A Pocketful of Crows

by Joanne Harris

  Five

  Even for such as I, there are ways of finding out what needs to be known. I cannot travel, but maybe my folk can be persuaded to travel for me. The white-headed crow can be bribed with cakes: the magpie with pieces of coloured glass. And in exchange they bring me news, a whisper and a word at a time.

  Fool! crows the magpie. Faithless! the crow. Fiona, whisper the reeds by the lake, and the sound is like fingernails on glass, like voices from an open grave. And today, as I sit by the firepit, I see them together, enlaced in the smoke, lily-white on petal-pale, and I know that what I see is true. My love loves another.

  It rained last night, and the night before that. Wild, intemperate rain that crashes down the mountains. Oh, to go into the rain, and be lost: to go into the lightning, and strike. But I must stay in my hut alone, and watch the rain drip from the trees, and listen to the sound of the stream, and try not to dream of William.

  What does he see in that cornsilk girl, that apple-blossom, goat’s-milk girl? How could he have forgotten me, after all his promises? She must have used some kind of witchcraft. Lavender, for forgetfulness, a poppet made from my petticoat, and hair gathered from my brush. She knew how to make the adder-stone charm; maybe she has other skills. Perhaps I was wrong to dismiss her as just another girl of the Folk. She must be a witch, to have thwarted me. She must be a witch, to have snared him. I did not hear the knock at my door: the sound of footsteps on the path. But when I looked up, I saw a face, peering in at my window.

  The travelling folk rarely show themselves, even to their own kind. There is no safety in numbers. Instead, we hunt with borrowed skin, with tooth, and horn, and antler. But this time, she had chosen to make the journey as herself, clothed in nothing but ribbons and rags, and with the fine shoes I gave her looking very out of place on her brown and knotted feet; and slowly, very slowly: for she is old as Old Age, her bones as light as driftwood, her hair a silver-moss peach-fuzz against the tender curve of her skull.

  ‘I said you might change your mind,’ she said, with a sharp-eyed glance at my face. ‘I hear on the wind that your young man has found himself a fairer maid.’

  I said nothing, but glared at her.

  ‘I know a charm,’ she told me, ‘to help you free yourself of him.’

  ‘I don’t want to be free of him,’ I said. ‘I want him to be free of her.’

  The hawthorn shrugged. ‘That’s easy. But it won’t buy back your freedom, nor make him any less faithless.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the hawthorn. ‘I’ll sell you a charm. But when you change your mind, come back and find me. I can help you.’

  ‘I will not change my mind,’ I said. ‘Give me the charm. What’s your price?’

  The hawthorn smiled, her brown face all spidery with wrinkles. ‘First, give me that pretty green dress you wear, to keep me warm through the winter.’

  I took off the dress. It was in no way as fine as the gowns I had worn at the castle. But it was warm, and well made, and without it, I felt suddenly cold. I stood in my petticoats, shivering. The old woman put on the dress, and seemed content with the result.

  ‘For the charm,’ she said, ‘you will need three things. The first is the heartswood of an ash, drenched with nine drops of your own blood, and bound with a skein of lightning. Stitch them with the runes Naudr and Thuris, and sew them into a purse made from the shroud of an unshriven man. Leave it under her pillow, and she will have no more power over him.’

  I shall bind my love with a charm made from the heartswood of an ash. I shall bind him with my blood, shed for him by moonlight. I shall bind him with the threads of lightning from the summer storms, and never let go, not for anything, not if Death himself commands it—

  The hawthorn nodded and smiled. In my dress and high-heeled shoes she looked even less like one of the Folk than she had dressed in rags and feathers. Then she went on her way through the woods – slowly, very slowly – and all the forest creatures stood aside to let her pass, for the hawthorn is a cunning one, old as Old Age, and as merciless.

  September

  Month of White Straw

  Me did he send a love-letter,

  He sent it from the town,

  Saying no more he loved me,

  For that I was so brown.

