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

Arrangements Are Made

The girl follows William to his house and inside without argument, though William expects one from his mother and father the moment they enter. Instead there is a long moment in which they stare at the barefoot girl with only a jacket sanding in the doorway, pale as daylight with shadow-dark eyes.

It is William’s mother first that inquires about her name, to William, for which he has no answer, and after a moment she redirects the question to the girl, who repeats the answer she gave William.

William’s mother fetches some old clothes that one belonged to his elder sister, who has moved to the city to attend university and has otherwise no need for them.

They resist asking questions for the duration of supper but when William has cleared the table and the kettle is boiling for tea his parents begin questioning her about her parents and her accommodations in the city. When she politely informs them that she has non, William’s mother insists that she stay with them, much to William’s surprise. He knows his mother would never turn away someone in need of help, but he did not expect such immediate acceptance of the strange parentless, nameless girl.

His father approaches the situation with considerably more trepidation. “Should we not alert the authorities? She could have parents elsewhere, someone looking for her.” Even as he says it, William has difficulty imagining a family waiting for her, some sort of kin whose household lacks a young girl. There is a quality about her that bespeaks not loneliness, but independence.

The girl is quiet throughout while William’s father expresses his concerns, but when pressed she insists she has no family, no name, no connections, and no place to stay. William stares in shock when his father concedes, and if hardly aware that his mother has whisked the girl away to his sister’s old room upstairs, peppering her with questions about her health and the state of her hair.

William’s father answers his son’s quizzical expression by declaring “it does not do to ignore those in need.”

After all, it is only until she can find a more permanent place of residence.

Days pass. They do not find the nameless girl another home. Though indeed, very few enquiries are made on that behalf.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Rebirth

In the afternoon sun the trees are all bare black skeletons in dusty gold light. Usually the village children can be found in these trees, perched on branches much too high above the ground, throwing acorns and generally terrifying the squirrels. When they are not full of children they are home to birds, whose song fills the air from late spring to early autumn.

Today they are empty of birds and children. Except for one child. William is staring up into the branches, where he had spent every summer since he was able to climb them. He is familiar with the view from the top of the trees, having always climbed the highest, several branches above his peers.

He does not speak with his peers as much, unless he wishes to call down to them from he upper branches. It is both a privilege and a punishment, climbing so high. He can see much more than the other children but always sees it alone.

Perhaps it is the thought that the birds might never return to their trees, nor the squirrels, and consequentially, the village children will abandon them indefinitely, perhaps it is simply nostalgia that makes him choose to climb the tree.

When he does he is somewhat proud to make it higher than he ever has. It is marginally cooler here too, with a slight breeze blowing.

From his vantage point he can see the stretch of field between himself and the village, the tall whistling grass, more yellow than green in the afternoon sun, the shadows of trees slanting across it. The village is a muddle of sloping silhouettes, like the outlines of mountains. It is not quite beautiful, he thinks, but the perspective from the topmost tree branches is certainly preferable to that from on the ground.

He has spent many afternoons here, alone in the top branches but not alone in the tree, imagining himself elsewhere, doing else things. He has read story books and anthologies and wonders if it is possible for something so fantastical or strange as a transmogrified frog or a golden goose to appear and change one’s entire life, and if so, why did it always happen to poor girls or princesses in disguise? He feels it is somewhat unfair but he finds no way to rectify it.

He does not have his book with him today. Instead he looks for any sign of life in the tree. There are no crows, to his surprise. But there is a nest in the lower branches of the tree, on the opposite side from where he climbed up.

It is not the egg that catches his attention. Many birds have abandoned their nests, left behind entire batches of eggs that have not hatched and never will, the chicks within them already dead. But this egg is hatching.

Before William can consider what he is doing, he is lowering himself toward the nest carefully but with considerable purpose. He has never seen an egg hatch but he thinks it must be interesting.

It takes him only a minute to each the nest and its respective branch, and by them the quivering has intensified.

It is a crow’s nest, empty save for the one quivering egg. It is shaking so forcefully that the entire branch vibrates. While this is the first egg he has ever seen hatch, William is sure it is not entirely supposed to be like this.

He thinks perhaps the nest will come apart before it hatches, and the egg will fall from the tree. Carefully, William picks it up. The egg is warm, and heavier than he expected. He slips it into his pocket where it continues to shudder as he descends the tree.

