“That’s because it’s time for you to move on,” I told him.
“I guess.”
“You’re remembered now,” Zia said. “That’s what was holding you back before.”
He gave a slow nod. “Listening to her…it didn’t make me feel a whole lot better. I mean, I understand now, but…”
“Life’s not very tidy,” Zia said, “so I suppose there’s no reason for death to be any different.”
“I…”
He was harder to hear. I gave him a careful study and realized he’d grown much more insubstantial.
“It’s hard to hold on,” he said. “To stay here.”
“Then don’t,” Zia told him.
I nodded. “Just let go.”
“But I’m…scared.”
Zia and I looked at each other.
“We were here at the beginning of things,” she said, turning back to him, “before Raven pulled the world out of that old pot of his. We’ve been in the great beyond that lies on the other side of the long ago. It’s…”
She looked at me.
“It’s very peaceful there,” I finished for her.
“I don’t want to go to Hell,” he said. “What if I go to Hell?”
His voice was very faint now and I could hardly make him out in the gloom of the room.
“You won’t go to Hell,” I said.
I didn’t know if there was a Heaven or a Hell, or what lay on the other side of living. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But there was no reason to tell him that. He wanted certainty.
“Hell’s for bad people,” I told him, “and you’re just a poor kid who got stung by a bee.”
I saw the fading remnants of his mouth moving, but I couldn’t make out the words. And then he was gone.
I looked at Zia.
“I don’t feel any better,” I said. “Did we help him?”
“I don’t know. We must have. We did what he wanted.”
“I suppose.”
“And he’s gone on now.”
She linked her arm in mine and walked me into the between.
“I had this idea for a store,” she said.
“I know. Where you don’t sell anything. Instead people just bring you stuff.”
She nodded. “It was a pretty dumb idea.”
“It wasn’t that bad. I’ve had worse.”
“I know you have.”
We stepped out of the between onto the fire escape outside the apartment. I looked across the city. Dawn was still a long way off, but everywhere I could see the lights of the city, the headlights of cars moving between the tall canyons of the buildings.
“I think we need to go somewhere and make a big happy noise,” Zia said. “We have to go mad and dance and sing and do cartwheels along the telephone wires like we’re famous trapeze artists.”
“Because…?”
“Because it’s better than feeling sad.”
So we did.
And later we returned to the Rookery and woke up all the cousins until every black bird in every tree was part of our loud croaking and raspy chorus. I saw Lucius open the window of his library and look out. When he saw Zia and me leading the cacophony from our high perch in one of the old oak trees in the backyard, he just shook his head and closed the window again.
But not before I saw him smile to himself.
* * *
I went back to the old woman’s apartment a few weeks later to see if the ghost boy was really gone. I meant to go sooner, but something distracting always seemed to come up before I could actually get going.
Zia might tell me about a hoard of Mardi Gras beads she’d found in a dumpster, and then off we’d have to go to collect them all, bringing them back to the Rookery where we festooned the trees with them until Lucius finally asked us to take them down, his voice polite, but firm, the way it always got when he felt we’d gone the step too far.
Or Chlöe might call us into the house because she’d made us each a sugar pie, big fat pies with much more filling than crust because we liked the filling the best. We didn’t even need the crust, except then it would just be pudding, which we also liked, but it wasn’t pie, now, was it?
Once we had to go into the faraway to help our friend Jilly, because we promised we would if she ever called us. So when she did, we went to her. That promise had never been like a chain dangling from our feet when we flew, but it still felt good to be done with it.
But finally I remembered the ghost boy and managed to not get distracted before I could make my way to his mother’s apartment. When I got there, they were both gone, the old woman and her dead son. Instead, there was a young man I didn’t recognize sitting in the kitchen when I stepped out of the between. He was in the middle of spooning ice cream into a bowl.
“Do you want some?” he asked.
He was one of those people who didn’t seem the least bit surprised to find me appearing out of thin air in the middle of his kitchen. Tomorrow morning, he probably wouldn’t even remember I’d been here.
“What flavour is it?” I asked.
“Chocolate swirl with bits of Oreo cookies mixed in.”
“I’d love some,” I told him and got myself a bowl from the cupboard.
He filled my bowl with a generous helping and we both spent a few moments enjoying the ice cream. I looked down the hall as I ate and saw all the cardboard boxes. My gaze went back to the young man’s face.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Nels.”
He didn’t ask me my name, but I didn’t mind.
“This is a good invention,” I said holding up a spoonful of ice cream. “Chocolate and ice cream and cookies all mixed up in the same package.”
“It’s not new. They’ve had it for ages.”
“But it’s still good.”
“Mmm.”
