The Wizard of London (13 page)

They
boarded a horse-drawn omnibus and—since it wasn’t raining
yet—everyone ran up the little twisting staircase to the open seats on
top. After all, what child cares to ride inside, when he can ride outside? They
were the only passengers up there due to the chill and threatening weather, and
Nan cast an anxious look back at the last place she’d seen Neville—

He
wasn’t there. Her heart fell.

And
right down out of the sky, the huge bird landed with an audible thump in the
aisle between the rows of seats, just as the ‘bus started to move. He
folded his wings and looked about as if he owned the place.

“Lummy!”
said one of the boys. “That’s a raven!” He started to get out
of his seat.

“No
it isn’t,” Mem’sab said firmly. “And no one move except
Nan.”

When
Mem’sab gave an order like that, no one would even think of moving, so as
Neville walked ponderously toward her, Nan crouched down and offered her
forearm to him. He hopped up on it, and she got back into her seat, turning to
look expectantly at Mem’sab.

“This
is not a raven,” their teacher repeated, raking the entire school group
with a stern glance. “This is an uncommonly large rook. Correct?”

“Yes,
Mem’sab!” the rest of Nan’s schoolmates chorused.
Mem’sab eyed the enormous bird for a moment, her brown eyes thoughtful.
Mem’sab was not a pretty woman—many people might, in fact, have
characterized her as “plain,” with quiet brown hair and eyes, and a
complexion more like honest brown pottery than porcelain. Her chin was too firm
for beauty; her features too angular and strong. But it was Nan’s fervent
hope that one day she might grow up into something like those strong features,
for to her mind, Mem’sab was a decidedly handsome woman. Right now, she
looked quite formidable, her eyes intent as she gazed at Neville, clearly
thinking hard about something.

“Bird—”
she addressed the raven directly. “We are going to have to go through a
number of situations in which you will not be welcome before we get home. For
instance, the inside seats on this very ‘bus—since I think it is
going to rain before we get to our stop. Now, what do you propose we do about
you?”

Neville
cocked his head to one side. “Ork?” he replied.

Now,
none of the children found any of this at all peculiar or funny, perhaps
because they were used to Mem’sab, Sarah, and Nan treating Grey just like
a person. But none of them wanted to volunteer a solution either if it involved
actually getting near that nasty-looking beak.

“Oi—I—can
put ‘im under me mac, Mem’sab,” Nan offered.

Their
teacher frowned. “That’s only good until someone notices
you’re carrying something there, Nan,” she replied.
“Children, at the next stop, I would like you to divide up and search the
‘bus for a discarded box, please—but be back in a seat when the
’bus moves again.”

Just
then the bus pulled up to a stop, and slightly less than twenty very active
children swarmed over the vehicle while passengers were loading and unloading.
The boys all piled downstairs; they were less encumbered with skirts and could
go over or under seats quickly.

The
boys hadn’t returned by the time the ‘bus moved, but at the next
stop they all came swarming back up again, carrying in triumph the very thing
that was needed, a dirtied and scuffed pasteboard hatbox!

As
their teacher congratulated them, young Tommy proudly related his story of
charming the box from a young shopgirl who had several she was taking home with
her because they’d been spoiled. Meanwhile, Nan coaxed Neville into the
prize, which was less than a perfect fit. He wasn’t happy about it, but
after thinking very hard at him with scenes of him trying to fly to keep up, of
conductors chasing him out of the windows of ‘buses, and of policemen
finding him under Nan’s mac and trying to take him away, he quorked and
obediently hopped into the box, suffering Nan to close the lid down over him
and tie it shut. Her nerves quieted down at that moment, and she heaved a sigh
of very real relief. Only then did she pay attention to her classmates.

“I
owes you, Tommy,” she said earnestly. “Sarah, she said last night
she was gonna get a chest’ve Turkish Delight from Sahib’s warehouse
for her treat and share it out. You c’n hev my share.”

Tommy
went pink with pleasure. “Oh, Nan, you don’t have to—”
He was clearly torn between greed and generosity of his own.
“Half?” he suggested. “I don’t want to leave you
without a treat, too.”

