The Crow Folk Page 9

  Faye thought about Mrs Teach’s warning to keep things to herself, and young Herbert Finch’s humiliation after telling folk what he’d seen.

  ‘I found her book, Dad,’ Faye said. ‘The one with all the magic and the spells and sketches of runes and creatures and demons and such. You know the one I mean.’

  Terrence said nothing, but Faye could see a new fear in his eyes. He started to shake his head.

  ‘She done that book for me, Dad. It says so in the front. Why did she go to all that trouble for nothing but a silly fancy?’

  Terrence gripped Faye by her shoulders. ‘Put it back,’ he said. ‘Put it back in the trunk, lock it away and never, ever look at it again.’

  ‘She said it was for me, Dad. When the time is right.’

  ‘Promise me.’ Terrence’s voice cracked. ‘Please, Faye, this is very important.’

  Faye had never known her father to be scared of anything. If there was ever any trouble he would brush it off with a joke or a groan, but holding her now he looked proper petrified.

  ‘Everyone tells me to pipe down,’ Faye said, her voice calm. ‘One of our neighbours is wanted by a bunch of crow folk after he had ructions with ’em and birds fall dead from the sky, but no one wonders why.’ She puffed out her cheeks. ‘Yes, Dad, I’ll stop going on about magic and witches. I won’t embarrass you or myself any more. I’ll stay inside with a bag on my head if it makes you happy, but sometimes I feel like I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t lost their marbles.’

  ‘Promise me.’ Terrence still held her tight.

  Faye shrugged him off. ‘I’ll put the book away, Dad. I promise. Me and magic and witchery are done.’

  16 PUMPKINHEAD’S QUESTIONS

  Suky drifted between dreams and waking. When the birds started to fall, Suky’s world had gone dark, but now light and life were slowly returning and she followed her Pumpkinhead like a woozy duckling.

  The poacher Craddock was here at the abbey on his knees, dead birds lying around him. He had the look of a cornered fox and he raised a hand in surrender.

  ‘Craddock, oh, Craddock, how wise you are to return.’ Pumpkinhead’s voice was kind with an edge like a knife blade. ‘You still haven’t answered my question, friend.’

  Suky watched Craddock’s face crumple as he tried to recall his last encounter with them.

  ‘Question?’ Craddock shook his head.

  ‘The names of your witches,’ Pumpkinhead reminded him. ‘There is a book. It whispers to me, though soon it will sing loud and clear. A book of magic and it will be in the hands of these witches.’

  Suky’s thoughts tingled at the mention of magic and witches. This new life, with the crow folk and Pumpkinhead, was all so floaty. Moments came and went like puffy white clouds in the summer sky, and not for the first time, she wondered if she was dreaming.

  ‘Tell me where it is,’ Pumpkinhead said, looming over Craddock, ‘and we shall be merciful.’

  Suky saw the flicker of recognition on Craddock’s face. And if she could see it in her addled state, then so could Pumpkinhead.

  ‘You have seen the book, haven’t you?’ Pumpkinhead took Craddock’s head in his hands. ‘Where is it? Tell me.’

  The others closed in around Craddock and Suky followed. They all looked like Suky felt: half-awake and gormless.

  ‘I remember now.’ Craddock sneered at Pumpkinhead. ‘I remember your question. And my answer stays the same. To hell with you and to hell with your straw men and to hell with your questions.’ Craddock got to his feet and made fists. He was weak, but Suky was in no state to defend herself and neither were her siblings. A few punches from this thug and they were done for. And what if he had his matches? Would there be more burnings? Suky took a step back, and she wasn’t the only one.

  Pumpkinhead lunged forward, his hands a blur as he gripped the sides of Craddock’s head and squeezed harder. The man’s eyes bulged and he gasped for breath, falling back to his knees, his arms thrashing.

  ‘Let me see,’ Pumpkinhead said. ‘That’s it, let me in. Good. Yes.’

