Two and Twenty Dark Tales Read Online Free PDF Page A

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Sing a Song of Six-Pence
    Sarwat Chadda
    Sing a song of sixpence,
    A pocket full of rye;
    Four and twenty blackbirds
    Baked in a pie.
    When the pie was opened,
    They all began to sing.
    Now, wasn’t that a dainty dish
    To set before the King?
    The King was in his counting house,
    Counting out his money;
    The Queen was in the parlor
    Eating bread and honey.
    The maid was in the garden,
    Hanging out the clothes.
    Along there came a big black bird
    And snipped off her nose!
    – Mother Goose
    B LACKBIRD watched the maid enter the Six-Pence. He sat farthest from the light, comfortable in the darkness. The other patrons, here in the lowest levels of the city, turned to watch her with eyes made of scales and desire, measuring the worth of what they saw, wondering whether to tempt and seduce, or to terrorize and devour. A few muttered then turned their backs, seeing her of little value. A poor, sad creature with few prospects in her short life. Neither looks—that much was obvious—nor intelligence. If she had possessed an ounce of the latter, she would not have come here.
    To sell her soul.
    What fools these mortal are.
    She searched the gloomy tavern, peering into the shadowy hoods of the djinn, the demons, and the ghouls that frequented the Six-Pence. The tavern had earned its name because a mortal had once sold his soul for that meager sum, so driven by hunger that he’d given it up for the price of a single meal. Blackbird hoped it had been the most divine supper in all of existence, as he’d been collected the following night. The man’s screams now joined the choir of the damned that wailed beyond the city’s walls.
    Blackbird clicked his talons on the tabletop, chipping slivers of wood from the surface. He peered at her, watching the flare of her soul shimmer and shift through his lens.
    He groaned. He’d hoped she would be worth the effort, but no; it was a pale, flickering thing of little warmth. Despair dampened its colors, while her selfish desires and her small ambitions shrunk it. Envy and malice drained whatever taste there once might have been. It was a soul in name only. She was not evil, but she was petty.
    A ghoul stalked across the room, bent so low he was almost on all fours. He sniffed at the ground, his eyes stitched shut for some past transgression, tongue clipped short, yet still slavering in a mouth of yellow teeth. The hairless demon was little more than a carrion creature—rarely taking a fresh soul but devouring whatever spirit might be left by the stronger demons once they’d finished with their meal. The ghoul’s body was pasty and sick with disease; large pustules oozed across his crooked back, seeping green ichor along his gnarly spine and down his ribs. The girl backed away as he smelt at her feet.
    Blackbird stood up. A deal was a deal.
    Sable wings unruffled across his back and shadows stirred as the darkness within his feathers deepened. Other demons grimaced and snarled at him, wary of one of the fallen within the Six-Pence.
    Like his brothers he was no longer bright and shining, but a beast with talons and twisted limbs, his head narrow and feathered, his thin jaw both a mouth and a beak. The rustle of feathers sounded like the scales of armor shifting before battle, the melody metallic and somber. The ghoul twitched, his sharp ears picking up the threat in those fluttering wings. He clicked his teeth and hissed, then scurried off, head near the ground.
    The girl stared at him. If she was looking for some golden hero, she was sorely disappointed.
    This was not a place for heroes. This was a place for deals and betrayals and terror. All these things, Blackbird excelled in. That he was cast down to live amongst the other demons who had never known what it was to soar, well, that was what made him cheap. Once, he would have traded the souls of a thousand newborn babies. Now, a tainted, washed-up girl was all he was worth.
    And now that she had seen him, she was afraid. What had she