Two and Twenty Dark Tales (20 page)

Melody’s green eyes widened. “Is she mad? How long were we gone?”

Juliet sunk to the ground as her world crashed down on her. It all made sense—the house, everything being future-like. Why should time in a magic world run the same? After all, it never did in the stories.

She buried her face in her hands. “Thirty years.” The words barely made it past her lips. “We’ve been gone for thirty years.”

– The End –

One for Sorrow

Karen Mahoney

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret,

Never to be told.

– Mother Goose

T
HE
first night the crow raps on my window with its hard beak, I have only just climbed into bed.

Tap-tap-tap.

Three times and then it waits, politely, staring in at me with hooded eyes.

Blink.
Tap-tap-tap.

I don’t open the window that first night, but it returns the next. And then again the next.

On the third night, I relent.

I slide open the window, just enough for the crow to slip beneath, and it hops inside. The cold air freezes my breath into ghosts as I struggle to close the window again, while my visitor watches from the cracked wooden sill beside me.

Claws click as it shuffles to the edge and scans my room with those beady eyes.

Shivering, I jump back into bed and pull the comforter right up to my chin. The crow spreads its inky wings and flutters onto one of the carved bedposts by my feet.

We regard each other, the crow and I.

What does it want? If this was a dream it would be able to speak, and I could find out why it was here. We could have a conversation, and maybe it would even teach me the language of crows.

But the crow is just a bird and it doesn’t speak. It doesn’t even squawk. It only perches at the end of my bed, blinking occasionally, watching me until I fall asleep.

***

The next morning, the crow has disappeared.

It was a dream, after all. The window is shut fast, and my bedroom door is closed. There is no way in or out for a creature without human hands.

Disappointment nips at my heart. Something magical has been taken away from me. If it was just a dream, then maybe that means magic doesn’t exist—despite what my mother used to say.

But no matter the stories of my childhood, I know the truth: you can dream about magic, but dreams themselves aren’t
real
magic.

That’s when I find the black feather on the floor by the window.

So…
not
a dream, then.

My heart soars. I hold the feather reverently and twirl it between my fingers. I sniff it and it smells of licorice and the night sky. Winter sunlight from the window gleams cobalt blue along its fine edges, and I find myself wondering about the crow. Where did it come from? How could it leave my bedroom before I’d woken up? Where did it go, when it wasn’t tapping at my window or perched at the foot of my bed?

It was a mystery.

It was magic.

I wait for the crow to come back the next night, but I fall asleep despite the strong coffee I forced myself to drink before going to bed. I wake suddenly in the morning, still bone tired and dying to use the bathroom. I search the window ledge outside my frosty window, hoping for signs of the crow. Clues. Another feather, perhaps, or a four-taloned footprint.
Anything
.

But nothing disturbs the smooth ice outside.

The next night I don’t go to bed at all. I pull my small chair close to the window, curl up with a blanket and a book of poems by Edgar Allan Poe, and wait. The single black feather serves as my bookmark. Or a talisman.

Just before dawn, my vigil is rewarded. I hear the rush of wings as a silhouette passes the window, first one way and then the other. The shadow returns and settles on the narrow ledge. I can hear the scuffling clicks as the crow struggles for purchase in the thick layer of ice.

I fling off the blanket, run to the window, and open it. I take care not to spook my guest, and I can’t help my secret smile when he hops inside.

He? Yes, I decide.
He.
It looks like a boy crow to me, though I can’t say why.

He shakes out his fine wings and then glides to my dresser, landing on top of the mirror so that he can clean his frost-damp feathers. I glance down at the carpet, hoping he might have left me another gift, but the floor remains clear of his fine plumage. I pull my blanket back around my shoulders, shivering in the frigid air that hangs like mist in the room. I’d closed the window quickly, but the early morning air still lingers.

