But when he turned back to the charred remains of the fire, a slender figure stood barefoot in the ashes. Her hair hung in long brown braids along either side of her narrow face, decorated with cowrie shells, feathers, and coloured beads. There were more beads woven into patterns around the throat and on the shoulders of her cotton dress. In her eyes burned a strange, unworldly light.

Though there was nothing threatening about her, Rabedy felt a sudden chill.

“Dog that is not a dog,” she said in a low voice. “What do you want from me?”

Grey

Having promised Jack I’d talk to Raven, I make my way across town to the Rookery on Stanton Street where he lives. I don’t expect much of anything to come of it. These days, Raven might call himself Lucius Portsmouth and look like a man, but he’s still not exactly engaged with the world around him the way the rest of us are. It’s just him, in that big house of his, living inside his head. He’s not supposed to be as bad as he once was, but from all I’ve heard, he firmly believes that people should handle their own problems.

“That’s how you grow,” is what I’ve been told he says when people come to him looking for help.

I know it seems harsh, but I guess when it gets around that you’ve made the world, everybody must come by asking for just this one little favour, or maybe just that one, and there’s not enough time in any one day to deal with it all.

Or at least that’s the argument I use when I’m speaking outside the corbae clans. Personally, I believe that if you can make a difference, it’s your responsibility to do so. Especially when you’re responsible for the world the rest of us find ourselves in. But it’s not like Raven would listen to that coming from me any more than he’d stop whatever he’s doing to come talk to the buffalo.

I found myself wondering if he even saw the world anymore. When he stepped outside the Rookery, did he ever stop to appreciate this big old sprawl of dirt and green and stone for the grace and beauty that could still be found in it, or did he only see the parts we’d messed up?

I’m guessing he only saw the mess, or he’d be more proactive.

But I was still going to talk to him, so I keep on walking.