A Pocketful of Crows

by Joanne M Harris

  Mad Moira (or Mad Mary, or Mary Mack, as some of the children now call me) lives in the trunk of a blackthorn tree. She feeds on the blood of the wicked. She wears a thorny crown, and a dress all stitched with black beetles. She watches the world of the Folk, and she can sometimes grant their wishes. To summon her, tie a red ribbon onto the branch of a blackthorn tree, and dance around it widdershins, singing:

  Mary Mack, Mary Mack,

  All in blood, and all in black

  Bring me what my soul doth lack,

  Merry mad, mad Mary.

  It is a rhyme I have heard more than once as I walk in the forest. Bracken-brown, I walk unseen. Sloe-black, I hide in the shadows.

  Mary Mack. Where did that come from? In any case, it is another step away from the name he gave to me. I may have been Malmuira, once. But now Mad Mary takes her place, and I am not Mad Mary. Now I am almost nameless again, and shall be wholly nameless soon; nameless, soulless and free—

  Two

  February is the whirling month, and this week has been one of turbulence. Harsh winds from the east; rain, sleet, and now the Winter Queen’s element, hail, that clatters onto the rooftops and scatters the ducks on the dancing lake.

  Two funerals, a mystery illness, and now a growing sickness among the sheep that makes them first aggressive, then unsteady, and finally listless unto death. It must be some kind of witchcraft. Six thus far, and more to come. It could be a disaster.

  The cattle, too, are suffering. A rot has afflicted the grain store, and spoilt much of the season’s hay. Food is scarce. The grass is cropped away to nothing. The horses feed on bran dust and the pasture is nothing but stones and mud.

  William’s sickness continues. The doctor has visited twice; once alone, another time with a specialist from the town. Neither agrees on the cause of the illness. The town doctor speaks of an imbalance of the humours, and prescribes a course of leeches. The country doctor believes it to be an affliction of the heart. Perhaps it is. I hope so. I hope he feels some part of what I felt when he abandoned me. In the crook of the hawthorn’s branches, the pocket-doll made from the dead girl’s shroud is little more than a bunch of rags, stitched together with blackthorn spikes. Perhaps he dreams of me. I think it only fair, after all the hopeless nights I dreamed of him.

  Fiona has twice tried to see him, but has been sent away. I think that she is afraid. Her disappointment – the scandal, the failed pregnancy – have made her old before her time. She wears black now, and hides her hair, and speaks of joining a convent.

  I have no sympathy for her. She is alive. I owe her nothing more than that. But she has taken to walking the woods, as if in search of something. Yesterday, she tied a rag around the trunk of the blackthorn tree that stands alone by the side of the lake. She left no offerings, sang no rhyme, but all the same, I know what she wants. Today, I let her find me.

  We were not far from my ruined hut. My boat was safely out of sight. I, too, could disappear in a moment if the need arose. Months of living with the wolves have made me even more silent. I move along the forest trail, sometimes on two feet, sometimes four. I hear the wind above my head, the many soft sounds of the leafless trees. It has rained during the night. The ground underfoot is soft and damp. I make no sound in the undergrowth as I travel through the forest.

  Over the months of living outside, I have grown even more ragged. Dried mud mats my hair. There are twigs and leaves in my braids. I smell of wolf, and of worse. My clothes are a collection of found and stolen items: an overcoat too large for me: a brown skirt made from a flour sack. A collection of moth-eaten woollens, all stained with blood and dirt and sweat. I look like a wild thing. No, more than that. I look like the demon they believe me to be. I look like Mad Mary.

  I met Fiona on the path. I let her come towards me. For a moment she did not see me; I was sitting very still, and I looked like a dead tree stump. Then I stood up, and she saw, and took a step back as if to flee. Then she seemed to change her mind, and looked at me with forget-me-not eyes, and said:

  ‘I knew you were still alive.’

  Four months after her miscarriage, Fiona still looks pregnant. Her face is round: her belly, too. Only her eyes seem sunken, older and colder than before. I said:

  ‘He thought he could finish me. He was wrong.’

