The Book of the Crowman (5 page)

The prostitute’s tent is so thick with spicy, aromatic smoke that Megan chokes as it hits the back of her throat. She blinks until her eyes get used to the haze, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. The smell in here is immediately reminiscent of Bodbran’s tent, and the prostitute, who sits on layers of sheepskin and is wrapped in woollen blankets, smokes a similarly large and conical wrap of herbs. On a low, smooth cross section of oak log, a dozen or more squat tallow candles drip and hiss, creating a small sun, its brightness causing Megan to squint.

The prostitute beckons with both hands.

“Come. Come to me, girl. It’s a blessing to see you again.”

Stooping, Megan goes to the woman, who unwraps her shroud of blankets and enfolds her like a long-lost daughter. Megan doesn’t need to will herself more form; she is here in the weave as solidly as she exists in the day world. The prostitute holds her for a long time and Megan senses a tremor through the woman’s tight embrace. When she lets go and Megan retreats to sit down, the prostitute is wiping away tears of her own. Her face has changed; less furrowed by resigned cynicism, the prostitute now looks careworn but content and wears no trace of makeup. She adjusts her position on the skins, wincing, and smiles at Megan.

“You haven’t changed at all, girl. How lucky you are to hold your youth so well. Now, after all this time I can’t keep calling you girl. What’s your name again?”

Megan laughs.

“I’m Megan. And I only saw you yesterday.”

“Ah, yes. I remember.” The prostitute draws hard on her fat roll-up, holding the smoke in for a long time. As she breathes out she says, “But it’s been a sight longer than that for me, Megan. I may see the weave. I can even enter it since you visited me that night. But I can’t travel it the way the Keepers do.”

How stupid of me, thinks Megan. I should have known that time might have passed for her.

“What’s your name?” Megan asks.

“Folk hereabouts call me Carissa.”

“Carissa. That’s lovely.”

“Well, it’s better than Annie the Attic Attraction.”

Megan blushes.

“How long has it been, Carissa? Since we met?”

“In three months, it’ll be a year. I refused my next customer the day I saw you. And the one after that. The next one that came up the stairs was drunk. He had the eyes of man who’d been hurt as a child. Hurt and abandoned. I can see these things. Any road, he didn’t understand what ‘no’ meant. Thought it was a game until I tore a strip off his cheek with my teeth. That just made him more committed, though. He stuffed his wallet into my mouth and broke both my shins with his kicking. Rode me all night after that and then refused to pay because of his face.”

Megan sucked at the air in shock and her hands flew to her mouth. Carissa smiled.

“It wasn’t so bad. He left enough money for a bonesetter to fix me up but the Mistress didn’t want Annie the Attic Attraction any more after that. I knew what I needed to do, though. It was time to cross the river and start again. I do alright now. Folk tell me their pains. They ask me the way forward. Most of them pay. And sometimes, when the things I’ve told them come to pass, they come back and pay me more. It’s tiring at times, but no more so than being on my back all night, and I do a lot more good this way than I used to.”

“And you’re happy now,” says Megan.

Carissa considers.

“No. But I can see happiness in others sometimes. And that’s blessing.” She leans a little way forward to whisper, “A blessing I’d like to repay.”

Megan is ashamed at her misreading of the woman’s demeanour. And after everything Carissa has been through, all she has now is her tent and a reliance upon the kindness of strangers. Surely there is something more that she can do for this woman.

As though reading her thoughts, Carissa says:

“Listen, Megan. You don’t owe me a thing. You may not understand it until you’re a bit older but you’ve given me a new life. I’ll always be grateful for that and I’ll always be here if you can find your way back to me.”

Unable to meet Carissa’s eyes, Megan mumbles a quiet “thank you”. She glances around the small domed space. Much of it is taken up with essential animal furs and blankets, protection against the frost that would penetrate the bender in winter. There is no sign that the space is shared with another; Carissa seems to be sitting in the area she uses for sleeping and, apart from a cooking pot and a couple of cracked bowls, she appears to have no possessions. However, near the grease-coated log which acts as a base for all her candles, there is a tiny shelf hand-carved from a single piece of wood. It contains no books, however. Instead, Carissa has made a shrine of it. A crude charcoal sketch of a crow wearing a top hat forms its centrepiece. On either side of it, black feathers have been gummed to the back of the shelf in layers, imitating a black wing. Where the books would sit, Carissa has placed offerings of flowers, grain and polished pebbles from the river.

“I’ve kept his memory alive ever since you came,” says Carissa, noticing what Megan is looking at. “And I see black feathers wherever I go. I used to be terrified of them, you know, but now I take each one to be a blessing.”

Megan glances up.

“They aren’t always a blessing,” she says before she can think better of it. The boy and everything she has seen of his desolation so far are not hers to speak of yet. First she must complete the book. And the path.