“So what happened to the old woman who lived here?” I asked.
“I didn’t know her,” he told me. “The realtor brought me by a couple of days ago and I liked the place, so I rented it. I’m pretty sure he said she’d passed away.”
So much for her being happy. But maybe there was something else on the other side of living. Maybe she and her ghost boy and her daughter were all together again and she was happy.
It was a better ending to the story than others I could imagine.
“So,” I asked Nels, “are you happy?”
He paused with a spoonful of ice cream halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“Do you have any ghosts?”
“Everybody’s got ghosts.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I suppose one of the measures of how you live your life is how well you make your peace with them.”
My bowl was empty, but I didn’t fill it up again. I stood up from the table.
“Do you want some help unpacking?” I asked.
“Nah. I’m good. Are you off?”
“You know me,” I said, although of course he didn’t. “Places to go, people to meet. Things to do.”
He smiled. “Well, don’t be a stranger. Or at least not any stranger than you already are.”
I laughed.
“You’re a funny man, Nels,” I said.
And then I stepped away into the between. I stood there for a few moments, watching him.
He got up from the table, returned the ice cream to the freezer and washed out the bowls and utensils we’d used. When he was done, he walked into the hall and picked up a box, which he took into the living room, out of my sight.
I could tell that he’d already forgotten me.
“Goodbye, Nels,” I said, though he couldn’t hear me. “Goodbye, Ghost Boy. Goodbye, old lady.” I knew they couldn’t hear me, either.
Then I stepped from the between, out onto the fire escape. I unfolded black wings and flew back to the Rookery, singing loudly all the way.
At least I thought of it as singing.
As I got near Stanton Street, a man waiting for his dog to relieve itself looked
up to see me go by.
“Goddamned crows,” he said.
He took a plastic bag out of his pocket and deftly bagged his dog’s poop.
I sang louder, a laughing arpeggio of croaking notes.
Being happy was better than not, I decided. And it was certainly better than scooping up dog poop. If I was ever to write a story, the way that Christy did, it would be very short. And I’d only have the one story because after it, I wouldn’t need any more.
It would go like this:
Once upon a time, they all lived happily ever after. The end.
That’s a much better sort of story than the messy ones that make up our lives. At least that’s what I think.
But I wouldn’t want to live in that story because that would be too boring. I’d rather be caught up in the clutter of living, flying high above the streets and houses, making a joyful noise.
###
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You can read more about the crow girls and other corbae in Someplace to Be Flying. Here’s an excerpt.
###
Afterword
There’s a truism when it comes to the creative arts: If you put the work in every day, from time to time the universe will give you a gift. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it really does feel special. It’s when the song comes to you—melody and words all at once. When a story flows through you and you hardly need to change a word. Sometimes it’s a character who just steps into your head and everything about them has the weight of reality—you just know them.
But it only happens if you put the work in.
The original crow girls story was like that. It dates back to a time when, every Christmas, I would write a story as a gift for my wife MaryAnn, but which we then sent out as a Christmas card in the form of a chapbook. While most stories I wrote were commissioned for various anthologies, the chapbooks had no preset length or theme. I just told whatever story I felt like writing.
So back in 1995 I opened a file and typed, “People have a funny way of remembering where they’ve been, who they were. Facts fall by the wayside.” And the rest of the story just flowed out of me without my having to do much more than get the words on the screen.
“Crow Girls” was a double gift. Not only did the story come as a gift, but so did Maida and Zia. I knew them well before I ever wrote a word because they stepped fully realized out of the shadows of my mind, and I fell in love with them. They’re sweet and silly, loyal to a fault, but with an underlying steel to their demeanor if you cross them or do something they consider to be morally wrong.
As I mentioned in the new afterword for my novel Someplace to Be Flying, what I couldn’t foresee was how much my readers would take to them. Over the years, many fans have shown up at events dressed as crow girls. Sometimes they don’t even have to dress up or change anything about themselves at all, and that’s all the more fun.
As the original wild spirits, the crow girls probably don’t make good role models (for instance, just consider how they like to help themselves to things that belong to others), but I’m delighted that so many of my readers, especially young women, have taken them to heart.
Because the crow girls care for each other. They don’t take crap from anybody. They live in the moment and pay attention to everything.
Now, that strikes me as behaviour that we should all embrace.
* * *
For some time now readers have been asking for story collections centered around their favourite Newford characters. The crow girls are almost invariably at the top of their lists, so we decided to start these Newford Stories collections with them.
A number of the other regular members of the Newford repertory company show up here, but at the forefront of each story are these two little wild girls with their big personalities.
I like to think that, male or female, old or young, no matter what one’s cultural background, sexual orientation, or religious leaning, we all have a little bit of crow girl inside us.
