What the Raven Saw Read online

  Vigilance was everything with his treasure. The raven had his own alarms and devices rigged for when business took him elsewhere, but even at home he was always on guard, especially with the weatherhen.

  That was another of her bad qualities. She was a vexatious flirt, and sneaky, but she was also very greedy. The raven knew she was just waiting for the right moment to break her pretence and scurry down to his hoard of treasure. And she wouldn’t creak and screech, like the show she was putting on now. She’d be as silent as rain running from the graves.

  The raven flew up, hovering over the gables, and fixed her with a fierce eye. ‘It reeks of rust and metal down here,’ he said, hoping to trip her up.

  ‘Squeeeeeak-haw, squeeeeeak-haw,’ laughed the weatherhen.

  Typical. She never owned up to anything, only laughed away her guilt.

  ‘If I find you down here again, I’ll fix you so you don’t know north from west.’

  The weatherhen just spun herself around in a dizzying flash of circles. The raven felt sick, and dropped his wings a little so he could lower himself back to his nest. As per usual, he got stuck trying to get in through the loosened shutter.

  ‘A witch as well,’ he said, sucking in his stomach. ‘Sorcery, slyness, shame. I won’t have it in my home.’

  He snapped up one of the jewel beetles; it had a satisfying flavour of dead mouse. Then he went over to his treasure and lay down at the bottom of it, feeling its security, its comforting bulk. He relaxed his wings, closed his eyes, and conjured up his precious hymns, the sound of Father Cadman’s voice filling the church.

  He woke, a few hours later. It had just gone dark. Someone was crying into the gathering gloom.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The raven heaved himself up and staggered out from his nest. He felt fuzzy and out of sorts. His wings were stiff, and he wheeled ungracefully for a few spans, hoping the weatherhen couldn’t see. When he’d got himself straightened out, he cast about for the source of the crying.

  It was the little girl.

  She was down there, the one from this afternoon, the one who’d called him a maggot. She sat on the edge of her brother’s plot, only just filled in, looking down the length of her legs. Her skinny shoulders shook with each sob.

  Perched on the little brick wall, watching her, was a ghost. The raven sighed. Great. He really didn’t like it when the dead took it upon themselves to roam about freely in the land of the living, as if they’d never even left. They were so flimsy and shifty, and their shapes played tricks on his eyes. Worse, they were the biggest moaners he’d ever met.

  ‘Just don’t know when to give up,’ he said to himself, swooping low.

  The ghost looked up and saw the raven. It was a boy, older than the girl by a few years. ‘Can you help me?’ he asked the raven. ‘That’s my sister. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You can’t do anything,’ the raven said. ‘You’re dead.’

  ‘Maybe you –’ began the boy, but the raven knew what was coming.

  ‘You can get that idea out of your head. I can’t do anything. I’m just a bird.’

  ‘You could talk to her,’ the boy said. ‘I know you can. Please. Tell her you saw me and that I forgive her. I don’t want Mackenzie moping around like this. Tell her to get up and go home.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ the raven said. It was an unspoken rule among his kind – and one the raven strictly adhered to – that birds must never let on they could speak and understand humans. At least, humans who were alive. What a circus it would become then. If humans knew that birds could hold a conversation with them, and not just in chirrups and squawks, then there would surely be no rest for the raven. He’d be as easy a target as an earwig without a pincer.

  Besides, you would have to be the raven’s equal in human intelligence for him to maintain any sort of worthwhile conversation.

  The boy looked at his sister. ‘We had a fight, just before I . . . you know.’

  ‘Died,’ said the raven.

  The boy cleared his throat. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We had a fight over whose turn it was to do the stupid washing up, and then I went out for a walk, even though it was dark and I shouldn’t have. But I was so mad. And then the car came and I didn’t notice it because I was still mad, see, and then . . .’

  He paused, and the raven had the discretion to look away.

