reading

“…comes the Crowman, people. He walks where there is pestilence. He walks where there is war. He weaves a cloak of blackness for he is the black sunrise of the black dawn. For he is the son of the broken land and the wrathful sky. For where he walks there is destruction and decay, the old world cast down in dust and ashes. For he is judgement made flesh. And you shall perish or be raised up at the touch of his black feathers. And you shall vanish into darkness behind his cloak or be set free by it into the light. The black poppy of Death sprouts in the Crowman’s bootprints. He shall plant a black seed of silence in the earth and none can know what will spring from that seed…”

“…the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of birds, the rippling of mighty waters, and the sweet breathing of flowers. If this is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan.”

Great tracts of England are as grey and dead as leprous flesh but, here and there, the green of Mother Earth persists; lush pockets of riotous overgrowth murmur with birdsong and the scurrying of small creatures, awakening once more. In some places the fields, ungrazed for years by sheep or cattle, have returned to grassland, occasionally swaying to the touch of the still slumbering wind.

And where the calcified arteries of road and motorway once ran, choked with the noise and fumes of trucks and cars, now those sclerotic highways have been broken by quakes or have vanished into fathomless rifts. Those that remain are entombed by an arch of luxuriant foliage; the pressing in from both sides of the verges and embankments, clutching the tarmac until it ruptures allowing even more growth to sprout though.

The cities are dead. Many have sunk back into the land, absorbed by tremors that turned the earth beneath them to liquid. London is a barely populated ruin. Manchester is a vast lake of shaken soil. All that remains of Birmingham are the tops of its highest buildings. The Ward are falling, the Green Men reclaiming the land day by day.

A Bright Day is coming.

But Mother Earth, she sleeps yet, still feverish after cleansing herself of the sickness that humankind became, not yet trusting that we have remembered her as the giver of all nourishment and substance and the receiver of our remains in death. Nor is there any certainty that such a trust will ever return.

As for the Crowman, I never doubted him. After all, I knew him more intimately than most. One could say I was his progeny, perhaps, for he made me everything that I am. He is here still; his spirit stronger than ever in the land and in the hearts of its people. I prophesied his coming, I told the Green Men he was among them and would lead them into battle. He did all that and more, blessing every soul who loved the land with the chill caress of his black feathers. He walks with all of us.

And what of Gordon Black, the boy whose task it was to seek out the Crowman and reveal him to the world? Did he succeed? Did he fulfil his destiny?

Even though I have glimpsed the future, I cannot say for certain. The prophecies have come to me and I have recorded them, but my spirit will have returned to the wind for many generations before his story truly has its end.

Though Gordon may have overcome every obstacle and though he may have been equal to every task and though, in the finish, he might even have found the Crowman and shown him to the world, what was all that worth without another to keep his story alive? Yes, the people told his tale, but even those who witnessed aspects of it never saw the whole. And you know how people can be when they have a story to tell; their embellishments cloud the truth. Gordon Black needed someone to tell his story plain and true, to keep it alive in the hearts of us all. Only then would his deeds have any meaning. Only in the passing on from one soul to another, in the most accurate telling, could they have a purpose.

It fell to me to be the first chronicler of Gordon Black’s life and mission, to tell it right for the good of all. The Crowman chose me; he made me. To keep him alive in story. Even now, I find it hard to believe that he would choose a man with a black heart, whose ways were those of theft and rape. Me, whose eyes are pitted and white with blindness, whose skin is scarred, whose body is broken, whose fingers are bent and almost useless. I am the first Keeper. Many better souls will follow me but I am proud of my place in all this and I would not change a word of it simply to show myself in a better light.

For all of this, though, for all I’ve been witness to as a whole man and as a blind man with a new way of seeing, I still cannot say whether any of it matters, or if a single word of it has made a difference. For, though the Crowman’s story is already becoming distant in time and his wonders grow all around us, I see there is a child yet to be born who holds all of this in her hands. Somewhere, even now, she walks the Black Feathered Path in the hope of becoming a Keeper. If she is equal to this task, and no simple matter is it, there will be something special about her, something powerful.

The strict codes of the Black Feathered Path will not keep untruths and substitutions from creeping into the Crowman’s history over the passing generations. This young woman might be the one to bring Gordon’s journey of discovery back to the world through the most exact recounting of all, the final telling. Only a woman has the power to do it. If she can complete the path, hers will be the history that ensures our future: The Book of the Crowman.

All this I have seen and yet it has not been my place to know the outcome. I am the first Keeper and I have done everything I can. For good or ill, I have played my part. This much you already know, whether you believe me or not: without the teller there is no tale.

Dirty rain fell on the woman’s paling cheeks and neck, leaving gritty streaks. The heavy droplets pattered into her staring eyes but she barely blinked. A small hole in the front of her throat pulsed with dark upwellings. The blood, diluted by the filthy downpour, pooled behind her head, and her long greying hair became indistinguishable from the bare soil. Her right hand still clutched a longbow, her knuckles yellow with tension as though its curved shaft was keeping her alive.

