Mortdale

Prologue

It was the seventh year and the ravens had died.

Willow dragged a bloodied bag made of scraps behind her, tossing another dead bird into it.

Her naked toes slid against the wet shingle floor, the skin on her fingertips already chaffed and peeling by the time she’d managed to drag her limbs halfway across the orphanage’s quadrangle, where another few dozen dead ravens bled into the sediment.

The headmistress only watched from the entrance, shielded from the fine drizzle scraping against her naked arms. Willow didn’t dare stop for rest.

It had been her fault. As had the year before. And the one before that.

She’d been ordered to never speak. To never look at things for more than five seconds at a time. To not touch what was not hers. And she’d violated those orders.

As the rest of the children had flocked the bay to play, she’d found an open window, staring at the rain for a long while and sticking her hand out to catch the drops between her fingers.

The first raven had croaked in agony as it had fallen from the skies; the rest had not made a sound at all.

It had rained dead ravens for a full minute.

The entire dreaded length of sixty seconds.

Thunder struck the small grey bay, hitting the towers of the old monastery.

She finally paused when two cloaked figures stepped out of a dark carriage, clutching a dead raven to her chest. Pale mist left her shivering lips as the warmth of the dead creature seeped through her wet shirt to thaw her skin.

“We cannot keep her here anymore, Agnes,” Willow heard the headmistress say as she took a seat just outside the office with her bag of dead birds.

She had to count them for the headmistress; one strike for each life she’d so recklessly claimed.

“If you do not take her, I will throw her in the streets. I’ve done my part.

I’ve fed her. I’ve kept her alive thus far. ”

Willow’s bloodied hand went to her sunken stomach. Hunger, she’d gotten used to. Hunger made her sleepy. And she could sleep well enough. Maybe the headmistress knew that. Maybe she’d been doing her a favour.

A moment later, the cloaked women came out of the study, eyeing Willow from a distance.

Hands tightened in fists and shoved against her thighs, eyes lowered, flitting from time to time in their direction, she waited for their assessment.

She didn’t allow for the organ in her chest to swell with hope, but she momentarily let herself be free from the shackles of reality.

She’d seen enough children being taken into homes, families.

Maybe this was her time? Maybe someone out there wanted her?

A pair of dark eyes poked through the shadows of the hood as one of the women lowered herself to a crouch and pinched Willow’s quivering chin between her fingers. “Poor girl.”

Hope fled with her sigh.

The second cloaked woman approached, brushing her rough fingers down the mark on Willow’s shoulder. “Who’d put a malediction on a child?”

Willow shrunk back in the wooden seat, the wall of stone digging into the curve of her spine. She ground her bones against it, hoping for some relief from her shame.

Agnes, as the headmistress had called her, pulled her hood back.

Soft, dark curls almost like her own sprang down her shoulders.

She’d only taken but a glance at the contours of the woman’s face, but she’d thought of them as kind.

“You’re a special girl, aren’t you? A little sparrow with the heart of a falcon.

Listen to how it beats, Marilla. All that chaos in her small chest.” She glanced back at the headmistress.

“We’ll take her. Twenty-five sterlings.”

Marilla, the other cloaked woman, sputtered. “What? Why would we need a cursed child? We came here to put her out of her misery, not bring her back with us.”

The headmistress’s pale grey eyes narrowed. “Thirty.”

“Twenty-five,” Agnes said, putting her gloves on.

“Agnes!” Marilla shouted, each irate letter echoing down the empty stone corridors. “Have you gone insane? She will be dead before she hits adolescence. Enough with this foolishness, and let’s spare the girl from the torment.”

Defeated, the headmistress sighed. “You can have her for twenty-five. What about the other one?”

Agnes threw the hood over her head, not even sparing a glance at the headmistress as she left. “Just this one will do.”