A RAVEN IN THE DARK

         My eyes blink, grimy and sticking together. I squint as the light’s too bright, trying to understand. I’m warm and comfortable. The bed underneath me so much better than the cardboard and concrete I’m used to. I hear the patterned beep of some machine and the call of ravens outside the building. A plasticky-wrap smell convinces me I’m in the hospital. Whatever meds they’ve given me, they are nice. My dopey limbs twitch in response to my desire to move.

          “..’m alive?” I rasp, not expecting to say it out loud. The language sounds wrong.

         “Yes, you’re alive, Shieldmaiden.” I start at hearing an answer. “No thanks to trying to stand in front of a Berserker’s enchanted strike.”

         It’s a man’s voice which rumbles like distant thunder and swells like wind through big trees. I didn’t have anyone who would come visit me in the hospital, right? I peer to my left and identify a silhouette with the sun coming from the window behind him. He sits filling the standard hospital chair, but his stout shoulders curved inward, slumped as if carrying a heavy backpack. The bright back-light and overhead fluorescence make the details blurry. He might be wearing an eyepatch.

         “The girl?” I want to see her. I needed to check that the Berserker hadn’t hurt her.

         “Safe.”

         I let the word relax me some. The drugs rush into the void. I wonder if the man is a janitor or the hospital manager. Wait, no, the girl. Safe where? I want to ask him more. I have met him before, I think. Definitely wearing an eyepatch. My heavy lids lower to blink and— 

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         We lived in a place tucked up into a corner of the First Street Bridge, separated from the rest of LA by choice and status. Grimy heads bobbed by as they crawled in a little gate through our makeshift walls. Bits of wooden pallets, scavenged orange, mesh construction fencing, and whatever else could blend in and keep bigger people from reaching us. Together it all made our little corner of the bridge safer. Still wasn’t much to look at. But at least the overwhelming smell was car oil and exhaust, like a well-used car shop, as opposed to rotting things. Our little home for kids without homes or those who had run away.

Every night, I had the same goal. Make sure I counted up to seven little heads. I had the fuzziest of memories before I became in charge of our little group. I didn’t remember a time where I didn’t count to make sure the heads, which had left the hole that morning, returned the same evening. This just was. Same as the rest of the city continued its Hollywood and Twitter filled ways, beyond those of us who lived on the streets.

         “Three, four…” I huffed each number as a noise under my breath. Each number counted off as brown hair followed blonde, followed reddish, then black. I pulled at a loose thread at the bottom of my torn sweatshirt as I counted. The jeans underneath sagged at two sizes too big, but a bit of found twine and they at least stayed up. Once counted and inside, the kids slipped to their nest of newspapers, cardboard boxes, and coveted blankets. We slept in what we wore. A bottle of stolen sanitizer passed around as routine, hands, faces, and underarms washed. 

         “Six, s—” I said, expecting one last head to pop up through the improvised gate. The rumble of a passing vehicle echoed above us. I could hear the groack, groack call of the big blackbirds on the power lines above the bridge. They were always up there. No other sounds of a kid scrambling to enter came. We were missing one.

         A fourteen-year-old boy walked over to me as I stared stupidly at the empty gate. “Seventeen?” 

         It was my age. Just as he was Fourteen to me. I had a Nine, two Elevens, a Thirteen, a Fourteen, and two Fifteens. I didn’t care which of the two Elevens and two Fifteens answered as long as one of them did when I called their number. We all had names assigned, taken, or borrowed. But we never used them amongst ourselves. Numbers made it easier when someone left.

         “What is it?” I said. Forcing my limbs to start the processes of setting the pallet and rope which closed us in safely.

         “Thirteen is missing,” Fourteen said, his black hair dusty from whatever he’d been doing that day. We weren’t in the penthouse or a bank vault, but the flimsy walls kept most of the casual street dangers away. Two nights ago, a coyote had gotten especially eager, scratching and sniffing at the edges, that’d been a creepy noise to listen to.

         “She’s got to be in before dark. She knows the rule.”

         The light dripped away as normal, no added clouds to hurry the dark, but a mass of them towered in the distance.  A bell pealed out into the growing darkness, setting the time. If Thirteen did not return by the time all light disappeared, then she was out of the group. This was how we managed the threats living on the streets.

         It was nothing new when another kid ended up not coming back before dark. I couldn’t remember the last one who hadn’t returned, but I knew it happened. We’d all seen those we huddled together with, soon act like strangers. Some places were as tempting as that story about a candy house. Stories, really lies, like that always looked better than a blanket under a noisy bridge. I didn’t have time for those fairy-tales anymore. The littlest ones still whispered their stories, after I tied the fence, one to another, about kings and queens who will come to claim their lost children. Then all their friends and they would eat cake and ice cream every day. I used to snarl at them to stop, but gave up. They’d only whisper more.

         “I don’t think she means to miss the gate closing,” Fourteen said.

         “What do you mean?”

         “We saw that woman down by The Corners talking to her,” one of the Fifteens added.

         “What were you doing down at The Corners?” I said. All eyes avoided looking at me. “You know that place is bad news. If Thirteen was down there, then maybe she plans on not coming back.”

         Fourteen shook his head. The same Fifteen said to her feet, “Thirteen acted like she didn’t want to talk to that woman, but we wasn’t getting any closer. We figured she’d be ok.”

         Frustration ran along my nerves like a screech of a worn brake pad. The surrounding air had that feel of a storm moving in off the mountains, strange, not normal. I told them to stay away from The Corners, don’t get into cars, look out for one another, and be back at the bridge before dark. They should have been simple enough rules. They worked… well, they’d worked forever. 

         The other six smudged faces stared out of their small, grimy nests that should have held one more girl face. As the light faded faster, those sorrowful faces stared at me. I should snap at them to get some sleep. I’m sure it’s what I’d done before. Once the light faded, Thirteen was on her own. She wouldn’t be allowed back into the group tomorrow, even if she should show up alive. The rules kept us safe.

         I wanted to growl at them like the wild dogs on the streets did when you came too close to their found meal. When those kids stared at me like that, that kind of hero worship in their eyes, like I could solve all the problems, it rubbed salt into my uncertainty. I was the same as them. A street kid lost in the cracks of the big city who didn’t even know how she got there. I worked to keep seven other kids alive and scarred as little as possible. 

         I gazed out into the night with my hands still on the gate and thought about waiting until morning. But that same storms-a-coming feeling kept pushing at me to go now or miss the chance. If I wanted to try to save her, then I needed to go now. 

         I had to be crazy.