Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore 1)

I dug my back hard into the tunnel wall. Small, squirming things wriggled wetly against me. I jammed my eyes shut, which made almost no difference in the underground dark. Something with many slight legs worked its way up my neck. I pressed my lips together and willed my ears shut too. The bug worked its way up my cheek and across my scrunched eyelid before heading on past my forehead and over my hair.

The boy tread into the blackness with halting legs. "Give yourself up. I'll do it quick. "

He stopped no more than a foot in front of me. I could smell his breath, stinky with corn chips, ranch dip, and cola. I felt the swish of air parting for his waving arms, groping ahead. I unsealed my lips and exhaled as quietly as I could, then slowly sucked in more moldy air through my wide open mouth.

Breathe in. Mustn't make a sound. Breathe out.

He kept moving, another step. Than another. Deeper back, farther from me.

Push the beam, child.

I didn't understand. She said it again.

Push on that beam. Shove your good shoulder against it.

Still afraid to move too much, I leaned a little weight on it and heard a creak.

He heard it too. His footsteps stopped.

No, do it hard. All at once. Then get out of the way. Go back the way you came.

No time to argue. He was turning, his shoes squishing an about-face in the muck.

I lunged, heaving with all my might. The timber groaned and cracked, then collapsed. I darted past it and back towards the patch of sunlight just in time to hear the walls falling in. My pursuer called out but his cries were stifled by the falling wood and mud. Hand over aching hand, knee over scraped knee, I crawled up out of the hole and left him there.

Back topside the rain was falling again, or maybe it was only the wind bothering the trees. It was lovely.

I tumbled back down the side of the mountain until I reached the road to my house, gripping my stinging shoulder as hard as I could, almost crying with relief.

Lulu, keeper of the hearth, was waiting at the door.

II

They made me go to court.

Lulu was wearing a fitted blue dress that stopped at her knees, and a pair of high heels that made her calves discreetly convex. Dave wore a black T-shirt and jeans. I was trussed up in a green skirt and blouse with cuffs that clenched at my wrists. Since we weren't regular churchgoing folks, it wasn't every day I was forced to present myself in such a manner. The clothes made me uncomfortable even more than the dozens of appraising eyes, all of which were pointed at me.

"And then he what?" the lawyer pressed.

My eyes lurched around the room and caught Dave, who flashed me a wink and a lopsided grin of sympathy. I sat up straighter. "Then he lifted up the gun and he started shooting at me. "

"What did you do?"

"Well, mister—I ran like the devil knew my name. "

The defense attorney also asked me a round of questions about my early "episodes" in school, trying to convince the jury that I might have provoked the assault, or even imagined it. But myfamily's lawyer had bullets dug out of trees and rocks waiting in a sealed plastic bag, and the other guy couldn't much argue with those.

I indignantly related the rest of my testimony while the defendant, Malachi Dufresne, sat dourly silent with his hands twisted into a pair of knobby fists. He never looked at me once. He never raised his eyes, not even when his great-aunt took the stand to tell the courtroom what a nice boy he was.

She said it in a mellow accent that sounded like his.

"He's such a good boy. Always has been. Ever since he was a small thing and his parents used to leave him at my home for the summers. He was always so kind to the horses. He's nothing but gentle. I'm sure there's some good reason he came after that child, or at least he thought he had a good reason. My poor nephew needs a doctor, not a prison. If y'all would just let me have him I could get him the best money can buy. "

Dave leaned over and whispered in Lulu's ear, mimicking the old woman's scratchy southern voice. "I'm filthy rich. Don't you dare send him to jail. "

Lulu nudged him in the ribs and whispered angrily, or maybe fearfully, back. "You stop that. She's got money enough to see it done. " And she was right. When the end finally came a few weeks later, the man in charge of jurors' row announced that Malachi should go to a hospital to be evaluated.

Dave shot to his feet, nearly jerking my arm off as he rose. "That's not enough!"