Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set by Chris Ward

Author:Chris Ward [Ward, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AMMFA Publishing
Published: 2019-06-11T22:00:00+00:00

20

Nozomi considers her future

Her master was calling for her. Nozomi ignored the shouting as it got gradually louder, until someone pounded on the door of her little basement room hard enough to shake the broken light fitting hanging from the ceiling.

‘I can see the light under the door. Open up, my dear.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Studying. Go away.’

There was a pause, and Nozomi could imagine his misshapen beak of a nose cocking to one side as what was left of his mouth tried to smile. He knew she wasn’t studying and he was right: by the light of a pocket flashlight she was working her way through a set of comics she had found in a skip not far from Avenida Diagonal, unfolding the crumpled pages one by one to reveal the story of a girl whose horse had been stolen, and how she had rallied her best friends to go on an adventure to get it back.

It was typical young teenager bullshit, but it kept her mind off how she had hurt Jorge the day before. A dozen times she had wanted to go and find him, to say she was sorry, but Barcelona was huge and she had no chance unless he chose to be found. And after the way she had treated him it was unlikely she would ever see him again.

She hadn’t expected that to hurt so much, but it did, weighing down on her like someone had cut her open and filled her stomach with rocks. She had never had a friend, partly because they moved cities every few months, and partly because she was effectively a slave to a psychotic, deformed madman, but Jorge had picked her out of a crowd of street kids and offered an olive branch which she might never get again.

And her hatred for her master and herself had caused an involuntary kick-back mechanism to push it away.

He was leaning against the door; she could tell from the way the wood was creaking.

‘I could instruct one of my experiments to remove this door from its hinges, but it would save a lot of time and effort if you would just open it.’

She sighed. I should have let go, she thought. I should have taken the chance to end my life like Mother did, crushed and carefree on an outcrop of jagged Romanian rocks.

‘Nozomi….’

She looked up. Nozomi? He had never once called her by her name, not once in five years. It was always “princess”, or “my dear”, or “my sweet delight”, or some other bitter-tasting crap.

‘Okay, okay.’

She got up and opened the door. Her master came sweeping into the room, now wearing a cape that billowed out behind him and a mismatching baseball cap that didn’t look cool like he probably thought it did.

His skin, thin around his black eyes, was red from too much sun.

‘I thought you didn’t like going outside?’

‘I had to take part in a reconnaissance mission.’ He nodded towards the comic books. ‘I’m glad to see that you’ve found a way to amuse yourself.

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