The Hanging Parrot

[Placeholder chapter text — The Hanging Parrot]

The little parrot sleeps head-down, as if the whole sky were a branch. So the boy had said, the first night aboard, and the words had stayed with her long after the boy himself was gone ashore at Trang.

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The steamer held its course through the strait a while longer, engines low, the water the colour of unpolished pewter. On deck the passengers kept their own counsel, as passengers on such crossings generally do, each with a private reason for being aboard and none of them eager to share it before Ranong.

Below, in the hold, something in a wicker cage shifted its weight from one foot to the other, and said nothing at all.

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