Can­non­ball opened the door to the world Above in his usual style, caus­ing it to hang list­lessly from its one remain­ing hinge as dust set­tled in the air. Mender and Coats ducked under his huge arms as they too emerged from the door, and stared upwards into the night sky. It was rain­ing lightly, and a fine damp mist curled around the alley where the three of them stood and breathed deeply in the fresh air.

“Every time,” Coats mum­bled to her­self. “Every time, it feels so good up here, and I feel like I don’t want to go back…”

Mender shot her a sharp look across the belly of the giant lad who stood between them. Inside her own head, Coats cursed. She hadn’t been as quiet as she thought she’d been.

“So, we’re going, right?” rum­bled Cannonball’s voice at last, as if he’d spent the entirety of the time between open­ing the door and now just think­ing up that one question.

“Yes,” Mender replied, voice like acid. Coats just nod­ded. Best not to think about the elu­sive promise of the world Above — after all, all three of them had rejected that promise when they were young. They’d cho­sen of their own accord to live Below. Hadn’t they?

By the time they had reached their tar­get, their can­vas for the night, any antipa­thy that the three felt towards each other had melted away. In the cut-and-thrust world of the Under­side a divided tribe was a destroyed tribe, and their old habits were too ingrained in their minds to be given up on after just a few moments Above. Each of them reached for a brush or a spray can as they stood beneath the tow­er­ing mar­ble of the wall, and each of them became in an instant an artist; three kindered spir­its joined by loy­alty, pas­sion and ability.

The Art began.

The wall stood gleam­ing and glit­ter­ing as they fin­ished their task. Pur­ples, blues and greens all merged and parted amidst the sil­ver and gold sparkling reflec­tions, giv­ing life and depth to a sur­face for­merly flat and clin­i­cal and dull. They each looked at each other, and smiled. A good night’s work, as always.

They turned to leave, but stopped sud­denly. Beneath a strag­gly brown fringe and above a mud-splattered t-shirt, two emer­ald green eyes glared at them as if they were pierc­ing them to the depths of their soul.

“Wh… who’re you?” Mender stam­mered, caught off-guard by his own fail­ure to notice the child earlier.

The child, if that was indeed what it was, mum­bled some­thing that none of them heard.

Coats knelt down next to him in the road, bring­ing her own head level with the kid’s. “It’s okay,” she said in her best attempt at sooth­ing. “You can see us, right? What’s your name?”

The child whis­pered in her ear, much to Mender’s annoyance.

“Are you lost?” Coats asked.

He nod­ded, twice.

“Do you know where your par­ents are?”

Shake, shake.

“Are you cold?”

Nod, nod.

Coats sighed, and stood up to face her friends. “He’ll die out here in the cold and rain before long. We’re not leav­ing him.”

Cannonball’s face slowly twisted into a mask of con­fu­sion, while Mender responded with prac­ticed quickness.

“Dun’ be stu’id, Coats.”

“I’m not being stu­pid, Mender, I’m being human!”

“Stu­pid.”

“Shut up. Look, I’m the eldest, what I say goes. I’ll take respon­si­bil­ity for him.”

“Huh. ‘e’s pro­lly got par­ents lookin’ for ‘im even nah. Look’ like a weak kid. ‘ow’s ‘e gonna sur­vive B’low?”

“We’ll look after him.”

Can­non­ball looked like he sud­denly under­stood, and he echoed Coats’ words. “We’ll look after him.”

Mender looked at the other boy, then looked up and made eye con­tact with him. Can­non­ball was at least a foot taller, and verg­ing on being spher­i­cal. “Of course he’d side with Coats,” Mender lamented as he sighed and turned away.

So it was that the young boy, aban­doned on the streets of Lon­don Above, came to find a new home Below. Already four­teen years old — the eldest of her tribe, but soon to be too old to remain with them — Coats spent her last year or so teach­ing her young appren­tice every­thing he needed to know to be a mem­ber of the tribe and to sur­vive in the gloomy world beneath the streets of the capital.

Her last wish before leav­ing was that the boy be ini­ti­ated as a full mem­ber of the group, at a cer­e­mony called the Nam­ing. Just seven years old, he stood before the entirety of his new­found soci­ety. Already an ath­letic kid keen on play-fighting, Coats chose for him the name “Knife”.

Shortly after the cer­e­mony, Coats dis­ap­peared for good. Most say that she dis­ap­peared, along with her vast array of cold weather wear, into the frozen Jan­u­ary world Above. Oth­ers, of course, keep the rumour alive that she still to this day roams the cav­erns of the sub­ter­ranean world, as a Guide, a courier, a secret agent, or hun­dreds of other pos­si­ble occupations.

Time blurs a lit­tle in the world Below, but that was thought to have been some­where between six and eight years ago. After Coats left the tribe, Mender became the eldest and thus leader. After him, a suc­ces­sion of kids ascended to the title one after another, until the respon­si­bil­ity at last fell to Knife. Now four­teen years of age, just as Coats was when she became his men­tor, Knife has not long left as a mem­ber of the tribe. But that doesn’t mat­ter to him, just like it’s never mat­tered to a tribe leader before. All that mat­ters is the fun, the adven­ture, the tribe, and the Art.