Faris and Jack

by Melanie Cusick-Jones

  * * *

  Faris struggled up the steep stairs towards his dormitory. With each step, his aching muscles burned and his legs wobbled, as if they might not actually keep holding him up. It was very late and he was the last boy to reach the room, where the others were already asleep, exhausted from their day of hard labour.

  Having the bathroom to himself for once, Faris took the opportunity to get a quick wash – splashing cold water under his armpits and over his chest, as well as brushing his teeth thoroughly with his finger. His weekly bath was still three days away and after spending the afternoon wading through pig muck and peeling potatoes inside the stinky kitchen, he certainly felt grubbier than usual.

  Faris moved towards his bed, but surprisingly, didn’t climb straight in to go to sleep. His feet carried him past the hard-looking mattress, straight to his favourite spot: the window seat. Climbing onto the wide ledge beside the glass, he settled back against the wall and gazed down on the world outside.

  The moon sat high in the sky, its cream face bathing the streets below in a milky light. Midnight was approaching, fast and the night was cold and cloudless. Unsurprisingly nothing moved on the silent streets of South Appledale.

  Faris wondered, as he often had, what the Grimbaldi Foundation for the Potentially Lacking looked like to the people outside its walls. In Faris’s mind, the large house at the edge of the village sat alone, glaring down over the roofs of the other buildings. The window where he sat now would be one of the staring eyes.

  At that moment, had someone been walking in the street below and looked up at the Foundation, they would have seen a pale face peering back at them out of the gloom. They would have seen Faris’s dark eyes and short brown hair, perhaps wondered at how old he might be and how strange it was that a child would be awake and out of bed at such a late hour.

  Faris could tell it was colder than usual that night because each breath he took came out of his mouth in a silvery mist. It steamed up small patches on the windowpane two inches from his nose and slowly blocked his view of the outside world. The cold never bothered him: he had grown used to the wintry world of the Foundation over the past nine years. It was like this every night in his dormitory because Mister Grimbaldi would never consider wasting heat or any other kind of comfort on the tenants of his establishment. The boys of the Foundation were there only to make him money, not to cost him anything.

  Mister Grimbaldi was a cruel man, without a kind bone in his body (most of the boys said he had a swinging brick instead of a heart). His “Foundation” was nothing more than a Victorian workhouse, into which he took orphaned boys to work as slave labour. Of course, no one knew this was what he did. By all outward appearances he was a man of generous spirit, giving a home and opportunity to poor little orphaned boys. It was a disguise he had used for a long time. The truth was that Mister Grimbaldi was as nasty and cold as the establishment he ran.

  Faris turned away from the chilly window and rubbed his hands together briskly to get some warmth and feeling back into them He sighed quietly as he looked around the shabby dormitory he called home. Four metal-framed beds sat against worn walls where ancient wallpaper hung off in patches revealing the bare bricks beneath. The thin mattresses on the beds were ripped and dirty. Springs popped out of them in places and they sagged so low on the bed frames that the boys could have slept on the floor and they would have been just as comfortable.

  Faris’s bed was closest to the window and sat empty tonight, as it did every night. The paper-thin sheets were filled with holes and spiders and lay crumpled in a small heap at one end of the bed – they were worse than useless at keeping out the cold. There were two other boys in the dormitory who were fast asleep in their own beds, huddled into small balls beneath covers as thin and holey as those on Faris’s bed. Their skin looks blue in the moonlight, Faris thought to himself as he glanced at the sleeping boys. But it wasn’t just the moonlight, the boys were blue – blue with cold.

  It had been nine years since Faris had been left at Grimbaldi’s Foundation for the Potentially Lacking. He had been just a year old when some unknown person had left him on the doorstep, next to the morning paper and bottles of semi-skimmed milk. The residents of the Foundation were all boys who were considered “potentially lacking” because they had no family, no money and no prospects. But Faris was different to the other boys at the Foundation – he had prospects, some very, very important prospects. Although he didn’t know it yet he had a future outside the walls of this prison.

  Over the years Faris had spent most of his nights sat next to an empty bed, looking out of the window and watching the empty South Appledale streets below him. Through the long dark hours he would watch and wait for something to happen…the unknown something that he felt from the very bottom of his heart would one day come. For nine years no one had come for him, no one had tried to find him and no family had ever arrived to take him away. But tonight was different. Tonight there would be something.

  Through the creaky floorboards below him Faris heard the large grandfather clock in the hallway of the Foundation slowly start to chime. One, two, three, Faris counted silently to himself. Seven, eight, nine, the clock continued to clang and Faris yawned, his mouth stretching wide open. Ten, eleven, twelve, Faris finished counting. Up past midnight. Again! He scolded himself. No wonder he was always so tired during the day. Faris was constantly being punished for not working as fast as the other boys.

  “There’s no room for dreams in your world boy.” Mister Grimbaldi would growl at Faris when he was punishing him for working too slowly. “You’ve got nowhere to go. This is the very best that you can expect from life!” He would say, his large shiny baldhead going red with anger as Faris silently ignored his words and gazed out of the window. Then Faris would normally find himself scrubbing toilets, cleaning out the pig-sty or some other equally horrible chore as punishment for being silly enough to think he could have dreams of his own.

  Faris was just about to leave the window and go to bed, when something strange happened. In the hallway of the house, far below where he sat, the grandfather clock chimed once, very loudly.

  Thirteen?! The clock doesn’t chime thirteen!

  Faris looked up, his brown eyes open wide in surprise. His gaze swung immediately to the window and the church clock tower in the village below. Both hands on the clock face stood perfectly upright, one covering the other. It was exactly midnight – the peculiar place between one day and another where anything was possible.

