Gaining Traction

The troupe visited Edinburgh, Carlisle, and York. They were headed to Leeds when he finally decided to put the thought of the red-haired girl and her butterflies from his mind. He refused to admit, as the weeks went by, that he was waiting to see another star, that he believed in the map and, by extension, in her. How foolish was he to believe she would remember him, would alter the stars for him?

The circus was picking up traction. Word spread that they were travelling south, and the audiences in each city had gotten bigger and bigger. He rarely saw his parents when they weren’t practicing, unless his father stopped to ruffle his hair and his mother insisted that he needed to find an act, or something to do on stage, if he wasn’t going to read the cards for the audience. He’d been approached by Maurice, the magician, who was looking for an assistant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a magician’s assistant, but when asked what he did want to be he only shook his head and refused to reply. What he wanted was very unlikely, and it had nothing to do with the circus at all.

He stargazed less and less each night; in part because the larger cities were so bright it was difficult to make out any stars. In the country stars flared like flames, but still he did not look. He resented the stars, and the fact that a new one hadn’t yet appeared. The stars did not care about a little boy lying in the tall grass outside a circus tent in York. They had better things to do. Except tonight, the only matter that required their attention was the making of space for a new star. Beside the constellation of Castor, one of the Gemini twins, it was red, as red as the Garnet star. It was so small he thought for a moment it was a spot of light in his vision, as if he had stared at a too-bright light too long. It had the impression of the arcane, of atavistic power. It was as red as her hair.

He took off toward the backstage tent. He knocked over several pieces of the contortionist’s paraphernalia as he rummaged for the map in his bag. He sprinted back outside and opened it on the grass. The light from the big top painted shadows across it like spilled ink, but he could make out the new star, in red ink, very clearly beside Castor. Tibia. The flute. A half a world away from his serpent charmer star.

Inside the tent the audience burst into applause. Probably the trapeze swinger had finished his routine and was taking a bow from a great and terrible height.

The boy suspected that somewhere, the red-haired girl was taking a dramatic bow, just for him.

Art by Adam S. Doyle

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Serpent Star

He walked with a world in his pocket, a collection of stories and myths that were larger and more real to him than the circus tent and the many cities they visited. He thought often and long about the red haired girl and the blue butterflies. It seemed he could not think of one without the other. Where there was red hair, there were blue butterflies, and vice versa.

He took it out occasionally, unrolled it on the floor of the tent, in the trapeze swinger’s corner, because she was the tidiest and therefore had the more floor space. He held down the curling corners of the map with paperweights: a chipped crystal ball that the fortuneteller had given him, a deck of playing cards with flowers on the non-suited side, a glass blown bluebell, and an array of chess pieces. He considered adding more stars to the map. More constellations. It did not seem right to do it without her.

This was until the day that a star appeared on its own. Not on the map, but in the sky. He’d been sitting in the audience under the big top, too full of chocolate covered popcorn to sleep, but hopelessly bored by the routine, which he had seen several times before. He shuffled between patrons toward the opening of the tent and pushed aside the canvas. The night outside made it hard to believe that summer could ever end. It was warm, filled with the sound of cicadas, smelling of popcorn and light rain and wet loam. The sky was dusted with stars, he could name each one: Arcturus, Lesath, Maia. He pointed to them each, as if the red-haired girl was here beside him, her butterflies flitting up between the light of each star. He whispered their names under his breath. Then the whispering stopped abruptly when he pointed to a space in the sky that had, previously, been empty.

The new star was just off the constellation of Ursa Minor, so close to Polaris that Polaris’ light almost eclipsed it. But it was there, distinct and twinkling, determined to shine.

Even without the map he knew which star it was. He had drawn it on the map, and the red-haired girl had named it. She had pointed to it and christened it before a butterfly had landed on it. Coreanid. His first thought was not that it was impossible that a star on their drawn map could have appeared in the sky. It was: Did she do this for me?

He was certain that she had. And he was also certain that she wanted something back. A star for a star. A story for a story. Something with which to prove his mettle. He wondered what he was supposed to give her.

Some days later, at the end of their stretch in Essex, he unfolded the map, carefully, and took out his pen. He was hesitant to make a mark on it, but he was afraid to leave her star alone in the sky, waiting for his. He tested his pen on some scrap paper, then, very delicately, dotted a star beside Scorpius. Serpens, he thought, and wrote the name beside it. The serpent charmer star. He sat back and marveled at his handiwork, feeling, for the first time, that the he was content with the ground beneath him, that it was not so strange for new stars to appear. He reached for his tarot card deck, bound in silk, and unwrapped it. The edges were worn, but the colours of the pictures on the cards, all copper and muted creams, were vivid. He cut the deck in half and drew the top card from the bottom half of the deck. L’Etoile. His star would rise. It would be a vertiginous force in the sky. He hoped she would see it. He replaced the card in the deck, waited for the ink to dry, and folded the map. 

Art by Erin

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Skip Rope Song For Alchemists

Fire wants to devour.

Water wants to erase.

Wind wants to steal.

Ice wants to heal.

Sun wants to rise.

Moon wants to veil.

Fear wants to rule.

Time wants to run.

Sky wants to fall.

Sea wants to drown.

Earth wants to grow.

Chaos wants to bleed.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Keeper Girl

The tomb was small and musty and empty. There was a white patch in the dust on the floor where the coffin had once been. And there was a nest of snakes that had been there since the coffin was removed. It was hard to see once she closed the door and sealed them both inside.

"Where are you?" he hissed in the dark.

She melted into the shadows. She did this very easily, like blinking, or beathing. "You can't see me?"

"I can't see my hand in front of my face," he said. He shuffled around in the dirt.

"I can see you," she said. "Careful. You'll step on the nest of snakes."

He froze. He was nowhere near the nest of snakes, she saw, but he couldn't know where they were. They weren't there yet. She wanted to say something before it happened.

"You never answered my question, earlier," she said.

"I forget what it was," he admitted, feeling his way along the walls.

"How do you want to die?"

"Oh. Right. Peacefully, I guess. Of old age. Or maybe doing something heroic. You know, something people will remember me for."

Yes. She'd heard this before. Everyone wanted to die one of those ways. "I know how I'm going to die," she said.

His voice held amusement. "Do you?"

"Yes. I know how you're going to die too."

There was a pause. This was not something people normally said, in the dark, in a tomb.

She continued: "And I'm sorry. It will be unpleasant and it won't be quick. And you're so young."

He made an uncertain noise. "Um..."

She grabbed the handle of the door and stepped out of the shadows. "And for it to happen, I have to leave and lock the door." She paused. "I'm sorry again."

She pulled the door open and stepped outside. The sunlight was grey. The cemetery was empty. He was still inside. She shut the door. "Mind the snakes," she said to the closed door.

She sat down, pulled out her iPod, put in her earphones, turned on her music, and waited.

Art by Abigail Larson

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Strange Alchemy/The Art Of Balance

"Love is a kind of alchemy. It is a combination of pain and time and trust and affection and frustration. An exchange of all that and something golden. There's no name for what you get in return, except love."

Art by Ludovic Jacqz

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Rabbit Trick

I kept pulling rabbits out of the hat. I didn't think anything of it. Magic, you know. The kind that makes people ask "how do you do it" as if it's as easy as an explanation.