  Craddock went limp, a lopsided smile on his face. Pumpkinhead rested his forehead against Craddock’s and, for a long time, neither of them moved.

  Suky sank deeper into her lazy daydream. She remained standing, though the very idea of talking or moving about was ambitious at best. Pumpkinhead began to slowly sway his head from side to side. Suky and the other crow folk moved with him, and she could somehow feel his gloved fingers pressing on Craddock’s head, seeping into his thoughts like a cloud of lemon cordial in water. She was in Craddock, the crow folk, Pumpkinhead. All were joined as one.

  Suky’s mind opened like the petals of a flower and she gave herself to Pumpkinhead. Her strength became his, and Craddock’s thoughts dissolved to nothing.

  Pumpkinhead gasped, released Craddock from his grip and the spell was broken.

  Craddock remained on his knees, his eyes fixed on some unseen spot in the distance.

  ‘There is… a book.’ Pumpkinhead’s words came slow and between breaths. ‘He has seen it… though I know not where. And there is a witch in the village.’ Pumpkinhead’s smile stretched across his face. ‘I know her of old.’

  Suky’s mind was almost her own again, and she began to wonder how much of what had just happened was real. A euphoria came over her, along with a clarity and an energy that made her feel reborn. Suky thought she could jump from here to the Moon and back.

  ‘But first, brothers and sisters,’ Pumpkinhead said, raising his arms high, ‘we must do right by this man and give him a fair trial. What say you?’

  The crow folk cheered and swarmed over Craddock, grabbing his limbs and holding him aloft.

  ‘Let us return him to the barn where we first met,’ Pumpkinhead cried. ‘I can think of no finer courtroom.’

  * * *

  ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’ Faye traced her fingers over her mother’s writing in the book as she recited the lines.

  ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’

  She had left her father with a promise to put the book back in the trunk. To lock it away and never look at it again.

  It was a sincere promise and one she intended to keep.

  In a minute.

  After the birds fell, after the visit from the scarecrows, Faye could no longer deny that something very strange was happening in the village, and it had all started when she found her mother’s book.

  Magic was in the air. That Pumpkinhead fellow had said it himself.

  And a man was missing. Craddock was a grump and a brute, but Faye had been flicking through the book one last time before putting it away when she came across a ritual to find lost things. Her mother’s notes in the margin made it clear that this could also be used to find missing people.

  Faye had to give it a try.

  ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’

  According to the instructions, the incantation had to be repeated four times. Once facing north, then south, east and west, so Faye shuffled on her bottom as she did so in the confines of the pub cellar.

  She swivelled one last time and felt a stinging twinge in her buttock, which she was sure meant she now had a splinter in her bum.

  ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’

  She was done. Faye sat in the candlelight, waiting.

  ‘Now what?’ she asked the book. She wasn’t sure what she’d thought would happen – she didn’t expect a big finger to appear from above and point the way to where Craddock was – but some sort of clue would have been nice.

  Faye held her breath, listening for something. Anything.

  Then her lungs started to hurt and she gasped in a lung
ful of air.

  ‘Oh, stuff this,’ she said, flipping her mother’s book shut, the displaced air snuffing out the candle and leaving her in pitch darkness. ‘Bugger,’ she said.

  Faye put the book back in the trunk, locking it with a rusty old padlock. Magic was no good to her. Dad was right. It was nothing but a fancy. Faye was going to have to find Craddock herself.

  17 FUNNY TURNS

  ‘What gets my goat is no one cares.’ Faye and Bertie took a path from the village, crossed over the old stone bridge and entered the wood up the track lined with deadly nightshade, purple and yellow in flower. Faye had considered searching for Craddock on her own, but she didn’t much fancy being on her lonesome if she came across a creepy bunch of scarecrows again. She wasn’t about to ask her dad, not after their last conversation. She found Bertie at a loose end and less than cheerful after spending all afternoon burning dead birds in a brazier, so she invited him along.

  He didn’t need asking twice.

