Books by CY Jones
Out for Blood Series
Revenge
Vengeance
Justice Coming Soon
The Crown of Blood and Frost Series
The Lost Heir
Tainted Throne
The Reformed Series
Diary of a Reformed Mean Girl
Diary of a True Alpha
Jewels Cafe
Amethyst
About the Author
CY Jones is a retired Army Veteran who lives in the suburb of South Carolina with her three children and two German Shepherds, Skittles and Raiden. In her spare time, she likes to dream about supernaturals and the stories the voices in her head telling her to write. When she’s not writing she’s busy chasing after her children, her dreams, and the stars.
The Ravens Of Draiochta
By
Tiegan Clyine
The Ravens of Draiochta
I’ve always liked ravens. Apart from their obvious beauty - glossy black feathers for the win - they’re staggeringly intelligent. They have documented abilities to problem solve on a level that rivals humans. Every time I look a raven in the eye, I know that someone smart is looking back.
That’s why I was so happy to find that Harmonville, the town I was consigned to with my mother after my parents broke up, hosted an unkindness of ravens larger than any I’ve ever seen. They’re everywhere, perching on houses, walking in the roads and making you wait for them as they cross the street. I noticed that a particular trio spent a lot of time in my yard, so I decided to make friends.
The three of them were pretty extraordinary as ravens go. Two were huge, easily the biggest birds I’ve ever seen, which is unusual for ravens. I mean, they’re not small birds, but these were the size of eagles, or maybe even eagle owls.
I should mention that I’ve got a thing for birds of prey. Always have. I’ve studied them since I was a little girl, reading every book the local library had about them. My favorites are the corvids, which is the group that includes ravens, crows, jays, rookdaws, and magpies. They’re smart, like I already said, and I always fantasized about turning into a raven and flying away.
Pretty dumb, huh? It’s funny the things you think about when your home life is a flat-out screaming disaster.
I guess it was because of these fantasies that these ravens really stood out to me when I saw them. Two of these birds were huge. The other one was big, but not as big as his companions. He had a white feather in each wing, which was pretty striking, and it made me wonder if he’d been injured at some point and lost the pigmentation in those quills. It saddened me to think that anyone could hurt anything as magnificent as this bird. Since he was smaller than his two buddies, it made me think that they were acting as his bodyguards.
I started giving them lunch meat out of the sandwiches that my mom would make for me to take to school. At first, they were really nervous about me, and they wouldn’t come close, so I’d have to throw the scraps into the grass twenty feet away. They’d come down and grab it, gobbling up the honey ham or turkey or whatever thing was between the dry husks my mom called her homemade bread. After they’d eaten, they’d fly away, but they watched me to see if I’d throw more. And I would. Each time I tossed them some food, I’d make sure it landed closer to me, until finally, after weeks of patience, they finally came up and took the food out of my hand.
I felt like I’d won the lottery the first time the crow with the white feathers ate out of my hand. He watched my face the whole time, super cautious and nervous, which reinforced my conviction that the poor thing had been abused. His buddies always stayed between him and me, so when he decided to finally take the meat out of my fingertips, they were squawking at him. It was like they were warning him to stay back. I didn’t try to touch them, though, even though I desperately wanted to. I’d feed them, they’d eat, and then they’d leave, and I’d come back and do the same thing the next afternoon. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Being the new kid in school is already challenging, so when the other kids found out that I was spending my afternoons trying to befriend wild ravens, I knew I was in for it. The local bully, Jeremiah Tompkins, didn’t disappoint. His dad was the preacher at the town’s only church, which of course meant that Jeremiah was the biggest asshole in the world. That seems to be the only kind of son that preachers have - dedicated rebels, jerks with a hatred for the world and everybody in it, trying to elevate themselves because their fathers keep them so far down at heel.
I was in the park after school one day in early spring, and the raven with white feathers and his two companions had just come within arm’s reach of me. A rock thrown from behind me scattered them, and they flew away, crying with indignation at the betrayal. I snatched up the rock and turned around, ready to smash whoever had thrown it in the face.
It was Jeremiah, of course. He was laughing so hard that his obnoxious face was turning red.
“Spooked you!” he shouted. “Why you messin’ with them crows, Maysie?”
“They’re ravens,” I informed him before I flung the rock back at him, narrowly missing his head. He dodged at just the right moment to keep himself alive… more’s the pity. “Why did you do that?”
“Ravens, crows… they ain’t nothin’ good.”
“Says you.”
“Says ever’one.” He shook his head. “My daddy’s right - you ain’t got the brains God gave an addled squirrel. What you tryin’ to do, get ‘em as pets?”
I picked up my books and stomped away. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“So teach me.”
“Teach you? Are you fucking serious?”
He clucked his tongue. “Oh, that ain’t ladylike. Boys don’t like girls who cuss.”
“I don’t care what boys like,” I grumbled. He was following me out of the park. I could hear his feet crunching on the gravel of the sidewalk as I marched down toward my house.
“You should. You ain’t never gonna get a man, messin’ with fairy birds.”
