named you because of your hair?’ Lyndon asked incredulously.

‘There’s worse reasons. It’s better than being called simple “freak,” anyway.’ I stretched out my arms towards the fire, feeling the heat concentrate in my palms. ‘I made fire once,’ I said conversationally. ‘In my hands.’

‘Bet you didn’t,’ said Lionel.

‘Did too.’

‘If the Elves have still g-g-got the G-g-g-gifts, then it st-t-t-t-t-tands to r-reason that half-elves have ’em too,’ Colby said.

‘Ain’t the Elves big on fire and air and all?’ Eldreda asked. [This sounds a touch out of character for her. She's talked quite elegantly until this point so I'd suggest a little re-wording.]

‘Fire, water, earth and air,’ I chanted. ‘Fire, water, earth and air, fire, water, earth and air, fire, water, earth and air… Doesn’t that sound nice?’

‘It’s just words,’ Lionel said.

‘But such words! The rhythm, the onomattywotsit, the assythingy, the scheme of the overall underlying thingybob.’

‘I don’t tumble,’ Lionel said sulkily. [This is completely random. You need to build up to it further. Maybe describe the Raven doing handstands or something as she chants.]

‘I do.’

‘Well, d-d-don’t q-q-q-qua – don’t [Why does he have no trouble with this don't? I'd remove it if I were you.] argue. Mistress Ad-d-d-d-die’ll be c-c-coming soon. We’re eating late, y-y-you see.’

This last was directed at me, and I nodded. ‘Second time around, no less sweeter to hear.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The eating late. What’s it going to be?’

‘We are having stew,’ Lionel said. ‘No idea what you’re having.’ [Does he look smug? And is his twin nodding, looking the other way completely or maybe scowling?]

I grinned at him. ‘There’s glad I am. Surprises are like spices, sa?’

‘“Sa”?’ Eldreda scratched her cheek with her toe. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s Elv-v-vish,’ Colby said.

‘Actually,’ I said, grinning still more, ‘it’s Danann.’

‘D-d-d-d-d-d-d-dan – ’

‘It’s making fun of you,’ Lyndon said.

‘It’s mocking your stutter,’ Lionel added.

‘Who, me?’ I blinked.

Colby looked surprised and rather hurt. There was an awkward silence. I lay down on my stomach with my feet in the air. Frona shuffled away from me, her humped back ducking up and down. She looked about eleven, but small for her age. I put my chin on my arms and blew on a thread hanging from her dress.

‘Stop it.’ Frona snatched her dress hem away.

‘She speaks!’ I exclaimed joyfully.

‘’Course I speak.’ She huddled together, her head resting on her drawn up knees.

‘Frona don’t like speaking much to people she don’t know,’ Eldreda said.

‘Very right and proper.’ I reached out and patted Frona’s shoulder. She flinched. ‘Never, never talk to strangers. Won’t you come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. I do desire we be better strangers.’

‘Don’t fiddle with her,’ Lionel said. ‘She doesn’t like it.’

‘I never fiddle,’ I said sternly. ‘I can’t fiddle, actually. I never learned how to play the violin.’

‘Shut up.’ Lyndon twisted his head around as far as he could to glare at me. ‘You talk far too much.’

‘Alas, we all have our faults.’ I sighed and rolled onto my back. ‘Did you know that if you have a TIA, you might get a bigger stroke in the future? I wonder how you tell if you’ve actually had one – a TIA, that is – and you’re not just feeling tingly and weird? ’Course, not having had one myself, maybe you can tell at once. If you can’t tell, it might explain certain things, like Morley’s imbecility… but no, TIAs don’t cause brain damage, do they?’

‘I have no idea,’ Eldreda murmured, looking dazed.

‘Shut up,’ Lyndon said again.

‘No, they don’t. Still, you’re supposed to watch out for a full-blown stroke afterwards, so I s’pose you must be able to tell. But the treatment sounds really gross. Again, not having had it actually done, I can’t give you a full, first-hand account of it, but it’s to do with pulling something… I can’t remember what. Something intestinal. Anyway, you pull – ’

Lyndon tried to twist around but he fell over Lionel’s legs and lost his impetus. I looked at him calmly. ‘Next time you want to swat me,’ I advised, ‘move quicker and not with a twin hanging from your side.’ [Surely Lionel has a reaction to this? It's as much an insult to him as his brother. And they're both rather short tempered. In act, you need to start showing some difference between them at some point. At the moment Lionel seems a little quieter but that's about all I can discern.]

‘Shut up, just shut up! Why won’t you just be quiet!’ Lyndon flapped his hand ineffectually in my general direction. ‘Why do you have to talk so much – I can’t understand a word you’re saying!’

The door was pushed open by Mistress Addie, the woman from before, holding a large tray, which she set on the table. On the tray was a large pot, and six bowls. She began doling stew out.

‘Is the hybrid eating with us?’ Lyndon asked, not hiding his disgust.

‘That’s what Mister Quennel said.’ Mistress A. scooped up a spillage with her finger and put it back in the pot. ‘He said as how it would behave quite nicely, and it knew how to use a spoon.’

‘It’ll b-b-b-b-b-b-be f-f-f-f-f-f-fine,’ Colby assured her, giving Lyndon a warning glance.

Mistress A. took the pot and left. I sat up and crawled to the table on all fours. I selected one of the bowls and sat down cross legged on the carpet, sniffing the steam rising from the heavily spiced mixture of cheap meat and old vegetables.

Colby got up and handed the others their bowls. For some time, there was no sound except a few slurps and quick exclamations when someone burnt their tongue.

I finished my stew and scraped around the inside of my bowl, trying to collect all the juices. My spoon made little scratching noises against the wooden bowl, and Lionel said grumpily, ‘Stop that.’

‘Stop what?’ I scratched my bowl again.

‘That.’

‘Oh, you mean this?’

‘Yes! Why is it so hard for you to just keep quiet?’

I blinked at him, gulped and blew tiny raspberries with my lower lip, making a string of wet popping noises.

‘Just ignore it, Lionel,’ Lyndon advised. [And now Lyndon is being more sensible and reserved? That seems a touch out of character from what we've learnt so far.]

I covered my head with my hands. ‘No, you’re looking at me! Go away!’

‘D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-don’t you think it’d b-b-b-b-be nice if you were quiet for j-j-j-j-just a little?’ Colby suggested.

‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that I talk in my sleep as well.’

‘Oh, great,’ Lyndon muttered.

I grinned at him and reached up to put my bowl on the table. Then I lay down, my back to the door and my face to the fire. A bit of charred black log snapped and a burst of brilliantly gleaming orange sparks flew up into the chimney. I rested my head on my hand and closed my eyes, seeing blotched masses of colour on the inside of my eyelids, a lingering echo of the fire-brightness.

The others began talking above my head, and their quiet murmurs, along with the occasional pop and rustle from the fire were the only sounds in the room.

∂

The next day we put on our first performance in Selseaton. The house where we and the others were staying was an official freak shop; it could be rented by anyone so long as they had money and an exhibit. Pace allowed Quennel to share the shop, and Quennel paid half the rent; that way everyone was happy.

The other freaks were exhibited in the front room of the shop, immediately behind the shop window which displayed the garishly painted posters advertising whichever freaks were in residence at that time. Quennel had put one of my posters in the window as well: a painting of a creature that looked like a human cross-bred with a dog, and the words, The Only Hybrid In Kiona – Half-An-Elf and Half-A-Human. I knew that I didn’t look quite as hideous as the poster made out, but both the picture and the words were brightly coloured and they certainly drew crowds.

Pace had let Quennel use the smaller room set behind his freaks’ one, and both Quennel and Morley spent the better part of half an hour getting it ready. Morley was putting up the curtain, and I sat watching him, handing him nails when he needed them.

Quennel rested a moment in his sweeping of the floor, leaning on his broom. ‘Raven.’

‘Yes, master?’ I balanced a nail between my first two fingers.

‘Pace said that his freaks had complained about you. You were annoying them last night.’

I closed my fingers carefully, still balancing the nail.

‘I thought I told you to behave.’

Silence. Morley paused, looking down at me, then across the room at Quennel.

‘Raven.’ [Is this said by Quennel? It's not completely clear. Maybe add that Morley remained silent to the previous sentence.]

‘I… did behave. I only – I only talked.’

‘What,’ – Quennel rested his broom against the wall and came to stand in front of me – ‘what have I told you about talking?’

‘I… do too much of it. I don’t talk sense. I don’t talk right. I shouldn’t –’

‘You’re doing it again!’

I tried to watch both his hands and his feet at the same time.

‘Look at me, hybrid.’

I darted a quick glance up at him, then ducked against the wall as he kicked me. ‘Ow – master –’

‘Keep your mouth shut. You understand me?’

I clutched my ankle, biting my lip in pain. ‘Yes, master.’

‘We are sharing this shop, hybrid, and sharing means getting along with people. I have to listen to Pace’s pompous dribble, and you are going to get along with his freaks, otherwise we’ll be in the streets, having to wait for an empty shop, simply because I have such a bloody stupid hybrid who won’t do as it’s told! Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, master,’ I whispered.

‘Good. Morley, take a turn with this broom. The Raven’s tattoos need doing again.’

Morley shrugged and took the broom. ‘Better you than me, Quennel.’

‘The Raven is going to behave this time, aren’t you Raven?’

I bit the tip of my tongue and gave a small, jerky nod. Quennel went out the door; I heard him go back down the passage to his room. Morley began sweeping, whistling Youth’s Yuletide Spirit softly to himself. I fiddled with the feathers tied to my wrists, then let my fingers touch the smeared paint marks on my arm. They were meant to resemble Elvish tattoos, but at the moment they just looked like wavy lines of smudged blue and brown paint. I had seen real Elvish tattoos; the marks I wore were nothing in comparison – a childish parody. If tattoos were a mark of status, what did mine say about me?

Quennel came back with the leather trunk. He opened it, brought out brushes and paint pots. ‘Now,’ he commanded, ‘stand up and keep still.’ I held my arm out and he began rubbing at the old tattoos with a damp cloth. I closed my eyes, feeling the blissfully clean coolness scrub away the old, dry paint. The walnut juice stains would stay on for months, but they were different. They were ingrained into my skin; they were a stain that I could forget about if I tried hard enough. But paint clung to my skin, drying and cracking in those idiotic designs. It irritated me, made me want to scratch it off, but I knew from experience what would happen if I did that. Quennel was proud of the tattoos in the same way that he was proud of his showman’s patter.

‘Hold still!’ Quennel snapped. He lay down his cloth and taking up a brush, dipped it into the pot of brown paint. The cold wet trail of paint slid across my arm, like a snail’s track of slime. I shivered and Quennel growled.


∂


The freak shop stayed open until nine o’clock, which was when it shut for the night. There were sometimes exceptions – people who didn’t want to be seen visiting a freak show but were too curious not to, and others who simply wanted a private viewing. For these patrons, the entrance was raised to a shilling; sometimes more if the person looked wealthy enough.

It had been a good day’s work. Quennel counted up almost seventeen shillings which he then tied up in small bag to be secreted in some hidden inner pocket at a later date. He patted my head. ‘Good Raven. Good freak.’

Pace appeared at the door. ‘Quennel! Come, Addie’s getting dinner. Put your Raven in with the others again, but just make sure it behaves this time, eh?’ He laughed and patted Quennel’s shoulder.

‘I am sure it will behave,’ Quennel said stiffly. ‘This time.’ He gave me a meaningful glance from the tail of his eye.

I nodded, and Morley gave me a tiny push past Pace and into the hall. He took me back to the freaks’ room, where they were already ensconced before the fire. Colby was reading a book, and the twins and Eldreda were playing cards. Frona sat staring into the fire.

No change there, then, I thought, sitting down beside Colby’s chair. He looked down at me rather coolly.

‘Your m-m-m-m-master let you come here again, then, d-d-d-d-d-d-d-did he?’

I nodded.

‘My my,’ Lionel said in wonder. ‘It’s silent! Your master give you a talking to?’

I nodded again, and now Colby smiled. ‘N-n-n-n-n-never m-m-mind,’ he said kindly.

Eldreda smiled as well, and the twins looked a little less sulky. Frona remained impassive.

‘So, did you have a good day, then?’ Eldreda asked me, holding a card between her toes.

I opened my mouth, shut it again and nodded.

‘I think you can talk a little,’ Lionel said.

‘But just a little,’ Lyndon added quickly.

I looked over my shoulder at the door. Still, Quennel hadn’t said I wasn’t to talk at all… ‘Yes,’ I said finally, keeping my voice low. ‘It was a good day.’

‘Oh, splendid.’ Eldreda was too polite to ask just how much we had taken, and suddenly I smiled at her.

‘Do you think that something can exist, just because it’s beautiful?’ I asked.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s just something I wondered about.’

‘Oh. I don’t know, really.’ Even though I wasn’t trying, the thought that went with Eldreda’s speech was so strong that I caught it unawares: poor thing, thinking about beauty like that.

I blinked. Thinking about beauty like that? Like what? Just because I was on the opposite end of the spectrum to beauty, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t think about beauty, did it? Did it?

‘Raven?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m tired.’ [I'm loving this contrast with their previous meeting.]

‘Stay awake for your d-d-d-d-d-dinner,’ Colby said. ‘It’ll be here soon.’

I rested my head against the chair leg and yawned. After a moment I closed my eyes and began humming quietly to myself.

‘What song’s that?’

I opened one eye. Frona had turned around and was gazing at me. She was really quite pretty, I realized, in spite of her hump. Her eyes were light blue, surrounded by pale lashes and her straw-blond hair framed her white face in heavy, shining locks.

‘Suo Gân,’ I replied, closing my eye again.

‘Does it have words?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘How do they go?’

‘Hunan blentyn, ar fy mynwes, clyd a chynnes ydyw hon…’

‘I don’t understand it.’

‘No duh,’ I murmured.

‘Is it Elvish?’ [How is Frona sitting? With her arms wrapped about herself or has she shuffled closer to the Raven?]]

‘Nope. Welsh.’

‘What’s Welsh?’

I sighed and opened my eyes. ‘It’s the language of a country full of whales. That’s why it’s called Wales, see? My da was a whale. That’s what my poster should really say – Half-An-Elf and Half-A-Whale.’

‘He wasn’t really a whale. You’re just saying that.’

I suddenly remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be talking, and shut up.

‘He couldn’t be a whale, could he?’ Frona asked, with quite distressing naivety.

I shrugged. It didn’t matter if she didn’t understand the difference between being half a whale and being half Welsh. Anyway, at that moment Mistress A. came in with the tea, and the subject was dropped.

The new characters are splendid, dear. I'm glad that the Raven loses none of her uniqueness amongst them and her effect on them is brilliant. In fact, the only thing that you need to work on is separating the twins just a little, showing that they're not a 'one twin' and smoothing out the odd inconsistency here and there. Your description could be a little stronger in places but is good, your dialogue is excellent and I really do love all your characters. Keep up the good work!

Heather xx

Jorge frowned. ‘But it’s ugly. It’s strange.’

‘Yes.’ The watch captain jingled my lead about in his hand.

‘It’s an animal.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a freak.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s staring at me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well I don’t like it!’ Jorge pointed his quill at the captain over his desk. ’If you want it in ’ere, you stay with it in ’ere! Or get the other bloke in, the weedy one. Make him sit with it.’

‘But he’s in a cell,’ the captain pointed out. ‘And I can’t leave it in a cell without someone to watch it.’

‘I don’t care! Get him or someone else to sit with it, but I am not going to have a hybrid sitting next to me and staring at me while I’m trying to work! Do you know how difficult it is making reports, even without a hybrid at your elbow?’

This dialogue is cute and amusing. XD I love it.

The captain admitted that he didn’t and he’d dig the weedy bloke out to sit with the hybrid while things got sorted. Was the general finished with his interview?

This was a little confusing. When I saw this, I thought that Jorge was the general, and it took me another couple of lines to figure out they were talking about a third person.

Jorge snorted. ‘Not likely! That Dorian man’s been coming around here for days now, trying to see if we’ve got anything ’e might like. I mean, how likely is it that we’re going to ’ave brought in a dwarf needing a home or a baby with an egg-head? Honestly. The general’s getting pretty sick of ’im by now.’

‘Mm,’ the captain said politely, and, tying my lead to the bench leg, patted my head and went out through one of the doors at the end of the hall.

I sat cross-legged on the floor and snuffled. My nose had stopped bleeding but it still hurt. Morley and Quennel had immediately been bundled off into cells the moment we arrived at the watch-house and the watch captain had taken me to this hallway where Jorge sat writing. There were three doors in this corridor – one at each end and one in the wall on the left. The captain had gone through the one at the far end, but I had no idea what lay behind the other two.

Jorge glowered at me over his desk, daring me to move. I blinked at him. After a few minutes, the watch captain came back with Morley. Morley looked pale and the graze on his face was red and raw.

This section is all very good. It's nice to see that your writing is improving, even as much as from chapter to chapter. The description of the room isn't that interesting, but it gets across everything it needs to without being unduly boring, either.

‘Make sure you behave,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth, sitting next to me on the bench.

‘By dose hurts,’ I said pitifully.

‘Well, don’t fuss about it.’

I massaged the bridge of my nose tenderly and said nothing. We sat like that for some time. Jorge shot us an occasional glare between pages. His quill made scritch-scratch noises on the paper, like a rat’s claws. I could hear voices coming from behind the door in the wall. They rose and fell; sometimes as a low, indecipherable murmur and then louder, and I would be able to catch a word here and there. I could Sense two people behind the door, but it was very faint. The door was too thick to let anything but the faintest pulses through and I was only skilled enough to Sense the barest details.

This paragraph feels a little too much like a list. The sentences are all close to the same length and have the same feel to them. I'd try to mix it up a little, maybe put in some more colorful description. I'd also reword that sentence about the voices rising and falling. It sounds a little awkward as it stands now.
"I could hear voices coming from behind the nearest door; they rose and fell, mostly indecipherable murmurs, but I was able to catch a word here and there."
The "Sense" stuff seems a little out of place. You haven't really introduced this ability, so having it crop up like this is a bit confusing and awkward. Oh, and I'd reword that first sentence.
"I could Sense two people behind the barrier, but my perception was very faint. The door was too thick to let any but the slightest of pulses through, and I was not skilled enough to catch more than the barest details."

‘Where’s Master?’ I whispered.

‘In a cell.’

‘Yes, I know that,’ I said patiently. ‘Was he in the same one as you?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ I snorted, hacked, and continued, ‘I just wondered, see, because if he’d been in the same cell as you, then you would have known how he was and then you could have told me when I asked about it, and now I wouldn’t have to ask someone else and I would know without having to –’

Jorge’s eyes were bulging. Morley nudged my shoulder so hard I almost fell over. I recovered and inched away from Morley’s knees.