She’d been on the ground for almost a minute already but the sound of hot lead penetrating flesh and cracking bone remained the loudest sound in Gordon’s head, far louder than the report of the gun it came from. The other four who now crouched around her, all Green Men and Women, were young and inexperienced, not really fighters at all. They’d been breaking up an old wardrobe for firewood in a backstreet of Fulham when the Ward attacked.

The nearest cover was a long-abandoned playground where they’d cowered, only returning fire from behind a concrete play tunnel when the advancing Wardsmen were within range of their bows. The woman’s first arrow had flown true, hitting a Wardsmen in the chest but in almost that same instant, a Ward rifleman had also found his mark. Gordon knew the Ward would regroup and advance first; they were trained. The survivors he’d had fallen in with were not. And though they may have hated the Ward, they feared them more.

Nearest the wounded woman, whose name Gordon still didn’t know, knelt Kieran, looking pale and confused. His hands shook as he reached towards her face. Kieran was the one who’d told Gordon how he’d seen the Crowman flitting through the streets of Fulham late at night, leaving a blessing of black feathers wherever the Green Men sheltered. Kieran was seventeen, the same age as Gordon, and seemed sincere. In other times they might have become friends but Gordon had learned to share as little information with people as he could get away with while he gathered as much intelligence about his objective as possible. Out of habit Gordon hadn’t told Kieran and his crew his real name. Right now he was David Cook.

A bullet hit their cover, blasting chips of concrete into the air and raising a puff of dust. Kieran started back, pulling his hands away. Another bullet slapped into the wet dirt near the wounded woman’s head, spraying Kieran with a mist of earth and blood. They all moved closer to the tunnel, dragging the woman with them. Kieran began to cry.

“Mum? Mum! What do we do now?” The rain in the woman’s eyes had begun to pool and spill like tears. Kieran looked at Gordon. “Why isn’t she waking up, Dave? It’s just a little hole.”

The others pressed their backs to the concrete pipe and tried to shrink as more rifle fire came down on their position. Gordon closed his eyes and pressed a fist to his forehead.

They’ll be coming around the sides any minute. We’ll be slaughtered.

As he had the thought, the firing stopped. A voice called across the open ground between the two parties.

“We know you have Gordon Black with you. Send him out, unarmed, and we’ll let the rest of you go. You all know the alternative.”

“Gordon Black? I’ve heard that name. Isn’t he some kind of psychopath?”

Gordon shrugged, lips downturned.

“I have no idea.” He pulled Kieran closer. “Listen, we’ve got an opportunity here. Who’s the best shot?”

“Me, I guess. But we can’t shoot now. They’re negotiating. It’s not right.”

“They’re not negotiating,” said Gordon. “The Ward never negotiate. Take one of them out, right now, and I’ll make all this go away. Doesn’t matter if you miss. It’ll give me enough time to find cover.”

Kieran shook his head.

“What are you going to do?” He asked. “What can you do?”

A bullet thumped into the dirt near Gordon’s boot. He drew his knees to his chest.

“Your mum’s dying, Kieran. The Ward are the ones who did it. Just give me a chance.”

Kieran put his face close to Gordon’s.

“If you run away, I’ll find you. And I’ll cut your fucking throat.”

“A second. That’s all I need, Kieran. Please.”

The voice came once more across no-man’s land.

“We know he’s there. Send him out unarmed and you can save yourselves.”

Kieran nocked and an arrow and hauled on the string, drawing the bow into a tight D. The moment he stood from cover, Gordon darted into the open and ran. He heard the awful silence in which he imagined Kieran scanning for a target and sighting it. He never heard the arrow fly, only the several reports of Ward rifles. He glanced back as he exited the playground and saw Kieran crouched once more, a grin on his face. It was then that the scream came, that of a man on the wrong end of a nightshade-dipped arrowhead. With a grim smile, Gordon sprinted freely now, safe in the cover of a high brick wall.

Gordon moved among the Wardsmen like a ripple on dark water. Their focus was the playground, the concrete pipe and the people crouched behind it, so Gordon’s presence, casual and assured but utterly silent, was something they only sensed when the blade of his lock knife parted the skin below their jawbones and severed their windpipes.

Two were already propped against a chunk of fallen masonry, dying from their arrow wounds. They saw him but their comrades-in-arms, immune to their agonies and intent on their prey, ignored their crying and gesturing. Two more fell to their knees clutching their throats in shock and disbelief before the three remaining realised they were under attack. Only one of them carried a rifle and he turned it now on Gordon Black.

