The Crow Folk

by Mark Stay

  Pumpkinhead raised his hands. ‘Good people of Woodville, listen to me…’

  The villagers weren’t having any of it, and some of the men began to roll up their sleeves, clenching their fists.

  Pumpkinhead brought his gloved hands down from around his head and clapped them together. The air shifted, the angry men stumbled back and the fire…

  … died out.

  The crackle was silenced and the heat was gone, replaced by a muggy dew in the air that whiffed of charred wood. The barn was a burned shell, wreathed in smoke. Blackened beams glowed white and orange in places, but the flames were dead. Pumpkinhead had told Suky and her siblings that he could put out any fire, and while she had never doubted him, to see it happen was a thrill nonetheless. Though something about it still troubled her.

  ‘Sister,’ Pumpkinhead muttered as he stepped to one side.

  Suky dismissed her uneasy thoughts and broke ranks with the other crow folk, pulling her shawl tighter as she approached the villagers. They huddled closer together and Suky could see their faces better now, a blend of fear and defiance in equal parts. She stopped some distance from them, giving herself enough time to turn and run if they came for her. She called to them, ‘We wants to parley.’

  The villagers shared confused looks and Suky began to wonder if they could even understand her until a young woman in dungarees marched forward, glistening with sweat, her spectacles misted, her face furious.

  ‘You did this?’ She pointed at the barn with rage in her voice.

  ‘Begging your pardon, but yes,’ Suky said. ‘You’ve gone and warned us away from the village with your shouting and hollering, you’ve threatened to burn us with your black salt; we cannot enter without great risk and harm to our good selves and we needs to speak to you all. I wants to make peace.’

  ‘You want to make peace by burning down our property?’

  ‘I ask you, if we don’t stop hurting each other, where’s it all going to end?’ Suky said. ‘I hads to get your attention and this was the only way. I’m sorry. I just wants to speak.’

  The young woman in the specs folded her arms. ‘Then say what you’ve got to say and make it fast and make it good.’

  ‘We are the crow folk,’ Suky said, struggling to find a way to match the words she was speaking with her thoughts. ‘We ain’t after no trouble, we ain’t after no fight, we just wants to live in peace and harmony with a little dancing and cavorting when the mood takes us.’

  ‘Peace and harmony? You got a funny way of showing it.’ The girl with the specs glanced around at the other villagers who shared angry looks. ‘Where’s Craddock?’

  Suky looked to Pumpkinhead. He nodded.

  ‘Craddock is gone,’ she said. ‘Punished for his crime.’

  It took a moment for the girl in the specs to find her voice. ‘And what crime was that?’

  ‘Murder most horrible,’ Suky said. ‘He killed our jolly brother with fire.’ That troubling thought niggled at her again, but she put it aside. ‘And another brother of ours was torn to pieces by one of your number, but we are willing to forgive and forget all that and put it behind us.’

  ‘And what if we don’t?’

  ‘Then we all carry on hurting each other, day after day, year after year. And none of us wants that, do we? What’s your name, young missy?’

  The girl in the specs hesitated. She knew what names were worth. ‘None of your beeswax,’ she said, then added, ‘Why do you come here bothering us anyway?’

  ‘You done made us,’ Suky snapped, finding herself more than a little miffed by the question. ‘You stuffed us with straw and hung us from crosses in your fields. You laughed at us, joked about us with your friends, looked up our skirts, threw balls at us and called us Aunt Sally—’

  ‘No.’ The girl raised a finger. ‘We might’ve made scarecrows, but never any like you. What do you call yourself? Suky, isn’t it?’

  Suky nodded.

  ‘But that’s not your real name, is it?’ the girl in the specs said. ‘Your real name is Susannah Gabriel. Is that right?’

  Suky’s mind rushed with memories of her mother calling her name, teachers, her father. Susannah. Susannah. Susannah. She hated the name. Hated, hated, hated it. Susannah was always being told off, always getting the blame, but Suky could be whoever she wanted to. Suky fell in love with a boy, Suky ran away to the wood, Suky felt his warm hands on her skin, Suky’s heart fluttered as she kissed him.