This dialogue is good, but the shift from Sensing behind doors to babbling about "Master" seems a little abrupt to me.

The first door down the hall flew open and bounced off the wall behind. A man with frown lines deep enough to plant corn in stalked out, jamming a big plumed hat onto his head. He stalked past us and turned to yell at the man who had followed him to stand in the doorway. ‘You’ll end up regretting this, you mark my words, general.’

This guy seems to have a lot of freedom to insult and verbally abuse the general. o.o Anyway, I'd remove the "behind" in the first sentence. And that second bit about the corn, is a great metaphor. It feels a little awkward to me, but I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it.

‘Mister Dorian,’ said the general, ‘I have given you all the help I can. It’s not my fault that we don’t have what you need. We do try and keep an eye on the freak shows, but if there isn’t anything around that suits your needs, I can’t just pull a monster for you out of my pocket.’

Dorian made an explosive noise through his nose. ‘You could have tried a little harder!’

‘You’re being unreasonable, sir. Quite frankly, you’ve been making a huge nuisance of yourself these last few days. I would appreciate it if you didn’t trouble me again.’

Why does this guy expect the jail to provide him with freaks?

‘I’ll trouble you again all right! You just –’ He broke off. ‘What’s that?’ he asked in quite a different voice. I realised that he meant me.

The general shrugged. Jorge said, ‘It’s a hybrid. Captain Trent just brought it in. Its owners were trying to break into a house.’

‘A hybrid?’ Dorian just stared.

I waggled my fingers at him. ‘Hi.’

‘It talks as well!’

‘Mister Dorian,’ the general began, but Dorian wasn’t listening. He was beaming all over his face.

‘General,’ he said, ‘might I have a word?’

‘You’ve had it already.’

‘Are you the owner?’ Dorian asked Morley.

He asked for a word with the general, but he's taking it with Morley.

‘Uh well,’ Morley said, dithering slightly. ‘No, not really. Quennel actually found it and all, so he owns it. Yeah, Quennel owns it.’

‘Who’s Quennel?’

‘He’s, uh…’ Morley looked helplessly at the general and shrugged.

‘He’s the other man in the cells,’ Jorge said, with a kind of sour smugness. ‘There were two of ’em brought in. This man and the other one.’

‘What’s your name?’ Dorian asked Morley.

‘Morley Andro.’

‘And you’re with the hybrid as well as this Quennel?’

‘Jos Quennel. Yes, I am. We try to do a freak show with the hybrid, but we haven’t been able to find anywhere. All the freak shops are full and no one wants to share with a hybrid. That’s why we had to break in, you see. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.’

‘Poor you,’ Jorge muttered.

‘Thank you,’ I said nicely. He scowled.

I'll let that ellipsis slide. That seems a decent place for one.
"And you're with the hybrid as well as this Quennel?" doesn't feel right to me. Maybe a comma would help.

‘And Mister Quennel is in one of the cells?’

‘Yeah.’

‘General,’ Dorian said. ‘Can you bring him up here?’

‘Mister Dorian, I really don’t think that –’

‘General, if you just let me speak to him, I give you my word that I’ll never trouble you again.’

The general hesitated, clearly tempted. ‘All right. Five minutes. Jorge, will you…?’

This ellipsis is less acceptable. Get rid of it.

Jorge sighed, got down from his desk and disappeared through the door at the end. He was back in a few minutes and with him was a watchman prodding Quennel forward as though he were a pig being driven to market. Quennel’s wrists were still strapped together and in addition to his split lip, he had the beginnings of a beautiful black eye. He looked like half a panda.

Half a panda is hilarious. The rest of this paragraph needs work. "Jorge sighed, got down from his desk, and disappeared through the door at the end of the hall. He was back in a few minutes, accompanied by a watchmen who prodded Quennel forward as though he were a pig being driven to market." There, that's better. Oh, and you need a comma between "and" and "in addition to his split lip."

‘Are you Mister Jos Quennel?’ Dorian asked eagerly.

‘What of it?’ Quennel growled.

‘You own this hybrid?’

‘So?’

The watchman slapped Quennel across the face and snapped, ‘Watch your tongue, idiot.’

‘How did you find this hybrid, Mister Quennel?’ Dorian asked.

Quennel said nothing, just glared at him.

‘Please, Mister Quennel,’ Dorian coaxed. ‘Did you go to Carathara and get it? Did you breed it yourself? Did someone give it to you?’

Quennel remained silent. The watchman drew back his hand and I blurted out, ‘They found me.’

Dorian blinked. Quennel’s eyes blazed with fury and he snapped, ‘Shut up freak.’

‘No no, let it speak,’ Dorian said. ‘If it can. Does it say anything else?’

I shot a glance at Quennel. He shook his head and I looked down at my hands.

‘Mister Quennel,’ Dorian said, and I could tell that his patience was wearing thin, ‘if you don’t co-operate, I will be quite happy to leave you to the tender mercies of this watchman. It is imperative that –’

‘We did find it.’ Morley was unconsciously wringing his fingers. ‘We found it and just… picked it up.’

Dorian nodded. Abandoning Quennel as a lost cause, he devoted all his attention to Morley. Go on,’ he said, sounding like an uncle about to give his favourite nephew a bar of chocolate. ‘Where did you find it? Was there a colony of them?’

‘No… It was in this little fishing village down south and east.’ Morley looked as though he were trying to unscrew his fingers from his hand. ‘Quennel and me went down there to help with the herrings… Quennel’s got family nearby and we were staying with them, ’cos it was the busy season and all.’

‘Why did you go along as well?’ Dorian asked.

‘I just did. Because Quennel was going and I was going to help him. But we got to Quennel’s village and found that they was all excited, like, ’cos they’d burnt out an elf witch and ’is familiar and ’is apprentice. Quennel and me went along the next day to have a look-see. The cottage was all burnt down and everything, and Quennel went pokin’ around in the ruins.’

Get rid of all those ellipses. Bad habit. It feels to me as though Morley is being deceitful to Dorian in this dialogue. Not necessarily about everything, but he's got something to hide. If that is the case, you've done a very good job portraying this without being too obvious.

I laid my hands on my knees and examined my fingernails. I remembered that day, too. Strangely, my time in that small, insignificant fishing village was never difficult to remember in the way that my time in London was. I hardly ever thought about it, but I remembered it.

Druth was the first person I met from this past. I had hated him at first. He was too different, too strange; he just couldn’t fit into my way of thinking. Only when the villagers turned on him and burned him as a witch in his own home did I realise what he had been to me. And of course then it was too late. Just my luck, I thought, picking a hangnail and listening to Morley winding up the tale like a spool of thread, making it sound far more tidy than it really was.

The thread simile there seems a little forced, but it's passable. And you need commas in this sentence: "And then, of course, it was too late."

‘…There’d been a cellar, see, and the hybrid had gone down it during the fire. An’ Quennel found it holding a burnt dead bird. So he called me and –’

‘Wait – you say it was holding a bird?’

‘Yes, sir. A dead one. That’s partly why we – why Quennel called it the Raven, see? Even though it was probably a starling or something… Anyway, we tried to move it, but it kept on whining about a cat and a fool and it wouldn’t budge.’

Ellipses=bad. Stop doing that. I keep telling you.

Morley had been scared, said that I was evil and everyone knew that Elves were of the Devil and had the powers of air and darkness, and a hybrid was worse still. The sensible thing to do was to call the villagers and let them finish the job.

Quennel had told him not to be such a simpleton. That was superstition. Everyone knew that the Elves had been mighty helpful in the last war, even if they had backed out after Luboš. This hybrid could be useful. After all, the elf witch was dead now, so even if the hybrid had been its apprentice, it wouldn’t be able to make magic.

I had barely heard them, too busy rocking back and forth over the handful of bones and singed feathers that had once been Dubhan. His cage had hung from the ceiling near the door, and when you went in, he was the first thing you saw, bobbing on his perch and waving his long black tail up and down like a closed fan. Hamlet would sit for hours watching him through unblinking yellow-green eyes until I picked him up. Then he would rub his face against my chin and purr.

I had found Hamlet’s remains as well, but I couldn’t sit by him and mourn, just as I couldn’t bear to even find Druth’s body. I had concentrated all my grief on Dubhan until Quennel put his hand on my shoulder and tried to lift me to my feet.

I like how you're mixing Raven's memories in with the dialogue, here. It gives us a nice balance, rather than having the entire history explained through just introspection or just dialogue. This is good stuff.

‘And Quennel tried to pick it up, but it dropped the feathers and bit his hand. Quennel hit it and it scratched his face and hissed and spat, just like a cat.’

‘But you managed to move it.’ Dorian sounded weary. Morley was taking his time with the story and generally giving the impression that he was just getting comfortable.

‘Oh yes, sir, eventually. We managed to wrap it up in my coat and scarf and get it back to Quennel’s home. We hid it in a shed with the fishing nets and lobster pots, and then Quennel said about travelling ’round the country with it as a freak show, like the ones he’d seen in Selseaton. We’d didn’t have proper jobs, see, and if we did the show, we could go all over the place and a earn a fortune with it. That’s what Quennel said.’

Dorian looked over at Quennel, who was standing with his shoulders hunched, still glaring at the floor. ’Your fortune does not seem to have been forth-coming, Mister Quennel. Or am I merely looking in the wrong place?’

‘It would have been a fortune,’ Quennel growled. ‘It started off fine, once the hybrid had been trained proper and everything.’

‘We burned its hands and feet,’ said Morley, feeling Dorian’s attention slipping away. ‘Like what they do to chimney sweeps, to make the skin hard. It’s like a blister, see, and then it gets all –’

‘Thank you, Mister Andro. I think I’ve heard enough now.’

Well, the deceit I sensed earlier doesn't seem to be holding true. If he's telling the story as it happened, I go back and edit that previous bit to remove the signs of his deception. It might not be what you were intending when you used the imagery that you did, but that was definitely the impression that I got.

‘Thank you, Mister Andro. I think I’ve heard enough now.’

Crushed, Morley bit his lip, looking from Dorian to Quennel under his eyebrows.

Dorian rubbed his upper lip with one finger, frowning slightly. ‘So, there were no other hybrids? Just this one?’

‘Yeah.’ Quennel gave a short laugh. ‘That’s what we billed it as. The Only Hybrid In Kiona.’

‘In that case,’ Dorian said briskly, ‘I’ll buy it from you.’

Awesome.




Sorry I didn't have a lot of specific comments to make on a lot of this story, but that's just because you've improved so much that you don't need half so much nitpicking as you did at the beginning. You're feeling the style of the story more, now that you've gotten so far into it, and you're coming to know your characters better, as well. Most of this dialogue is great; this chapter moves along nicely and tells us a lot of things without feeling forced.

I do wish you would stop using those damned ellipses, though.

As for the narrative/flashback thing, I think the whole section came out very well. The dialogue and introspection are well-balanced. I love how you see the story from the POV of both the captors and the captive, and how Raven's inner monologue adds little personalizing details that make the whole thing feel more real. Definite kudos to you on this installment, TLG.

I'm so sorry that this took me so long to get to. Fortunately, I don't have much to say.

Was the general finished with his interview?

Jorge snorted. ‘Not likely!

Hmmm, here I thought that Jorge was the general and sorta referring to himself in the third person. Probably not too big a deal, just thought I’d point out that I was a tiny bit confused. P.S. Is this Raven’s viewpoint? ‘Cause I’ve not heard anything from her yet—if it’s not, that’s disconcerting/weird, if it is, please let us know somehow!

‘Mm,’ the captain said politely, and, tying my lead to the bench leg, patted my head and went out through one of the doors at the end of the hall.

This sentence is just a little unnecessarily long. What do you think of something like: “‘Mm,’ the captain said politely. He tied my lead to the bench leg, patted my head…”

‘Are you Mister Jos Quennel?’ Dorian asked eagerly.

0.o When Morely said “Jos Quennel” I thought he was saying “Just Quennel”—thus, this really confused me, especially as what Morely said earlier seemed an odd time to mention Quennel’s first name.

Go on,’ he said,

You’re missing a quotation mark.

Morley looked as though he were trying to unscrew his fingers from his hand.

Is this a comment on his face (i.e. his expression was that of a man unscrewing his fingers) or on his hands (i.e. his fingers are making un-screwing motions)?

all over the place and a earn a fortune

Nix.


Overall

The flashback is perfect, darling, and well-timed. It’s nice to get these little peaks into Raven’s past. One thing in general, about the story over-all, I mean. A lot of people have been commenting on your lack of plot direction, and I think that could easily be solved if you moved this chapter up. Maybe condense/cut a few earlier ones, make it so people don’t have to wait till chapter seven to see the larger story begin to unfold. A really fun chapter, once again. Can’t wait to read more!

Aflonyddwch emosiynol

Cold.

Still with my eyes closed, I curled up tight and wrapped my arms around myself. I tried to scrub my upper arms with my hands and still stay asleep but it didn’t work. Mumbling in my throat, I opened my eyes. The fire had died down and the room was dark. The sleeping shapes of the others made solid shadows on the floor and in the two chairs.

There were goose bumps on my arms. I shifted closer to the fire and bumped into Colby’s chair. He stirred and sighed; I sat up in despair. Everything was peaceful and very quiet. No sound came from the street except for a tiny scuffle in the alley behind the house. Probably a rat, I decided, tucking my knees under my chin and shivering. Or a stray cat. The amount of stray animals I saw in the cities and towns we visited was nothing new. There had been plenty of stray cats and dogs in London, and when you sleep on the streets, it’s hard not to see rats. I remembered one time, I asked Da if rats could still give you the Black Plague.

He had laughed. ‘I don’t think the Black Plague exists anymore.’

‘Oh, it does!’ I had assured him. ‘It was on House. You can still get it, I just wondered if you could still get it from rats.’

Da had rolled his eyes. ‘You’re the medico of the family. You tell me.’

I smiled now, and looked into the nearly dead fire. TV was so far away. Have they made any new seasons of House? I wondered. How many episodes have I missed by now? That was one of the main downers of living in [s]a[/s] an alternative past – the lack of medical dramas. Leaving Grey’s Anatomy didn’t hurt, though…

Something niggled in the back of my brain. I thought I felt a flash of sudden movement, and I looked over my shoulder to see the door opening. [This seems a little awkward. How do you feel a flash of sudden movement?] A tiny light flickered and the doorway was suddenly lit up by a candle.

‘It’s in here!’ someone whispered, and four people darted into the room.

It all happened so suddenly; my mind was still on Izzie and George and Meredith when someone grabbed me and yanked me up by my hair. I yelped, and the candle was pushed into my face. I shrank away from the flame, and someone hissed, ‘Keep quiet, freak.’

‘Please – let go my hair – you’re hurting –’

Someone hooked a finger under my collar, and my hair was released. The candle was held up and I saw four young men, none of them over twenty-one and all of them smelling of cheap ale. One of them with fox-red hair held the candle close to my face, and I stared at him.

He smiled slowly, wonderingly. ‘Cor,’ he breathed. ‘It was true, then. A real life hybrid like what Anselm said. Look at its eyes, Curt.’ He passed the flame in front of my eyes. ‘They go all gold-like, in the light.’

‘You can see all this in the show,’ I whispered, going at top speed so they wouldn’t try and shut me up before I’d finished. ‘Come back tomorrow and see it all properly. I’m sure I can get you a discount.’ [I think you need to show her fear more. Is her heart beating fast? Is her voice shaking?]

‘What’re you doing?’

Redhead and his friends whipped around in alarm. Frona was sitting up and yawning, pushing back her hair from her face with one hand.

‘Private viewers, love,’ one of them said, smirking.

Frona’s mouth gaped a little open, and she looked blearily at me. ‘Private viewers?’

Oh, don’t be so naïve! I wanted to yell at her. [And why doesn't she yell? They haven't threatened her at this point so why doesn't she yell? You need to give us a reason.]

The tallest blond-haired boy bent down to Frona’s level and smiled. ‘And what’re you then? One of the private freaks?’

The others began to snigger.

Frona stared at him, then leaned over to shake the twins awake. The boy swatted her hand down, grinning. ‘Hey, don’t wake up any more boys, there’s enough of us here to make things exciting.’

‘Uh, Frona?’ I hissed. ‘Right now, screaming might be a good idea.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ she began. [Naive little girl? The later suggestion of things having happened to her in the past is rather inconsistent with this.]

Redhead lifted my hand and prised open my fingers. He pinioned my first finger and held it dangerously close to the candle flame. ‘You say one more word, freak,’ he breathed in my ear, ‘and I burn your skin black. Black. You got that?’ [Show us her thoughts. Why doesn't she reason that a burnt finger isn't so bad if it possibly saves her life?]

The blond boy stroked Frona’s face. ‘Pretty little hunchback, ain’t you though?’

From the look on Frona’s face, she had suddenly twigged as to how this might end. ‘No,’ she whispered, trying to pull away.

The boy laughed and pushed her back onto the floor. She fell awkwardly, silent tears beginning to track down her face.

Redhead chuckled quietly. ‘Keep her, Rigg and don’t use it all –’

‘What are you doing?’ Eldreda sat up in her chair, her eyes and mouth wide open in horror. ‘Frona!’

‘Oh, stuff it, Legs,’ Rigg said. ‘There’s plenty to go round.’

‘Pace!’ Eldreda’s scream almost blew out the candle flame. Colby jerked awake and the twins snapped upright simultaneously.

Redhead rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, great.’ [This is what I really don't get. How is he holding her? She can see him so well that she must be facing him and yet he has a good enough hold on her that she can't break free and he can threaten her with a candle?]

‘Pace!’

‘All right, Legs. We’re going, we’re going.’ Redhead’s finger tightened around my collar, and for one mad moment I thought he was going to drag me along with him.

Rigg leaped up and bounded for the door. ‘Come on, George!’

Redhead tilted his head to one side, still looking at me, his mouth curling up into a half smile. The others had already fled, and Rigg hesitated just long enough to yell, ’Come on!’ before dashing out of the door. Redhead patted my shoulder lightly, released my collar and followed. [So let me see, he's holding her collar in one hand, he's holding in a candle in another hand and with his third he pats her shoulder? My, my.... is he a freak too then? Hehe. He needs to release her before he can pat her shoulder.]

Colby knelt down beside Frona. She was still crying silently, and he pulled her to him in a tight hug. ‘It’s all right,’ he crooned softly, for once not stuttering. ‘It’s all right.’

Frona buried her face in his shirt, her shoulders shaking.