  She gave me a look of hate. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she said. ‘You’ve taken everything I had. What else can you do to me?’

  ‘I took nothing,’ I said to her. ‘William was faithless. If he had really loved you—’

  ‘I’m talking about my child,’ she said. Her voice was low and cold and harsh. Wisps of primrose hair had escaped from the scarf around her head, and blew in the wind like thistledown. ‘You took him,’ she said, still looking at me. ‘You took him with your witchcraft.’

  I shook my head. ‘I took nothing,’ I said. ‘My only quarrel is with William.’

  ‘Liar!’ she spat. And from her coat she brought out a handful of something like rags. I recognised my pocket-doll.

  ‘You did this,’ said Fiona. ‘You stole the child from out of my womb. You stole him before I could see his face. You stole him before I could give him a name!’

  ‘I did nothing,’ I told her. ‘I swear it on my life.’

  But I was becoming uneasy. I thought of Old Age. The price will be high. Whatever it is, I will pay, I had said. And now I wonder to myself: what bargain have I made with her? And what exactly have I paid?

  Three

  Another turn of the whirling month, and snow has come once more to the hills. For the present it spares the valley, but the sky remains dark and threatening.

  Fiona no longer comes to the woods. She has said all she wanted to say. But sometimes I see her face in dreams, and hear her harsh, accusing voice. It makes me uneasy, even though I know I did not take her child. My business was never with her. It was always with William. And yet, the hawthorn’s words – and my own – often return to haunt me. I remember her smile as she came to my door. Her eyes, so bright and gleaming.

  How old is she really? I ask myself. From what ancient, far-off earth did she spring? The travelling folk are not born; do not die. We travel; that is all we know. We have no parents, no children. We fly; we land like thistledown, taking root wherever we can. We grow, we flower, we move on. We are the travelling people.

  I try to imagine Fiona’s child. If indeed, she had a child. A son in William’s image, with his bluebell eyes and shining hair. But my curse is on William’s line. I said I would see it ended. I swore my oath on his father’s grave, and left the rune-stone to seal it. I think of my words, like flung stones in the water of the lake, sending out ripples to the shore. Who else have my words reached? And how much does the hawthorn know?

  Last night, I went to her again. February is the Wolf Moon, and last night, it was howling. Rags of cloud across the sky. A wind like a capful of terrors. And the hawthorn, in the midst of it all, black as a nest of spiders, cold as the grave, and sleeping like the armies of the living dead—

  Around her, the stones of the fairy ring were grey and black in the dull light. In the village, nothing moved. Only a few windows were lit, the yellow glow of the firelight unbearably remote to my eyes. The hawthorn slept but under her skin I could feel the promise of springtime. Hidden under the bark, there is blood. It dreams. It sings. It hums to itself.

  ‘Old Mother,’ I said.

  Deep in the bark, a whisper of something that might have been mirth.

  ‘Old Mother, please,’ I said. ‘Talk to me.’

  Once more, that distant laughter. It sounds like a child, deep underground, playing under the fairy ring. I can hear music, voices:

  Mary Mack, Mary Mack,

  Kept a baby in a sack,

  Never gave the baby back,

  Merry mad, mad Mary.

  Is the hawthorn mocking me? In any case, she does not speak. Only that distant, eerie strain of music comes from under the ground, where the hawthorn’s roots, a
million deep, reach all the way to Fiddler’s Green, and beyond, into Death’s kingdom itself.

  Four

  And now as the whirling month turns again, more news from the castle. William’s health does not improve, in spite of an army of doctors. Another specialist has been summoned; an expert in matters of the uncanny, who proclaims that William has been bewitched, and demands all kinds of expensive ingredients for his medicines.

  The man is a charlatan, of course. All his doctors are charlatans. Through the eye of my wedding-ring charm I have watched them come and go, with potions, and possets and medicine bags, and leeches and chanting, and cupping, and spells. But this man is a specialist. He arrived with two cartloads of books, and after a fortnight’s study, announced the cause of William’s sickness.