With only ten feet between them, the rifleman’s shot from the hip went wide. Frowning, he raised his weapon to the correct position, aimed and fired again. The boy stepped clear even as the Wardsman’s finger closed on the trigger. Then Gordon was upon him, turning his world briefly red then black. One of the two remaining was the unit’s commander, his belt pulled tight on his grey overcoat, hinting at the hungry, wasted flesh beneath. The brimmed hat once worn by Ward agents had been replaced by grey riot helmets. But neither the commander nor his final man carried a firearm – ammunition was a finite resource now. The commander raised instead a long heavy stick made of hickory and his subordinate pulled free a well-oiled and honed machete.

“You agreed to let them go.” Said Gordon.

The unit commander blinked.

“There were… conditions.”

Gordon stood with his legs slightly apart and his arms hanging relaxed at his sides. His right hand was slick and red, his knife dripping. He shrugged.

“They’ve been met.”

“I don’t understand.”

Gordon made a show of impatience.

“Do I have to spell it out? You wanted Gordon Black and you’ve got him.”

He watched the look that passed between the two men. It used to amuse him, this moment, but he couldn’t smile about killing any more. It was too much like a task now, something wrong and unpleasant; something that had to be done nevertheless. They were young, these two. A little older than him, perhaps, but not as experienced. Not by a long way. They’d been sent out to find him. To bring him back. How many like this had there been over the last three years? Gordon couldn’t recall. They wanted to do their duty, to make good on their orders.

You stupid, stupid boys.

The whistle and snick of slim projectiles finding their warm fleshy home caused Gordon to jump back. For a few seconds longer the stunned Wardsmen stood there, taking in the truth as the nightshade crept into their systems, slowly making good on what the arrowheads had begun. Gordon looked into the commander’s eyes for a long time before loping back to the playground.

“She couldn’t hold on, Dave.”

The others stood back, fidgeting and red-faced. When Gordon looked at them they couldn’t meet his eyes.

He crouched beside Kieran, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Let me look,” he whispered.

When Kieran didn’t respond, Gordon put his knees on the sodden ground and placed his ear to her chest. There was no movement and the rain had already chilled her body. Gordon closed his eyes and heard the distant cawing of a thousand crows. The sounds merged into a roaring hiss and he felt the first globules of Black Light pulsing behind his fingertips.

Kieran’s voice cut through the static in his head. Holding the Black Light back made Gordon’s guts turn over but he managed to stem its flow for a moment.

“What did you do to them?”

Gordon didn’t understand at first. Was Kieran asking about the healings? Did he already know about the Black Light?

“Oh…” Gordon put a fist to his mouth, fighting to keep his gorge from rising. “I… uh… shut them down.”

“Three. You took the last two.”

“We thought you were going to distract them. Get them to turn their backs so we could get away. How did you kill three armed Wardsmen?”

Black Light swirled and expanded in Gordon’s palms. He swallowed back his nausea. Willed the dark energy away.

“I was lucky.” He began to cough, to choke. “They were new recruits. Didn’t really know what they were about. Does it matter?”

“Yes, mate. It matters. It matters a lot. I don’t think your name’s David Cook.” He jabbed a dirty, blood-caked finger towards Gordon’s face. “I think you’re the one they were looking for. We’ve heard about you – the boy who’s looking for the Crowman. The boy who cuts up Wardsmen wherever he goes. But you got it wrong this time, mate. You lied to us and you got my mother killed.”

Gordon thrust his palms against his forehead, squeezing his eyes shut.

How can I be the enemy to the people I’m trying to help?

He let his hands drop to his sides and raised his head to meet Kieran’s eyes. Even with the fury of his mother’s death still hot in his blood, the boy could not hold his gaze. Gordon allowed the Black Light to come, feeling it bead and swell at his fingertips, letting it drip like venom to the wet ground. Where the spent, dead earth had been the colour of charcoal, the droplets of Black Light brought colour: deep fertile brown and the first stirrings of green growth. Kieran and his crew backed away.

Gordon looked at them, weeping. He sank to his knees.

“Just do one thing for me,” he said. “If you truly are Green Men, if you value this land and believe in her future, never… ever… speak of this.”

Gordon let his hands be drawn towards the woman. Anything he could do to lessen the impact of what he was about to do was a bonus. His hands went to her throat, as though he intended to throttle her. The Black Light, gravitating to sickness and death, found its lodestone.

He felt the bullet dislodge from the woman’s cervical vertebrae and travel forwards and out towards his hands. With deft fingers, he removed the mangled lead slug and dropped it to the ground. He returned his hand to her neck and sensed the wound shrinking closed within, the flesh reconnecting, the entry hole sealing.

The woman blinked. She coughed. Her eyes focussed on Gordon, with his hands still clasped at her throat, and she screamed. The scream of the living with no wish to die.

Gordon leapt up and ran, no idea which direction to take and half expecting the whistle of arrows to follow him. He sprinted from the playground and from the ruined park, taking left turns and right turns as haphazardly as he could. It was the healings that brought both Green Men and Ward out looking for him, the rumours of a boy with power. The gift was a threat to his mission. Faces peered from broken windows and shelters in rubble. He knew that everyone who saw him would remember his passing. Anyone who ran among the streets of London now, had something to run from.