‘You bastard.’

Eldreda’s face was tight with fury. I don’t know what surprised me more – her curse or the fact that it was directed at me.

‘Pardon?’ I said disbelievingly.

Eldreda got to her feet, stalked towards me like a furious mother bird defending her young. ‘You utterly heartless bastard.’

‘What?’

‘I saw you, I saw you! You were just standing there – not doing anything!’ She drove me back against the wall, and I was still too gob smacked to do anything about it. ‘Do you know what could have happened to Frona, do you know what that would have done to her? Do you know what she’s been through – what happened to her before she came here?’

‘Let me think. Oh yes. Before, everyone gawked at her free of charge, but now they have to pay. It’s wonderful what a little showbiz know-how can achieve with the right management.’ [The Raven really needs to get a hold of her tongue!]

‘Stop it!’ She was breathing like she’d just finished the marathon, her face flushed.

‘And here,’ I continued, ‘we see a classic example of the advantages of arms over feet. Note the peculiar helplessness of the Armless Wonder here. She obviously wants to hits me, but has no arms with which to do so. The uses of the arm, we can then conclude –’

I didn’t see how it happened, but Eldreda made a movement and I hit the floor with a thud. Then she knelt on my arms, and that really hurt.

‘Ow!’ I squirmed, trying to reach up and bite her. Failing that, I spat in her face, unconsciously baring my teeth.

Eldreda smiled mirthlessly, immune to my show of fierceness. ‘It hurts, does it, hybrid?’

Colby, still rocking Frona, said, ‘I think I c-c-can hear P-p-p-pace coming.’

‘He took his time,’ Lyndon said, looking over Eldreda’s shoulder. ‘You know, hybrid, it’s just like everyone said.’

‘Hybrids are animals, with no human thoughts or feelings,’ Lionel finished.

‘He had a candle!’ I protested. ‘He was going to burn my hand if I made a noise.’

Eldreda shifted one of her knees onto my stomach and I yowled wheezily.

‘You sound like a dying cat,’ Lyndon said contemptuously.

‘And I – I suppose you’d sound like a songbird if you had a great – hulking Armless Wonder rupturing your lungs! I suppose you’d have – got help even if you were going – to get burned!’

‘Oh dear,’ Lionel mocked. ‘You were threatened by a candle? What a shame, what a traumatic bloody shame. You are pathetic. Couldn’t you think of someone else, someone worth more than your stinking yellow self?’

The door slammed back on its hinges, and turning my head on the floor, I saw Pace and Quennel in the doorway. Pace had his trousers on under his nightshirt, and looked completely ridiculous. [colro=red][Does she feel relief? Show us her emotions a little more.][/color]

‘Get off my hybrid!’ Quennel screeched, leaping forward like Jesse Owens. He wrestled Eldreda out of the way and I scrabbled over the floor and latched onto the hem of his nightshirt, gripping the coarse white fabric like it was a lifebelt in a storm.

Pace rounded on his freaks. ‘What the blazes has been going on here? What’s the matter with Frona?’

Colby rose to his feet. ‘There was a b-b-b-b-break-in, sir. A couple of youths. They m-must have come in through the k-kitchen. They w-wanted to see the Raven.’

‘See the Raven?’

‘Yes, sir. And then they… g-g-got d-d-d-istracted.’ Colby pressed his lips together into a thin, pale line.

Pace ruffled Frona’s hair. ‘You all right, Frona?’

Frona drew a long, shuddering breath and bit her lip. She nodded.

‘Good girl.’ Pace glared around at the others. ‘And what else happened?’

Quennel tapped the top of my head, and I looked up at him, still holding onto his nightshirt. ‘Raven,’ he said deliberately. ‘What happened?’

I looked at Eldreda – still flushed and panting – and then at the twins who were glaring at everyone through half-lidded eyes. ‘They got cross ’cos I didn’t help Frona.’ [How does she say this? Factually or angrily or smugly?]

There was a pause. Quennel lifted an eyebrow. ‘That’s it? They “got cross”?’ He glared at Eldreda. ‘Getting cross is no reason to try and suffocate my hybrid!’

Eldreda returned his look, but addressed Pace. ‘I think all of us are agreed, Mister Pace. We won’t have the Raven with us anymore.’

‘Oh you are agreed are you!’ Pace scoffed. ‘Well I’m not agreeing. That hybrid’s bringing this shop more business than the lot of you would ever get, and if they pay to see that freak, they’ll pay to see you as well. The Raven is staying.’

‘With respect, sir,’ Lionel said. ‘No.’

‘No? I’m your manager! You can’t just –’

‘We can, actually. We’re the ones who make the money, Mister Pace, and if we don’t go out, the show can’t go on.’

Pace’s face turned pink. ‘Are you threatening me, Lyndon?’

‘I’m Lionel, sir. No, I am not threatening you. Just bargaining. Unless the Raven goes, there’s no show.’

‘Now look here,’ began Quennel. ‘You can’t fold up everything like that just because the Raven upset you. She can be difficult, I know, but if you just give her time, she’ll get better.’

Eldreda laughed. It sounded harsh and short, more like a bark. ‘If I found a rabid dog, Mister Quennel, I would shoot it. I wouldn’t give it time, and neither would you. Your freak goes.’ [I think I'm starting to dislike her a little.]

Another uncomfortable silence. For the first time I noticed Morley and Mistress Addie in the doorway. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece, a strangely mundane, homely sound in the tightly strung room.

Pace blew out his breath in a huff and shrugged his shoulders. ‘We’ll talk about this more in the morning. I’ll tell the watch about the break-in, see if they picked up anyone tonight. You freaks go back to sleep. You’re tired and upset; if you sleep on it, it’ll be better in the morning.’ He turned and went out. I heard him go back to his room and close the door.

Quennel looked at the freaks: Eldreda grimly defiant, Frona still tear-damp and shaking, Colby silent but unforgiving, the twins furious and showing it.

‘We mean it, sir,’ Eldreda said.

Quennel yanked me to my feet and pushed me out, past Morley, along the corridor to his own room. My stomach seemed to be full of eels, all writhing about and tying themselves into knots. [Show us her thoughts. Who does she fear most?]

‘When,’ Quennel whispered through clenched teeth, twisting my wrists sideways, ‘when, oh when, oh when will you learn?’

‘I didn’t do anything, Master! I really didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t! The others, they just didn’t like me, they don’t like hybrids and they had a candle and they were going to burn my hand and I thought she would scream, and I didn’t want to get burned and they kept on whispering so no one would hear –’

Quennel shoved me against the bed, and fumbled to find his trousers on the floor. He unthreaded his belt. I buried my face in the patchwork quilt, the squares of material creating a mad, distorted jigsaw in front of my eyes. An embroidered daisy on red cotton. Light blue feathering across a cream background. Rough brown homespun, coarse and practical. The neat stitching binding them together; thin white thread running out and through like a spider web of sinews. [Good description.]

Quennel swung the belt, and I closed my eyes against the impact, taking refuge in the plain darkness behind my eyelids.

I thought this was a pretty good chapter actually. Not your best admittedly but it built on some very essential characterization. As to how do I feel about the characters? I think Frona is sweet but too naïve and weak for me to feel sorry for her. I think Colby is nice though misguided in his anger. But I still like him. I find the twins annoying and I find them both to be very short tempered. There's little to love about them. I quite liked Eldreda earlier and then I could make an exception because of the threat to her family but her mistreatment of the Raven makes me dislike her a little. Quennel I dislike but I have a strange respect for his sense of humour and the strength of his power. I wouldn't mind seeing the Raven kick back at him though. And that brings me to the Raven. I think she's selfish but I love her anyway because she has a great sense of humour and we're all a little rough around the edges. Still, I found her behaviour rather weak and passive, even if her tongue was sharp.

It may help to go back and reread the first and third chapters, (Drych-ddelwedd and Arhosfeydd) as I edited some things into them



Fárwel

‘I – I beg your pardon?’ Quennel’s scowl was replaced by an open-mouthed gawk. ‘Buy it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Buy the hybrid?’

‘Yes.’

‘From me?’ Quennel wanted to get it all quite clear.

‘Yes, Mister Quennel,’ Dorian said impatiently. ‘I will buy the hybrid from you. Is that a problem?’

‘But… why?’

‘That doesn’t concern you. But it’ll be going to a good home. We may need to contact you if there are any complications with its care, but I trust you’ll be willing to help with that? If you just let me know where you’ll be staying, if you plan to stay in Selseaton or move on, then I can –’

‘Hang on, hang on, wait a minute.’ Quennel raised his tied hands and pointed two index fingers at him. ‘You want to buy the hybrid?’

‘Yes. We’ve been over all this; what I need is –’

Quennel tried to fold his arms, wrestled with the leather straps for a minute and gave up. ‘Well, you can’t have it.’ He straightened his shoulders instead. ‘I won’t sell it. Consider your proposition declined.’

‘But –’ It was Dorian’s turn to gawk.

‘Mar ty cafos fandae, parüsý menta gollweyng hwy lemmýn,’ I said sweetly, and smiled. ‘Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.’

‘You’re mad.’ Dorian’s eyebrows drew together into a bristling auburn line. ‘Why? You want to carry on with your pathetic idea of a freak show? Chase your dream of a fortune?’ He laughed angrily. ‘You’re mad.’

‘Not my choice, mister,’ Quennel snapped. ‘This freak’s all I got. If I sell it, then what’ll I do? Settle down and try and find a job? I tried that before, didn’t work.’

‘Is that it, then? Just money you’re worried about?’

‘Isn’t that enough?’

Dorian sniffed. ‘Point taken. The party I am representing –’

‘A party?’ I exclaimed joyfully, looking up at Quennel and clapping my hands. ‘We’re going to a party, papa? Whatever shall I wear?’

‘The party I am representing,’ Dorian continued, unfazed, ‘is willing to pay you a very substantial amount, if necessary in monthly payments.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Morley asked.

‘Morley,’ Quennel said. ‘As a favour, could you shut up?’

‘But –’

‘Button it!’

‘Twenty four monthly payments,’ Dorian repeated. ‘Of, say, one hundred pounds each?’

Morley looked as though he were going to have a heart attack. Quennel smiled. ‘Five hundred.’

‘Five –’ Dorian looked taken aback, but he recovered himself. ‘Two hundred.’

‘Three hundred.’

‘Two hundred and fifty.’

‘Two hundred and seventy-five.’

‘Done.’

‘And done.’

What? I looked from one man to the other as they shook hands, Quennel with some difficulty. What? I’m… sold? Just like that?

Dorian leaned over Jorge’s desk and asked, ‘May I borrow a quill?’

Jorge shrugged and passed him one. Dorian took a clean sheet of paper and began to write.

I crawled on all fours to Quennel’s side and tugged at his trouser leg. ‘Master?’

He looked down and smiled.

‘Master,’ I whispered, ‘did you just… sell me?’

‘Yes.’ He gave a soft chuckle. ‘Yes. I suppose I did.’

‘But Master!’

‘What?’

‘Master, you can’t sell me!’ For a moment I felt something close to panic. ‘You can’t sell me, you just can’t! You can’t give me to someone else. You’re the only one who keeps me alive, you’re the only one who cares about what happens to me – you said so! If I go to anyone else, they’ll kill me. No one else would let me live, ’cos I’m a freak and a hybrid and a perversion… Master, you said so!’

Dorian didn’t look up from his writing. ‘It won’t get killed, if that’s what it’s worrying about. I told you. It’ll be going to a good home.’

‘Raven.’ Quennel knelt down to my eye level and patted my shoulder. ‘Raven, that won’t happen. You heard what Mister Dorian said: you’ll be going to a good home. You won’t have to travel around all the time, either. You’ll be safe inside a new home with your new master. By the way,’ he called over his shoulder to Dorian, ‘who is her new master? Who’s the one dishing out all this money for a scrawny hybrid freak?’

Dorian blotted the paper. ‘It won’t be a master, it’ll be a mistress. A certain lady – a peer of this land – asked me to find a suitable curiosity for her niece’s birthday present. And now I have the perfect gift: unique, alive and with enough intelligence to be amusing. Now, Mister Quennel, if you’d just sign here.’ He laid the paper down on the desk.

Quennel eyed his wrists meaningfully, and Dorian nodded to the watchman, who still stood behind Quennel’s shoulder. The watchman unbuckled the cuffs, and after rubbing his wrists for a minute, Quennel took the quill and flattened out the piece of paper. Peeping over the edge of the desk I could see that it was covered in bold black writing with f's instead of s's and long curly tails on the g's and y's. At the top was written, ‘Agreement concerning Business Done.’

‘This is just laying out our bargain in legal terms,’ Dorian said as Quennel, scowling, tried to decipher the lines of small print.

‘You couldn’t have made more of a mess if you were using a drunk quill,’ Quennel commented in exasperation. ‘No, don’t read it out loud, I can see what it says all right.’ He frowned over the last few lines and signed his name in thick, slightly smudged letters at the bottom of the page. Dorian held out his hand, but Quennel jerked his head at Morley. ‘Come on.’

‘Uh?’ Morley said in disbelief.

‘Come here and sign.’

‘Really?’ Morley began to smile. ‘Oh, I never thought you’d… I was… I mean, I didn’t think you’d –’

‘Shut up and get on with it.’ Quennel pushed the quill into Morley’s hand, looking cross. Morley made a wobbly, spattered, ‘A.M’ and Dorian signed a beautiful flowing ‘Seeley Dorian,’ completely filling the blank space at the bottom.

Then he took another piece of paper and began to question Quennel about my care. How many meals a day should I have? How much exercise did I need? Was I all right with other animals? Was I house-trained? Were there any foods I mustn’t have?

The list got longer and longer. Dorian started a second piece of paper, his quill scratching so loud and so fast it made my nerve ends shrivel. I still clung to Quennel’s trouser leg, holding fistfuls of the rough brown fabric so tightly the weave dug into my calloused palms. Quennel’s scent burned the inside of my nose: sour sweat, blood from his split lip, the faint tang of old beer, a smear of muck on the sole of his boot. Dorian smelled so different – so clean. He was wearing a type of skin oil; it smelled fresh and minty and completely alien.

But clean.

Dorian had said that my new owner – my mistress – was rich. And if she was happy to shell out monthly payments of two hundred and seventy-five pounds for the next few years, then she must be very rich. Presumably if I were a rich lady’s pet, I would be expected to be clean all the time. Maybe this lady wouldn’t mind if I didn’t wear paint tattoos. Maybe she would want them scrubbed off. Maybe she was the type of lady who had allergies and couldn’t have a smear of paint near her without breaking out in hives. I imagined her; middle aged, stern, matriarchal and fanatically tidy. ‘Look at this freak!’ she would say. ‘Simply covered in paint. No creature of mine is going to go around smothered in silly tattoos. Wash them off at once.’ And I would smile and be obedient to at least that one of her wishes.

‘What are its favourite foods?’ Dorian asked.

‘Big Mac and a coke,’ I replied.

‘It eats pretty much anything, really,’ Quennel replied. ‘It didn’t use to like vegetables, but it eats them now. She likes a lot of meat, but don’t give her too much or she’ll get sick. It’s not a proper carnivore. A bit like a dog, actually; a bit of this and a bit of that.’

‘Indeed.’ Dorian scribbled some more, then stopped and massaged his fingertips. ‘Is there anything else we should know?’

Quennel thought. ‘You’ve got the bit about lead-walking and about feeding. Um… it likes getting up early. When it hums, that means it’s happy. It’ll hiss at you if it’s annoyed. Don’t annoy it; it’s got kitten teeth.’

‘Yes, I’ve got all that. Anything else?’

‘Um…’ Quennel paused, hemmed for half a second. ‘No. I think that’s it.’

‘Good.’ Dorian flapped his hand over the paper to dry the ink, then rolled it up. ‘If I need anything else, I’ll contact you. Where will you be staying?’

‘I don’t know.’ Quennel gave a wry smile. ‘We haven’t looked around the most fashionable places, yet.’

‘I recommend the Hare and Hounds. It’s very clean and the landlord’s a pleasant enough fellow. You go there for the time being and if you move on, leave a forwarding address.’

‘All right.’

‘Good.’ Dorian held out his hand. Quennel shook it, then looked down at me.

Don’t go, I pleaded silently, staring at him, trying to memorize his features so I wouldn’t forget them. His blue eyes, set wide apart in a square-jawed, somehow flat face; his short, wiry blond hair; the tiny red scar on his left temple. ‘Master…’

‘Bye Raven.’ He stroked my hair, lifting my feather and smiling. ‘You be good now. I don’t want your mistress knocking on my door and complaining that she wants her money back.’

I bit my lip. ‘No, Master.’

Quennel grinned. ‘Don’t look so forlorn, Raven. I’d have thought you’d be glad to go to someone else. What about all those times you bit me, hey? Remember that?’

I did remember. I had hated Quennel; some part of me still hated him, but he was familiar. I knew him, had spent the last fourteen months of my life with him. My new mistress might be an improvement on my current situation, but what if she wasn’t? What if she was worse?

Morley patted my shoulder a little awkwardly. He coughed. ‘Well, bye.’

‘Goodbye, Morley-sir.’

‘Come on,’ Dorian said impatiently. ‘Is all this really worth it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, covering my cheeks with my hands and blinking at him. ‘Lend me your handkerchief, Mister Dorian, my one’s been washed away on our combined floods of tears. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Drogda, Mister Dorian, drogda.’

Dorian looked at the roll of paper he held in his hand. ‘I’ve thought of something I forgot to ask you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘How do I make it be quiet?’

Quennel laughed. ‘I haven’t found that one out yet! If the new owner can find the answer, I take my hat off to them.’

‘And – does it have the Sense?’

Quennel raised and eyebrow. ‘Does that matter?’

‘Considering the fact that a Sensing hybrid might able to read its mistress’ thoughts, I think it matters, yes. Its mistress has a right to know, at least.’

‘All right.’ Quennel shrugged. ‘It does. I think its Sense-familiar used to be a cat that got burned along with the elf witch.’

‘Cats and elf witches.’ Dorian sniffed. ‘Nice company this hybrid used to keep. Well, goodbye.’

Morley untied my lead from the bench-leg and gave it to Dorian. Dorian gave it a tiny tug, said, ‘Heel,’ and led me to the end of the hall. I paused at the door and looked back. Quennel was re-reading the document of agreement, his brow furrowed as he waded through the fancy writing. Morley saw me looking and gave a tiny wave.

Then Dorian pulled me through the doorway and out of the hall.

