The Book of the Crowman

by Joseph D'lacey

  Nothing came.

  “Why?” he whispered.

  There was no time for wondering. He thumped her hard on the chest and breathed into her slack mouth. Neither action revived her. He began heart massage, pumping down hard and fast and then breathing for her again.

  “Come on, kid. This isn’t the end.”

  Pressure and breath, pressure and breath. Her body remained doll-passive beneath his ministering hands.

  “There’s a future for you, I promise. A bright future. I’m working on it.”

  He pumped faster, working himself into a sweat.

  “I’m working on it. It’ll be there. All you have to do is breathe.

  “Just breathe.

  “Breathe!”

  The girl died as the sun went down. Of terror; that was all Gordon could think. Perhaps her heart had been weak to begin with. Or maybe her mind had been strong enough to end her life before the skinheads did it their way, with gang rape and butchery.

  As darkness gathered he cleaned the girl as best he could and made a resting place for her at the centre of the skinheads’ clearing. Once she was buried he used a pair of steel tongs to break the circle formed by their fire pit. He used the hot stones to build a cairn over her body so that her grave would always be visible. He buried the remains of the man and woman hanging from the timber A-frame near the girl and placed a single stone at the head of each of their graves.

  When he was done, he strode into the night.

  Before dawn, Gordon had tracked and captured all of them by ones and twos, returning them to their camp. Some stumbled at knife point, hobbled by ankle ropes. Others came back slung over his shoulder. He bound them the way they’d bound the girl, like animals restrained for slaughter, and staked their ropes to the ground.

  They were all alive and conscious when he strung the first of them up on the A-frame at first light. Alive, bound and facing the workplace where they’d turned other humans into meat. With a deft act of surgery to their eyes, akin to circumcision, Gordon ensured none of them would miss a single nuance of his performance.

  He used the one with the injured ear first – the wound had swollen and suppurated and the man had begun to run a fever. Gordon cut his clothes away and hauled him up, feet first, to hang from the A-frame. Whilst those who waited were gagged, the hanging man was free to plead and scream all he wanted. Gordon stripped himself naked. Then he went to work on the hanging man, whose watery shit ran from his buttocks to the top of his head and whose piss dribbled into his own face.

  Gordon whetted his knife blade against his river rock for all of them to see. He tested it on the man’s thigh, a single delicate stroke opening his flesh deep into the quivering muscle below and sending streaks of blood from his groin to his shoulder.

  He addressed his audience and fellow player:

  “What you do to this world, to its people, you do to yourself. You do to me.”

  Blade-led deconstruction of the human form absorbed Gordon utterly. He lost count of the hours but the direction of the light had changed considerably by the time it was done. The hanging man was alive until the very end. He managed only one more that day before using one of their tents to bed down for the night. He was exhausted.

  The work took two more days. Malcolm, last to be lifted from the earth, was insane with waiting by then. When it was complete Gordon washed himself in a nearby brook, dressed once more in his coat of black feathers and walked back to the canal.

  He left the pieces for the rooks.

  PART II

  THE COMING OF THE CROWMAN

  “There is no death. Only a change of worlds.”

  Chief Seattle (1786-1866)

  “An individual may walk many paths but all paths lead to the self; and the true self is greater than any individual can ever be.”

  Aaron Alwin, Keeper of the Crowman, Guardian of the World

  32

  Half propped up against folded skins and blankets, Mr Keeper looks like an ancient sack of bones, older than Carrick Rowntree and nearer to death. At first he shakes his head when Megan shows him the food but she pushes a spoonful of hot broth into his mouth and he has no choice but to take it. Brown juice trickles from his lips and she wipes it away with a rag. A little spark ignites deep within his eyes when the warmth of the stew hits his stomach.

  She gives him a second spoonful and this time he makes a small nod of approval at the flavour. Now she gives him a third bite with a chunk of meat in it. He chews and swallows with gusto and pushes himself into a more upright position. He holds out his hand and she gives him the bowl. In a few minutes he hands the bowl back empty. She refills it.

  After three bowls of ricky pot he is a different man. It’s hard for Megan to say exactly what it is that is different about him. He still looks old and scrawny. He is still wounded. But the light that glows in his eyes has expanded into his skin and beyond. He exudes the powerful aura she remembers from the very first time she met him face to face in her parents’ kitchen.

  “Is there more?” he asks.

  “I think three bowls is enough, isn’t it?”

  “I meant for you, Megan.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need it.”

  Mr Keeper reaches for his pipe and baccy.

  “Actually, you do.”

  Before he says another word, a chill passes through Megan because she knows what is coming.

  “You want me to go there, don’t you?” she asks.

  “You’re the only one who can do it, Megan. No other Keepers live near enough. I never imagined something like this would happen before your training was complete but even so, you are ready. You have the understanding and strength to do what all Keepers must do: preserve the balance. Those men must be prevented from pursuing their work. For all we know they might have finished it already.”

  “Won’t they be expecting more trouble?”

