The Book of the Crowman

by Joseph D'lacey

  He chewed for a long time before swallowing.

  There was no opportunity for a second bite; a noise in the distance brought him to his feet. Nearby, there was an impact hole in the wall, almost perfectly round but for the jagged edges of bricks. There was damage like this all over London, across every city he’d passed through, blasts and bullet holes from the early days of conflict.

  He ducked through into a small back garden full of junk; everything of use or value stripped from it long ago. He placed his pack in a cracked bathtub and rested the tin of salmon on top before crouching and poking his head back through the hole.

  The noise was closer now. The clatter of six or seven horses approaching along Lillie Road. He guessed he’d have about a minute to find cover. Praying it was a routine patrol and not a dog squad, he ducked back through the hole, grabbed his food and pack and, stumbling over the tangle of scrap, scrambled towards the back of the house.

  The door was shut but not locked. He yanked it open and assessed his options. The tin of salmon was precious but the smell of it was like a loudhailer announcing a human presence. Out here where the population was sparse, the Ward would stop and question anyone they saw, just so they’d have something to report at the end of the patrol. Nearer the centre it was busy and they ignored you, saving their energy for dawn searches, breaking up fights over food and lynching petty criminals. There wasn’t time to hide the fish and even if he ate it in a hurry, the smell would linger. He grabbed the tin and crept into the house.

  Please, let there be some stairs.

  Passing through two rooms he found the front hallway and, leading up from it, intact stairs.

  Thank you.

  Most properties had been raided for wood and a decent staircase could keep a family warm for a week of winter. Two weeks if they used it carefully. These stairs were still carpeted. Three at a time, he ascended.

  On the first landing there were two rooms. He passed the damp, mildewed bathroom, its walls dark with colonies of rot. Beyond was what might once have been a bedroom. It was empty now and its windows were gone but it looked out over the rubbish tip in the back garden. If he kept still and hung back, he’d see the Wardsmen pass by on the other side of the wall. Anticipating he might have to run or hide again, he put his tin of food down and pulled his rucksack on. As he completed the manoeuvre and bent to pick up his precious salmon, he felt something hard dig into his ribs.

  He froze.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman. Pale-faced, dark haired. That was all he could glean before the most important detail took his attention: a double barrelled shotgun pulled tight into her shoulder. She looked like she knew how to use it.

  Outside the clopping of steel-shod hooves approached.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” he whispered. “That’s the Ward outside. I only wanted to hide.”

  The woman glanced through the window and ducked slightly. She backed away still pointing the gun at him; at his head now. She motioned with it for him to follow her.

  “You won’t shoot me. It’ll only bring them to your door.”

  She smiled without a trace of humour.

  “And I’ll tell them I shot a thief. Saved them the trouble.”

  Gordon raised his hands. It was a hundred to one that the gun was even loaded but he couldn’t take the risk. Even if she fired and missed, the whole troop of Wardsmen would be off their mounts and through the door in seconds. She probably wouldn’t miss with the second barrel.

  She sniffed the air and then noticed the tin in his hand.

  “Is that… fish?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I found it.”

  “You stole it.”

  “I found it.”

  For a moment she had a faraway look in her eye. He could have pounced then, wrestled the gun from her and made a run for it.

  But the noise… And if she was faster than he anticipated...

  By the time he’d thought it over, his chance had passed. She had the eyes of a predator all of a sudden.

  “I haven’t eaten fish for two years.”

  He sighed.

  “Fine. It’s yours. Just let me go.”

  Outside the horses had come to a halt. He couldn’t see them but they had to be right outside the hole in the wall. If any of them were listening, they could probably hear the conversation.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  She shook her head, backed up and motioned again with the morbid end of the shotgun. There was space for him to pass by her now and that was what she wanted; to get him in front of her. To herd him. He did what she wanted, keeping low. He sensed her crouching too as she followed.

  “Up,” she hissed.

  He mounted the last flight of stairs where there were two more rooms. A ladder led from the top landing, up into a black square hole.

  “And again.”

  Shit.

  He climbed the ladder, still holding the tin of salmon. From up here there was no way to see the back garden, no way of telling what the Ward patrol was up to. A single candle burned in the blackness above. He didn’t have time to register what it illuminated before he felt the shotgun in the crack of his arse.

  “Quick,” she said.

  He could tell from the strain in her voice that the patrol had entered the house.

  She pulled the ladder up and closed the attic hatch with swift, well-practised movements. Like a soldier. She wrapped the fish in a clear plastic bag and pushed it as far from the hatch as possible. Any smell from the open tin was masked by odours of human habitation where water no longer ran. Sweat, urine, faeces. And something else he wasn’t able to isolate at first. Something like decay.

  Using only gestures his captor showed Gordon where to sit and to stay silent. He didn’t require the instructions but accepted them with a nod. On the far side of the attic where the roof met the floor, something wrapped in blankets moved. The woman put her hand on the muffled form and made as quiet a shushing as she could. The shape stilled.