  ‘Anyway, I died when we were in the middle of a fight. A stupid fight, over dirty dishes. Mackenzie thinks it’s her fault, what happened. I can tell. So I just wanna let her know that it wasn’t, and that I’m not mad, only I’m not really getting anywhere. Because, well, because . . .’

  ‘Because you’re dead,’ said the raven.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the boy, ‘because I’m dead.’ He stared down at himself and his lip started to quiver, and the raven wasn’t having any of that.

  ‘You know the groundskeeper relieved himself, when he was filling in your grave,’ the raven told him. ‘He did. Right in the middle of the job. Dropped his pants and away he went.’

  For a moment the boy looked horrified. But then he grinned, just a little bit, and the raven felt it much more appealing than the tortured look he’d been going for before.

  ‘That’s quite funny, actually,’ said the boy. ‘Mackenzie would have liked that, I reckon. Had a few laughs. Least I’ll have the greenest patch of grass in the whole cemetery.’

  The raven sniffed. ‘I’ll have it be said that I didn’t approve. Disgusting. No respect.’

  ‘Aww, it’s a bit funny,’ said the boy, and he giggled.

  The raven didn’t understand him. He would have no one relieving themselves over his dead bones, thank you very much. To do that kind of thing was shameful. If someone was dead they should be left in peace. The raven had heard something of that very nature spoken in his church – let the dead rest in peace. Not rest in pee. Besides, it just gave ghosts something else to whine and groan about.

  It was a hard slog, sometimes, having a connection to the dead. Sure, it was a noble quality, and it went back years and years, steeped in lore: Never look a raven in the eye, for it will steal your soul and fly away with it; you should always cross yourself when seeing a raven, for they will carry your image into the land of the dead, where death will mark you. On and on it went, the whole mythology about ravens and the dead. He was a bird of distinction. Heritage. Books had been written about him.

  And yet so many of his kind squandered that ability away. They had no idea, or just didn’t care. So much inborn ability, so much prestige wasted. Not including crows, of course. Crows were always trying to muscle in on raven territory, steal the mythology for themselves. The raven wouldn’t have a bar of it. Crows were disgusting. They sounded like stupefied frogs. Always twitching and carrying on while they were flying. Drab feathers too – none of the raven’s indigo tones. Stubby little beaks and tails and lacking any of the refinement of the raven’s superior wingspan. And, most importantly, a crow’s lesser size had a rather dramatic impact on their brain capacity as well. But the worst thing was there was never just one – they always came in a flock. Absolutely foul. If crows came near his church, the raven flicked lichen pellets at them until they flew away.

  Crows, pigeons, ghosts moping about with unfinished business. Always bothering him. Luckily, hardly anyone was buried in his cemetery now, so the raven didn’t have to put up with too much of it. He just wanted peace. He just wanted to be left alone with his hymns and his church. That was all he asked for. It wasn’t so much.

  Down on the ground, the little girl kicked up her feet in a rather ungainly display of temper. Even the ghost-boy flinched.

  ‘This stinks,’ she said. ‘God sucks. I hate him.’

  The raven gasped. He was positive that was a sin. The raven had listened to Father Cadman’s sermons (it was inevitable, waiting around for the hymns to start), and he was pretty sure that when it came to superior beings, this God person was pretty high up. Much like himself. God was not a man to be
hated, especially by sulky faced, obnoxious little girls.

  Father Cadman liked to say, ‘we must have faith in the greater plan.’ The raven didn’t know exactly what this greater plan was, but when the priest said that, the raven always got chills. Father Cadman would start to quiver and little flames flickered in his eye and then his voice would get a tremor in it.

  When he raised his arms to the roof of the church, the raven sometimes pretended he was the one being worshipped. Fitting really, because it was quite clear to the raven that he was a singular creature in every sense of the word.

  The raven watched with interest as the ghost-boy tried to reach out to his sister and touch her arm. Every time his hand passed through the boy grew more determined and upset, until even his pallid cheeks had a bloom of frustration.

