you have hatched...
Phelim, who is fourteen years old, is trotting along the path by the canal. Now and then he looks over his shoulder, but he seems to be slowing down from what was a fast run.
He comes across a girl who is graffitying flowers onto a wall with several spray cans. She's about his age, and as brightly-coloured as the flowers.
As Phelim trots past her, she speaks: 'River's getting higher every day. Something bad on the way when the river gets higher.'
The boy stops. 'I'm a bit lost. Trying to get to the police station and I thought this might be a shortcut, but...
She interrupts: 'You don't need the police, Jack. You need me. I'm Alexia.'
'Oh God, not you as well...'
Phelim hears his sister's voice in his head, nagging at him not to talk to strangers or get into trouble or go down by the river.
... but he's distracted as he notices that Alexia has no shadow on the ground, nor reflection in the river. Oh, but he does see something in the river. Something shiny and golden... a candlestick?
He tries to reach it, but he can't quite, so he looks for a stick. But there aren't any, so he just steps into the water a little way. And then he sees more: gold plates, gold candlesticks, must have been dumped by a thief!
Alexia comes closer as she hears him exclaim, look, gold, but instead of helping him get it, she tries to stop him.
Phelim pulls away from her and goes right in under the water... he looks up, and can see Alexia's face staring down from the bank. He looks down for the gold, but... he can only see weeds and the silt he stirred up.
Some weeds wrap around his ankle. As he tugs to free himself, more weeds catch his other ankle, and then his arm. Now he's struggling, in shallow water, trying to get his head up, trying to tear himself free.
And all he can hear in his head is the voice of his sister, 'What have you done now, Phee McLummock? What have you done now? Stupid boy, stupid child.'
Suddenly there's a splash, and something else grabs him. A hand. It drags the weeds off him and he leaps to the surface, his lungs fit to burst.
He looks for Alexia, presuming it was she who freed him, but he can't see her. Just a thrashing under the water. He grabs a breath and dives down, clutching at Alexia's long blonde hair and dragging her to the surface.
A mad young man who calls himself Sweeney is sitting in a tree that bends over the river, watching, calling to them.
Phelim and Alexia collapse on the bank and cough up river for a few moments. Then Alexia yells at him. He doesn't even know her and she's yelling at him.
He's stupid, she says. She is supposed to be the helper, not him. She is his Maiden. Doesn't he know anything? Phelim responds that he doesn't know her, and she's welcome that he just saved her stupid life.
Sweeney hates the shouting. It makes him crazy. He looks wildly in the tree as it ruffles where a small bird landed on a branch. He grabs the bird, and rips it open with his bare hands, muttering the word 'ruby' over and over. Then he sticks two fingers into it's bloody chest and rummages, but comes up empty-red-handed. He casts the bird carcass aside in disgust.
Phelim and Alexia are now staring. Sweeney leaps onto a wall. Alexia tells Phelim to hurry up; they have a long way to go. Phelim follows her because... there's nothing much else he can do right now, and some company - even mad company - seems better than none.
Phelim asks her if she knows what the deal is with killing the bird - is he safe to hang out with, that madman? Alexia smiles: Sweeney is Jack's Fool. He's only the right kind of mad. And the bird thing isn't a big deal. The story goes that somewhere in the world there is a sparrow with a ruby in its chest, and finding the ruby will cure madness. So Sweeney looks for the ruby. That's all.