Carissa doesn’t appear to have read much into her slip of the tongue, though. She shrugs.

“They always will be to me. I’ll never forget how you called on him or what he did.” Carissa takes a final draw on her almost spent fag, licks her fingers and pinches it out. She drops the dog end into a cup of damp river silt beside her. “Give me your hand, Megan. Only if I touch you can I give you what you’ve come for.”

Megan frowns.

“What have I come for?”

Carissa’s smile levels out and disappears.

“Let’s find out.”

Megan slides closer and reaches towards Carissa. Before their fingers make contact, she senses a radiated warmth that vibrates at some barely perceptible frequency. Carissa takes Megan’s hand in both of hers and the cheery candlelight suddenly dims, the flames choked small and blue. Megan finds it hard to breathe. At first, she expects Carissa to begin speaking but it takes only a moment for her to realise that whatever is happening is affecting them both. She glances at Carissa’s eyes and sees the trepidation there.

A wind rushes at them and their cosy, intimate surroundings disappear. All Megan can feel is Carissa’s hand gripping hers in the darkness as the ground falls away. Megan reaches for the point of contact with her other hand and holds on as hard as she can.

The wind increases, pressing tears from Megan’s eyes and tearing at her hair. She becomes aware of pinpoints of light in the blackness above them and a thin band of almost midnight purple that seems very far away. Only then does Megan remember these feelings, even though it can be no more than three days since she last experienced them. She is unable to stop herself from crying out. The tiny dots of light are stars; the ribbon of brightening colour is the dawn horizon. They are flying but there is no feathered breast or black wings to cling to now, no Crowman to guide them.

“What is this, Carissa?” asks Megan. “What’s happening?”

There’s no reply other than a tightening of the grip on Megan’s hands.

“You know how to travel, Megan. And I know the way. Hold me. Hold me tight.”

Flora frowned for a moment at the touch of Gordon’s hand and then sat back grinning and delighted with the little compliment. The girl’s mother put out her hand too. Gordon held it as though it were precious.

“Denise,” she said, reddening. She withdrew her hand quickly.

This was better than being poked with the shotgun. Better by far than fighting the Ward. Gordon allowed himself to relax. They shared out the fish and he made sure Flora got most of it. In his rucksack was an apple he’d been saving. This seemed like the moment it was destined for. He cut it three ways, again in favour of the sick little girl.

To start with no one said much and Gordon enjoyed that full, mingling silence. To have food, to share it in safety with people who didn’t want to rob or rape you; all this was a rare combination of blessings. He let the silence build, happy just to be in company. Flora studied him without any embarrassment and, if that was considered bad behaviour, her mother didn’t scold her for it. Denise glanced at him from time to time, assessing him in minute snatches, gathering intelligence with her eyes, processing it and then glancing again. He pretended not to notice.

Flora crawled back into her blankets when the food was eaten. She looked exhausted and moving seemed to cause her pain. Tightly bundled, she lay on her side, peeping out at Gordon and her mother. After watching for a while Flora sat up and reached for a cloth bag. In it was a tablet of blank white paper. It looked very expensive and very clean. Her coloured pencils, by contrast, were either stumpy or broken and appeared to have been gathered from many sources.

“You live up here all by yourselves?”

Gordon’s voice sounded like a shout after the quiet they’d shared. Denise nodded, looking around as though seeing the place for the first time.

“Pretty much.”

“How do you get food?”

“I’ve got friends.”

Friends
.

Gordon nodded, more to himself than her. Did he trust these two? He knew he wanted to. But could he trust their friends? Friends meant uncertainty. Friends meant whispering lips and flapping tongues. And friends weren’t always friendly, especially not to strangers.

He moved the conversation along.

“You two should get out of London. Cities are the hardest places to survive. It’s less dangerous in the countryside and there’s more to eat.”

While Denise considered this – not with any enthusiasm that he could see – Gordon glanced at Flora. The girl was busy drawing things she had seen in the street from the attic’s tiny dormer window: broken walls, blinded windows and forsaken buildings. Here and there a weed poked through the decaying stratum of damned construction overlaying the land and Flora captured those particularly well.

“I’ve never been to the country,” she said, looking up at him and smiling. “What’s it like there?”

“It’s green and open. It’s beautiful. Not as beautiful as it used to be but it’s still a lot nicer than London. There are trees and flowers and–”

He caught the warning flash in Denise’s eyes.

“And what?” asked Flora.

“Well,” said Gordon. “It’s not like that any more, of course. Those days are over.”

“I’d like to go,” said Flora

“We’re just fine here,” said Denise.

He didn’t force the issue.

“Anyway,” said Denise, “if the countryside is so safe and so easy, what are you doing in London?”