  His sister got up, dusting the seat of her pants. ‘Well, I gotta go,’ she told the tuft of grass next to her white sneakers. They had silvery threads woven through the laces and, although he’d never tell her, the raven coveted them for himself.

  ‘Mum’s gonna kill me if she knows I’ve been out after dark. She’s worse than ever, you know, now you’re not here. Can’t even have a bath and she thinks I’m gonna drown. I’m not a baby.’ She kicked the ground and the loose dirt puffed up over her sneakers, dirtying the laces.

  What a waste.

  ‘I’ll see you real soon, okay, Toddy?’ the girl told her brother. ‘Guess it won’t be a problem because you got nowhere else to go.’

  Haven’t, thought the raven. Haven’t got anywhere else to go. Appalling English. I hope her brother’s not like that or it will do my head in.

  ‘All right, see you later then,’ said the girl again, and she shuffled her feet a bit more and set off through the churchyard, hands crammed into the pockets of her jeans.

  Back at his grave the ghost-boy shifted, sliding for a moment in and out of the moon.

  ‘Toddy?’ said the raven.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the boy. ‘Todd Trebuchet. That’s my little sister, Mackenzie.’

  ‘So I figured,’ said the raven. ‘But Toddy?’

  ‘I’d like it real good, Mr Raven, sir, if you would help me,’ said the boy. His tone remained polite, but his face had started to crumple.

  The raven liked being called ‘sir’, but it took more than that to win him over.

  ‘It’s out of my claws,’ he said. ‘If I went around helping every dead person, I’d never have time to live for myself. It’s impossible. I won’t be conned into it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said the boy, this Todd Trebuchet, hanging his head.

  ‘Good,’ said the raven, and he nodded. ‘Good. Well, I’d best be off then. Got things to attend to. Don’t go walking through walls or anything like that. It gives me a dreadful fright.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy. He didn’t raise his head.

  The raven relented, just a little bit. ‘And stay away from those pigeons that hang about here,’ he warned. ‘They’ll give you an earache. And their personal hygiene is appalling.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the boy, but he seemed to have forgotten about the raven already.

  The raven knew a thing or two about birds that hung about when they weren’t wanted. He located the closest gust of wind and veered away to his belltower, admiring his shadow on the ground below.

  It was a bit peculiar, though. He didn’t know why he’d said that about the pigeons. It was almost like warning the boy, giving him a friendly heads-up. The raven didn’t usually bother with those sorts of feelings – empathy, consideration, concern. Nobody ever showed them to the raven. So he didn’t see why he should show them to anyone else.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The raven was sitting up in the church eaves, listening to the church choir being led by the wonderful Father Cadman. That was humankind’s single redeeming factor – they sure knew how to sing. Every time they opened their mouths, the raven found himself having horrible sentimental thoughts. Thoughts he believed he’d long since gotten over.

  He felt like he did the first time, as a very young bird, he’d poked his head out of the nest and seen the day wake up and break through the branches and the foliage of the trees. Or when he’d seen an enormous sea eagle, far from home, resting on top of an old stone cross. When it had launched itself into space the sky had seemed to tear itself apart. It was exactly the same feeling as the first time the raven had caught his first rogue gust of wind and thought he could soar and soar and there would never be an end to it.

  The choir sang many different songs, some without music and some with the big old organ haunting every rise and fall of their voices. They sang songs where they all clapped and hollered and stamped their feet, and the underside of the raven’s wings got all tingly and itchy. They sang songs that made the raven’s chest puff out in unnameable pride – songs made for singing in a big, wide-open church. And they sang simple, pretty songs: quiet songs, with the faintest whisper of music.

  The whispering songs made the raven feel heavy and light at the same time. They carried a sadness in them that could haunt a bird for the rest of its life.

  It was only a small choir, about thirty people, but when the whole congregation joined in it could have been the biggest and best choir in the entire world. Whoever this God was, the raven was pretty sure he’d be like that sea eagle for everybody to love him so much.

