I suppose this can be seen as my first foray into the world of parent!lock (which I adore reading). It's not completely parent!lock, but it's close enough for government work. :) This is an expansion of the chapter entitled "Four Crows for a Boy" from my other work, Seven Crows. I was really curious to see how the dynamic worked out between the characters and thus...this story was born. (You don't need to read Seven Crows for this to make sense...but if you still want to pop over and check it out I certainly won't mind...)
Enjoy! And let me know if anything is completely... whacked. Thanks. :)
My name is Cecil Jacobson. When I was five years old, I diagnosed myself with a condition called selective mutism. It just means that I don't like to talk in front of people I don't know or don't trust. On a broader scale, it means that I have at least a moderate level of anxiety when it comes to interacting with people. Some people think that I'm autistic or that I have a speech disorder. I don't…I have never been much for talking, which was something that confused my foster families. They always wanted me to speak. But my voice…my thoughts… I was never inclined to give them away. Not just to anyone.
I was put into the foster care system at the age of four when my parents died in a plane crash. I was given to a kindly older woman named Greta. Greta was sweet…it was with her help that I discovered that my…proclivity to be non-verbal was called selective mutism. Sadly, Greta died just before my seventh birthday and I was put back into the rotation. Shortly thereafter I was given to Frank and Celia Jones. They were not nice people. Well, they were nice to the people that seemed to count, like the social workers and the administrators for Protective Services and the like. But there were seven of us total living in their flat with them, and they were never nice to us.
We were miserable. Our lives were miserable. Not Oliver Twist miserable, but we were degraded to a base level of human existence that was just sadistic, especially for children. Seven of us; Grace, Tabitha, Niall, Will, Rory, Marisa, and me. Grace and Tabitha were twins and the eldest among us. They were ten and had only been in foster care for a few months. They weren't handling it well, but they put on brave faces for the rest of us, their blond hair always done in neat braids as if that could somehow help them control the situation. Niall was nine and loved football. Will was nine too. I remember he hated peas and had a yellow marble that was his prized possession. Rory and Marisa were eight. Rory only ever talked about how much he missed his brother, who'd gone to a different family. Marisa liked singing, but the Jones' never allowed singing. And then there was me.
I was seven and a half and didn't like talking. I didn't much like interacting with people at all, to be completely honest. This always made the Jones' mad, because they—like so many people—didn't understand why I never wanted to talk. I wanted so desperately to tell them that I didn't want to talk to them because they were so achingly stupid and mean, but I couldn't. I would just sit there with my foster brothers and sisters and wonder if we would ever be allowed to leave.
If I would have known that within six months of moving in with the Jones family Sherlock Holmes and John Watson would appear like angels with Scotland Yard and pluck me and my foster siblings from our misery, well… I wouldn't have despaired so much.
