by Jacob Grey
“I found you,” he said.
“Or I found you,” said Black Corvus. “You are not the first, Jack. Come, walk with me.”
His voice was stern and Caw obeyed without question.
They descended a narrow set of creaking wooden stairs. At the bottom, Black Corvus unbolted a door and swung it open on to the outside world. A wide muddy street with timber buildings opposite. The smell of woodsmoke in the air. Caw followed Corvus, who’d already set off across the street, but had to jump back as a horse-drawn carriage careered towards him. It rattled past on huge wooden-spoked wheels, flicking up mud from the churned ruts in the road. In the back, a woman in a pink bonnet and a man in a tall hat sat beside each other. The woman was looking Caw’s way, but she showed no sign of seeing him. As the carriage rolled onwards, Corvus beckoned Caw to follow with a jerk of his chin.
Caw crossed the street, stepping over a pile of horse dung, and saw this world ripple and blur in his peripheral vision. He was here, but he was not. It was an image, but one which he could feel with all of his senses – and he knew it could vanish in a moment. He looked back at the house he’d come from and saw a tall, timber building with upper windows that stuck out from the front, supported by wooden struts below. It looked quite grand.
They passed a wooden chapel set back from the thoroughfare, a cockerel spinning slightly on its spire. Beside the church, through an open set of doors, Caw saw a man with a leather apron hammering a piece of glowing metal. The man stopped and nodded to Black Corvus, who tipped his hat in response. Again, Caw sensed that he was invisible here.
“What is this place?” he asked, as his eyes swept over the street.
“This is Blackstone,” said Corvus, pausing as a flock of sheep crossed their path.
“When is it?” said Caw, hurrying after him.
“The year is not exact,” said Corvus. “Sometime around 1680. The Midnight Stone holds my memories, and this place is made from them. I’m glad you came, Jack.”
“I need your help,” said Caw.
“Then let us go somewhere where we can talk,” said Corvus.
They passed a tavern and a stable yard, and a group of women coming out of a shop with dresses in the window. A boy carried a stack of bread rolls on a tray across the street. Blackstone was a small but bustling place. A couple of men playing cards on a veranda tipped their hats to Black Corvus and he waved back.
At the end of the street, a wooden bridge crossed a small river, and they climbed a hill between pastureland, where golden wheat shivered in the cool breeze. Caw followed as his companion strode up the incline. He was panting a little as they reached the top, where a single tree stood, its branches sprawling over a small well.
“What is it you want from me?” said Corvus, sitting on the wall of the well.
“I need to help my friend,” said Caw.
Corvus stared out over the town below them. It really was tiny – perhaps thirty buildings, with fields beyond as far as the eye could see. He sighed. “The White Widow.”
“How do you know?” said Caw.
“I sense things – through the Stone. It is a prism between this world and yours. Important things can penetrate.” He paused. “Like evil.”
“There must be a way I can free her,” said Caw, shivering as the wind became colder still.
“There is not,” said Black Corvus. He turned, his black eyes fixing on Caw. “Do not underestimate the tenacity of the spider line, Jack. They never stop weaving their vile webs. They hate us and always have. And the White Widow hates you too. She will not rest until you are dead.”
“But it’s the Spinning Man who hates me, not Selina,” said Caw. “Somehow he’s possessed her – made her into the White Widow.”
“The name of your enemy is not important,” said Black Corvus. “All spider talkers are evil. That is what you need to know.” He stood and took the wooden cover off the top of the well.
“But …”
“Come,” said Corvus, pointing into the depths. “You will see.”
Caw edged up and peered over the rim. Black water reflected his face for a moment, reminding him of the surface of the Midnight Stone.
Then Corvus reached across, a pebble in hand. He dropped it. As the ripples spread, an image formed in the liquid, made of shadow and light but completely clear. A child pressed into the corner of a room, spiders coming at him from every side as an old man stood over him, cackling.
Another pebble splashed into the surface and the vision changed to a woman lying pale and still in an ornate bed, as spiders crept over her dressing table and carried off a jewelled necklace on their backs.
“What is this?” asked Caw.
“History,” said Black Corvus. “The spider line is rotten to its core. It is our job to stamp them out for good.”
Caw looked into Corvus’s dark gaze. “But I can’t kill my friend.”
Corvus laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed firmly. “You don’t understand. She is already dead, Caw. She is like prey trapped in a silk cocoon, being slowly consumed. From the moment the Spinning Man took her, he has been sucking away her life force. Soon he will be powerful enough to exist without her.”
“What do you mean?” asked Caw with a shudder.
“I mean she is only his temporary vessel,” said Corvus. “He will drain her body, leaving an empty husk. And then he will rise again, in the flesh.”
Caw shook his head fiercely. “That can’t be true. The Spinning Man is dead.”
“While his spirit lives, he will find a doorway back,” said Corvus. “The girl is that doorway. You have my sympathy, Caw. I have lost enough friends to the spiders to know how you feel.” He handed Caw a pebble.
Caw took it and dropped it into the well. As it sank beneath the water, he saw another image: spiders swarming across a woman and a man, who writhed and then fell. My parents.