  Now the woman let her eyes meet Gordon’s over the light from the candle, a light that suddenly seemed very bright and very dangerous.

  Indistinct noises and voices came from below.

  The woman leaned forward and Gordon noticed that she really wasn’t a woman at all but a girl, probably not much older than him. A girl whose face had been worked over by fear and responsibility. He knew the look from his own reflection.

  She whispered one last thing:

  “If they come up, you’ll fight them with me?”

  He withdrew his lock-knife and unclasped it.

  She nodded once, licked her fingers and pinched out the candle flame.

  5

  Megan and Mr Keeper walk in silence for many miles. There is nothing unusual in this except that, for the first time, the silence originates in Megan.

  Shep Afon is miles behind them and nothing but open country lies ahead. Megan senses the tug of the weave and thinks of her half-finished business with the prostitute. This is the first experience she hasn’t shared with Mr Keeper since treading the Black Feathered Path and keeping silent about it fills her with shame. And yet, if she has learned anything at all from him, it is to trust her instincts above all else. An intelligent gravity works on her from the weave, drawing her back to the attic room in Shep Afon. The moment she has a chance, she will go, while the blood of her moon shields her from Mr Keeper’s watchful protection. A sudden belly cramp reminds her of her power but she doesn’t permit herself a smile; she’s certain he would sense it even though he walks ahead of her.

  The land spreads to every part of the horizon with such power and presence the sight of it overwhelms her. The land is no different, though. Her eyes are merely seeing it anew; all her senses hum with lush, deep perceptions. Colours and sounds combine so that the landscape sings a song of savage passion at the very edge of her hearing. Smells burst from the feeling of a breeze on her face or the impact
of her boots on the path. The air itself has subtle flavours that change each time the wind shifts. The sky is so vast and unfathomable it pulls at her, threatening to snatch her away from the ground. Every rule is broken. Blades of grass are tiny cutlasses of green threat, glimpsed foxes with their jaws clamped over slack prey send her messages of benevolence. A distant dove is a swooping raptor, patches of thorn and bramble promise the sweetest rest.

  All the while Megan watches for shadows cast from overhead, listens for the hush of huge wings. She expects a dark figure to step out from behind every tree they pass, his black weeds trailing to the ground or spread wide and sleek, ready to enfold her. And, though she fears his power more than ever, more than the day on which she first laid eyes upon him, Megan knows with profound certainty that the Crowman represents both the darkness of endings and reavings and the darkness of chaos from which births and unions are manifested.

  She tries to distract herself with memories of home and the times before she first saw the Crowman; the days of her childhood which she knows are behind her forever. She can visit them now only in reverie or in the weave; those long days spent idly and in wonder, with a trust of things so deep and total there was no space for unhappiness.

  On a day like this, so tired and so far away from anything familiar, it feels as though she has lost everything of value. That part of her, the little girl who once ran through the meadows and swam in the Usky river, who danced and sang with the other children of the village, that Megan Maurice has been left far behind. Somewhere, she still sings and still skips, her blonde hair as yet untouched by the feathers of the Crowman; but she is lost to this world and this time, and thinking of her brings Megan only sadness. Even Amu and Apa are closed to her for the moment, and her childhood friends Tom Frewin and Sally Balston seem so distant as to be strangers.

  She thinks instead of the old man who arrived in his tiny, almost circular boat – a vessel made of skin stretched over woven slats of split ash – and how he left earlier that day the very same way he had come. He and Mr Keeper had embraced; a long, heartfelt clasping, before Carrick Rowntree had thrown his pack into his boat, pushed it down the sandbank and hopped in like a little boy who couldn’t wait to go fishing.

  They’d watched him with his single oar, paddling against the current and making headway with no apparent effort. He hadn’t looked back and Megan, feeling every nuance of intent and emotion in everything she saw, experienced waves of sadness and longing burst from Mr Keeper. This man, usually so inscrutable it was easy to forget he was her sworn guardian and teacher, loved Carrick Rowntree, would miss him and feel alone without his leadership, knew he might not see the old man again. As suddenly as these pulses of melancholia had begun, Mr Keeper stopped them. It had seemed to Megan like an act of will. They were replaced with a simple joy that came from the inevitably of death and separation, and from the certainty of the cycles of the Earthwalk. They came from the knowledge that in every ending was a beginning and that to be cut away was to be reunited elsewhere. Carrick Rowntree is gone. That neither of them will see the old man again is another certainty living in Megan’s water.

  What does she have that she can rely on? What does she have that is certain and that can protect her as her abilities increase and her perceptions become more powerful? Only this land and all its gifts and mysteries. Only this land and the feeling of her feet in communion with it as she walks. Only her living heartbeat and the pulse of the world moving through her; the rhythm of her feet and the rhythm of living and dying, beating slow, beating fast everywhere she turns her eyes.

  She lets this rhythm lead her footsteps.

  The struts and crossbars of their shelter in the woods are untouched, right where Megan and Mr Keeper left them. They rebuild and wrap the bender without a word and Megan can’t help wondering if he already knows that she has entered the weave without him. Perhaps he’s merely waiting for the right moment to spring it on her.

