I shove my plate to the side, and race upstairs, nearly slipping on the narrowly curving staircase. I open my door and dive onto the bed, opening the windows. I'm steadied by my knee catching on the ledge, and nearly tipping me out, so I slow down.
I crawl my hand along the brickwork and grip the sheaf of paper wedged in there. It's pretty tightly wedged in there, almost unmovable. I prise it free, and stare at in disbelief. Can this person fly? Are they telekinetic? Or was there a damn good climber shimmying up the drainpipe next to my bedroom?
I try not to think about it. I unfold the note, with the same nice handwriting and folding style.
Dear Death's Daughter.
The world needs death. Don't ask about what will happen to the world, but death itself. We will still need your help.
The Apprentice.
I frown. What kind of a message is that? 'Don't ask about what will happen to the world, but death itself'. Sounds like someone ripped it off the blurb of some mystery novel. I grab some more paper and scribble something more down.
I don't think the world needs me. If something can defeat death, how can a fourteen year old stop it?
That makes a surprising amount of sense for a thirty-second-no-second thoughts piece of writing. But I guess it's part of the 'spiky profile' stuff I'm really good at vs areas I'm terrible in. Writing is easy, I'm getting more marks for some essay on a classical novel than they can put on my score. But art, PE? Can't run a mile to save my life. Not bad for the first two minutes though. It goes downhill real quick from there.
I decide to make it harder for whoever takes these back, so I grab a chunk of blue ribbon floating around my bedroom, and grabbing my hockey stick from downstairs, to get some extra reach, I tie the note in a tube around a high-up, spindly branch of the apricot tree. Try and get my reply now.
"Hana, what are you doing?" Dad shouts from the front garden. He's fixing the lamp in the garden, the one by the gate. I figure it got rain-damaged by the storm last night or something.
I check from my bedroom window, and I remember something very useful. Dad is a biker, so he has a bunch of small, head mounted cameras to make sure if a car tries to run him over or something, he has footage. He could lend me one, and I could check to see how the figure gets it back.
Then I could use it as proof! I smile to myself. As much as I don't like the fact this person has been right by my window twice without me noticing, like a phantom of some kind, it has created an interesting sub-plot in what I imagine as the story of my life. And, as much as I'd prefer to ignore it, a distraction from what happened with Miss Decimal too.
"I was hanging something up. I learned the other day that pigeons are super smart, so I wanted to know if they could untie ribbons. I want to borrow one of your cameras to see what they do!" I yell down, retracting partially back inside my window. I hope that lie is more convincing than it sounds.
"I can't hear you, come down." He replies.
I check the time. 9:23 already? I turn around, and walk to the landing. There are two sets of dangerously twisting stairs, one on each end. My bedroom is right on the left end, and when I go down, I'm conveniently very close to the front door. I open it, and walk a few paces to the top of the three stairs down to the weird hollow before the front gate.
There's a light there, with the top off, and dad working away with the complex bulb inside. I wait for him to pause and look up at me. He's got his messy DIY t-shirt on, a red thing, covered in paint and varnish, some old remnant from the seventies, like him, but it's aged much worse.
"Daddy, can I borrow one of your bike cameras?" I ask, realizing what I've said.
I call him dad in my head, and in front of my friends, because of what the internet has done to that word, it makes me look really weird whenever I use it, but I never quite grew out of using when I'm asking for something, or when I'm tired, which makes it really obvious when I need something for a reason I don't want to talk about. Like the time I needed brown tape to 'practice waxing my legs' when I was twelve, 'like a grown up', but this is only slightly better.
"Why?" His voice is suspicious now.
"Observing mum's robins, and a pigeon intelligence thing." I say with as much confidence as I can muster, which is more than I expected, with that bad of a lie.
"Okay, but show your mum, you know she's mad about those robins." Dad shakes his head and gets back to fixing the light. "There's one charging on my desk."
I thank him, and turn away. I run to his office, and grab one of the cameras. I fiddle with it as I go upstairs, and tie it to the window catch. That will be interesting, and I'll have something to show for it.
I realize I'm still in my pajamas, so I get dressed in light blue jeans, that aren't quite jeans, because I can't stand regular jeans, they're too scratchy and stiff. I pull on a t-shirt, something from a musical I saw once. I also pull on a blue ski jumper and my black trainers.
I wait around for a few hours, until I hear the click of the gate. Layla's here already! I rush out to greet her. She's wearing a pair of acid washed jeans, with a white, long sleeved crop-top, showing off her flat stomach. It pricks at the back of my brain that my stomach doesn't look like that.
I smile anyway, she looks good, like usual. I tuck my phone into the pocket of my bumbag belt, zipping it in. I triple checked already that I have enough money, and my card. I got it on my thirteenth birthday, to teach me financial responsibility, and it worked, I like watching the number of pounds in my account go up, makes me feel like there's a safety net. Provided I do my chores, I get £6 a week. Plenty of spending money on top of having a lot of relatives on my dad's side. None on Mum's though.
"Hi Layla." I hug her tightly.
"Be back in three hours, okay?" Dad kisses my cheek, and I pull away, absolutely mortified.
"Yeah, okay. Let's go." I practically pull Layla out of the gate.
I sit in the back of her mum, Mrs Knight's, car as Max wiggles around from the passenger seat. He's picking his nose, and his hair is scruffy. He is covered in a muddy football kit, but he smiles at me, pointing at a gap, pressed up with pink toilet paper.
"I almost lost a tooth today!" He grins. "Wanna see?" He moves the paper, and grabs the tooth, yanking it away without warning, revealing the tooth hanging on by a pink thread.
"Eww! Max! No-one wants to see your weird tooth!" Layla shrieks, tapping the back of his seat as he wiggles it more to provoke her. She sound more mortified than I was thirty seconds ago.
"Layla, he wants you to be proud of him, Max, here." Layla's mum proffers a packet of something, and Max turns around again, engrossed in whatever he's eating.
"I thought death liked blood." Max murmurs through his sweets.
"MAX!" Layla snaps. He seems to realize what he said, and goes on chewing, more carefully now. Sometimes I think Layla dislikes the 'death's daughter' thing more than I do. It makes me feel weird, but I'm relieved to have a friend like Layla.
"Sorry Hana, honey. Max is just hyper after football today." Mrs Knight says.
"It's fine. I don't mind. I know he doesn't mean it." I say. "Let's just get to the Scythe."
YOU ARE READING
A Tale of: Ravens, Scythes and Cherry blossoms
General Fiction'All it takes to consult the dead is a pen, some paper, and a secret you've never told anyone else' Hana is the daughter of death, a hereditary position that has existed for as long as mankind has. She lives through each day with the caw of ravens i...
