City of Darkness

Chapter SIX

Autumn, 1872





His father had taught him to hunt.

The man had taken the boy, when he was no more than nine, into the oak woods outside their home. Had given him a gun, one of the sandwiches they had wrapped the night before, and had taught him how to find a place to hide. Not deep in the brambles, as one might imagine. If the hunter sought too much coverage or buried too deep, his father explained, then the slightest move would give his position away.

The father illustrated. He climbed into a nest of broken branches and covered himself entirely. Then he made a great, loud sneeze and the entire pile had shaken, puffing stray leaves into the air. The boy had laughed.

Far better, the man explained, crawling out and brushing the debris from his jacket, to hide in an open area. Perhaps “hide” was not even the proper word. It was more a matter of blending in, of being unobtrusive, of becoming so much a part of the landscape that the birds knew you were there, but did not register your presence as alarming. Ducks, pheasants, and quail were dumb creatures, dumb and plentiful, and if one sat still long enough they would come of their own accord into your sights. The victim would choose himself, would practically beg to be shot.

The boy nodded. He’d always had the gift of grasping concepts quickly, of understanding certain things before his childhood vocabulary gave him the ability to explain them, even to himself. He may not have known the word “contradiction” but he understood his father’s message well enough. The key to survival was to be special, smarter than the other creatures around you, yet still to blend in.

The blending, of course, is the challenge. Most who are special cannot seem to stop themselves from announcing the fact, despite the dangers that come with being different from the rest of your species. If you tie a red string around a wren’s leg, the others in the flock will peck it to death.