Crow Of Thorns

by Richard Mosses

  “I don't know if you've seen the news, or the weather reports, but tonight is going to be the coldest night on record here. Below minus twenty they think.” No apologies we need to get down to business. “If we move down into the tunnels below we'll be less exposed. Our heat will stay in and if we cover up the entrances this will help. We don't have much time.”

  “That's whit ye goat us up fur? Gies a break. Ah thought it wis somethin important.”

  “Minus twenty. You think you won't freeze to death. Albert died of hypothermia only a few weeks ago when the weather was comparatively mild.”

  “He was an old man. We'll be fine. I'll just put on some socks and jumper like I did last night.”

  “Last night it was minus eight, maybe minus ten.”

  “What dae you ken aboot the cald anyway?”

  “I can tell when there's a danger. We're living behind thin plastic. It would be freezing inside a house. Seriously, do you want to die?”

  “Look we've heard what you've got to say. We're going to take our chances. We move from here they may not let us back.”

  “Okay. If any of you change your minds I'm happy to lend a hand.” I can't believe they would rather freeze than move their stuff.

  I order a large cooked breakfast from Sindi who almost faints in mock shock. “Did your aunt just die and leave you her fortune?”

  “I wish. I don't fancy my chances of making it through the night on an empty stomach.”

  “You've a few hours yet. All this'll be gone by then.”

  “I may come back for more later.”

  “Shame my sofa's already taken.”

  “That would be like staying at the Ritz.”

  “Steady on, the Hilton maybe.”

  I'm surprised how hard it is to finish the sausages, bacon, fried eggs, French toast, beans, fried mushrooms, fried tomato, tattie scone and black pudding. Sindi even brings me a fresh tea to help wash it down. I swear my stomach is sticking out like I'm pregnant.

  With the sun up, it would be warm if it wasn't for the thin wind whipping up from the Clyde. I search round the back of shops for empty boxes and newspaper.

  Corbie glides down from the blue and sits on the lid of a dumpster. “Jack Frost nippin at your toes?” I'm getting used to him just coming and going. We need our space.

  “I tried to get them to join me in the tunnel, but they weren't interested.”

  “Maybe if you made the place respectable. Put up some lights, got some nice flowers.”

  “I just feel responsible somehow, after Albert…I could've done something.”

  “There's no point cryin over spilt milk and all that.”

  “Could I ask the spirits for help?”

  “It's kinda your job.”

  “I don't know. Ask the spirits of cold to keep away or spirits of summer to warm the place up?”

  “It's worth a shot.” Corbie shrugs.

  “You're not filling me with confidence.”

  “You're not fillin me with confidence.”

  “What's the problem?”

  “Shouldn't you know this stuff by now? I mean why you askin me? Get on with it if you think it's right.”

  “If that's the best advice you're going to give me then I don't why you've bothered showing up.” But he stays and watches me pull on my shaman outfit. I'm just pulling on the jeans when I hear footsteps along the platform. Just what I need.

  “Hello, anyone here?” A woman's voice. Doesn't sound like anyone I know. I can hear a second person too.

  I finish doing up the buttons and come out of the tunnel onto the platform. A woman in a heavy quilted coat, jeans and hiking boots is coming towards me with a guy balancing a professional video camera on his shoulder. I consider heading out the back of the tunnel, but she sees me first.

  “Hello. They said I'd find you down here,” she says, offering a gloved hand, brusque and all business.

  “Hi. Who said that?” I don't think the camera's on but I'm wary anyway.

  “Some of the, er, residents up top,” she says.

  Revenge no doubt for their rude awakening. “I see. What else did they say?”

  “That you're a magician, that you cast spells and summon demons, like the neon jellyfish last night.”

  “I think they're pulling your leg.”

  “Why are you wearing that strange outfit?”

  “Who are you?”

  “I'm Shona McFadzean, Alba Today. This is Mike, my cameraman.” Mike mimes tipping a hat at me with his spare hand.

