Free The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney

beautifully worked wooden spoon out of her skirts and places it in the bowl. ‘Eat, me dear. You look half starved.’
    I am hungry, and though I cannot see what it is I am eating, I begin scooping it out of the hot bowl with a will. Some kind of beef stew, and there is wild garlic in it, and thyme, and the taste transports me for a moment to another, warmer world. I wolf it down while they all watch, silent as the trees.
    ‘Where be you from?’ Queenie asks me in a softer tone.
    ‘From Jericho, in the city,’ I answer between steaming mouthfuls.
    Queenie frowns. ‘That ain’t right. You ain’t no more English than me, my girl. I sees it in your face. You is from somewheres far south o’ here.’
    ‘I am Greek,’ I tell her. I look around the fire as I say it, and I realise with something of a pleased shock that I must look just like these people here. I am dark and olive-skinned with brown eyes and black brows, just like them.
    ‘Are you Jews?’ I ask them.
    Queenie laughs, a rasp of humour, and it travels round the fire.
    ‘We’m of an old and wandering folk girl, a tribe as ancient as you Greeks – or the Jew-folk too, comes to that. The ignorant calls us Romani, but we ain’t the same as the travellin’ people, though we has dealings with ’em. Egypt is where our kind hails from, in the old, old part o’ the world.’
    ‘Then what are you doing in England?’ I am quite unafraid now, with the good food in me and the warmth of the fire and the beautiful smiling girl leaning against me.
    ‘What is you doing here?’ Queenie darts back.
    I set down the empty bowl, and decide that the truth cannot hurt. ‘The Turks drove us out, and killed my family and took our home.’
    There is a buzz of talk at this, the men speaking among themselves. Queenie gives me a long hard look. I can’t keep her eyes. There is something in them that is as sharp and shrewd as a black crow.
    She gives a snort, and then turns back to the fire. Kneeling down, she sets some more sticks upon it, placing each one as carefully as though it were made of glass. Then she blows softly into the heart of them, and the flames lick up and dance yellow and blue, and the heart of the fire glows bright and hungry. She waves her hand through the flames as though she is caressing them, and it seems for a second that the light jumps up brighter to meet her fingers.
    ‘I was askin’ what you are a doing in this here wood, creeping up on us like a little stoat,’ Queenie says. ‘Care to tell us that, Greek girl?’
    ‘I… don’t know,’ I say, keeping carefully to the truth. ‘The moon and the snow… I had to get out in it. And there was something about the woods that just drew me in.’
    Queenie looks up at that, and I see her glance at the moon. One of the older men, the one who had exchanged words with the boy Luca, rattles on harshly in their language, shooting suspicious glances at me as he does. I don’t like him. He has grey whiskers, and looks like a bright-eyed rat in a flat cap.
    Queenie frowns. ‘There’s more you ain’t told us, child.’
    The girl beside me tightens her arm about my shoulders. Now it feels less like affection, and more like a restraint. ‘Speak up dearie,’ she hisses to me.
    My heart is thumping fast again. They all stare at me. Who are these people, so strange and foreign, and why are they out in the woods on a night like this? The fear comes back, cold enough to make the food I have just eaten turn to a cold lump in my tummy.
    ‘I saw that boy before,’ I say, reluctantly. ‘Luca. I saw him on Port Meadow weeks back. He was with some other men, and they had a fight.’
    I wish I had Pie to hold. Their eyes are all so sharp and cold now, and the firelight almost makes them seem to shine yellow, blank as glass.
    ‘You saw what happened then,’ Queenie says.
    ‘I didn’t tell anyone, I swear,’ I say, gulping. ‘Fat Bert started it. He had the knife. The boy was just fighting back. I won’t