  ‘Silence!’ Pumpkinhead’s voice shattered her memories, and Suky felt giddy as he stepped forward. ‘Enough of your lies. Where are your witches?’ His question echoed across the field. ‘The venerable Mrs Teach. Is she here?’

  ‘She’s at home, resting,’ the girl said. ‘Poor love nearly had a heart attack the other night when one of you lot came for her.’

  ‘Oh, really? That’s what she told you?’ Pumpkinhead’s zigzag smile creaked into a smirk. ‘Your witches have a book. A book of magic. Give it to me and all this will go away. You have till sundown tomorrow. Deny us what we ask, and…’ He clapped his hands once more, the air shifted and the flames raged again. The heat bloomed and what little was left of the barn’s roof collapsed in on itself. ‘Brothers and sisters,’ he cried to the rest of the crow folk. ‘Retreat!’ On his word, the crow folk hurried back to the wood. Suky felt him take her hand and pull her into the shelter of the trees, his soothing voice saying over and over, ‘Lies, Suky, it’s all lies, don’t listen to them.’

  More cries from the villagers rose behind them, but one cut through all the others and Suky wondered what it meant.

  ‘Faye, Faye, they got your dad!’

  28 INTO THE WOOD

  As the flames consumed the barn, villagers ran to save themselves, but Terrence kept throwing water on the blaze. He was alone when four of the crow folk bundled into him in a rugby scrum. They pinned him to the ground as they took a limb each before carrying him off into the woods, thrashing and cursing against the backdrop of roiling flames.

  Bertie was the first to see. ‘Faye, Faye, they got your dad!’

  Faye had never much been one for running, but she gave chase like Jesse Owens at the Olympics when the crow folk took her father.

  Bertie tried to keep up with Faye, though his uneven legs were no match for hers. ‘Faye, be careful,’ he called after her, but his voice faded as she plunged into the wood.

  Faye’s chest burned and she had a stitch in her side, but she kept running. The fire threw long, swooping shadows and the trees shifted like dancers at a ball. The whoops and cries of the crow folk echoed around her, their wild, waving arms blending into the shadows. The ground moved under her feet, the sky above twisted and the clouds smudged like a watercolour left in the rain.

  Faye lost sight of the crow folk.

  ‘Dad,’ she cried again and again. ‘Dad, I’m coming!’

  ‘Dad! Dad!’ came the mocking replies of the unseen crow folk, followed by cackles and caws of laughter.

  A twig snapped close by and Faye whipped around, losing her balance and tripping on a root. She fell hard on the ground but picked herself up pronto. She left no footprints and the glow of the barn fire was lost in the thick of the trees. There was no path here and the canopy above was so dense that only dappled light fell around her.

  ‘Dad!’

  Again, the mocking voices came. ‘Dad! Dad!’ The words ricocheted off the tree trunks around her. No sign of her father, no sign of Bertie, no way of knowing the path home. Panic began to scratch at her, so she ran. The direction didn’t matter. She ran and ran, calling after her father, ‘I’m coming, Dad, I’m coming.’

  * * *

  The woodland around the village could be unforgiving to those who lacked direction. Smaller creatures followed their noses and birds flew above the canopy, but when humans got lost they would choose a direction and follow it, change their minds, turn back, choose another direction, follow that, change their minds again and again and again until they either wound up ba
ck where they started, or were spat out in a strange place wondering how on earth they had got there. Sometimes, there was no way out. In the freezing rain and the snow more than a few had died, lost in its labyrinth, only to be found later in the thaw. In the heat of summer, some wilted for want of water during the day and made a feast for hunters at night.

  This girl was lost and alone and zigzagging deeper and deeper into the wood and she would not stop. But the wood knew someone was watching over her. Someone was always watching over her.

  * * *

  Faye was not panicking. Definitely not. She, Faye Bright, did not panic.

  Ever.

  Much.

  It had been some time since she last heard the cries of her father or the crow folk, but she followed their echo in a straight line. She would continue on this course until she found them. And if she came to the edge of the wood, she would go back the way she’d come, looking for clues. She would not give up. Not on her father. Not now. Not ever.