“Never again,” he whispered as he fled. “Never again.”

Archibald Skelton regarded the dead Wardsmen in silence for a long time. Three years of pursuing the boy had done little to reduce his cask-like paunch or the amphibious blubber of his face. However, his surviving eye was keener than ever.

Blood had turned the churned brick and masonry of their position black, as though the three men whose throats had been cut had leaked oil. Their faces were stiff and ashen in the permanent gloom that choked the streets of the capital; each expression of horrified acceptance more like studies in stone than true death. The four men with arrow wounds lay collapsed and staring, but all of the fallen reminded Skelton of toy soldiers. Perhaps it was their youth that gave them that aspect, perhaps the casual ease with which they appeared to have been dispatched.

“They were just youngsters,” said Skelton. “We should have sent men with more history. More guile.”

When there was no response, Skelton glanced over at his long-serving partner. The hulk that was Mordaunt Pike might also have been dead for all the colour in his sunken cheeks, for all the movement in his limbs. Even Pike’s eyes were dim and unfocused, waiting for a true threat to rouse the power in his massive hands or a command to fire the resolute circuitry of his mind.

“It was the boy, of course,” continued Skelton in the wheezed tones of a schoolmistress.

At that, there was a stiffening of muscle in Pike’s huge frame, an almost mechanical creak from deep within him. Skelton smirked.

“I wonder how many he’s taken now, Pike,” he said. “How many of our boys have gone down under that dirty little blade of his, do you think?”

Pike straightened, eliciting further groans from the cabling of his joints. Something ignited in his eyes and he seemed to see the final position of the Ward unit, the dead men and the playground beyond, for the first time.

“Sometimes, I think he’s too smart for us,” said Skelton. “Too… strong.”

The machinery of Pike’s body strained beneath his grey trench coat and he turned to face Skelton. Cold rage glowed in his eyes. He was alive once more. He took a step towards his partner, towering over him. Skelton swallowed the wonderful dread in his throat but there was nothing he could do to prevent the hot stiffening at his groin. Pike’s eyes, the headlamps of some killer automaton, blazed with hate.

“Gordon Black’s life will be a short one,” he said in a monotone. “We’re getting closer all the time. And he’ll pay, Skelton. We’ll make him pay. For all of this.”

Skelton’s pulse beat thick and heavy at his neck. He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and patted his forehead. As much as he adored the lethal energy that rolled off Pike when they discussed the boy, the fact was that they were running out of time.

In three years of searching, coming tantalisingly close to capturing the boy so many times, they still didn’t have him. Sometimes, in the small hours, when Pike’s engine was a faint rumble of snores from across the room, Skelton wondered if they were doomed. So many of the cataclysmic prophecies had already come true: the earthquakes and epidemics, the floods and landslides. In those anxious and debilitating insomniac watches, Skelton could almost believe that if they didn’t stop Gordon Black soon, the Crowman’s work would be complete and the Ward would be as extinct as everyone else. By morning, though, such thoughts would always have disappeared to the realms of paranoid fantasy, where they belonged.

One thing Skelton was certain of: once they had Gordon Black, the world would be the Ward’s. Forever.

Taking a deep breath, Skelton reached for Pike’s shoulder, ended up with his waxy, swollen fingers on the bigger man’s biceps. Pike’s eyes watched the contact, the coals of fury still smouldering in his gaze.

Skelton swallowed and spoke.

“Listen, Mordaunt…” For a moment words escaped him. He swallowed again. “You know I feel the same way as you about the boy, about everything. But look around, man. There’s not much world left to save from the Crowman. Look at these youths, their lifeblood joining the torrent of such that Gordon Black has already spilled. Three years, Mordaunt. Three years and we haven’t seen him, haven’t so much as grabbed at his coattails.”

Pike’s slab of a hand, cold and vicelike, removed Skelton’s from his arm. Death crouched in his eyes.

“What are you saying?”

It took all he had but Skelton held his partner’s gaze. He thanked God for love and the strength it gave him. He became formal once again, his partner’s superior – just as he’d always been when they were in uniform.

“We’re going to change our approach, Pike.” And, as Skelton’s heartbeat clattered on, bearing feelings he had no words to express, it came to him what they must do. He took Pike’s arm again, only for a moment. “Walk with me,” he said. “I have an idea.”

As the sun sets behind the hovels and squats on the far side of the river in Shep Afon, Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree sit on the soft silt and smoke their pipes beside a small fire. A little farther up the riverbank, wrapped in a blanket, Megan sleeps, exhausted by the effects of the sacrament and the journey it took her on. Sometimes she murmurs or cries out, kicking weakly at the sandy earth and causing Mr Keeper to cast her a concerned glance.

“We could take a room at one of the inns,” he says. “She’s been through a lot.”

Carrick looks unconcerned.

“What could be more renewing than being cradled in the arms of the Earth Amu?” he says.

Mr Keeper shakes his head.