  “Alba Today?”

  “We're a digital-only news channel covering Scotland and Scottish Affairs.”

  Corbie jumps up onto my shoulder. “You don't wanna talk to reporters, man,” he says.

  “What do you broadcast the other 23 hours?” I say.

  She cracks a smile. “Adverts for shortbread and teacakes. I've heard them all before, Mister…?”

  “Nik. Nik Munro.”

  “You didn't answer my question, Nik.”

  “I'm training to be a shaman,” I say. “This is my uniform.”

  “So you are a magician.”

  “I don't cast spells or summon demons. I don't make love potions or Voodoo dolls.”

  “What do you do?”

  “What is it you want, Ms McFadzean?”

  “We were looking to interview people who had witnessed last night's event. Some of your neighbours suggested you might have seen it. One or two did go so far as to accuse you of causing it.”

  I shrug, recalling the conversation with the cops last night. “I was in my tent reading. I got a call on my phone and it cut out as my lamp started flickering. Shortly after that the guy who was crashing down here got sick and fortunately some cops had come down asking the same question.”

  “You're not very good at answering questions, are you?”

  “I'm not very good at giving you the answers you're looking for.”

  “How did you get into the shaman business? I can't imagine anyone's really been practising it for a few hundred years now.”

  Corbie chuckles like he's shifting phlegm. “Hah. Shows what she knows.”

  “Shamanism is alive and well. Sometimes the state carts kids off to the psych ward, sometimes they support it. Everyone needs help. I'm a spiritual plumber.”

  “You don't make it sound very glamorous.”

  “It's a discipline of pain and blood. No one really wants your help except when they're desperate.”

  “Like Ghostbusters?”

  I smile. “I ain't afraid of no ghosts.”

  “You see dead people?”

  “Not here, in the Living World. I don't see any spirits here at all. But they live in everything. The bricks of the tunnel, the plants here between the tracks, in that camera, or your phone.”

  “Animism, right?”

  “Shamanism is as old school as it gets,” I say. “Shamans made the cave paintings.”

  “How can you know that? They didn't write anything down.”

  I laugh. “Of course they did. They used the walls didn't they? The first graffiti artists, the first psychedelic users, the first cross-dressers. Shamans are the real bad boys, the original outsiders.”

  Mike whispers something in Shona's ear. She nods. “Look, this is fascinating and all, but it's bloody freezing down here and we've got a story to file. Any chance we could pick this up again sometime. Maybe in a café?”

  “I'll think about it. Can you leave me out of whatever you broadcast? I'm supposed to be at work right now instead of trying to keep my neighbours from turning into icicles.”

  “If you agree to an interview, then I'll think about it.”

  Crap. “Ok. When you blackmail me like that, what choice do I have?”

  “I'll be in touch.”

  “You shouldn't have done that,” Corbie says.

  “Without my job I can't eat and then there'd be no shamanic activity at all.”

  In the jungle riot of the Lower World I head towards M
idori's pool. If anyone can point me to the right place for the elemental spirits I hope it's her. I also need to find something for Janice's cough before she gets back. I'm not sure why I'm bothering to help though.

  Midori is sitting beside the river in a pool of moonlight. Some of her leaves look jet black, on others the veins are silvered. She stands and walks over. The sensuous sway of her hips brings back an echo of the pleasure that being with her brought me. She leans in close to me and I can smell a heavy intoxicating mix of woods, jasmine and rose. I feel her hand sneak beneath my coat and under my shirt. My skin tingles and I wish Corbie wasn't here.

  “Where have you been?” Midori says.

  I feel a sharp scratch across my stomach and another along my cheek. I cry out in shock and pain as I feel blood seep down my face. Corbie takes to the sky.

  I try to get away but I'm embraced by vines and roots and see fury on Midori's face.

  “In the Living World, Midori. Where do you think?” The hawthorn point in front of my eye has my whole attention.

  “We made love and then you just abandoned me.” She snarls at me.