  Sometimes the raven wondered what it would be like to be loved like that. But then he thought of his treasure, and his belltower, and his high-standing as an avian species of great renown. He didn’t need anything else. He wasn’t like a pigeon, all needy and dirty and common. Now that was attention-seeking of the worst sort.

  There were kids down there today, and they really got up the raven’s beak. Father Cadman had his usual hymns, the ones he played almost every mass, but he always made sure there was a special one, the centre-piece, much like the necklace of glittering jewels that took prime position at the top of the raven’s treasure pile.

  But the kids, two or three of them, were crawling around in the aisles and making obnoxious little noises as though the whole service was in their honour and everyone should be charmed by their happy babble. The raven tried to block them out, but they kept drawing his eye.

  He didn’t want to be unfair, but they were ruining it. He bobbed and twitched about in irritation. One even had the cheek to whine, loudly, that he was bored. And afterwards, of course, they would shriek their way through the graveyard, trampling all over the best worm-picking spots. The worms would be so frightened they wouldn’t come up for days.

  The choir was on about Jacob’s ladder today, singing over the top of each other in a way that made the whole church seem rich and warm.

  We are (we are)

  Climbing (climbing)

  Jacob’s Ladder

  Brothers, sisters, all.

  Every (every)

  Rung goes (rung goes)

  Higher and higher

  Brothers, sisters, all.

  But he couldn’t enjoy it. All he could think about was that this Jacob’s ladder had better not be put anywhere near his belltower, because he wouldn’t have people coming up it to nose about his treasure. He didn’t care if they were brothers or sisters or how high the rungs went – if anyone so much as looked at his treasure, he’d rush at them with his beak snapping. Maybe he could teach the weatherhen a lesson in the process.

  Eventually the song ended and so did the mass, and the raven watched as Father Cadman drifted down the centre aisle. His hands were clasped over his stomach and he looked like that Moses fellow he often talked about, parting the sea. People turned to smile at him and follow him out.

  The raven swallowed the feeling that no one ever smiled at or followed him. What he needed was for people to fear him. With fear came respect, and that was more important than being liked. You got nowhere by being liked.

  The raven hopped about up on his crossbeam, humming to himself while he waited for Father Cadman to return. The altar b
oy came and took away the shiny cups and blew out the candles. Waxy smoke wafted through the air.

  It was the smell of long ago, when he was a very young bird, out in the mountains and all on his own. Perched in the trees at night he would watch sparks shoot up from faraway campfires, the idle blur of quiet conversation, the gentle crackle of leaves and twigs. And it would smell like safety, warmth. He used to fall asleep smelling that, snug in the security of it.

  But it was silly to get all nostalgic over past things. Nothing was ever as good as you remembered it.

  Father Cadman still wasn’t back. The raven took a cautious look around the church and then flew down to the old organ at the side of the altar, landing with his claws sunk into the worn leather seat. He struck a key with his beak and then looked around guiltily as it boomed out. But no one came rushing over, so the raven made himself comfortable

  ‘We are,’ he began to sing, ‘climbing . . . Jacob’s Ladder.’

  His voice buckled on the A in ladder and he croaked in impatience. It was his own fault because he hadn’t done any warm-up scales.

  It was a long time ago, but the raven remembered it clearly – how Father Cadman had once caught the raven practising hymns. That was what sparked their relationship. It wasn’t ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ or ‘I’ll Fly Away’, but ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’, and the raven was at the organ one Sunday after mass.

  Somebody had left the hymn book open and the raven had been trying to tap at the ivory keys with his claws so he could practise the melody. He’d just got to six white horses standing side by side and was getting into a fluster because he had to sing the bass and the alto and the echo-refrain all at once. He also had a tendency to sound like a frog every time he got above middle C, and he was trying to rectify it when Father Cadman walked out from the confessional booth.

  At first the raven almost defecated in fright, and that would have been even more embarrassing then getting caught singing human songs. Humans weren’t supposed to know that birds could speak, and the raven felt a little bit sick to his stomach.