  William is the victim, he says, of a witch’s blood curse. Cast by the light of a blue moon, fed by incantations, the curse can only be broken by rowan berries, red thread, a cantrip of the rune Raedo – and the heartsblood of the witch, spilt by the light of a Crow Moon . . .

  But there is little chance of that. William has tried to find me, and failed. Now that my charm has taken root, I would be mad to show myself. And yet, I almost want to go. I almost want to see him. So many months have passed, and still I have not forgotten him. I see his face in dreams. I hear his voice. I feel his touch. However much I hate him now, a part of him is inside me. It feels like a splinter under my skin; something sharp, too small to remove. And yet I must be free of him, before I can be myself again.

  In the village, there is little talk of anything but witchcraft. The Folk hang red rags over their doors, and go to church, and fast, and pray, and leave offerings under the fairy tree to pacify Mad Mary. It is widely understood that Mad Mary is responsible, both for William’s sickness and for the loss of Fiona’s child, as well as for many lesser ills: sick sheep; mouldy grain; rats in the henhouse; cows running dry. Small accidents, misfortunes are seen as signs of mischief. Mothers rock their babes to sleep, singing songs of the Winter Queen. Children make masks from flour sacks and run after each other, screaming. The white-headed crow reports that, in the town, two witches have already been hanged, on the advice of William’s man, and others are under suspicion. Beggars, no doubt, or old folk, too addled in their wits to run. But once they have tasted blood, the Folk are difficult to appease. I must take care not to be seen. The rumours fly like magpies. The Wolf Moon wanes, and soon it will be the Moon of the Crow. The magic moon, by which my blood will carry special significance . . .

  March

  The Mad Month

  Next did he send from out the town,

  O next did send for me;

  He sent for me, the brown, brown girl

  Who once his wife should be.

  O ne’er a bit the doctor-man

  His sufferings could relieve;

  O never an one but the brown, brown girl

  Who could his life reprieve.

  The Child Ballads, 295

  One

  March: the wild, the madcap month; bringing with it the daffodil, the hyacinth, the celandine; the aconite, the violet, the primrose and the crocus. March comes, and the blackthorn breaks into wild white blossom. March comes, with the dancing hare; the skylark’s song of freedom. March comes in, and Winter turns, hand in hand with hopeful Spring, as once more the dance of the seasons begins, and the land awakens at their feet.

  But the cold is not over yet. Last month was mild, and the villagers fear the snap of a blackthorn winter. The Winter Queen grows ever more cruel as her power fades. But in the fairy ring, Old Age hums with the promise of rebirth, and the sheep grow fat, and the wild ducks fly, and the salmon swim upriver.

  My home on the island is once more alive with otters, frogs, and songbirds. In the woods, the birch trees are in sap. I harvest their dark honey. For the first time in months, I feel the warmth of the sun on the back of my neck, and smell the new grass growing. The blackthorn tree by the side of the lake is once more hung with offerings. Some are to the Winter Queen. Some are to Mad Mary. And some are to Maid Marion, or Maia, the Queen of the May, who comes in white blossom and birdsong.

  The priest – a town man – is quick to denounce these hateful country customs. There is no Winter Queen, he says, nor yet a Queen of the May. Obediently, the Folk bow their heads, and prepare for their Lenten fasting. They sing their hymns, confess their sins, but in the fairy ring they dance, while the Crow Moon whets her blade and rises like a scythe in the sky.

  From the town, the white-headed crow reports several more arrests. Vagrants, not of our people, but sooner or later the Folk may discover one of us by accident. The travelling folk have too often been the victims of their fearfulness; now, in the current climate of fear, we are all of us vulnerable. I of course am especially so. Without my powers, I am trapped in this body, in this place. I must be wary, I tell myself.

  And yet the call of Spring is almost irresistible. I want to run, I want to dance. I want to swim in the ice-cold lake. Most of all, I want to shed this skin, to become one of my people again. But for that, my William must die. This is the price the hawthorn demands. This is the price that I must pay, or be for ever outcast . . .

