The Book of the Crowman (34 page)

Megan has to hold a kerchief to her face and sit back from the book to make sure she doesn’t dampen the pages or smudge the ink with her freely flowing tears. When she has written the final word, the only space left is the last verso inside the back cover of the book’s leather binding. She blots the still glistening ink, closes the book quietly and gently and sits back in her chair.

For some time, she has no notion of how long, she is able to do nothing but stare from the wind-eye, her eyes moving across the landscape in random sweeps and vainly trying to see back into the weave. Sitting at her desk though, her only power is that of the journaler and archivist. At this moment, the ability to pass into other realms might never even have been hers.

In gradual increments the will and ability to move returns to her and she packs away the writing implements and book into their box. Outside it appears to be midmorning, though it is cloudy again and she hasn’t kept track of the movement of the light.

Megan has run out of road. The purpose that has animated her in waking and sleeping for the last several months has been fulfilled. She has never felt emptier. There are no more tears left to cry and she is no longer confident of the purpose of her world or her place in it. To be without a compass is frightening. It is this simple fear that motivates her to rise. She packs the black box into a knapsack, pulls on her furs and leaves the bedroom. At the front door she pulls on her winter boots. Her mother is busy in the kitchen, preparing cakes and pies for the Festival of Light.

“Going far, Meg?”

“Not sure. I have to see Mr Keeper.”

Her mother turns then and sees Megan’s face. Megan can only assume that what Amu sees there is beyond deciphering.

“You’ll be back in time for the celebrations, though, surely.”

“I’d like to be. But I… don’t know for certain.”

“Megan Maurice, no one misses the Festival of Light. You make sure you’re back in time.”

The instant the words are out Megan can see Amu regrets them. She is talking to a little girl and there is no little girl in the Maurice homestead any longer.

“I’ll do what I can, Amu. You know I wouldn’t miss it unless there was something…” There isn’t any point in trying to explain. Megan goes to her mother and embraces her. At first Amu is rigid, then she returns the contact just as fiercely. When Megan draws away, her mother is unwilling to release her. She kisses Amu on the cheek. “I really have to go.”

Walking along the snowy track through the village, Megan wishes Tom and Sally would appear. It would make leaving the village again more bearable – especially if she isn’t able to return in time for the festival. There’s no one on the road with her, though, and she departs the borders of Beckby alone.

Returning along the track through the pines is far easier for Megan than when she left almost two weeks before. When she arrives at the clearing she is surprised to see Mr Keeper outside the roundhouse; even more surprised to see two horses tethered and saddled nearby. Their saddlebags look heavy and are collecting flecks of snow. Mr Keeper holds up a hand to her even though he’s facing the opposite direction.

As she reaches the roundhouse he turns to her, looking irritated, and says, “Where have you been all morning?”

“I was… working.”

“No you weren’t. You were sitting staring out of the window.”

There was nothing she could say to that. It was easy to forget how far Mr Keeper could see when he chose to look.

“I’m sorry. I was… gathering myself.”

“Really? Well, at least you’re here now. Pick a horse – this one’s mine.”

“What? Where are we going?”

“Not far.”

“But… The Festival…”

“We’ll be back in time for that.”

“Are you sure? Only–”

“Megan,” he says, his eyes a-twinkle, “Have I ever let you down? Come on, girl. Mount up.” He holds out his hand. Finally Megan reacts and hands him the box from her knapsack. He removes the book, tucking it under his arm while he stows the box inside the roundhouse. “I’ll read as we go along,” he says. Once again she is amazed at how he swings from grumpy to cheerful in the space between moments.

“I don’t much like horses,” she says.

“Nonsense. Get your behind in that saddle before I throw you up there myself.”

Warily, Megan complies. If her horse even notices she’s sat on top of his back, he doesn’t show it. Mr Keeper unties both mounts and climbs onto his. Megan watches his movements. Some of his energy has returned, she’s relieved to see, but he still moves with difficulty and his back remains subtly bent. His hair seems to have lost bulk and his face is thinner. Getting into the saddle causes him obvious discomfort and Megan suspects that his wounds mustn’t yet have fully healed. Still, he seems happy enough and happier still to be moving.

