Hello …
No. That sounds like I'm familiar with the person who reads this letter. Let me start again.
Dear Reader…
Can I say that? Yes, I think so…Or not? Oh great. This is what happens when you let a 14-year old girl who never did something like this before write a letter to a complete stranger as a prologue for a story about the most famous detective in Europe, or maybe even in the whole world; Sherlock Holmes.
I guess I'll start this thing with some facts about me:
My name is Blackbird. Stupid name, isn't it? Yes yes, it is. I know. Anyway, I am the storyteller here so you are not allowed to speak.
I have lived on the streets of London since…well…since always. My mother was a whore and I must say, I am not very proud of that. One can also say that I am a unwanted child, born from a one-night 'game', including a whore and a sneaky nobleman or something of the kind. Oh, she didn't know she was pregnant, of course not. If she did she would have gone to a hospital to get rid of the growing creature in her belly. So, nine months after that small affair and a mountain of other men, I came to this world. Naturally, I was thrown upon the streets. Whores can't use a child wandering around while they are 'working' and they can't afford it.
I bet you think that I was taken care of in an orphanage and grew up healthy until I was old enough to live on my own. If so, you are horribly wrong. That stuff only happens to the lucky and higher ranked kids. Most of the abandoned children die, just after they are born.
Why didn't I die, you ask? I don't really know either. Some of the women here told me I was taken in by another whore, others say that I was raised by all the people that live on the streets of London. A curious thing, my past.
The last thing I will tell you is that this story will start at the point that I am about to die, on the 29th of February, 1889.
Nice to meet you and farewell,
Blackbird