“I know. It’s stupid of me. But she’s been through such a lot. And she’s still so young. I want to… make it up to her. She deserves a reward.”

“A night spent on one of Shep Afon’s splintery pallets is no reward for one who seeks the Crowman. Look at her, Aaron. She’s at home right where she is. Besides,” says Carrick, patting something hidden inside his tunic. “You know as well as I do that Megan has already taken her reward.”

For a while there is no sound but the plunge and slop of the market town’s creaking waterwheels and the distant murmur of trader’s voices raised in cheer as they throng the taverns around the hub.

“It took me years to see our work as anything other than a curse,” Mr Keeper says eventually. “Even now there are days when I think things might have been simpler if I’d stayed in my apa’s smithy. He was a bastard to me and never taught me a damn thing worth repeating but I’d have known, of a morning, what was in store for me between sunrise and nightfall. Hell, Carrick, I’d be happily shoeing horses now. Making pokers and mending gates, instead of worrying about the future. And her.”

“You’d have your own children, Aaron. You’d be just as worried about them and just as worried about the future. We Keepers are folk, plain as anyone else. The only difference is the knowledge we hold and the burden it bestows upon us.”

Mr Keeper taps the ash from the bowl of his pipe and refills it. He lights it with a stick from their fire. As the light fades from the day, the glow of the flames picks out the deepening creases in his forehead, around his eyes and mouth. He looks at his old master.

“Carrick…” He hesitates for long moments. “The story has been eroded over the generations. The people tell it wrong around their hearths when evening comes. They don’t understand the Crowman like they used to. If we lose the thread of his life, we’re finished. You know that. All of this rests on her shoulders now.” Mr Keeper takes a long pull on his pipe stem. “It sometimes strikes me as unreasonable that an innocent must carry such a load.”

“There are no mistakes in this world. She’s where she’s meant to be.”

Mr Keeper’s eyes flash.

“Don’t try to placate me, Carrick. Those are worn out words. They have no meaning now. Nothing is certain. Nothing is ‘meant to be’.”

The old man sighs but when Mr Keeper glances over it’s a smile he sees on Carrick Rowntree’s face.

“Listen, Aaron, if it makes you feel any better, I was just as concerned about you.”

“Of course. I lost a great deal of sleep over it. But you should understand that it’s absolutely right and proper to fret about your life’s work. Our work is the Black Feathered Path and we can’t help but care for those who travel it. If we didn’t, well, all this would be nothing more than a joke. A bad one.” Carrick Rowntree glances at Megan’s huddled form. “The girl is strong. She is equal to the task. Guide her right and you’re giving everyone a chance at the future.” The old man shakes his head, again good-naturedly. “You’re no different than when you came to me, Aaron, all those years ago. A boy who held a vision. What did I always tell you?”

“Don’t be distracted by what others are doing. Concentrate on what you’re doing.”

“Exactly. You need to do the same now. Get your part in all this right and Megan will get hers right. It has to be that way around or nothing will work.”

Mr Keeper clamps his pipe between his teeth and scoots closer to his old master so that he can whisper.

“She’s a young woman, Carrick. The first there’s ever been. It’s not as simple as working with a lad. Everything I do or say, it has to be correct. And I can’t just give her a beating when she gets it wrong like you used to do with me.”

The old man chuckles.

“It’s not funny,” says Mr Keeper. “I have to think carefully before I speak and act. On every single occasion. And I have to maintain a certain… distance. It would be so much more comfortable if it was a boy.”

“No it wouldn’t. Lads are troublesome. They don’t concentrate and they think they know better than you do. They’ll earn themselves a beating every day given half the chance. Just like you did.” Carrick takes Mr Keeper’s arm in his old fingers. “Listen to me, Aaron. As a friend. What you have with Megan is unprecedented. It’s as much a challenge for you as it is for her and that is absolutely as it should be. Guiding her, teaching her our ways as you do, you are forced to maintain a sacred mindset throughout. You are required to respect the girl as you respect… who?”

“Are you testing me?”

“Indeed I am. Answer the question, Aaron.”

Mr Keeper’s anger rises.

“Listen Carrick, there’s too much water under the bridge for this. How dare you sit there and think you can treat me like a...” The answer comes to him and Mr Keeper’s annoyance vanishes. “Great Spirit,” he whispers. “Oh dear sweet heaven above.”

“Do you see?” asks the old man.

Very slowly, Mr Keeper nods.

“I don’t know why I never saw it before.”

“Because it was right in front of you, Aaron. That’s how it always is. The Earth Amu has sent a girl child. Even in the Black Dawn the time of men was waning. It was men whose ideas forced the Crowman from blackness into existence. And though we’ve changed, made amends and redressed the balance to some degree, men alone cannot heal the wounds they inflicted. Only a woman can do that. I’ve seen things in the weave, Aaron. Women already wearing the mantle of Keeper in many lands across the water. But this girl,” Carrick nods in Megan’s direction. “Well, she is different – special. And that is why, if she can complete the path, Megan will be the one who changes our world forever, bringing harmony where even the Keepers have failed to find it. Even now, Aaron, there are factions out there in our land, all men, who search for the lost knowledge, who thirst for its resurrection. And they are dedicated. They will not stop and we must find a way to deal with them.”