But there was nothing wrong with it. People liked the rabbits.

But I kept pulling them out. And now they're... different. They're faces are just a little bit off. And they're looking at me funny.

I tried pulling out a fox once, just to see if the rabbits would go back to normal. But people expect rabbits.

So I keep pulling rabbits out of the hat. I'm beginning to worry.

But really, what can I do?

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Planes

Marie stared at herself, who was standing three feet away. She had to be lit, like a candle. Then she flared into existence, flickering. Marie hadn't pictured herself this way, but perhaps the other Marie, the one three feet away, staring at her with an identical expression of apprehension and distaste, felt the same way about her. 

"I'm not sure I have this all quite down," said the Marie who could take a seat without setting it ablaze.

The Marie with eyes like fire looked exasperated. "Why not? It's very simple."

"For you, maybe. I didn't know there were two of me, let alone a hundred."

"There aren't a hundred." There was a brief pause as that Marie flickered and almost gutted. Then she was steady. "There are infinite us. Us's. However you'd like to say it."

"And they're all like you, are they?" Marie eyed the other Marie's feet doubtfully. They were blue, like the heart of a flame, and didn't quite touch the floor. Neither did her own, but the chair was quite high. And she was wearing fluffy bunny slippers.

"Of course they're not. And they're not all like you. I've only met a few, but we're all the same, and we're all different. That's the purpose of coming from other planes."

Marie furrowed her brow. "Don't you mean other worlds? Alternate universes, and that sort of thing?"

"I mean what I said. As far as I know, other worlds are all about physical stuff. You know. There's an us with fur, and an us made out of a gold, and an us grown out of a tree like a branch. Planes are different. Planes mean time and matter and space. We've got old versions of ourself, and versions that don't exist in the physical world, and versions that are just sounds, and a version that's just a pair of eyes with no mouth. God, I pity me. Us."

Marie opened her mouth and closed it. She thought she needed a drink. "I'm getting a drink," she announced, and went to the cabinet where she kept glasses. She offered one to the other Marie, who was standing a little too close to her bookcase for comfort. 

"No thank you." The other Marie's tongue was also a flame, with a blue root. "One sip of alcohol does me in. I just blaze up and then go out."

"Ah." Marie poured herself a glass of scotch. She drank. Then she poured another. "I don't understand one thing."

The other Marie, the other her, groaned. "What now?"

"Why are you telling me now? Why tell me at all? What do you want with me?"

The other Marie shifted uncomfortably. A single spark went up from the end of her ponytail. "Because I'm not sure what else to do. The planes are... in trouble. I'm not in charge. I'm not sure what's going on. But I can only get me- us- to help. So... you're all the help I've got right now."

"Help? What am I supposed to help? What's wrong?"

"The best way I can put it is this: The world is ending."

"Ah." Marie drank her second glass. She had a feeling she would need a third. "And there's only us to stop it?"

"So far."

Marie poured a third glass. "Oh dear."

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Earl King

Earl King will do you grevious harm.

If your parents warn you about witches and gouls and monsters under the bed, they should warn you too of the Earl King. Child-snatcher. Wood-eater. King of the hunt.

And as beautiful as a summer's night. He is like the throne of the forest. White as birch, a perch for birds and small beasts. Where he treads in the leafy aisles between trees he leaves no tracks. Nightingales nest in his antlers, morning doves, and love birds. Entire dawn choruses are sung from his antlers.

Like a timid fawn, he approaches children and shy maidens. But timid fawns do not have eyes as old as the woods themselves. They do not have eyes with teeth. They do not swallow people whole.

Where the woods go, he goes. Where the hunt goes, he goes. If you dream of a bow and arrow, of Orion the hunter, of the path the moon carries through the night, you may wake to see the Earl King in the shadows of your room. And it will be too late to make a sound.

Earl King is silent.

Earl King means you grevious harm.

Art by Stephanie Pui-Mun

Text by Lucie MacAulay 

The Shadow Month

Once, in a very old house, at the end of a very narrow lane, two children lived with their mother. The children were very content in their old house.

In the winter, when the floorboards felt like ice and they put off getting out of bed as long as they could, they made fires in the stone fireplace in the drawing room, and pretended to read the books with no pictures inside.

In the spring they went tot he attic and let the birds in, scattering crumbs on the floor, holding as still as they could to coax the birds into their palms.

In the summer, when the house swelled with heat and the apples burst with juice on their branches and the grass turned green and then withered in the hot dirt, they raided the blackberry bushes until their hands were brown with dirt, purple with juice, red with blood where the thorns had scraped them, and leaned against the old ash tree in the backyard that someone had told them was to ward off evil.

In the autumn they watched leaves fall from their branches like flakes of gold from gilded statues and lay on their backs thinking of their wonderful summer, and also thinking of candy-flavoured hot chocolate in the coming months.

Then there was the inbetween month. Their mother did not believe in this month, and insisted that when they were older they would grow out of such fanciful tales. The children did not think you outgrew the inbetween month.

This was not a month when grass and trees flourished, when wind blew, or water fell, or the wind howled, or the sun burned.

This was a month when shadows grew.

They grew long and black and thick as ink puddles. And not just puddles, but streams and rivers and oceans of shadows. They reminded the children of the shadows in between houses, and of the shadows between the underbellies of beds and the floor, and of the shadows in between rooms in long, dark hallways.

The children kept at least two candles lit at all time in the inbetween month, in case one blew the other out. They kept their eyes on the shapes of the shadows, lest one turn into a hand or a mouth and come too close. When the girl was scared she held her brother's hand as they climbed the stairs and went down the corridor. When the boy was scared he climbed into her bed at night and pulled the blanket over his head. But the shadows, they realized after the third year in the house at the end of the lane, were not very frightening.

And they left presents.

The first present was a black flower. Not red-black, or purple-black, or blue-black. It was blacker than black, blacker than night. Like a piece of the world cut out in the shape of a flower, a stencil through which the children saw the void. The shadows left it in a vase on the girl's bedside, so when she woke with her brother (who had crawled in just before midnight), they saw it open its petals like a hand uncurling its fingers.

The second present was a black cat. The children were not sure at first what it was. It vanished in direct sunlight, and was skittish. When they held their hands out to it the cat fled. But at night they felt its black paws on their cheeks, its warm fur against their necks, its purring like a triphammer.

There were other presents: black candies that tasted like several fruits at once, or like honey, or like chocolate, or like ancient seeds pried from pods that had lain in the sun. There were sugarplums with black sugar. There was an old book with blank pages that, when the children flipped through it quickly enough, showed them a story of a shadow house and the girl inside it who lost her shoe. There was black paper and black pens, black ribbons and black bows, black glass sculptures and even a black knife that looked like sharpened shadows.

When the children's mother finally deemed them too old for such stories, and sent them to bed when they tried to tell her that she could see the black cat in just the right light, the children became angry.

In the winter they would not come out of their beds at all, keeping their feet warm and the fireplace cold. In the spring they did not venture up to the attic, and watched the birds out the window instead. In the summer their mother was dismayed by the animals that came to eat the blackberries that had fallen off the bush in the backyard when no one had bothered to eat them. In the autumn there was no one to watch the leaves turn colour, and they curled and turned brown and became a graveyard of leaves.

