“Slow down, boy.” Mellie stomped her way over to her bench and sat down with a grunt, gesturing at the empty space next to her. Charlie’s Sunday jacket looked quite sharp on her, the tiny part of his brain not swirling about in a mad panic observed. He handed the mug of porridge to her and she pulled a dirty-looking spoon from somewhere in the depths of her many jumpers. She placed Pudge into Charlie’s arms and he began to stroke his silky head without thinking.
“Now,” she said around a mouthful of porridge. “From the beginning.”
The sun was fully up by the time Charlie was done talking. Mellie had long since finished her porridge and begun serving the pigeons their breakfast of stale crusts. Pudge had gone to sleep on Charlie’s lap and Bertie had huddled up next to him to keep warm. The street was milling with people, who now and then tossed Mellie and Charlie curious glances. Charlie was too distracted to care.
“Now, that,” Mellie said finally, “is a right predicament.”
“What should I do?”
“Never mind ‘should,’ should is philosophy and poppycock. Stuff and nonsense. What can you do? Lay out your options, Merriweather. Assess the weapons available to you. Warcraft 101.”
“I don’t have any weapons. I have Biscuits and this coat—that’s it.” Biscuits swatted at his ankle to remind him that that was certainly not nothing. He scratched at her ears.
“Well, a good coat is a good start,” Mellie said, running her thick-knuckled hands along her sleeves. She looked immensely proud of it. Charlie’s shoulders felt, for a moment, just a tiny bit lighter. “But that’s a shield more than a weapon. Defensive, not offensive. We need to think carefully. We need more intelligence.”
“I’ll say,” Charlie said, rubbing at his head.
“I mean facts, not brains, boy. Although, seeing as you chased after a pack of war wolves in the middle of the night without a plan of attack, a few more brains might not hurt you.”
Charlie nodded, heavy with misery.
“You can’t open the door without the keys, yes?”
“Right.”
“And you can’t get the keys without the wolves.”
“Right. I mean, I think that’s right. I can’t imagine anyone but a war wolf would have the keys to the War Room. And I don’t know any locksmiths. And even if I did, those locks didn’t look . . . standard-issue.”
“No, I’d imagine not. So,” Mellie said, resettling herself. “You’ll probably have to deal with more wolves, if you need more keys. How will you get them? What do they want? Your heart?”
“I . . . I don’t think so. The war wolf last night said that they each have their own . . . currency, she called it.”
“Hmm” was all she said, glaring thoughtfully out into space. After a long minute, she finally said, “How’s your heart?”
“It hurts.”
“Hearts do that. It’s mostly what they’re for: breaking and hurting. The hurt’s how you know it’s still there. Come back tomorrow,” she said, standing up, pigeons flurrying around her. “I’ll give it a think and we’ll make a plan.”
Charlie, knowing when he’d been dismissed, got up to his feet. His knees crackled a bit from sitting for so long, and he wished that he’d thought to bring his bicycle. He didn’t feel much like going home, but it was too cold to go anywhere else without a scarf and mittens.
Bertie swooped overhead to make sure Charlie made it down the street safely, although, here in the daylight, it felt like Bertie’s droppings were the main danger. And as Charlie finally arrived back at home, at little lighter, perhaps, than he’d been when he left, the bird did a little loop in the air that Charlie reckoned was a pigeon salute.
21
CHARLIE STOOD IN THE KITCHEN LATE THAT night, or perhaps very early the next morning, and truly looked at his brother for the first time since he had first spoken to the war wolves.
He had woken up that night from a fitful sleep, wolves and pigeons and cats chasing each other in endless loops all through his dreams. Theo was up, walking around the kitchen downstairs. Charlie recognized the THUMP-drag, THUMP-drag of Theo’s walk, moving in an endless loop. Checking the perimeter, that’s what Grandpa Fitz called it.
Charlie had punched his pillow a few times, trying to get comfortable. Biscuits had made a grumpy noise from somewhere under the blankets, and teeth nipped at his ankle, as if to suggest that he settle down or leave certain other parties to get their well-deserved beauty sleep. With a sigh, Charlie had gotten out of his warm bed and padded in stocking feet downstairs.