  The Child Ballads, 295

  One

  The most difficult part was finding a way to slip the charm under her pillow. She sleeps in my bedchamber now, in the bed with the silken coverlet. My messengers tell me she goes there at night, under cover of darkness, for Fiona is a virtuous maid with a good reputation.

  But go there I must, I told myself, for the hawthorn’s charm required it. And so I set about planning a way to gain entry into the castle. First, I needed a disguise. Clothes, stolen from a washing line. An apron, and a clean white cap, to make me look like a laundry maid. I went inside with the rest of the girls, hiding my face beneath the cap, and hid until they had all gone by, before taking a pile of clean sheets into William’s chamber. It would have been easy to slip the charm into a fresh pillowcase. But I had not expected to see William there in the bedroom – William, my one true love, who had promised to love me for ever – and Fiona, in her dove-grey silk, sitting by the window.

  His hair has grown since I saw him last. But he is as handsome as always. Handsome in the May Day coat he had on when first I saw him, his blue eyes filled with points of gold as he turned and looked right through me.

  I felt a surge of dizziness so strong that I almost fell, but William did not notice. He looked at me, and saw me not, in spite of all I had meant to him. For what’s another laundry girl, her hair bound up in a starched white cap, another doe-brown laundry girl, with scowling face and downcast eyes?

  I remembered the tale of the kitchen princess, and the prince who sought her. And if I’d had a knife with me, instead of an armful of linen sheets, I would have slaughtered them both on the spot, and left their bed awash with blood, her eyes on his pillow, his tongue at her feet, and her cut throat like the widest of smiles—

  But I had no knife. Instead I felt a curious numbness. The hawthorn charm would work, I knew. But could it make him see me?

  I left the chamber as soon as I could. My heart was caged and beating. I stood outside in the passageway, my back to the wall, and tried to breathe. The hawthorn charm was still in my hand. There would be no chance to use it now. But I did not care. My rage was gone. I wanted to die. I wanted nothing more than to curl up like a dead leaf and blow away.

  But now, back in my hut of split logs, my courage has returned to me. I shall write him a letter, and send it by my own means. The white-headed crow will deliver it, and await his answer. Whatever the reason for his change of heart, I shall not accept it without hearing the truth in his own words.

  The hawthorn was right: if William is faithless, I should not blame Fiona. Fiona is nothing. She has no power. If she had, she would have seen through my laundry maid’s disguise. And if I were to be rid of her, there would be another Fiona. No, I must speak with William, and find my way back to his heart, for I cannot yet believe that he could have forgotten me. And so I write my letter of love, and hope that I can find the words.

  My dearest WILLIAM,

  If You ever cared for me, Heed me now.

  I Know Not why You have abandoned me. I was Your love. You are Mine still. My Heart is true. I cannot Believe that You would change. Please send me Your Answer by the White-Headed Crow. It Knows Me. It will Find Me. I implore You, write, and comfort Me, for My Heart aches, and I can Think of Nothing else but You.

  My Love for Ever,

  Malmuira

  Two

  I waited all day for his answer. The white-headed crow flew off at dawn, but it was almost dusk before I heard its harsh cry overhead. A few minutes later, it landed on a low branch by the firepit. It was carrying a folded piece of paper.

  I paid the white-headed crow its fee of honey-cakes and
slowly read:

  Dear Malmuira,

  I am most sincerely sorry if you feel that I have misled you. But my father has ordered me to make my P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N clear. Whatever my warmer feelings, I cannot allow my P-A-R-T-I-A-L-I-T-Y to blind me to my duty. My rank does not permit me to A-S-S-O-C-I-A-T-E with persons of your kind: so wild, so lacking in polish, so brown. Forgive my B-L-U-N-T-N-E-S-S, and be assured of my continued R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

  Your servant,

  William MacCormac

  It took me some time to make out the words. It was almost as if he had chosen them on purpose to confuse me. But the meaning is clear. He cannot love me. He and I are too different. I am brown, and rough, and wild. He is a fine nobleman. He cannot love a wild girl. And this is not his decision, but that of his rank, his duty and his father.

