I’ve had months of practice. Even as I run, my steps hardly make a sound. I can feel my surroundings as a part of me that I can almost feel people if they come too close - if trouble comes too close. My eyes have adjusted enough in the dark that I can see where exactly to place my foot ahead of me. If you can see me as I weave my way back to the tower - which you shouldn’t know - you’d only see a blur darting from one shadow to the next like a ghost.

At least that’s what I want you to know, I’m no one.

Every night is like this. I go in a store and buy food, and the rest is hiding and running, making sure no one can follow me back. My crows stay close enough in case I fail at being a ghost, then it would be their turn to be the shadow. They’ll fly in a tornado of flapping wings, while the only thing you would see is the shadow dancing in front of you.

When I reach the alley where the tower stands, almost everything in the streets has closed. The only lights come from the moon, the street lights, and the lamps hanging by the doors of the houses. Everything else is a facade of deep grey, not unlike the tower itself.

I am walking in a sleeping town.

It’s like a dream I realize. The fog only letting the light pierce through so far out, the lamps only seem to glow like orbs at a distance.

From the bottom of the stairs, I hear the crows come in through the window. In here, the only light is the moon streaming through the clock’s face, and it’s stained by their small dark shapes as they fly in and perch on the unseen wall.

I see my brother sitting by the clock, a blanket over his shoulders. If he heard me coming up the stairs, he doesn’t show it. He sits facing the clock and staring at something in his hand, ignoring the London nightscape spread below him.

I walk to him and sit beside him. I look at his hand and the chain of a locket spread over his feet. He stares longingly at the picture, just barely visible in the moonlight. But I know who it is even in the pale light. How can I forget that sweet-faced woman? I look at the picture and the smile spread over her face. Her hair falls in smooth waves to her shoulders and she carries herself calmly as if there is not a problem that is too hard for her.

But it isn’t the last thing I remember of her.

I remember her tear-stained face and her unkempt hair that sticks out in a dozen places. I can see it clearly, her creased clothes and her broken necklace. And of all the things that was left, it was the locket with her fake smile and fake face.

“You kept mum’s locket,” I say as flatly as I can.

“Yeah,” he says thumbing the photo where our mother smiled.

Beside it is ours, sitting in front of a dusty-looking backdrop not much unlike the scenery laid out below us. The streets aren’t anything more than pinpricks of golden light and the pale grey of the moonlight, just barely. The one sign where the city ends and the sky begins is where the gold turns into the white light of the stars. And somehow, everything in it can seem surreal and real at the same time.

“You can’t hate her forever you know,” he tells me. I see him looking at me, his lips turned up at one corner in a sad smile and the locket sitting closed in his hand.

“How can you say that?” Perhaps even in the pale light, he’d seen how my eyelids twitch at the mere mention of her.

“I know you do.”

I sigh. I know it’s something that has always been on my mind. That every time I see some woman on the streets or hear that word, I internally crumble into a fit of rage. But it’s one thing for me to think about it alone and quite another to talk about it.

I lie back down, feeling the coldness of the bare floor seeping right through my clothes. But I don’t shiver. I just lay there staring at the beams that criss-crossed overhead as the seconds stretch between us in silence.

I reach up to him and ruffle his hair. All I can see from where I lay is an outline of him, his features just barely visible. I feel him shiver ever so slightly underneath my cold fingertips. “Hey,” I say, “Don’t mind me.”

“It’s mum’s birthday today,” he choked.

“I know.”

He lies down beside me and stares blankly above. “I miss her.”