Amanda Block
The Crows are gathering.
Grace is curled up on the window seat upstairs, her arms around her knees, her fingers picking at the loose hem of her sleeve. This is the only spot in the house where she can watch them; it is just high enough to see over the town wall.
They are smudged in the crisscross of panes, the glass distorting the almost-human shape of them, so that if Grace moves her head even a little, they seem to lurch from side to side. But even blurred those dark spirits are unmistakable, and she knows that, for now at least, they stand perfectly still beyond the border.
It calms her to sit here, taking stock of them: three by the gate, eight in the orchard, the rest away in the fields. Yesterday, there were two dozen; now she counts twenty-nine.
After a while, her vision relaxes and she leans forward, a cold kiss lingering where her brow touches the window.
“Shoo,” Grace whispers, her breath fogging the glass. “Get away. Shoo.”
* * *
(Seven days earlier)
Once the cursed spirits of the Untamed are Gathering (meaning their number has reached over a score), the town must request volunteers for a Clearing.
Those eligible for the Clearing must be of appropriate standing within the community, therefore the following persons need not come forward:
Those under the age of sixteen
Women who are with child or have lately borne a child
Men owning more than ten hectares of farmland
Men of the church
Members of the council
Physicians, healers and those practiced in medicine
As Father Francis read from the leather-bound Charter, Grace waited alongside the other volunteers: sickly Mr. West; the widow Elizabeth from across the way; an older woman she didn’t know. They kept glancing sideways at her, but she already knew she looked out of place, standing with them on the steps of the town hall.
Grace was third to draw. She has since tried to remember why she picked that particular strand, and sometimes recalls it had a greenish hue that appealed to her, as though there were some life in it yet, but that might have been something she invented later. What she remembers most is the leap of her heart, as the straw slid easily from the priest’s fist, small and smooth and sharp.
She hadn’t planned it, but she thrust the straw high into the air, for the entire crowd to see. Then as the whispers of her name rippled to the very edges of the town square, she murmured a fierce prayer of thanks.
Father Francis stepped forward, closing the Charter. “Let it be known who has been selected for the Clearing,” he said. “Honored by—”
With a moan, the widow shook her head. “Father, she’s a child. We’ll choose again…”
Mr. West and the other woman both murmured their agreement.
No, Grace thought, looking anxiously to the priest. But he simply went on as though no interruption had taken place.
“Honored by God, feared by the Untamed, Grace Palmer is the Scarecrow.”
* * *
“Gracie?”
As she turns from the window, the dark shapes of the Crows remain in her vision for a few seconds, imprinting themselves over the figure of her father.
“It’s almost time,” he says.
She shuffles from the seat, her progress made awkward by the weight of her dress.
“You look very fine,” he mumbles, gesturing towards it. “Although are you sure, considering—?”
She holds up a hand to stop him. “I’m doing God’s work,” she says, trying to smile. “No matter what happens, I want to—” She stops, unsure how to say it.
“You’ll shine like a pearl underneath,” he tells her.
Grace looks down at the loose thread of her sleeve and a silence falls between them, during which her father shifts his weight from foot to foot, the floorboards protesting beneath his shoes.
“You remember your promise?” he asks eventually.
“Yes.”
More silence follows, although this time it is Grace who speaks first.
“I think I’d like a little time outside—with Mother’s tree—before we go.”
He nods, as though he has been expecting this. “I’ll fetch you in a few minutes.”
Grace calls him back as he heads for the stairs.
“Father? Perhaps I could have a little longer? I need to say my prayers.”
When he looks back at her, his expression is almost distressed.
“Even tonight?” he asks.
“Especially tonight.”
* * *
(Seven days earlier)
Grace’s father had not relinquished his grip on her elbow the whole way home. She allowed herself to be marched back, inwardly preparing for his reaction, as she had been ever since volunteering.
“Why did you do it?” he demanded, as soon as they were inside.
“It was my choice, father.”
He gripped at her shoulders. It didn’t hurt, but it forced her to face him—to see the shock and pain in his expression.
“Did you not see the others? They’re old and ill and alone, whereas you—”
“I’m of age!”
“—you have your whole life ahead of you!”
“I’m of age,” Grace repeated stubbornly.
