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Warlock Dowling is six years old and awake. The only problem is that it’s also 8pm on a Sunday and his father is hosting another diplomats' party. And what with all the goings-on, he hadn’t been able to escape yet.
Of course, he’d already said hello to everyone right at the beginning; wearing his fancy dress shirt and suit and tie he’d got specifically for nights like these, giving the adults a smile, shaking everyone’s hand and, most importantly, staying out of the way. Having done this most of his life, he was already well-practiced at the whole routine. If dinner was served and he had to stick around for it, he could usually excuse himself halfway through with a big yawn and be sent to his room. And he liked that a whole lot better, anyway, because playing quietly in his room or sneaking off to bother Nanny was more fun than being ignored in a stuffy room for hours. And she usually had snacks.
Presently, he was on yawn number five and leaned into his mother, as his head was starting to spin. The voices were too loud, the air too thick, the light to bright and his shirt too itchy because they hadn’t let Nanny cut out the tag for this one (because it was a ‘good shirt’) and now that’s all he could feel. And it was hot like hellfire. He just wanted out.
Thankfully, she got the hint this time, someone pointed out the time and he was sent upstairs. He felt like he deserved a gold star for not using the stairs on his hands and feet. Not until he was out of sight, anyway.
----
“Hm, party over already?” Nanny asked and let him into her room. It was cool and smelled faintly of cold candle wax and lavender.
“Nah, they’re still downstairs. It’s really loud there.” Warlock collapsed onto her purple sofa-thing, taking a deep breath.
“Yes, I imagine. I can hear it from here.” She closed the door, dimmed the lights and came over to sit next to him.
“My head hurts,” he whined. It was worse now that it was quiet and nothing distracted him from it.
“Were any of the adults smoking around you?” she asked as dangerously as she was gentle when she ran her hand through his sweaty hair. Warlock shrugged, so she wouldn’t get upset.
“They will get a much worse headache than you," she said under her breath, which made it sound like a curse, and then coaxed him into a sitting position to make him drink some Cola. The coffee in it was supposed to help, she’d said, and it was nice and cool. His jacket had disappeared too at some point.
He sunk back down and laid his head on her lap so she could go back to petting his hair to make him feel better. Nanny obliged and he closed his eyes.
For a few minutes everything was quiet and calm and cool, as his headache began to dissipate.
“Did you eat anything yet?”
“Roast potatoes.” They always had roast potatoes at these dinners, so even if he didn’t like any of the weird food, he could still eat something.
“Good, and how about some raspberries for dessert?”
He could see the satisfaction on her face, when he perked up. He loved raspberries. Especially the ones Brother Francis grew in the garden, although they weren’t in season at the moment.
“Lucky for you I still have some left,” she said and produced a bowl full of fresh raspberries.
Warlock sat up with a smile and reached for one, wisely not asking about where or how she’d acquired them exactly. “Mmh, they’re so good.”
“Aren’t they just.” She popped one into her mouth as well. “Have I told you the story about Samson before?”
“Where god leaves him just because he got a haircut?”
Nanny hummed.
“No,” he said cheekily, so she’d tell him again, and settled into her side.
She wrapped an arm around him and chuckled. “About three thousand and two hundred years ago a man called Samson lived in the Near East. One time, he spent the night with a woman from Gaza, when…”
Warlock liked listening to Nanny’s stories. They weren’t stupid kids stories, but proper ones that he could ask questions about, especially because he usually didn’t understand it all. And even if he didn’t understand most of it, he also just liked the sound of her voice.
It was still a bit before his bedtime, but he found himself drifting off anyway and before he knew it, he was vaguely aware of being carried, tucked into bed and given a kiss on his forehead. And if the person carrying him noticed he wasn’t entirely asleep yet, she didn’t say a word.
All was quiet and calm and cosy.
----
It wasn’t until he heard a bang and a shout, followed by laughter that Warlock shot up from his bed, startled awake. He needed a few seconds to remember where he was and what was going on. That the laughter were guests.
Annoyed that they’d woken him up and also curious about the noise, he got up to investigate. He was pretty sure it had just been a bottle, but it could have also been a James Bond gun.
Clutching his stuffed cuddly whale to his chest, he ventured out of his bedroom and silently crept towards the big staircase. Another flight up was Nanny’s room, another flight down the party.