Caw looked away. “That was the Spinning Man, not the White Widow,” he said.
“They are one and the same,” said Corvus. “You have a duty, Jack. You must spare your friend more misery. End the spider line forever. For us, for your mother, and for every other feral who lives a life of goodness.”
Caw felt sick. He steadied himself against the well and watched the water swirl below. His stomach churned and he closed his eyes, but water still seemed to fill his vision.
“Caw?” said a voice that didn’t belong to Corvus.
He peered down and saw another face in the water, blurred and indistinct. The cold breeze was gone from the back of his neck; Caw realised the vision was releasing him.
Caw felt a hard surface beneath his face, arms shaking him, then a hot sting across his cheek.
He blinked and a jowly face glared down at him. Felix Quaker’s hand was raised for another slap.
Caw was back in the attic flat, the room swaying nauseatingly around him.
He drew his hand back from the Midnight Stone.
“About time!” said the cat feral.
The crows were squawking furiously.
“What’s going on?” asked Caw.
At last! Glum said. We thought you’d had your brain sucked out.
Caw felt horribly disorientated. The Crow’s Beak was lying on the table. It wasn’t there before, was it? Then he remembered his earlier command back at the power plant. Krak and the others must have brought it here.
“What time is it?” he mumbled.
“You’ve been out of it for nearly two hours,” said Quaker.
Caw blinked hard. It felt like no more than ten minutes since he had laid his hand on the Stone. “I spoke to Black Corvus,” he said.
And? said Shimmer. What did he say?
Caw looked at each of his crows. “He said there was nothing we could do now Selina is the White Widow.”
Oh, said Shimmer.
“He said the Spinning Man was using her,” said Caw. “That there was a way for him to come back for real, as himself.”
“There you are
then,” said Quaker. The cat feral was frowning severely.
“Is everything OK?” asked Caw.
“You tell me,” said Quaker. He pointed to the corner of the room, where a pigeon lay dead on the floor, missing several clumps of feathers. “My cats found it spying,” Quaker spat. “Who else knows you’re here?”
“No one,” said Caw. “At least, I thought so.”
Quaker paced angrily to the bed and pulled out a suitcase from underneath it. “I knew I shouldn’t have got involved. All I wanted was somewhere I could live in peace. Why couldn’t you leave me alone?” He began to stuff clothes into the open case.
“So that’s it?” Caw said. “You’re off?”
Quaker paused with his back to Caw as cats gathered around his feet. “I didn’t want any of this,” he said, then crossed to the door. “Goodbye, Caw.”
And then he was gone.
Screech landed on Caw’s shoulder. Hey, boss, he said.
“If you’re going to ask about biscuits again, please don’t,” said Caw.
Listen, said Screech, sounding more serious than Caw had ever heard him. You know I’d follow you anywhere …
“Screech, you’re as loyal as they come,” said Caw.
But this … It seems different. I mean, you killed him, but now he’s back. I just think it might be better …
“What do you want me to do?” said Caw impatiently.
Screech raised one wing – a nervous twitch. Maybe we should bury the hatchet with the other ferals, he said. We could handle it on our own, but strength in numbers, right? At least until we know what we’re dealing with.
Caw shrugged, and Screech tumbled off, landing on the floor.
“Not yet,” said Caw. He wrapped up the Midnight Stone and sheathed the Crow’s Beak. “I need to think.”
You got it, Screech said. You know I’m with you. Whatever happens.
Morton and another crow dropped through the skylight and fluttered up on to the table, looking agitated.
“What’s going on?” said Caw.
The new crow hopped from side to side. Spiders everywhere! she cried. Back at the power plant. We’re under attack!
The rubbish dump was no longer a lifeless landscape of trash. Spiders swarmed across it like a plague. They must have taken the crows by surprise, creeping up from beneath, because several birds were pinned, flapping on the ground, trying to break free.
Soaring above in the grip of his crows, Caw saw Krak rise on weak wings then collapse again. Other crows swooped and dive-bombed, trying to pick the spiders off, only to rise covered in spiders themselves.
Glum, Screech and Shimmer swooped down from the sky as Caw swept overhead.
The spiders were everywhere. Caw told the crows who were carrying him to descend, and his feet crushed spiders as he hit the ground. He stamped through the melee, snatching up crows where he could, knocking the spiders from their wings, and tossing his birds up into the safety of the air. His hands were stinging with bites and he could feel the spiders crawling under his clothes.
“Retreat!” he shouted.
Save yourselves! yelled Morton, but as one wave of crows lifted off, still more seemed trapped on the ground.
Caw saw webbing across their backs, between their feathers – even over their eyes. This was no aimless attack. This was planned carnage.
And then he saw a movement high up on the wall of the old power plant.
Something pale darting through a window.
The White Widow.
Caw called crows to him, and sprang off the ground in their grip, spiders tumbling from his body. He ignored the pricks of pain as the arachnids bit him, focusing on the power plant. But soon he couldn’t see anything as spiders crawled over his face and he had to claw at his skin to scrape them off.