He let her go, slumping into a chair and shaking his head just as the widow Elizabeth had done.
“I don’t understand, Gracie. How could you do this to yourself? How could you do this to me?”
She knelt at his side, gazing up at him and gripping at his arm with both her hands.
“Father, don’t you see? I’m young, I’m strong, and I’ll face them with God in my heart.”
He grimaced at this, just as he had taken to grimacing in church.
“They won’t take me, I’m sure of it,” Grace went on. “I’ll be one of the ones who comes back—I’ll come back to you.”
Later, when his panic had abated, he had begun to prepare the potatoes for dinner, hacking at each of their skins until he grew impatient and tossed them into earthy water.
“Can you promise me?” he said, after neither of them had spoken for a long while.
“Sorry?”
“If you’re so sure that God will protect you,” he went on, glowering at the potato in his hand, “can you promise me you’ll return, no matter what happens with those—those creatures?”
“Of course,” she said, without hesitation. “I promise.”
He let out a humorless laugh. “Just like that? You’re so certain?”
“I’m certain of God.”
He frowned at her for a moment, and then turned his attention back to the potatoes.
“You’re just like your mother,” he said. Then, nodding over at the empty chair beside him, he added, “And look at all the good it did her.”
* * *
The cloud is low this evening; it renders the granite walls and cobbled roads dull, lacking their usual shine, and will choke the sunset when it comes.
On her father’s arm, Grace is walking down the same streets that lead to the market, or her old school, or dances at the town hall. Only now they are different. This route seems colder, grayer, and there is not a soul in sight.
Maybe it is better this way. Since she was chosen, people she has known all her life have treated her differently—almost fearfully. Of course, they have smiled at her, and some have even offered her their gratitude, but then they have turned away too quickly, or else she has heard them whispering before she is out of earshot.
Still, it is strange, this empty town. It is almost as though the situation is reversed, and she is the only one remaining within its walls tonight. She thinks about commenting as much to her father, but decides against it. He has not uttered a word since they left the house, and she fears he will not speak at all until they reach the church.
* * *
(Three days earlier)
“The Eleventh Song of the Crossing”
This land of ours was cruel and wild,
Before us, long ago:
Ruled o’er by those with souls defiled
E’en God did them forgo.
But those Untamed, they should have known
That evil has a price:
They bred and fought amongst their own
And perished from their vice.
(Oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh!)
Our ancestors, who wanted more,
Across seas they did roam,
Until they spied this distant shore;
A place they could call home.
They built each house and ev’ry street
To spread God’s holy word.
But in the earth beneath their feet
The restless Untamed stirred.
(Oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh!)
Dark shadows then began to swarm,
And growth beneath them froze,
So for this plague and their dark form,
Our people called them Crows.
Those dead Untamed had cursed this ground,
O’er it, they’d cast this spell:
And that is how we all were bound
To spirits straight from Hell.
(Oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh!)
Our town, it was held in their thrall,
Until a man of worth
Went out one eve beyond the wall,
To drive them from this earth.
With torch and cloak he stood all night,
And ‘round him Crows did throng,
But though he was made pale with fright,
His heart was pure and strong.
(Oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh!)
The townsfolk woke with great concern
They feared the good man dead,
But with the dawn he did return,
And all the Crows had fled.
Thus this good soul who’d faced the horde,
His courage was proclaimed:
That righteous man, blessed by the Lord,
The Scarecrow he was named.
(Oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh-la-la, oh!)
During one of her vigils at the window seat, Grace found herself humming. It was many years since she’d learned that ditty—it was taught to children starting school and church, along with the other Songs of the Crossing—but she found she could still recite it by heart.
It was comforting, she supposed; more hopeful than the other stories surrounding the first Scarecrow. In one of the tales she’d heard later, he had returned to the town different, troubled, and within a year he had hanged himself from the rafters of the town hall.
Another less comforting thought occurred to her: the Crows always returned, in the end.
* * *
Most of the town is gathered in the churchyard when Grace and her father arrive. She kneels before them and Father Francis places a hand on her head.
“Blessed are we who gather here this evening, to see God’s child, Grace Palmer, depart for her holy task…”
The fingers of the priest are trembling, so much so that it distracts Grace from what is being said.
“…Amen,” he says at last.
“Amen,” the crowd replies.