Then the inbetween month came again. This time the children were ready. When the shadows left them presents on their beds they kept their eyes open, hoping to see faces. In the hallways they stared at the shadows, and held out their hands. The shadows were as skittish as the cat had been. But the shadows were lonely, and they took the childrens' hands. And the children knew what it was to belong to nothingness. To the absense of light. It was the most peculiar thing. They knew what it was to be the space in between two things when the shadows took their hands their arms. They knew what it was to be the space in the world where only void shone through, when the shadows had swallowed them up to their necks.

Then they knew what it was like to be shadows, and to live without seasons and months and houses and blackberries.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Fear Is A Weapon

She was ice itself. And she was behind him, sharp nails digging into his shoulder, lips at his ear.

Her voice was silver and black, champagne and moonlight and velvet blankets.

The shadows before him writhed. He'd known, when he came in, beckoned by her voice and her lips and her deep deep eyes that he would have to face the monsters, as Arthur faced the dragon.

His hand by his sword trembled.

"What do I do?" he asked as his panic peaked, as the shadows blinked. 

She breathed against him. Her breath was ice. Her fingers shocked his skin. He could feel those deep deep eyes on him. He was no hero. He could desire her, but he could not save her. He could not save himself.

He clutched his sword. He could try.

She leaned in, to kiss him, he hoped. Her words painted the darkness with new hope. His fear was an animal he could tame. "Don't let them see you're afraid."

He pulled the sword from its sheath and looked into the eyes of the shadow. Her hands were leaving him. He stared into the shadows, still feeling her cold breath on his neck, and lifted the sword.

Art by Anna Dittmann

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Silent Wordsmith

Her father had taught her silence. He was not a man comfortable with words, but he could steep in silence for hours, and when she collected her books and went to bed with a quick kiss on the cheek, she felt as if they'd said more than they ever had in any conversation.

She had learned to be quiet, to be watchful and wary, but also to lose herself in her novels. Though not, she remembered, all the time. She had been so absorbed in The Three Muskateers when she'd first read it, sitting in a tree, that when d'Artagnan dodged a sword, so had she, and promptly lost balance and fallen out of the tree. Her concussion had been so severe the doctor insisted she stay in her bed. Her father had relocated for several days to her room, with a new stack of books each day, and they'd sat in silence, in their own worlds, closer than ever.

Silence, she came to realize, was a breeding ground for stories, but not books. In silence she could make up entire aventures and epics, but without words they withered and died. Her father was a collector of stories, but he was not a wordsmith.

She found her fertilzer, her compost, her sunlight and water and root-growing soil for her stories in libraries, where she easily camouflaged herself with grey blouses and black skirts and listened to the conversations on the other side of the stacks. She'd never longed to have conversations like that with anyone.

Her father had filled shelves and shelves of books for her. One day she caught him glancing at the black smudges on her fingers. The next day, with a biography and an annotated version of Alice in Wonderland, a box of pencils and a silver sharpener appeared on the shelf.

She made notes of the stories she'd collected, and when they felt ready to grow, she planted herself in the silence she'd collected, and touched the tip of her pencil to the page. Words bled from its tip, and the silence consumed them.

Art by Ludovic Jacqz

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Seven

"It's the Seven!" they whisper, behind not-quite-closed doors, watching and waiting for the blue door at the end, the one covered in vines, to swing open.

"I've seen it open," boasts one of the oldest, who has seen all the doors open, though, being just a child when the Seven appeared, can hardly remember it. Still, she boasts, swinging her cane and speaking with her hands to anyone who will listen.

The Seventh door is the last in the line, the least frequently opened, the most overgrown with vines. Until yesterday, when the warning - the missive had come. The Seven shall arrive tomorrow. Prepare your children. Two will be chosen.

One is a place for children of good learning, where they disappear and return with secrets and inside jokes and a skill they have honed for years. Two is an honour, those who return become scholars. Three is slightly more dangerous. Only a certain number of children return, and half of them are unrecognizable, mad and haggard and relegated to street corners where they spout half-nonsense prophecies. Half of them come true, but they are never pleasant, and the villagers prefer to listen to pleasant things. The fourth door is for musical children. The Fourth produces children with the skills to draw whole flocks of sheep through gates with a few notes, to chase snakes from the hutches, to send children to sleep. The door to Five collapsed long ago. Some say it began the way Seven did. The door had opened less and less often until it had stopped opening altogether. It was had splintered and nearly come off its hinges and the villagers had decided to leave it be, that the higher powers would fix it if it was their intention. It has stayed that way for years. Six is a place for athletes, the ancient Sparta of the doors. Those that are spit out years later are rigid with muscle, nimble with their fingers, and generally not the kind of people one wants to anger.

But Seven, oh Seven is a different door altogether. And the Seven, the person-teacher-thing beyond it calls for only one or two children, at irregular times. No one has ever returned from Seven.

The children of the village are groomed and combed and perfumed and wrestled into itchy lace and uncomfortable trousers and pinching shoes. When the time has come, when the clocktowers are arguing noon across the rooftops, they are put into a single file line, before the door.

They begin at the first chime. They wait only seconds to see if the door opens. There is no movement from it, not fo the first child, nor the second. There goes the baker's son, the butcher's boy, the mayor's daughter, the farmer's twins from down the lane, the woodcutter's son, the orphans from the orphanage, looking particularly grey in their worn clothes. The librarian's son steps forward, meeting the number on the door with his calm, green gaze. He feels as though it is looking back at him. Very slowly, it opens. Just a crack, enough to cast a small shadow on the wall it is set into, but the villagers see it. The librarian comes to stand with his son beside the door, holding back tears.

The humber of children in the line dwindles. Villagers hold their breath until the door rejects their child, relinquishes them for some other destiny. The Seven does not want their children today.

It opens again for the cobbler's daughter, a tall red-headed girl with shining shoes and her hair loose, though most of the girls have tied their hair in ribbons for this occasion. She does not seem to believe at first that the door has opened, not until her father takes her shoulders with his shaking hands and steers her toward it.

The Seven swings open. Beyond it is immediate darkness. A cold gust of wind blows the librarian's son and the cobbler's daughter a step closer. The Seventh is getting impatient.

The librarian gives his son a quick kiss on the forhead and a pat on the shoulder. The cobbler embraces his daughter for the last time, kisses her cheek, and pushed her gently ahead. She steps into the darkness, just before the boy. They are swallowed by it immediately. The door swings shut. There is no noise. No sound. The Seven has made its claim.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Eyes On The Walls

The hallway is lined with playing cards, walls of black and white and red. There is no discernable pattern, no order to the rows and columns that hide the walls. Faces are across at faces, the suicidal King, the black-haired Queen.

Some cards are flipped over, backs exposed. The designs are intricate, as extravagant as the curlicues and flourishes on tarot cards. They are images of vines and spirals and tiny buds.

You walk along slowly, looking to see if any of them are different, but the faces remain the same, the numbers do not increase above 10 or decrease below 2. You can imagine the feeling of the cards beneath your fingers, while they are pristine you imagine soft edges, bent corners, cards that have seen smoky pubs and logwood cabins and rainy days. Memories emerge from their corners and niches, some better than others.

