Crow Shine

by Alan Baxter

  He would have mocked me, but I know dear Barnaby would have found it endearing too.

  *

  Two years before the nineteenth century began, nearly fifty years before solid chocolate, I married sweet Barnaby. Such a gentle, honest man. A carpenter of rare skill. He built us a house and a future and I gave him a son and a daughter. Our boy, Damien, grew rich in the industrial revolution, though his machines mystified me. How simple that time seems now. And dear Belle learned the secrets my mother taught me, and she is truly adept. Would she understand if she knew? I wonder where she is now. I miss her so, my first little girl.

  In the musty summer of eighteen twenty five Barnaby died. Only fifty two years old. Some sickness even the magic couldn’t impede. I grieved, wearing black for two years before I decided it was time to move on. Suspicion would surely rise, for I didn’t look my fifty one years. My children understood and we all wept as I slipped away. So many times I’ve wondered what they did with their lives, what my first daughter might still be doing. Am I really a bad mother? The eternal pain of that separation would suggest I am. I’ve tried so hard to find Belle, never succeeding. Perhaps she harbours resentment still. But I choose to believe she’s out there somewhere, thriving.

  *

  I lift the glass and toast dear Belle at the memory. I still feel all my progeny in one way or another but it becomes ever harder to tell whether they’re living or dead, especially with the girls. I sip and savour the taste, swallow.

  A couple walk slowly by along the gravel pathway in front of me. Old by mortal standards, maybe seventies, they cast me a disparaging look as I sit on my most recent husband’s grave. They mutter to each other, probably something about young people today, as I smile at them, whisky in one hand, chocolate in the other. If only they knew what children they are to my eyes. I wonder whose grave they’re here to see.

  As they pass, I turn my attention back to my small, hard leather case of treasures. I’ve kept a single thing from each of them, all my men and children. I run a finger over Barnaby’s handmade chisel, that he used on so many toys and repairs. Belle’s first magicked oak stick, curved against nature by her will, smooth as glass now. A small metal cog Damien used to wear on a chain about his neck, that he gave me the night I slipped away. My eyes prickle with tears, but I’ve long since done with crying. Haven’t I?

  My stroking fingers find George’s medal, the silver and enamel gift from Her Majesty that he treasured over every other possession. I don’t know what I ever did to earn this, he insisted every time he looked upon it, and it became a joke between us.

  *

  I went to London after Barnaby’s death, to lose myself in the madness of the modern world. The factories and noise, the multitudes and poverty. My skills were well-suited and well-used. Nine years after dear Barnaby died, I fell in love again.

  George. Strong, handsome George, with his jet black hair and pure white soul. He walked with royalty, a footman to King William IV, the man who ended child labour and emancipated colonial slaves. Such progressive, wonderful men, King William and my stoic George. We had two sons, Wilfred and Alfred, who grew to be proud, strong men like their father, Royal Guards. No daughters that time.

  Two years after George and I were married, King William fell victim to illness. George insisted I help, but even my skills could not keep the poor King’s lifeblood pumping for long. I managed to give him one more year before his heart broke.

  And then Victoria ascended the throne, just eighteen years of age, and my reputation in the court sealed my future. Though I had been unable to save the King, Victoria insisted on my counsel and assistance. She understood the old way and revelled in it, while George turned a blind eye. She loved our “little secret”, delighted in dispensing my skills in the right places, learning from me for her own amusement. Sweet, young Victoria was not without some cunning of her own. And dear George, the man I loved more than life itself, stood by us, protecting and serving.

  While I had no daughters with George, our sons gave us granddaughters. They’re nothing close to girls of my own womb, but they keep the way alive even today, grateful for my teaching. They instruct their own children and grandchildren, sometimes send me news of their lives, but less and less often. I often wonder how far my legacy extends now. How many of them will know? How many will understand?