The crow watches me, his head cocked to one side, eyes unblinking. I take a tentative step forward, and then another. I glance at the photographs of my sister and me, and then back at my visitor. He shows no sign of fear, so I take heart and edge a little closer. I am afraid he will leave before I manage to unravel this mystery.

When I stand directly in front of the dresser, I look up at the top of the mirror and meet the bird’s serious gaze.

I say, “Hello.” I only feel slightly ridiculous.

The crow nods its head once, as though acknowledging my greeting.

“What do you want with me?” I ask.

He blinks.

“Can I help you at all?”

The crow flicks out his wings with a sharp
snap
that startles me. I take a quick step back.

He settles again, watching and waiting, eyes steady and bright, like two drops of polished coal.

I glance at his wicked claws and frown.
What is that?
There, on his left ankle…

Keeping my gaze on his I move forward again, hoping for a better view of the glint of metal I’d just seen. I wonder what might happen if I try to touch the crow? Would he fly away? Try to escape? Flap around my room, squawking and shedding feathers until I open the window and set him free?

I don’t want him to be scared of me, so I resist the temptation to reach out.

He might attack me. Peck out my eyes, like in a movie I’d seen once upon a time.

Chills sprinkle along my spine. What a thought! The crow wouldn’t hurt me.

My
crow is a friend.

I get as close as I dare, so close that the dresser draws are pressed against my pajama-clad legs, and I look at the crow’s left ankle. His gray, scaly skin reminds me of the many colorful pictures of dinosaurs that used to fascinate me when I was a child.

The metal winks as the crow stirs, and I gasp. I don’t quite know what I had been expecting. Something romantic. A ring of finest gold, perhaps. Something out of a fairy tale or a nursery rhyme. Like the stories Mom used to tell us when we were very small.

Before the accident. Before she and Alice died.

Silver circles the crow’s leg. It presses tight against the flesh, like a noose. There is no easy way to remove it. Not that I can see. There is a tiny loop of metal attached to the smooth edge, and threaded through that loop are three chain links. The final link is bent and partly open at one end.

It is as though my crow has broken the chain attached to the silver cuff around his ankle. Had he been a prisoner? And if he was a prisoner, who, then, had been his jailer?

Questions flutter around my mind, making me dizzy.

I glance up and meet those intelligent eyes. This time, he doesn’t blink.

But
why
would someone keep a crow chained by its ankle? What’s the point? Crows are hardly the sort of bird people would want to keep as pets. At least, not out here.

I try to imagine this crow—my crow—in a cage, attached to a little perch by that cruel manacle. Like a songbird, only with no song that most human ears would want to hear.

Before I realize quite what I am doing (or so I like to tell myself), I rest my finger against the tip of one of the crow’s wings. His head whips around, sharp like his beak. Sharp like a claw. He makes a crow-sound, deep in his throat.

Caw! Caw!

A warning.

I pull back, ashamed rather than afraid. I hope the noise hasn’t woken Stella. My father is away, which is a small comfort.

The crow shakes himself, ruffling those beautiful feathers for a moment before they settle again.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Who am
I
to touch this beautiful creature? Here I am, already thinking of him—it—as
my
crow. What’s wrong with me? I have clearly lost my mind.

The crow closes his eyes, ignoring me.

I fold my blanket and lay it across the armchair by the window, then crawl into bed. The sun is just coming up and I don’t think I will be able to sleep, no matter how tired I am, not with the crow sleeping in the room. I am too aware of him. I imagine I can hear his breathing, the beating of his tiny heart. The faint rustle of his wings.

But eventually, I do sleep. I fall into a nightmare that spirals down and down into darkness, like a narrow staircase. I dream of blood and decay and death. I dream of crows, too many to count, swarming around me like a black cloud.

A murder of crows.

***

Four hours later, my father’s wife knocks at the door and pokes her head around it, tugging me from the lingering threads of the nightmare.

“Are you getting up today, Rose?”

My gaze immediately darts to the dresser, but there is no sign of the crow.

