A Pocketful of Crows

by Joanne Harris

  I have returned to my island, now that the immediate danger is past. I like it better than the cave, which is cold and cheerless. My firepit is lit once more: to avoid being seen, I filter the smoke between a grid of branches. My shelter is intact; the men must not have come to the island. Everything in its place again: everything in order.

  And yet something disturbs me. Perhaps it is the church bells that ring so loud on Sundays. Or perhaps it is the Milk Moon, so like that moon a year ago, that watched me as I lay in the grass, and saw Fiona place her charm, and whisper her spell to the May Queen. I did not see her face, and yet it must have been Fiona. It was she who led me to William, that bright and clear May morning; she who made the adder-stone charm that set all this into motion. I wonder what she is doing now. I have not seen her, even once. She stays in her house, the curtains drawn, and will not come out for anyone. I wonder what she does in there. Even as a bird or a cat, I cannot catch a glimpse of her.

  But in the absence of certainties, the white-headed crow keeps me company. She does not speak, but stays by my side, or perches on my fishing pole. Sometimes she feeds on the crumbs I leave. Sometimes she brings me small gifts. A piece of shiny stone; a shell; a bead; a scarlet ribbon. Like the villagers, she leaves her offerings by the blackthorn tree on the shore, now all in leaf and summer green, and watches from the branches. And, of course, the children come there to play by the lake, and paddle, and catch sticklebacks. And sometimes maidens come to bathe, and gather knots from the hawthorn trees, and pray to Maid Marion for love, and sing songs of the May Queen.

  The very next morning I made her my bride,

  Just after the breaking of day;

  The bells they did ring, and the birds they did sing,

  And I crowned her the Queen of the May.

  I want to warn them. Do not believe. The ballad is a beautiful lie. I believed it once, but I have learnt the hard way. Marry in May, and you’ll rue it for aye. The May Queen is not a hawthorn bride, but a vengeful spirit, bathed in blood. And she has many faces: Mad Moira in midwinter, Maid Marion in summertime. The Winter Queen; the Queen of the May. Mary Mack, all in black: and Maia, all in blossom-white. And when she is cruel, we call her mad; and when she is kind, we can almost forget the cruelty of winter. Thus she endures, from year to year, taking what is due to her – your life, your blood, your maidenhead – and beware those who scorn her, or try to tame her with their charms, for she will tear out your heart with her teeth, and hang it on the fairy tree . . .

  Five

  And now as the Milk Moon waxes and wanes, the white-headed crow grows restless. All day today she has fretted and crawked, and now tonight, as dusk falls, she takes to the treetops at last. Tonight, she knows, I must be alone. Tonight, our circle is almost complete, and soon it will be over.

  It has been weeks since I left my lair to walk the woods in my own skin. I can see and hear and sense so much more when I am a traveller. But now I feel the pull of the night: the scent of the hawthorns by the lake, and I want to see it through my own eyes, once more, while I am still myself.

  So much has changed since last year. I was a maiden, fourteen years old. Now I am old as the mountains. I was a wild rose, sweet and pale; now I am a Christmas rose, as dark as I am deadly. I have shed tears, and I have shed blood. I have been tame, and I have been wild. And I swear I will never again be tame, or try to be like one of the Folk, or turn away from the ancient ways of the travelling people.

  The evening is cool, but clear, and the moon is less than an hour from rising. I bathe in the lake – still winter-cold, but the water is clean and inviting. I dress myself quite slowly, in my gown of rabbit skin and my cloak of feathers. Then, barefoot on the soft green ground, I walk along the forest path, where the first bluebells are starting to show their heads above the carpet of moss. From the village, I can hear the sound of a church bell tolling. It is the Eve of St Mark: a day on which the village girls pray for love.

  On St Mark’s Eve at twelve o’ clock,

  The fair maiden will wash her smock,

  To find her husband in the dark,

  By praying unto good Saint Mark.

  Of course, St Mark has nothing to do with finding love. But the parson understands that girls need to pray to someone – and it may as well be one of his saints, rather than the mad May Queen, who troubles his thoughts and haunts his dreams and makes his old limbs tremble.

