Young Writers Society

ONE

Once upon a time there was a cage and I was in it.

‘Morley!’ Quennel bellowed. He propped his booted foot up on the side of the cart and tugged at the laces.

I stretched out a finger and dug it into the faded patch on the toe.

‘Get off,’ Quennel snapped, and kicked the cage so the bars rang.

‘That patch needs repatching,’ I said, still lying with both arms out between the bars. ‘It’ll be a patch on a patch, but not a patch on a new boot.’

‘Morley!’ Quennel bawled, and Morley stumbled out of the inn door.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, hurrying to the cart and climbing in. I clutched at his ankles but he shook me off.

‘I told you to go in and pay the landlord half an hour ago. What the hell have you been doing all this time?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Morley muttered, looking at his boots.

Quennel hauled himself up into the cart’s front seat. ‘It’s always like this, isn’t it, I tell you to do something and you always manage to mess it up or take twice as long as any normal person would. I mean, what is the matter with you? Why do you always manage to cock up every responsibility you’re given? I might as well ask the Raven to handle things.’

‘I am yours to command, oh my master,’ I said. ‘Say the word, unlock the door, break the chains and I shall run your empire with grace, poise and finesse.’

Quennel slapped the reins on Shallie’s big brown bottom and the cart lurched forward. ‘And it’s not like it was even that good of an inn.’ Quennel’s voice was penetratingly clear in the still air. The track wound through the black wet trees and the only sound aside from Quennel’s voice was the rattle of the cart wheels and the slow steady drip of moisture from the black tree branches. ‘The beer was sour, the maid was old and I know that bed had fleas.’

‘They liked the Raven, though,’ Morley ventured.

‘Well of course they did.’ I could hear the eye-roll in Quennel’s voice. ‘Everybody pays to see the Raven. That’s why we have her, remember?’

I bared my teeth at the back of Quennel’s pale head and thought about chainsaws. Morley pulled his coat tighter about himself, plucking at the buttons with his long twitching fingers and customary look of misery. I reached out and pinched his ankle, and he squawked in surprise.

‘Hey Morley,’ I said. ‘You know something?’

‘What?’ he said warily.

‘I thought of another blonde, brunette and redhead joke.’

Quennel gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh Lord, not another one. Where did this one come from? A dream or a mad fit?’

‘Want to hear it, Morley?’ I asked, ignoring Quennel.

‘Um,’ Morley said. I knew he didn’t want to hear it, but Morley wasn’t brave enough to say no to anyone, not even to the freak in his own freakshow, so he said, ‘All right. Tell me,’ and I grinned.

‘So there was a blonde, a brunette and a redhead, and their names were Quennel, the Raven, and Morley.’ I scuttled my fingers over the toes of Morley’s shoes. ‘Blonde, brunette and a redhead. And they were hiding from the magistrates because the blonde and the redhead were running an illegal still and peepshow, and the brunette was coerced against her will and it was all very cruel and terribly illegal. And they were hiding in an old barn when the magistrates caught up with them, so they decided to hide in these old sacks. The magistrates came in, swords and lanterns, and searched the barn and they found the old sacks. They kick the first bag with the brunette in, and the brunette says, “Woof!” “Ah,” say the magistrates, “it’s just a dog.” They kick the second bag with the redhead in, and the redhead says, “Squeak!” “Ah,” say the magistrates, “it’s just a mouse.” They kick the third bag with the blonde in, and the blonde says, “Potatoes!”

I giggled, and Morley sighed.

‘Where’d that one come from?’ Quennel asked derisively. ‘Heard it in a dream?’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘No no no no no. I saw this one in the stream where the wild roses grow.’

‘Last one you said got told you by a flying horse,’ Morley said.

I sat back in the cage and wrapped my arms around my knees. ‘Morley my lamb, my mind goes to so many different places I can’t be expected to keep track of them all. Quid pro quo, merci beaucoup and insha’allah merciful effendi.’

Morley sighed and huddled down deeper inside his coat.

The black dirt path went deeper and deeper into the trees, and the air seemed to get even colder. My breath smoked out of my nose and I wrapped my blanket tighter around myself, squinching down as small as possible to try and cover my bare toes. The chain around my ankle chafed, as it always did when it got cold, and I worked a fold of the blanket between it and my skin. Now my toes poked out.

‘Exposed toes,’ I said. ‘Toes exposed.’

‘She’s cold,’ Morley said to the back of Quennel’s head.

‘So’m I,’ Quennel retorted. ‘It’s winter. We’re in a forest. Of course we’re going to be cold.’

‘Don’t you think,’ Morley ventured, ‘maybe it would be best not to travel in the winter? We could stay in Jardinille or take a ship back to Ennesey... Or not,’ he added quickly, as Quennel turned around to stare scornfully at him. ‘Or not. Travelling around’s good as well, it’s better because this way we get to reach new towns and places that haven’t seen the Raven yet so they want to see her so they pay to see her so we get money and...’ He trailed off.

Quennel raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t think so much, Morley. It doesn’t suit you.’ He turned back to Shallie’s bottom. ‘We travel because the law says that if we don’t move on, we get shut down. If we get shut down, we don’t eat. It’s as simple as that.’

‘What happens if I freeze to death?’ I inquired. ‘What if I just keel over one day, clean as that, two and two equals four, so long and all the rest your Majesty?’

‘Raven, if you even think about dying, I’ll flog you with the horsewhip.’

‘Oh but master,’ I protested, ‘where’s the originality in that? You’ve done it so many times before. You need to find some other way of expressing yourself. Maybe try sticking me full of needles and dropping me in a vat of hot treacle, or blowing me out of a volcano covered in chocolate sauce—that’s me that’s covered with chocolate sauce, not the volcano—only do you have volcanoes here? I mean, I haven’t seen any, but that’s nothing because there I never saw any back home either but they were there, Vesuvius and Mount Etna and Katrina or was that something else? But it doesn’t matter because they might be here too only not in this here, the here where I’m here, but they might be here, I might have seen them in the stream but I’ve forgotten but they might be in—’

‘Shut up!’ Quennel bawled.

‘...itty-bitty living space,’ I whispered.

‘Be quiet!’

‘Are we there yet?’

‘No! And if you don’t be quiet I’ll take you out and flog you right now!’

I sighed and rested my head on my knees. The rough weave of the blanket grazed my cold cheek and I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the forest, but although I hoped for more, all I could hear was the rumble of the cartwheels.

‘Can you hear me, Raven? Do you understand?’

‘Yes master,’ I said, and clenched my fists in the blanket.