He nudges his horse and it walks off towards the path. Her horse follows without her having to do anything. She notices Mr Keeper’s reins are loose and he already has the book open in his lap.

They travel east and their journey takes the rest of the day. Mr Keeper is the least talkative she has ever known him and at no point does he stop, not even to smoke his pipe. Megan contents herself with watching the landscape slowly alter as they move through it, keeping her eye open for signs of the Crowman. There is nothing. Not even the crows themselves. Some of the route they take she recognises from their journey to Shep Afon but they turn onto a lesser-used track quickly and the land here is new to her once more. This alone breaks the monotony of journey.

The horses maintain the same unconcerned, unhurried pace throughout the day. They appear to know exactly where they are going, which is fortunate because Mr Keeper never once looks up from the book. Sometime before dusk she notices a lump in the landscape. This seems to be where they are heading. It is too small to be a hill and too large to be roundhouse or dwelling. The lump is situated at the centre of a generous but slow rise in the land, higher up than the rolling hills that surround it in every direction. As they begin the gradual climb that will bring them to the grassy bubble at the top of the rise, Mr Keeper thumps the book closed.

He makes no other movement or sound.

Even when they reach the mound and he tethers the horses to a wooden stake driven deep into the turf, he says nothing. He dismounts, walks around to the opposite side of the mound and disappears beneath its rim. Megan climbs down and follows him.

He really has disappeared. For a few moments she is utterly disorientated. Walking a little farther around the mound she finds grass-covered steps leading down to a dark opening. A stone door, thick as her thigh, stands open. Light flickers inside.

She descends towards it.

A few steps below the surface of the land, the earthen mound becomes a small stone cavern, its walls cold and slatey to the touch. Megan traces her hands along them to steady herself and dips her head to keep from hitting it on the low ceiling.

The cramped passage gives into a small oval space with embrasures at intervals around it. It is in between these hollows that Mr Keeper now moves, lighting tallow candles. At each end of the oval an aperture leads into a new space. Megan steps partially through to find another room of exactly the same dimensions with one difference; the room they occupy is three-quarters lined with black books exactly like the one she has been writing in these past many months. The rooms beyond are empty.

“What is this place?”

“It’s the Keepers’ Library for this land.”

“This land?”

“There are many lands, Megan, each with their own Keepers and their own libraries. Like all those others, this is where past and future, near and far, the day world and the night country meet. It’s where we can see the weave in all its magnificence. This is where the world continues. We tell its stories and thereby keep it alive.”

Mr Keeper’s eyes shine in the warm yellow glimmering. Are those tears she sees, ready to spill at their corners? She looks around trying to guess the numbers of books here; perhaps four hundred in this room, with room for a couple hundred more.

“How long has it been since the Black Dawn ended?”

Mr Keeper shakes his head.

“I don’t know. No one does.”

“And how many Keepers are there?”

“Not many. Not enough, that’s for certain. Well, until now, of course.”

Megan frowns, moves to the stone shelves and runs her fingers over the spines of the identical black books. She stops and looks back at Mr Keeper.

“Why must we keep telling the same story over and over again? Once we tell it, won’t it stay told?”

Mr Keeper grins and holds up his finger.

“Ah. Now.
There’s
a question. Perhaps you ought to find out for yourself.” Mr Keeper plops down on the stone floor and finally reaches for his pipe and tobacco. He fills the bowl with gentle fingers and lights up from a candle nearby. “But first, there’s one more thing you need to do.” He opens up Megan’s book to the last page, the blank verso. From a slot in the wall he draws out a raven quill and a pot of ink. He hands them to her. “Your name,” he says, nodding towards the parchment. “Right there, please. Large as you like.”

She hesitates only for a moment before dipping and writing:

Megan Maurice

near the top of the page. She hands the quill and ink back. Mr Keeper places the ink beside him but keeps the pen.

“Pass me the book,” he says.

She returns it and he adds, underneath her name, a single line of handwriting:

Keeper of the Crowman, Guardian of the World

Her own eyes fill with tears now. When the ink is dry, Mr Keeper adds her book to the shelves, filling a row. He comes back to her and holds her in his arms.

“Well done, Megan. You’ve been an inspiration to me.”

They sit quietly then and he attends to his pipe, drifting away from her on wafts and twirls of smoke.