This was what always happened when you got talking to people. Tricky questions. The temptation to open up. He ought to have known better. Something about Denise and Flora was safe, though. He could sense the good, the sturdy honesty of good people. In spite of how they’d begun their acquaintance, Gordon felt welcome in their home. For once he wanted to talk. But how to let it out?

“I’ve got… business here.”

“Really?” Said Denise. “What kind of business?”

“The tracking-someone-down kind.”

“Maybe I could help with that. Like I said, I’ve got friends.”

The expression made Gordon’s stomach tighten. Even so, something made him want to tell them. Something like instinct. He needed any assistance he could get but he usually saved this part of the inevitable conversation for Green Men only. As Cooky had shown him and as he’d done on hundreds of occasions since, Gordon stroked the outside of his eye three times. If Denise noticed it, she gave no inkling. He made the gesture again but she still didn’t respond.

“I’ll take any help I can get,” he said in the end.

“Who is it? Family? An old flame?”

Gordon blushed. Could she sense there was no flame, that there never had been? Was that mockery in her tone?

“Sorry,” said Denise. “It’s not meant to be an interrogation.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just not used to talking about it. People are… you know how people can be. I’ve been on the road three years now. Folks you can trust are in the minority.”

“The world was like that before all this,” said Denise.

“I know. But it matters more now. Things are tough for everyone. If we worked together, helped each other out just a little, things would be better for everyone. Seems even crazier to be selfish now.”

“People are too busy staying alive to help each other out.”

“If that’s true, Denise, no one’s going to make it through the dark times and out into the light.”

Denise looked over at her daughter, colouring by candlelight from her imagination and memory. If Flora had heard what they were saying it seemed not to have made any impression on her. When Denise looked back at Gordon, however, the earlier flash of warning had become a threat.

He inclined his head a fraction to show he understood.

“So,” she said, making an effort to get the conversation back onto safe ground. “Who is this someone you’re tracking down? Maybe I can ask around.”

Gordon prepared himself for the swift descent through the hatch and back down the stairs to the street, one hand already reaching for his rucksack, his eyes roving to make sure he hadn’t left anything lying around. Everything was secure and stowed. He took a last look at the young mother and her little girl, a last look before their feelings towards him changed.

“I’m looking for the Crowman.”

Flora stopped colouring and looked not at Gordon but at her mother. Something must have passed between them but he was unable to read it.

“Mummy says the Crowman’s not real. But I’ve seen him.”

Flora transformed from a kid doing some colouring into a small adult with a mission. Gordon glanced at Denise, ready for her to go into meltdown over this new topic. He gripped the straps of his rucksack, preparing to dart out if she reached for the shotgun. She didn’t move. Nor did she attempt to stop Gordon or Flora from discussing this particular taboo. All the power of motherhood had drained from her. Gordon took the opportunity to probe for more.

“I’ve never seen him,” he said. “But he’s real. I know he is.”

I’m seconds from being kicked through that trapdoor. But she knows something. She definitely knows something.

“I know he is too,” said Flora. “He visits me in my dreams and sometimes he lands on the roof or down in the street so I can see him.”

“What does he look like, Flora?”

“He’s an angel. A black angel.”

Not looking at Denise for permission because it would waste precious moments, Gordon pressed on.

“Could you… draw him for me?”

Flora dug into her cloth bag and withdrew a sheaf of papers, scrolled and secured with a rubber band.

“I draw him all the time,” she said, handing Gordon the scroll.

With great care he removed the elastic band and opened out the curls of paper. Silence expanded once more in the attic. Denise was tight-lipped but made no move to stop the exchange. Flora’s face was anxious.

“It’s his face I have trouble with. It changes. Sometimes he’s an old man and sometimes he’s a little boy. Sometimes he just looks exactly like a crow. I can do a better one if you want.”

Gordon shook his head.

“There’s no need. You’ve done a wonderful job. These are the best sketches I’ve ever seen.” He looked up from the drawings. “You say he’s been here, Flora?”

Flora nodded big exaggerated nods.

“He comes to see me a
lot
.”

The edges of the pictures amplified the tremor in Gordon’s hands. So many times he’d been close and so many times the trail had gone ice cold. He tried to control his shaking fingers. He’d never been
this
close,

“Does he ever… speak to you, Flora? Does he tell you what he wants?”

Again came the nods but Flora had become a little girl again and now she looked to her mother for permission to speak. Once more, Gordon missed whatever gesture it was that allowed the girl to continue. Denise let her forehead rest in her left palm and whispered:

“Oh, Christ.”

Flora began to speak, softly at first and without much conviction, but as she progressed, her words gathered strength and pace.