Father Francis bends down, picks up a fistful of soil, and smears a little across Grace’s forehead, first down, then across. Afterwards he opens his arms to include the watching people.
“I now invite you all to help prepare Grace for the Clearing…”
The crowd surges forward before he has finished speaking. Suddenly, Grace is surrounded by bodies, and hands are in her hair, on her dress, even at her shoes, pulling and tearing and scratching. There is earth too, great clumps of it, being smeared into her clothes and skin and scalp. It slips down her collar, into her ears and almost to the corners of her eyes. But she bears it all, silent and still, though the fervor of the crowd is unnerving.
“Enough,” booms her father’s voice above the noise.
The priest nods and everyone draws back. Then he hands Grace the torch and drapes the heavy, tattered cloak over her shoulders.
“Go,” he whispers, in her soil-clogged ear.
Shoo.
Grace stares down at her feet as she begins to walk, unwilling to focus on the crowd. She does not need to see their faces to know that she is transformed: her dress is torn, some of it ripped clean away; her hair is tangled and loose; her whole body smeared with earth and grit and even a little blood. Indeed, though this is how the ritual goes, she burns with the shame of what she has become: barbaric, savage, Untamed.
Scarecrow.
* * *
(Two days earlier)
“I’ve already told you, there is nothing I can do.”
“You can choose again, pick someone else!”
Summoned by the raised voices downstairs, Grace crept from her room, avoiding the floorboards that creaked.
“That’s impossible, it goes against everything in the Charter. She was chosen, it is done.”
“She’s too young!”
“She’s old enough to volunteer, it says in the Charter—”
“Hang the Charter, she’s a child!”
Grace slid into a sitting position at the top of the stairs, half touched and half shocked by how her father was speaking to the priest.
“You know they’re your responsibility,” he went on, “these—these Crow demons, whatever you want to call them. The church should be protecting our children from them, not sending them out to do battle!”
“But we can’t, you know that. We’ve tried everything: holy water, sacrifice, even exorcism, it’s all in—” Father Francis seemed to think better of mentioning the Charter again. “It’s all recorded.”
There was a long silence. Grace drew her shawl tighter over her nightdress and waited.
“In helping to preserve the town from the legacy of the Untamed, Grace will be doing God’s work, Mr. Palmer. It is an honor for your family.”
“If she goes, I’ll have no family left.”
The priest had no response to this, so pressed on with a different line of argument. “You have to remember, they can come back, the Scarecrows. William Bell wasn’t taken, thirty years ago. I know he moved on, but by all accounts his farm prospers. And Ellen Turner’s still here—she returned, didn’t she?”
“Not whole!” Grace’s father roared. “Not with her wits! We all saw the state she was in—heard the wicked things she said. Heaven knows what they did to her. Heaven knows what they’ll do to my Gracie…”
His voice broke. Grace put her arms around one of the banisters, resting her cheek against the cold wood.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Palmer,” said the priest. “I know your faith has wavered since your wife’s illness, but perhaps I can suggest some verses that might offer you some comfort?”
He didn’t receive a reply, and a few minutes passed before he spoke again.
“Otherwise, I must return to the church. There is much to be done.”
Evidently deciding to let himself out, the priest appeared in the hallway. He paused at the door, as though sensing a pair of eyes on his back, and looked up. Seeing Grace, he nodded, and she nodded back.
Then, before her father could find her, she ran back along the corridor and into her bed. Her feet were cold against one another as she wriggled deeper under the blankets, but even when she stopped shivering, sleep would not come.
* * *
The crunching of the gate being closed and bolted behind her seems to echo in Grace’s ears. She has only ventured beyond the wall five times in her life—and never without a farmer or during a Gathering.
I have been chosen, she remembers, as she forces herself forward. I’ll face them with God in my heart.
She adjusts the cloak around her shoulders and tries to focus on the land, hoping it will incite something in her stronger than fear. The hard ground on which she walks is bruised with blackened soil, as though many fires have been recently stamped out. This is where the Crows have stood, and the scorched-looking earth will be barren for generations to come.
Grace’s fingers curl into fists. This is ours, she thinks. Shoo.
Her conviction last for just a few minutes, after which she looks to the horizon and is struck by nausea so strong her whole body sways. She can see them now, just ahead: tall and still, they are like standing stones silhouetted against the darkening sky.