You squint at the cards. Is the Jack smiling here? Has the suicidal King closed his eyes? Is the Queen weeping at the sight? The cards seem more morose, more tragic as you continue. This cannot be all there is.

You avoid the eyes on the walls as you continue down the corridor. You have not noticed that the most often occurring card is the 2 of hearts. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous

The Magic Eight

The magic eight is only reference in the apex of superstition. On All Hallow’s Eve, when the black cat crosses one’s path, when a child wanders beneath a ladder, when one steps on the cracks in the sidewalks, one will go out of their way to see the magic eight.

It has been here for as long as anyone remembers. Even the gray-haired, deaf, pearly-eyed cannot remember a childhood without it. It has always been there, they say, and it always will be.

There is some speculation as to when it appeared. Some say a former neighbour left it behind long ago. Others insist it has always been there, it was born from the land.

And why eight? Why not seven? Why not nine? OR the unlucky thirteen? The magical, fairy tale three?

Touching the magic eight leaves some feeling cold, others warm. But each will come away with a new perspective. New eyes. The neighbours with the strongest of practical streaks insist it is electric shock. Nothing new about it. 

Most days the magic eight is ignored. Unseen. Strangers will point and ask questions. That? Just the magic eight. No, it’s always been there. Nothing lucky about it.

Yet, when the wind blows harshly, when the waves on the shore are capped with white, when the rain lashes hard against the small rickety houses on the hill, when the knife has slipped in the kitchen and blood is running over the tiles, when death stands over one’s bedside, someone will always be sent to the magic eight.

Deep down, no one questions the magic of the eight.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous

Secret Destinations

“The boat departs at midnight,” the captain says. “It’s a cold journey, tonight. Bundle up.”

The wind is cold as a ghost’s breath across the deck, whistling in the sails. The lanterns flicker with it.

You depart with no suppositions about your destination. The journey alone is an adventure. There is a map of stars above your head, continents of constellations, the river of Orion’s Bow.

You are among others as you stare into the mist, then, as the mist dissipates, at the large dark mountains, like the backs of sea beasts rising above the water. These kindred spirits marvel with you over the sweet taste of the air, over the star studded surface of the water, over the tiny lights appearing in the mountains like candles.

The captain has vanished to the top deck. He is little more than a shadow against the light. You wave and, after a moment, he waves back. There are refreshments, timed exactly when the passengers begin to get hungry: champagne in glasses with coloured flutes, confections of cream and sugar and jam, and spices too exotic and strange to name.

Soon you forget that you are headed for a destination at all. The night reaches their pinnacle, and as it wanes, as the dawn bleeds over the mountains, the strange question re emerges. But there is no use wondering. The mist seeps across the lake once more. The captain has all but disappeared. But the ship shows no signs of stopping.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous

The Dreaming House

You descend the stairs to a room filled with feathers, each as soft as clouds, so thick the floor is barely visible in the spaces between them. There are no walls, only bars on either side of you that outline a winding corridor, like the bars of a large birdcage.

You continue down the hall, where the feathers and metal converge to a door. Through it is a room filled entirely with evergreen trees, each as silver as tinsel, glowing as though lit from within. Their light is a ruler that measures your shadow.

You catch glimpses of figures, here and there, flitting from tree to tree. A blonde pig-tailed girl in a muslin gown, an old man holding a pipe, wreathed with smoke. A young woman with a handkerchief soaked in blood. An adolescent with short cut hair and a soft face who is not masculne, but too boyish to be a girl. You do not catch a glimpse of the same person twice.

Beyond the line of a group of trees is a wooden door, set between two trunks, and beyond it a room of such lightlessness that you are blinded. There are no walls that you can feel, and were your feet not firmly planted on the ground you might believe that it does not exist either. It is not until the first of the stars reveal themselves that you realize you are in an open space, as vast as a desert. It is, in fact, filled with sand, soft beneath your feet, white as snow. There is no door behind you.

You follow crest after crest until you fear there is no end to this desert. Perhaps you were wrong to choose that door in the trees. Perhaps you were wrong to leave the birdcage-hall. But in the dip between two hills is a trapdoor, and beneath it, a ladder made only of playing cards.

You fear, as you descend it, that it will break, but it holds steady until you stand in a hallway lined with mirrors. They are pieces of glass, of all shapes and sizes, framed and unframed, circular and triangular and in lines and jagged mosaics. Each one is different, you realize, as you pass them. In some your boots dissappear, in other they reappear, with extra buckles or without. In one mirror there is a hat on your head, in another it is gone. In one mirror your shadow has vanished, only to reappear in the next.

In one mirror a hand is on your shoulder, but when you turn to see its owner, you find nothing.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous

The Price Of Decadence

"Life is like a box of chocolates," are some of the lady's first words to him.

The boy watches her swallow a chocolate after she speaks. She has a pleasant face. She has pleasant lips too, he notices. Carnation-pink, smiling widely.

"Oh?" he says, and takes a chocolate of his own. Hazelnut prailine. She turns the smile on him and he feels himself flush, deeply, in places he's never flushed before.

"A simple bite of the wrong one can put you off forever," she continues and licks her lips. He follows the path of her tongue across her teeth.

"And the right one?" he asks. He bites into his second chocolate. Coconut. Not his favourite, but he is hardly paying attention.

She pauses with a chocolate halfway to her mouth, lips pulled back, teeth poised to take a bite. "The right one can be worse. Addiction is a most dangerous poison." She sinks her teeth into the chocolate.

"I suppose it depends what you're addicted to." He reaches for another chocolate but a slender hand rests atop his and he pauses. There is a clash of instruments in his head, a sonata accompanying the loveliness of the face in front of him. The music dims when she leans close.

"Not that one," she says softly, pulling his hand toward another row of chocolates. She plucks one from its mold and places it in his fingers.

This one has a sweeter taste, tart like raspberries, bitter like wine, bubbly like champagne, rich like dark, dark chocolate. He tastes sunlight and shade and long nights and velvet and whispers.

She is whispering. Running her tongue across her teeth. She is close. He feels her body heat. Her face swims in and out of focus. Perhaps it is her nearness that makes the world appear as though it were on the other side of a distorted glass. Perhaps it is his vision that makes her teeth appear just a little too sharp.

The discovery of her breath on his neck arrests his thoughts.

"I am addicted to life itself," she says. Her voice is the most decadent thing he has tasted all night. His sudden sharp breath is the last thing he will taste, and the first thing she will taste of him.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Ludovic Jaqcz

Bell Minders

Now that I think about it, it all began with the bells.

Silver and tarnished, found in the back of an antique shop for less than three pounds. The shopkeeper couldn't seen to remember when they had appeared, or where she had aquired them. We asked if she had ever seen anything like them and she had shrugged and given us our receipt and wished us a good day.

We hung them first on our porch, where e suspected the wind would draw sound from them, like a musician. They looked old, like dust and forgotten things and sad stories. But they were as silent as if they lay still in the back of the antiques shop.

