Baux Hill Village is a small rural community on the outskirts of London and like any small community Baux Hill has its fair share of secrets. Moving there from a young age Joshua finds himself tangled up in the web of deceit. Will he find his way ou...
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Six species of deer, and not one of them matched Cain's. Or at least, what I imagined Cain's deer to be. I scrolled through the pictures one by one, staring at the grainy screen until my eyesight blurred and my eyes watered. Red, Sika, Roe, Fallow, Reeves' Muntjac, and Chinese water deer, but no skyscraper whose nose touches the sky deer. Even the largest of the six, the Red Deer, was nothing in comparison. I was disappointed, and I didn't know why. After all, it wasn't my deer.
Maybe the number six was unlucky. Maybe the number six was in fact linked to devil worship, and witchcraft and evil. In China the number six was a sign of luck, or so the website said, but I didn't believe it. I didn't believe any of it, but in the sixth year of my life we'd moved to Baux Hill, and no matter how much I chose to dismiss superstition I couldn't help but wonder whether I was lucky or unlucky.
"If you sit at that computer any longer your eyes are going to start playing tricks on you!" Dad warned, placing a box on the floor before ruffling my hair.
"Eyes don't play tricks!"
"Sure they do!" He pulled a silver coin out of his pocket and twirled it around. The coin twinkled in the bright light of what was now my dads office, like a star amongst devastation. Knowing he had my full attention, Dad waved his hands about in a fancy and exaggerated motion like the magicians on the television did, and in a fraction of a second his palm was empty and the coin was gone. "See!"
I jumped off the swivel chair and plodded up to him, checking the obvious places. Left sleeve, no coin. Right sleeve, no coin. Floor? Nothing. "Where is it?" I asked him.
He held out his palm for me to inspect, and then like magic the coin appeared, right in front of my eyes. "Your eyes are playing tricks on you! Or maybe it was magic," he said, wiggling his eyebrows as he left the room.
I called out after him. "Magic isn't real."
He popped his head back round the door frame. "Who told you that?"
"Mum."
Dad sighed.
"You know that thing with the cards Uncle Dan always does? Mum explained it to me. Did you know that the reason why there was only one red card in the deck at the end is because there was only one red card to begin with? The deck doesn't shrink. It was always half a deck. Mum told me. Mum told me how it works."
For a moment Dad said nothing. He was disappointed, I could tell, but it didn't matter, because I was above juvenile games and magic tricks and childish fantasies.
"Come downstairs. We're having tea in the garden," he said eventually, before disappearing behind the door frame. I listened to his footsteps as he thudded down the stairs until I couldn't hear them any more.
Outside the sun was beginning to set, but the air was warm and suffocating. Summer hadn't quite let go of us just yet, though some of the trees were already bare. The birds had since returned and were chirping loudly from the towering trees at the end of our garden. Mum was laying on a floral blanket, reading a book without a care in the world while Josiah and Dad happily kicked an old football around. Picture perfect, like the families on the front of board game boxes.