  “I doubt it. As far as they know, they came to work and found a black panther in their hideout. Those with a hankering for technology from the old times have usually lost touch with the land already. I doubt they’ll even suspect that they’ve been visited by a Keeper. They may have put some kind of deterrent or barrier up in the mouth of the cave to keep out wild animals, but that, I think, will be the extent of it.”

  “What will I have to do?”

  “You must destroy everything in that cave with fire. I’ll give you what you need for that.”

  “What if they catch me?”

  Mr Keeper lights up and smiles, his irritating good humour returning far too rapidly for Megan’s liking.

  “Then you must educate them.”

  “What if they don’t take kindly to my instruction?”

  Mr Keeper’s grin broadens at this.

  “Well, Megan Maurice, I would suggest you impress upon them the importance of your knowledge. A Keeper has the final say in any matter such as this.”

  “I’m not a Keeper.”

  At this, the old man shrugged.

  “It’s true, the book isn’t complete yet, Megan. But it will be soon and then you will be a Keeper. I have no doubt about that. In the meantime, you’re acting under the auspices of one and you carry my authority. These men and their meddling must be stopped. By any means, Megan. Any means at all.”

  Megan sits back, quiet for a moment. This is her opportunity to show Mr Keeper what she can do, to prove herself. She knows she has abilities beyond her teacher’s already, but will it be enough?

  “I may have your authority, Mr Keeper. But I don’t have your power. I can’t take the shape of an animal.”

  “Little good it did me in the end. Anyway, Megan, you have no idea what you’re capable of yet. You’re only limited by what you don’t yet know and your view of the world. The broader your perception becomes, the more possibilities the world will hold for you and the greater will be your power.”

  Nothing in her walking of the Path has been easy and none of it has been fair. It is disorganised and random with no
clarity of beginning or end and no recognisable signposts along its way. It would be easy to fall into frustration as she so often has when he talks like this but Megan can already see herself searching for the secret cave and confronting the men who dare to forget how delicate this land is.

  And yet, what does she really know of being a Keeper? Truly, in her heart, how certain is she of herself? What weapon does she possess that can defeat such determined men?

  She is surprised to hear herself voicing her doubts.

  “I don’t need perception. I need training. I need to know what it is I’m meant to be doing.” She gestured beyond the walls of the roundhouse. “Out there I’m just a girl, Mr Keeper. If those men catch me, they won’t listen to a word I say. And who knows what they’ll do to me?”

  Mr Keeper closes his eyes for a moment or two and takes a pull on his pipe. I’ve gone too far, she thinks. When he opens his eyes again he will send me home. Why can’t I learn to keep my mouth shut?

  “I’m sorry,” she says, knowing it’s too late. “I’m… frightened.”

  His eyes open again but his expression is kind.

  “You’ve every reason to be frightened, Megan. Do you think I wasn’t? But you’re not a child any more and you can’t pretend to be. The things you’ve done, everything you’ve learned and all the thinking you’ve had to leave behind to come this far – all this has brought you out of childhood. You’re a woman now. I ask you to do this because I believe in your ability to achieve it–”

  “But even you couldn’t do it.”

  “No. I couldn’t. But I trust you to succeed where I have failed, Megan. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t ask you to do this. It’s too important.” He takes a final suck on the pipe and tips the remnant ash into a bowl beside him. “The age of male dominion still pulls our world out of balance. The energy of woman, the Earth Amu, must now rise. It’s time for you to step into your power, Megan. See it, embrace it, use it.”

  There is always a choice; it is implicit in everything Mr Keeper says. Megan knows she could leave the roundhouse now and go home. It would be to forget she ever walked this path, ever knew this man the way she has come to know him. It would be to draw a thick curtain over her life and smother its potential. But at least it will be safe. At least it will be knowable.

  And safe.

  She realises with a tiny snort that these are things she is no longer interested in. She is interested in the wild nature of the land and its creatures. She is interested in pondering mysteries she may never penetrate. She is interested in living in the fullness of magic that exists between the great fatherly spirit above and the bounteous motherly earth below. She wants to keep it alive and give it everything she has so that its mystery will continue for those who come after her. She did not come into this world to stay coddled at her family’s hearth, nor for her life to be anything other than the most ecstatic mystery.

  “When should I go?”

  “You must go now. Eat some ricky pot and I will make you a map.”

  33

  Denise had made far more ground than Gordon could have anticipated. Two days of near-running pace didn’t bring him close to her. In her fear she must have fled.

  As he travelled he caught sight of small bands of men and women moving north with him. He tried to stay out of sight but there were others who, like him, had found the Grand Union towpath a road they could be safe on.

  He began to come upon trains of people walking in single file. Many of them carried longbows. The rest were armed with weapons which belonged in tool sheds, workshops or farm outbuildings but they walked with purpose, these people. Perhaps understanding that this war might signify their final act in the world, that it might decide the future. They weren’t raucous or overconfident. They walked with quiet determination, saving themselves for whatever lay ahead. Gordon began to believe that with a mindset like this, they might have a chance. They’d be lost without the right leadership though and this made him push the pace even harder after he’d spoken to as many travellers in each group as he could.