Outside it was getting dark. Most of the street sellers had already gone home and only a few remained, packing up their barrows or still trying to get rid of the last of their wares. There was a fish stall near the watch-house, with a candle burning at each corner of the counter. The light illuminated the herrings and mackerel lying in neat, layered rows on the scrubbed stall top. The fishes’ dead eyes seemed to glow with a second life and the silver-flashing scaled herrings shone like wet jewels in the dim street.

I would have stopped to look properly but Dorian hurried me on, past the stall to the water trough set outside a small coffee house. There was a horse tethered there, and Dorian untied it quickly. He lifted me up onto its back and climbed on behind. It wasn’t very comfortable; the saddle had been designed with only one passenger in mind, and I ended up on the horse’s neck, grabbing handfuls of chestnut mane to avoid falling off.

‘Keep still,’ Dorian ordered, pulling my lead back so I had to lean against him. He held the reins in one hand and my lead in the other and the horse set off at a steady walk down the street, its hooves scraping hollowly on the cobbles.

I didn’t like sitting between Dorian’s arms. I could feel his chin near the top of my head, and as he had to lean forward to see where he was going, it was almost as though he were hugging me. I wanted to squirm, but he held my lead too tight.

We clopped through the streets for quite some time, out of the seedy area to the more fashionable districts. Here, the streets were wider and cleaner, and there were a few lamp posts set on convenient corners, the tiny candles flickering behind discoloured glass panes clothing the nearby pavement in a pale grey glow.

The sound of the horse’s hooves made a continuous rhythm in my head, over and over and over. I wanted to stay awake and see where we were going, but my eyes kept on closing. I yawned, and my head nodded forward, only to be brought up short by Dorian’s grip on my lead. This happened several times before Dorian pulled me back against him and pushed my head to rest against his shoulder with a kind of awkward gentleness. I was too tired to protest. The last thing I remembered was Dorian clucking to his horse, murmuring, ‘Step up, boy, nearly there now’ before I fell asleep.

Yay! First to respond!

But it’ll be going to a good home.

This may just be me, but why should Dorian think Quennel cares about this?

Quennel tried to fold his arms, wrestled with the leather straps for a minute and gave up.

Lol, I’ve done that before, had my tied or chained up characters try to cross their arms. Ahhh, nostalgia.

‘Mar ty cafos fandae, parüsý menta gollweyng hwy lemmýn,’ I said sweetly, and smiled. ‘Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.’

Is she quoting Shakespeare in Welsh? Um…why?

together into an bristling auburn line

I think you mean “a”.

‘The party I am representing,’ Dorian continued, unfazed

At first I was like “Hey, he’s pretty unflappable.” Then I remembered that he’s been freak-hunting for awhile. ^_^ Good bit of mini character development.

‘Done.’

‘And done.’

Quennel closes on a deal without tying the buyer down to how many moths these payments will last? Doesn’t seem, well, Quennel-ish of him.

‘Master, you can’t sell me!’ For a moment I felt something close to panic. ‘You can’t sell me, you just can’t! You can’t give me to someone else. You’re the only one who keeps me alive, you’re the only one who cares about what happens to me – you said so! If I go to anyone else, they’ll kill me. No one else would let me live, ’cos I’m a freak and a hybrid and a perversion… Master, you said so!’

Ooo, this is interesting.

You won’t have to travel around all the time, either.

How does he know?

with fs instead of ss and long curly tails on the gs and ys.

This may be a Yank/Brit thing, but methinks should be f’s, s’s, g’s, and y’s. Or something like that…

‘This is just laying out our bargain in legal terms.’ Dorian said as Quennel, scowling, tried to decipher the lines of small print.

0.0 Wow, that didn’t take him long to do. Perhaps either comment on how extremely fast Dorian wrote, or have a sentence mentioning the awkward silence that pervaded as he wrote (or such). Oh! It just occurred to me—couldn’t Dorian have a sort of ready-made contract with him? With “Insert Freak’s Name Here” or something? Especially since he was freak-hunting to begin with.

‘No, don’t read it out loud, I can read what it says all right.’

>.< Ze repetition, it hurtz mein eyze.

How many meals a day should I have? How much exercise did I need? Was I all right with other animals? Was I house-trained? Were there any foods I mustn’t have?

*falls over laughing* I’m sorry, I don’t know why I find this so intensely funny!

monthly payments of two hundred and seventy-five pounds for the next few years

You see what I mean about specifying?

expected to be clean 24/7

Erg. I understand that Raven’s slipped into ‘modern lingo’ as she so often does, but this is still a jolt—perhaps not the best time for her inter-dimensional idioms?


Btw, I love how it’s the paint tattoo’s she focusing on—very well done.

Don’t go, I pleaded silently, staring at him, trying to memorize his features so I wouldn’t forget them.

Awww…this is really sweet, despite the fact that we hate Quennel. Perhaps give us some idea of why it is Raven doesn’t want to leave him (besides the whole ‘anyone else would kill you’ spiel; she can’t believe that), even just a hint?

I did remember. I had hated Quennel; some part of me still hated him, but he was familiar. I knew him, had spent the last fourteen months of my life with him. My new mistress might be an improvement on my current situation, but what if she wasn’t? What if she was worse?

Disregard above post.

The fishes’ dead eyes seemed to glow with a second life and the silver-flashing scaled herrings shone like wet jewels in the dim street.

A most beautiful bit of description, darling.

I wanted to squirm, but he held my lead too tight.

Curious: how does he hold her lead if he’s also holding the horse’s reigns?


Overall

Ooo! A new episode in Raven’s life begins! I can’t wait to see where we’re going with this, darling!

Cyfeiriad newydd

‘Look, I’m… I’m really sorry about all of this, Quennel.’ Pace popped his knuckles, looking at the hall floorboards. ‘I don’t understand the freaks. They’ve never been this… difficult… before.’

‘You don’t have to apologize,’ Quennel said stiffly. He held my lead tightly; I could feel the tension in his grip. ‘The Raven can be difficult to get along with. We’ll find somewhere else.’

‘If you need anything –’

‘No. Thanks. But no.’ Quennel opened the front door and went out with his head in the air. Morley trailed behind, juggling the luggage in his arms. The early morning air was sharp and damp, and little wreathes of mist curled over the dewy street cobbles. I looked over my shoulder; Pace was watching us go, and he raised his hand in a little wave. Quennel didn’t look back. He kept his head up, strode confidently to the end of the street and turned the corner. Then he stopped and leaned against the wall. [I'd like just a touch more description in that last sentence. Leaned heavily against the wall? Do his shoulders droop, does his grip on the lead tighten or weaken?]

Morley, trying to support the slipping crate, asked, ‘Why are we stopping?’ [I have trouble with Morley at times. Sometimes he seems a rather whiny sort of character and other times gruff and more in control. Here, is he whining and complaining? Or does he ask it in a gruff, irritable voice?]

‘To think about where to go next, idiot!’ Quennel snapped.

I began licking a scratch on my wrist. My back and shoulders still hurt from last night, but Quennel was very good at causing pain without causing damage. He had scratched my wrist with his nails, though, and it stung.

‘Well, where are the other freak shops?’ Morley asked.

‘I looked into them before I decided to share with Pace. They’re all full up.’

‘There can’t be that many freaks running around,’ I said between licks. ‘Or is it a lack of freak shops? Why not start a new shop?’

Quennel cuffed my ear. ‘Be quiet. It’s a lack of freak shops.’ He thought for a moment, then shrugged. ‘We’ll just have to try normal shops, then. See if they’ve got a spare back room.’

Morley hefted the crate again. ‘Can’t you take something?’ [Does he say this gruffly? Or in a whiny voice? Or angrily, irritably. Again, I'm just not quite sure about him.]

‘No.’ Quennel straightened and headed for the nearest shop.

‘He’s too important,’ I told Morley wisely.

Morley snorted and followed. The shop was a watchmaker’s; the walls were filled with clocks and a huge grandfather clock stood in one corner. [Oooh, oooh. I love grandfather clocks but how can I love this one if you don't describe it? And also, think about the sound in the shop. The tick, tick, tick of clocks. Are they all in synch or is there that one clock that's just out, ticking just behind like an echo. I went in a shop like this once and there were two clocks out and while my parents looked at which they wanted to buy, I couldn't help but try to find the clocks that were out. I found one. It was a really pretty little white one in the shape of a rabbit. A children's clock. Now, think about the Raven. Do any in particular catch her eye?] A man sat behind the counter, peering through a jeweller’s glass at a pocket watch in his hand. [What sort of man?] He looked up as we entered, and the glass fell out of his eye like an upper class twit’s monocle.

‘Good morning,’ Quennel began politely. ‘I wonder if you had –’

‘What is that?’ The watchmaker’s eyebrows were touching his hairline.

Quennel smiled. ‘This, sir, is my fortune.’

‘Looks like a hybrid to me,’ said a new voice. A curtain hung behind the counter and a boy had pushed past it and stood watching. ‘’Tis a hybrid,’ he said. ‘It’s the one from the freak shop in the next street. I went and saw it and all.’ [What's the boy look like? Does the Raven recognise it? And play on the symmetry of the Raven observing him sat behind his curtain.]

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Quennel tried not to show his irritation. ‘A hybrid. I was wondering if you had a spare room or a shed that you wouldn’t mind hiring out.’

The watchmaker frowned. ‘And you’d show this… hybrid… in it?’

‘That is our hope, sir, yes.’

The watchmaker leaned his elbows on the counter top and surveyed me. I blinked at him, felt Quennel’s grip on my lead tighten.

‘Does it talk?’ the watchmaker asked.

‘Oh yes, sir. Say something Raven.’

I smiled. ‘Your assistant is a cross-dresser.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

The boy’s mouth opened in outrage. ‘I am not! Whatever a cross-dresser is, I’m not one of them.’

‘What if it’s a good thing?’ I asked him. ‘You’re throwing away a compliment.’ [Haha, love your dialogue!]

‘I…’

‘That’s enough, Corey,’ the watchmaker said. The boy disappeared back behind the curtain, and his master took up his glass again.

‘Sir?’ Quennel queried.

‘No. I’m sorry, but it’s…’ He sighed and stared at the watch in his hands. ‘I just wouldn’t feel comfortable with it. It’s too – too unnatural. I’m sorry.’

‘But sir,’ Quennel began, then stopped. ‘Very well. Good morning.’ [How does he say this? Behind clenched teeth? And what makes him stop? Why doesn't he push a little further?]

‘Good morning.’

Back in the street, Quennel started towards the next shop – a jeweller’s. Then he paused. ‘Hey, Morley.’

‘Can you take the crate at least…’

‘Morley, you stay outside with the hybrid this time.’ Quennel gave me a pointed look. ‘That way there’s no chance for bad behaviour, is there?’

Morley shrugged and took my lead. Quennel went into the shop and Morley put the luggage on the ground and leaned against the wall. I squatted down on my heels and surveyed the street.

An artist wanting to paint the scene would have been kept very busy, I decided. I had a mental image of an artist hunkering over his easel, sending paint spattering everywhere in his frantic efforts to capture the burgeoning bustle of the early morning street traffic. Over against the opposite wall stood a crouched old man selling laces. A few paces away from him was a little girl selling apples, and she was soon joined by another little girl with a tray of ribbons around her neck.

A ballad seller passed by, crying, ‘All come hear the tale of Kendal Grover and his unfaithful murderin’ wife! A penny a sheet! A penny a ballad, a penny, a penny, a penny, a penny for a ballad!’

A [Too listy. Your last three paragraphs have all begun with an or a. Try to alter one of them, re-word it a little. And think of smells as well as sight and sound.] man with a donkey cart loaded with vegetables turned into the street; a boy walked beside him, shrieking out over and over again, ‘Peas, peas, peas, peas, peas, peas, peas, peas, peas, peas,’ with hardly a pause for breath.

‘Too noisy,’ Morley grumbled.

‘Silence is golden,’ I agreed.

‘Silence is golden?’ Morley gave me a sceptical glance. ‘Since when have you known about keeping silent?’

I grinned. ‘You know about playing sour notes, but you don’t play your whistle out of tune.’

‘There’s a difference between silence and music.’

‘Oh-h, but of course. One’s blue and the other’s multi-coloured, sa?’

‘No sa.’ Morley dug the toe of his boot against the cobbles and sent a pebble skittering into the gutter. A small boy picking over the rubbish sent Morley a violent glare and hunched a thin shoulder, his grubby fingers curling over the pebble as though he wanted to throw it back.

‘Muffins! Hot, piping hot, r-r-ree-king hot muffins!’ The muffin man swung his heavy bell in one hand and steadied the tray on his head with the other. ‘Muffins! Three a penny!’

Quennel came stalking out of the shop and, squaring his shoulders, went straight into the next one.

‘No go, then,’ I observed.

‘No. You’re too repulsive, that’s why,’ Morley said crushingly. ‘If you had three heads and a tail, it’d be easier to find somewhere to go.’

‘Well, okay, then,’ I said obligingly. ‘You cut off your head and Quennel’s head and find a stray cat’s tail. Then we’ll stick them on with super-glue, and no one’ll ever notice the difference.’

‘Be quiet.’

‘I thought it was a good idea.’

‘Well it isn’t.’ [A little more description here perhaps. Do the sellers try to get their attention at all?]

‘Oh, blow you, then.’ I began to whistle ‘This is Halloween.’

Morley yanked on my lead so hard that I choked. ‘Shut up!’

I shut up and sat down on the pavement with my legs outstretched, running a finger under my collar to ease it. The wind blew strands of my hair into my mouth and eyes, lifting my feather there and bumping it against my shoulder. I caught it with a handful of hair and looked at them together: fine black strands of hair tangled around a rather ragged black feather. I tried to smooth the feather out, zip it together again, but some of the barbs were broken and wouldn’t catch against each other. It needed replacing, really. After all, how could I look smart and exhibitable with untidy plumage? People would think I had no sense of neatness.

‘Morley sir.’

‘What?’

Quennel left the second shop and went into the next one. [Does he perhaps dust his clothes down or something to make himself look more presentable? How is he dressed?]

‘Morley sir, I need new feathers.’

‘What?’ He turned his head and stared. ‘You need new what?’

‘Feathers,’ I explained, twirling my feather between finger and thumb. ‘See, it’s all old and broken. And my other ones as well.’ I swivelled my wrists and ankles, showing him the state of the feathers there. ‘I’m all ill-shod and sullified. Besmirched. Tarnished. Polluted. Unshipshape. Inverted spick and perverted span.’

‘Talk to Quennel.’ Morley hunched his shoulders.

‘Master’s in the shops,’ I pointed out.

‘No he isn’t, he’s coming back.’

Quennel was indeed crossing the street, avoiding a woman with a basket of fish on either arm and a donkey cart full of cabbages.

‘No luck?’ Morley called.

‘Obviously not,’ Quennel retorted, and went straight past us into the shop behind.

It was the same in all the shops we tried. Either there was no room to spare, or the owner wanted more money than Quennel could afford. Most often though, it was that no one wanted a hybrid on the premises. It was too unnatural, too wild, too strange. Yes, they were sure Mister Quennel had it under control, but they wouldn’t feel easy, knowing that a hybrid was in their back room. They had children to think of, too. What if they went in and saw it, what if the hybrid got loose and hurt someone? No, they were sorry, but…

By the end of the day, Quennel was in a thoroughly bad temper. My feet hurt, and Morley was banging the crate against his leg with every step he took. Quennel was no longer quite as polite as he should have been when asking for a room, and I knew that we wouldn’t find anywhere tonight.

Quennel eventually took us to a small inn called The Oak and Crown near Klaes Gate and managed to persuade the landlord to let us have a room for the night. The landlord chewed on his lower lip, eyed me, said, ‘Just make sure it doesn’t get loose,’ and took the tuppence Quennel pushed into his hand.

Morley dumped the crate on the floor of our room with a sigh of relief. ‘Quennel, can you please carry it tomorrow?’

‘No I cannot! I’ve got enough to worry about without hulking a dirty great crate around with me all the time.’ Quennel sat down on the bed and scowled at the floor, digging his fingernails into the stitching on my lead. I sat next to him, by his feet, rubbing a sore spot on my ankle.

‘Well, that’s that for today, then,’ Morley said. ‘Are you going to go down and get supper, or what?’

‘You go get it.’

‘But… Oh, all right.’ Morley sighed, scratched his head and went out.

Quennel stared at the floor for a moment longer, then he reached down and unclipped my lead from my collar. I smiled and curled up on the floor. ‘Thank you, Master.’

‘You are impossible, Raven, you know that? Impossible.’

‘Master is too kind.’

‘You’re too good a freak. You’re too much of a horror. In Londlow and Arlow and Obury and all the other places we’ve been to, people haven’t been that sensitive. They didn’t ’ave a watch there, either. But here…’ He sighed, almost groaned. ‘The watch close down the freak shops that offend people too much. I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to be one of the more offensive freaks. People here just look at you and think about what a depraved animal you must be. It’s like the people who don’t like menageries, ’cause of the animals not looking ’appy and all.’ [Haha. I love how he speaks to her.]

‘Animal Rights Activists,’ I said, stretching my neck out and in again. ‘Save the skunks and hug the nettles. Give the bramble a seat in Parliament.’

‘I mean, I never thought we’d ’ave this much trouble. Competition with other freaks, but not people just saying “no” without giving a proper reason.’

‘Maybe we should try a new angle,’ I suggested. ‘A new name or something. The Fantastic Elastic Freak – and I can do pirouettes and grand assemblé en tournant and a cabriole or two. And, Master, I need new feathers.’

‘Feathers?’ He looked down at me and tutted. ‘You go through them far too quickly.’

‘But they matt [Matt? Do you mean malt?] even quicker, Master.’

‘Oh, all right. I’ll start the next bundle with the next performance. Whenever that may be.’

I rested my cheek on my hand and decided not to answer.

---

The next day we headed further into the city. There were more shops here than on the outskirts of Selseaton, but even less enthusiasm. Quennel tried everywhere: the butcher’s, the baker’s and the candlestick maker’s, but it was no use. Even my new feathers didn’t help soften the people’s hearts, and I supposed that Quennel was right. I was too shocking, too disturbing to be successful in the way that Pace’s freaks were successful. Even Frona, tragic though she was, with her pretty face and hunched back, was easier to sympathize with than The Only Hybrid In Kiona.

Sometimes it seemed as though I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t been a freak. I must have always been with Quennel and Morley, always lived in Kiona, always been exhibited about the country. But there was something else, always some memory tucked away at the back of my mind that pulled me back from forgetting. A memory of a time when there had been smiles and laughter and warm sun sparkling off the face of Big Ben. A memory of a man with black eyes and black hair and a sing-song way of speaking, who spread my sleeping bag on rough pavements and called me cariad. [Who could not sympathise with this wonderful creature? Excellent characterization, dear.]