  Bertie ambled behind her with a walking stick, keeping a slow yet steady pace on his uneven legs. Faye waited for him to catch up, her fists bunched, the woodland floor around her scattered with purple violets.

  ‘A bunch of crow folk want him dead or alive, and no one’s seen him since last night. A fella goes missing, you’d think people would be calling the police or telling the papers, but nothing.’

  ‘Craddock ain’t missing,’ Bertie started, a little breathless. ‘He’s his own man. He comes and goes as he likes, keeps his own company and has little time for friends. He’s a miserable old bugger. That’s why no one cares, but…’ Bertie came to a stop by Faye and gripped his walking stick a little tighter. ‘You said something last night that made me change my mind. Maybe he is like Poland and France. Maybe if we had stuck up for them sooner, we wouldn’t be in this blasted war. And so it got me thinking we should help Mr Craddock, whatever I think of the grumpy old git and his disposition, if you’ll pardon my French.’

  Faye looked at him, agog.

  ‘What’s… what’s wrong?’ Bertie shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘You… you listened to me?’ Faye’s smile gave her dimples. ‘You listened to me and you changed your mind?’

  Bertie nodded, his cheeks turning red.

  ‘Why, Bertie Butterworth, a girl could go sweet on you with behaviour like that,’ Faye said, and poor Bertie didn’t know where to look.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  Faye couldn’t recall if Bertie had one leg too short or one leg too long, but either way it had kept him from joining up and doing his bit in the army when he was old enough. He had immediately signed up for the Local Defence Volunteers instead, and even though the rule book said he was too young, they took him on anyway. They knew that whatever he lacked in physical fitness he more than made up for with determination. All his life Bertie had been told by folk there were things he couldn’t do, and all his life he had been proving them wrong. Faye found it odd that a fellow like Bertie was so determined to fight in a war against the terrifying might of the Nazi Blitzkrieg yet couldn’t muster the courage to ask a sweet girl like Milly Baxter to step out with him. Faye had long ago decided that fellas were odd fishes and best left to their own devices.

  ‘You don’t notice birdsong till it’s gone,’ Faye said.

  ‘You should hear the noisy buggers at dawn chorus over at my place,’ Bertie said with a snort, then he blushed again. ‘Blimmin’ racket they make. You should… you should… y’know… come over one morning.’ He mumbled this last, and it went unheard by Faye as a growl cut through the air above. They looked up to find three fighter aircraft flying in formation over the wood.

  ‘Hurricanes.’ Bertie’s eyes lit up with excitement. ‘You can tell by the shape of the wings. They had a thing in the paper on how to identify aircraft by their silhouettes. I pinned it on me wall.’

  ‘Don’t seem real, does it? Folks shooting each other with guns and tanks and planes just over the Channel. You really think they’ll come here?’

  ‘They do,’ Bertie said, his eyes following the aircraft as they banked around the clouds.

  Above, a bird cheeped. A solo robin’s sing-song chatter. Then came the overlapping gossip of sparrows.

  ‘They’re back.’ Faye gripped Bertie’s arm. ‘Listen. The birds are back.’

  The trees filled with chirps, tweets and cheeps as if they had never been away.

  ‘Ain’t it beautiful,’ Bertie said, the song bringing a smile to his face.

  ‘There’s more. Listen.’ Faye angled her head and Bertie did the same. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘Er… yeah, a robin, I think, and a—’

  ‘The sparrows. They’re all singing the same song.’

  Bertie shook his head as he listened. ‘Sounds like a load of cheeps and—’

  ‘No, listen carefully,’ Faye insisted, and sang along in a whisper. ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’

  ‘Is that a nursery rhyme?’

  ‘No. It’s what they’re singing.’

  Bertie winced. ‘I… I don’t hear it.’

  Faye sang louder now, ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’

  The sparrows sang back, then with a flutter that made Faye’s heart skip, they flew from their perches and flocked in the sky above the treeline. They all swirled in the same direction, back down the path, for about fifty feet in a cloud of wings, then settled on another tree and began singing again.