“I
got a treat,” she insisted, patting the box happily. “An’
mine’ll last longer nor Turkish Delight. Naw, fair’s fair; you get
my share.”

And
she settled back into her seat with the pleasant, warm weight of the box and
its contents on her lap, Mem’sab casting an amused eye on her from time
to time. Neville shifted himself occasionally, and his nails would scrape on
the cardboard. He didn’t like being confined, but the darkness was making
him sleepy, so he was dozing when the box was on her lap and not being carried.

There
were no difficulties with the rest of the journey back to the school; no one
saw anything out of the ordinary in a child with a shopworn hatbox, and Neville
was no heavier than a couple of schoolbooks.

They
walked the last few blocks to the school; the neighbors were used to seeing the
children come and go, and there were smiles and nods as the
now-thoroughly-weary group trudged their way to the old gates, which were
unlocked by Mem’sab to let them all back inside.

True
to her word, Sarah had gotten the sweets, and when the others filed in through
the front door, she was waiting in the entrance hall, with Grey on her shoulder
as usual, to give out their shares as soon as they came in. Nan handed hers
over to Tommy without a murmur or a second glance, although she was
inordinately fond of sweets—Sarah looked startled, then speculative, as
she spotted Nan’s hatbox.

“Sarah,
you just gotter see—” Nan began, when Mem’sab interrupted.

“I
believe that we need to make a very careful introduction, Nan,” she said,
steering Nan deftly down the hall instead of up the stairs. “Sarah, would
you and Grey come with us as well? I believe that Nan has found a friend very
like Grey for herself—but we are going to have to make sure that they
understand that they must at least tolerate one another.”

There
was a room on the first floor used for rough-housing on bad days; it had
probably been a ballroom when the mansion was in a better neighborhood. Now,
other than some ingenious draperies made out of dust sheets, it didn’t
have a great deal in it but chests holding battered toys and some chairs pushed
up against the walls. For heat, there was an iron stove fitted into the
fireplace, this being deemed safer than an open fire. This was where
Mem’sab brought them, and sat Sarah and Grey down on the worn wooden
floor, with Nan and her hatbox (which was beginning to move as a restless raven
stirred inside it) across from her.

“All
right, Nan, now you can let him out,” Mem’sab decreed.

Nan
had to laugh as Neville popped up like a jack-in-the-box when she took off the
lid, his feathers very much disarranged from confinement in the box. He shook
himself—then spotted Grey.

Grey
was already doing a remarkable imitation of a pinecone, with every feather
sticking out, and growling under her breath. Neville roused his own feathers
angrily, then looked sharply at Nan.

“No,”
she said, in answer to the unspoken question. “You ain’t
sharin’ me. Grey is Sarah’s. But you gotter get along, ‘cause
Sarah’s the best friend I got, an my friend’s gotter be friends
with her friend.”

“You
hear that?” Sarah added to Grey, catching the parrot’s beak gently
between thumb and forefinger, and turning the parrot’s head to face her.
“This is Nan’s special bird friend. He’s going to share our
room. But he’ll have his own food and toys and perches, so you
aren’t going to lose anything, you see? And you have to be friends,
because Nan and I are.”

Both
birds clearly thought this over, and it was Grey who graciously made the first
move. “Want down,” she said, smoothing her feathers down as Sarah
took her off her shoulder and put her down on the floor.

Neville
sprang out of his hatbox, and landed within a foot of Grey. And now it was his
turn to make a gesture—which he did, with surprising graciousness.

“Ork,”
he croaked, then bent his head and offered the nape of his neck to Grey.

Now,
in Grey’s case, that gesture could be a ruse, for Nan had known her to
offer her neck—supposedly to be scratched—only to whip her head
around and bite an offending finger hard. But Neville couldn’t move his
head that fast; his beak was far too ponderous. Furthermore, he was offering
the very vulnerable back of his head to a stabbing beak, which was what another
raven would have, not a biting beak. Would Grey realize what a grand gesture
this was?

Evidently,
she did. With great delicacy, she stretched out and preened three or four of
Neville’s feathers, as collective breaths were released in sighs of
relief.

Truce
had been declared.

