Nevermor Read Free Page B

together in one large
room that was full of echoes and damp smells.  They were unsupervised through
the night and left to care for one another.
    Max was among
the youngest, but he had his own bed just as Wren did.  The mattresses were
stuffed with sharp down that often pricked them, and the metal frames creaked
in the night, but it was better than sleeping on the ground, or outside in the
gutter.
    “What is it?” 
She looked over at him, seeing how he was curled around his pillow.  He had no
toys, so he often adopted the pillow as a stuffed doll.
    “Are you sad?”
he asked her.  “I can’t sleep if you’re sad.”
    Wren hated
herself for letting him notice, though she sometimes thought he was unnaturally
perceptive.  She didn’t like her personal feelings to bring any of them lower
than they already were.  She was one of the oldest here, and her brothers were
not the only ones who looked to her for guidance.
    “I’m alright. 
Come here,” she invited, holding out her arm to welcome him in. 
    Max and his
pillow crawled into bed with her, as he did on many nights when he couldn’t
sleep.  She often wondered if it was a good idea to keep him so close, though
she did feel he deserved to be coddled by someone .  She feared that this
made him look to her as if she were his mother.  She had, after all, been the
only one caring for him since he was old enough to remember, but she had never
liked the idea of that.  She was only a child herself and was unfit to raise
one.  What Max needed was a real mother.  They all did, but it was almost too
late for that – especially where she and Henry were concerned.  They had seen
far too much to go back to being petted again.
    “Everything is
alright,” she told him.  “It’s the same as it was yesterday.  We’re all
together and we’re safe.”
    “When are you
going to stop pretending that you’re alright?” Henry asked abruptly from his
bed on the other side of her.
    Judging by his
intolerant tone, this burst had been welling up inside him for several
minutes.  His eyes were blazing in the dim light, and she would have to put out
those flames.
    “I’m fine.  I’m just
tired,” she told him.
    “You’re upset
about today!” he accused.
    “I’m not,” she
insisted firmly, trying to calm him down before he got too loud and disturbed
the others.  “It’s been a long day, and we need our sleep for tomorrow.”
    “That’s a lie,
and you know it.  You wish those people had wanted to take us home.”
    Perhaps she had
– wolf eyes and all – but at the same time, she was glad to have avoided that
fate.  She did not, however, intend to explain all of this to Henry.  It was
beyond him.
    “I never stop
wishing for that,” she admitted.  “But it hasn’t happened yet, and we have to
accept that.”
    Henry twisted
onto his back, his movements swift and restless.  “We don’t have to be here,
you know,” he growled angrily, but his voice was subdued now.  “We can leave
whenever we want.  We can go find our real parents and make them take us
back.”
    They don’t want
us, Henry!  
Even if she had screamed it at him, she didn’t think that he would have gotten
it through his head.  Wren resolved not to think about their parents, even
though the subject had come up, but only promised herself that she would be a
better mother herself – someday.
    “Life isn’t so
bad here, Henry,” she said instead.
    “It gets worse
every day,” he complained for the sake of the argument.
    At times like
this, Wren wasn’t sure of what to do with him.  It seemed like everything she
said made him angrier – made their situation worse.  No matter what she said,
she couldn’t win, and likewise he wouldn’t relent.
    She did the only
thing she could do.
    “You’re going to
upset the others,” she told him sternly.  It was avoiding the subject, but it
was true.  Some of the other children were already starting to stir in their
beds, wondering