Black Feathers

23

Megan’s journey is not over.

Whatever has given her the body of a crow now takes it away. She is allowed to come to earth first and then her wings and long, sleek face vanish. Her feathers melt into black smoke. The crows, even though they could see the beginning and end of everything, even though they held the pain of the world in their beaks and claws, they flew light and free, they flew exultant, knowing they were magic, knowing their place in the world. Megan, human again, girl again, feels no such wonder or certainty. She wishes only that she could have stayed a crow forever.

She has a task, though, and a path to walk. She has a duty, and even as her body fills with its former solidity – and all-too-familiar frailty – she readies herself to move forwards and keep her word.

It is early morning and she stands in a hollow in a clearing among the trees. She thinks this is Covey Wood but she has never seen this part before. This is the vortex, she thinks, into which the mist was being drawn. She walks up the gentle slope. Partway up is a single crow feather, lying on the leaf-strewn ground and agitated by some breeze she is unable to feel. She leans down and lifts it up. The sun catches the filaments of the feather and it changes colours, rippling from grey to black to blue.

“They’re the only ones I ever found.”

Startled, she looks up. A few paces away is a small, slight boy with black hair and irises of stone. Her free hand covers her mouth to prevent a tiny cry from escaping.

“I always thought of them as black. Simply black. But they’re not really, are they?”

The boy is beside her now, studying the way the light affects the feather. Megan can’t help but take a step away from him.

“Don’t be afraid. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

She is embarrassed but doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want him to think badly of her. He smiles and shakes his head and Megan knows he knows what she’s been thinking.

“This one is for you, Megan. You’ll need it because you don’t have language for the things you’re going to see. You’ll find it hard to keep their story alive if you have no way to describe them.”

She thinks she understands.

“The crows showed me… lights. So many of them. Some were still and others moved in lines across the land.”

“Yes. Cars and electricity. You haven’t seen that before?”

Megan shakes her head and frowns. Why would she have? She’s never been into the past before, where there were so many things that no longer exist. Things people didn’t really need.

Again, the boy is listening to her thoughts.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to judge, Megan. Just because you haven’t seen these things in your time, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. And who’s to say those things aren’t useful, even necessary, if used in the right way?”

Megan is suddenly doubtful of the boy’s wisdom and power. Maybe Mr Keeper has been wrong about the boy from the night country. Maybe he doesn’t have so much to teach her. She can’t help thinking this, and even as she has the thoughts she regrets it because the boy knows everything in her mind.

He doesn’t appear affected. Certainly he is not angry. He smiles at her, his grey eyes watching her without any inhibition. She looks away.

“From now on,” he says, “you must be ready to listen and learn at any moment and you must record everything that comes to you. Everyone has the ability, Megan, but few will ever become what you will become. You must never turn away from it, no matter how frightened you might be, no matter how alone it makes you feel. This gift is not just for you, it’s for everyone.”

The boy’s face is grave now, an expression far beyond his years to possess. What manner of child could hold such knowledge?

“There’s one other thing you must remember, Megan. Nothing will ever be simple. Nothing will ever be exactly as it seems to be now that the threads of dreaming and waking are woven, now that time is touching time. What you see will contain the truth but you will have to sift it out. There will be times when you cannot decide which world is real, the world you live in or the world into which you look. And there will always be a great darkness waiting to break through into your life and into your world. You must guard against it in all things. You must search it out within yourself and know it. You must embrace it. When you embrace the darkness within, you will always live in the light.”

Megan strains to take in what he’s saying, knowing all this must be recorded once she’s found her way back to Mr Keeper.

“I don’t understand the things you’re telling me. I won’t be able to remember it all.”

“You will and you will. Your memory of this will be clear and accurate. You can’t understand it now but in time it will make sense. Everything you need will come to hand in the very moment of its requirement.”

The boy steps close and strokes Megan’s cheek. His fingertips are like the touch of feathers.

“You mustn’t worry. I chose you for a reason. And you agreed for the same reason. This is what you were born to do, Megan.”

His final gesture is to touch the tip of the crow feather she still holds. The moment he does this, the ground beneath her begins to spin. It’s as though something has wound the land into a tight spiral, humming with tension. Now the spiral is released and she pirouettes as the land unwinds. The depression she has been standing in rises upwards and the speed of the spinning increases until she is flung up, still turning, her arms flung out to her sides by the force of it. The bounce sends her up a few feet and then she falls to the earth, stumbling in a circle and then falling onto her bottom on a thick carpet of fallen oak leaves. She feels a little sick and collapses onto her side in the soft leaf litter. When her stomach settles and her equilibrium returns enough, she pushes herself back into a sitting position and brushes the leaves from her hair and clothes.

She is among the trees of Covey Wood, back in her own time and, she hopes, in the day world. The mist which came down so swiftly is gone and sun streams through the canopy, stamping broken pot-shards of light all over the ground. Her limbs are weary. When she looks around she sees Mr Keeper sitting with his back against one of the larger oak trees, its trunk veined with ivy. He is smoking his pipe and he nods an acknowledgment when she looks his way. The smoke rising from his pipe makes Megan just a little nervous, reminiscent as it is of the vapours that took her so far away from here.

“He’s the little boy from my dream,” is all she can think of to say in the end.

“Of course. Who did you expect it to be?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Suddenly Megan is crying. Shaking and crying and unable to stand up, she’s so tired. “I don’t think I can do this.”

Mr Keeper is beside her and lifting her to her feet.

“Come on, Megan. You need to eat.”

She is too exhausted to resist as he leads her out of the wood and back towards his roundhouse, making sure to skirt Beckby village and its nosy denizens.