Then the memory would harden and solidify and I would remember that it was Da who had called me that, lilting the word in his Welsh accent. I would wonder how I could have possibly forgotten him; the way he grinned, pulling up one corner of his mouth, the way he stirred his coffee, little finger unconsciously cocked in the air, the way he read Shakespeare, savouring the rhythm of the words and phrases that I often couldn’t make head or tail of.

I remembered lying next to my brother and sister in a dark corner of a subway, huddling together to keep warm. Da had managed to get his arm around all of us, and with his free hand he held a battered copy of Midsummer Night’s Dream.

‘Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere…’

It was so difficult to remember, sometimes. Someone had once told me that Elves have extremely short memories. It was to do with their shame, their secret that the humans weren’t supposed to know about. It seemed that the hybrids had got the Elves’ bad memories along with their shame as well. Only with the hybrids, it wasn’t a secret shame, because everyone knew about it and that was why they hated us.

They certainly hated us in Selseaton. Quennel tended to use a lot of bad language in the weeks that we spent there. We usually managed to find an inn that would let us stay the night, but we always had to move on the next day. Then there would be another fruitless day of searching.

Once, Quennel managed to hire a stable stall in a small, squalid public house near Pegger’s Court. Our exhibition there lasted a grand total of two days before the watch closed us down and we had to move on again. [In this time did they go hungry at all? Or did they have money to see them through?]

---

One evening at the end of our daily round, we found an abandoned house in Eartha Street. The whole neighbourhood was rather seedy, the type of place where people got mugged on their way home from work without too many eyebrows being raised by the neighbours, and the watch tended to be extra zealous there in consequence.

Morley wrinkled his nose at the dirty, timbered building. ‘It’s not very clean, is it?’

‘Morley, my dear chap.’ Quennel looked up and down the street, making sure that no one was providing an audience to this display of breaking and entering. ‘What does clean matter?’

‘Speaking personally,’ I said, ‘it matters quite a bit.’

Quennel got his knife out of his pocket and began levering out the nails holding the window shutters closed. ‘Raven. You want to have a show, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘Yes, Master. I want a show.’

‘Good. You’ll just have to put your cat-habits on one side for now. Morley don’t just stand there gawping, come and help.’

They managed to prise open one window shutter, and Quennel boosted me up, saying, ‘Climb through and see if it’s all right inside. Then come back.’

‘Yes Master.’ Obediently, I climbed through the small gap and landed on the floor inside. It was almost pitch black; the only light came through the half open window which Quennel was looking through. He saw the trouble and moved behind the remaining shutter.

His voice came clearly: ‘Hurry up, Raven, or the watch’ll come.’

I was tempted to dawdle and see Quennel sweat, but he had a point. If the watch did catch us breaking in, even into an abandoned house, it might be days before we were allowed anywhere near here again. And then, goodbye any hopes of the Fantastic Elastic Freak idea.

The light from the window was blocked as Quennel looked in. ‘Get a move on!’ he hissed.

‘Yes, Master.’

The room I was in must have once been used as a kitchen. I could dimly see a table with a huge split down the middle and a fireplace set in one wall with a rusted, broken spit. I wrinkled my nose; the whole place stank, and there was something rotting nearby.

There was only one other room downstairs, and that was filled with rubbish, broken furniture and the decaying body of what had once been a cat. It smelt even worse at close quarters, and I quickly left to find the stairs. The upstairs consisted of a large, bare attic with a smashed oil lamp in one corner. My feet left a trail of prints on the dusty floorboards. I squatted down on my heels and spent a few minutes drawing pictures in the dirt. [What happened to her disliking the dirt? Where's her distaste at getting her feet filthy? Why doesn't she draw with a stick or some sort of object instead of her finger?]

First I drew a cat – my cat, the one that had died over a year ago. I drew him sitting bolt upright, his tail curled tight around his toes, his eyes tiny horizontal slits as he gazed into the distance. I wrote his name, ‘Hamlet,’ underneath, and then moved onto a fresh stretch of floorboard. I drew a smiley face with big, protruding ears and a missing tooth, and next to that I drew a sad face with long ringlets and perfect eyelashes. As a final finishing touch, I added, ‘Quennel is an flatulent blonde porpoise,’ underneath.

I rubbed the dust off my finger and went downstairs, wincing as the boards creaked. The smell of the dead cat made me gag, and I hurried through to the kitchen.

‘It’s okay in here,’ I announced, poking my head through the window. ‘Just a bit pongy and dirty, that’s all.’

‘Raven –’

‘Oh,’ said the captain of the watch, raising an eyebrow. ‘Not doing anything ’ere, are you?’

‘Hello,’ I said, looking past him to the rest of the watch gathered in a formidable knot around Quennel and Morley. ‘Are you the tax gatherers?’

The captain jerked a thumb at me. ‘Get that out of there.’

‘Come on, Raven,’ Quennel muttered. He lifted me down from the window and wrapped my lead around his wrist.

‘Right,’ the captain said, one hand on his belt, resting on his pistol. ‘And just what were you doin’ in there, may I ask?’

‘You mayn’t,’ I said.

Quennel laughed nervously. ‘We, ah, we thought there was an intruder and I, ah, sent the hybrid in to… to look around.’

‘An intruder in an abandoned house?’ the captain queried. ‘I think, sir…’

‘That you must warn us that anything we say may be used against us?’ I suggested.

The captain sighed. ‘Sir, it’d be nice if you could keep your creature quiet. Now sir, it’s getting late. Just you come down to the watch-house and we can –’

‘We weren’t doing anything!’ Quennel insisted.

‘Then, sir, you won’t mind coming, will you, sir?’

Quennel cast a wild look around, then dashed away down the street. He still had my lead around his wrist, and, taken by surprise, I tripped and got tangled up with one of the watch’s legs. Quennel was brought to a halt and the watch captain got him by the shoulders. Quennel punched him, the captain punched him back and the rest of the watch flung themselves into the fray.

In the middle of the fight, someone’s elbow crashed into my nose and I squealed, eyes watering. Dropping down all fours, I tried to scuttle away, but the captain hauled me back.

‘Heel!’ he panted, and I sat down on his feet. [Actually on his feet? Or at his feet? And how does she feel about taking orders from another?]

It was all over astonishingly quickly. By the time it had finished, several of the watch were in various stages of dishevelment, Quennel had a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye, [Change that comma to an and or maybe use semi colons to seperate each item in the list?] Morley’s shirt was ripped along the shoulder and his cheek was grazed and bleeding. The watch lieutenant finished strapping Quennel’s wrists together and said, ‘All done, sir. You got the… the, uh…’

‘The hybrid,’ Quennel ground out between his teeth.

‘Oh, an ’ybrid?’ The watch captain eyed me with interest.

My nose had started to bleed. I pressed the back of my wrist against the flow and blinked at him from over the top.

‘Well I never,’ he said. ‘An actual ’ybrid.’ He smiled and clucked his tongue, tugging my lead gently. ‘Come along then, ’ybrid.’

I found your narrative a tiny bit rushed in places but I've suggested a few spots for description and I think the little flash back worked quite nicely. Your dialogue is brilliant as always and this wasn't your best of chapters but it was still good. I think they could have been a little more prepared when they sneaked into the house – no candles? And I found it a little inconsistent that the Raven could see to get up the stairs and then even to draw in the dirt. Are the windows up there not shuttered then? And if not, you really should mention the light streaming through.

Keep up the good work, hope this helps a little,

Heather xx

I'm not going to quote whole huge sections this time, since you don't need as many grammar fixes any more. Here goes:

The opening dialogue here is very amusing, and, if I haven't yet done so, I'd like to express my appreciation for your skill in combining humor and lightheartedness with the deeper and harsher aspects of this story. *applauds* Good job!

‘A party?’ I exclaimed joyfully, looking up at Quennel and clapping my hands. ‘We’re going to a party, papa? Whatever shall I wear?’

"Papa" should be capitalized, since she's using it like a name."

What? I looked from one man to the other as they shook hands, Quennel with some difficulty. What? I’m… sold? Just like that?

Another one of those ellipses. But I saw your custom title, so I'll let up on you.


Honestly, I don't have a lot to say about this piece, and that's a good thing. I'm not very good at pointing out what's good in a piece, so I tend to dwell on all the bad stuff, but you've definitely improved by leaps and bounds since chapter one. All of the dialogue in the beginning of the piece was well-executed, and the readers are satisfied because it seems as though the real plot is finally starting to come to bear. I love Raven's daydreaming in the middle part of the story, about what a wonderful life she might possibly expect with her new mistress, and you've done a good job laying out the business transaction and the transference of care without boring us or going overboard with unnecessary information. A quick, business-like transfer of information, and Dorian is on his merry way with a new prize for his mistress, and Raven is on her way to what might possibly be a better life. A nice, upbeat ending for a chapter, and an excellent conclusion to the initial part of the story. You did a good job, too, showing Raven's reluctance to leave a captor who treated her cruelly, a kind of Stockholm Syndrome effect.

I was especially amused by that parting dart about making her shut up, and I was also intrigued to get another little hint about this Sense thing, though it's still very vague and undefined at this point. A spectacular conclusion, leaving room for a great beginning in a new place. I enjoyed the whole chapter, and am left more eager for the next than at any point thus far in the story. I can only say that I'm sorry I didn't go line-by-line for you this time, but you hardly need that kind of advice any more!

Canlyniad

Jorge frowned. ‘But it’s ugly. It’s strange.’

‘Yes.’ The watch captain jingled my lead about in his hand. [I think you should introduce this chapter with a little description so that the reader has a vague idea of the room they're in. And to avoid breaking up your dialogue, you could place it at the very beginning.]

‘It’s an animal.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s a freak.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s staring at me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well I don’t like it!’ Jorge pointed his quill at the captain over his desk. ’If you want it in ’ere, you stay with it in ’ere! Or get the other bloke in, the weedy one. Make him [If you're going to give someone an accent, be consistent. He needs to drop every h.] sit with it.’

‘But he’s in a cell,’ the captain pointed out. ‘And I can’t leave it in a cell without someone to watch it.’ [This confused me a little. I didn't get that they were talking about Morley. I thought it must be another guard or something.]

‘I don’t care! Get him [Drop the h.] or someone else to sit with it, but I am not going to have a hybrid sitting next to me and staring at me while I’m trying to work! Do you know how [Drop the h.] difficult it is making reports, even without a hybrid [Drop the h.] at your elbow?’

The captain admitted that he didn’t and he’d dig the weedy bloke out to sit with the hybrid while things got sorted. Was the general finished with his interview? [For a scribe this guy sure seems to have a lot of power bossing the captain about and everything. Also, you might want to show rather than tell here. If you have this as dialogue rather than an explanation, it will be clearer that the general is a third character.]

Jorge snorted. ‘Not likely! That Dorian man’s been coming around here for days now, trying to see if we’ve got anything ’e might like. I mean, how likely is it that we’re going to ’ave brought in a dwarf needing a home [Drop the h. or a baby with an egg-head? Honestly. [Drop the h's.] The general’s getting pretty sick of ’im by now.’ [That Dorian man doesn't exactly sound like a man of importance and yet this guy must be pretty rich or special to be able to bother the General and still be put up with. Maybe have them refer to him as sir or something. Also, are these guys complete idiots? As soon as I read this, I was thinking 'he's going to want the hybrid' so maybe try to be a little more subtle.]

‘Mm,’ the captain said politely, and, tying my lead to the bench leg, patted my head and went out through one of the doors at the end of the hall.

I sat cross-legged on the floor and snuffled. My nose had stopped bleeding but it still hurt. Morley and Quennel had immediately been bundled off into cells the moment we arrived at the watch-house and the watch captain had taken me to this hallway where Jorge sat writing. There were three doors in this corridor – one at each end and one in the wall on the left. The captain had gone through the one at the far end, but I had no idea what lay behind the other two. [This description and recollection could be more interesting.]

Jorge glowered at me over his desk, daring me to move. I blinked at him. After a few minutes, the watch captain came back with Morley. Morley looked pale and the graze on his face was red and raw.

‘Make sure you behave,’ he muttered out of the side of his mouth, sitting next to me on the bench.

‘By dose hurts,’ I said pitifully.

‘Well, don’t fuss about it.’

I massaged the bridge of my nose tenderly and said nothing. We sat like that for some time. Jorge shot us an occasional glare between pages. His quill made scritch-scratch noises on the paper, like a rat’s claws. I could hear voices coming from behind the door in the wall. They rose and fell; sometimes as a low, indecipherable murmur and then louder, and I would be able to catch a word here and there. I could Sense two people behind the door, but it was very faint. The door was too thick to let anything but the faintest pulses through and I was only skilled enough to Sense the barest details. [Why not tell us a little of these details. It would make for a smoother transition into the dialogue.]

‘Where’s Master?’ I whispered.

‘In a cell.’

‘Yes, I know that,’ I said patiently. ‘Was he in the same one as you?’ [Is her nose suddenly healed? She can't go from having trouble speaking to saying full sentences with ease.]

‘No.’

‘Oh.’ I snorted, hacked, and continued, ‘I just wondered, see, because if he’d been in the same cell as you, then you would have known how he was and then you could have told me when I asked about it, and now I wouldn’t have to ask someone else and I would know without having to –’

Jorge’s eyes were bulging. Morley nudged my shoulder so hard I almost fell over. I recovered and inched away from Morley’s knees. [I'd love a simile about Jorge. I've not got much of an idea of how he looks yet except that he's holding a pen. And well, my typical idea of a scribe is probably rather different to yours.]

The first door down the hall flew open and bounced off the wall behind it. A man with frown lines deep enough to plant corn in stalked out, jamming a big plumed hat onto his head. He stalked past us and turned to yell at the man who had followed him to stand in the doorway. ‘You’ll end up regretting this, you mark my words, general.’

‘Mister Dorian,’ said the general, ‘I have given you all the help I can. It’s not my fault that we don’t have what you need. We do try and keep an eye on the freak shows, but if there isn’t anything around that suits your needs, I can’t just pull a monster [ I'd suggest out of my pocket for you. It sounds more natural.] for you out of my pocket.’

Dorian made an explosive noise through his nose. ‘You could have tried a little harder!’

‘You’re being unreasonable, sir. Quite frankly, you’ve been making a huge nuisance of yourself these last few days. I would appreciate it if you didn’t trouble me again.’

‘I’ll trouble you again all right! You just –’ He broke off. ‘What’s that?’ he asked in quite a different voice. I realised that he meant me. [What do you mean by different? What's the tone in his voice now?]

The general shrugged. Jorge said, ‘It’s a hybrid. [Drop the h.] Captain Trent just brought it in. Its owners were trying to break into a house.’

‘A hybrid?’ Dorian just stared.

I waggled my fingers at him. ‘Hi.’

‘It talks as well!’

‘Mister Dorian,’ the general began, but Dorian wasn’t listening. He was beaming all over his face.

‘General,’ he said, ‘might I have a word?’

‘You’ve had it already.’ [You need a follow up to this. You need to have Dorian at least frown at the general or something before turning to Morley.]

‘Are you the owner?’ Dorian asked Morley.

‘Uh well,’ Morley said, dithering slightly. ‘No, not really. Quennel actually found it and all, so he owns it. Yeah, Quennel owns it.’

‘Who’s Quennel?’

‘He’s, uh…’ Morley looked helplessly at the general and shrugged.

‘He’s the other man in the cells,’ Jorge said, with a kind of sour smugness. ‘There were two of ’em brought in. This man and the other one.’

‘What’s your name?’ Dorian asked Morley.

‘Morley Andro.’

‘And you’re with the hybrid as well as this Quennel?’

‘Jos Quennel. Yes, I am. We try to do a freak show with the hybrid, but we haven’t been able to find anywhere. All the freak shops are full and no one wants to share with a hybrid. That’s why we had to break in, you see. There wasn’t anywhere else to go.’

‘Poor you,’ Jorge muttered.

‘Thank you,’ I said nicely. He scowled.

‘And Mister Quennel is in one of the cells?’

‘Yeah.’

‘General,’ Dorian said. ‘Can you bring him up here?’

‘Mister Dorian, I really don’t think that –’

‘General, if you just let me speak to him, I give you my word that I’ll never trouble you again.’ [Add some dialogue tags. Don't get into the habit of talking heads. As lovely as your dialogue is, it needs accompanying.]

The general hesitated, clearly tempted. ‘All right. Five minutes. Jorge, will you…?’

Jorge sighed, got down from his desk and disappeared through the door at the end. He was back in a few minutes and with him was a watchman prodding Quennel forward as though he were a pig being driven to market. Quennel’s wrists were still strapped together and in addition to his split lip, he had the beginnings of a beautiful black eye. He looked like half a panda.

‘Are you Mister Jos Quennel?’ Dorian asked eagerly.

‘What of it?’ Quennel growled.

‘You own this hybrid?’

‘So?’

The watchman slapped Quennel across the face and snapped, ‘Watch your tongue, idiot.’

‘How did you find this hybrid, Mister Quennel?’ Dorian asked.

Quennel said nothing, just glared at him.

‘Please, Mister Quennel,’ Dorian coaxed. ‘Did you go to Carathara and get it? Did you breed it yourself? Did someone give it to you?’

Quennel remained silent. The watchman drew back his hand and I blurted out, ‘They found me.’

Dorian blinked. Quennel’s eyes blazed with fury and he snapped, ‘Shut up freak.’

‘No no, let it speak,’ Dorian said. ‘If it can. Does it say anything else?’

I shot a glance at Quennel. He shook his head and I looked down at my hands.

‘Mister Quennel,’ Dorian said, and I could tell that his patience was wearing thin, ‘if you don’t co-operate, I will be quite happy to leave you to the tender mercies of this watchman. It is imperative that –’

‘We did find it.’ Morley was unconsciously wringing his fingers. ‘We found it and just… picked it up.’

Dorian nodded. Abandoning Quennel as a lost cause, he devoted all his attention to Morley. Go on,’ he said, sounding like an uncle about to give his favourite nephew a bar of chocolate. ‘Where did you find it? Was there a colony of them?’

‘No… It was in this little fishing village down south and east.’ Morley looked as though he were trying to unscrew his fingers from his hand. ‘Quennel and me went down there to help with the herrings… Quennel’s got family nearby and we were staying with them, ’cos it was the busy season and all.’

‘Why did you go along as well?’ Dorian asked.

‘I just did. Because Quennel was going and I was going to help him. But we got to Quennel’s village and found that they was all excited, like, ’cos they’d burnt out an elf witch and ’is familiar and ’is apprentice. Quennel and me went along the next day to have a look-see. The cottage was all burnt down and everything, and Quennel went pokin’ around in the ruins.’