  I turned the letter over. I had no other paper to use, and besides, the words of his letter were already cut into my heart. There was no danger that I would forget.

  I took my quill and wrote these words:

  Dear WILLIAM,

  Forgive my plain speaking. My folk are blunt. But be easy, and know that I care not for Your Respect. I am not bound by such Duties as Yours. Brown as I am, I love as I please. I would have kept My Promises.

  I wish you joy of your Village Girl, and hope to never see You again. And now that You are free of Me, so too shall I be free of You.

  Farewell,

  Malmuira

  I will not cry. I never do. There is a saying among the Folk: Give as much pity to a woman weeping as to a goose going barefoot. I gave the note back to the white-headed crow. And then I lay down in the ferns and grass that grow around my hut, and watched the fragments of sky through the trees, and wondered how the sun still shone when my light had gone out for ever.

  Three

  September is the month in which we put away the summer. Nuts, apples, berries and corn, stored away for the winter. Eat all you can in September, for the lean nights are coming. And yet I cannot eat. I cannot gather hazelnuts and put them away for the winter, or pick mushrooms under the Harvest Moon, or blackberries from the forest path.

  Instead, I pick over the stubble fields for the last small grains of the love we once had. The harvest is spoilt: the storehouse shut. I will not see its like again. I pick over every memory, every word he spoke to me. And my heart is a hollow shell, as empty as a beggar’s bowl.

  I went to see Old Age again, this afternoon in the fairy ring. I counted only fourteen berries on her single living branch. But the hawthorn was in a playful mood, like an old cat, which, from its bed, deigns to play with a ball of wool.

  I said: ‘I wrote to William. I said I cared nothing for him. And yet I am not free. Why?’

  The hawthorn shook her branches. The rags and ribbons and silver spoons placed there by the village girls fluttered, though the day was still.

  I told you to give away everything he gave you, said the hawthorn tree. And yet you wear those pretty beads he gave you at Midsummer’s Fair.

  It was true. I’d kept them. The tiger’s-eye beads were around my neck. They were all I had left of William; each shining bead a memory. It hurt to take them off, as if I had taken a layer of skin with them, and yet I gave them up without a word, and hung them on the fairy tree.

  A gift given freely on Midsummer’s Day returns a hundredfold, she said.

  I did not understand what she meant and turned to go, feeling heartsick. But the hawthorn tree had not finished with me. Once more I heard her branches, rattling like a handful of bones on a wind that was not there.

  They say he has promised her a ring, she said. A gold ring, for her white hand. And his name, to bind her for ever to his house and to his heart.

  My own heart gave a rattle. ‘I care not for his heart,’ I said.

  Oh, but you do, said the hawthorn tree. And until you give him up, you will never again be free.

  ‘But how do I give him up?’ I cried. ‘He gave me a name. He bound me with his promises. And now I am like a hazelnut that has been eaten away from the inside. I cannot sleep. I cannot eat. There is nothing left of me.’

  The hawthorn said: There is a way. But I don’t think you’ll like the price.

  ‘What price?’ I said. ‘Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.’

  The hawthorn was silent.

  ‘What can I do? How do I give back a name?’

  Once more, the hawthorn was silent.

  And finally I realised that she had nothing more to say, and went on my way through the stubble fields, barefoot, until my feet bled with the short, sharp stems of the yellow corn, so tender in the springtime but so like knives at harvest month, so that I left a trail of red behind me on the footpath.

  Four

  September is the busiest month: with nutting, and storing, and sheaving. This is when the geese grow fat, and the sheep eat their fill on the hillside, and the gnats dance on the silent lake, and the brown bears go a-berrying. But I remain idle. I cannot move. I cannot think of anything but William and Fiona, and the gold ring he promised her, and the hawthorn’s words at the Midsummer Fair: The gold in your eyes is truer by far than the gold he promised you.

  Yes, I was true. What good did that bring me? I was faithful, I was true, and yet another girl will have William’s ring, and take his name, and be at his side, and one day bear his children. Fiona, whose name means White Lady, and who is good, and virtuous, and will never disgrace him or give him a moment’s anxiety.

