Join the Dance

xi. Rafe, the Thief

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.

- The Book of Common Prayer, "A General Confession"

He wandered lonely up the aisles of the empty, quiet church. The children, their beds and the blanket curtains were all gone, leaving only Rafe in the dead silence. The candles were not lit. The altar and the crucifix shone with a backlit glow from the stained glass. And whenever he tried to walk in that direction, he found his ankles were tied to a chain. Long and strong it was, and behind him it reached out the double doors, out into the deep darkness.

Out in the real night, darkness was deep. But it didn't scare him. The night was his friend.

Rafe ran  to his mother's house, through the deathly quiet streets, away from the nightmares and pressing matters that were choking his chest like dust. The silence here wasn't quite so congesting. It was peaceful.

The square of the window lit up. The old woman moved around. Even on Christmas night, she was here! That comforted him.

And yet, everything was so different. Rafe felt so much more bitter now than he had even a few days ago, so much more unsettled. How could only a few days simmer his anger and sequester his life to only the church and this ledge?

Pointless, he knew, was his nightly daydream about the past. He had always kept it a secret because of the embarrassment of it; sitting here staring at a window, pretending.

Sometimes Rafe imagined Ma watching the sunrise and rubbing his hair to make him wake up. Sometimes he imagined she had come back to life and moved back in without telling him, and he was about to jump up and run to her and tell her what she'd missed: about Miss B, and the Savages, and all the terrible people, the Imps, the giant man, and Kate... and Kate...

What would Ma think of the Separation, or of Kate? She would like one, and not the other. He was certain of that.

The light went out. The old woman stopped dusting, and Rafe climbed down from his ledge, his mind pacing over the landscape of all of Kate's words to him these past two days.

He walked slowly, always intending to end up at the church, but somehow always skirting it. Avoiding sleep was his forte, and he enjoyed excelling in it, however indulgent that may be.

He would often venture into green-grassed graveyards or climb the tenements at dawn, or simply wander down rich streets he could never aspire to live in (much less want to, since they were inhabited by non-magical people).

This particular day being Boxing Day, New York was late to rise - unless you were in the Bowery. Which Rafe was.

Christmas trees were being hauled by ropes onto carts at 4am, and by 5am hawkers were already yelling the details of their wares to no-one in particular, particularly not the businessmen that hurried past the ramshackle tents on their way to more fashionable workplaces, keeping their top hats low.

Rafe kept to the sidewalks just outside the magical quarter.

He stole, not as well as he could with the Savages, but still decently enough on his own. It was a habit, really: jostling the line of early-birds buying their pasties for breakfast; asking for directions to the orphans' home (his little sister had got herself stuck in there); haunting the alley near the butcher's so his customers would smell a fire nearby, he'd go out to look on their insistence, and Rafe would stumble into them muttering something about arson and how they'd better buy their porks and run.