  Poor Victoria, I still feel her pain, the year she lost her mother and husband within months of each other. If only I had understood disease then as I do now I might have been able to save her Albert. Victoria never blamed me, though her grief coloured the rest of her life. Grief I only truly understood seventeen years later when time took George away.

  He loved me more than I thought it was possible for any man to love. He grew old, but never tired. Strong as an ox to the end, he slipped away happy, but for one regret. It pains me that I leave you alone, dear Erin. But I think you’ve endured this before.

  The only time he ever spoke directly of my unusual nature was with his dying breath, on the opulent bed in our fine quarters at the Palace, his polished shoes beside the dresser. One hundred years to the day after my mother had smiled from the pyre, my dearest George smiled from his pillows and left. He was eighty-two. Our sons were there and they held me, but nothing could contain my pain. My grief knew no boundaries.

  My melancholy was insufferable, to myself and to others around me. Victoria and I could not bear each other’s anguish and I had to leave. I travelled back to the north, shook off the trappings of royal life, dropped my disguise of age and survived as a young midwife again. How many lives have I coaxed into this cruel, unforgiving world?

  As the century turned once more, I knew my Queen needed me. I felt her calling out across the land, drawing against our shared pain. She wanted to say goodbye. I travelled to the Isle Of Wight and stood by her bed with her son and grandson. She squeezed my hand, still dressed in black even on her own deathbed, itself draped in charcoal raiment. You’re as young and beautiful as the day we met, she said. Live well, dear Erin.

  I reached out to prevent her passing, I could have done so easily, but she gently shook her head. It’s time. We can’t all be like you. I go to my Albert. She didn’t smile as she left, but she took some of my grief for George with her, I think.

  It was the first month of the second year of the twentieth century and I had no one left but two sons, themselves old men with families. Their families had lives of their own, my granddaughters taught and sent out into the world. My first son, Damien, long turned to dust, my first daughter, Belle, somewhere, lost to me, surviving as I survived, I hoped. Time to move on again. I drifted, leaving England and its painful memories for the continental temptations of mainland Europe.

  *

  I slip the lavish diamond and sapphire ring from my finger and tuck it into my case of treasures, the only item in there not from a husband or child. The ring Victoria gave me when grief pushed us apart. Ignore its worth, she whispered, voice still weak from the pain of loss. Just remember I have worn this every day I have known you and I want you to wear it now. A true Crown Jewel in my possession still. I have worn it every day since, my Queen. Every single day. Until now.

  I put it beside the fountain pen that belonged to Wilfred, and Alfred’s polished pocket watch.

  I do miss Victoria as if she were a daughter of my own.

  *

  Not long after I left the pain of England behind for the Continent, war swept the world. I travelled the trenches as men tore men to pieces and lunacy ruled. I practiced my art with no concern for secrecy, yet barely stemmed the tide of agony and horror by a fraction. Many soldiers returned home with stories of miracles, while so many more never returned at all. I watched atrocity unfurl among the mud and smoke and blood, and I despaired.

  Horrified by all I’d seen, I ran as far as I could imagine, sailing to the new world, putting a heaving ocean between myself and all I’d lost. By the mid-nineteen twenties I found a fresh life in Chicago.

&nb
sp; Oh, this was the modern world, where illicit drinks were served in jazz-soaked, smoke-filled speakeasies, and no one cared any more. So good to allow myself to be young again, revelling in my beauty and vitality. Wickedness found me and I welcomed it gladly.

  And love found me again, with my guard down. Anthony Magrese, mobster and cad. Ours was a torrid and powerful love affair and I bore twin girls. My skills were used more for bullet wounds and beatings than sickness and disease, and the only children I helped into the world in that time were my own. For the first time in a hundred years I had daughters to teach again, my powerful Marlene and Loretta.