After some time he says, “We’ll stay here tonight and return in the morning. You’ll be back in time for the Festival of Light.”

Megan doesn’t miss the implication.

“What about you?”

“I’ve some travelling to do.”

“But why? Where to? Why can’t you come to the celebrations?”

He waves her questions away like bothersome flies.

“We can talk about that later. I’m going to fetch our bedrolls. Meanwhile, I want you to read…”

He stands up with some difficulty and searches the shelves until he finds what he’s looking for.

“…this. I’ll be right back.”

The first thing Megan does is turn to the back of the book where she finds, the name:

Aaron Alwin

The handwriting is the same as Mr Keeper’s, if a little steadier.

She opens it and begins to read. After a couple of pages, she frowns and reads back over a section. She reads a page more and then flicks ahead. Not satisfied, she removes her book from where it has barely had the chance to settle and reads sections from each. There’s a swish and a solid thud from the direction of the door. When Mr Keeper returns, she has both books open on the stone floor and is lying on her front with the index finger of each hand resting on the parchment of each book. She doesn’t look up as Mr Keeper rolls out their bedding and prepares them a meal of cured pigeon and chunks of oatbread.

Megan reads in silence for a long time – it must be hours because when her concentration breaks and she looks up, Mr Keeper is asleep. She reads on into the night, comparing the books until she’s quite certain of her conclusions. She does, eventually, sleep but all too soon she hears Mr Keeper preparing his first smoke of the morning. She wants nothing more than to go back to sleep. For a month or more.

“Pleasant night?” he asks.

She sits up.

“Far from it.”

He passes her a skin.

“Drink some water. You’ll feel better.”

“No, I won’t. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Questions, Megan? There’s a surprise.”

Megan sits up from her bedroll. Furious with Mr Keeper’s nonchalance.

“This may be amusing to you but it means everything to me. Everything. Can’t you understand? Don’t you remember what that feels like?”

He lays his pipe down half smoked and lets his eyes meet hers. Immediately she is full of remorse. She has gone too far now. Broken the respect that has gone tacitly between them all this time. Mr Keeper ages in those silent seconds and she can’t bear to hold his gaze. She looks away.

“You’re quite right, Megan. I’m sorry to be so… curmudgeonly. Laughing at things has become my way of dealing with what can sometimes be a confusing and painful experience.”

“Being a Keeper, you mean?”

“I mean life.”

Megan doesn’t know what to say.

“Look, Megan, I know what you want to ask me and it’s OK. I asked my Keeper exactly the same thing and everyone who writes this book and completes this journey is bound, literally bound, to ask the same question. You want to know why the stories aren’t the same. Right?”

Megan nods.

“The truth is, we receive the story of the Crowman through spirit, by being in touch with something that is not entirely of this world. None of us hear it in identical terms, no matter how hard the Crowman tries to speak it the same to all of us. The language of spirit is different from ours. It’s a miracle that we hear it at all.”

“But, Mr Keeper, some of the
names
are different. Even some of the places. The way it begins. The way it ends…”

Mr Keeper picks up his pipe again and continues to smoke now that they are over what he seems to think is the worst of it.

“Would you agree that the stories are broadly the same?”

Megan sighs. She can’t help but feel a sense of bone-deep defeat.

“Yes, but so what? Aren’t the differences between them big enough to invalidate the whole story?”

“That’s a question for a Keeper’s own heart, Megan. I can’t answer it.”

“I don’t understand. Is any of it even real? Did any of it even
happen
?”

Mr Keeper finished his smoke and put the pipe down again.

“Megan, come here.”

“No.”

“Come here and sit with me for a moment. Please. I ask as a friend. We are friends aren’t we, you and I? After all that’s happened, surely you can allow me that one assumption.”

Megan is weeping even before she reaches him.

“Of course we’re friends,” she stutters. “Of course we are. I just… it feels like you’ve taken everything away from me. I
love
him. You can’t go telling me Gordon Black is just something I conjured from my imagination.”

Mr Keeper folds her into his arms and rocks her for long moments. For now, she is too upset to listen but she knows he’s waiting for her to be calm enough to take in something more. She works hard to regain control. Gently he takes her shoulders and pushes her away from him. He looks into her eyes.