Soon we forgot about them, except to duck our heads and we left the house. "Mind the bell," we began to say, until the word lost all articulation. Mindthebell, it became.

Grandmother came to visit and stared at them for a long time. While I poured our tea in the kitchen she nodded toward the front of the house. "Bell like those cause trouble. Mark my words. When they start ringing, you'd better run." Grandmother said some weird things, so I nodded and promised her I would and offered her a biscuit for her tea.

I shared the superstition with a neighbour, who shared it with other neighbours, and soon a common greeting evolved. "Those bells ringing yet?" "Don't worry about the bells, they're quiet as mice."

The bells began to ring yesterday. I'm not sure I believed grandmother, but I began to run. So far I'm the only one who's got away.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Anonymous

The Crow Boy

When he wakes, without quite knowing how he knows, William is certain that the crow girl is gone. He knows it before he goes to her room and knocks and, hearing no answer, opens the door a crack. Dread creeps up his spine and he descends the stairs and finds the bottom floor empty. Her coat is hung up by the door, though when he exits the house he discovers it is too cold to go without. He takes one with him when he leaves and as he walks through the village he thinks perhaps he should have brought a scarf. But it is bound to be warmer by the time he finds her.

He does not want to contemplate what will happen if he does not. But he feels as though his feet cannot move quickly enough. The ground is crossed slowly under his feet. It takes an age to get to the end of the main street. An eternity to reach the edge of the village.

In the half hour it takes William to cross the field to the trees his anxiety has increased. His hands shake, he walks so quickly he almost runs and trips several times over his own feet.

Alone, for the first time since the crow girl appeared, William climbs a tree. He looks toward the trees across the field. He did not see the flash of light, but it is something he feels in the air. A sudden stillness. Not a bird sounds, the leaves on the ground do not stir with even the smallest wind. There is the impression of a scale being balanced, of a released breath and a rush of relief, but he remains still, certain it will somehow break.

He remains for several minutes looking toward those trees, though his legs have begun to ache from the position in which he is sitting and the cold wind makes his eyes water. He does not move.

When the day has warmed and the village has woken William slowly climbs down the tree. He looks backward several times as he crosses the field.

William waits for her to return but he has the sinking feeling he will not see her again. Still, it is a week before he will allow his mother to clear out her room or pack away her coat and blouses and skirts.

The yellow wool scarf that had been folded on her pillow still smells of honey and cream and sage, no matter how many times William’s mother washes it.

William spends as many hours a day as he can cleaning or helping his mother in the garden, or in school, though it does not take up as much time as he would like. His parents speak little about the crow girl except to offer him condolences and assurances that someone else will help her, wherever she is. William wonders if they truly believe this, or if the crow girl has gone to seek help at all.

He often finds himself wishing that she had not left him with no warning. Had not given him no notice of her impending absence. Perhaps if she had he could have joined her. He would not have minded leaving the village. He would not have minded helping her. He would have insisted upon it.

He does not help his mother clean out her room, except when she cannot manage to carry the bundles of sticks and dirty linens and rocks all by herself.

William wonders if there is something of hers he should keep, on the off chance she does return, or to remember her by, but he finds he does not want any of her selection of shiny stones or pale bones. In the end he takes a single iridescent black feather, the one in the best shape, and keeps it atop his dresser.

In the weeks following he does not look at the feather. He forgets it is there. The details of her face are slipping from his memory as well. He writes them down so as not to lose them completely and berates himself for not taking these precautions earlier.

He reads books and fairy tales, ones he had planned to read with the crow girl. It is not as enjoyable alone. When he finishes each one he thinks that perhaps the heroes in the stories do not always have the good fortune to happen upon adventure by waiting. Perhaps some heroes need to travel first.

He begins spending more time in the fields and the trees, before the weather worsens and the first snow falls and the trees are too cold and wet and icy to climb.

William climbs to the very tops alone, several branches above his friends, where the wind and his weight make the boughs bend and creak. But it no longer feels like a punishment. He looks beyond the field, not to the village, but beyond that, where the birds are dots against the expanse of blue sky. He thinks perhaps it is not bad to be alone for a while, or to look beyond and farther than his peers.

He brings his fairy tales with him to read. Each one stirs something within him. In his heart he is sure something very similar awaits him.

William thinks perhaps he will meet the crow girl again in one of his adventures (he decides there will be many) and thinks that if he does he would have more of his own stories to tell her, rather than someone else’s. The thought in incredibly pleasant.

One night he takes the black feather from his dresser and places it beneath his pillow. In his dreams he is not in the tops of trees, but above them, on black wings, hand in hand with the crow girl, and it is not so lonely nor so frightening, after all.

Art by Joao Ruas

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Woman King

The crow girl waits until the sun has just peeked over the horizon, yellows and reds chasing away the azures and blacks of night, to leave. It will be an hour or two before William is awake, though the knowledge does not impact her decision.

She could wake him, could try to explain where she is going, but he can do nothing except follow her and the thought of saying goodbye fills her with remorse.

She rises and dresses quietly, careful not to disturb any other sleepers.

The crow girl carefully folds the yellow scarf and places it on her pillow. She goes quietly downstairs to the front door. She doesn’t put shoes on, nor the charcoal coat hanging on the hook that was leant to her by William’s mother.

She takes nothing with her as she leaves.

She closes the door to the house as quietly as she is able, without hesitation. Perhaps if she were like William, if she were like anyone in the village, she could remain and live independently. And the red sun would return and eventually even the crows would die from the heat.

Leaving is the best gift she can think to give William in exchange for his kindness.

It is early enough that there are only a few villagers awake and outdoors, to stare at the girl with no boots who is never seen without William by her side.

She walks past the bakeries she has come to recognize by the smells wafting from them, past the school she has never attended, and the square where the boys stoned the crow. She pays no attention to any of it, or to the villagers. It is as though she is not walking through the village at all, but introspectively walking through an entirely different landscape, blind to the buildings and people around her.

At the edge of the village she keeps walking.

She walks across the field to the trees she and William have climbed several times. They are full of crows, boughs bending under the weight of them. Then she continues walking, into the farther fields, where William has never gone.

The better hours of the morning have drifted by when the tower rises on the horizon. Still an hour’s journey, but she can already see the crumbling reliefs around the top of it, the way shadows cling to it like they cling to nothing else.

Her stride does not change, she keeps a steady pace as she nears the tower, and though several crows disappear within the window at the top of it, her eyes are trained on the doorway at the bottom of it.

There is no door, whatever hung on the blackened hinges on the wall is long gone. It is simply a dark opening, as welcoming as the dark of night when one wakes from a nightmare, and it is overrun with weeds and vines. The crow girl walks through them. Burs stick to the hem of her skirt, nettles bite her feet, but she vanishes into the darkness and does not emerge.

The crow queen stands at the balcony, gazing over the field. Her view of the village is obscured by trees, thick on the horizon, even leafless. But she has seen the crow girl coming and knows when she is standing behind her.

The hollowness in the crow queen’s chest pounds, as if her heart has returned.

She turns slowly, unsure what exactly she will face as she does.

It is the crow girl, standing as still as if she were made of the same stone as the tower. She wears a white blouse and a grey skirt, but no shoes. She could be one of the village children, curious and lost. But she is not. At the moment the space they stand in is completely still, silent. No rustling of feathered wings. The crows are frozen to their perches, motionless.