“Fairy birds?” I shook my head and resolved not to turn around. “You’re an idiot.”
“At least I ain’t out here tryin’ ta get rabies, feedin’ wild birds.”
“Birds can’t give you rabies.”
“They can if you eat ‘em.”
I wanted to hit him in the face with my bookbag until he stopped talking. “I’m not going to eat them, dumb ass.”
“What you gonna do with ‘em, then?”
I stopped, and he kept walking, coming around until he was right up in my face. I gave him my fiercest glare and tightened my grip on my bag.
“I swear to God, Jeremiah Tompkins, if you don’t get out of my way….”
He laughed and stepped just a little bit to the side, still close enough to harass me but no longer blocking the sidewalk.
“I know what you’re doin’,” he claimed. “You’re tryin’ to catch them birds as familiars.”
I stopped and stared at him in disbelief. “What?”
“My granny says you and your mama are witches. An’ witches get them wild black fairy birds to do their biddin’.”
It was all I could do not to laugh in his face. “My bidding,” I mocked. “Do you even know what that word means?”
“It means you get ‘em to do whatever you tell ‘em and to cast your spells and do other wicked things for you. My daddy says women from the city are easy and fallen, and that y’all sold your souls to the Devil to get your power.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, right. My mom has a lot of power, working at a grocery store.”
“She got put up as office manager right away ‘stead of bein’ a cashier first. That ain’t normal.”
“It is when she has a business degree and already ran a company three sizes bigger than your grandpa’s stupid store,” I retorted, pushing past him.
The crow with the white feathers streaked by overhead, his two companions behind him so they were flying in a wedge formation. They called out as they
passed, and one of them dropped a rock that hit Jeremiah squarely on the top of his empty head. He yelped and rubbed the spot where the stone had struck him, glaring up at the sky.
“Dang!” he exclaimed. “I’m too late. Y’all already got ‘em doin’ your spells! You are a witch!”
He walked quickly to cross the street, watching the sky above him warily. The birds squawked and trilled at him, then wheeled around and went back to the park. I swear the biggest of the two big bodyguard birds watched me as he flew by.
The next day was Saturday, and my mom left early as always to work her sixth 10-hour shift that week at the grocery store. The store where she worked, Tompkins Foods, had a big sign on the front door that said: “Closed on Sunday - CHURCH IS OPEN.” All the Tompkins were sanctimonious pricks, and I hated every one of them. They owned practically everything in Harmonville, though, and my mom always said it was a bad idea to offend the people in charge. So we went to church all day on Sunday like everybody else who lived there, and we all bought our groceries from Tompkins Foods, fueled our cars at Tompkins Stop ‘n Go, and ate dinner on Fridays at Tompkins Family Restaurants. I’m still amazed that they hadn’t gotten around to renaming the town after themselves, but I guess they were working up to it. Something about needing to get votes at the state level. I have no idea.
Anyway, it was Saturday. My schoolwork was already finished - I’d wrapped it all up the night before because what my teachers knew could fit into a notebook with half the pages missing. My classes were hardly a challenge. I had already worked ahead and finished all of the assignments in two of those classes all the way through to the end of the year, and that left only math where I had to do the worksheets as they were assigned. My other classes were even more lightweight and ridiculous, and I was perpetually annoyed that I’d been forced to take Typing and Home Ec like all of the other female students while the boys were allowed to take Shop. I knew my way around all my dad’s tools, and I could probably build rings around Mr. Ellis, the shop teacher. At least I still had all ten of my fingers. Mr. Ellis had cut his own thumb off the year before, and he loved to tell us the story while waving the stump around.
Like all the other men in Harmonville, he made me sick.
I sat on the back stoop of the house where we lived. My mom was renting it, since we didn’t have enough money to buy. My dad hadn’t been ordered to pay alimony or child support in the divorce, so he certainly didn’t sprain anything trying to keep us comfortable. It was a shotgun house, which meant you could shoot a shotgun at the front door and the bullet would go out the back door without hitting anything in between. It was only about twelve feet wide and four rooms deep, shaped like a shoebox with no hallways and no privacy. The front porch opened into the living room, and a door from there led to the bedroom my mother and I shared. The bedroom was connected to the kitchen, one corner of which had a toilet enclosed on three sides with pressboard walls and a door that didn’t reach all the way to the floor. Then the back door led out to the stoop, and that’s where I sat. The ceilings were high which was meant to make the air circulate, but it only meant that the flies could get out of reach of our swatters. The house was cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and miserable all the time.
I hated it.
I was eating a biscuit that was left over from dinner and staring out at the garden behind the house. It was ridiculous puffery to call the patch of grass behind our house a “yard,” but it had a little wire fence around it, and my mother had already marked out a square section where we would grow vegetables during the summer to augment our meager food supply. She was planning to plant corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and maybe a few beans. I had seen the ground, though, and what wasn’t rock was clay, and there was no way in hell we’d be able to eke any crops out of it. Still, the garden would be my job while she worked at the store, and I’d do my best to make it yield.