* * *
(One day earlier)
“Ellen? Ellen, dear? You have a visitor.”
Grace had been very young at the time of the last Clearing, but the memory of the proud female figure clad in rags had stayed with her. She realized now that this is what she had been expecting—a Scarecrow—but the woman sitting on the bed was small and meek. Her soft blonde hair was plaited neatly down her back and her girlish dress looked wrong on her middle-aged body.
“Ellen, this is Grace Palmer,” went on Mrs. Turner. “She’s come to see you.”
Ellen looked up, but said nothing. Her eyes were very green.
“Hello,” said Grace, with an awkward wave of her hand.
“Have a seat,” said Mrs. Turner, indicating Grace should take the chair next to the bed. Then, looking nervous, she said, “Ellen dear, Grace has come to ask you about being the Scarecrow.”
Ellen blinked. “Scarecrow,” she repeated.
“That’s right.” Mrs. Turner looked encouraged. “You remember when you were the Scarecrow, and you saved the whole town from the Crows? Do you remember that, my darling?”
Another blink. “Crows.”
Mrs. Turner reached forward, took her daughter’s hand. “You went out there, the bravest girl in the land, and in the morning, you came back to us, didn’t you? You came back to your family.”
Her voice wavered. Grace fidgeted, recalling her father’s words: Not whole. Not with her wits.
“Now Grace here has volunteered, just like you did. And she wants to talk to you about it.”
Ellen looked between her mother and Grace several times.
“Scarecrow,” she said again.
Mrs. Turner sighed.
“Please,” Grace found herself saying, “please, tell me what it’s like. Do I just stand there? Do I pray?”
Ellen shrank back, apparently unnerved at being addressed directly by a stranger. Mrs. Turner hardly seemed to notice: she was looking at Grace with almost the same expression with which she looked at her daughter.
“I wish you’d come sooner,” she murmured. “Some days she’s better than others.”
Grace didn’t say so, but she wished it too. She had never thought to find herself in the Turner house—nobody did. Only children would linger outside its door, competing as to how far they could run up its path before they lost their nerve.
As the three of them lapsed into silence, Grace looked around. Ellen’s room—the whole house, in fact—was far from the cobwebby haunt of her imaginings. It was bright and clean and full of cooking smells. It was, she realized, just like her own house.
“I should go,” she said, when no one had spoken for some time. “My father doesn’t know I’m here…”
But as she rose from the chair, Ellen suddenly lunged forward. Grace gave a cry of shock and fear as the woman’s fingernails cut into the skin of her wrist.
“Ellen, no!”
But the woman paid her mother no heed. She yanked at Grace’s arm, pulling her down so that their faces were very close.
“I’ll tell you,” whispered Ellen. “You have to live through it. Do you see?”
“Y-yes,” Grace stammered, grateful for the encouragement yet desperate to reclaim her arm.
“You’ll live through it, you must!”
“I want to—I want to come back. Please, tell me how…”
But apparently Ellen had said enough, for she sat back on the bed. Releasing Grace’s wrist, she gazed up at the ceiling and slowly raised her arms.
For the first time, Mrs. Turner looked stern. “Now, Ellen, not this again…”
But Ellen didn’t hear her: she was humming a low, sorrowful tune that Grace didn’t recognize as a hymn or a Song of the Crossing. She swayed a little as she sang, her arms still outstretched.
“I’m sorry, but we’ll get no more out of her now,” Mrs. Turner said.
Nodding, Grace followed her to the door, unable to resist taking one last look back at the other Scarecrow. Will I be stronger than her? Grace wondered. Even if they do not take me, will I return whole?
Ellen, oblivious to these questions, continued to hum until suddenly—with no warning at all—she fell into a heap on the bed. Grace stared: slumped and still, the collapsed figure looked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
* * *
The Crows are different up close. From the window, Grace had thought them like shadows or black mist, but now she sees there is a density to their darkness, as though the Untamed ripped deep holes in the world before they left it.
At her approach, the Crows have begun to move. It is a slow, rippling motion, quite unlike the flapping of their namesakes. Grace turns, trying to keep them all in her sightline, but this is impossible: there are far more than twenty-nine now, all of them drifting in different directions. By the time Grace has realized they are forming a circle, she is trapped at its center.