  Corbie flaps back down but keeps his distance. “Please tell me you didn't?” he says.

  Just what I need – a spirit going all bunny-boiler on me. “Midori, I'm sorry. I wanted to come and see you, but I was busy trying to help people. This is the first chance I've had, and I'm here.”

  “Oh jeez. You did, didn't you?” Corbie says. “You fuckin idiot. Is there nothin you can't fuck up?”

  Midori changes, like sunshine appearing through a storm cloud. “You have nothing to apologise for.” The bonds snake away, the thorns retract. “I forgot that you have other responsibilities.”

  “I promise that I'll come and see you as often as I can.” Idiot why are you making promises?

  Midori licks the blood from my face. I see a Venus flytrap snap over a careless fly. A leg sticks out between the jaws. Slow digestion awaits. “What have you been doing?” she whispers in my ear.

  “I helped a man with his cancer, and now I'm hoping to prevent my neighbours from freezing tonight. And I need to find a cure for a dry cough. Do you know where I can find the spirits of winter or summer or fire or some way to keep an area warm?”

  Midori steps back and I miss her heat already. The tip of my tongue aches. “That doesn't sound like it would take up a lot of your time.”

  “I have to eat, go to work and do all of that too. Can you help me find the right spirits?”

  Midori sighs like wind through a field of wheat. “Some of these elementals work in opposition. Show too much favour or ignore one group the others may get upset. Ask Winter and Frost spirits to ease off first, see if that works. A blended tea of Echinacea, Thyme and Peppermint will help the cough. Who is it for?”

  “A woman in the camp.” I don't even think first.

  “A woman? Who is she?” The sun retreats behind the cloud. The thorns are out again. “Is she another lover of yours.”

  “She isn't my lover,” I say. “I'm helping her, like I help everyone. You can't get jealous every time I need to help fifty two per cent of humanity.”

  The sun reappears, a little shy. “I know,” she says.

  “Where will I find the Winter and Frost spirits?”

  “Head that way as far as you can go.” She points the way. I have no idea if it is North or South.

  “You could come with us?”

  “No. I couldn't.”

  “Okay. I'll see you soon.”

  In the moonlight she looks like a weeping willow on the banks of the pool.

  I walk through the jungle until it becomes a more sparse savannah, big cats watching as we pass. Herds of deer and cattle chew the long grasses. The savannah changes to a more familiar temperate landscape of rolling downs and deciduous woods and I wonder if The Hunt is nearby. All the while Corbie is nagging at me, “What were you thinkin?”

  I finally snap. “I wasn't thinking at all. It was lust. Have you been up close to her? Your mind doesn't work right.”

  “It was probably that first kiss,” Corbie says. “Your apology is gonna cost you more than you know. I told you to be careful.”

  “You also admired how I got out of the diplomatic problem too. I thought she bit my tongue but now I wonder if she didn't spike me somehow.”

  “She has a unique way of forgin alliances, I tell you.”

  “We'd already agreed to help each other before anything like that happened.”

  “Is that what your head thinks or your dick?”

  The temperate zone changes to thick boggy tundra, evergreens and stunted bushes struggle to hold on and the temperature drops. I see snow glinting in the moonlight and I wrap my coat about me but the thin wind ferrets its way past all my defences.

  Wisps of the white stuff sliver down to us on the wind before we reach the snow line. The going is tough and I don't have breath for argument or the strength to knock Corbie off his human perch. The direction, if we've stayed true, heads upward towards icy crags. If I have to climb, I'll be in trouble.

  The ice sheet is black and a deep eerie blue. A huge wall that spans a valley. The ice groans and a deep cracking sound leads to large chunks falling off and splintering on the hard ground in front of the glacier. I walk along, hunched over, expecting to be brained or impaled at any moment, until I find a tunnel. It is a blessing to be out of the wind, but I don't feel secure going deep. Inside the ice walls there are figures, I'm sure of it. Darkened outlines of shaped ice, frozen within the glacier. Frost giants, angular shard beings, a conquered army or one waiting to be set free, I don't know. But if we think this is winter now, what would it be like with spirits like this loose in the land? It is still late summer in the spirit lands.