  A September bride is discreet and forthcoming, beloved of all. Fiona is William’s beloved now, and she has always been discreet. But my whispers on the wind bring me no news of a wedding. Instead, they bring me rumours of secret meetings in haylofts, weevils in potato crops, troubled skies and storms on the way, but no word of William and Fiona. Could it be that he has changed his mind? But that is a childish hope, I know; and I am not a child. Perhaps I was, five months ago. Now I am as old as Old Age, and colder than ice, and harder than stone.

  September blowe soft

  Till fruite be in loft.

  Forgotten month past

  Doe now at the last.

  I should be hard at work. Soon it will be Michaelmas, when berries grow hard and bitter. Soon, my folk will start to fly south with the wild geese and the swallows. The travelling folk rarely spend the winter in their own skin. Some will fly south, and some will hide under the dry leaves as hedgehogs, or under the snow as foxes and hares. Some, like the hawthorn, will go into trees, and sleep throughout the winter. But I must prepare, if I want to survive. I have nothing put away.

  The others know this. Several times I have found gifts left at my door: two rabbits; a pile of hazelnuts; some mushrooms; the haunch of a slaughtered goat. The travelling folk look after their own, even when they have been cast out.

  Sometimes I think it would be easier to die. They will find me in the spring, a pile of rags in the undergrowth. Maybe William will hear of it, and weep for me in the green woods, and know that when I promised him to be faithful unto Death, I was true, though he was not. Maybe Fiona will be with him, his golden ring on her finger—

  That decides it. I will not die. I will not give that cowslip girl the satisfaction of knowing me dead. Nor will I be the kitchen princess, with her paltry three wishes. I have no need of a fine dress, or shoes, or a fairy carriage. But vengeance, my sweet William. That I can still wish for. And I shall dance barefoot on your grave, and sing like a lark with the joy of it, and soar into the stormy sky, and fill my throat with lightning.

  October

  The Golden Month

  One for anger,

  Two for mirth

  Three for a wedding,

  Four for a birth.

  Five for rich,

  Six for poor,

  Seven for a witch:

  I can tell you no more.

  Magpies: 16th-century

  nursery rhyme

  One

  October brings the Hunter’s Moon, the crows, the brewing of barley. Oc
tober is the thresher’s month, the month of grouse, and geese, and deer. October is the month of sloes, and chestnuts, and acorns, and hips, and haws. October is the golden month, where even the trees are a miser’s dream.

  An October bride is fair of face, affectionate, but jealous. I wonder if Fiona has her golden ring yet. Word has it she does not: and yet this does not please me. Let her have her golden ring. Let her have her honey.

  Last night I went to the fairy tree. There was no moon, and the ancient one was so fast asleep in her hawthorn skin that I almost despaired of rousing her. Around the fairy ring, the stones were nothing more than shadows: some short, some tall, some only hummocks under the turf. The Folk believe that the fairy stones cannot ever be counted. Try it, and the stones will dance, slyly changing positions, so that their number can never be known. The travelling folk, too, have their beliefs concerning the stones of the fairy ring. But this was no night for stories. Tonight, I wanted something more.

  I sat by the tree, and waited until the hawthorn stirred from her sleep. Another few weeks, and she will be impossible to waken. I was beginning to wonder if she had already begun her winter’s sleep, when I heard a whispering from her boughs.

  Why do you trouble me once more? What more can you want of me?

  ‘You know what I want,’ I told her. ‘I want to be able to travel again. I want to be free of him; of the name he tricked me into accepting.’

  A sigh came from the hawthorn tree. There’s only one way to do that, she said. And I don’t think you have the courage for it.

  ‘I do have the courage,’ I told her. ‘I swear it will not fail me.’

  The hawthorn gave a kind of shrug, deep inside her hawthorn skin. I don’t think you know what you’re asking, it said.

  I promised the hawthorn that yes, I did.