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