  Mr Keeper makes a broth of dried meat and oats, flavoured with some herbs he has picked as they were walking. They drink it from small wooden bowls, fingering the chewy flesh into their mouths and tipping up the slurry of porridge at the end. Megan is surprised by a hunger she hasn’t noticed while passing through the landscape. She has moved like a spirit blown on the wind, seemingly using no energy, but now she eats three bowls of broth and what’s left in the cook pot before she is satisfied. The food brings her from spirit into flesh at a plummet and she is so tired she can barely crawl into the bender to unroll her blanket.

  “Let me dream tonight,” she whispers and drops into the crow blackness of sleep.

  The sun is bright directly overhead, much hotter than Megan remembers it being when they left. Shouts and snatches of traders’ songs come from every direction. The air is filled with the scent of food both fresh and cooked and a greasy aroma of grilled meat wafts among the crowds of buyers. Megan walks amid the throng of Shep Afon’s market place like a ghost. No one sees her but even so, she does her best to avoid contact and its sickening effect on her.

  The riverbank where she camped with Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree is where she really wants to go, feeling pulled back by the intensity of her experiences there. But she makes herself walk towards the thin house that bulges, the brothel squashed between the two inns. It is the prostitute woman she needs to see.

  The door is locked and the building silent – she supposes there will be little happening here until the day’s trading is complete and the traders’ takings have been added up. Megan passes through the gnarly wood, feeling only slight resistance and no nausea from the inanimate barrier. She slips past the unattended reception booth and trots up the cramped flights of stairs until she reaches the door to the attic room. She raises her hand to knock, shakes her head with a small smile and then passes through.

  The room is empty.

  There is no mattress on the old bed. The mirror and small dressing table have been removed. No oil lamps hang from the beams. A thin layer of dust coats every surface. Megan crosses to the window and looks down into the market where there is much movement. The heated tones of haggling voices rise up to the glass but her eyes are drawn to the far side of the hub, to the river and its many waterwheels. Something down there tugs at her. She turns back to glance around the empty room again and moves to leave. It is only as she passes back through the attic room door that she notices the crudely fashioned hasp and padlock that have been used to prevent entry.

  Frowning, Megan steals down the cramped stairs and along the claustrophobic corridors until she is once more in the market. Urgently now, like an impatient breeze, she flits through the press and noise of the crowds to the wall bordering the river where she and Mr Keeper first rested on their arrival in Shep Afon. Megan hops up onto the wall and scans the riverbank. There is no sign of their footprints or camping place in the sandy expanse of silt. It’s as though they were never there. The pull however, is stronger now. It comes from across the river, the quiet side where the outcasts live.

  Ignoring the bridges, Megan flits to the water’s edge and walks across, the sense of the water buoying her up bringing a grin to her face. She would stop and play here, skipping and dancing over the gentle ripples, if the urge to find the source of the weave’s pull wasn’t so great. Gaining the far side, she leaps up the same bank her kidnappers forced her to climb when they took her to the hag Bodbran.

  Megan surveys the ramshackle huts, lean-tos, tents and benders that make up the loose community of outcasts on this side of Shep Afon’s river. The pull is stronger than ever now and comes from the farthest of the dwellings. Megan walks fast, dodging guy ropes, water butts and small piles of firewood. Possessions here are of little worth but many of the dwellings are open and unattended, the few objects within and around each quite visible. Tethered goats munch grass in circular patches and chickens wander, apparently ownerless.

  A low, dome-shaped bender takes Megan’s attention. It is a little way beyond the perimeter of the dwell
ings, very deliberately set apart. From the centre of the dome, a pennant of black feathers rolls and flutters to the touch of the breeze. She hurries towards it, glancing around. The whole encampment seems to be deserted, as though, for just a few minutes its entire population has wandered into the hills.

  Outside the black bender, Megan halts and the draw from the weave goes slack. No pull. No glow. Silence everywhere. She’s been so eager for this, so committed, but now that she stands on the threshold Megan hesitates. Maybe this is the wrong thing to be doing. This is no simple dream, after all, no innocent promenade in the night country. She asked for this. She intended it. And she is here without Mr Keeper’s knowledge or permission. He has never encouraged her to enter the weave alone; it’s as though the idea has never crossed his mind. Does he think she is still too young and inexperienced or is it more deliberate? She senses something like fear in his failure to address such an idea but what kind of fear is it? For her or for himself? Or is it something more far-reaching; a fear for the land?

  Megan looks back the way she has come and considers the distance in real time and space. Her body is asleep beside Mr Keeper right now but in her visit to the night country, her spirit is many miles away. She feels both afraid and ashamed. She could still travel back into sleep with nothing further discovered, no transgression committed, and she would wake in the morning able to look Mr Keeper in the eye with no secrets. Surely that is the right thing to do. She turns away from the bender and takes a step back towards the encampment, towards the river.