Once on the ground he removed the egg, startled to hear a sound like the crackle of frost forming on a window. Cracks form across the surface of the egg like the fissures in a broken china cup.

When it begins to chip away it is not feathers he sees, but pale white fingers, pushing outward, and an arm and the body of a girl that follows.

As more and more of her appears – a knee, an elbow – it seems to William impossible that so much of a person could exist in one place. It puts him in mind of the contortionist he once saw at the circus, who had shut herself inside a shoebox.

But this is far more impressive.

She rises shakily to her feet when she is completely without the egg. She is completely naked, without shoes or shirt or even a jacket, but she appears neither frightened nor embarrassed nor cold, though it has been days since it has been chilly enough to be cold.

William stares at her, uncomfortable and embarrassed but too shocked to look away. The contrast of her glossy black hair against her white skin is shocking, as are her swan-dark eyes, deep set in her ace. She is watching him curiously, as if he had not stumbled upon her as she hatched from an egg.

“Hello,” William says, and immediately feels as though it is the most mundane thing he could say.

But she does not seem to think it stupid. The girl cocks her head to the side but says nothing. “I’m William,” William says. “What’s your name?”

After a moment of silence, the girl answers. “I don’t have a name.”

“Everyone has a name,” says William.

“I don’t.”

“What do your parents call you?” he asks.

The girl cocks her head again. “I don’t have parents.” There is something strange about her voice. It is low and soft, like the brush of black velvet.

“I’ve never seen someone hatch from an egg,” William admits.

The girl smiles, a smile that brightens her entire face, but says nothing.

William is suddenly more aware that she is wearing nothing. His ears begin to feel rather hot. “You must be cold.” He takes off his jacket and hands it to her, then turns away as she slips it on and buttons it up.

When he turns back she looks only marginally more normal, in his tweed coat with the slightly too-large shoulders that hangs down to her knees. She is standing there, patiently, as if she expects more of him, though he is not sure what.

“Where are you going to go?” William asks her.

She looks at him as if she is looking through him, considering. “I don’t know.”

“You can come back to my house,” he says without thinking. As soon as the words are out of his mouth he has difficulty reconciling the girl with the mundane surroundings of the village. And he wonders what his mother would say about it.

The girl nods before he can retract his offer, not that he would. There is something strange about her, though he cannot say what it is. It seems to exist in the air around her as much as in her. And for reasons he cannot put into words, he wants to bring her back with him.

They set off toward the town, across the field. William wonders what she would have done is he had left her there. Would she have lived in the nest? A big as she was?

She walks by his side but he finds he keeps looking at her, as if to assure himself that she is real. He has the distinct feeling that if he does not watch her carefully enough she will vanish. She remains, and occasionally catches his eyes with her own dark ones.

It takes them the better part of a half hour to cross the field, walking at a leisurely pace, and in that time William asks her tentative questions. But she seems to have no family or relations, and to know nothing about herself. The nearer they are to the village, the more his conviction fades. Perhaps his parents will not let her stay. Perhaps they will not let William associate with the strange girl who hatched from a crow’s egg.

The girl looks toward the village, not glancing back at the tree from which they departed even once. Only once, when a crow calls out from a rooftop before taking flight, does she look toward the sky.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Claudia Hahn

Shadow To Shadow

The young man working in the book store takes his break at precisely quarter past noon each day for exactly a half hour. He often spends it reading in a café across the street, but since his father died his appetite has been somewhat less rampant.

The funeral was a quiet affair, private and with a limited guest list, though some villagers attended the ceremony without invitation. The young man had recognized them as distant friends and had not turned them away. He was not moved by grief, but the smiles he distributed were strained and shaky.

The ceremony itself was peaceful, villagers reflect after the fact. The son handled it well and efficiently. Many make a note of commenting on the birds. Though quiet, crows were in abundance, as if they are intrigued by the lowering of the coffin into the grave.

Now the funeral has come and gone, and the young man has endured, and is still receiving sympathy and condolences from neighbours and friends. The distance between himself and the rest of the world that so suddenly intruded upon him when his father died is slowly closing.

On this break he stands just outside the doorway of the shop and removes a pack of cigarette from his pocket.

He pulls out a lighter, a complicated and heavy mechanism, and moves to light his cigarette when something in the blur of tweed coats and wool scarves in front of him catches his attention.