“But what in heaven’s name can one young woman do against all that, Carrick?”

“The fact that neither of us knows the answer should be reason enough to realise that it is time for a daughter of the land to take her turn. This is what the Earth Amu wants. It’s what the Crowman wants. And it’s the reason you and I exist, Aaron. Everything we’ve ever done and the wrongs of every generation before us will be met here and now by this girl. And it is up to you to train her right and well or all is lost.” Carrick Rowntree’s fingers clasp harder over Mr Keeper’s arm. “Hold your commitment, Aaron. Continue to lead her as you have thus far. Give her the best chance you can, and she in turn will give us a chance. One last chance for us all.”

Megan stands on the silty river bank watching Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree and listening to their hushed conversation. She sees her own blanket-wrapped form, curled in exhaustion close by, and senses the ache in her belly even though for now she is disembodied, her spirit abroad within the weave.

The seepage between her legs is strong and steady and it will soon be time to change the cloth she surreptitiously placed there before collapsing into sleep. One thing is immediately clear: neither Mr Keeper nor his teacher can see her in the weave, even though that very afternoon they both travelled with her, quietly keeping watch over her in the guise of two wrens as she searched for the Crowspar. It was soon after she returned that her bleed began, and she is in no doubt that the Keepers’ blindness is due to her moon. Her womanhood increases her abilities in the weave: Silence. Invisibility. Who knows what more?

Her delight, however, is brief. What has passed between the two elders is enough to clip these newfound secret wings. Now that the men have fallen into silence, Megan decides she has heard enough. The only power she holds right now is the power to flee, to be away from the weight of destiny, if only for a while.

She turns from her guardians and takes a few tentative steps up the bank toward the rocks that lead up to Shep Afon’s hub and the now deserted market place. Glancing back she sees neither Mr Keeper nor Carrick Rowntree look up from their spiral of worries. Climbing the rocks is easy. Though her body is heavy with fatigue and the lingering effects of the sacrament, her spirit is light and fleet of foot. In seconds she stands on the wall separating the market from the river, finding herself between two worlds. One is the world she knows, the world where Mr Keeper is her guide and protector. The other is the new world, the weave, the byways of which she has never trodden entirely alone.

She hops down into the deserted hub where not a scrap of waste from the day’s trading remains. Even the beggars and stray dogs have moved on and the only noise now comes from the inns and taverns that line the hub.

All this freedom and no idea where to begin. She closes her eyes for a moment and waits for a draw or ripple in the weave. It is barely a blink before she senses a glow among the inns and the pull that accompanies it. She takes a step into the marketplace but stops to look back over the low boundary wall. The Keepers seem very small and far away even though if she spoke quietly they would be able to hear.

She turns her back on them.

The boards and trestles that the traders leased for their day of commerce are now stacked in stone archways out of the weather. The hub of Shep Afon is a broad, perfect ring of compacted grit nestling in a semi-circle of the river’s meander, the inns, taverns and other premises forming the opposite half of the circle. At the centre of the market place, Megan stops, opening herself to prompts from the weave. When a distracted wind skitters across the deserted expanse, Megan hears the voices of a thousand stallholders, their songs and cries now whispered in the body of the breeze.

One voice, that of a woman, is clearer than all the rest.

Save us all. The girl’s got the Scarecrow in her.

The pull from the weave intensifies and Megan begins to walk again, her pace quickening. She makes for a slim property, sandwiched between two inns. The building is timber-framed, its front wall formed in bulging sections of dun coloured daub, as though the inns on each side are crushing it. There is no sign to say what manner of business it houses, but to be in the commercial centre of the village, Megan assumes some sort of trade must occur on the premises.

She approaches the warped, splintering door and is about to knock when it opens and two men stumble out. Trying to support each other and failing, the pair blunder right through Megan and collapse to the ground, laughing. She shivers, nauseated by the sensation, but the men have no awareness of her whatsoever.

“I’ve had better donkeys,” slurs one.

“I’ve had better… weasels,” says the other.

“Er, yeah. Big, fat stripy weasels.”

“You mean badgers?”

“Badgers. Yeah.”

The two men roll around, laughing so hard they can’t get up.

“You can say what you like ’bout Shep Afon’s dubious… snatch rental… ’stablishments,” says the larger of the two men, with difficulty. He gains his feet and hauls his thinner friend upright. “But the beer’s bloody excellent. Let’s have another pint.”

The drunks stagger away leaving a yeasty, sweaty reek in their wake. The door has closed behind them but the pull from behind it is even stronger now. Megan closes her eyes and passes through the weathered wood like a breath through gauze.

