Crows - Part 2
A short story
He fell. Through the icy water and down. Tumbling and twisting in slow motion. Down and down as if his pockets were filled with rocks. But the deeper he went, the slower he moved. And the cold water became thinner and warmer until eventually he could breathe it. He saw the ground below him approach gradually and he gracefully floated down until at last his feet were planted on the ground as if he were a piece on a chessboard, placed by a particularly gentle player.
He looked up at the way he had come, unsure of what he was expecting to see. There was a tall shaft and from the top of it came a light that gently flickered, as if it came through rippling water, or perhaps through swaying leafless trees.
Around him were the moss-covered walls of a natural cave. The only unnatural things in the cave were two statues. One was made of stone and was covered in patches of green moss and lichen. He eyed it with suspicion but then his attention was drawn to the other statue which was almost the same shape but was made of some dark material he couldn’t recognise. He shuffled cautiously closer and reached out to touch it. Suddenly the statue cracked into pieces, each one a flapping, cawing crow. They circled round him, their cries sounding like mocking laughter, and then flew away down a tunnel.
Unless he could go back the way he had come, the only way out seemed to be to follow the crows. It was a long and ragged tunnel of rough stone and overgrown plant life. There was a glimmer of light coming from somewhere far ahead and with it came the thin and haunting sound of a woman’s voice singing a wordless melody. It was a melancholic refrain that spoke to something deep within him. He hadn’t heard it before but it reminded him of times long gone, of people he had once known.
He started down the tunnel, stumbling in the gloom and struggling to keep his footing on the uneven rocks. As he went along, the sound of singing faded slowly away and the light that he had taken to be daylight resolved into the flickering glow of a lantern that hung on a pole in the misty nighttime air. It had not even passed midday when he had entered the forest and snow had been falling. Now, as he looked out of the mouth of the tunnel, the pale light of the moon lit a forest clearing with air that smelt of a summer evening.
As the crows chattered in the trees, he wondered where he was. He had an unsettling feeling. The sudden change in time and temperature was wrong, of course, but there was something more. The way sounds hit his ear was strange, things were loud when they should have been quiet and quiet when they should have been loud. He set off. Cautiously at first, following the sounds of the birds, but all the while deep in thought.
It had been almost a week since the incident in his village which had left everybody there either dead or turned to stone. Everybody except him. He hadn’t been there to see it but had arrived at the end, too late to do anything. Just in time to see the woman in black and his brother. He hadn’t been close enough to hear what was said, he just saw his brother reach out, grab the woman by her shoulder, and then turn to stone. To a statue that was immediately covered with moss and lichen as if it had stood there a decade.
He had shouted. The woman had looked at him and fled, crows flying and flapping and obscuring his view of her retreat. After checking for any survivors he had pursued her. He had his horse, she was on foot. It shouldn’t have taken this long for him to catch up, but he had known from the start that she had some magick about her.
He was shocked out of his revery by the sight of the reflected light in a pair of eyes in the shadow under a distant pine tree. He stopped and peered into the gloom. Wolf’s eyes, watching him keenly. Before he could react, the wolf turned and ran, it’s fur black as the shadows around it. The sudden movement gave him a jolt of fear and adrenaline. Without really knowing why, he started to follow it.