  Out of the corner of his eye, something in the moonlit street caught Faris’s attention. A large pigeon had fluttered onto the ground below his window. It stood for a moment or two, looking up and down the street and walking in tight circles on its small pink feet. Faris pressed his forehead against the cold window to get a better look. That’s strange, he thought to himself, pigeons are city birds…you never usually see them around here. As Faris watched, the bird stopped walking in circles and slowly, very slowly, it lifted its head up towards the sky…and it looked him right in the eye.

  Faris jumped away from the window. Birds don’t do that! He pushed away the silly idea, but a moment later he was back at the glass with his head pressed against the icy pane. That pigeon can’t have been looking at me, he told himself. Faris squinted back down at the pavement. The pigeon was still standing there. Still looking up at his window.

  It’s watching me, Faris thought. But then just as quickly he shook his head, dismissing the idea. Don’t be stupid – birds don’t watch people! It’s just a bird!! Just as he did this, the pigeon cocked its head to one side. It gave Faris a funny look, as if to say “I can hear what you’re thinking and I’m going to prove you wrong.”

  “You’re actually going crazy,” Faris muttered to himself beneath his breath. He probably had some form of sleep-madness he decided, why else would he be imagining human behaviour in animals. I should just turn away and climb into bed. But he didn’t.

  As Fa
ris watched from the window the bird looked down at its leg, apparently interested in something there and then it looked up at him again. With a quick nod of its head it spread out its wings and flapped up towards the window where Faris was sitting.

  The pigeon landed on the window ledge and stared at Faris. Faris sat in his dormitory and looked back at the bird, mainly out of curiosity because the bird was acting rather strangely. This is the most interesting thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here, Faris reasoned with himself. Usually, the most exciting thing he would see during his nightly vigil was the large, evil cat from down the street chasing after some poor creature or other. Needless to say, after all these years that was not overly interesting anymore.

  A minute or two passed while Faris sat, pondering what the pigeon was doing. The pigeon itself was just perched on the window ledge staring at him with its small black eyes. But a moment later it shuffled closer to the windowpane and tapped three times on the glass with its beak.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that bird wanted me to open the window,” Faris muttered to himself. But it can’t do, that’s just, that’s just…Faris couldn’t think what it was, but it certainly wasn’t normal.

  He did nothing, but kept watching the bird. After a few more seconds the pigeon tapped on the window again. This time it tapped five times and was a lot louder, as though it was getting impatient at not being let in. Behind him in the dormitory one of the other boys stirred in his sleep. Faris looked nervously over his shoulder at him.

  The boys at the Foundation were not allowed to leave their beds after lights out until five o’clock the next morning, when they would be awoken by the loud clanging bell that signalled the start of another day of hard labour to make money for Mister Grimbaldi. As Faris watched, the boy shivered deeply in his sleep and rolled over, snuggling lower into his wafer thin sheet. He was still asleep.

  Faris sighed with relief and turned his attention back to the window. The pigeon was still there and as he watched, it tilted its head towards its left leg, which it lifted in the air and jiggled around as though it was doing some strange bird “hokey-cokey”.

  What is that crazy…? Before Faris could finish wondering what on earth the bird was doing, he noticed that there was a small cream roll of paper attached the bird’s leg with bright red ribbon. As strange as it may seem, it appeared that the bird had a message for him.

  Slowly and very quietly Faris slid the window upwards and the pigeon hopped inside the dormitory. It shook its feathers silently as it allowed Faris to untie the scroll from around its leg. As soon as he had the scroll in his hand the bird tipped its head towards him in a polite sort of nod and then flapped away from the Foundation into the still night air. Faris watched the bird until it disappeared in the darkness. He sat for several moments, not moving, just thinking. Faris glanced towards the church clock and was very surprised to see that the two black hands were still pointing straight upright. It was still midnight.

  This is beyond crazy. Faris shook his head. It’s been at least five minutes since I heard the clock chime downstairs, so it can’t still be midnight – can it? He sat in the window for another ten minutes watching as the clock hand slowly moved from twelve to two. Once he was happy that time hadn’t stopped completely he turned away from the open window and looked down at the tiny roll of paper he held in his hand.

  Two years ago a new boy had come to the Foundation. John was eight when he arrived and he was the only boy there who had ever attended school – all the other boys had come as small children, not old enough to have had even one day in school. Faris remembered John telling them that many years ago pigeons had been used to carry messages long distances to people from their owners. But Faris didn’t know anyone at all, let alone someone who could send him messages by pigeon. Anyway, from what John had told him, Faris couldn’t think of anywhere in the outside world that would still use a pigeon as a messenger.

  With many confused thoughts spinning around his head Faris nearly forgot about the message itself. Slowly he unrolled the tiny scroll to reveal a note written inside in very small black handwriting; he tilted the paper towards the moonlit window so he could read it. Faris was lucky that John had taught him to read and write a little, or else the message would have been completely useless. As it was, the message was going to change his life.

  Dear Faris,

  Please excuse the strange introduction, but it was the only way I could find to contact you. I am waiting for you now at the back door and I am here to take you to your real life - we hope you will come.

  Kind Regards,

  Jack Ω

  Faris stood up and walked over to his unmade bed, not bothering to close the window. He couldn’t understand all the words in the letter, but he had got the point. They had found him. At last, after nine long years alone the someone he had been waiting for had found him! A part of Faris had always felt as though he were different to the other boys at the Foundation and that one day he would leave. This note confirmed everything he had always thought! Although they didn’t say they were his family, Faris knew that this was the something he had been waiting for.