Eye of the Crow Read Online Free PDF

live in single rooms.
    It is time to leave. Past time.
    But then he spots the crows down an empty alley.
    What are they doing?
    He can barely see them. They’ve landed right on the ground. They are bobbing about on the cobblestones deep in the alley, hardly visible in the dimming light. He looks at the street name on the brick building at the corner. It seems familiar. He isn’t sure why.
    Sherlock hesitates. He is in an area his parents don’t allow him to even go near, let alone enter. He is beyond late. They’ll kill him when he gets home.
    He hears the crows muttering.
    He turns down the alley.
    The wooden doors on either side are boarded up. They look like entrances to stables that haven’t been used for a long time. There is an eerie silence. He takes each step with great care, as if someone might leap out from behind those doors and pounce.
    He hears the sound of caws through the yellow fog.
    Why are the crows on the ground?
    He advances. They don’t move. Now he can almost step on them. They are pecking at something on the cobblestones. He crouches down. The ground is gray, but it looks different where the crows are, as if it is stained … red.
    Then he remembers why he recognized this little lane’s name. He has read it many times in the newspapers over the last few days.
    That red stain is human blood.
    He is standing on the
very
spot where the woman was murdered!

VIOLIN LAND
    H e runs from the East End with all his might, runs as if he were trying to get away from all the hatred in the world, the brutal ways people treat each other, from whomever it is who murdered that woman.
    In bed that night he can’t sleep. He keeps thinking about the scene in the alley: the black lane, crows pecking at the cobblestones, the blood. He had felt watched, as if someone were standing somewhere in that mist, following his every move.
    Now he feels ashamed. Why had he been
so
afraid? Would he stand up against evil if he could help? Would he do something? He’s just a boy – a mixed-up mixture of a boy. But what if that Arab didn’t do it? What if an innocent man is going to hang? What if someone is going to get away with something much worse than taunts in a schoolyard … with murder?
    No one
is going to do anything about it.
    He rises in the morning with dark circles under his eyes. His mother would have noticed. But she has gone to teach three singing lessons: one in Belgravia, two in Mayfair.His father will leave soon too. He walks five miles to The Crystal Palace every morning, and back again in the evening. He is sitting at their little table, staring blankly while he takes his breakfast, a bowl of porridge and a warm cup of tea in front of him. He wears his spectacles; his old black frock coat is as clean as Rose can make it, his black beard neatly trimmed.
    When Sherlock arrived late last night, he had admitted to his parents that he’d been in central London again (though he didn’t say where he’d gone later). He asked for one more day of freedom and then he’d go to school every day. He promised.
    “Good morning, Father,” says the boy. He looks in their little mirror to make sure his hair is in place.
    Wilber responds without lifting his head.
    “Sherlock. Sleep well?”
    “I did, thank you.” He sits down.
    “I feel that you have a question.”
    His father is like that. He has a sixth sense about everything.
    “Remember we talked about crows yesterday?”
    “Yes,” Wilber’s eyes focus and he looks at his son. “Yes, I do.”
    “You said they were smart,” says the boy, leaning for ward.
    “Undoubtedly.”
    “That they were carrion eaters.”
    “Unfortunately. Tends to make folks a little prejudiced about them.”
    “That they can recognize people. What else?”
    Wilber takes his bowl to the shelf. His mind is beginning to shift to his day’s work. “What exactly do you mean?”
    “Can they do anything else that’s unusual?”
    Wilber had turned toward the door, but he stops and