  Blimey, her mouth was dry and her head was pounding.

  The stream that came off the River Wode had to be nearby – she could hear its trickle – but she didn’t want to risk veering off the path and so carried on with a dry mouth. Her run became a jog, which became little more than a walk with flailing hands and heavy, flappy feet. The pain in her head moved behind her eyes, her thoughts sloshed around in her skull, her heart threatened to pop from her chest. Faye’s lips were dry and flaky and she was wheezing with every step. She had to stop.

  Faye could no longer hear the stream.

  She could go back and try to find it. Or she could carry on. Her legs ached, her lungs burned. She hadn’t noticed it when she was running, but now she had stopped she felt the weight of her legs. She tried running again but her body protested. It wanted rest. It needed water.

  Faye thought back to her last proper exchange of words with her father. Before the fire, in the pub. He was angry at her. No, not angry. Disappointed. She had promised to keep her head screwed on, and there she was gallivanting about with a witch looking for clues about strange scarecrow people.

  ‘Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. I’m… I’m coming, I promise, I promise, I…’

  Faye leaned forwards, hands resting on her thighs. She could sit for a while. Just to catch her breath.

  She fell back onto her bottom, noticing a few bright red cherries on the ground, dropped by some squirrel in a hurry to get home. She snatched them up and chewed on them, the flavour bursting across her tongue, but it wasn’t enough. Faye needed water. Lots of water.

  And rest. Just a quick break. She could…

  She could…

  She could…

  She could lie down among the sticky sycamore leaves and sleep…

  Just…

  For a bit…

  * * *

  Faye’s mind wandered in the dark. It took her to last summer, before the war, when no one had a care in the world. Memories came and went in a flash. Pulling pints in the Green Man. Eating strawberries and cream. Helping with the hop picking. Then, after summer, listening to Mr Chamberlain on the radio. War came, evacuee children with little cardboard suitcases and gas masks huddled in groups; everyone had a uniform now and so many of the young men left the village to fight. Though not much else changed. Faye helped harvest the squashes on Ernie Teach’s allotment. He gave her cloudy lemonade, the taste sharp and refreshing. Weighing and measuring the pumpkins for the harvest festival. Ernie carving eyes and a smile in one and fixing it as a head on his scarecrow.

  * * *

  Faye jolted awake. She had only closed her eyes for a moment, she was sure, but somehow the trees were full of birdsong.

  Ernie Teach’s scarecrow had a pumpkin for a head.

  Lots of scarecrows had pumpkins for heads. It didn’t mean a thing, but Faye recalled its dusty dinner jacket and scuffed top hat being awfully like the outfit of the one that had just kidnapped her father.

  Jays screamed at her, magpies cackled and crows cawed. The birds were insistent she get up.

  ‘All right, all right, I’m not stopping, I’m not.’ Faye heaved herself up onto her hands and knees. ‘Yes, yes, I’m…’

  On every twig of every branch of every tree sat a bird.

  And every single one of them was staring straight at Faye and singing in unison. Faye felt a tingle at the nape of her neck. The air was charged like a storm about to break.

  ‘Hello,’ Faye said, getting to her feet.

  The birds fell silent.

  ‘You were supposed to help. You were supposed to put the fire out.’

  Some of the birds shuffled guiltily.

  ‘Yeah, you should be,’ Faye said. ‘But you help me find my pa and you can redeem yourselves.’

  The warbling resumed, a debate in chirps and twitters.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, all right, give it a rest.’

  As one, the birds fell silent again.

  ‘You’re a peculiar lot, aren’t you? Escaped from a circus, did ya?’

  As one, they flapped into the air and moved further down the path before settling in new trees, waiting for Faye.

  ‘I should follow you, then, should I?’ The birds remained silent. ‘Just let me get my breath.’

  The birds began cheeping again, irritated and impatient.

  ‘Fine, right, yes, hold your horses.’ Faye staggered after them and, as before, they flitted from tree to tree, waiting for her to catch up before moving on again, leading her through the wood. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Faye managed between gasps of air. ‘I’m coming. Dad, I’m coming, I’m…’

  Faye stumbled out of the treeline and into a field. Above her, the birds dispersed silently into a sky with stars peeking between sheets of grey cloud.