Now, Theo was standing by the kitchen table, his eyes flickering from the door to each of the windows in turn. He was pale. He looked so very, very tired.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Theo asked without turning around.
“No,” Charlie said, sitting down in the chair to Theo’s left. “I keep thinking about all the things I have to do tomorrow.”
Theo gave a dry huff of a laugh. “That I understand.”
“How is the new job?” Charlie winced, wishing he could snatch the words back. The job Charlie had made Theo miss because he had thrown a snowball at him because he was a thoughtless idiot? The job they needed the money from so Mum could unclench her shoulders just a little bit? That job?
“It’s fine,” Theo said, his voice indifferent.
“It’s not . . . too early? For you to go back? After . . . ?”
Theo just shrugged. “There’s nothing for it.”
“But do you . . . like it? The job, I mean? Do you like the factory?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “But I don’t really think there’s a job anywhere in London I would enjoy, anyway.”
In the dark, Theo didn’t look so tired, so angry, like he always did now. In the moonlight it could almost be like before—before the war, before the wolves, before the whole world had gone wrong.
THUMP-drag, Theo marched. THUMP-drag.
Charlie could only blame the fact that he was exhausted from hunting monsters who ate hearts when he said, without thinking, “You always did say I’d make you go all lopsided.”
Theo’s face went strange, blank and then red, and then his shoulders began to shake.
Oh no, Charlie was so stupid, he should’ve known it wasn’t funny, he should’ve known—
Theo was laughing.
The laughter didn’t stop. Theo was barely making any noise, just sucking air and shaking, his mouth wide open, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.
“Theo?” Charlie finally said, rising, crossing to his brother and tapping his shoulder. “Are you all right, Theo?”
Theo just waved a hand dismissively at him and wiped the tears from his eyes.
Some mad impulse took over Charlie’s mouth. He wanted it so badly all of a sudden—the life, the world, the Theo he’d had before. “Will you tell me a story?”
Theo looked over at him in surprise, his breath still coming in fits and starts.
“Just a short one,” Charlie added quickly. “Just so I can sleep.”
His brother was silent for a long minute, and Charlie had almost decided to go back to bed, but then Theo began speaking, his voice a little hoarse.
“Once upon a time, there was a baker,” Theo said, carefully sitting down at the kitchen table, his bad leg stretched out in front of him. Charlie sat down beside him, trying to be soundless so as not to break the temporary spell. “He was the best baker in his whole village, some people even said in the whole world. He loved to make cakes and pies and iced buns and soft, flaky pastries for all the villagers. He thought he could give them sweetness, to lessen the bitterness of their lives. The town had been stricken with a plague of sadness by a wicked sorcerer. Not the crying kind of sadness, but just a wet blanket of unhappiness that clung to everyone like mildew. Joy couldn’t push its way through to any of them.
“The baker loved his village; he wanted to see the people smile again. But no matter how much sweetness he put into their bellies, he could never seem to put any
into their hearts. With each passing day the sorcerer’s curse weighed heavier on the village, until the villagers were so sad they could barely get out of bed to milk the cows or tend their fields.
“Finally, the day came when no one came to the baker’s shop for sticky buns or bread studded with berries and nuts. They were all too overcome by a grief they didn’t understand. All day the baker waited and waited, but no one ever came. So that night, he began laying out the dough for something new. The last bit of sweetness could he offer up to the village he so cared for. He took all of the love out of his chest and baked it into a pie. He made the crust a latticework of all the hopes and dreams he had for his friends in the village. He dusted it with sugar like an early snowfall, and then he set out into the dying light.”
The blue light of the dark room only illuminated the highest planes of Theo’s face, so Charlie saw him only as a flash of cheekbone, the bridge of a nose, the occasional flash of teeth.