I laid my hands on my knees and examined my fingernails. I remembered that day, too. Strangely, my time in that small, insignificant fishing village was never difficult to remember in the way that my time in London was. I hardly ever thought about it, but I remembered it.

Druth was the first person I met from this past. I had hated him at first. He was too different, too strange; he just couldn’t fit into my way of thinking. Only when the villagers turned on him and burned him as a witch in his own home did I realise what he had been to me. And of course then it was too late. Just my luck, I thought, picking a hangnail and listening to Morley winding up the tale like a spool of thread, making it sound far more tidy than it really was. [I like how you switched to Raven's perspective but she is a strange little thing isn't she. She almost makes me want to dislike her.]

‘…There’d been a cellar, see, and the hybrid had gone down it during the fire. An’ Quennel found it holding a burnt dead bird. So he called me and –’

‘Wait – you say it was holding a bird?’

‘Yes, sir. A dead one. That’s partly why we – why Quennel called it the Raven, see? Even though it was probably a starling or something… Anyway, we tried to move it, but it kept on whining about a cat and a fool and it wouldn’t budge.’

Morley had been scared, said that I was evil and everyone knew that Elves were of the Devil and had the powers of air and darkness, and a hybrid was worse still. The sensible thing to do was to call the villagers and let them finish the job.

Quennel had told him not to be such a simpleton. That was superstition. Everyone knew that the Elves had been mighty helpful in the last war, even if they had backed out after Luboš. This hybrid could be useful. After all, the elf witch was dead now, so even if the hybrid had been its apprentice, it wouldn’t be able to make magic.

I had barely heard them, too busy rocking back and forth over the handful of bones and singed feathers that had once been Dubhan. His cage had hung from the ceiling near the door, and when you went in, he was the first thing you saw, bobbing on his perch and waving his long black tail up and down like a closed fan. Hamlet would sit for hours watching him through unblinking yellow-green eyes until I picked him up. Then he would rub his face against my chin and purr.

I had found Hamlet’s remains as well, but I couldn’t sit by him and mourn, just as I couldn’t bear to even find Druth’s body. I had concentrated all my grief on Dubhan until Quennel put his hand on my shoulder and tried to lift me to my feet.

‘And Quennel tried to pick it up, but it dropped the feathers and bit his hand. Quennel hit it and it scratched his face and hissed and spat, just like a cat.’

‘But you managed to move it.’ Dorian sounded weary. Morley was taking his time with the story and generally giving the impression that he was just getting comfortable.

‘Oh yes, sir, eventually. We managed to wrap it up in my coat and scarf and get it back to Quennel’s home. We hid it in a shed with the fishing nets and lobster pots, and then Quennel said about travelling ’round the country with it as a freak show, like the ones he’d seen in Selseaton. We’d didn’t have proper jobs, see, and if we did the show, we could go all over the place and a earn a fortune with it. That’s what Quennel said.’

Dorian looked over at Quennel, who was standing with his shoulders hunched, still glaring at the floor. ’Your fortune does not seem to have been forth-coming, Mister Quennel. Or am I merely looking in the wrong place?’

‘It would have been a fortune,’ Quennel growled. ‘It started off fine, once the hybrid had been trained proper and everything.’

‘We burned its hands and feet,’ said Morley, feeling Dorian’s attention slipping away. ‘Like what they do to chimney sweeps, to make the skin hard. It’s like a blister, see, and then it gets all –’

‘Thank you, Mister Andro. I think I’ve heard enough now.’

Crushed, Morley bit his lip, looking from Dorian to Quennel under his eyebrows.

Dorian rubbed his upper lip with one finger, frowning slightly. ‘So, there were no other hybrids? Just this one?’

‘Yeah.’ Quennel gave a short laugh. ‘That’s what we billed it as. The Only Hybrid In Kiona.’

‘In that case,’ Dorian said briskly, ‘I’ll buy it from you.’

[The flash-back works and it isn't too confusing. In fact, I liked the flash back very much.

Overall, this isn't the most interesting of chapters but it's good and it starts to add to the plot a little more. I think it would improve from some more description and maybe cutting a little of the telling here and there but other than that, I enjoyed it and the story is moving on well. Perhaps a little more characterization of Jorge wouldn't hurt. Keep up the good work,

Heather xx]

Fárwel

‘I – I beg your pardon?’ Quennel’s scowl was replaced by an open-mouthed gawk. [I'm quite a fan of starting chapters with a little description and here would actually be the perfect place to describe Quennel's features in more detail. Does he have large lips or thin lips? Can his teeth be seen and are they yellow or white? Is his face rather pasty and gaunt looking or tanned and plump?] ‘Buy it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Buy the hybrid?’

‘Yes.’

‘From me?’ Quennel wanted to get it all quite clear. [Perhaps 'Quennel wanted everything perfectly clear' or 'Quennel wanted to be absolutely sure.']

‘Yes, Mister Quennel,’ Dorian said impatiently. ‘I will buy the hybrid from you. Is that a problem?’ [Impatiently. Hmmm. Why not have his actions show us that he's impatient. He could grit his teeth, shuffle his feet, clench his fists etc.]

‘But… why?’ [Is Quennel suspicious or curious or shocked?]

‘That doesn’t concern you. But it’ll be going to a good home. We may need to contact you if there are any complications with its care, but I trust you’ll be willing to help with that? If you just let me know where you’ll be staying, if you plan to stay in Selseaton or move on, then I can –’

‘Hang on, hang on, wait a minute.’ Quennel raised his tied hands and pointed two index fingers at him. ‘You want to buy the hybrid?’

‘Yes. We’ve been over all this; what I need is –’

Quennel tried to fold his arms, wrestled with the leather straps for a minute and gave up. ‘Well, you can’t have it.’ He straightened his shoulders instead. ‘I won’t sell it. Consider your proposition declined.’ [How is Raven feeling about this? Is she watching unconcerned, confident that she won't be sold, is she smirking at Dorian? Is she worried?]

‘But –’ It was Dorian’s turn to gawk.

‘Mar ty cafos fandae, parüsý menta gollweyng hwy lemmýn,’ I said sweetly, and smiled. ‘Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.’ [I hate it when people do that. I want to know what it says! Any chance you could have a little asterix and have the translation at the end of this chapter or something?]

‘You’re mad.’ Dorian’s eyebrows drew together into a bristling auburn line. ‘Why? You want to carry on with your pathetic idea of a freak show? Chase your dream of a fortune?’ He laughed angrily. ‘You’re mad.’

‘Not my choice, mister,’ Quennel snapped. ‘This freak’s all I got. If I sell it, then what’ll I do? Settle down and try and find a job? I tried that before, didn’t work.’

‘Is that it, then? Just money you’re worried about?’ [Is he sounding relieved now? Does he look Quennel up and down as if to judge what status he might have in terms of wealth and what knowledge he might have of value?]

‘Isn’t that enough?’

Dorian sniffed. ‘Point taken. The party I am representing –’

‘A party?’ I exclaimed joyfully, looking up at Quennel and clapping my hands. ‘We’re going to a party, papa? Whatever shall I wear?’

‘The party I am representing,’ Dorian continued,[s] unfazed[/s] not phased, ‘is willing to pay you a very substantial amount, if necessary in monthly payments.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Morley asked.

‘Morley,’ Quennel said. ‘As a favour, could you shut up?’

‘But –’

‘Button it!’[Where is Morley stood? I've completely forgotten. And who is holding Raven's lead? You need to remind us of little details every now and then. Add some sort of action here. Have Raven pull at her lead a little or something.]

‘Twenty four monthly payments,’ Dorian repeated. ‘Of, say, one hundred pounds each?’

Morley looked as though he were going to have a heart attack. Quennel smiled. ‘Five hundred.’

‘Five –’ Dorian looked taken aback, but he recovered himself. ‘Two hundred.’

‘Three hundred.’

‘Two hundred and fifty.’

‘Two hundred and seventy-five.’

‘Done.’

‘And done.’

What? I looked from one man to the other as they shook hands, Quennel with some difficulty. What? I’m… sold? Just like that?

Dorian leaned over Jorge’s desk and asked, ‘May I borrow a quill?’ [This seems just a little too nice and polite for Dorian. Though I guess he did just manage to bag himself a freak...]

Jorge shrugged and passed him one. Dorian took a clean sheet of paper and began to write.

I crawled on all fours to Quennel’s side and tugged at his trouser leg. ‘Master?’

He looked down and smiled.

‘Master,’ I whispered, ‘did you just… sell me?’

‘Yes.’ He gave a soft chuckle. ‘Yes. I suppose I did.’

‘But Master!’

‘What?’

‘Master, you can’t sell me!’ For a moment I felt something close to panic. [This seems a little too casual. And for only a moment? Maybe describe how her stomach clenched and her palms started sweating?] ‘You can’t sell me, you just can’t! You can’t give me to someone else. You’re the only one who keeps me alive, you’re the only one who cares about what happens to me – you said so! If I go to anyone else, they’ll kill me. No one else would let me live, ’cos I’m a freak and a hybrid and a perversion… Master, you said so!’

Dorian didn’t look up from his writing. ‘It won’t get killed, if that’s what it’s worrying about. I told you. It’ll be going to a good home.’

‘Raven.’ Quennel knelt down to my eye level and patted my shoulder. ‘Raven, that won’t happen. You heard what Mister Dorian said: you’ll be going to a good home. You won’t have to travel around all the time, either. You’ll be safe inside a new home with your new master. By the way,’ he called over his shoulder to Dorian, ‘who is her new master? Who’s the one dishing out all this money for a scrawny hybrid freak?’

Dorian blotted the paper. ‘It won’t be a master, it’ll be a mistress. A certain lady – a peer of this land – asked me to find a suitable curiosity for her niece’s birthday present. And now I have the perfect gift: unique, alive and with enough intelligence to be amusing. Now, Mister Quennel, if you’d just sign here.’ He laid the paper down on the desk.

Quennel eyed his wrists meaningfully, and Dorian nodded to the watchman, who still stood behind Quennel’s shoulder. The watchman unbuckled the cuffs, and after rubbing his wrists for a minute, Quennel took the quill and flattened out the piece of paper. Peeping over the edge of the desk I could see that it was covered in bold black writing with f's instead of s's and long curly tails on the g's and y's. At the top was written, ‘Agreement concerning Business Done.’

‘This is just laying out our bargain in legal terms,’ Dorian said as Quennel, scowling, tried to decipher the lines of small print.

‘You couldn’t have made more of a mess if you were using a drunk quill,’ Quennel commented in exasperation. ‘No, don’t read it out loud, I can see what it says all right.’ He frowned over the last few lines and signed his name in thick, slightly smudged letters at the bottom of the page. Dorian held out his hand, but Quennel jerked his head at Morley. ‘Come on.’

‘Uh?’ Morley said in disbelief.

‘Come here and sign.’

‘Really?’ Morley began to smile. ‘Oh, I never thought you’d… I was… I mean, I didn’t think you’d –’

‘Shut up and get on with it.’ Quennel pushed the quill into Morley’s hand, looking cross. Morley made a wobbly, spattered, ‘A.M’ and Dorian signed a beautiful flowing ‘Seeley Dorian,’ completely filling the blank space at the bottom.

Then he took another piece of paper and began to question Quennel about my care. How many meals a day should I have? How much exercise did I need? Was I all right with other animals? Was I house-trained? Were there any foods I mustn’t have? [You need to show Raven's panic more. She's too calm and casual with her description of this.]

The list got longer and longer. Dorian started a second piece of paper, his quill scratching so loud and so fast it made my nerve ends shrivel. I still clung to Quennel’s trouser leg, holding fistfuls of the rough brown fabric so tightly the weave dug into my calloused palms. Quennel’s scent burned the inside of my nose: sour sweat, blood from his split lip, the faint tang of old beer, a smear of muck on the sole of his boot. Dorian smelled so different – so clean. He was wearing a type of skin oil; it smelled fresh and minty and completely alien. [Good description =)]

But clean.

Dorian had said that my new owner – my mistress – was rich. And if she was happy to shell out monthly payments of two hundred and seventy-five pounds for the next few years, then she must be very rich. Presumably if I were a rich lady’s pet, I would be expected to be clean all the time. Maybe this lady wouldn’t mind if I didn’t wear paint tattoos. Maybe she would want them scrubbed off. Maybe she was the type of lady who had allergies and couldn’t have a smear of paint near her without breaking out in hives. I imagined her; middle aged, stern, matriarchal and fanatically tidy. ‘Look at this freak!’ she would say. ‘Simply covered in paint. No creature of mine is going to go around smothered in silly tattoos. Wash them off at once.’ And I would smile and be obedient to at least that one of her wishes.

‘What are its favourite foods?’ Dorian asked.

‘Big Mac and a coke,’ I replied.

‘It eats pretty much anything, really,’ Quennel [s]replied[/s] said. ‘It didn’t use to like vegetables, but it eats them now. She likes a lot of meat, but don’t give her too much or she’ll get sick. It’s not a proper carnivore. A bit like a dog, actually; a bit of this and a bit of that.’ [I find his way of switching from her to it within the same line of dialogue rather disconcerting.]

‘Indeed.’ Dorian scribbled some more, then stopped and massaged his fingertips. ‘Is there anything else we should know?’

Quennel thought. ‘You’ve got the bit about lead-walking and about feeding. Um… it likes getting up early. When it hums, that means it’s happy. It’ll hiss at you if it’s annoyed. Don’t annoy it; it’s got kitten teeth.’

‘Yes, I’ve got all that. Anything else?’

‘Um…’ Quennel paused, hemmed for half a second. ‘No. I think that’s it.’

‘Good.’ Dorian flapped his hand over the paper to dry the ink, then rolled it up. ‘If I need anything else, I’ll contact you. Where will you be staying?’

‘I don’t know.’ Quennel gave a wry smile. ‘We haven’t looked around the most fashionable places, yet.’

‘I recommend the Hare and Hounds. It’s very clean and the landlord’s a pleasant enough fellow. You go there for the time being and if you move on, leave a forwarding address.’

‘All right.’

‘Good.’ Dorian held out his hand. Quennel shook it, then looked down at me.

Don’t go, I pleaded silently, staring at him, trying to memorize his features so I wouldn’t forget them. His blue eyes, set wide apart in a square-jawed, somehow flat face; his short, wiry blond hair; the tiny red scar on his left temple. ‘Master…’

‘Bye Raven.’ He stroked my hair, lifting my feather and [s]smiling[/s] smiled. ‘You be good now. I don’t want your mistress knocking on my door and complaining that she wants her money back.’

I bit my lip. ‘No, Master.’

Quennel grinned. ‘Don’t look so forlorn, Raven. I’d have thought you’d be glad to go to someone else. What about all those times you bit me, hey? Remember that?’

I did remember. I had hated Quennel; some part of me still hated him, but he was familiar. I knew him, had spent the last fourteen months of my life with him. My new mistress might be an improvement on my current situation, but what if she wasn’t? What if she was worse?

Morley patted my shoulder a little awkwardly. He coughed. ‘Well, bye.’

‘Goodbye, Morley-sir.’

‘Come on,’ Dorian said impatiently. ‘Is all this really worth it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, covering my cheeks with my hands and blinking at him. ‘Lend me your handkerchief, Mister Dorian, my one’s been washed away on our combined floods of tears. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Drogda, Mister Dorian, drogda.’

Dorian looked at the roll of paper he held in his hand. ‘I’ve thought of something I forgot to ask you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘How do I make it be quiet?’

Quennel laughed. ‘I haven’t found that one out yet! If the new owner can find the answer, I'll take my hat off to them.’

‘And – does it have the Sense?’

Quennel raised [s]and[/s] an eyebrow. ‘Does that matter?’

‘Considering the fact that a Sensing hybrid might able to read its mistress’ thoughts, I think it matters, yes. Its mistress has a right to know, at least.’

‘All right.’ Quennel shrugged. ‘It does. I think its Sense-familiar used to be a cat that got burned along with the elf witch.’

‘Cats and elf witches.’ Dorian sniffed. ‘Nice company this hybrid used to keep. Well, goodbye.’

Morley untied my lead from the bench-leg and gave it to Dorian. Dorian gave it a tiny tug, said, ‘Heel,’ and led me to the end of the hall. I paused at the door and looked back. Quennel was re-reading the document of agreement, his brow furrowed as he waded through the fancy writing. Morley saw me looking and gave a tiny wave.

Then Dorian pulled me through the doorway and out of the hall.

Outside it was getting dark. Most of the street sellers had already gone home and only a few remained, packing up their barrows or still trying to get rid of the last of their wares. There was a fish stall near the watch-house, with a candle burning at each corner of the counter. The light illuminated the herrings and mackerel lying in neat, layered rows on the scrubbed stall top. The fishes’ dead eyes seemed to glow with a second life and the silver-flashing scaled herrings shone like wet jewels in the dim street. [Beautiful attention to detail.]

I would have stopped to look properly but Dorian hurried me on, past the stall to the water trough set outside a small coffee house. There was a horse tethered there, and Dorian untied it quickly. He lifted me up onto its back and climbed on behind. It wasn’t very comfortable; the saddle had been designed with only one passenger in mind, and I ended up on the horse’s neck, grabbing handfuls of chestnut mane to avoid falling off.

‘Keep still,’ Dorian ordered, pulling my lead back so I had to lean against him. He held the reins in one hand and my lead in the other and the horse set off at a steady walk down the street, its hooves scraping hollowly on the cobbles.

I didn’t like sitting between Dorian’s arms. I could feel his chin near the top of my head, and as he had to lean forward to see where he was going, it was almost as though he were hugging me. I wanted to squirm, but he held my lead too tight.

We clopped through the streets for quite some time, out of the seedy area to the more fashionable districts. Here, the streets were wider and cleaner, and there were a few lamp posts set on convenient corners, the tiny candles flickering behind discoloured glass panes clothing the nearby pavement in a pale grey glow. [Perhaps describe the change in scent?]

The sound of the horse’s hooves made a continuous rhythm in my head, over and over and over. I wanted to stay awake and see where we were going, but my eyes kept on closing. I yawned, and my head nodded forward, only to be brought up short by Dorian’s grip on my lead. This happened several times before Dorian pulled me back against him and pushed my head to rest against his shoulder with a kind of awkward gentleness. I was too tired to protest. The last thing I remembered was Dorian clucking to his horse, murmuring, ‘Step up, boy, nearly there now’ before I fell asleep.

