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.

Magpies had nests to hide their treasures. Tini doesn't, so she never gets to keep them long. Sometimes they stop for a few days or even a month, especially when it rains and the roads are dangerous, and she makes a little pile of things she's found. Keys and spoons and bits of worn glass, clips that girls used to wear in their hair, and little bottles with nail varnish dried on in crazy pavement patterns. But eventually Damon gets that look again and spends his time at the doorway, staring out into the darkness or the rain, and Tini digs a hole with a stick and buries her things so they're safe, and then they leave.

One house they stopped in had bodies in the bed still. Bones surrounded by fabric that crumbled to dust when Tini touched it, but gold never faded, and she saw the sparkle in the weak afternoon sun. Neria watched her from the doorway, and she looked sad when Tini ran to her to show her her prize. When she asked why Neria was sad, she called the ring a promise that got broken. Damon and the others buried the people at the back of the house, and Neria made her put the ring with them before they filled in the shallow grave.

Tini heard them arguing that night. Raised voices drifting in through the cracks they couldn't patch in the broken windows, too far away to make out words but angry enough to frighten her, especially when she heard her name. Neria didn't raise her voice often, not like that, but when she did, it was usually about Tini. She screwed her eyes tight closed and dragged her blanket up over her head, pressing her hands over her ears so she couldn't hear them over the rush of her own heart.

In the morning, they acted like nothing had happened, all smiles from Neria and grunts and ruffling her hair from Damon. The others are busy like they always are. Tommy and Alf and Jenny and Pet and the rest. They don't really have time for her, and they aren't always there. They drift off and come back, and maybe they'll mention that she's grown again or give her something they've found. When they're working in the garden, she gets sent out with water that Neria boils through the day, and sometimes with food if it's safe, but mostly they keep her indoors, out of sight. There, she dipped in and out of crumbling rooms, magpie eyes alight for anything they can use. Scissors that still cut a little, sheets packed away in boxes that protected them from rot, empty bottles Neria can boil clean. And in between she finds her trinkets. In a box with its lid falling off, tucked in the back of a chest of drawer where the runners stick, there's burnished silver and green-tinged copper, and in amongst is a heart that gleams brighter, because gold never loses its lustre. She clutches it in one hand and takes it to the window. Tiny fingers find the clasp and open it. Two people stare back at her, their pictures cut out into the shape of the heart by clumsy hands that cut too close at one edge, too wide on another, but with care.

She closes it again and slides the chain over her head, tucks the heart against her chest and hides it in her clothes, although she won't understand why until she's older, and those faces are the only ones she remembers.