The queen stares at the crow girl, into the eyes as dark as her own. They stand at opposite sides of a cavernous room strewn with bones and rocks, glittering with candlelight. A smudged chalk diagram decorates the floor between them.

“I did not call you back,” the crow queen says. She offers no welcome, extends no hand of friendship or niceties.

“It does not matter,” the crow girl says.

“I banished you,” the crow queen replies.

“It does not matter.”

“I killed you,” the crow queen says, her voice rising.

“No you didn’t. Sometimes I need to grow again,” says the girl. “If I’ve been damaged enough. I was safe, and now I’m not, and that’s the way it needs to be again.”

“Where did you come from?” the crow queen demands, not in English, but in a language understood by each bird in the room, who flap their wings and shuffle on their perches in nervousness.

The girl does not answer. She takes step after measured step toward the crow queen. “You can give me away and protect me and hide me, but you cannot get rid of me. No one can. I am essential.”

The crow queen shakes her head. To her surprise, the girl smiles.

“Yes.”

The crow girl holds up her hands, as if in prayer, looking into the crow queen’s black eyes. “Let the dead be. Draw down the red sun.”

The crow queen shakes her head. She is pale, and trembling. The crow girl does not seem to notice either her response or her appearance. There is an intensity in her eyes as though she were gazing not at the crow queen, but at the passage of time belonging to the her, through her and into her past. And there is age in her eyes, old age and weariness.

The crow girl reaches up to touch the crow queen’s crown. It is a twist of thorns and vines and dry twigs and string, and it is grander than any king’s crown. But the crow girl will not bow to the woman-king. One does not bow to the thing they have weakened.

Then she lifts her hands and cups them, as if she were preparing to catch water or rain within them. But what bursts from her fingers is not water. Fire appears, as if she held a candle, but there is no candle or match in her hand. This is no illusion or clever trick.

The first flames lick at the girl’s fingers, held between them, as if the red sun that rose for days is rising between them. Then they grow. They are as long and winding as serpents, towering over the girl, in front of the queen.

The crow queen wishes she could run away, forever avoid this moment and the consequences that will follow it. Instead she watches as the flames burn white, like the centre of a flame.

The light of the fire is blinding, and the crow queen closes her eyes against it. The light flashes red through her eyelids. She does not see the girl step forward, step into her, as easily as if she were stepping into water.

Then there is the pain. It is too sharp to comprehend, to stand. It is worse than the pain of ripping out her own heart.

For a moment she thinks perhaps she has been torn apart and stitched back together incorrectly. If the crow queen could open her mouth, she would scream, and her cry would frighten birds from their trees, would wake children from dreams.

Then there is nothing. No fire. No girl. No agitated cawing. Nothing but a quiet timeless stretch in which the surroundings slowly return.

She blinks, staring at a white pattern of stars, smudged. It is a moment before she realizes she is staring at the floor of the tower, surrounded by broken candlesticks and extinguished candles. The in-billowing breeze, damp as though it has just rained, is cool against her skin.

She rises to her knees, then, slowly, to her feet. It is still morning. The sun is battling through the mist, piercing it with golden spears, glittering on the dew-covered grass. There is an entire village beyond the mist, and something in her aches for it.

It is just beginning to weigh on her now, the heaviness. There is an ache in her chest that was not there before. But there is also something else, another feeling. She cannot explain it but it settles around her as much as inside her. Broken promises and disappointments, heartbreak, falls away. She feels more grounded than she has in weeks.

The crow queen presses her fingertips to her chest and, beneath them, feels the beat of her heart.

Art by Liga Klavina

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Heart Of Flame

The room in the tower smells of the dozens of candles that illuminate it, and something dark and bitter, like wet earth. There is more illumination coming from the windows across the room, where a part of the floor has been excavated to sin a level deeper that the rest and leads to a balcony beyond two stained glass doors.

The balcony overlooks a panoramic view of the fields and orchards, and the town, several hills and fields away. The crow queen sees it with such clarity as if it were standing in its streets. She stands on the balcony, bringing herself into focus. She has never attempted something of this size. She has no idea what the repercussions will be. She is not afraid.

A crow is perched upon her shoulder, glossy and ebony dark, a patch of darkness in the sunlight.

The room behind her has a high ceiling and is round, with walls of smooth, black, stone bricks. Bones have become the room, covering every surface and themselves hidden beneath strange objects: small silver knives, glass decanters, teeth, some large and curved like cobra fangs, others small and vaguely human in appearance. There are enough teeth to fill entire mandibles, scattered about the room.

And everywhere above her are crows. They perch on the rafters and on bookshelves, on sconces without flames, staring down with glistening black eyes. There are over a dozen pairs of eyes watching her as she returns inside, leaving the door open, and gently lifts the crow from her shoulder. It swoops upward in a flutter of black feathers and joins its companions in the shadows. She does not so much as look at it. She goes directly to the table on the other side of the tower to check her work. It is a delicate balance and a difficult process. It has taken her ages to work out precisely how it will happen and there is still no guarantee that it will go as planned.

The bones on the table are unwashed, yellow with age and the effect of the air, sockets and crevices, and indents depicted in dark shadow. The crow queen pushes them aside and pulls book after book from the pile next to the edge of the table.

She flips through books and ledgers and manuscripts, double checking and cautious of any forthcoming errors. Some pages she tears from the binding carefully, removing them and crumbling them within her fist. She needs no safeguard, no loopholes. She is certain she wants to continue.

The bones sit in a precariously made pile in the centre of the diagram, snow white in the candlelight. The diagram is written in chalk on the floor, like a picture emblazoned on a playing card.

She walks to the centre of the diagram where a single white candle burns, forming a small pool of wax beneath it. She holds the papers over the flames and watches them catch fire. She brushes the ashes and char from her fingers before standing.

She removes from a bracket on a wall a thin, silver dagger with a bone handle. The crow queen lets her hand linger on it as she thinks. She returns to the diagram in the centre of the room.

There are pieces of chalk, broken and worn down, on the floor, next to the smudged diagram and looping strings of symbols. She kicks them as she takes her place in the centre of a concentric design.

She begins quietly. She speaks words that the crows can barely hear, and that no person would understand. The crows stir in the rafters above her with a fluttering of feathered wings. Several feathers fall upon the diagram like the petals of some dark flower. But it is not the words that elicits this reaction. It is the flame of the white candle. It is several shades darker than any ordinary fire, and is steadily growing. It looks too large to be balanced upon a mere candle. It grows to a size that would barely be contained within a fireplace.

Then the fire erupts into crimson flames. It coils through the air like a serpent, rising over the queen of crows. Several crows take flight, swooping in circles around the room in agitation. She pays them no mind. The knife blade grows hot in her hand, but she does not let it go. Slowly, and deliberately, she steps into the centre of the fire.

The room is a blur of light and shadow, obscured by the red flames. She does not have time to let the knife go, though she can feel that even the bone handle is too hot, searing against the skin of her palm.

The crow queen lifts the dagger and, without hesitation, plunges it into her chest. The knife shears through the skin and flesh and into the bone underneath.