Love the plot twist, dear! And this new character is very interesting. I think I quite like him actually but then, that could change very quickly. The chapter was well written. It could do with a few more action near the beginning to split up a little of the dialogue but I've pointed a place or two out for that and in general, it was great. You held my interest throughout and I can't wait to meet the new mistress. Poor Raven. That's one area you could work on though: Raven's emotions. She feels a little too neutral at times.

Heather xx

TL G-Wooster wrote:‘Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.’ – Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi



Drych-ddelwedd

There was a tiny hole in the curtain in front of me. Its edges were slightly ragged, and a microscopic tear wandered [awkward] away into the rest of the rough fabric. I wanted to poke my finger through it, make it larger.Nice way of getting the reader into the story. I would try to introduce the "tear" in a less wordy way. Would Quennel notice? I could hear his voice on the other side of the curtain, loud and stirring. ‘When we think that the world is within our grasp-- that we know all – only then do we realize just how little we [s]do[/s] know.’

He always started off with that [parable/passage/excerpt]; he said it impressed the audience. No matter where we were – in a pig sty, a lord’s hall, or the back room of a printer’s shop like today – Quennel always insisted on being dramatic.

‘As human beings, we know the difference between good and evil. [s]We know what means this and what means that.[/s] We can realize truth and lies. We are at an advantage in nature. But for this creature here – this mix of Elf and human blood – there is no such advantage.’

This creature here. Even after months of being exhibited, that phrase still stung.

‘This mixed breed, this hybrid of two different species – what place has she in nature? Too human to be an animal, too animal to be a human. [I would prefer the word 'beast' to 'animal'. It's almost more Biblical in a sense, and this man seems to be preaching. The Elves are at one with nature, but the hybrids?’ I could imagine Quennel’s shrug, his wide-spread hands and [slowly shaken head] awkward. ‘They are forever divided. They can live with neither humans, Elves or animals. And so they live in Carathara, the land far beyond here, the wide, harsh plains providing the perfect isolated habitat.[He is speaking what should be in the exposition]’ He paused, let that information sink in. ‘All but one of the hybrids. All but one! Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one hybrid not living in Carathara. That one,’ – Quennel would have raised his finger now – ‘that one hybrid, ladies and gentlemen, is here in Kiona. Here, before you now.’

The curtain quivered on its line, strung across the room. Quennel’s fingers appeared at the edge; dirty finger-nailed but otherwise clean, tanned brown against the dark red curtain.

‘Ladies and gentlemen. See the only hybrid in Kiona. See… the Raven.’ Quennel flung the curtain wide.

It was a good-sized audience made up of small boys, young working-class [Sounds political, like you're trying to paint the audience in a negative way. Be careful here.] men with their sweethearts on their arms, a few older men and two elderly women in matching lavender silk hoods. One of them put her hand to her mouth when she saw me; the other blinked and looked away, then back again. The boys crowded close, grubby fingers outstretched, but a sharp word from Quennel halted them.

‘Keep back! She may look tame, but be careful. She bites.’

Quennel let them stare at me for a moment longer, then he said sharply, ‘Turn around!’ Slowly I turned, letting the audience see me fully. Quennel had set up three large mirrors in a semi circle against the wall behind me, and as I turned, I saw myself in three different directions. Left profile, straight on, right profile. It was strange, but I found it difficult to connect myself with the creature that I saw in those mirrors.

That creature had short dark hair hanging in lank strands over its face. A black feather was tied into a side lock of hair, its tip almost brushing its shoulder. Its skin was blotched with walnut juice, creating mottled dark brown patches, and tracings done in dark blue and brown paint ran in strange, curling, smudged designs over its face, bare arms and legs. It wore a thin leather waistcoat and short, tight trousers. Two soft, curling black feathers were tied around each of its wrists and ankles, and a leather collar was fastened around its neck.

That was not me. That was a strange little thing, wild and animal-like, seeing the world out of inhuman, light brown eyes. It would look on dispassionately at the misfortunes of others, not turn a hair if any one of the audience dropped down dead in front of it. It was a picture of something else, some being that wasn’t real, couldn’t be real. I pitied the creature in the mirrors, [s]doomed forever to the loathing and prejudice of others[/s] [Find another way to evoke pity than these emotionless words. Give us a picture.], never allowed to have a sensible idea of its own. It was an animal.

‘Go down!’ As I dropped down onto all fours, Quennel began his commentary again. ‘See, ladies and gentlemen, the way that the Raven is made. Arms and legs all the same length. Pointed features, a sure sign of her Elven blood.’

I tucked my head under my arm and peered at the audience behind me. The boys gawked. The men stared. The young women drew in their breaths. I stared at them unblinkingly.

‘Stand up!’

I rose and turned around once more. Quennel spread his arms wide, as though he were embracing the audience, inviting them to share his secret. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. This freak, this abomination against [nature: see] her. Imagine her back in Carathara, living the normal life of a hybrid. Cannibalism. Bestiality. Inbreeding. Murder. Violence. Disease. Death. Keep it to four of these things for the sake of balance and rhythm. The first four sound good enough without the others] That is the pitiful excuse of an existence that hybrids have. They have no dignified thought, no concept of right or wrong. They are animals, living only for their own desires with no feeling or empathy for their fellow creatures. Fear them, ladies and gentlemen, fear the Raven. Boys and girls, be wary. This isn’t like the bogey stories your parents used to tell you to make you behave; this, my friends, this is the real thing. A very real danger. A horror. A freak. A hybrid.’

A hybrid, I thought. All that fear and danger contained in one little word. Hybrid. Me. I couldn’t tell whether it made sense or not.

‘Hey, mister,’ one of the young men called out. He shot a sideways glance at the girl on his arm, as though he hoped she were noticing this. ‘Does it ’ave the Sense, like what the Elves’ve got?’

‘Ah.’ Quennel nodded gravely. ‘[s]Every Elf has the Sense, true.[/s] [Self-evident in the sentence before.] But hybrids are different. For some, their Elven blood runs strong and thick, and for others it has been watered down by generations of inbreeding. For some direct crosses, the human blood is strongest and there is no Sense. But for others…’ He turned his hand and unfurled his fingers as though he were offering the young man a gift. ‘For others, the Elven blood pounds through their veins, bringing with it the power of air, the awareness of nature, and above all… the Sense. The Sense that allows them to read other’s thoughts, to feel life and living movement, to feel the emotions and moods of the people around them. To bond with another living creature – a Sense-familiar – to share souls and minds and thoughts and feelings in a way that we can only dream of. The Sense, ladies and gentlemen, one of the greatest natural wonders.’ This paragraph is overly confusing and really shouldn't be introduced by a speaker who so far hasn't been interested in long reasoned explanations, but getting across his message through emotion. This paragraph should be shorter and 'dumbed down'. It feels as though you're info dumping.

‘But ’as it got it?’ the young man demanded, not very impressed. [It is possible to keep this aspect even if you dumb down the paragraph before. Just make sure that Quennel doesn't exactly answer the question, even if he speaks to them simplistically.]

Annoyed by his irreverent manner, Quennel gave him a patronising glance. ‘Of course it has, my dear boy. Just because the Raven has no Sense-familiar doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have the thing itself. She just doesn’t show it, that’s all.’

The young man didn’t look very convinced. Hard luck, boy, I thought, completing my turns and feeling a little dizzy in consequence. Just take Quennel’s word for it. He’s right on this one, anyway.

In the opposite corner of the room, next to the door, Morley piped a few notes on his whistle, a signal that the show was over. Quennel smiled, and spread an arm towards the door. ‘All you get for your money, ladies and gentlemen, all you get for sixpence, and I think you’ll agree ’twas money well spent.’ [I really love how you make him appear to be some sort of religious/moral leader and then with the blow of a whistle he is this scummy circus-type.]

The elderly ladies immediately shuffled towards the door, and the young girls pulled their escorts forward when they would have lingered longer. One of the boys made a quick dash forward and would have touched my shoulder, but I ducked out of his way and Quennel, dropping like a hawk, latched onto the boy’s ear.

The boy squealed, ‘Ah-ow! Leggo!’

Quennel said grimly, ‘Out,’ and pushed him out of the door to run after his friends who had already fled.

Quennel turned back and grinned at Morley. ‘Now that!’ he said, dropping his polished accent for more comfortable tones, ‘was a good day. I’ve lost count of the people we’ve ’ad in!’

‘Maybe we should stay here in Londlow, then,’ Morley said. ‘Carry on while we’re doing well.’

‘When we’re doing well is the right time to leave. Keeps the people wanting, makes ’em eager when we come back.’

‘But Selseaton’s days away. The hybrid might not travel well.’

‘It will travel well,’ Quennel said calmly, ‘because I sez it will. Selseaton [s]being the capital and all[/s] [Keep it simple. "Selseaton's the capital"] – the money we’ve made here’s nothing compared to what we’ll get there.’

Morley shrugged and wiped the mouthpiece of his whistle. I squatted down onto my heels, keeping my eyes on the dark-beamed ceiling. Quennel came and stood behind me. I resisted the urge to look around at him.

‘Good little Raven,’ he said. His hand patted my head, then stroked the side of my face. I whipped my head around and hissed at him, but he only laughed. ‘I don’t care how much you hate me, Raven. I’m the only one who keeps you alive.’

‘My gratitude makes me lie awake at night,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘You’re a freak. An animal that just happens to have the ability to be sarcastic. I can accept that, but out there,’ – he waved a hand towards the door – ‘how many people out there would let you think even one thought of your own?’

‘None of them.’ My voice was flat, reciting the words – the facts – that he had hammered into my head since the day he had found me in the burned ruins of my home. ‘No one would let me do anything. No one would care if I starved to death in front of them. People would kill me. They fear me. I shock them, make them sickened. I’m a freak, a hybrid, a slave, a mistake. I’m yours. I am the Raven, the only hybrid out of Carathara.’ [Interesting little speech. Make sure it's not too overbearing.]

‘Good little hybrid.’ Quennel pinched the top of my ear gently, and this time I let him. [Nice little quirk at the end there.]

The MC has been developed pretty well here, which is what you wanted to do. You have a nice physical description, but since you have described it so in depth, make sure you continue to give us more description if there is a change in her appearance. Her thoughts match well with her sarcastic nature and I would continue to characterize her that way.

Quennel is an interesting person. I feel like he's smart, but scum. I think a few stupid assistants would help create that contrast well.

I think the premise is interesting. I was a bit unsure about her home. I think Quennel was lying that it was lush, and then we find out that it is burned. You may have the right idea to keep that hidden from us until the end, and you better explain how it happened to burn later (it would be best if Quennel were somehow responsible).

I'll get to the next section sometime soon. Feel free to PM with any clarifications. ^_^

Wherewherewhere whenwhenwhen is the nextnextnext installment!

Ymbaratoi

‘Da, what’s green and yellow melancholy?’

‘Like in Twelfth Night? I’m not sure. Lines in plays sometimes had to have a certain number of syllables, see, so maybe Shakespeare just shoved in the colours to make it longer.’

‘Oh.’

‘You cold?’

‘A little.’

‘You should go to sleep. Catrin and Kester’ve been out for hours. Come here. There, that better?’

‘Mm. Thanks Da.’

‘Go to sleep, cariad. It’ll be morning soon.’

The voices in my head were so loud they woke me. Even then they carried on, though outside my head now.

‘Its owner wrote all its care down on those papers, so be careful with them, Ulrick.’

‘Of course, sir. Did the gentleman mention the creature’s lifespan, sir? Only it might be worth mentioning to the lady…’

‘Dash it, Ulrick, I forgot that. He said it was about thirteen years old, though. In a dog, that would be ancient. Though I suppose it isn’t really a dog.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Still, Elves live to be about sixty, don’t they? Hybrids shouldn’t be too different.’

‘No, sir. The dark red trousers, sir?’

‘Oh yes, thank you.’

‘A pleasure, sir.’ Footsteps crossed the floor; I could feel them through the blanket I lay on and I Sensed someone standing over me, looking down.

‘Well, Ulrick? What do you think of it?’

‘It is perhaps not the most attractive of creatures, sir. But it has a certain strangeness about its face… It makes me want to look at it again, sir, if you know what I mean, sir.’

‘You should see its eyes; they’re the strangest colour.’

‘Sir? If you’ll pardon me, sir, the jabot…’

‘Oh, all right. Yes, its eyes. They’re like – like a cat’s, only they’re a different type of yellow. More brown.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Yes.’ A second set of footsteps joined the first and something prodded me in the side. ‘Hybrid. Up.’

I opened my eyes. Dorian poked me again with his stockinged toe. The man at his side – tall, not yet plump and providing a blond contrast to Dorian’s auburn looks – bent down and lifted my chin between one finger and thumb. I blinked at him and looked away.

‘A most remarkable colour, indeed, sir,’ he said, smiling. ‘They’re quite pretty, really.’

‘Pretty?’ Dorian shrugged. ‘They look more like the colour of black tea to me.’ He went and sat on the bed to pull on his boots. I sat up and scratched my head. It quite a large room that we were in, with smooth panelled walls and bright red carpets that matched the four poster bed’s curtains and quilt. There were two mahogany chairs and a matching bedside table with a tray on. The diamond-paned window was open a little, and the sounds of the street filtered through: the milkmaids crying milk-o, the clatter of carriage wheels, a woman selling flowers, a man selling coals, the creak and bang of buckets as maids fetched water from the public pump.

‘Where are we?’ I asked. It sounded silly, but the last thing I remembered was riding through the town on Dorian’s horse. We could be anywhere.

Ulrick grinned in delight. ‘It talks!’

‘I did mention that,’ Dorian remarked.

‘Oh, I know you did, sir, but it’s just so strange. An actual hybrid, and it actually talks. The Lady Alarise will be delighted.’

‘Mister Dorian,’ I said again. ‘Where are we?’

Dorian stretched out his feet in his boots, ignoring my question. It was Ulrick who answered. ‘In the Brown Jug Inn.’ He was still smiling widely, like a child with a new toy.

‘Where abouts is that?’ I asked.

‘In the Wald.’

‘Oh-h,’ I said, impressed. I knew that the Wald was the poshest district in Selseaton; all the people with fancy long names lived there, including the royal family, the Burchards. Burchard Castle was right in the middle of the Wald. I had seen only the flag flying from a distance; Quennel hadn’t thought that anyone with more than two names would be interested in a hybrid.

Dorian stood up, wincing a little. ‘Damn these boots.’

‘Time will break them in, sir,’ Ulrick said placidly.

‘I dare say.’ He eyed his feet for a moment, frowning, then became business like. ‘Ulrick, give the hybrid some of the milk and leftovers. I’m going to settle with the landlord.’ He went out, treading carefully in his new boots.

Ulrick lifted the tray from the bedside table and surveyed it critically. He picked up the white china milk jug and began to fumble with Dorian’s used bowl.

‘I can drink it straight from the jug,’ I said. ‘Sir,’ I added belatedly.

Ulrick smiled and set the jug down on the floor in front of me. Then he gathered together the scrapings onto one plate and placed that next to the jug. I glugged the milk eagerly. It was cool and creamy with cloudy bubbles bursting against my nose. I drained the jug, licked my lips clean and looked at the plate. It held a mixture of buttered toast, bacon rinds and lumps of congealing porridge. I wrinkled my nose at the porridge, ate the bacon rinds and chewed at the buttered toast until Dorian came back. He picked up his cloak and my lead from one of the chairs, swirled the cloak over his shoulders in a flare of red like the leap of a poked fire, then clipped my lead onto my collar. ‘Come on,’ he said, as much to Ulrick as to me, and we went downstairs. ‘Did you send the luggage on ahead?’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Yes, sir. And sir, your hat.’

‘What? Oh, yes. Thank you.’ He clapped his hat on his head and nodded to the landlord as we came into the hall. The landlord bowed respectfully, his hands smoothing the front of his brown, bright brass-buttoned jacket, and opened the door leading out onto the street.

‘Good morning, Lord Dorian.’

‘Lord’ Dorian? I wondered, then remembered the name he had signed on the business deal with Quennel: Seeley Ansgar Dorian. The significance of him having three names hadn’t clicked until now. Lord Dorian. Blimey, I’m moving in distinguished circles, now.

The landlord smiled a little nervously. ‘That’s it, then, sir? The hybrid?’

‘Yes.’ Dorian tightened his grip on my lead. ‘Don’t spread the word about too much, Tobias. Afterwards you can boast all you like, but for now…’

‘Oh yes, sir, of course, sir, I completely understand, sir.’

It was funny, I reflected, how he could manage to throw in all those ‘sirs’ and still sound completely sincere.

Dorian led the way out of the inn into the courtyard. Two horses were tied up near the street-gate, one of them the big chestnut from last night. Dorian boosted me up and mounted behind me. I sighed and squirmed. It was no more comfortable than I remembered.

‘Sit still,’ Dorian snapped, jerking my lead for emphasis. He seemed to have become suddenly tense and expectant. Nervous.

Ulrick gathered up the reins of his horse and it took a few steps backward, tossing its head a little. He patted its dark brown neck soothingly and followed Dorian as he urged the sack of potatoes that passed for a horse out of the courtyard and into the street.

It was clean and wide outside; it smelt of chimney smoke with a faint aura of roses coming from the gardens we passed. The houses were all tall and built of red brick, some with tiny strips of front garden spotted with flower and herb bushes. Even the ones with no garden had big pots by the front door, containing small globes of trimmed ivy or box.

A few girls in almost clean white aprons stood on street corners with baskets of cut flowers over their arms. ‘Pretty posy,’ they called. ‘Pretty posies for pretty women. Daisies and roses and daffy-down-dillies.’

A black carriage rattled past us, pulled by a matching pair of greys with white plumes. I caught a fleeting glimpse of its occupant – an elderly lady with a black veil and shielding her face with spotless white gloves – as it flashed away down the road.

Dorian shifted his shoulder, letting a fold of his cloak fall forward and partially shield me from view. I pulled it around me and peeped out at the pedestrians. Women in dresses with long lacy cuffs and feathered bonnets, skirts held out stiffly so they hid their feet. Men in long jackets with too many polished buttons, big feathered hats and big riding boots. Only a few of them spared us glances, but I still huddled under Dorian’s cloak, grateful now of his encircling arms. Perched up high on the horse made me feel very vulnerable, open to stares and comments. Even small groups of people like these made me feel nervous, and I couldn’t help but remember the time when I had run away from Quennel.