At last, the crows carried him through the window of the derelict building into a huge turbine hall. Massive metal bars criss-crossed the empty space, and the ground below was littered with rubble. Caw swept back and forth, eyes scanning the building’s corners. There was no sign of the White Widow. He passed through another window and rose towards the roof.
They’re retreating! Caw heard Shimmer cry.
As his crows carried him back to the scrapyard, he saw the last of the spiders vanishing through gaps in the rubbish, sinking out of sight like black water seeping into sand. They left countless injured crows in their wake, flapping weakly or hobbling upright. Caw didn’t know what to think. Why had the White Widow called off her forces?
Circling crows gradually came to land, to tend to the rest of the flock.
Only one bird was still in the air as Caw stood in the centre of this nightmarish scene.
Where’s Screech? said Glum, swooping back and forth. Screech!
Caw scanned the dump for his loyal lieutenant. He spotted a small gathering of crows beside a large pool of stagnant water. They stood facing the same way, completely motionless. And in the pool of dirty water there was something floating on its side. Something black, like a rag.
Caw started to run across the mounds of discarded rubbish. He tripped and fell, then scrambled up and ran again. A long keening call that he had never heard before echoed in his ears. The terrible cry of a crow that he knew came from Glum.
Shimmer swept past, crying out, No … No …
The crows stood aside as Caw reached the pool. He waded straight in, his heart bursting in the hope that he was wrong but his head telling him that he wasn’t.
Cupping his hands, he scooped Screech’s lifeless body from the water.
cruel wind whipped across the rubbish dump, tugging at Caw’s freezing, sodden clothes and ruffling the feathers of his crows. He cradled Screech in his hands – a dead weight. The young crow’s head hung limply and his talons were curled. His eyes had already taken on a milky vagueness within their black depths, like a premonition of the Land of the Dead.
Glum had turned away, unable to look. Shimmer was talking to the older crow in a low voice that Caw couldn’t hear. The other crows watched their master with unblinking eyes.
Caw sat heavily, sitting cross-legged with the body laid in his lap, and he began to cry.
Screech had been with him since almost the start. He was the first crow Caw had really understood, the first who had brought him half a sandwich instead of a wriggling worm. They had grown up together, like brothers, and while Caw had gone from a five-year-old to an adolescent, Screech had stayed the same – funny, smart, reckless and loyal. Caw had always known that Screech would have flown into fire for him. He would have given his life.
And now he had.
Screech had never once shied from danger. He had followed Caw everywhere, even when Caw had asked him not to. He was always at his master’s side.
“He can’t be gone. He just can’t.”
Oh, Caw, said Shimmer.
Caw hadn’t realised he’d spoken aloud. Shimmer skipped on to his knee and lowered her head to press it against Screech’s. They hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but their rivalry was a fond one. Screech had liked to show off, and Shimmer enjoyed putting him in his place.
The crows are saying he rescued three others before the spiders overwhelmed him, she murmured.
Caw managed to suppress the sob that rose up at her words. He kept expecting Screech’s wings to flutter, to hear his irrepressible voice – Fooled you!
But Screech didn’t even look like himself any more.
Caw wiped his eyes and looked over at Glum. The old crow was staring vacantly into the distance. “Glum?” he said.
Glum turned, his shoulders hunched. I told you we couldn’t do this alone! he said. Screech tried to tell you as well.
Caw was taken aback. “I didn’t know this would happen. I … I thought we were safe here.”
Glum shook his beak angrily. We’ll never be safe from the spiders, he said. You thought because you beat the Spinning Man once, you could beat him again. Alone.
“No!” said Caw. “I just wanted to
help Selina.”
Glum made a disgusted sound. Your arrogance killed Screech.
Glum, that’s not fair, said Shimmer. Caw—
But Glum was already hopping away across the rubbish.
“Glum, wait!” said Caw.
Let him go, said Shimmer. Give him time.
Caw sighed. If Screech had been like his brother, then the young crow had been like a son to Glum. Crows didn’t have family like humans, but the deep love Glum had for Screech had been poorly disguised in his good-natured grumbling.
And he did have a point.
If Caw had done things differently, would Screech still be alive?
Don’t listen to him, said Shimmer, as if reading Caw’s thoughts. He’s just upset.
Her words did nothing to soften the pain. Caw wondered if Shimmer really thought the same thing as Glum, deep down. And what about the other crows? For years he’d grown up with only three at his side, and no idea he could command the whole flock. The changes had happened so fast that Caw realised he sometimes took them for granted. Would the crows always follow him blindly or did their loyalty have limits?
He looked back to the window through which he’d chased the pale figure. “I think she was here – the White Widow,” he said. “Watching.”
Then why didn’t she finish us off? said Shimmer.
Caw’s sorrow hardened. “The Spinning Man is punishing me,” he said. “He’s not happy just to kill me. He wants to hurt me too. That’s why the spiders went after Screech.”
Shimmer was quiet for a moment. You should let the crows look after him now, she said. They have a place they can take him.
Caw nodded mutely.
It was one of the strange things about the crows that they never left their dead to the elements. It was practically unheard of to find a dead crow on the ground. Where they took them was a mystery, and one that Caw understood he was not supposed to question.
He laid Screech on the ground, and slowly a circle of crows gathered round.