  The wild nights and crazy days felt as though they would last forever. Sharp suits and tight dresses, vibrant life and new money, there was nothing my heart desired that Anthony Magrese couldn’t supply. We lived in a grand house with all the clothes and jewels and decadence I could imagine. So many cars. I soaked up the envy of his peers and the lust of his crew, every inch the queen Victoria had been, in a new kingdom of wealth and booze and corruption. Our girls at my side, a triptych of female grace and power behind the throne of the man with the attitude.

  No one disrespected Anthony Magrese, but no one suspected for a minute he’d have been anything without his potent lady wife and his strangely commanding young girls. They knew power as soon as they knew life, those twins, and they were born for it. Embraced it.

  I promised myself I would never lose touch with these two, as I had my first daughter. Sons and husbands grow old and die, but daughters are forever. My granddaughters in England and daughters here would always be part of my life. They still contact me from time to time, my Chicago girls, though more from a sense of obligation than desire, I think. It seems time makes strangers of even the closest bonds. They have daughters and granddaughters too now, my legacy spreading like the arms of an ancient oak. I wonder if they’ll understand, any of them? Will they even know?

  After fifty-four years married to my wonderful George it seemed as if I hardly knew Anthony at all when, after just sixteen years, a Falcone family bullet took him in the summer of nineteen-thirty-nine. The same year war raged across the world again.

  *

  Another smile lifts my lips as I caress Anthony’s solid silver cigarette case. It bears a significant dent from the first bullet that tried for him, and he always said it was proof smoking couldn’t possibly be bad for you. A shame the Falcone bullet went between his eyes instead of for his heart again.

  Beside the bullet-shot case are the twin silver hip flasks of Loretta and Marlene. So young but already so decadent. Those girls embraced their twinhood and were as adults from twelve or thirteen years old. I encouraged it, endorsed their quick maturity, for their own protection as much as my own. After Anthony was shot and we knew all our transgressions had caught up with us, I had to disappear. His enemies would ever hunt me down. It was time to move on and I faked my death to give my girls a chance. They each filled a flask and gave them to me wrapped in silk. Rum in Loretta’s and gin in Marlene’s. For all their similarities, they never could agree on liquor.

  They assured me, though they were barely halfway through their teens, that they would be fine and care for each other. I believed them and they proved my faith justified. They were a year older, after all, than I had been when I ran from my mother’s pyre. Both flasks are still full, that booze untouched, and they’ll stay that way for now. They’re both enchanted, each containing far more than a secret drink. My girls’ magic is strong and those silver vessels hold valuable power. I wrap them in the flowing red silk again.

  *

  I couldn’t bear another war, so I ran far away. Marlene and Loretta left for Canada, young but safe together, to build lives of their own. Dead to all but my closest kin, I took a new identity and another long journey across rolling oceans here, to Australia, unaware the war would follow even this far. But everything seemed fresh again, the outback in the nineteen-forties strangely reminiscent of my youth, so very long before. The climate couldn’t have been more different, but the desperate survival just the same. Perfect to shake off the debauchery of the preceding years.

  For two decades I travelled through outback communities, building health centres and schools. Teaching care and driving back ignorance. For the first time in a long time I felt as though I had some peace. Barnaby was a warm memory, the painful recollections of George began to soften and the incandescent years with Anthony lost their heat.

  The sixties arrived and love was all around. It was a time of such freedom and excitement, new hope and aspiration. I met Gareth among the orange sands of Broken Hill and my heart felt whole enough to give away again.

  My life began to wrap around itself when we travelled the state of Victoria and I saw their Government House. It gave me a jolt of painful nostalgia to see a building styled so closely to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where I’d said my final farewell to the Queen who gave this far-flung state its name. That was perhaps the first sign of what has come to pass.

  Gareth soon tired of outback life, wanted to be near the ocean. Sydney was a shining gem in those days, all optimism and promise. We built a house and a life and Susan was born. Two years later, young Adam. I began to love Gareth as I’d loved George all those years before, something I never thought possible, though I knew George approved. A part of him hung around me always, his blessing like a ghostly embrace.