The wind makes Megan’s eyes sting and blur. She tries to blink away the tears but even in the brief moments of clear vision it is impossible to tell where they might be or where they are going; even though they’re racing east towards the dawn, the night is still too dark. Carissa’s grip hurts but Megan is glad the woman is so strong. The horror of falling is her whole world now as they speed through the darkness, unable even to see each other faces.

“Where are we going?” Megan screams over the noise of the rushing air but Carissa is either too focussed on guiding them or too terrified to reply.

Without warning the wind from ahead becomes a wind from below. Megan’s stomach rises into her mouth and at first she is too shocked to make a sound. The scream is caught at the back of her throat as they hurtle downward. Now the night gives way to morning as though time itself has developed the speed of a falling rock. Dawn breaks, the sun climbs high and Megan sees the ground rise to meet them. She imagines the impact busting open their bodies and smashing their bones to fragments.

All she can do is close her eyes.

Like a child being lowered by a loving parent, Megan’s feet are set gently upon the earth. She opens her eyes. She and Carissa, hands still locked together, stand at the opening to a sandstone cave. Its entrance is perfectly round and black, like a mouth pronouncing “O”. Megan glances around. Roughly hewn steps lead down and away from the cave into a small valley. An earthquake must have struck the place; fallen rock and clods of mud are everywhere and the trunks of the few trees that still grow there are half submerged in earthy debris.

A noise from inside the cave startles Megan. It sounds like an animal in pain. She and Carissa step back from the entrance. The moan comes again, low and agonised. A ruined human hand appears at the cave’s entrance, its fingers impossibly deformed, bulbous scars where some of the nails have been torn off, the skin dotted with some kind of pox. Megan and Carissa, still holding hands, retreat further, stumbling backwards down a few of the crudely made steps.

“Plague,” whispers Carissa.

Megan is shocked to see how terrified the woman is. She places a gentle palm to Carissa’s cheek and brings her head to face hers.

“Don’t be afraid, Carissa. We’re travellers in the weave. Though we can see it and touch it, this is not our world. Nothing can harm us.”

The words have barely left her lips and the two of them are flying again. Carissa remains so terrified as to be almost mute, her body rigid with tension. And yet Megan with so much experience of the weave is not the one to lead them. It is Carissa’s ability as a seer that has become their beacon.

Night and day pass a hundred times as the wind whips their hair and clothes. The land turns below them, apparently at random, shifting like leaves on water. As another night falls, they descend into the ruins of a city. Carissa is trembling by the time their feet touch the rubble strewn ground.

“This is a bad place,” she says. “Terrible things happened here.”

Partially decayed bodies line the roadsides. They appear to have been there for years but there is no evidence of rats or flies having eaten their dead flesh. Instead the human remains bear a thick layer of dust. The bodies lie sprawled or slumped where they dropped, the crude weapons lying near the fallen a sign that they died in conflict.

Carissa looks around and seems to take something from shattered scene.

“Food,” she says. “They were fighting for food. What is this place?”

“A City. Generations behind us in the weave. They were huge.”

“Sitty?”

“Like a big village.”

Megan is about to say more when she hears a clatter from behind them. They both spin towards the noise. A bent figure stumbles along an alleyway, using the wall for support and guidance. The person, a man it seems, is staggering right towards them and is only a few paces away. Megan takes an involuntary step back and dislodges loose brickwork from a wall. It thumps to the ground raising dust, the sound echoing into the distance in the deserted streets. The man, who has stooped until now, halts and looks up.

Megan’s heart falters.

He seems to look right at them except that can’t be possible for the man wears filthy rags wrapped around his eyes. Besides, Megan thinks, he is of this world not of the weave. Megan holds her breath until she hears another sound from the opposite direction, that of wings whispering on the gritty air. She and Carissa glance back and both of them pale. It is this sound the blind man appears to be interested in.

Wings
.

Suddenly, Megan is less certain of their safety. She had not considered that other travellers might be abroad among the fibres of the weave. She is a trespasser here, without her guide and chaperone, without
leave
.

“Quick,” Megan whispers. “In here.”

She hauls Carissa through the open door of an abandoned bus and pulls her along the between the seats to a broken window where they can see out. The sound of beating wings approaches fast and the street grows dark. With a final downthrust of air that whips the dust into clouds, something comes to earth near the entrance of the alleyway.

The stumbling man cowers as a tall, dark figure approaches him. A single caw splits the air, loud as the shriek of storm winds. The cackle reverberates around the entire city. The blind man falls to his knees, bowing his head to the dead ground. A feathered hand extends towards the now foetal figure. In its palm is a lump of dull black stone about the size of a fist. It drops the stone in the cold dirt and the man reaches out for it with trembling, diseased-looking fingers.

Megan and Carissa are whipped from the bus by an updraft that spins them skyward like a tornado. Once again they cling to each as time and space flit past below them like autumn leaves.