Black Feathers

26

After Megan eats a heavily spiced stew, she falls into a hard, dreamless sleep. When she wakes, it feels as though she has slept for a month. She sits up, alert and energised, all her fear and weakness gone. Mr Keeper sits cross-legged on the reed matting, smoking, watching over her.

“Hello, Megan.”

“Hello, Mr Keeper.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“I feel like I could run from here to the ocean and back again. How long have I been asleep?”

Mr Keeper shrugs.

“An hour, perhaps.”

“An hour? It felt like weeks.”

“That’s how it’s meant to feel.”

“What was in the stew?”

“It’s Ricky Pot.”

“What’s Ricky Pot?”

Mr Keeper taps his pipe on his knuckles and drops the ash into his hand, pocketing it.

“Rook. Ale. Quick-bine. Salt and pepper.”

“I ate a rook?”

“Three rooks, actually.”

Megan grimaces, aghast.

“But the rook is hallowed,” she says.

“Yes, it is. But it is not forbidden to the likes of you and me, Megan. When we have need, they come to us. They make us strong. I caught three this morning. They knew you needed strength and so they gave themselves. It’s for the good of all. For the land.”

Megan takes this in with as much poise as she can. She tries hard to understand the nature of the sacrifice, what the rooks have given just so that she might be renewed. Before she knows why or what she will do, she is rising from her sleep mat.

“I need to go outside.”

Mr Keeper nods.

She opens the door, crouching to exit, and walks to the pile of debris where Mr Keeper composts his waste and leavings. There on top are the feathers, heads, entrails and feet of the three rooks. She gathers them up from the slowly rotting pile and takes them, slippery threads of gut beside horny grey beaks, greasy eyes beside pristine feathers and leathery claws. She carries them some way into the pines and digs a small hole in the soft earth with her bare hands. In it she places everything but one broad, unblemished feather. With the knife Mr Keeper gave her when they began their “gathering” trips, she cuts into the pad of her thumb and lets the blood from the incision drip onto the rook feather. Much of it dribbles away onto the recently parted ground but some of it soaks into the fibres of the feather, darkening it further and giving it unnatural weight. Not satisfied, she uses her cut thumb pad to smear the blood all along its grey shaft. Only then does she place it on top of the remains of the three rooks and cover everything with earth and pine needles. She kneels in front of the burial site and places her hands over her heart.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

In the roundhouse, Mr Keeper is waiting with boiled water and a cloth. He cleans her cut and wraps it in a strip of muslin before handing her a steaming bowl of tea. As is often the way in the roundhouse, all is quiet for a long time.

Unusually, it’s Mr Keeper who breaks the silence and her recollections.

“I’ve something for you, Megan. After I give it to you, you can go home for the rest of the day.”

Megan brightens. Some time at home with Amu and Apa before bed will be an unusual treat. It’s easy to forget she has any life beyond the Black-Feathered Path. The celebrations of the harvest have come and gone with her and Mr Keeper almost uninvolved but for his appearance to bless this year’s reaping – the most bounteous crop in memory. The harvest is a season of rejoicing. The villagers spend time together in the streets and around the hub at the centre of the village. Bands play music all day and night and everyone dances and drinks ale and elderberry wine and Usky Lick, the local spirit. All the food is cooked outdoors and shared and eaten together. This year Megan has seen none of it. She misses Sally and Tom, too, misses playing and being idle.

Mr Keeper reaches behind the blanket that divides the roundhouse and keeps his sleeping place private. Now he brings out something large and heavy-looking. It is wrapped in black cloth which shimmers a little when the light catches it at certain angles. He places it on the matting between them and sits back. This is the correct way of giving. After a pause to let the gift settle, Megan leans forwards and takes it, drawing it close in front of her.

She unwraps the black cloth one fold at a time. Inside it is a box. The box is made of gleaming black wood. Scorched into the lid is the sign of the Crowman, the same crow’s footprint she now bears on her chest. She lifts the lid, and inside are several items. The largest of these is a book, also branded with the Crowman’s sign. It is bound in thick hide and tanned to black. Beside it are two black stones and a small black bowl set into carved depressions in the base of the box. Next to those are three long black feathers. She lifts the book; this single item is responsible for most of the weight in the box. The hide is smooth and cool beneath her fingers. She opens the book and stares at the pale, silky pages within for a long time. She closes and opens the book in several places and what she sees is always the same.

She looks up at Mr Keeper.

“What is this?”

“It’s the Book of the Crowman.”

“But it’s empty,” she says.

“No. The Book is full. The story is already there. Its words, however, have not yet been rediscovered and rewritten.”

For once, Megan knows exactly what Mr Keeper is going to say next:

“That’s your job.”

For a while she runs her fingers over the items in the box, even the sleek wood of the box itself. She smoothes her palm across the surface of the blackened cowhide, and it seems to leave a trace of dust on her hand which she tests between her fingers.

“The feathers are from Anglesey ravens. I’m going to show you how to cut them into quills. You have a block of pigment, a grinder and a bowl. Before you leave, I’ll instruct you in the making of ink. Tonight you must write the opening pages exactly as you have seen them.”

He stretches for the kettle.

“More tea, Megan?”

“No,” she says, adding: “Thank you.”

“Tell me, then. The boy from the night country. Did he give you anything?”

“In the vision he gave me a feather. A crow feather.”

“It was no vision, Megan. You must understand that. You journeyed to him and he gave you a feather. What did he say about it?”

“He said it would give me words for things I have not seen and do not understand.”

Mr Keeper seems satisfied with her answer.

“Very good. May I see it, please?”

Megan doesn’t know what to say. Protesting further will only make him angry and she doesn’t want that today. So far, it has been overwhelming, special and exciting. She doesn’t want to spoil it.

“I… I don’t…”

“Where did you put it?”

She tries to remember what happened. As the world had unwound, she’d thrust it into the pocket of her coat so as not to lose it. The coat is beside her on the matting.

“You remember, yes?”

She nods.

“Then fetch it out. Show it to me.”

Feeling stupid and embarrassed, worse than she ever has before, Megan pulls the coat to her and reaches into the outside right pocket. Her hand emerges with a single crow feather and a single magpie feather, the one Mr Keeper had given her before she entered the mist. Frowning, she hands them both to Mr Keeper.

He turns them in his hand, smiling as though he remembers something joyful. He returns them to her now-trembling fingers.

“The Crowman is with you, Megan. He has given you this feather so that you may write his story in the pages of his book, so that you may bring him to life once more. From now on, nothing will ever be simply what it appears to be. It is a burden but it is an ecstasy too. Magic is alive in the world, Megan, and it always has been. You must ensure that it stays that way.”

When Mr Keeper has shown her the way to make ink and cut quills, she wraps up her bundle in its black, shimmering cloth and walks alone through the pines and along the paths towards home.

His final words to her are:

“Do not return to me here until you have written everything you’ve seen.”

Her parents are delighted to see her and sit down to hear about her training – what little she is allowed to tell of it. Her mother feeds her well and her father regards her with both pride and sadness. As much as she wants to enjoy the extra time with Amu and Apa, all she can really think about is how she will make that first mark, a mark whose blackness will be both beauty and destruction, when she writes the first letter of the first word of the Book of the Crowman.