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