Honour Amongst Thieves
A Short Story
It’s the dead of night. Ruby droplets lie still on the dry wood floor. Some weight elsewhere in the house shifts. The whole structure groans in response. Shadows in the doorways coil their muscles and deepen their thresholds, the dark rearing back into itself in a threat display. Wind creeps in through the cracks in one of the windows and leaves a small, whistling howl as a sign of its passing. The death rattle of the house.
About half an hour later, a man leaves the house through the back yard, exiting out the gate and making his way down the path behind the row of houses. A beaten path, thin in its topsoil. Back in the house, spilt pearls sit at rest, much the same as the rubies. The man walks through the back lane until he comes to a larger dirt road. He is a burglar by trade, a man who once considered it a craft. Now he has gone simple with blood and other nocturnal things, which he carries on his back and which drop off bit by bit as he puts more distance between him and what he has left behind. His walk is a kind of stumbling gait, and he kicks up dust carelessly. He remains in this exhausted stupor until he returns to his house.
For a few seconds after he enters, he wonders if he isn’t mistaken, and if he hasn’t just broken into another abode. The sun is beginning to rise. It fills the empty spaces of this dwelling and hits him with a slight warmth as he looks out the window. As much as the light, his presence transforms the humble wooden chambers of this lodging into something more familiar. He recognises it now. Satisfied finally this building is his home, he moves further in. Back there, in that other place, light will also fall on changed, empty rooms.
He sits on his bed in exhaustion. He lies down and closes his eyes, but he finds he cannot sleep. He gets up, and goes to sit on the back porch, a porch much like the one he made his escape from. He thinks he should probably change his clothes, but after a moment’s deliberation he decides it can wait. In his own backyard, there are nothing but patches of dirt and grass, the blades of which sway in the soft lull of the wind, before changing to a jittering dance as it picks up again. He has never noticed these things before. What seemed like the overwhelming poverty of his garden now looks a little less so.
A magpie drops down from its tree and hops about, picking at the ground. He watches it, his heavy eyes flicking between the ground, the magpie and then sometimes looking up at the sky. The man shifts his position on the porch and at this movement the magpie flies away. The morning sun is up. The burglar looks around the yard, takes it in, and then stands up. He goes to turn and then stops. He puts his hand into his jack pocket, and out of it fishes a small, golden wedding ring. He eyes it, then throws the metal band underhand onto the ground. Then he goes inside and watches from his kitchen window, waiting for the small intruder to return to the yard.
It is about half an hour before the corvid once again plants its feet onto the dry soil, if it even is the same bird. It walks up and down the little dirt desert, jumping here and there, before it comes across the ring, hidden amongst the grass. The bird looks at it, tilting its head slightly, pecking at it a few times before picking it up with its beak. Somewhere in a silent house, one slowly fading from memory, precious things also adorn the ground. The Magpie flies away with the ring. The man watches it leave, then walks away from the window, up the stairs, and to his bedroom where he lies down and goes to sleep.
In the magpie’s nest, the ring lies still amongst the sticks and twigs and other jewels, a small sign of solidarity between a hidden kind of kin. Some small, vain effort to turn back the night.