Usually he'd take the smaller staircase closer to his room to get up, but he didn't actually want to use the stairs at all today. Getting down onto the ground, he crawled closer to the landing and rested his head between two stone balusters, the only thing that kept him from falling straight to the bottom of the stairs. Here he had the perfect view while being pretty much invisible, although he also felt a bit like a prisoner looking through his cell bars. He could see his dad over there in the corner; he was smoking and laughing and holding a glass of water. Somehow these parties always looked more fun when he was already gone.
He watched everyone for a while, before remembering his whale.
“Right, sorry, Whale,” he said and pulled him up, so he could watch everyone too. “Look, there’s Dad, that’s a woman who smells like garlic, that man over there has sticky hands and Mom said that woman is a cow," he explained quietly, although he was pretty sure they couldn’t hear him from there. Engrossed in his own observations, he didn’t notice when Whale was beginning to slip out of his fingers. When he did, his stuffed animal was already falling dramatically, Warlock’s outstretched hand doing little to stop him from hitting the ground. “Whale…”
Warlock’s throat tightened as he watched his whale lie there, all on his own, like the man from the story. None of the adults had even noticed him. He couldn’t just leave him there but he also couldn’t just walk down the stairs in his pyjamas. Oh, he wasn’t wearing the scratchy shirt anymore. Normally, he’d be happy about that, but that also meant he’d get in trouble if he was spotted. And the staircase was so big, they’d definitely see him eventually. He looked to his whale again and swallowed. He was going down.
The plan was simple enough: Cause a distraction and use the kerfuffle to run downstairs, grab Whale and disappear back upstairs. The adults were too drunk anyway and he was small and fast. And the carpet on the stairs was blue just like his pyjamas, so maybe that would help camouflage him.
As for the distraction, Warlock had a great idea: Or, well, second idea. His first idea had been to throw one of his mom’s perfume bottles like a stink bomb, until he remembered that it was made of glass and that glass splintered. And he didn’t want anyone to actually get hurt. Instead, he was going to throw down a white bedsheet he’d just retrieved from the linen closet down the corridor. He’d throw it down on the other side of the stairs, so that they’d look away from him to watch the ‘ghost’. That should distract them for long enough.
And just like that, his plan went into motion. With satisfaction, he watched how the ghost did catch their attention and then rushed down the stairs. To his dismay, his makeshift ghost wasn’t a whole lot better at floating than Whale had been, so the ghost and he ended up having a pretty even race down the stairs, until about the halfway point, when Warlock slipped and decided the race for himself.
His foot slipped on a non-carpeted area and he landed straight on bum. A sharp pain shot up his back, before he slipped down further, bumping against the stairs again and again. And it hurt . As he looked around, he could see that his distraction hadn’t worked at all. The sheet landed a bit further away from the staircase, and now everyone was staring at him. For a second, the party was silent. Then there was laughter. A few people were laughing at him. He didn’t even want to see how his father was looking. Covering his face with his hands, he began to cry in earnest. His bum hurt a lot, his whale was still gone, he was going to get in trouble and now everyone was laughing at him.
In hindsight, he wouldn’t be able to say how long he’d sat there. Only that his dad had kept talking to his friends and his mum had stared at him with a mixture of shock and something else. The garlic woman approached him, but he wanted her gone and the rest of the party continued to be just as loud and bright and shrill as when he’d left and he couldn’t. Breathe.
“What happened here?” a very familiar voice said and Warlock looked up, as the garlic was replaced by lavender, and Nanny crouched down in front of him. The woman, who had reluctantly made way for her, found her voice again and explained he’d fallen down a few steps.
“He what? Warlock, love, are you hurt?” Nanny looked as stern as ever, but she sounded worried.
He looked at her and nodded. He was hurt and if even Nanny was worried it had to be very bad and now he really couldn’t stop crying.
Nanny ran her fingertips over his back and asked him if it hurt here or there, if he could feel this or that, all while the people around him were watching them. He just wanted to hide away.
Eventually she seemed satisfied and scooped him up so that she wasn’t putting pressure on his tailbone, before carrying him upstairs. As he clung to her neck and hid his face in her dressing gown, he realised that she must have already got ready for bed in the meantime. At least now he wasn’t the only one here who wasn’t wearing fancy clothes. As they got out of sight of the adults, Warlock did catch another glimps of his parents. His mom was still staring and his dad still wasn’t looking.