As I stared at the future site of the garden, the three ravens landed in the grass. They were looking at me strangely, and they were all holding things in their beaks. I watched, amazed, as they hopped closer to the porch where I was sitting.
“Hi, guys,” I greeted. “I’m sorry about that idiot who threw that rock at you.”
The bird with the white feathers cocked his head at me, then dropped what he was holding. It rolled toward me across the weathered wood of the bottom step until it came to rest against my foot. It was a fifty-cent piece, and it landed with JFK’s face pressed against my instep. The other ravens approached, too, and they also dropped coins - a dime and a nickel, respectively.
“Wow. Thanks, guys. Hold up.”
I scooped up the coins and took them inside. The refrigerator was mostly empty, but there were still some slices of lunch meat there in a plastic bag. I grabbed the meat and went back out to the stoop, hoping the birds would still be there.
They had waited for me, which was amazing, and they looked at me expectantly when I emerged from the house. When the screen door banged closed, they hunkered down for a moment but didn’t fly away. I crouched on the bottom step and held out the shreds of turkey.
“Here you go, guys. Thank you for my presents.”
The one with the white feathers crept up cautiously and took the turkey from my hands, and after a hesitation, the others did, too, following my example. His dark eyes glinted up at me as he swallowed his treat. I folded my arms across my knobby kneecaps.
“That’s all I have for now,” I told them. “I’ll see if I can get some more later.”
Someone’s car backfired down the street, and they flew away, startled by the sound. It had been an awful lot like a gunshot.
The birds came back every day from then on. I gave them lunch meat, and they brought me coins and shiny rocks and other gifts. When the garden went in, they would keep me company while I weeded, hopping up and down the short rows and making little chirpy sounds at me that I chose to take as encouragement. I named them White Feather, Julius, and Brutus. They seemed to like their names, and they even started to answer to them. They’d stick around the house and seemed to like hanging out in the oak tree whose limbs shaded the front porch.
In mid-July, Mr. Burney, who lived four houses down from us, was found dead in his house. Rumor had it that he’d killed himself. Rumor also had it that Reverend Tompkins, who was our landlord, had shot him for witchcraft. Most people believed the first story, and it was enough to keep him out of the town cemetery. No suicides could be laid to rest there by order of the church elders, you see. No witches, either. I’d seen the goofer dust that Mr. Burney laid around his property line for protection, and I believed the second tale. It was enough to make me worry after all of Jeremiah’s idiot talk about witches and the ways of city women, but the ravens kept watch over me. Even though it wasn’t rational, I felt like they were keeping me safe.
The garden, as I had predicted, failed to grow. By the Fourth of July, the corn was barely to my mid-shins, and it should have been knee-high by then. My mom brought home a bag of special fertilizer that she said Mrs. Washington, the chief baker, swore by. It smelled like ash and sulfur, but we followed Mrs. Washington’s directions and worked it into the garden soil by the light of the full moon. The whole time, I was afraid the neighbors might have been watching, but Mom assured me that they were all asleep. She sounded like she knew, and I didn’t figure there was anything wrong with fertilizing a garden after dark, as weird as that was, so I just kept my mouth shut and did the work.
The bedroom that we shared was barely big enough for our dressers and our twin beds, and it was hot that night, but we had a fan in the window beside Mom’s bed. The wire blade guard was bent and rubbed against the fan as it turned, so the little machine made an unholy whining and banging at higher speeds, so we had to keep the fan set on low. Mom was closer to the fan, so she was cooled by it, but it was so weak that its air never reached as far as me. I was hot and I was tired, and even though I’d washed them my hands still smelled of the strange fertilizer. I couldn’t slee
p. My mom, who worked far too hard, didn’t have that trouble, and she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
I lay awake and stared at the high ceiling, watching the shadows play across the white paint. It was just leaves moving in the ivy that clung to the side of the house, but sometimes it seemed like the shadows I saw belonged to ravens, and that thought helped me finally enter dreamland.
The ravens kept coming, and they kept bringing me presents. It was our exchange. I would give them lunch meat or scraps from dinner, and they would bring me things. They brought me beads and feathers, bottle caps and scuffed-up washers from mystery machines. Then they started to bring cash.
The first time they did it, I thought I was seeing things. I was sitting on the stoop, because that’s where I always sat, and I was re-reading a novel I’d already gone through twice before. White Feather landed on the railing and gurgled at me, a sound I’d come to recognize meant, “Look at me.”
I did, and he rewarded me by dropping a crisp $50 bill in my lap.
Julius brought a $20.
Brutus? Another $5.
“Are you shitting me?” I breathed.
White Feather shook his wings and his head as if he was saying, ‘No, we are not shitting you. This money is real.”
I gave them extra chicken.
The next day, they came back again with more cash, and we continued the exchange. I would give them an entire breast of chicken, stealing from our leftovers or from the food Mom had intended for that night, and they would bring me money. The third time it happened, when my mom was about to beat me bloody for wasting food, I showed her what they were doing, and I gave her the cash they’d given me. By then, it totaled nearly $200. She held the cash in her hands, her eyes wide, and when she finally spoke, her voice was hushed.
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