Chapter Two #3
When I first met him, I was feeding the messenger pigeons in our attic.
For someone who never went more than a quarter-mile from her home, it seemed ironic that I spent most of my time with creatures that flew across the whole of Virelith almost daily.
A small window allowed them passage in and out of their shelter, and I had fashioned a little wooden shutter on hinges that was light enough for them to push open, but substantial enough to keep out the chill.
I had attached a metal hook to a long wooden pole that I used to open the hatch, leaving it hanging on the wall when I didn’t need it.
I was proud of all my little innovations. They didn’t compare to Mother’s great work, of course, but each one represented a small triumph for me—a way in which I had made the ceaseless daily tasks that little bit easier. In these ways, I felt I was truly her helpmeet, and found some comfort there.
To feed the pigeons, I had to climb up into the choking miasma of dander and dust, negotiate the guano-speckled beams without falling through the plaster between them, and try not to lose my footing when the close air filled with a hundred beating wings as each bird fought to be first to the food.
The noise of all those wings and all those gurgling coos could be deafening, and I was always glad to climb back down to our living quarters.
On that day, I heard knocking at the little window that made me jump.
A huge black shadow blocked out the light, and an enormous yellow eye peered in with disconcerting intelligence.
The pigeons shivered their wings and fell silent.
For a moment I thought Mother might have summoned a demon—I wouldn’t have put it past her—but then the shadow flapped its wings, and I saw that it was a very large raven.
I had always admired them, despite Mother warning me against them—their gleaming dark feathers and the intelligence in their eyes—and I was glad to see one up close.
I crumbled a piece of bread in my hand and went to the window, opening it a crack to offer the crumbs. There was something in the raven’s beak—a scrap of fabric. He dropped it and pecked at the food.
“How did you make it through the wards?” I asked him. As he snapped up the bread, I admired his iridescent plumage. The short feathers on his skull looked almost like fur, and they crept a little way along the top of his beak, graying as they went, making him look like he was balding there.
What are wards?
The words arrived directly in my mind. It was an odd feeling—a foreign consciousness dropping its own thoughts into mine, like someone throwing pebbles into a lake.
The thoughts were indisputably other, and equally indisputably bird, somehow, moving through my mind with the skittery, staccato energy of hops and pecks.
I staggered backwards and sat heavily in a chair.
Perhaps I was going mad, I thought. It wasn’t all that surprising, after my years of isolation.
But the way the bird was looking at me, so expectantly …
“Um, the wards are barriers. Like a fence? But magical. Mother has put them all around the tower.”
The bird ruffled up his feathers. I felt nothing like that.
“How are you doing that?”
A questioning raark.
“Speaking to me. In my head.”
I do not know.
“Where did you come from?”
He started to preen his chest feathers. The forest, he said vaguely.
I picked up the little scrap of fabric that he had dropped and laughed.
It was that little piece of embroidered silk I had thrown out the window—the sort-of map that I had imbued with all my desperate wishes.
I had hoped it would bring someone to me, but I hadn’t imagined that someone would be a bird.
I supposed the metallic thread had appealed to him.
Can I keep it? he said.
“I suppose so. It served its purpose, in a way.” I laid the scrap down on the sill, and he clasped it again with one scaly foot. “What is your name?”
This puzzled him, and he was silent for a while. Finally, he said, We do not have names as you do.
“Can I give you one?” It seemed very important that he have a name. Names have a kind of magic. Without one, he was just a raven. With one, he was a person, albeit a feathery one.
You can call me what you like, he said, and flew off with the little piece of embroidery again.
And so finally I had a friend, of sorts.
He never did tell me much about his life before coming to me, but I was so grateful to have someone other than Mother to speak to that I didn’t press him.
He seemed fascinated with my Hair and loved to pick at the strands and nibble at it as if searching for bugs.
The Hair, in turn, tolerated him. I thought of all sorts of grand possibilities for his name, but, in the end, the sparse gray feathers atop his beak made me call him Baldbeak, and it stuck.
I knew Mother disliked ravens, but not how much.
When she first saw Baldbeak come to the window and tap with his beak, she flew into a rage, telling me that ravens were filthy creatures, eaters of death, cunning and untrustworthy.
After that, I was very careful to meet with Baldbeak outside, or in the lower room when Mother was absorbed in her work above.
I could not give him up. He was the only friend I had.