  They all asked him if he would fight, of course. And he always answered that he would. But he had questions for them now: had they seen a dark haired girl with two packs? Had they heard tell of the Crowman? Many of them had seen a girl who matched his description of Denise. It seemed that she had fallen in with a group of the Green Men’s First Guard; as near to an elite force as a civilian army would ever get. Some of these forces travelled on horseback and the group she’d found were such a one. That explained her speed.

  All those who’d seen her said Denise and the First Guard were heading to Coventry where Green Men from all over the country were massing. Everyone who made it that far would have their place in the war; everyone who chose to fight now could consider themselves Green Men. As to the Crowman, the stories were as jumbled as ever; some versions of stories he’d heard years before, others more recent.

  From a white-haired, stooped old man armed with a pick-axe handle:

  “I heard he was spreading the flu all over London like a cloud of poisonous gas, hoping to take out the Ward bigwigs. Ended up killing the likes of us mostly.”

  From a man, two sickles in his belt, whose brown beard almost reached his belly:

  “Crowman? You’re joking, aren’t you? That’s a story we used to tell our kids to stop them misbehaving or get them up to bed. It’s not real, mate. My advice? You want to keep your mind on killing Wardsmen. If there’s hope for the future, it’s in the destruction of the Ward. They’re real. And they’re bleeding this world to death.”

  From a woman, so gaunt she looked like twigs in a paper bag; a woman whose weapon – a baseball bat with barbed wire wrapped around its head – was the fattest thing about her:

  “I’ve never seen him but my sister did. Said he fixed her broken leg after her house collapsed. Got rid of her piles too…” The woman smirked. “She’d suffered with them for years. He got her whole family out of the rubble and he healed them.” The woman shrugged, the points of her shoulders jabbing upwards. “That’s what she told me, anyway. You never know who to believe these days, do you? You think you’re talking to a friend and then you find out you’re talking to the Ward.”

  From a boy who was obviously older than Gordon but was not yet a man:

  “I’m from London, mate. I know all about your Crowman. I’ve heard the stories. He’s not some superhero. He’s a fucking psychopath. I’ve heard he kills for pleasure. He doesn’t care whether it’s a Wardsman or Green Man like you and me or just some poor scavenger out on the street. He’s using the chaos to do whatever he wants. Rape. Murder. Torture. You name it. When you come across the worst misdeeds, it’s probably him that done it.” The boy had a replica samurai sword tucked through his belt. People walking behind had to take care not to cut their knees and whenever the boy turned around, the tip of the sword spun with him, sending those closest scattering. Gordon himself almost fell into the canal when the boy was startled by a bird in the hedgerow. He beckoned Gordon closer and whispered, “I’ll waste him myself if I catch him.”

  From a bald man wearing dirty orange robes and mouthing silently as he passed a string of beads through his fingers:

  “Look within, brother. That’s where you’ll find him.” The man, whether he was a real monk or not was impossible to tell, thumped his own chest twice with a clenched fist. “This is where I keep the Crowman. He’s with me all the time.”

  The only stories he heard that made any real sense were those eyewitness accounts of Denise passing through on horseback. Frustrated, Gordon moved past each new posse of ragtag fighters without further questions, cursing himself for the time he’d lost chasing rumours.

  Megan’s pack is light this time and she walks with urgency, eager for this to be over, eager to be pursuing Gordon in his search for the Crowman.

  She senses his journey will soon be over. In his world the Black Dawn has risen over the land and thrust it into darkness. Gordon has become a man and
the clash between the Ward and the Green Men is imminent. That conflict, she believes, will signal the culmination of Gordon’s long quest. She is not certain of this but it is something she feels within; there is a natural sense of conclusion arising from everything she sees in Gordon’s world, an inevitability about the turns his path is now taking.

  Whilst it is her duty, this journey to the cave is a disruption to her completion of the Black Feathered Path. The sooner she can put whatever is in the hideout to the torch, the sooner she can return and continue her own quest for vision. When the book is complete, her training will be all but finished and she will officially take the responsibilities and powers of a Keeper. Though this terrifies her, neither can she wait for it to be so.

  The morning crackles and creaks with frost. The soles of her boots meet knobbly, unyielding ground with each step and the air is powder dry. Though she is well wrapped up in furs, the cold bypasses every layer. Perhaps it is merely nerves causing her to tremble inside. She walks faster to build up some heat.

  A couple of hours into the journey she realises that she can’t keep up the pace. Another simple lesson she has failed to learn from irritatingly sensible Mr Keeper. She brunches on wheaten loaf and sips water as she walks, allowing herself to ease off for a few miles before putting the pressure on again. By mid afternoon, assuming Mr Keeper’s map is correct, she is two or three miles from her objective.

  Once again, she slows the pace, eats and drinks to keep up her strength. A mile or so farther on, she checks the map again. This area is more detailed, showing a coppice where she can rest and prepare out of sight. The cave is on the far side of a small valley between two gentle hillsides. Its position is marked by a windmill on the top of the hill opposite the coppice. According to Mr Keeper the three men are using the wind’s energy, not only to mill grain but to operate the machinery in the cave directly beneath.