There is no blood, nothing dripping down her chest, though it is certainly no illusion. The knife in her chest is real.

The crow queen pries the dagger out and drops it on the floor, where its bloodless blade winks in the firelight.

Where the flames lick her bare skin they are black. Where they pour through the hole in her chest they are darkest midnight, the terrifying nightmare darkness that swallows lost travelers in the forest.

Then the pain begins. Furious white-hot pain that tears through her like a lance. She feels as though something has reached inside of her and is rearranging her.

There is a heaviness in her chest, and an ache in he throat, and such an excruciating pain she feels she cannot stand.

She focuses on the pain, on every moment wasted on her own desires or someone else’s. She carries the memories with her, and she is ready to be rid of them.

Then, there is nothing. No pain or memory at all. There is a feeling of lightness, as if she has swallowed too much air.

Somewhere a clock is tolling. But it is not a clock, it is a heart beating. I do not want you, she thinks. The beating of the heart fades, and she must pull herself together without it now.

There is the silver of temptation to do nothing, to stand in the fire until she truly starts to burn, and is nothing but a pillar of ash.

She struggles against the temptation to surrender, and seeks to pull herself back to this time and place. It is like searching or the origin of a sound that echoes through a vast cave.

Slowly, very slowly, she pulls herself back, and returns to the fire and bone. Soon she is standing on top of a pile of bones, the few having died down quickly. She feels lighter, less consequential. But she is certainly here, in her won flesh, her feet burnt by embers, her hand scarred by the white-hot blade in it. She lets it go and it clatters to the floor, coming to rest outside the diagram.

She puts her fingers to her chest. The crows have stopped flying, but they blink in fear at their queen.

Half of the candles have burned out, but the scent of burning wicks is as tangible as the layer of wax frosting several surfaces. The remaining candles cast dancing shadows on the walls.

The shadows in the room have grown just a little darker.

The dawn is coming. The first of its milky light is bleeding over the horizon. The crow queen stands with the dagger at her feet, and the smoldering fire, her hand still over her chest. Nothing beats beneath it. She glances down once to search for her shadow but finds nothing. It is done.

Art by Liga Klavina

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Leo Overgrown With Myth

Though they say he can be tempted down with caramel apples, that is not true.

He does prefer caramel apples, but not enough to make illicit trips down to you to get them.

He is surrounded by myth, and only some of it is true, while other parts are lies and wishes, and some of it is true-ish.

He is hard to see on cloudy nights, though you might glimpse the tip of his tail, shining from the darkness, like a sequin in a skein of black silk. However, if you do not see him, that does not mean he is not there.

They say he can tell princes how to win battles, knights how to defeat dragons, or lovers how to end their quarrells or mend their broken hearts. They say that by naming him, by pointing to him and beseaching him with a phrase beginning with "I wish..." that one can accomplish anything. He often wishes this were true, though it is not. He is generous.

He wanders sometimes, and when he does some people remark he is a shooting star, and will indulge in wish-making again. But the truth is, he is lonely, and searching for someone with which to speak. He does not come down often, so he tries to see as much of the world as he can from where he is, pacing back and forth, tilting his head this way and that.

But if he does come down, and you happen to be there, do not offer him tea, for he does not drink it. Do not remark that you have been waiting a long time. Do not be angry with him for his sudden appearance. You do not know when he may come again next.

Instead sit down, wherever you wish, and tell him something, about yourself, about your life. Confide in him with secrets and hopes and secret hopes. It does not matter to him if there is sorrow or hurt or anger or joy. He simply likes the company. And if you happen to have a caramel apple at exactly that moment, he may tell you something of himself.

He may not be able to mend your broken heart, and he may not turn you into royalty, and he may not come to you or leave you at the best of times, but he will sit with you and be quiet and listen. And at the end of it you may feel better anyway.

Art by Johanne Hevelius

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Not Lost

In those days the mist returns in the mornings, no longer driven away by the heat, lingering about the trees and streets in the cool early hours.

The water in the riverbed rises, consuming shiny rocks and turning the bank into a muddy mess.

The scarlet recedes from the sky, and from the sun. It is less like a ruby today than it has been since the first morning the sun rose like that.

The sun that rises is milky gold, nearly silver in the mist, when William notices it.

The birds do not return but William suspects that is large because it has become too cold for them. Even the crows have begun to huddle together for warmth.

William and the crow girl – that is the name he has given her, as she will have no other and hasn’t one for herself – pass these days in the garden, helping his mother organize the plants that withered in the heat. In the afternoons he takes her around the village, acquainting her with the streets, traversing the paths that loop behind banks and the school and bakeries back to the square, where he uses his money to buy her hot chocolate. He watches her reaction when she has her first sip and is relieved she seems delighted by it.

Occasionally William sits in the room his mother calls the parlour, which is a small space beside the kitchen, near the front door, and her reads, while the crow girl gazes out the window.

The light through the window is aureate, as golden as if it were midsummer. The crows take to the spaces beneath awnings. To the balconies where the walls protect them from the wind-directed rain.

William’s mother drifts by, then stops, her attention caught by the crow girl. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“Watching the rain,” is her reply. When William’s mother glances out the window she sees a clear blue sky and a sun that is only somewhat scarlet. There is not a cloud in sight and no hint of rain. But she says nothing to her son’s strange friend.

It is an hour later, when William has joined her at the window, that the rain starts. Huge sheets of it that fill the gutters and sparkle on the windowsill.

There are several days of rain following the first rainstorm. Raincoats and boots are donned, umbrellas dot the streets, sheltering those who have braved the weather or those who have appointments to keep.

William and the crow girl make excursions around town at these times, to bookstores and the library, avoiding the worst of it, though they do get caught in some of the rain and return home looking as if they have climbed out of a river.

The rain becomes a drizzle, light enough to venture out in without an umbrella, should one with, which is how William and the crow girl spend an afternoon. They traverse the shining rain-slicked cobblestones at a lazy pace, with no destination in mind.

Oftentimes they end up in the cemetery, adding their own silence to the already-present silence. The silence of the absence of mourners or passersby.

They walk past rows and rows of graves, past names they do not recognize and some that have been worn away by the wind and time.

William tries to speak, to fill the quiet, but after his attempts at conversation are met by short remarks that dissolve into thoughtful silences, he gives up. The crow girl is clearly preoccupied. It is exactly a week after her arrival that he discovers by what she is preoccupied.

They are leaning against a tree, staring across the crest of a small hill dotted with graves. A crow caws, ruffling its feathers. The carmine-coloured leaves quiver on their branches. The dirt around the headstone trembles as if stirred by the smallest wind, though William can see nothing.

When the crow girl turns her head, quickly, like a cat, toward the source of the disquiet, William follows her gaze. There is a figure standing over one of the graves, tall with a dark suit, and a bowler hat.

And William realizes, though it is difficult to see in the shadow, the man is completely transparent. William can see other headstones and trees behind him, through him.

The sunlight catching the silhouette of him, in a black waist coat and pants. It highlights the lines in his face, as there are no creases in his coat or the shirt beneath it. His eyes are wells of shadow hovering in the air. And it is not only his eyes, some way away William spots another pair of dark hollows, though these are considerably lower than the first one and are not watching the nameless girl as he stands and stares directly into the first apparition.