  Two

  Today, the white-headed crow brought me news. A letter from the castle; addressed to me, and in William’s hand, as neat as a verse on a gravestone.

  My Dear Malmuira,

  I know I do not deserve for you to read this Note. I have W-R-O-N-G-E-D you. Forgive me for that, and for Writing to you now. But, for all my pains, my Love, I have not Forgotten you. I cannot Eat, I cannot Sleep, my Heart cannot find Rest, and all for Love of You.

  I beg You come now to my Side. Release me from this M-A-L-A-D-Y. For the Love you once bore me, I pray, have Pity on my Suffering.

  Your Ever Devoted,

  William

  I read the letter once again, following with my fingertip. Then I waited until dark and headed for the fairy ring.

  The hawthorn was sleeping, as always. But I could feel her awakening, slowly, under her jacket of bark. And if I listened carefully, I could still hear laughter, deep beneath the half-frozen ground, and the echo of children’s voices.

  ‘Old Mother, can you hear me?’

  No answer. Just the wind in the trees.

  ‘He wrote me a letter, Old Mother. He sent it with the white-headed crow. He writes that he still loves me. He says he can’t live without me.’

  The hawthorn gave a kind of sigh, deep in the folds of her winter skin. And do you believe him?

  ‘No,’ I said.

  And yet, you mean to go to him.

  ‘Is it so very obvious?’

  Everything is very obvious when you’re as old as I am, she said.

  ‘Of course, he’s lying,’ I went on. ‘This is a trap.’

  Of course it is. So, will you go?

  ‘It would be madness to go,’ I said. And yet we both knew I would. I knew it, just as the salmon knows to swim upriver; just as the hedgehog knows which way the winter winds are blowing. I will go when the moon is full. When the blackthorn is in bloom. That was the promise I made him, so long ago at the midwinter fair. It would be madness, and yet I must. For have I not a debt to repay? And am I not Mad Mary?

  Three

  I do not believe him. I am no longer the innocent girl of a year ago. And yet his words still trouble me more than I expected. I cannot Eat, I cannot Sleep . . . and all for Love of You. I know it is a lie, and yet my heart will not believe it so. Instead it dances like a star, and leaps like a salmon, and aches like a stone, and there is nothing I can do to still its wild and hopeful song.

  This morning, the hawthorn came to me, quite unexpectedly, out on the lake. I almost did not know her: the spring has brought her back to life. Now her hair is as dark as my own; her face, though not young, is fresh and unlined. In my green dress and tiger’s-eye beads, she looks like a mother, no longer a crone.

  ‘The season suits you, Mother,’ I said.

>   She smiled. Her eyes were as dark as the lake.

  ‘You gave me something, once,’ she said. ‘Now I have a gift for you.’

  And opening her pack, she brought out something that I recognised. It was my gown, my black silk gown, made from the April girl’s wedding dress. All embroidered with roses, and leaves, and tiny silk forget-me-nots.

  ‘I took it when they came looking for you. I thought you might need it again, some day.’

  I reached out my hand to touch it: the careful, intricate needlework. It seems so very long ago that I made it. So long ago that I barely recall how it felt to have something so beautiful.

  ‘You’re still wearing that wedding ring,’ said the hawthorn.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  For a moment I was silent. Then:

  ‘I wanted him to see me,’ I said. ‘The way he saw Fiona.’

  And in that moment, I knew it was true. I would have sacrificed everything I had to be Fiona. To shed my skin, my clothes, myself. To be one of his village girls. Primrose-pretty, cowslip-pale, purring like a pussycat.

  But we do not go into the Folk. The Folk have names – the Folk have souls. These things are what make us different. These things exist to protect them against such predators as I.

  ’Take it,’ said the hawthorn. ‘It’s yours. Wear it when you go to him.’

  I took the dress, remembering the tale of the kitchen princess. But the hawthorn is no good fairy, helping me to win my prince. And yet she gave me back my dress. Does she want me to go to him?

  ‘There’s something I need to know,’ I said. ‘About Fiona’s baby.’

  The hawthorn shrugged. ‘What baby?’ she said.