Page 42 of The Unknown Birds

The boy shrugged. “Maybe not the Irish. My grandad’s Irish. He said there’ll be a war with Germany because we didn’t finish them off the last time.”

“I’ll finish them off,” Fred piped up.

“Me too!” Sarah agreed.

“You can’t fight. You’re a little girl.”

“Miss says girls can do anything boys can do. Isn’t that right, Miss?”

“I’m sure the King is very grateful for your enthusiastic patriotism,” Ash cut in. “But let’s focus on our garden and pray for peace.”

“Yes, Miss,” they chorused like good little soldiers.

“War isn’t the glamour and honor you think it is. It’s cold when you want to be warm and hot when you long for a breeze. It’s wet socks that never get dry and itchy skin you can scratch until you bleed. It’s mites and lice and noise so loud it blisters your ears, when all you long for in the world is quiet. It’s exhausting and painful and sad.”

“Like the poems, Miss?”

“Exactly like the poems, Madeline. Except words, unlike bullets, don’t have teeth.”

“Miss Ashley’s right,” Rook said, stepping out into the garden all freshly shaven and handsome as could be, perching on the low brick fence like he belonged there.

His trouser leg hitched up enough to reveal the prosthetic inside his shoe, and Ashley’s heart gave a little squeeze, picturing him alone in some cold, distant hospital learning how to walk all over again.

“The most patriotic way to approach a war is to try and prevent it,” he said.

“Who’re you?” the nearest boy to Ashley asked, staring openly at Rook’s leg.

“Alex Rook. Who’re you?”

“Walter Hargreaves.”

“Pleased to meet you, Walter Hargreaves.”

The children studied him, curious and solemn.

“Is that what happened to your leg?” asked little Mary. “Was it injured in the war?”

“Mary,” Ash admonished, darting an apologetic glance at Rook and shaking her head at the child, who sucked in her lips to demonstrate being quiet.

“What, this?” Rook asked, tapping the leg with his cane to elicit a soft knocking sound.

Mary shot a wide-eyed look towards Ash and then nodded her curly head.

“No,” Rook assured her. “That was from a lion.”

“A lion!” she exclaimed.

“It never was,” laughed Susan, the oldest pupil at just fourteen.

“Oh yes,” Rook insisted. “A lion. When I was performing with the circus on the continent. There was never enough meat to go around, you see.”

Ash laughed, and he glanced her way briefly—she could almost feel him wink, but he kept his face completely serious.

“Let that be a lesson to you, boys and girls,” he said, looking around at his enraptured audience. “Always eat your veg so you’ll taste nasty and bitter to lions and they’ll eat some naughty child instead. And if the circus comes to town, don’t run away and join it. Oh, it’s all right for a day. But lions are restless creatures, ravenous for the taste of children.”

Shaking her head, Ash turned back to her weeding, wiping her face on her forearm to chase away the grin.

“Tell the truth,” Fred, the oldest of the boys, said in a low, conspiratorial whisper. “Were you in the war?”