  By the mid nineteen-seventies the world had started speeding up and something in Susan changed. When she turned seven and I two hundred, it became clear she mistrusted me, feared the old magic. She didn’t want to learn any more. When I healed her grazes she would cry and hide. And I knew I would never teach her again. She would never be like me.

  She married young and Claire was born when Susan was barely out of her teens, so desperate was she to be away from my influence, make a life and family of her own. My newest grandchild, another girl, lost to me before she escaped the womb. Susan always so protective, never leaving the two of us alone.

  And Claire doesn’t believe anyway.

  *

  Sadness wells in me as I look over the treasures in my small leather case. Gareth’s horn-rimmed spectacles are there, so old-fashioned, but he always insisted on them. Every time he needed new glasses I would try to convince him to try something different, more modern, but he would smile and shake his head. What do you know of modern? he would mock.

  Gareth had understood the magic and I always wonder . . .

  I have nothing of Susan’s in here.

  I turn to face his stone and stroke the carved letters of his name once more, the rough, grey surface warm in the bright sunshine. Did you guide Susan gently away from my legacy, dear Gareth? The secrets you’d coaxed from me, your horror at the depths of my experience, perhaps they made your decision for you. Were you protecting Susan from a life like mine and is that why she turned from me? If she doesn’t encourage her gift she will age and die like men. Like you.

  I make sure all my treasures are safely secure and close the case, then pinch shut the padlock. Such power contained in here. My sweet granddaughter Claire, who doesn’t believe, will get the padlock key in the post tomorrow. Along with a letter explaining what each item is, where it comes from. Her legacy, in spite of her mother. The case will find her, there’s no doubt about that. My power is strong, after all these years, and this is set in motion. It will happen. And I’ve left messages for all the others, in the sinister places where they know to look. Whether they will or not, I cannot guess.

  But I can’t rebuild again, this world has grown beyond me. All things end eventually and I couldn’t be more at peace with that. My legacy is legion. Time to walk away again, from everything this time.

  The razor blade reflects sunlight as I turn it over in my hand. Leaning back against Gareth’s stone, I smile at the high white clouds. I’m not nearly as afraid as I’d anticipated. A wave of excitement passes over me with the summer breeze.

  I make the cut, let the blood from
my arm drip to soak into the welcoming earth, and say the words. My connection to all my pasts severs like a snapped twig, so total. So quick. I no longer feel any of my girls, but I know they’ll thrive. As will I, alone and for myself. No more husbands, no more life quickening in my womb, son or daughter. No healing, teaching or saving. I still can’t decide if I’m being selfish or brave. Perhaps both. Regardless, I think I’ve earned my solitude and freedom.

  Another few words and the case is sent on its way. I have no idea where I’ll go, beyond the sure knowledge that I’ll be leaving Australia soon.

  It’s been so long since I experienced anything truly new.

  Mephisto

  “I need a volunteer!” Mephisto scanned the crowd, one hand shielding his eyes as if from a bright sun. His red-lined black cape whipped around as he strode from one side of the stage to the other.

  Dozens of hands shot up, clamouring to be chosen. Mephisto squinted, heart hammering. He so hated this bit, but had little choice. There’s always choice, a voice whispered in the back of his mind and he squashed it away into its dark corner.

  His gaze fell upon a young boy, maybe eleven or twelve, smiling in anticipation. His hand wasn’t raised and of course, that made him perfect. Mephisto singled him out, one long finger bright in the spotlights. “What about you, lad?”

  The boys eyes widened and he looked left and right. One trembling hand rose, pointed to his own skinny chest.

  “Yes, you. Come on, I’ll make you famous!”

  The boy’s parents sat either side of him nodding enthusiastically. Cajoling from the crowd drove the boy from his seat, up darkened steps and past voluminous crimson velvet curtains. Brass half-shells along the stagefront cupped incandescent bulbs. Mephisto grinned over the brightness at the audience as they encouraged the boy along.