* * *
A very special thanks to Tara Larsen Chang for providing us with her charming take on crow girls, and to Joanne Harris for taking the time from her busy schedule to provide an introduction. If you’ve never read her, you’re in for a treat. I recommend you start with Chocolat or Blackberry Wine, though you can’t go wrong with any of her books.
You can read more about the crow girls and other corbae in my novel Someplace to Be Flying. Here’s an excerpt.
###
Copyrights & Acknowledgements:
“Crow Girls” first appeared as a Triskell Press chapbook, 1995.
“Twa Corbies” first appeared in Twenty 3: A Miscellany, edited by Anna Hepworth, Simon Oxwell & Grant Watson; Infinite Monkeys/Western Australian Science Fiction Foundation, 1998; based on a comic book script of the same title which appeared in The Book of Ballads and Sagas; Green Man Press, 1997.
“The Buffalo Man” first appeared as a limited edition chapbook published by Subterranean Press, 1999. Copyright (c) 1999 by Charles de Lint.
“A Crow Girls’ Christmas” first appeared on-line at www.charlesdelint.com, 2001. Copyright (c) 2001 by Charles de Lint & MaryAnn Harris.
“Make a Joyful Noise” first appeared as a limited edition chapbook published by Subterranean Press, 2005. Copyright (c) 2005 by Charles de Lint.
About the Author
Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who makes his home in Ottawa, Canada. This author of more than seventy adult, young adult, and children’s books has won the World Fantasy, Aurora, Sunburst, and White Pine awards, among others. Modern Library's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century poll, voted on by readers, put eight of de Lint's books among the top 100. De Lint is also a poet, artist, songwriter, performer and folklorist, and he writes a monthly book-review column for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. For more information, visit his web site at www.charlesdelint.com
You can also connect with him at:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Charles-de-Lint/218001537221
https://twitter.com/#!/cdelint
http://cdelint.tumblr.com/
Cover art by Tara Larsen Chang (www.taralarsenchang.com).
Cover design by MaryAnn Harris.
Newford Stories: Crow Girls
This Triskell Press edition published in 2015.
Introduction copyright (c) 2015 by Joanne Harris.
eISBN 978-0-920623-56-5
For information:
Triskell Press
P.O. Box 9480
Ottawa ON K1G 3V2
Canada
www.triskellpress.com
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
Discover other titles by Charles de Lint at Smashwords
Other Books by Charles de Lint
NEWFORD STORIES: CROW GIRLS (collection; Triskell Press)
RIDING SHOTGUN (novella; Triskell Press, 2015
TIMESKIP (short story; Triskell Press, 2015)
PAPERJACK (novella; Triskell Press, 2015)
WHERE DESERT SPIRITS CROWD THE NIGHT (novella; Triskell Press, 2015)
OUT OF THIS WORLD (young adult novel, Penguin Canada, 2014; Triskell Press, 2014)
JODI AND THE WITCH OF BODBURY (young
adult novel; Triskell Press, 2014)
SEVEN WILD SISTERS new edition (middle grade novel; Little Brown, 2014)
OVER MY HEAD (young adult novel, Penguin Canada, 2013; Triskell Press, 2013)
THE CATS OF TANGLEWOOD FOREST (middle grade novel; Little Brown, 2013)
UNDER MY SKIN (young adult novel, Penguin Canada, 2012; Triskell Press, 2012)
EYES LIKE LEAVES (early work, 1980 novel, Tachyon Publications, 2012)
THE VERY BEST OF CHARLES DE LINT (collection; Tachyon Publications, 2010); Triskell Press, 2014)
THE PAINTED BOY (young adult novel, Viking, 2010)
MUSE AND REVERIE (collection, Tor, 2009)
THE MYSTERY OF GRACE (novel, Tor, March 2009)
WOODS & WATERS WILD (collection, Subterranean Press, 2008)
WHAT THE MOUSE FOUND (children's collection, Subterranean Press, 2008)
DINGO (young adult novella, Viking, 2008)
PROMISES TO KEEP (novel, Subterranean Press, 2007)
LITTLE (GRRL) LOST (young adult novel, Viking, 2007)
TRISKELL TALES: 2 (collection, Subterranean Press, 2006)
WIDDERSHINS (novel, Tor, 2006)
THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN (collection, Subterranean Press, 2005)
QUICKSILVER & SHADOW (collection, Subterranean Press, 2005)
THE BLUE GIRL (young adult novel, Viking, 2004)
MEDICINE ROAD (novel, Subterranean Press, 2003)
SPIRITS IN THE WIRES (novel, Tor, 2003)
The Newford Stories Page 11