“He gave a slice of the pie to each of the villagers in turn. With each bite he saw the joy come back into their eyes. But with each slice there was less and less of him left, too. Finally, he’d given a piece of the pie that was his love to everyone in the village. There was just one sliver left. Just enough for one more person—the piece he’d saved for himself. But as he lifted the pie to his lips, he saw a long, dark figure walking down the road towards the village square. It was the wicked sorcerer who had cursed the land with sadness. He had felt the curse lifted with each villager that tasted the baker’s heart.
“‘How did you fix them?’ the sorcerer asked the baker. ‘How did you get rid of the sadness? How did you make it go away?’ The sorcerer was crying. And the baker realized that the sorcerer had cursed the land because he, too, was cursed to never feel joy. He had wanted someone else to feel what he felt, and now that the village was saved, he was alone in his unhappiness again.
“So the baker took the sorcerer’s hand, and placed the last slice of pie in it, and lifted it to the sorcerer’s lips. And with that last bite, the sorcerer’s own curse was lifted, and the sadness fell away from the land, not just the village. The sun shone brighter than anyone could remember.
“But the baker’s love was gone, every crumb of it given away. The village prospered and the sorcerer went through the land undoing all the wickedness he had wrought. But the baker never smiled again. The end.”
His story finished, Theo got back up and began walking the perimeter of the room again. THUMP-drag, THUMP-drag.
There was something Charlie should be saying, he knew. Exactly the right thing to make Theo understand that Charlie was helping the best way he knew how; a magic word to break the curse, a pie with all his love in it.
Was that what it would take, in the end, to fix Theo? All of Charlie’s love, his whole heart on a plate? But how could Charlie possibly make himself love Mum less, or Grandpa Fitz, or Biscuits, or even Mellie? He couldn’t. And what was more, deep in the pit of his stomach he knew he wouldn’t, either. Just like he would never give a wolf his heart to eat, and that Theo wouldn’t, either. He couldn’t have.
“You’re home now, Theo.” Charlie’s voice came out in a hoarse squeak. “I missed you for so long, did you know that? But you’re home now, you really are.”
“I don’t think I am, Charlie.” Theo’s eyes caught the firelight, two small torches against so much darkness.
“Theo . . .”
“I think, maybe, I’m still there.”
“No, you’re right here,” Charlie insisted, grabbing Theo’s hand. But Theo eased himself out of Charlie’s grip, and stood so the moonlight slipped off him like a closing curtain.
“Good night, Charlie,” Theo said as he made his way to the stairs.
“Good night, Theo,” Charlie said, and found himself alone in the dark.
Charlie knew who it was before he opened his eyes. The briny, fishy smell of the docks spiced with the metallic tang of the metalworks factory that was next to the harbor: Dad.
“Charlie, wake up.” Dad’s voice was a whisper, but still deep and thick with smoke from the docks and the burr in his vowels from where he’d grown up, somewhere far to the north, Charlie couldn’t remember where.
Charlie blinked, eyes blurry with sleep, Dad just a big, soft shape interrupting the dark of Charlie’s bedroom. “Dad? Did you work a double shift again?”
“Yes, and a good thing, too. Otherwise I might never have found this little one as needed looking after.”
Charlie sat up as Dad pulled something out from deep inside his coat. At first he thought it was a balled-up fur cap like he’d seen posh ladies wearing downtown. Then Dad put the fur cap into Charlie’s sleep-clumsy hands, and Charlie almost dropped it in surprise. It was warm and vibrating. A tiny mouth with nubs where the teeth should have been latched onto Charlie’s finger. It didn’t hurt—if anything, it tickled a bit. The fur hat’s vibrating got louder.
“I found her hidden under some netting, all alone. I think her mum lost track of her when she was moving her other babies. Such lungs she had, wailing away so loud I could hear her over the foghorns. So I dug around until I found her and you know what she said?”
“What?”
“She said she needed someone to take care of, once she got big enough. She said she just needed a little help getting to the big enough part. Do you think she could look after you, Charlie? Would you mind? Since I’ll have to work a few more doubles before winter sets in and Theo’s got his paper route?”