  I can hear a high pitched chittering sound, like locusts, or the slicing of ice skates on a pond, coming from up ahead. We stumble into a large cavity, like an amphitheatre. Along the tiers a number of creatures gleam like knives. If the sound of the glacier was to come from smaller bodies of ice it would sound like this. I hope I'm not interrupting parliament.

  In the centre of the amphitheatre is a short humanoid ice sculpture, if the artist had chosen to represent the frozen bones of a glass nightmare.

  The chittering sound quietens down. The sculpture moves and points its head in our direction. I'm reminded of the aliens' heads, as this too looks like a 3D fractal geometry; ice planes with an ever smaller set of melted blobs eaten into their surfaces and edges. Are the aliens truly that, or are they spirits of some natural process?

  I clear my throat. “My apologies for interrupting. I was looking for help from the spirits of Winter and Frost.”

  There is a hiss from the small fractal ice figure, like snow grains blowing over rock. In a voice like cracking glass the figure responds. “What do you wants warmblood?”

  “I would like an area in the Living World to be left alone for the next two days.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible. If you want to help you can. If not I'll find another way, but someone else will get the tribute.”

  “You offer tributes? To us?”

  “Of course. The favour of a powerful shaman is useful, surely?” I turn to Corbie and ask in a whisper “Why don't they expect tribute? I thought everyone wanted something round here.”

  “I don't think anyone usually comes here looking for them to make significant changes. Weather patterns shiftin have long term consequences, the butterfly effect, you know, and they're showy.”

  “You're saying we shouldn't do this?”

  “I'm sayin there'll be big after effects. And it may cost you.”

  “What are you offering us?” In my head he's Jack Frost, if Frost was a vicious cutpurse.

  What would ice creatures want? Do they desire warmth or symbols of cold? What am I prepared to sacrifice for people who won't listen in an act that will draw even more attention to me if I'm not careful? While I think this through I feel the pressure
of interest from the assembled elementals and I'm amazed to feel beads of sweat appear on my brow. It's the usual dilemma – I don't want to give away too much. I start with something trivial. “I will sacrifice fine wine and liquor – I will offer you libation once a week for three months.”

  “That is nothing. You want us to act, to change much.”

  “No I want you to change a little. Make it not so cold. Clearly if it was not cold at all this would be very hard for you to do.”

  “It is not so difficult.”

  Ha! These guys must be out of practice. “If it is of so little effort to you, why should it be at great cost to me?” Frost screams and I have to cover my ears. Some of the elementals look restless. They rub the shards that are their forelimbs together, making a keening ringing. “How about a small animal sacrifice once a month for four months?” I say.

  “This is not enough,” Frost says. “We need hot blood.”

  “The sacrifices will give you hot blood.”

  “We wants blood now.”

  “That's a big ask,” Corbie whispers in my ear. “Are you sure this is gonna be worth it?”

  How much blood is enough? “If I give it to you now, how do I know you will do as I ask?”

  “A pact is a pact, Shaman. Your blood, our words.”

  I don't know how this will work, or what it will do to me back in the Living World. I step forward and open my thumb on one of Frost's edges. A smear of darkness is left on him. The blood wells up and drips onto the floor of the cavern hissing where it melts the ice. Soon a small pool forms lined with frozen blood. My thumb just keeps bleeding, big heavy drops splash into the pool. I've had bad cuts before, I sliced my hand on a tin lid once, but I've never needed to get stitches. This just keeps on dripping. I feel light headed and sink to my knees.

  “Enough,” Corbie crawks at me.

  I feel the restlessness amongst the elementals. I realise my eyes are shut. The pool looks like a small lake to me now. I come round and sit up lifting my hand out of the blood lake with my other hand. It looks blue. I push the thumb against the frozen ground and it congeals the blood.