  The bell has a melancholy sound. It reminds me of something. And then I see the full Milk Moon rising above the treetops, and my heart knows what the tolling means: William is dead at last.

  For a moment, I feel sadness. Not for him, but for the love that I bore him once; for my hopes; for his promises; and for the loss of my innocence. I am no longer that bonny brown girl that came to him so wild and sweet. I am so much older now. And though I can value what I have learnt, I feel a pain that is almost regret. Must lessons always be so hard? Must battles be so bloody? And must it always be our kind that keep the wheels in motion? The year, it turns, and turns, and turns. Now it has come full circle. Winter and summer: life and death; the adder-stone and the wedding-ring; all echo that endless coming of age. Who can stop the world turning?

  I go into an owl overhead, its wings – my wings – so snowy-soft, my voice a cry of defiance. I have won the battle, I know. The bell gives me the victory. And soon I will stand once more between the hawthorn hedge and the fairy ring, and see the stones like raised fists coming out of the mossy ground, and stand with my sisters, and dance, and rejoice, and once more join the circle.

  May Eve

  Now when we did rise from that sweet mossy grove,

  In the meadows we wandered away;

  And I sat my true love on a primrose bank,

  And picked her a handful of May.

  Folk song, 18th century

  One

  And now comes the last day of the month, when witches make their merriment. In the village, the Folk hang pockets of vervain and dill at their windows, and make charms of rowan berries to keep the witches from entering. But they cannot keep me out. If it is my will, I will come.

  Tonight I am dressed all in berry-black, the better to walk in the woods unseen. My hair is tied back with a leather strip and braided with crow feathers. As I braid it, I notice that my hair is shot with silver. But the wind is high, the clouds are chalk, and the night is a night for Mad Mary to ride, and for good Folk to look to their prayer books.

  I make my way to the fairy ring slowly, very slowly. No one sees me as I go, except for a vixen in the brush. For a moment I see myself reflected in the vixen’s eyes; a tiny figure, dressed in black, no larger than a pinprick. The vixen raises her hackles as I pass, and I notice she is pregnant. I reach the edge of the forest at last. The waning moon is a silver ship, in a sea of broken cloud. The stones of the fairy ring are teeth, as white and sharp as the vixen’s.

  The hawthorn is already waiting for me. Crowned with may blossom, and in the green gown that I wore when I first fled the castle, she looks so young that without these things I would barely have known her. Ancient as she is, tonight she might be a maiden of fourteen years old. Her hair is unbound, and as black as sloes, and her face is fresh and youthful. She looks at me with dark, dark eyes, and she smiles as I enter the fairy ring.

  ‘Well met, sister,’ she tells me.

  ‘Well met, sister. Blessed be.’

  ‘There is one more to come yet,’ she says, looking into the darkness. And then something stirs, and a figure walks into the clearing. It is Fiona, in bracken-brown, and carrying a baby.

  But it is not Fiona. Fiona was a named thing: a cornsilk, milksop village girl. This is a woman of our kind; one of the many-faced travelling folk. Her hair is loose and August-gold, and crowned with scarlet berries. And the child in her arms is bright-haired, blue-eyed, and laughing like a cuckoo.

  ‘Who are you?’ I say.

  ‘I was the white-headed crow,’ she says. ‘I was the maid Fiona. But that was never
who I was. Like you, I am part of something greater.’

  I turn to the hawthorn. ‘How can this be?’

  The hawthorn smiles again. She looks young; younger by far than I am now. ‘This is the way of our people,’ she says. ‘Spring reborn, from Winter’s womb. Life, snatched from the arms of Death. This is how we carry on, year after year, life after life. Nameless, unbaptised, we are born. We rule the earth, the seasons. We rule the sky, and the green woods, the oceans and the mountains. The Folk call us by many names. Mary, the mother. Moira, the crone. Marion, the Queen of the May. Some have called us witches, hags. Some call us the Triple Goddess. But we are so much more than that. We are the travelling people. We have travelled since Worlds began. And we will go on for ever, changing our faces throughout the year, taking what we need from the Folk, and giving back what they need from us. Good harvest, rain and warmth and love, and the hope of a new beginning.’