And Warlock was still crying.
“Shh, it’s going to be alright, little hellion, you can stop now.” Nanny spoke softly and the noise of the party faded behind them, until she shut his bedroom door, dimmed the lights and it got quiet.
“What were you doing down there, anyway? Weren’t you already asleep?” She raised her eyebrow at him and pulled back the duvet, before she gently laid him down onto his side. Surprisingly, that hurt a lot less than sitting.
“I was. But there was a bang and I wanted to see what it was and I wanted to show Whale and then he fell down and then I had to get him, but my distraction didn’t work and then I fell and then everyone laughed and then-” Warlock rattled off, his breath hitching, because he wanted her to know he hadn’t lied to her and hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.
“I see. That was your sheet ghost on the ground, then, yes?” she said and he nodded quickly.
“Right. Clever idea, bad execution. We’ll go through the physics later. For now, do you think you can be alone for a moment, while I get you some ice for your back?” she said and his lower lip began to wobble, when suddenly Whale appeared in front of his face. Warlock reached out and hugged him close. “How?”
“Well, you weren’t the only one at the bottom of the stairs. And I couldn’t just leave him behind now, could I?”
Warlock shook his head and gave Whale a kiss.
Nanny covered them both with the duvet and straightened up. “Back with you two in a moment.”
Warlock pulled his whale away a little to look him in the eyes. He was so sorry for putting him through all of that. “I’m really sorry…” he whispered and Whale seemed to forgive him.
Soon enough, Nanny was back just like she’d promised, although she’d brought an icepack instead of ice cream. It wasn’t that big a disappointment, though. He wouldn’t have been able to eat much anyway.
She came back to the bed and sat down in a chair that had just pulled up behind her, before wrapping the icepack in a kitchen towel and carefully placing it under his pyjamas and over his tailbone.
“There now. Better?” she asked and sat back. Warlock nodded.
“Now tell me again why you didn’t just ask me to get your whale when he fell down the stairs.”
He looked down. “Didn’t want you to get mad I wasn’t asleep. Or put me back to bed…”
“Do I ever get mad when you genuinely can’t sleep, like when it’s too loud because of certain adults?” She glanced very sternly at the door.
“No, you don’t.”
“And do I ever put you to bed when you’re not tired?”
Warlock frowned. She had done that a few times, when she was planning to see Brother Francis afterwards. But usually she didn’t. “No, Nanny.”
“Watching the adults was harmless fun and I’m all for well-planned mischief, but only as long as it doesn’t get you hurt. Stairs are dangerous, as you had the displeasure of finding out tonight, and you can be glad you didn’t break your neck during that stunt of yours.” She gave him a long serious look and Warlock’s lower lip got all wobbly again. “You’re too important to die. But that’s what’s going to happen if you keep doing things like running down the stairs at full speed when you’re still half-asleep, capiche?”
This wasn’t her angry voice, she just sounded serious. Warlock nodded timidly. “Sorry.”
“Don’t. Just think next time," she said and sighed, pulling his duvet up a little.
“Were you scared?” he asked and Nanny looked up. He added, “When you saw me down there. Were you scared?”
“Of course I was scared. I thought you’d broken your back.”
“Because you'd be in trouble because you have to keep me safe?”
She raised an eyebrow and pinned him to the bed with her gaze without even removing her sunglasses. “No, I was scared, because I thought you were hurt and I was worried about you. I can’t keep you safe all the time – and you’d never learn to do it on your own if I did – but you bet I’d like to.”
“Because you love me?”
“Because I love you.”
Warlock hid his smile behind his whale. “Why didn’t my mom or dad do anything?”
Nanny bit her lip. “I don’t know, dear. Maybe your mother didn’t know how to help.”
“Dad kept talking to his work friends.”
Her jaw hardened. “I don’t know why he did that. In the end, you’re okay, and that’s what matters.”
She smoothed her hand through his hair and he closed his eyes.
“Am I in trouble?”
“Not with me. And I think I can convince your parents that your bruise is punishment enough, if they get upset.”
“Thanks. And it does hurt.”
Nanny’s voice got gentler. “I know. Is it getting better now?”
“Yeah, it’s better,” he said and opened his eyes a little to look at her. “Can you stay until I’m asleep, please?”
“Of course, dear.”
He smiled a bit and gave his whale another goodnight kiss.
“I love you too, Nanny.”