Beyond it, oil lamps illuminate a tiny reception area where a heavyset matriarch keeps watch like a bloated bird of prey. Her sour disdain, worn like scarring, lifts into a smile of lascivious and ingratiating welcome the moment a knock sounds at the front door. Megan steps clear of the brothel’s mistress, not wanting to repeat the sensation of flesh passing through the pure glow of her weave body. As a group of three traders stumble in, Megan lets the draw pull her through a curtain of red ribbons, along a slim corridor with closed doors to her right and up a flight of uneven steps that she knows would creak loudly had she a more substantial form.

On the next level, the rooms run to her left but the pull still comes from above. Noises emanate from most of the rooms; giggles, squeals, and grunts mostly but sometimes sounds of choking and sobbing. Megan concentrates on the draw from overhead but she can’t shut out the animalistic voices, nor can she imagine what they signify: something more complex than the rutting of beasts.

Only in Gordon’s world has she seen stairs rising more than two levels but here they take her to a third and still the steps in the sandwich house lead up. The fourth flight ends at a door with a red rose painted on it and this is where the pull emanates from. Megan ascends and listens. She hears nothing but she can sense life on the other side. She passes through the door.

Within, the roof of the sandwich house forms the tightly cocked ceiling of the room, the joists and rafters in plain view. A small wind-eye gives onto the market place, quite the vantage point for an observer. The bed, large by Megan’s reckoning, looks as though a fight has taken place in it. The room smells thick with the mingled scents of men and women. Well, one woman. The one who now sits remaking her face at a tiny dressing table in a mirror little bigger than her own face. It is in this mirror that her eyes glance at some movement in her periphery and then lock with Megan’s. Her free hand flies to her mouth but the cry it was intended to stifle is already out. The woman turns on her stool.

Darkness falls. Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree move closer to their fire while Megan slumbers nearby. Mr Keeper is lost in a reverie, his eyes drawn by ghosts of flame and starlight on the surface of the river. Carrick Rowntree adds wood to the fire, stirring up a plume of sparks to attract his old pupil’s attention.

“I have to leave in the morning, Aaron.”

Mr Keeper doesn’t look at him.

“I won’t be coming back this time.”

Mr Keeper sighs and looks over the flames at the man who guided him on the Black Feathered Path; so long ago it might be someone else’s life, someone else’s memories. The emotions of that time, though, are as fresh as spring buds. He has no remedy for the pain it causes to think of the old man leaving. Carrick became the father he’d never dared believe existed. Stern but fair, always encouraging yet willing to let a boy make mistakes and, more importantly, learn from them. He watches Carrick through the fire and smoke and fancies he sees the history of a thousand souls alive in the old man’s eyes.

Carrick slips a hand between the fold of his layers of warm clothing.

“If I forget to give you this, however, I will be obliged to return and find you, making tomorrow’s departure a far less dramatic affair and costing me a good deal of unnecessary effort.”

He holds out his hand, away from the flames, and Mr Keeper reaches across. The touch of the crystal is like frozen midnight in his palm. He shivers and spends long moments turning it over in his hands, watching the way it absorbs the flickering firelight.

“When Megan is ready, you must give her the Crowspar. If, as you believe, she is the girl in the prophecy, then she is the last of our kind. The one who cleaves us to the land forever.”

After a while, Mr Keeper flips the Crowspar up into the air, catches it deftly and secretes in one of his many pockets in a manner that appears to be final. Within a few moments, though, the crudely carved artefact is somehow back in his hands, its facets traced and its contours explored by Mr Keeper’s agitated fingers.

He leans closer to the fire and lowers his voice to a whisper.

“I don’t like to admit it, Carrick – especially not to you – but I’ve no idea what I’m going to tell Megan about this. The crystal is the one aspect of his life I’ve never truly understood.”

The old man might be smiling or frowning. The flames make it impossible to tell. Mr Keeper thinks he is angry at first but eventually Carrick does respond, his voice equally hushed.

“That’s because its role in the Crowman’s story extends into our time, into this moment. The telling will not be complete until a woman walks the path. Only then will any of us really know what the Crowspar may be or what its purpose is. Megan is the first to have found and retrieved the black crystal. I would like to believe she will know what to do with it when the time comes. I can only assume that she will find her instructions somewhere within the Crowman’s story. One thing I do know, Aaron: if you’re right – if she is who you think she is – hers will be the finest, most accurate telling of all.”

At that moment, Megan whimpers in her sleep. By the firelight, Mr Keeper can make out the fear and anxiety on her face. He almost gets up to comfort her but checks himself, knowing there’s nothing more he can do except allow her to rest. Tomorrow they must begin the journey home and she’ll need her strength.

“She’ll be alright, Aaron.”

Embarrassed that his concerns must show on his face, Mr Keeper sighs and turns back to the fire.

“I hope you’re right, Carrick.”

“She has you to guide her. She can do no better than that.”