  ‘Under sea, or over ground, give me sight, give me sound. What once was lost, now is found. Under sea, or over ground.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Faye muttered, then yanked on Bertie’s arm as she followed the sparrows back the way they’d come. ‘We’re going the wrong way.’

  ‘Faye, I don’t hear it. Are you sure?’

  To Faye it was as clear as a bell. The sparrows would sing the spell, then move to another tree, wait for Faye to catch up, then repeat the same thing again. ‘You must hear it – c’mon, Bertie, surely you hear it now?’

  ‘I’m, well, I’m hearing birds singing, so…’

  Once again, the sparrows sang and fluttered to another tree further down the path.

  ‘Look.’ Faye beamed. ‘Look at them. Birds don’t do that, do they? It’s not normal, it’s almost…’

  ‘Almost what?’

  Faye saw a smidge of confusion on Bertie’s face. Either he didn’t get it, or he genuinely didn’t hear or see what was happening right in front of him. Faye thought back to what her dad said about folk thinking less of her mother because of how she saw the world. Away with the birds, he’d said. That made Faye laugh, and she caught Bertie giving her a funny look.

  ‘It’s almost…’ Faye didn’t know what to say. Words like magic might make Bertie think she was away with the birds, too.

  The sparrows took off again, and Faye noticed that the trees were beginning to thin out. The birds were taking them to the edge of the wood.

  ‘There,’ Faye said, and they came to a stop. Beyond a field of hops, they could see a cluster of buildings and all the sparrows had come to rest on top of the biggest barn. A pheasant wandered its perimeter like a prison guard doing the rounds.

  ‘That’s Harry Newton’s farm,’ Bertie said. ‘You reckon Craddock’s in there?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Cos a load of birds are making a racket and they landed on its roof?’

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ Faye said.

  * * *

  They scurried around Harry Newton’s field of hops. Faye creaked open the doors of the biggest barn. The sparrows returned to singing their usual song before flying away.

  ‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Harry? Anyone?’

  ‘There’s a tractor out on the fields,’ Bertie said, hobbling behind her. ‘Probably Harry. We shouldn’t be here, Faye. This is trespassing, strictly spea
king, and I know Harry has an old blunderbuss. We’ll be picking bits of shot out of our backsides for months.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Faye slipped inside the gloom of the barn to where something was turned over in the mud and straw. She picked it up. ‘Someone’s old boot—’ she started to say, then the whole world swerved to the left.

  Craddock struggled as the scarecrows held him aloft. He kicked his legs wildly and a boot came free, landing in the mud and straw.

  ‘Faye? You all right? You looked like you had a funny turn,’ Bertie said as Faye jolted back into the real world. Her eyes darted about her. The boot was on the ground where she had dropped it. What in the blazes had just happened? She tried to recall if she had touched the deadly nightshade while walking here. Doing so could make one feel very ill, but she was sure she hadn’t gone anywhere near it.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told Bertie. ‘Just went a bit… giddy. That’s all.’

  Faye crossed the barn to right an overturned hay bale. A whole stack of them had toppled over. She gripped a corner and—

  Craddock was thrown by the mob into a pile of hay bales, knocking them over.

  The scarecrows formed a circle around him. A kangaroo court. They brought forth the charred body of the jolly scarecrow. Pumpkinhead pointed a finger at Craddock: Guilty!

  Faye backed away from the bale. This vision was accompanied by the musky scent of Craddock’s fear mixed with the whiff of burned straw. She trod on a hessian sack, blackened by soot. She crouched down and turned it over to find a jolly scarecrow’s face smiling back at her.

  ‘Faye…’ Bertie stood by the barn door. He had opened it and she could see through to the field beyond. A scarecrow stood alone in the corn.

  ‘It’s a scarecrow, Bertie. One that ain’t alive, thank goodness.’