“I don’t mind,” Charlie whispered in the dark. The kitten had crawled up his pajamas with tiny, sharp claws and tucked itself into a tight ball between his shoulder and chin. “We can look after each other.”
“I think that’s a wonderful idea, Charlie. What’ll we call this little one?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “She’s my favorite thing. She’s my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.”
Charlie didn’t see so much as hear Dad smile. “What’s your second favorite thing, then? We should mark her place of honor.”
“Um . . .” Charlie had to think, but only for a moment. “Biscuits.”
Dad laughed and flicked a biscuit crumb at Charlie from where they were clustered by the candle on his nightstand. “That sounds about right. Biscuits she shall be, then.”
Biscuits made a little brrrrpt noise against Charlie’s neck. Charlie felt the sound bouncing around inside him like a moth tapping against the windows of his rib cage.
“I love her, Dad.”
“And I love you, my Charlie boy. Sleep tight, my little ones.”
Charlie’s cheeks were wet with tears when he woke up. Biscuits licked them away.
22
CHARLIE WENT TO GET BREAD FOR TOAST AND hit empty cupboard wall instead.
“Grandpa Fitz, we’re out of bread again,” Charlie said over his shoulder.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grandpa Fitz’s shoulders slump as he tucked some mail into a drawer. “Thank you, Charles, I’ll take care of it.”
Charlie felt something like delayed panic. He hadn’t meant to upset anyone, he didn’t need toast, no one needed toast. “I’m going out for a bit,” he said, hoping to distract him. “Have you seen Biscuits?”
“She saw a mouse on the windowsill outside and screamed until I let her out to give chase. I’m sure she’ll be back soon, with all sorts of grisly little presents.”
Charlie felt sweat bloom on the back of his neck. “Are you sure it was a mouse and not a rat?”
“Hmm? I didn’t actually get a very good look at it; I suppose it could have been a rat. Biscuits has always been ambitious in her attempts at slaughter. Why?”
“No reason.” He kissed him on a whiskery cheek and went to pull on his coat. “I’m going out for a bit, see you later.”
As he stepped outside, he called for Biscuits, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Be careful,” he whispered, and walked into the street.
There were so many people out, he still
wasn’t used to it. All the young men, milling loose, and women, too, a lot of them probably like Rosie Linton’s sister and suddenly without a job to be at during the day, now that those men had come home. It made him feel crowded. Everything seemed to be pressing in on him lately.
St. Paul’s wasn’t a short walk, and his cheeks were burning with cold by the time he arrived at the right street. This one, like so many others, was mostly abandoned buildings and, every few houses, one that had been blown apart, like a missing tooth in a rotten smile. Charlie could sort of go numb to it in the other streets, the odd sort of evenness. He could almost trick himself into thinking it looked normal. But entire streets around St. Paul’s were simply gone. Looking up in London, he was still used to buildings around him, stretching up on all sides; here, there was nothing but piles and piles of red brick and gray cement in the blasted craters where whole lives used to be.
You could see so much of the sky from here, but in a backwards, mirrored sort of way. It felt wrong to look at, like being able to see the space behind Grandpa Fitz’s missing arm.
For the middle of a weekday, there were a surprising number of people milling about, some of them sitting on the church steps talking or eating their lunches. None of them, of course, could see the wolf waiting for him, sitting quite matter-of-factly on the walk by the steps to the front of the huge domed cathedral. People coming up and down the stairs gave him a wide berth without seeming to realize what they were doing, or why.
This one looked old, but not the way Dishonor looked old. His face was masked in white and gray, but his eyes were a clear sharp yellow and the muscles underneath his coal-dark fur were strong, and waiting. It followed his approach but made no move to stand up or come any closer.
Charlie forced each foot forward until he was an arm’s length away.
“Good afternoon,” said the war wolf, his voice neither quiet nor loud.
“. . . Hello.” It was a bit mad that Charlie felt almost more worried about people looking at him speaking to no one than he was about the fact that he was, in point of fact, speaking to a monster with very large teeth. Grandpa Fitz would have said there was a lesson in there somewhere, but Charlie was not in a fit state to go searching for it.
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