She turns on the spot, her breath coming fast and short: she is in a nightmarish version of a children’s game, and she doesn’t know the rules.
Do I just stand there? Do I pray?
But poor, mad Ellen hadn’t said; perhaps she hadn’t even known. Grace tightens her grip on the torch, trying to swallow the panic rising in her throat.
“My name is Grace Palmer,” she says, surprised by how loud she sounds in the breezeless night. “I am the Scarecrow, and I have come to clear you from this land.”
She braces herself for a response—an attack, even—but nothing happens. Around her, the Crows are silent and unmoving. Do they know who she is, what she is saying? Grace isn’t sure, and somehow this spurs her on.
“Crows, cursed creatures of the Untamed, in the good Lord’s name I ask—I demand—you leave this place!”
The Crows remain still. Grace’s voice rises to a shout.
“This is our land! This is our home! You cannot—”
The circle shifts as though each creature has shivered. While Grace hesitates, the largest of the Crows—one far taller than her—begins drifting forward, right into the center of the ring. Its emptiness is sickening: what would happen, she wonders, if she were to fall right through it? Gasping, Grace backs away, forgetting there are creatures behind her too.
The dark shape continues to advance, paying no heed to the torch with which Grace is slashing at the air between them. Something is growing from the side of its bulk, something long and grasping, almost like an arm.
“Get back!” Grace cries, as it tries to clutch at her. “On behalf of God Almighty, I—”
I watched them approach, that day they came back. I stood at the wall and I studied each of their faces. Those men were pale, so much so I thought them sickly; beneath those strange, heavy clothes, I imagined their bodies to be as weak as children’s. They did not even carry weapons, other than their sticks.
Still, I hesitated. We had never seen such men in this land, and doubt filled my heart, as though all the earth and every god was warning me: send them away.
But we had made a bargain. With gestures and pictures drawn in the earth, we had agreed to trade with these strangers. And what was the harm in that? What damage could these fragile figures possibly inflict?
So I raised my arm, I gave the signal: open the gate.
The Crow lets go of Grace and returns to its position in the circle. She staggers, staring wide-eyed at the gloomy field and her dark, still companions. For a moment, she had been somewhere else: the town—her home—on a different day. She had been someone else too.
She stoops for the torch she has dropped, which is sputtering on the blackened ground. Her hands are shaking so much she can barely pick it up. What has she just seen? A memory? Some unholy vision?
“What are you showing me, Crow?” she asks the creature that gripped at her. Her voice sounds stronger than she feels.
But it is a different member of the circle that responds: it drifts towards her, reaching out.
I was to stay inside when the strangers returned. My husband told me so, even though—oh!—how I wanted to see them! He said their skin was milk-white, and their eyes like clear pools of water, sparkling in the sunlight.
I did as I was told until the shouting began, and then I crept from my chair and peered out of the door. A figure was limping towards me: my neighbor, his eyes bulging with terror, his hands clawing at a slash to his stomach.
He fell to his knees, and I started towards him, but he shook his head.
“Run!” he choked, through a mouthful of blood. “Run!”
And as he collapsed, the thunder began; great bursts of it, even though there was no storm.
Grace has her hands over her ears as the Crow releases her, the banging loud in her head. When it stops, she looks up.
“You go—get back!” she says, though the creature is already reclaiming its place in the circle.
The torch is on the ground once more, but Grace doesn’t bother to retrieve it. Instead, she runs her hands through her dirty, tangled hair, trying to make sense of it all. Who had she just been? Had that man died? Was it even a man? His color and features and clothes were different from her own…
It doesn’t matter, Grace tells herself, it wasn’t real.
But another Crow is coming.
The noise from their sticks was like nothing I had ever heard. It was louder than the screams of the women, louder even than our battle cry, as we rallied for the fight.
The strangers were scattering, using the confusion caused by their weapons to spread themselves through the town. I spotted two ahead, and with a bellow of fury, I pelted after them, my spear aloft.
I do not know whether it found its target before I fell. After the thunder-noise, I was scrabbling on the ground, clawing at the pain in my leg, and I couldn’t remember if I had thrown it.
