you have hatched...
Alexia, who is fourteen years old, is explaining to her friend Phelim - also fourteen - that they need money in order to get a horse.
There's a young man sitting in a tree, watching them. He captures a little bird and tears it open with his bare hands, pushing his fingers into its chest as if he's looking for something, and muttering the word 'ruby' over and over. His hand comes out empty and bloody, and he throws the bird carcass away in disgust. Phelim tries to ignore the man in the tree, saying only that he wishes Sweeney wouldn't do that.
Phelim impatiently explains to Alexia that, since his sister is away and hates him anyway, and Alexia hasn't spoken to her parents in months, and since they're both fourteen years old and can't exactly go and get jobs, the only choice he can see available to them is theft. Is that what she's suggesting they do?
Alexia points to a manhole cover and asks him to open it. After a minute of calling her insane, he does. Sweeney calls out that he won't come down, won't come down. He stays in the tree as the two vanish down the manhole.
They climb down a long ladder, which Alexia hates: she's never liked ladders. They make her shudder, like when someone walks over your grave.
At the bottom, Phelim casually slips off one of the two shirts he's wearing, and hangs it over a ladder rung. He tries to avoid having Alexia see it, but she spots it and hands it back to him. He takes it with a shrug and puts it on again.
In the tunnels and drains and underground system beneath the city, Alexia shows him how to look for coins and lost valuables. She tells him that in Victorian times, people known as Toshers did this for a living. Phelim isn't keen until he finds a pound coin, and then another.
Alexia moves away down a tunnel as Phelim rummages through a pile of rubbish. The pile rustles, which makes him jump back, and a rat runs out.
A few moments later, a girl appears. She's about his age, with jet black hair, and all dressed in black. The most noticeable thing about her is the fact that she has one brown and one grey eye.
She tells Phelim that it's a very long time since she last saw anyone down here. He asks what she's doing down here, and she tells him that she mostly comes here alone. To think, and get away.
Phelim hears his sister's voice in his head, nagging him about being down a sewer and getting so dirty. He sympathises with the girl's desire to get away.
He wants her to meet Alexia, but she says she saw Alexia go quite far down another tunnel, and anyway, she has to go in a minute, and wouldn't he rather just talk to her alone?
He asks her name, and she tells him that everyone calls her Queenie. She says that if he's scavenging, she can show him a good place to go. She takes his hand and pulls him down a tunnel, faster and faster.
He complains, slow down, hang on, more and more until suddenly she stops and pulls him into a dark doorway. There, she kisses him full on the mouth. He gasps, tries to pull away, but her fingers dig into his skin like claws.
With claws.
Phelim feels something whizz past his cheek, and a hand grabs Queenie's hair and yanks hard. He's thrown back as Alexia pulls Queenie out of the doorway and pushes her away down the tunnel. Oh no you don't, yells Alexia, you with your one grey eye, I know you. I name you, Queen of all the Rats.
Phelim tries to calm Alexia down, but she pushes him away.
Queenie smiles, and blows a kiss at Phelim, then runs off.
Phelim frowns at Alexia: what did she do that for? Alexia is exasperated: Queenie is one of them, she says. A hatchling, reborn from old times. And now they have enough money, so they need to go.
As they leave, Alexia seems particularly grumpy. Phelim bugs her about it until she reveals, slightly jealously, that by blowing him a kiss the Queen Rat has probably blessed him.
Phelim asks what that means, and Alexia says it's usually not good for any other girls in his life. She moves quickly up the ladder and into the sunshine. Phelim wonders why girls are so complicated, and follows.