  For a moment I let her words hang between us like raindrops. And suddenly I see it all, from the adder-stone charm to the fairy ring, from May to December, from falltime to spring, from innocence to knowledge.

  ‘You planned this from the start,’ I say. ‘William. His death. The child.’

  The hawthorn nods. ‘This child of ours,’ she says, with a smile at the laughing infant. ‘This child will be the Summer King, that the Folk call Jack-in-the-Green. Born of three women, he will reign in fruitfulness and harmony until he becomes the Winter King, keeping the land under snow and ice until Spring returns to challenge him. And then he will fall, as his father did, and the rite will start anew, with Summer’s child reborn again, and all of us back in our places.’

  The white-headed crow takes my withered hand. ‘From the moment I placed the charm,’ she says, ‘you were part of our circle. Life out of death. Love out of hate. Summer out of Winter. A circle of three, joined in sisterhood. For ever, until the end of the Worlds.’

  For a long time, I am silent. But now I understand her words. Maiden, mother, three-in-one. This is how we continue. This is how our lives move on. Not alone, but always linked, as daughters, sisters, mothers. And when my turn comes around again, I will be a maid once more, my innocence reborn like the bloom of love-knots on the hawthorn. Till then I am the Old One, the keeper of wisdom and mysteries. Girls will come to seek my advice, and to hang their charms on my branches. Children will dance in the circle, and whisper that they saw me move, and look through the stones in the fairy ring, and tell tales of Mad Mary. And all through the summer I shall stay, until my boughs are stripped and bare. And then, through the winter, I shall sleep, cocooned inside my hawthorn skin. I shall sleep, and hope to dream; and dreaming, go into a lark, and sing a song of starlight.

  The year it turns, and turns, and turns. Winter to summer, darkness to light, turning the world like wood on a lathe, shaping the months and the seasons. Tomorrow is the first of May. A day for love, and joy, and songs, and garlands for the May Queen. Tomorrow the woods will be dappled with green, and the fiddleheads play by the waterside. The hedges are white, and their scent is honeycomb and asphodel, and the birds, and the gnats, and the butterflies will dance upon the sunlit air. Tonight is May Eve, and the moon is low. My sisters are already waiting. May Eve, and a waning moon.

  Time for a witch to go travelling.

  Acknowledgements

  Some stories are planned many years in advance; others appear without warning and demand to be written down. This was one of the latter, delivered by a white-headed crow sometime around Hallowe’en, 2016. No-one expected it – least of all my publishers who nevertheless both embraced it and moved mountains to bring it out in time for my favourite season.

  It takes nine Worlds to make a book: and most of the workers behind the scenes never see their names in print. I would therefor like to thank all those who worked so tirelessly to help make this book as good as it could possibly be: my lovely, perceptive editors Gillian Redfearn and Bethan Jones; my copy-editor Liz Hatherell; my terrific publicist, Ben Willis; and wonderful production manager Paul Hussey; plus Jon Wood, Stevie Finegan, Genn McMenemy, Craig Leyenaar, Mark Stay and all the good folk at Gollancz.

  Also, my agent, Peter Robinson and his capable assistant Matthew Marland; Sue Gent for her inspired cover design, and illustrator Bonnie Helen Hawkins, brought to me by chance on the wind of a summer’s day, whose vision helped bring my story to life. Thanks, too, to my family, to Kevin and Anouchka; to the booksellers, reps, bloggers, Tubers and tweeters whose enthusiasm helped give this story wings: and of course, to you, the readers, without whom no story would ever be anything more than just words.

  Also by Joanne M. Harris from Gollancz:

  Runemarks

  Runelight

  The Gospel of Loki

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Gollancz

  an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2017 by Gollancz.

  Copyright © Frogspawn LTD, 2017

  Illustrations © Bonnie Helen Hawkins 2017

  The moral right of Joanne M. Harris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (eBook) 978 1 473 22220 5

  www.joanne-harris.co.uk

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  www.gollancz.co.uk