A stranger approached from behind and kicked me down when I tried to rise. He pointed the end of his stick at my face: it was a hollow, smoking tunnel, and it smelt of fire and death.
Grace jerks back.
“Stop it!” she shouts, batting in vain at the retreating form of the Crow. “This didn’t happen, that isn’t my town!”
But the apparitions, the possessions—whatever they are—do not feel untrue: the pain and the panic is far too real.
It was too late to escape; I could hear them surrounding the house. I only had time to bundle my boy under some rags, pleading with him to stay quiet, before the strangers knocked down my door.
I had been skinning a rabbit, and the knife was still in my hand, but there were three of them, so it was easy enough to smack it from my fingers while I was distracted.
When I screamed, they pounced. One of them came up behind me, seized my hair and pushed me face-first towards the table. As I tasted blood, I felt his body press down on mine, and his hands grip at the back of my thighs.
I froze then. And throughout it all, I stared at that pile of old cloth in the corner, willing it to stay as still and silent as me.
“No, please!” Grace is sobbing now. “Please, stop! Why are you doing this?”
But the Crows don’t reply; they just keep coming.
My brother had always been strong and quick, and he fought until the end, in spite of his wounds. It took four of them to wrestle him to the ground, and even then he writhed and spat like a snake.
It was dishonorable, far beneath one such as him. For they prolonged it: kicking and punching and stabbing and slicing him just enough to keep him clinging to life. One of them even emptied his bladder, laughing as he washed away some of the blood.
But my brother didn’t give up: he never stopped struggling, not even when the guts were spilling from his stomach.
Again and again the Crows come forward, grasping at Grace, pulling her into their pasts. And though she thrashes out, reeling from the horror of it, still they advance, determined that she should witness—that she should feel—what was done to them.
You have to live through it, Ellen had said.
And Grace knows now, why the Crows gather: they come to tell their story.
Over and over, they show her; the desecration of their town, the slaughter of their people. Sometimes two Crows grasp her at once, sometimes a Crow returns and she suffers the same scene twice, sometimes the vision is so clouded by terror it no longer holds meaning. But Grace relives it all anyway, every moment of their tale, until she is cowering against its assault, only able to decipher snatches of the pain and fear and anguish.
…“You must go!” he was screaming at me. “Run to the back gate, and don’t look back—don’t look back for anything!”
…I did not care what magic they yielded, I would tear off their limbs, I would strip the flesh from their bodies…
…I couldn’t find my sister. While everything raged around me, she was all I could think of, but I didn’t know where she’d gone…
…“There’s no way out!” I shouted. “They’re surrounding the wall!”…
…Blood, blood, there was so much blood. And I wanted it to stop, I wanted it all to end…
…“Mercy,” we cried, “mercy!”…
…“Help us!”…
…“Please!”…
A long time later—a lifetime later—it stops. Grace is curled up in the dead earth, her head in her hands.
“I didn’t know,” she whispers. “Why did no one tell me?”
The largest Crow drifts forward once more, stopping just above her. With the little strength she has left, Grace turns her mud and tear-stained face towards it. Towards him, for she can almost see them now, the people who were torn from this place.
They kept me until last. I believe it was deliberate: they wanted me to see the blood-smeared streets, the smashed-up houses, the bodies piled in every corner; they wanted me to hear each scream, every plea for salvation; they wanted me to understand the extent of what I had done, in letting them in.
When all was quiet, the strangers dragged me back to the gate, where their leader forced me to my knees and addressed his men with words I didn’t understand.
(But Grace understands).
“This land belongs to us now. We have cleared it of these creatures—of those Untamed by God—and now we will rebuild this as a holy place for our children, and for our children’s children!”
I welcomed death then. As he put his knife against my throat, I closed my eyes and that blade became a small, cold hand, beckoning me into the afterlife.
Both the circle of Crows and the girl at its center are still.
“Why did no one tell me?” Grace asks again.
Because no one knows, she realizes. For who would think to question the words of the Charter or the Songs of Crossing?
Grace thinks she can see now, why the Scarecrows are taken: they are the price the town must pay for peace, and she hasn’t the strength to fight it anymore. After all, a willing soul once a generation versus everything she now knows—it does not seem too bad a bargain. So instead of standing, instead of struggling, she starts to cry anew, her whole body shuddering with grief.