It is not a passing resemblance to his deceased father on the man walking through the square. There is no difference at all between this man and the man whose funeral he attended only two days ago. They are one and the same, down the crisp black suit and white shirt, and the wrinkles around his eyes.

The young man drops his cigarette and fumbles with the lighter, sliding it back into his pocket with shaking hands.

His father walks with purpose, as if the dead have important places to be at specified times. He crosses through shadow and sunlight. Where the light hits him he all but disappears, as insubstantial as smoke. The young man catches only glimpses of the highlight of his sleeve, the shadow under his brow, in the light. He does not walk around the crowds on the cobblestones, but rather they move around him, taking sidesteps or leaning away, without realizing it, parting like water to let him through.

The young man is just as certain it is his father exactly as he is that it cannot be possible. His feet begin moving him through the street after his father anyway.

His father has no shadow, though the young man can hardly tell amidst the ever-fading light and the shifting shadows. But when the sun shines through him there is nothing but light on every side of him.

And he is completely transparent, like a reflection in glass. Briefly, his son pauses, wondering if that is all he could be. But when his father continues and steps into the shadow, becoming once more opaque, he follows.

His father acknowledges no one, though he walks past many people that had once tipped his hat to. He wanders past the baker’s stall, past the florist, though he does seem to slow and inhale the pungent air outside it. His presence leaves a trail of cold, like a breeze, and several villagers pause in their actions as he walks by, looking around themselves and fidgeting with their coats.

The young man follows him, skeptical of what he is seeing yet unable to tear his eyes from every step, every movement. He pursues him through the streets, near-panicking when his father rounds a corner and disappears, letting out long breaths when he is once more in his field of vision. Out of the periphery of his eye he notices acquaintances and friends watching him as his father leads him closer and closer to the cemetery.

The crowds grow thinner nearer the cemetery. Those whose routes take them close to the rows and rows of graves keep their distance, walking on the opposite side of the street, averting their eyes from the towering black fence. His father walks next to the bars, stride never faltering, and enters through the gate.

The young man does not hesitate as he bursts after him. The air is cooler, freezing the sweat under his collar. It would be so pleasant if he were not chasing a ghost, and if there was not the impression here of other presences, pulling at his attention.

Finally, his father stops, in a ray of sunlight, an outline of whiteness and shadows, the buttons of his suit catching the light. The young man watches his father step aside, still in the sunlight, ripple and vanish.

He hurries to the spot where his father was, directly before his headstone. There is nothing there, no hint of cologne or ink, no footprints in the dirt. Nothing to suggest he was there at all.

He stands looking down at the headstone for some time. His attention is only diverted by a sound like the rustle of paper. When he turns he sees it is not paper but black feathers, rustling as a crow balances itself on a nearby tombstone. It does not take its eyes from him as he turns back to his father’s grave. It makes him feel distinctly uncomfortable, as though he is being watched by more than a pair of glistening black eyes.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Yasser

Under The Red Sun

The sunrise is vibrant and vivid this morning. It is a canvas covered with canyons of carmine, canary, rosy gold. The sun is a deep orangery red, like an eruption of flame. It burns red through the eyelids of sleeping villagers.

When they finally wake, their eyes go as wide as the sky above the horizon. As the sun rises higher and higher and the colour deepens in hue, their eye only go wider.

It douses the orchards in colour, edging the leaves in fire and gold. From some perspectives it appears as though entire fields are blazing.

The sun has risen red before, say the oldest villagers to their nieces and nephews and grandchildren who visit. It indicates a sunny day ahead. And a good harvest, when it sets red. Though, they add, they have never seen it quite so red.

Comforted, villagers open their windows and make their tea. The red fades from the sky, but the sun continues to burn.

People stand just outside their houses, staring eastward, waiting to see if the sun will shift to its standard pale golden shade, but it does not. As they watch it depends in hue, to a colour as rich as rose petals. The sky around it is clear grey blue, as on every other morning. When it becomes clear that the sun is not changing people disperse to carry on with their usual tasks. But as they occupy themselves with work and school the village settles into a space of uneasiness, or trepidation.

Children look outside their school windows while they are meant to be writing, straining their necks this ay and that to catch a glimpse of the red sun. Bank managers or theatre proprietors find themselves glancing skyward, as if to check that the sun hasn’t also suddenly dropped from the sky altogether. The sun remains, bright as a ruby catching candlelight over the village.

