Lexy Needham

The Magpie

Damon calls Tini his little magpie, which made her cross until Neria told her what a magpie was. They sat together in the shadows of a crumbling shed as night settled over the valley below them and she closed her eyes to imagine birds in the darkening sky. The next time they risked going into a town, Neria ushered her into the shelter of a building she called a library, where the walls were lined with shelves of actual books, or had been before they gave way and their contents spilled across the floor. In the children's section they found guides to plants and animals and birds, and when they left Neria slipped one into her bag and promised not to tell Damon, so Tini could lie awake in the hours between dawn and the day starting, leafing through the pages and imagining. Sometimes she imagines she's a hare running through fields, or a deer in a woodland, but mostly she imagines she's a magpie, high in the sky and watching out for treasure.