After a time, one of the Crows begins to sing. It is a strange humming sound that Grace thinks she is imagining at first, for in all but the memories they have been silent. But then she remembers: she has heard this tune before, just last night, from the lips of another Scarecrow.
Soon, other Crows join in, until the whole circle is united in the deep, mournful song. Grace’s tears stop, and she closes her eyes, feeling the elegy resonate through the earth beneath her. It is both the saddest and most beautiful sound she has ever heard: it spills into her, seeping through the cracks the Crows have made until she is flooded with it.
The song has no words—and if it did she wouldn’t have recognized them—but Grace understands its meaning.
They purged us from this place, sing the Crows, and only the land remembers.
* * *
The sky is lighter when Grace opens her eyes. She has been drifting, dreaming, but suddenly she jerks into a sitting position, staring around at the land, her heartbeat quickening. But there is nothing to see: all the Crows have gone.
A breathless laugh escapes her. I am still here, she thinks.
Their story, however, also remains. It returns to Grace now, and she is besieged again by the sights and sounds and smells of the massacre.
“Stop it!” she cries, though there is no one there to listen.
She shakes her head, as though she could dislodge that knowledge, as though all of it could somehow trickle away. She can still hear the song of the Crows, although perhaps it is she who is humming it. She tries to recall a hymn—any hymn—to distract herself, but cannot think of a single one.
Instead, she turns to focus on the dark outline of the town behind her. She is now free to return, but how can she go back? How can she walk through those streets, knowing what happened there?
“Why wasn’t I taken?” she wonders aloud.
But even as she says it, she finds herself questioning whether any of the Scarecrows had been taken. All the Crows did to her was show what had been done to them. Did they really steal men and women from the land as payment, or were the Scarecrows who had disappeared actually the strong ones—the people who refused to go back, knowing what they knew?
“…Can you promise me you’ll return, no matter what happens with those—those creatures?”
He is a good man, her father—her whole community is full of decent, virtuous people. Are they to blame, for what was done?
As questions chase one another through her mind, Grace clutches at her head, her nails digging into her scalp.
“Dear Heavenly God…” she begins instinctively, but can go no further, for the distant words of an executioner override her attempt at prayer.
“This land belongs to us now. We have cleared it of these creatures—of those Untamed by God—and now we will rebuild this as a holy place for our children, and for our children’s children!”
Grace wails, pressing her knuckles into her temples, trying to make it stop. Her town, her history, her God: in giving her the truth, the Crows have taken away everything else.
What is it all for, then? What is the Scarecrow’s fate? Is she supposed to go on as normal, never speak of what she knows, at the cost of her own sanity (…some days she’s better than others…) or even her life (…within a year he had hanged himself from the rafters of the town hall…)? Is she meant to leave, turn her back on everything she knows, and pretend that it never happened, that the town doesn’t even exist (…William Bell survived, thirty years ago. I know he moved on, but by all accounts his farm prospers…)? Or is she supposed to tell the truth; go back and rip apart the very foundations of her home? How would she even begin? And why should anyone believe her? (…we all saw the state she was in—heard the wicked things she said…)
Something flashes in the corner of her eye, something so bright Grace feels as though she’s been stung. She cringes towards the ground, expecting some further ordeal, but then realizes the distant glare is the day’s first glimpse of the sun.
After the horror of the night, it is an unexpected, almost overwhelming sight. Grace struggles to her feet, her body cold and stiff, and turns to face the sun head-on. She watches as light begins to stretch over the land, and with tears coursing down her cheeks once more, she raises her arms, waiting for the dawn’s embrace. But it does not come: the sun cannot quite touch her, there in the blackened earth, just as it cannot reach the other places where the Crows have stood—those scars that tell of long-forgotten wounds.
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Amanda Block is a writer and ghostwriter based in Edinburgh, UK. A graduate of the Creative Writing Masters at the University of Edinburgh, she is often inspired by myths and fairy tales, frequently using them as a starting point to tell other stories. Amanda’s work has been featured in anthologies such as Modern Grimmoire, Stories for Homes, and World Weaver Press’ Fae. She has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Chapter One Promotions Short Story Competition. Amanda is currently working on her first novel. She can be found online at amandawritersblock.blogspot.co.uk.
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