It was about a week after he had found me, and he had taken me to a nearby town – bigger than the village I was used to, but still tiny by Londlow’s standards. We were staying in the back room of a butcher’s shop, and Quennel had left me alone to go and negotiate further with the butcher about the rent. My lead was tied to the door handle, and it was a matter of seconds to untie it and creep out of the back door into the alleyway behind. Then I had run out of the alleyway into the main street, too exultant at my freedom to be careful. At first people just pointed, raising eyebrows at my feathers and tattoos, but as I ran on, a crowd began to collect behind me. Someone threw a stone that hit me in the back of the knee and brought me to a sliding halt, reopening my newly-burnt palms and making me yowl in agony. Then the crowd was suddenly all around, pushing against each other to get a better look, yelling to their friends to come see this strange thing that had apparently appeared from nowhere. I crouched in the centre of the circle, sobbing and gasping over my bleeding hands, and glaring at them all. A boy with a bright green handkerchief tied around his neck made a sudden dart forward and grabbed a handful of my hair.

‘It’s got pointed ears!’ he yelled, and the crowd stilled for a moment. Then it roared up again in a rising wave of emotion and noise.

‘It’s an elf!’

‘It’s an elf witch!’

‘’Tisn’t an elf! I seen Elves, they’re nothin’ like that!’

‘You never seen an Elf, Beda Skarsgar! It’s an Elf and all!’

The circle closed, and suddenly it seemed that everyone was trying to grab my hair and hit my shoulders and pull me this way and push me that way and kick me to the ground and drag me away. I covered my head with my arms and screamed.

In the mad blackness behind my clenched eyelids, I heard someone yelling, ‘Get off her! Get off her, you mad idiots, get off her!’ and Quennel was suddenly, magically there by my side, shielding me with his arms.

The noise of the crowd slacked off and Quennel bawled once more, ‘Get off her! Get away!’

‘It’s an elf!’ someone shouted.

‘No it isn’t,’ Quennel scoffed. He prised open my arms and lifted me to my feet. I clung to him, shaking. Everything hurt and my hands were throbbing as though all the blood was fighting to make its way to the reopened burn-calluses and pour out.

‘Wha’ is it, then?’

‘You can see that tomorrow,’ Quennel said. ‘At the back of Rilo’s butcher shop.’ He bent down and scooped me up into his arms. Walking back down the street, he called over his shoulder, ‘It’s only sixpence to get in. Better hurry so you don’t have to wait.’ I buried my head in his shoulder and wiped my tear-wet cheek against Quennel’s shirt.

So now I hid behind Dorian’s cloak and tried to look inconspicuous.

---

As time went on, I began to notice something. ‘We’re going uphill.’

Dorian said nothing.

We’re going uphill,’ I tried again. ‘And uphill’s where all the really, really, really, really posh people live. Uphill.’

Once more, Dorian ignored me.

‘Mister – Lord Dorian, who is my new mistress?’ I twisted around to look up at him. He looked down and frowned.

‘Is there a rule against talking to the hybrid, sir?’ Ulrick asked.

‘You can talk to it if you think it’ll understand you.’

‘You’re nervous, sir.’

‘You’ve hit the nail right on the head, Ulrick. I am nervous. I’m nervous because I’m on my way to the queen to tell her that I’ve finally got her niece’s birthday present, and doesn’t she think it looks sweet?’

‘The queen will approve, sir. She was the one who suggested a tame freak as a present in the first place, anyway, sir.’

‘Yes, but a hybrid?’ He sighed, almost groaned. ‘Oh, I just hope I’ve done the right thing.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Did you say the queen? As in the queen queen? The actual, living, breathing, talking, commanding, beheading, regal, stinking-filthy-rich queen?’

It’s difficult to slap someone’s ear when both you and the someone are on a horse, but Dorian managed it. ‘Be quiet, you stupid creature!’

‘But the queen?’ I insisted, rubbing my stinging ear. ‘The proper queen? Our queen? Rahel Eada something thingyummy Burchard?’

‘Yes! The queen! Rahel Eada Armine Napea Burchard!’ Dorain jerked my lead with each name to emphasize his point. I gurgled hoarsely. ‘And yes, she’s the queen, and yes, she’s the king’s wife, and yes, she’s very rich, and yes, her niece is going to be your new mistress. Have you got all that?’

I nodded and massaged my throat. For the next seven minutes, I sat quietly and attempted to digest all this. The queen’s niece. My new mistress. The queen’s niece. The queen – oh blimey, the queen. I am going to be the queen’s niece’s birthday present. A birthday present. Hai mai. My thoughts ran in circles, like dogs chasing their tails. All I could think was, The queen’s niece. Gorblimey. Me, the queen’s niece’s birthday present.

Who was the queen’s niece, anyway? I thought vaguely that there were two of them, their father being the queen’s older brother. Apart from that, I couldn’t remember anything. Which niece was it going to be? Didn’t one of them have some funny, mincing type of name?

We turned a corner, and saw the street running away to the left. It was wide enough to take three carriages side by side, and there was very little traffic – a party of five ladies out for a morning walk, two gentlemen walking a brown and white spaniel, and only one flower girl. The ground levelled out now, and if I looked behind, I could just see the gentle hump of the main body of the town.

And ahead… Ahead was the castle, surrounded by a huge grey stone wall with black iron gates. I could see the flag flying from the little tower on the right: a writhing snaky-looking thing with big wings on a dark green background.

Dorian settled his hat more firmly on his head. Its long blue feather fluttered a little rebelliously, asserting its independence. I could Sense Dorian’s nervous excitement, feel his heart thumping against my back, and I shifted uneasily, pinching the cloak hem.

A man in a long maroon velvet jacket and boots that looked even more uncomfortable than Dorian’s opened one of the gates for us, and bowed low as we passed through. I stared at the hard, graceful ridge of the horse’s neck and chewed on my lower lip. The gravel path crunched, as though it were pale brown sugar and the horse was eating it through its hooves.

Dorian reined the horse in. He sat quite still for a few seconds, took a deep breath and dismounted, his cloak momentarily lighting up the landscape in a red flare. Then he lifted me down and wound my lead around his wrist.

I stared up at Burchard Castle, the gravel pricking my feet, and something turning at the bottom of my stomach in a slow, deliberate circle. The castle was built in a U-shape, which made it appear wide rather than tall, even though it had four stories. It was built of a mottled light brown stone, with patches of grey and white dotted about on the walls. A small balcony ran along the top and ended at the base of the flag tower. In front were two long strips of manicured lawn that began at the door, ran on either side of the gravel path, and ended in an inverted curve a little way from the iron gates.

‘Ooooh!’

‘Stop staring, you stupid child,’ Dorian snapped, ‘and help with my horse.’

I had been staring at the castle so hard I had not noticed the arrival of a groom who had come to take the horses. With him was a small boy who looked about four, and completely incapable of dealing with any horse bigger than a knitted one. At Dorian’s rebuke, the groom cuffed the boy over the head and mumbled, ‘Sorry, sir.’ The boy jammed his hand against his mouth and blinked his watery green eyes. A tear slid down his cheek, and I saw with interest how it curved around and ended up on the tip of his small snub nose. It quivered with his breath and would have fallen if he hadn’t suddenly scrubbed his nose and turned away.

‘Raven, heel,’ Dorian ordered, and I obediently trotted beside him as we went up the path. I expected that we would go in the big front door, but instead we followed the path around the side of the castle and eventually went in at a smaller side door, which I assumed was a servants’ entrance.

It led into a small room which in turn led into a large, cheerful, busy kitchen with a brown-tiled floor. Several kitchen maids in dark dresses and white pinafores were rolling out pastry on the long wooden table, and another was standing by the fireplace, beating eggs in a round brown bowl. A woman with a huge frilly mob cap sat on a chair on the hearthrug with a tray on her lap and moulded flowers out of sugar pastry. ‘He simply wasn’t right for her,’ she was saying to the girl beating the eggs. ‘Always telling her what to do an’ all. It was a good thing her father broke off the engagement, if you ask me. Oh!’ She saw Dorian and would have got to her feet, but he waved an impatient hand and she sank back down again. The maids curtsied and as Dorian strode across the room to the door, the talk started up again.

‘And she’s crying her eyes out over him. Says he liked him doing that and it was only his way of showing that he cared about her.’

‘Caring, my foot! I told her, I did. I says, “Grizelda,” I says…’

The conversation was lost as Ulrick closed the door behind us gently. The passageway was dim and fusty, with the only light coming through peepholes in the wall. Several side passages branched off on either side, and Dorian went left, which led us to a small crooked stairway going up.

‘Sir,’ Ulrick ventured, ‘may I ask why we’re using the servants’ way?’

‘The queen wishes it. It’s a birthday present, remember? No sense in spoiling the surprise.’

‘Ah.’ Ulrick nodded and followed us up.

I didn’t like the stairway. The walls crowded in on either side, and it was so dark and damp-smelling. The stairs creaked underfoot, and my foot slipped on a smooth patch. Dorian made an exasperated noise through his nose, and I hurriedly scrambled back up. I made the rest of the journey on my hands and feet.

The staircase eventually ended in a small, surprisingly well-made door. Dorian hurried us out of this and into a long bright corridor with big windows, red carpets and lots of paintings on the wall. I had no time to notice anything else before Dorian was off again, so fast that I had to run to keep up, skipping three steps to every one of his strides. To the end of the corridor, left into another corridor, left again, then right and left again. I was clutching at a stitch in my side when he suddenly stopped at a door, brushed his jacket down, straightened his hat and knocked.

‘What’s –’ I began, but Dorian suddenly bent down and stared into my eyes.

‘Hybrid,’ he said, almost gently. ‘If you say one word that I do not command when we are in that room, I will hit you. Do you understand? You bad – me hit. You talk – me hit. You talk – you bad. Ty dallt?’

I blinked. I hadn’t known that Dorian spoke Elvish. ‘Sa, tighearna Dorian-ner. Ow dallt.’

‘Good.’ The door opened and Dorian bowed to the maid who stood in the doorway. ‘Please inform your mistress that Lord Seeley Ansgar Dorian requests an audience.’

For one stupid, insane moment, I had an image of Dorian on a stage, acting to an empty theatre and later saying to the manager-maid, ‘I must request an audience!’

The maid nodded and went back into the room. In a moment she was back, saying, ‘She says you are to come in at once.’

Dorian almost shoved her out of the way and entered the room. I had been expecting something very large and impressive, but it was cosy, more than anything. The walls were panelled with a light-coloured wood, and the furniture matched. There was a small window set in the far wall, and the light from it made two oblongs on the polished wood floor. There was a small rug in the middle of the room, and on it were set four chairs. Their cushioned seats were made of the same blue patterned fabric as the curtains.

‘Lord Dorian.’

Two women came out of a door at the end of the room. One of them curtsied, but the other went straight up to Dorian and held out her hand. ‘Lord Dorian,’ she said again and Dorian kissed her hand. ‘Good morning.’

She had a husky voice, deep but gentle. She was too slim to be fashionable, but she had a certain something about her face. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, it was… I searched for the right word and could only come up with ‘commanding’. A variation on a theme of power that made you want to study her face in case something extraordinary happened. I couldn’t explain it, even to myself. Maybe it was that she was simply handsome. Her golden hair was piled on top of her head and fastened with a diamond clasp, letting a fringe of curled tendrils wisp about her face.

‘Your Majesty,’ Dorian answered. ‘Good morning.’

The queen looked at me, and I saw that she had very dark blue eyes under straight light eyebrows. ‘And this…’ She paused, waiting.

‘A hybrid, ma’am.’

‘This hybrid is the result of your search?’

‘Yes, ma’am. You suggested a tame freak and I found this in one of the watch-stations near Eartha Street. Its owner assured me that it’s properly trained, and I have a list of information about its care, and an address where the owner can be reached.’

‘In case there’s any trouble?’ the queen asked, and one of her eyebrows quirked upwards.

‘In case we have anymore questions, ma’am.’

She smiled and put her hand on my head, stroking my hair. She lifted my feather. ‘I assume it wore this costume for its freak show act?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Its owner called it the Raven.’

‘The Raven. Raven,’ she said, and I blinked at her. ‘Does it talk?’ she asked.

Dorian coughed. ‘Yes, ma’am. A little.’

‘Raven,’ she coaxed.

I looked up at Dorian and he gave a tight nod.

‘Good morning, your Majesty,’ I said.

She smiled widely, showing slightly yellowed but very straight teeth. ‘Good morning, Raven. Did you have a good journey?’

‘No, ma’am, not very. The horse felt like a sack of potatoes.’

She frowned slightly. Dorian tightened my lead and I wondered what I had done wrong.

‘How much…’ the queen began. ‘No – how intelligent is it? Is it… sentient?’

‘I believe not, ma’am. The tales one hears of hybrids –’

‘Are not very pleasant, no. But I wouldn’t have thought that…’ She let the sentence trail off. For a moment she looked thoughtful, then said briskly, ‘Well, that aside, may I see the information on its care?’

Dorian felt in his pocket and handed her the sheets of paper. She skim-read them and nodded. ‘It seems fairly easy to care for… And it says that it’s tame. Did you have any trouble with it?’

‘No, ma’am. Its only fault was that it squirmed a lot on the horse.’

She smiled. ‘Well, if the horse was uncomfortable…’ Her smile faded and she frowned a little, looking at me rather oddly. I lowered my eyes.

‘Well,’ she said, matter-of-fact once more, ‘I think it will do. My thanks, Lord Dorian.’

He bowed deeply, relief spreading all over his face. ‘It was my pleasure, ma’am.’

She nodded graciously, and he gave her my lead, patting my shoulder quite kindly. Then he backed to the door, bowed again and left, Ulrick trailing behind him like a loose thread.

The queen looked down at me and stroked my hair again. ‘Look, Clement. Its eyes.’

The other woman came and stood by the queen’s side. She was just as tall as the queen, but plumper, and her hair was a shade lighter. ‘Like apple juice,’ she said.

The queen laughed. ‘Apple juice! I’m giving my niece a hybrid with apple juice eyes?’

‘Apple juice coloured eyes, ma’am.’

‘Ah, Clement, you’re so sensible. Would you mind running along and asking Stefan to step up here? He should be in the next corridor; I asked him to wait there about this time.’

‘Of course, ma’am.’ Clement curtsied, backed to the door like Dorian had done and went out.

The queen said, ‘Sit!’

I sat down on the floor and crossed my legs, looking up at her. ‘Yes, your Majesty?’

She rolled the lead between her fingers, the odd, thoughtful look coming back into her face. ‘Raven… who called you the Raven?’

‘My master, ma’am,’ I replied. ‘Mister Jos Quennel.’

‘Was he good to you?’

I pondered. The question was unexpectedly difficult. Already the memory of Quennel was fading like a half-remembered dream, as though he were something that had happened a long, long time ago. ‘I think so,’ I said finally. A memory surfaced: Quennel shielding me from the angry crowd. ‘Yes.’ Then another: Quennel beating me and the patchwork quilt pressed against my face. ‘No. I don’t know.’

‘My niece will treat you kindly,’ the queen said, almost reassuringly. ‘The Lady Alarise Hedda Oriel Cranley, she’s called, and my older brother’s youngest daughter.’

I nodded politely, but couldn’t help feel puzzled. She’s telling me all this? Why? I mean, I’m a hybrid. She just bought me. I’m a… a thing that she’s going to give to her niece as a birthday present. Why’s she giving me all this info? I was tempted to ask this out loud, but decided that it might not be deemed respectful enough.

There was a knock on the door, and the maid quickly opened it. Clement came in, followed by a fairly tall man with bright red hair and a roll of paper under his arm. He kissed the queen’s hand and nodded at me, saying, ‘Is this it, your Majesty?’

‘That’s it, Stefan.’

Stefan frowned and surveyed me from all angles. The queen tugged on my lead and I got to my feet again. ‘But your Majesty, I thought you said a livery would suitable. A livery for this creature would be…’

‘Yes, I know, Stefan. It’ll need something else, but I had an idea…’ She took the roll of paper and pencil he gave her and quickly sketched something. Peering over her arm, I saw that it was a small featureless figure that seemed to be draped in cloth.

Is that meant to be me? I wondered. They’re deciding what I’m going to wear? For some reason, that seemed very funny.

Stefan pursed his lips over the drawing. ‘I think I see, ma’am. What colour?’

‘Black.’

‘Black, ma’am?’

The queen lifted one shoulder and smiled. ‘The creature is called the Raven.’

‘Oh! Oh, I see. Oh, and yes, then, if you’re going for this enveloping look… Yes, I see, now.’ He added a few strokes. ‘And if we had some kind of binding on the arms…’

‘With feathers?’

‘Mm, I don’t know, ma’am, that might be a bit too much.’ Stefan held up my arm and tapped it critically. ‘It’s very thin. And –’ He raised his bright eyebrows. ‘Its arms and legs are all the same length?’

‘What?’ The queen took a step back and did a head-to-toe scrutiny. ‘Oh yes. I hadn’t noticed that. How extraordinary.’

‘So if the overall garment is black, and if it wears perhaps a tunic underneath…’ Stefan scribbled on the paper, his pencil almost going through. I tried to see what magnificent new costume was emerging, but he held the paper close to his face, and I couldn’t see. It sounded interesting, and I longed to ask if I could have a look, but the queen and Stefan were chattering away and leaving no room for interruptions.

‘If it was red, maybe, to would contrast with the black.’

‘Yes, ma’am, only you have to be careful when mixing colour and black. The tunic underneath, though…’

‘Perhaps make it in the Elven style?’

‘Oh, yes, ma’am! I’ll have to experiment with the length of the sleeves. If the colour goes with the black –’

‘Elves wear patterns mostly, I think. A kind of checked flaxen cloth.’

‘I’ve got linen, for sure. And if it tucks into the trousers…’

I shifted from one foot to the other and wished they would hurry up.

At one point, Stefan asked delicately, ‘Is it male or female?’

The queen consulted the care sheet. ‘It says here that it’s female.’

‘Is it – I mean… Yes ma’am.’ Stefan’s ears were turning pink. ‘It’s just that it –’

‘Doesn’t look it, no. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve heard that some hybrids do that – become adults while still retaining a child’s body.’

‘Yes ma’am.’ Stefan’s ears were now a shade of red to rival his brilliant hair, but the queen didn’t seem to notice.

I looked at the floor and smiled slightly. If the queen was hoping to breed hybrids, she’d have to wait for more to come along. I’d be the nanny, though, and rock the cradle and sing lullabies. On the other hand… I wrinkled my nose at the thought of dirty nappies, cheesy-smelling baby sick and wet sheets. Nah, I’d just guard the cradle and be a faithful watchdog. Woof woof.

Eventually Stefan collected his pens and paper and bowed his way out, promising that my new costume would be ready tomorrow. Tomorrow was the Lady Alarise’s birthday. Lady Alarise. Not a stern, middle-aged matron, then. She would be eighteen tomorrow. Oh man, I thought. What, oh what, will she be like?