Stella leans against the door. “I know you don’t have school, but you shouldn’t keep staying up so late at night.”

“I’m awake,” I say, burrowing deeper under the covers.

“It looks like it,” she replies, smiling. Stella’s all right, considering. “I’ll bring you a cup of tea. I just made a pot and it’s still hot. That might help.”

“Thanks.” I stifle a yawn.

“I heard from your dad this morning.”

“Good.”

Her smile fades. “He sent his love.”

Yeah, right,
I think. “That’s nice,” I say.

She finally pulls the door shut, and I poke my head out from beneath the comforter. There is no sign of last night’s visitor. No way could he have gotten out alone, not unless he can open a window with his beak.

I slide out of bed, shivering as my feet hit cold carpet, and pull the purple curtains aside. The fields stretch out for miles beneath the blue-white sky. Not for the first time, I wonder whatever possessed Stella to marry my father. She isn’t cut out for farm life.

But then, neither am I.

I grab the blanket from the chair and shake it out. I stop as something flutters to the floor.

Another feather.

I scoop it up and cradle it in my hands. I know it must be my imagination, but I can almost swear it is still warm against my chilled fingers. This feather is even more handsome than the first, long and smooth and so black it shines ebony-bright.

I place it next to its twin between the pages of my book.

What does it mean? I try to figure out how the crow manages to escape my room. It’s like one of those classic “locked room” mysteries that Poe himself was so fond of.

The only possible explanation is that my crow can disappear into thin air. In a puff of smoke, like magic. And, really, what kind of an explanation is that?

I think about it all day. I worry at it like one of our neighbor’s dogs with a bone, trying to untangle
The Case of the Disappearing Crow
. While I help Stella with lunch, I imagine all kinds of wild scenarios. My favorite is the one where the crow turns into mist—like a vampire—and floats from my room through the tiny cracks along the window frame. Or perhaps beneath my door.

If it weren’t for those two feathers, I would be convinced I had been dreaming all along.

But the feathers were
there
. I even ran upstairs to check.

I could hardly wait for night to fall.

That night, however, my crow doesn’t return.

I wait and wait in the chair by the window. It is bitterly cold and I can’t stop myself from worrying about the crow. Perhaps he is freezing somewhere. Alone and injured.

Perhaps whoever chained him in the first place has somehow recaptured him. He might be in a cage, unable to free himself this time.

He might be under a spell. A curse.

Maybe he’s dead.

“No,” I whisper, as I watch the window and pray. I haven’t prayed since the day of the accident, seven years ago.

He will come tomorrow,
I tell myself.

But he doesn’t. Nor the next night, nor even the next.

The crow does not return, not even on Christmas night. Not on New Year’s Eve.

“Everybody leaves,” I say, as I study the fields and the sky, searching for a dark speck that will give me hope. I see something dart and flit wildly across the setting sun, and my heart soars—

Until I realize that it is just a lone bat, and I swallow disappointment sharp as a razor.

Another week passes, and school starts up again. The vacation with its magical visitor feels more and more dreamlike. A distant memory. It is as though my crow has flown away forever, and taken my hopes along with him.

Life falls back into familiar patterns. My father returns from the farming conference, so I spend more and more time in my room. I wish, not for the first time, that there is a lock on my door, but he removed it after Mom and Alice died all those years ago.

The thought crosses my mind that my life is not unlike the crow’s. We are each, in our own way, prisoners—even though we come from very different worlds.

***

My heart is heavy when I take the bus along plowed roads, dirty snow piled like miniature mountains on either side as we rumble toward school. I press my forehead against the damp glass and watch my reflection. I try not to think about the crow. My gaze catches on a sign by the side of the railroad crossing:
Mind the Gap.
I touch my chest, where a new space has opened. This new fracture has settled alongside the others, one for my mother and one for Alice, my twin. My other self. And now, strangely—perhaps, inexplicably—for a crow.