The raven sat on the tiptop point of his church and surveyed the grounds. Dawn was breaking and colour fell from the sky; in just a few hours mass would begin. He knew all those involved in his plan to win back the church were thoroughly sick of him pestering them. But he must not fail. He would not.
Mackenzie had presented him with her sparkly shoelaces, which had so often been the subject of his wandering eye. They were now draped around his neck. He could feel the silver threads against his feathers, itching, waiting to catch the first glint of the sun when it appeared over the tops of the mausoleums.
‘For good luck,’ she told him. ‘I’m sure you don’t need none, but I want you to have them anyway. Because everyone needs luck. And because you ain’t nearly as cranky as you make out.’
As if to prove her wrong, the raven scowled and turned up his beak.
‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for your offer, but I don’t need charity. I may currently be homeless but I’m not a beggar.’
The girl shrugged. ‘Take them if you want them. I’ve seen you looking. At first I thought you wanted to have a taste of my legs, but now I know you’ve got an eye for the sparkles.’
‘I have given up on possessions.’
‘This isn’t a possession. This is my present for you. A gift.’ She swung them in front of his face. ‘Come on, Ravo. I know those darting little eyes anywhere.’
The raven snapped them up. ‘Yes, well, I suppose just one more is perfectly acceptable. And far be it beneath my manners to refuse a gift.’
‘You can thread your eyepatch onto them,’ suggested Mackenzie.
But the raven hadn’t done that. Instead, he tied a knot in the shoelaces and wore them as a necklace so that the ends hung down in a nice burst of frayed pink and silver sparkles. It was perhaps his best look yet. Not just any bird could pull off pink.
The raven admired them now, in the inky violet light that preceded the sun. His happiness was not shared, however. Down below Jeremiah Hickelsby had found something else to complain about.
‘The sun, the sun,’ he was saying. ‘Coming right on up, like a poor man isn’t trying to catch a lifetime’s worth of sleep. Can’t close me eyes for a wink of shut-eye, and here comes the sun to ruin it. Rude, the sheer rudeness of it, the magnitude of the ache in my head.’
‘You should be up anyway,’ the raven called down to him. ‘You’ve got things to do. There’s not long to go now.’
‘Aye, now it’s birds,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Too many birds, and all of them twittering. Can’t ye just shut up and let a poor man rest?’ He appeared over the top of his grave, bony fingers cupping his ears.
‘Warm-up exercises, please,’ said the raven. ‘I’ll not have the plan going bust because you were too busy moaning to limber up. There’s no room for slackers on this team.’
The old man shook a fist but he didn’t go back into the ground. Instead he floated away to the mausoleums to see if they would be more sympathetic to his plight, and the raven shuffled along until he was next to the weatherhen.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘How’s it going there? Good?’
The weatherhen drooped to the left. Her hinges gave a sad, drawn-out squeak.
‘I know,’ said the raven. ‘I’m sorry. My belltower was ruined in the storm and I’ve had to relocate. So I apologise, I know how much you must miss seeing me, but we can no longer be neighbours. It’s just the way it is.’
The weatherhen said nothing.
‘So,’ said the raven, ‘that was quite a storm, wasn’t it?’
‘Hree,’ she sighed.
‘Lots of rain. And wind. Few clouds. Actually, a lot. Funny, for a storm. To have so many clouds. Usually it’s not so . . . cloudy.’
‘Hree,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ said the raven, ‘well.’
‘Hree.’
‘Sorry,’ said the raven, frustrated by her lack of effort and his own inadequacy at finding something clever to say. ‘Are you hurt?’
And the weatherhen moped about and whistled so sorrowfully that the raven finally got up enough guts to turn and actually look at her. There was something wrong with the hinge that she usually rested on. It was almost snapped in half, and her whole body teetered to the left at a rather precarious angle.
‘Oh,’ said the raven. ‘That looks uncomfortable. Why don’t you just move away?’
She looked at him, and the raven saw in her eyes that it must be a stupid question.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I always thought you were rather attached to this particular spot. I just didn’t think you meant literally. But far be it from me to question the habits of others. Whatever works for you. Each species to their own, and all that.’
She gave a barely perceptible squeak.
‘You know, I may be able to help you. If you want me to.’
Her eye twinkled – he couldn’t have got a stronger response if he’d tried.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was in the middle of preparing for a very important plan. But I can spare a few minutes. Let me just get some materials. Hang in there. Whoops. Sorry. Insensitive joke.’
She was not ill enough to forego a wolf-whistle as he flew away.
He returned with a wad of gum Mackenzie had left on the steps of his mausoleum, and a half-eaten buttered croissant. The other half he’d eaten as a midnight snack.
‘Okay,’ said the raven, and he waddled forward, shrugging the sparkly shoelace from around his neck, with the gum on the end of one claw and the half-croissant clutched in the other.
The weatherhen didn’t take her eyes off him. He pretended that he didn’t notice.
He reached for the broken hinge and his head butted into her chest. Backing away hastily, his wings then got tangled up in her feet.
‘Oh my,’ he said. ‘Excuse me.’
She tittered. Some things never changed.
He then went to grab her with one claw, to pull her upright so he could do what he needed to, but a tiny breath of wind tickled the air next to them, and her whole body moved an inch or so to the left. The raven, off-balance, found his claw swiping nothing but empty space. His other claw shot out so he could right himself, but what it grabbed was very much the weatherhen’s rear end.
‘Oh, pardon me,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to do that.’
But the weatherhen didn’t seem fussed, and finally the raven just let go of all sense of propriety and grabbed her body with both claws. He pulled her upright, fixing her into place with a bit of Mackenzie’s gum. Then he tied the shoelace around the hinge and her feet, using many intricate knots and thread work so that she would once again stand tall but still be able to swing. He finished up with a bit of greasy butter from the croissant, slathering it into the exposed bits of the hinge and her feet.
The last bit was more for himself. The weatherhen had a pleasant enough way of speaking, but when she got excited even he didn’t want to be within twenty yards of her awful screech.
‘You’ll be a bit stiff to start with,’ the raven said. ‘But when the gum wears down you’ll have more freedom to move.’
The weatherhen gave a few practice swings. The silver threads in the shoelaces did wonders for her eyes. The way she stood so proudly and upright made the air around her tingle with magnificence. She looked as though she’d finally come into herself.
‘Funny species,’ he said. ‘To want to stay in the one spot so much. Homebodies. Still –’ he tapped his beak and ruffled his wings ‘– I guess I don’t really mind.’
‘Coo coo cooooo.’
‘You look good,’ he said. The weatherhen gave him a stare that said you look more than good. The raven, even though he knew it to be true, still had the decency to duck his head.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’ve been here such a long time. Longer than me. This is as much your churchyard as it is mine.’
The sun rose further over the top of the mausoleums, and one by one the tombstones turned a lovely shade of violet-bronze. Old inscriptions and gilded crosses flashed briefly and were gone. Todd’s grave, with all its bottlecaps, seemed to float above the ground in a miasma of gold light.
‘I’m going to win it back for us,’ the raven said. ‘All this. Even the sun is on our side. May I demonstrate with a song?’
He sang ‘Joyful, Joyful’, not one of his favourites – a little too sentimental, perhaps – but befitting the moment. When he’d finished, the weatherhen whistled and cooed appreciatively.
‘See,’ said the raven, ‘now you know why I have to get back into the church. How can I let a voice like that go to waste?’
They sat there and watched the soft-hued light trickle into the churchyard, the blue skies open up and the first clouds appear. Just before eight-thirty the first cars pulled into the parking area and Father Cadman threw open the church doors.
It was now or never.