Mr Keeper doesn’t know how to respond to the compliment. It’s not the sort of thing Carrick Rowntree usually comes out with. In the end he settles for familiar territory.

“One more pipe?”

His old teacher nods.

“One more. And then we must sleep. Tomorrow will find us on the long road once more.”

They fill their pipes and smoke in silence as the fire dies down.

“You,” says the woman. “I prayed I’d not see your kind ever again.” Whatever fright she felt is fast replaced by suspicion and anger. “Yet here you are on the very same day.” The woman, tense but hard of the eye, spends long moments studying Megan. “What brings you to my room?”

Megan wants to put the woman at her ease, to answer simply but she struggles.

“The… shape of the weave.”

“Listen, Scarecrow girl, I know cocks and I know futures. I don’t know no weave.”

Megan blushes and looks away. The woman rises and approaches. She stands in front of Megan, one shoulder bare, her arms folded.

“How did you get past the mistress?”

“She didn’t…” Megan clears her throat. “…see me.” Fearing the woman might call for the mistress or simply kick her back down the stairs, Megan starts to talk without really thinking. “I had to find you. You said you’d tell my fortune. I wanted you to but Mr Keeper wouldn’t allow it. Please, I have to know.”

The woman snorts in disgust.

“That’s it?” She almost smiles. “Listen, girl–”

“Megan then. You’re a bright spark. Pretty too. This is your future: you’ll be happy. A good husband, enough to eat, a healthy brood. Go on back to your Keeper.”

“No. You don’t understand. I already know that’s not my fate. I’m walking the Black Feathered Path. I need to see where it leads.”

“Don’t Keepers have the power to see both behind and ahead?”

“Yes. But we’re forbidden to serve ourselves with our own knowledge. It’s meant only for the good of the land and the people.”

The woman’s hostility begins to drop away.

“And you hold to that?”

“Of course. If the path is not defined, the way is not clear. Besides, I want to complete my training. For myself and for everyone.”

The woman considers Megan for a few silent moments and then holds out her hand.

“Come. Sit with me for a spell.”

Megan smiles and reaches towards her. Her fingers to pass right through the woman’s hand and they both flinch as though stung.

“Fuck. What are you, girl?”

A sickening shiver overwhelms Megan and she staggers back towards the door. The woman stares.

“Please don’t be afraid,” Megan says. “Help me. I know you can do it. Help me to see.”

The woman isn’t shocked for long. Her edge returns almost immediately and she folds her arms across her chest.

“If you want the future you must pay for it. How will you do that, ghost girl? With ghost money?”

Megan’s mind whirls. She is so close. She hears heavy footfalls on the stairs and drunken laughter. The woman shakes her head.

“Time you were away.”

“No. Wait. We can make it… a trade.”

“Believe me, little one, all you’ve got that I want is your looks and your youth and I don’t think you’ll be wanting to part with those.”

The footsteps reach the door and a strong hand hammers against it.

“Please,” Megan whispers. “I have something to give you. This can’t be a mistake. You need me and I need you. I’m sure of it.”

The woman considers. The hammering comes again.

“Fuck off!” she yells.

After a pause a slurred male voice says:

“The mistress said top room.”

“The mistress is drunk. I’ve got my moon.”

“I’m not fussed.”

“Well, I am so fuck off like I told you.”

After some indistinct muttering the footsteps clomp back down the creaking stairs and the hammering assails a different door. The woman’s gaze fixes once more on Megan.

“So. What can a girl like you possibly do for me?”

Megan closes her eyes and stretches into the weave around the woman knowing she has one chance to get this right and very little time in which to do it. Immediately she senses pain in the woman’s womb and bladder. She sees black spots there: years of untreated disease, the scarring from two abortions and several rapes.

But this long-term physical damage is nothing next to the shadows that crowd the woman’s aura: dark spirits feeding on the degradation of leased flesh, drinking the woman’s shame and pain despite her efforts to maintain some sort of prostitute’s nobility. Megan is not frightened by the spirits. Far from it. She is incensed at their leechlike cling and the barefaced simplicity of their intentions. But she knows if the woman could see what attends her at every moment of the day she would be insane with terror.

Megan can also tell that the woman’s true ability is that of a seer. But her profession and the shadows it has plunged her into are clouding her skills almost beyond use. The woman barely believes in her own gift, using it as a way to bring in an extra meal or two on the days when Shep Afon’s market is busy. There is only one thing to do, and Megan has never done it before.

Using her hands in the weave, she reaches into the woman’s belly and strokes the scars with her fingertips, fingertips that begin to spark with white light. As the light grows she lets it blast away the decade or more of infection that has caused so much inflammation and discomfort. Guided only by instinct, Megan works fast inside the woman’s body and as she works she prays, calling in the only spirit being she knows she can trust to answer.

The oil lamps in the room flicker and dim. The woman doesn’t notice. Her eyes stare ahead and her body is rigid, as though time has stopped. Megan prays harder, putting all her fury into her invocations.

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