Chapter 2
The Docklands. 1974.
Five years earlier
The present was a pliable thing. An ever-pervading, yet swiftly changing condition that spread its tendrils from the banks of the river Thames to the walls of fog in the west end. Nobody knew the present quite like Tommy Crane. The present, like its homonym form, was said to be a gift. One that she had many times considered returning. Those that could unravel the future often had the wherewithal to change it. Tommy had to sit on the windowsill and watch it unfold like a paper owls wings.
“You’ll be able to see all of what is happening in our world, but there’s little that you can do beyond that,” Enoch Ames had told her. “The pleasure of being a seer lies not within what exists in the light, but what is currently happening in the dark.” He had cocked his head. “Let us hope you have perfect vision.”
That was in the beginning, when the cracks of London had begun to weep black down the annals of the crooked streets. A war, one that didn’t concern itself with the every day man and woman. Those with magic burned; the ones that had any survival instinct at all leapt for their lives into the ranks of the dark arts cults that had formed through the country. So much magic had been lost in a world already weak of it that the Ouroboros Order had sent task forces to the reaches of the hidden islands, stealing orphans from their beds in the dead of night, handing them wands before their twelfth birthday and stuffing them into the claustrophobic quarters of safe houses in hopes that they would live long enough to fight. A few would.
Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild.
“I was surprised when I found you,” Enoch Ames said. “There’s not many surviving from your line. What with your predecessors slain, I thought for certain, with our luck, that you would be a talentless squib. We’ve had to dispose of those before.”
To which Tommy had sighed, folded her arms and asked, “How does one dispose of a child?”
Enoch hadn’t answered, and that was answer enough. Tommy was talentless in many regards, but an ability to stretch her vision to find what prisoners of war had been shackled to posts was a blessing for the Ouroboros Order. Even at that age, still pink in the cheeks with hope, she knew that she had stepped out from under primrose tufts and green bower and into the sinking pit of a war that already had too many casualties to ever constitute a win for either side. She didn’t need to be able to see the future to see that.
Which is why she grew enamored with the concept of power.
There were multiple types of power; the brand of it which was given, through blood and wealth, passed down the line of a family tree until it blossomed in the hold of the eldest heir. Or in some cases, was lost completely to the soft hands of an offspring too spoiled to shoulder it. The other version of power was taken. Plucked out of that tree by hardened fingers more apt to wield it. Tommy had long ago deduced that those who were born in glory did not deserve it, and in fact, were merely keeping the fruits warm for a more capable stranger to sneak in and pocket it in the night.
She was thirteen when it occurred to her that she had hardened hands. There were tens of other children in the safe house tucked between harbors in the docklands. It was spring. Long before the blackness had completely encapsulated the city. When stars still burned overhead and the muggle radio stations were calm over static waves, insisting that the shorter days and longer nights were nothing but an astral phenomena that would pass like any other hard bout of weather. It was at the same time that the Deatheaters, the Vitruvian Cult and the Ouroboros were playing a sharp witted chess match in regards to who could muster the most soldiers. The first blow had already been dealt. The ministry, fallen into ash and rubble, had lost their game in a smoking pyre in the center of Whitechapel.
There were few players on Enoch’s team then. Only a handful of adults and a makeshift orphanage designed to keep young minds open to concept of war.
When Tommy spotted Oliver, that sandy haired little turnip, playing with a stick on the bank of the Thames her first consideration was that the last name Prewitt belonged to the purebloods. A surprise, considering the majority of the sacred twenty-eight had sided with the Deatheaters, leaving the Vitruvian and Ouroboros to hunt for half-blooded scraps, and veins so diluted by muggle interference that their offspring were as closely related to magic as a cat is to a mountain hare. Her second consideration was that Oliver was sort of a cunt.
He batted the makeshift weapon against a pile of rocks first. With careful consideration, he smacked a stone as one would a golfball, and set it to hurdle into the ankle of a raven haired girl with legs half soaked in the river. The evening bell called out inside of the decrepit boat house, a cry for small ears to wander inside and take to their beds. Tommy ignored it. So did Oliver. He sent another stone through the air, which whipped the girl upside the head before sinking into the murky waters.
“Stop it,” Tommy scolded him. The girl had begun to cry, which was both an audible nuisance and a visual annoyance. Tommy was reminded of something her mother would have said; keep crying, and I will give you something to cry about. A sentiment for those that had no regard for justice. “If you hit her again, I will come over there and drown you.”
“You could,” Oliver replied, and he was every bit the sniveling boy that she suspected him to be, tongue to the roof of his mouth as he sneered. “And Enoch will whip you until your eyes bleed.”
The skies were geared to pour great gouts of rain over the city. A gale pummeled Tommy’s hair over her fox-face. “Scars heal, but they won’t be able to bring you back from the dead.”