  ‘Why’s it…?’ Faye panted. ‘Why’s it so dark?’

  By rights, Faye should have come out of the other side of the wood by Farmer Dell’s brassica field, but she was back where she started by Harry Newton’s barn. Bertie sat alone on his upturned tin bath by the smouldering remains.

  ‘Why?’ Faye called after the birds. ‘Why did you bring me back here? I didn’t want to come back here. I wanted to find my dad.’

  Bertie jolted upright when he heard her. ‘Faye, where have you been?’ He hobbled over to her as fast he could. ‘We thought they’d got you, too.’

  ‘What… what time is it?’

  ‘It’s after eleven,’ Bertie said. ‘You’ve been gone hours.’

  ‘Hours? That don’t make sense. I was only…’ Faye grabbed Bertie’s arm. ‘My dad. Have you seen my dad?’

  ‘Faye, listen, please. Miss Charlotte says—’

  ‘I don’t care about her. Have you seen my dad?’

  ‘She says you’re to get the book and go to her cottage immediately. Mrs Teach is there, too.’

  ‘Mrs Teach? With Charlotte?’

  ‘Right away, she said. She made that very clear. “No matter how much that girl stamps her feet, you send her straight here with the book. Don’t you let me down, Bertie Butterworth,” she told me. And I’m inclined to listen to her.’

  ‘I don’t stamp my feet,’ Faye said, catching herself with a foot raised in the air. She gently lowered it again. ‘What book?’ Faye asked, though she knew the answer.

  ‘I don’t know, but she said it in a way that made it sound like you would know, so I didn’t ask her for any more details because… Well, I’ll be honest, because she scares the willies out of me. We’re all scared, Faye, what with the fire and the crow folk and the birds. No one knows what’s going on so they’ve all gone home, closed their curtains and put the kettle on. Do… do you know what’s going on?’

  There was something in Bertie’s tone that saddened Faye. He couldn’t quite bring himself to accuse her of causing all this madness, but the insinuation was there.

  ‘I had nothing to do with this, you know that, don’t you, Bertie?’

  He nodded and took a step back. ‘It’s just… Milly Baxter and Betty Marshall said you spooke
d them outside the church earlier today and put a curse on them and—’

  ‘What? Fibbers.’

  ‘A-and you’ve spent all day with Miss Charlotte going around the village asking about dead people and then them crow folk show up and burn the barn and now, well, tongues are wagging.’

  ‘Are they now?’

  ‘N-not mine,’ Bertie protested. ‘I ain’t said nothing.’

  ‘Do you believe them, Bertie? Do you really think I put a curse on Milly Baxter?’

  Bertie scratched the back of his head. ‘Course not. Will you go to them, though? Miss Charlotte and Mrs Teach, that is?’

  ‘Yes.’ Faye started marching towards the village. ‘I need them to help me find my dad. We can’t let what happened to Craddock happen to him, too.’

  ‘Good, cos that’s the thing about the book, Faye. You’ve got to take it to Miss Charlotte. She said…’ Bertie took a breath and bit his lip as he hurried after her. ‘She said it was the only way to save your pa.’

  29 THREE WITCHES

  Bertie was friendly enough when he bade Faye goodnight, but there was something different in the way he spoke to her now. He was scared of magic, strange books, birds and now her, and he couldn’t get away from Faye quick enough. It broke Faye’s heart to see him so, and she wanted to reassure him that he had nothing to fear from her, but what mattered to her most now was getting her dad back safe. And to do that she had to keep an appointment with a pair of witches.

  Returning home to an empty pub wasn’t easy. Faye half expected her dad to pop up from behind the bar and start making jokes, but it remained dark and cold. She went straight to the trunk in the cellar, unfastened the rusty padlock and retrieved the book. She couldn’t resist a quick look through its pages, hoping that some solution would present itself, but its words and sketches remained a mystery to her. The witches would know. She imagined them flicking through the book, finding just the right ritual, saying a few magic words and her dad would walk through the door again. She snapped the book shut, stuffed it in her satchel and closed the trunk.