Join the Dance

xvii. The Dark Patches

It is not on you alone the dark patches fall, /
The dark threw its patches down upon me also.

- Walt Whitman, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

***

ORDER OF EVENTS
December 27 1899
By Caitlin Baptiste

- QUOITS QUARREL! (A COMPETITION)
- THE GRANDEST GAME O'GRACES TO (EVER) GRACE THIS GROUND
- EATING COMPETITION AT LUNCH (MAYBE)
- MEDAL CEREMONY
- SNOW CELEBRATION! (RAFE PERMITTING)
- BLANKET BUILDING & PILLOW PILING
- THE END!

PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT!! EDIT THIS DOCUMENT WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM CAITLIN BAPTISTE!!

***

Rafe took his lunch with Miss B. Not the best idea for his sake, but the pandemonium downstairs was difficult not to escape from, like having a circus trope rent out your front room. Your initial instincts were to move residence to a cave - or so Miss B was saying.

"I'm not disposed at present to be so radical, however. A shame." She picked up her lamb chop. "What's next, Rafe?"

"I read it's an eating competition." He ate his chop, too: they'd got a good shipment of lamb just yesterday, leftover from Christmas, from one of Miss B's rich friends here in the city. Lamb was generally reserved for upper-class restaurants.

"Oh dear. How are you taking it?"

"My head hurts. So nothing new."

"Will you send them out tomorrow? My head hurts, too."

Rafe didn't want to show his surprise. "Bein' up here doesn't help?"

She chewed. "... The fresh air does wonders. But I want those children out and about, boy, doing errands, being useful. Making money, and away from me. The Separation will not cause itself."

"But you said it ain't safe."

"It is not. We'll watch closely. Scruggs and I - "

"It ain't safe!" said Rafe again, twirling his fork through his fingers. Up, down, around. Up, down, around. "Magic people are being treated like..." He saw his half-eaten lamb chop. "Like sheep!" He glared at it as if it alone had caused his sudden irritation.

Miss B's voice turned low and serious. "Rafe. They will not be harmed as long as we guard them. You are their protector, remember that. They follow you every step. You set the precedent of caution, and the children will be cautious."

Oh, so it's that easy. Sure, he wanted them to be able to run around outside. And sure, it couldn't be much more dangerous out there than it was a few days ago. But that didn't mean he wasn't worried.

"I saw a family get evicted last night. The kids had no socks on in the snow. I saw a man spit on their toes." The dark was deep near his mother's apartment, but from the rooftops Rafe had watched, with rapt disgust in the light of the moon, a tenement of magical families emptied out so that with none of their possessions except each other, they ended up standing wretched in the midnight street.

"That's not the worst of it."

"I know. That's my point. What if - "

"It won't happen to us, boy."

What if the Savages were abused? Attacked? Made to remember their past lives, as small kids, trapped in jobs that exploited them and in a world that hated them? What if they were hurt?

"It could happen," he argued.

Miss B picked up a stray cup of tea, sipped from it. "Ugh. Gone cold. Rafe - listen. In the broad daylight, with Scruggs and I keeping our spells intact, and with you and all my associates - many of whom you don't know of - keeping your eyes wide open, the children will not come to any harm before Sunday."