The moment it left her lips, she felt a pang of regret in using death as an ore to wade the tide of such a simple argument. It had always been so, karmic retribution slapping a hand to her shoulder when she stooped to low threats. The summer air drew insects out of their homes in the day. When storms broke, their houses did too, and they were always in search of a new place to shack up. The hornet landed on her kneecap. A set of hollow black eyes glared up at her. Its nimble weight testing the patience of her thin skin as it fluttered toward the hem of her dress.
Black waters mingled on the dock. Boats with rusty underbellies scratching tally marks into the wood, each hit to the weak port a notch to mark the passing minutes. Tommy’s breath was a ghost, escaping her lips in shudders. The shadow of the city splayed out on the other side of the river, hulking and gargantuan in comparison to the little beast that rested on her thigh.
This was the downside to the present. She could see the scene so clearly, sure, but what good was that if she couldn’t deduce how the future would unfold. What exact length of time it would take for the hornet to drop it’s bodice into her flesh to scar and taint. Most children with magic had managed to escape such an earthly problem as allergies. Those that didn’t, very often had antidotes and potions at the ready from the hands of more practiced guardians. Tommy fell into a lonesome category. That killing thing which threatened her with unblinking eyes could end her short life in a fleeting moment. Face red, hands clutching her throat to stop a pain that would not cease until froth had formed at the corners of her mouth. If Enoch were not quick footed enough to make it to the dock upon hearing her screams, she would seize out in the dirt. If he was, she would at least make it to the steps before her skin turned purple and tongue swelled beyond repair.
Tommy didn’t venture to assume that she could survive that sort of thing again.
“Everyone knows your parents were cretins,” Oliver chided, slapping his stick in the mud. Tommy shrugged off the insult, before realizing it had not been leveled at her in the first place. “Now they’re dead, and so is your brother.”
“Your parents are dead too!” Cried the girl, sloshing out of a rising wave. Tommy tried to recall her name. Eastern in nature, she thought. Far from the celt varieties of the Hidden Islands.
“Yeah, and they died for the right side,” Oliver returned. Each step was a word as he waded toward her, “Not for the Deatheaters who started this war.”
“They didn’t have a choice!” The girl screamed.
Tommy focused her attention on the hornet, which like herself, refused to make an inch of ground. Even when the sharp thud broke the evening. Long past the point where Olivers head had gone under, a pair of nimble hands holding his body below the tide it until it seemed an impossibly long time for bubbles to keep rising.
The hornet fluttered, only an inch. The girl went under with a tight scream, muffled by black water in her throat and arms breaking through bracken tide.
Sinai, that was her name. Novak.
Tommy flicked the wasp, it’s body writhed in a patch of grass some feet away. A singular dark bead in a haystack that pleaded for further attention. Her bare feet traversed the stones of the bank, metal and broken glass digging into the hardened parts of her soles. It wasn’t much compared to the pain of dissipated air in her lungs as she took to the water, as if someone had turned on a vacuum that sucked every drop of blood from her nerves and made her swim in it.
By the time Enoch found the mess there was only two of them left. Oliver floated on his stomach some miles down the Thames, bloated by then, a carriage for birds to ride on as they picked minnows from the crags and used the soft of his neck as a dinner plate. It wasn’t a noble way to go. Then again, such noble houses rarely fell in a way that was dignified. Rather, they dried up like plums in the hot sun and waited for scavengers to pick open the seeds.
“Who did that then?” Enoch asked, acutely aware of a missing child and two more with water poured out of their mouths like deflating vessels. He looked younger in such dim light, the moon at his back reflecting the softer proportions of his face. Men of his age rarely looked good in freckles, but he had a way of working that token of youth to his advantage. A boy soldier. A young captain of an army that lost one too many cadets. Tommy assumed he was in his early thirties. Men began to curdle beyond that.
Sinai didn’t blink as she lay with an open palm over the soft cotton of a hand-me-down paupers dress. Hell, she might have been dead too.
“I did,” Tommy choked. “And I would do it again.”
Enoch lowered himself, warm fingers to her neck, knees popping as he crouched. “You helped that girl with great risk to your own life, even when she didn’t deserve it. We both know it was not for the sake of your own integrity. You’re going to have many problems in your life, Tommy Crane. I sincerely doubt that you will ever be loved. You may be adored for your lies, your willingness to do what needs to be done. Even your skills will be vied for. But, nobody will ever truly like you beyond what they think they might gain from being in your company.” He paused, pulling a cigarette from his suit pocket and lighting it with the tip of his finger. “Are you prepared for that?”
Tommy turned her face toward the boathouse. A light had flickered on in the upper story. Three little faces gathered at the window to watch the commotion.
“I don’t care about being loved,” she mused.
“Good,” Enoch clapped his hands, then trailed the warmth of the cigarette down her jaw. She waited for him to press the glowing cherry to her throat, but he wavered. “Sometimes you remind me so much of your sister.”
Tommy initially thought he meant in her foxen features.
He likely meant, rotting.