When night falls the sun descends like a heavy red fruit on a drooping tree branch. It does not lose its brightness nor its colour as it descends, bathing the village in such lurid light that it looks as though the white pavement is aflame. The last rays of it catch on the curling tops of the black cage that runs the perimeter of the cemetery. On another day, under a different sun, the cemetery is transformed momentarily into a trick of illumination, full of sunlight and lush with greenery. The villagers find themselves avoiding it, and he elongated shadows stretching behind headstones.

When the sun finally sets the villagers release deep breaths. The sky is dark and studded with stars, fathomless as the ocean. As it has always been.

The phenomenon of the red sun is discussed and pondered, and after much pontificating it is dismissed. It was an abnormality in the weather, they say. Nothing more.

The next day, as the clocks about the city begin to chime on the hour, arguig dawn, children wake and peer out their windows into the fields and farms where the trees are already black shadows against the red sun. Before the last clock has stopped chiming they are already out of their beds, running to fetch their parents.

Those who had been asleep, assured that the sun would rise yellow in a blue sky, wake quickly and look to the sky. Almost every eye is turned upward, where the sun burns like an ember among ashes.

The next day, when the sun is a red beacon above the town, the villagers shed their autumn coats and scarves. It is too hot, despite the summer having come and gone. They congregate in the shadows of awnings and trees. The shopkeepers fan themselves behind their counters, the bakers despise their ovens. The heat will pass, they say. It is only the vestiges of summer heat. The trees are changing colour more rapidly. In the green fields they stand out as brilliant as bonfires.

By noon on the fourth day, several trees have dropped most of their leaves. They were full and supple in the morning. As the clocks chime, they crisp and brown. They fall like acorns in the late summer, blanketing the warm pavement.

Following the rising sun on the fifth day the crows begin to caw. Several take to a tree, in entire flocks from the cemetery to the edges of town, they call to each other, giving frightening black-eyed stares to those few villagers brave enough to approach them with sticks or brooms. They do not move, do not even flinch or cower on their perches. They continue cawing, as punctual as roosters, more loudly than the clocks are chiming, until the last streak of red has faded from the sky and there are only clear blue skies around a red sun.

Then there is silence. To some people it seems as if they have gone deaf. Not even the leaves rustle or stir.

A sixth day and the villagers can feel the heat of the pavement and cobblestones through the soles of their shoes.

On the seventh day it is as hot as the hottest day of summer. Winter boots and coats are packed away. Strawberries and peaches begin to appear among the foliage. The children in the river claim that the rocks on the ever-growing riverbank have changed. It is a nest of stones like tigers eye and agate, with blackened veins, polished by the heat. In the fields snakes have emerged from the grass and lay across rocks. The air is as thick as warmed oil. A scholar refers to his books on weather, and eventually geography, where there are pictures of the desert, the vast desert where nothing can live and all that stirs is ash.

On the eighth day the children playing in the river, searching for treasure along the riverbank, notice something distinctly untreasurable. Regardless, they collect their findings, wrap them in their handkerchiefs, placing them carefully in their pockets, and return home. Those children who do not neglect to remember them take the bones from their pockets. Tiny bones bleached by the sun, still feathered in some places. With tufts of down found on the starlings and rooks that nest by the river. Without quite knowing how they know, the children are certain that the birds died from the heat.

The crows flock to the cemetery on the ninth day. They cover the fence all the way around, and perch on the curls of hot iron that decorate the bars. They do not appear bothered by the heat. They rustle their feathers in the wind, black as ebony, as dark as ink blots against the daytime. The cemetery itself is cooler than the village, as if a breeze flows through it that does not flow anywhere else. Yet no one will go there.

When the villagers wake on the tenth day, there is but one tree that has yet to drop its leaves. Against the grey stone and brown loam of the cemetery it is a riot of colour: bronze and gold, copper and crimson, umber and chartreuse.

The trees that have dropped their leaves are as brittle as veins, reaching into the sky.

And they are crowded with crows, each large and black with eyes like the stones on the riverbeds.

Following the eleventh day, when the villagers peer out their windows at the red sun, with hopelessness and dread, they do not see a single bird. Pure white bones decorate the trees, but the birds that remained through the heat have fled. All but the crows. There are always crows.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Art by Don Simpson