The crow girl is still beside William, her gaze fixed as if she cannot bear to tear her eyes away. She is not staring through the transparent man, but at him. At the glint of watch half sunk into his breast pocket.

Her gaze intensifies. The words cease. The shadow on the grave shudders like a candle flame, and disappears.

The feeling of unease felt by villagers in and around the cemetery slowly dissipates. It is no longer a place for ghosts and crows. It is once more a place of respectful silence and melancholy and peace.

Wherever she goes, the crow girl is watched. There are at least one, if not a dozen, crows following her about. They are outside the door when she and William depart in the mornings, they fly from perch to perch hen she and William climb the trees across the field, they wait at windows when she sleeps at night. She does not find it disconcerting in the least. When William comments on it she only smiles and insists she feels safer, as if she were among friends.

One afternoon, William and the crow girl are enjoying their hot chocolate in the square, holding the steaming cups in their hands, sipping it slowly, when a band of children William only vaguely knows from school begins to seize rocks and throw them at the crows lining one wall of the bank.

There is jeering and laughter, loud enough to call the attention of William and the crow girl, and several adults. The people passing by pay no attention to the cruel boys stoning the crows; there are always more crows.

But the crow girl sets down her cup, her hands shaking, visibly distressed. Then she grows. It is an expression like the discovery of horror. William averts his eyes, shuddering, and in a moment he hears silence in the square, as noticeable as if the square were suddenly flooded with light, as cold as ice. The village boys have ceased their merriment; have ceased their abusive rock-throwing game. They are caught in the gaze of the crow girl, yet none of them can look her in the eye.

Only one of them looks marginally defiant and irritated that their game has been disrupted, as they depart, but they are all anxious to leave, clearly uncomfortable under the scrutiny and cold glare of the bone-white girl with black eyes.

William and the crow girl find other ways to amuse themselves, especially with the improving weather.

They spend hours exploring the field outside the village, seeing how far it stretches in any direction. They find interesting beetles, iridescent like green silk, unfamiliar stones that, upon further investigation, they recognize as quartz. The crow girl reveals nothing about her parents or family. She insists she has nothing to say, with such honesty and so often that William feels perhaps she really does not have parents, or otherwise does not know. But he does not pry, instead asking her if she has enjoyed her time with him – in the village. She replies that she has, and the smile that accompanies this statement is so warm William cannot keep himself from grinning.

Best of all, she will climb with him to the tops of trees. They ascend several trees in fields and orchards, William hovers a branch above her, or when there is enough space, they sit next to one another, like two nesting ravens.

They see views of the town that William has only ever seen alone. He often finds he is nervous when they climb together, afraid she will not enjoy sharing the view with him as much as he does. That she will be impressed, but will not see the beauty of it.

But she seems overjoyed to be so high. She is sharpest, more immediate and content, in the treetops. Sh says nothing about he branches swaying around them, expression no concerns about falling.

Once, they climb to the top of the tree that William found her egg in. He hasn’t climbed it since that day, but the branches and knots are familiar. He grasps for foot holds and hand holds with ease.

One day they sit on the low branches, to watch the sun rise from over the tall grasses of the field, rather than the low hills. In the lull of the ending day, of the coolness and the quiet, and the stirring of the dead leaves around their feet, which dangle off the branches, William broaches the subject of her arrival. “Most people don’t come from eggs,” he informs her.

The crow girl smiles. “I know. But it was the only way.”

William wonders what she means by that, but decides against asking. “Why are you here?” He does not mean to sound rude, he is simply curious as to what twists of fate brought her to this village, to his tree and this nest, or if she would have been hatched in another nest at all.

“I have to mend,” she says cryptically.

“Why? What happened?”

“What always happens. To everyone’s. Some people deal with it differently than others. But when I’m mended I’ll go back, because everyone needs one.”

She does not elaborate. These are the mysterious declarations William has come to expect from her, though it does not make it easier to comprehend. And he is distracted now, by the mention of her leaving. He does not know where she will go back to, but he does not care. This is the first moment he contemplated the idea that she would not stay, would not be there to climb tree with him in the spring, or the next summer, or a year or several years from now.

The silence between them stretches. He cannot stand it. “I’ve never seen someone hatched from an egg,” William admits.

“I’ve never seen someone climb as high as you do,” says the crow girl with a smile.

William feels colour rise in his cheeks. “You’ve never seen anyone climb at all, except for me,” he points out, be he is inexplicably pleased.

He has been feeling more content since the heat vanished, though it has more to do with the drop in temperature.

The village smells as it does each autumn, of woodsmoke and the first cool crisp winds of winter, and of the cinnamon pastries in the bakery, and the damp earth. The strange feeling has disappeared. The feeling like a clock not quite oscillating properly, of scales being tipped too much on each side. Were the village a clock with would be polished and ticking steadily, almost in perfect condition. Though William also has the impression that the hands of the clocks, the measures of minutes and seconds, are converging toward an event. A something that will soon take place. And he cannot tell where it will lead.

The crow girl has made an impression on her environment, as much as she has on William. He has learned small things about her from sharing meals, sitting next to one another in the evenings. 

She does not drink tea at all, and will only read by candlelight.

She will not sleep before midnight but wakes before William’s parents are up.

She remembers the faces of everyone in the village, even if she does not recall their names.

And there are indications of her in every room of the house, as if she has lived their all her life. The walls themselves radiate an impression of her quiet and calculating demeanor.

Her room has begun to smell of honey and cream and something like wild sage. It permeates the yellow wool scarf William’s mother lends her, though the girl does not seem to get cold.

The room is untouched in certain corners, but a glance at the bed is enough to warrant a second look.

The bed is a nest of oddities and rubbish that Williams’ parents regard with uncertainty, hesitant to relay morays of cleanliness to their guest. In the twisted up sheets of her bed are an assortment of twigs wrapped with loose bits of string, several black feathers-strangely undamaged despite having been slept on. An entire raven’s wing that she and William found in the field one day. A shiny black rock that William’s mother identified as onyx. A candle that William’s father gave her to read by before bed, though it was half run down and now remains unlit, nestles in the folds of linen sheets. And recently, mounds of cemetery loam have materialized. William suspects she scoops handfuls of them into her pockets in the afternoons they spend in the cemetery. There is a steadily growing pile of bird bones beneath her pillow, from sparrows and crows and wrens and rooks. William has no idea how she identifies them all.

He has seen her asleep in the bed only once, by chance, when he woke before her. She sleeps with a blackbird claw beside her, curled on the pillow like a withered vine.

She wakes with twigs and crumbling leaves in the tangle of her black hair. William’s mother plucks them from her hair before combing it at the breakfast table. She makes no remark as to how they might have gotten there. She is too unnerved and scared to rearrange the crow girl’s bed when she enters the room to sweep it.

But even as disturbed as she is, William’s mother strokes her hair gently. It is another effect of the crow girl, the impulse to impart tenderness upon her, as one might on a lost child. But when William’s father once asked her if she was lost, she smiled and shook her head.

Art by Ludovic Jacqz

Text by Lucie MacAulay