Daily stories

When the birds spoke we learned they had names for us too. Not as many as we might have liked: not as many as we had for them, or for each other. A little brown one, a sparrow or a wren, I thought, alighted on my shoulder. I asked her what they called me. "Oh, I don't know," she said, "I'm terrible at names. But I love the way you sing."

It looked like rain, so we walked up to the train station. There you can stand on the ridge, under the big canopy that covers the platforms, and watch the rain fall all around without getting wet yourself. But it's no good if you get rained on walking up there. You have to go before the rain comes, or step off a train. After an hour's joy there the rain showed no sign of relenting. It would be a wet walk home. So we caught the next train, without checking its destination.

I took a walk in the moonlight to drop the things that shamed me into the hole. It was a good hole, deep and dark with a steep, sharp edge. We all used it, and all let each other pretend we didn't. As I walked home the moon went in and a steady rain fell, and things began to float past me in the gutter: a letter, a bottle, a photograph. We would clean it up in the morning without exchanging even a glance. We never needed the hole at all.

I slice the cake and you choose and that is fair. You slice the cake and I choose and that is fair. I slice the cake while you watch me and set the angle of my cut by the angle of your eyebrows. You slice the cake and keep hold of the knife while I choose, turning it this way and that. You wipe the blade with a napkin and I eat my little portion and agree, yes, this is fair.

He looked all through the button drawer, but while it seemed that every shape and size and colour and finish could be found there, none of them were close to matching. He brushed a finger over the torn threads that tendriled from his coat. Then he heard that tobacco-torn voice at his shoulder, as her hand reached in and took out something bright and pearlescent: "You'll never match the old, you daft thing. And why bother if you could? Look for something new and beautiful."

I was over the river with the chicken when the strangest thing happened. The fox took the sack of grain between its teeth and dragged it away. By the time I got the boat back over they were far enough gone that I couldn't follow the trail. I crossed once more, and picked up a feather from where my chicken used to be. I had thought I had it all worked out.

We all lined up for a turn touching the electric fence. The lining up was part of the bravado: pushing to go first, or laughing to show you weren't scared while the boys in front of you shrieked. When it was my go, I laid my hand on good and firm, thinking it wouldn't hurt any more, but I'd impress the others. I felt nothing. The fence was dead. But I yelped and snatched my hand back all the same.

Not much changed after the accident, except that clouds only looked like clouds. There were no faces in the wallpaper or songs in the wind. At times I would lie my healed skull on the heather and look up at the shapeless clouds, and breathe in the moor, and the smell would remind me of nothing at all.

It's a good life, being the King's poisoner. Well paid, with room and board on top, and the freedom to pursue my research, my healing. Very rarely am I called upon to poison anyone. We have other ways of handling such things these days. When I am needed, of course I serve. If I did not, another poisoner would, and who would make my medicines?

When breakfast was ready Jamie was still snoring away in his five-quid tent. Even from outside you could see the droplets where his breath had condensed on the plastic sheet. We grabbed a corner each and shook to make it rain, but on he snored. The zip wouldn't pull so we ripped the seam open. Inside was a snoring speaker, and a tunnel leading far and away.