Black Feathers

13



In her bed that night, Megan touches her scar, tracing its edges with a fingertip. She is exhausted by her day with Mr Keeper and has come to bed straight after her meal, barely saying a word to her parents about what has happened. She knows they are worried but she’s too tired and too full of new things to talk about it. What she needs is the comfort and warmth of her bed and the time alone it will give her.

Mr Keeper kept her busy all day. Together they wandered across the borders of the community searching in the hedgerows for various plants and herbs. Some of them she recognised and others she’d never seen before. It had been like searching for secrets and she loved it. He had talked only a little about what lay ahead. Perhaps he felt her branding had been enough for one day. And yet, she had the feeling that somehow the routes they took and flora they collected had a purpose, even though it was one she could not define. Often Mr Keeper would stop and look up. She would follow his gaze to a tree or fence post or a patch of meadow and there she would see magpies, flicking their tails and chattering out their raucous calls. And each time this happened, Mr Keeper would smile and then return to whatever his business had been.

Before she left the clearing that evening, he said:

“The magpies know about you. Did you see them?”

She’d nodded.

“You’ll walk in the night country tonight, Megan. Mark it well. I’ll want to know all in the morning.”

He’d called her Megan ever since she’d woken from the faint caused by her scarring. He’d handed her a small sheaf of blank onion-skin pages, bound with twine.

“When you wake, light a candle and capture it all in here before you forget. Bring it tomorrow.” He’d touched her on the shoulder. “Safe home, Megan. Safe home.”

Then he’d turned, letting her go.

She touches the mark of the Crowman now, his footprint on her heart, and sleep comes so very easily.

August 3rd ’14

My eyes only

Should I tell you about the shoebox in my wardrobe?

When I was ten, I caught flu. My body ached so much I couldn’t get out of bed to go to the toilet and Mum had to bring me a bottle to pee into. The fever went on for three days and I was delirious with it.

When my temperature got really high, Mum put wet flannels on my head and neck and armpits. It hurt like ice-cold fire but it worked. I remember opening my eyes and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. My head ached so much I was crying so she told me a couple of stories.

On the day she gave birth to me, she saw a crow sitting on her bedroom window ledge. It was huge, she said, and it pecked on the glass and fixed her with one intelligent, black eye. That was the moment her contractions started. She said that later, as I came into the world, a snowstorm blew her window open. She believed it was a sign that the world had reached out a hand to welcome me.

She also told me about a crow that had perched in the chestnut tree by the back terrace and how Dad had killed it with his shotgun. She said I cried all night and she couldn’t work out whether it was because I’d been frightened by the sound of the shot or if I was mourning the death of the crow. After that, no matter what Dad did, the crows and jackdaws always nested in our chimney pots, perched in our trees and did aerobatic displays over the house. In the end, Dad gave up trying to shoot them.

The first morning I felt well enough to get out of bed after the fever, it was to the sound of dozens of crows cawing away in the garden. When I sat up, still weak but out of pain for the first time in over a week, I found a feather on my pillow. I never asked Mum about it. I just assumed she’d left it there so I’d remember her crow stories.

It was the first feather I kept. And, from then on, whenever I found one, I put it in a shoebox with the one from my mother.

I suppose I ought to mention that the feathers I find are black. All of them. And they only ever turn up at moments when something important is happening or if I’m worrying about something or when I feel like everything is going wrong. I tell myself it’s a hobby or that I do it because I like to collect things. But that’s not really true. I do it because I don’t want anyone else to find them.