***

Alliance
soon followed. In fact, within a week, the birds were sharing perches (except
at bedtime, when each perched on the headboard of their respective girl). It
probably helped that Grey was not in the least interested in Neville’s
raw meat, and Neville was openly dismissive of Grey’s cooked rice and
vegetables. When there is no competition for food and affection, alliance
becomes a little easier.

Within
a remarkably short time, the birds were friends—as unlikely a pair as the
street brat and the missionary’s child. Neville had learned that
Grey’s curved beak and powerful bite could open an amazing number of
things he might want to investigate, and it was clear that no garden snail was
going to be safe, come the spring. Grey had discovered that a straight, pointed
beak with all the hammerlike force of a raven’s neck muscles behind it
could break a hole into a flat surface where her beak couldn’t get a
purchase. Shortly afterward, there had ensued a long discussion between
Mem’sab and the birds to which neither Nan nor an anxious Sarah were
party, concerning a couple of parcels and the inadvisability of birds breaking
into unguarded boxes or brightly-wrapped presents…

After
the incident with the faux medium and the spirit of the child of one of
Mem’sab’s school friends, rumors concerning the unusual abilities Sarah
and Nan possessed began to make the rounds of the more Esoteric circles of
London. Most knew better than to approach Mem’sab about using her pupils
in any way—those who did were generally escorted to the door by one of
Sahib’s two formidable school guards, one a Gurkha, the other a Sikh. A
few, a very few, of Sahib or Mem’sab’s trusted friends actually met
the girls—and occasionally Nan or Sarah were asked to help in some occult
difficulty. Nan was called on more often than Sarah, although, had Mem’sab
permitted it, Sarah would have been asked to exercise her talent as a genuine
medium four times as often as Nan used her abilities.

One
day in October, after Mem’sab had turned away yet another importunate
friend and her friend, a thin and enthusiastic spinster wearing a rather
eccentric turban with a huge ostrich plume ornament on the front, and a great
many colored shawls draped all over her in every possible fashion, Nan
intercepted her mentor.

“Mem’sab,
why is it you keep sendin’ those ladies away?” she asked curiously.
“There ain’t—isn’t—no harm in
‘em—least, not that one, anyway. A bit silly,” she added
judiciously, “but no harm.”

The
wonderful thing about Mem’sab was that when you acted like a child, she
treated you like a child—but when you were trying to act like an adult,
she treated you as one. Mem’sab regarded her thoughtfully, and answered
with great deliberation. “I have some very strong ideas about what
children like Sarah—or you—should and should not be asked to do.
One of them is that you are not to be trotted out at regular intervals like a
music-hall act and required to perform. Another is that until you two are old
enough to decide just how public you wish to be, it is my duty to keep you as
private as possible. And lastly—” her mouth turned down as if she
tasted something very sour. “Tell me something, Nan—do you think
that there are nothing but hundreds of ghosts out there, queuing up to every
medium, simply burning to tell their relatives how lovely things are on the
Other Side?”

Nan
thought about that for a moment. “Well,” she said, after giving the
question full consideration, “No. If there was, I
don’t‘s’p-pose Sarah’d hev a moment of peace.
They’d be at her day an’ night, leave alone them as is still
alive.”

Mem’sab
laughed. “Exactly so. Given that, can you think of any reason why I
should encourage Sarah to sit about in a room so thick with incense that it is
bound to make her ill when nothing is going to come of it but a headache and
hours lost that she could have been using to study, or just to enjoy
herself?”

“An’
a gaggle of silly old women fussing at ’er.” Nan snorted. “I
see, Mem’sab.”

“And
some of the things that you and Sarah are asked to do, I believe are too
dangerous,” Mem’sab continued, with just a trace of frown.
“And why, if grown men have failed at them, anyone should think I would
risk a pair of children—”

She
shook herself, and smiled ruefully down at Nan. “Adults can be very
foolish—and very selfish.”

Nan
just snorted. As if she didn’t know that! Hadn’t her own mother
sold her to a pair of brothel keepers? And Neville, perched on her shoulder,
made a similarly scornful noise.

“Has
he managed any real words yet, Nan?” Mem’sab asked, her attention
distracted. She crooked a finger in invitation, and Neville stretched out his
head for a scratch under the chin.