“Remember this, Megan: if the story wasn’t real, none of us would be here now. There would be no world. It would have ended generations ago. It’s true, we created the Crowman by telling his story, but his story existed long before we did. It can’t be a myth any more because we’ve made it real. Do you understand?”

“Are you saying that the myth created us before we could recount it?”

“Yes, Megan. That is exactly what I’m telling you.”

“But how much of it is the past and how much is just…” Megan breaks down. She can barely get the words out of her mouth. “…a story?”

“I don’t think anyone will ever know. Not for certain. There was certainly a boy who grew into a powerful man. There was certainly a force of evil on earth so powerful it almost ended the world. The boy certainly opposed it and through his self-sacrifice, defeated it. There were prophecies. There were earthquakes. There were storms. There was famine and sickness. There was a war. And this boy, this boy who became a man – as he does in every book in this library – led an army against the forces of evil. And though they lost the battle, his death, his passing back into myth, won the war. That is the story we Keepers tell and by telling it we keep this world alive. Yours is the most beautiful and powerful ever placed in this library.

“What you must ask yourself today, Megan Maurice, Keeper of the Crowman, is not how much of the story is true but how much of it is
alive
. My answer would be that every page of it is alive with the presence of the Crowman. I have seen him with you from the start, Megan, and the two of you share a special connection. I could see that in the way he first presented himself to you.

“The spirit of the Crowman was born long before humans but his
story
could only be told after we had come to that point in history, that place in the weave, at which we would either end ourselves or be reborn. We were always going to come to that moment of crisis; it was built into us and it still is. That was the trigger that caused his energy to enter. That was when we called on his spirit, not merely as individuals, not as a nation, but as a world. His seed was alive in all of us and we called from a deep place in ourselves that most people don’t even know exists. That is the place where Keepers work from, Megan. Once we’d summoned him, the Crowman prophecies began. By keeping his story alive, we keep the dark side of ourselves in balance by
allowing
his darkness in.

“You have kept the world alive, Megan. But not, as the Keepers who came before you have, for one more generation. You have reunited us with the land forever. You should be proud, Megan.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve done anything more than tell some silly fireside tale.”

Megan weeps harder into Mr Keeper’s shoulder. He holds her tight for a few moments more.

“Megan.”

When she doesn’t respond, Mr Keeper gently breaks their contact.

“You have to stop crying now, Megan. There’s work to do. It’s time for you to share his story with the folk in Beckby and hereabouts. After that, you must take it to the other Keepers. You are the last of us. The one who carries the Crowman’s tale. It is as perfect and fragile as a snowflake and you must find a way to keep it safe for everyone.”

Megan sniffs and wipes the tears from her face. She heaves a sigh and nods to her mentor.

“I’ll do everything I can.”

He grins.

“I know you will. And it will always be enough, Megan. I’ve never known anyone worthier of such a responsibility.”

Megan glances around the library and shivers as she thinks of all the Keepers who have travelled the weave in pursuit of the same words. Even then, after so many generations, only one book is correct. And now her dark angel, her guide in the realms of spirit has stepped back once more into shadow.

“He told me he had to leave me for a while,” says Megan. “And that I was to look for him in inconsequential things.”

Mr Keeper nods, smiling as though he remembers a similar admonishment from a distant moment in his own life.

“He said there’s a part of him that knows me from a time before. From a time in my story. He says I’ll be reunited with that part of him some day.”

“That’s between you and the Crowman, Megan. Not for my ears.”

“I think I know who I was. He watched me die a long time ago. I think I loved him even then.”

Mr Keeper places a hand on her arm.

“Are you going to be alright, Megan? Do you understand now?”

“I think so. I…”

“What is it?”

“The men from the mill. Do you think–”

“They won’t bother you again, Megan.”

“No. It isn’t that.”

Mr Keeper looks impatient.

“What then?”

“Not just them, but all men who still seek the power of technology. They’ll never stop, will they?”

Mr Keeper struggles to his feet, his joints clicking loudly, the sound echoing off the stone.

“Come on, Megan. We can talk about this on the way home. If we don’t leave soon, you’ll miss the celebrations.”

For a few moments, Megan doesn’t move. He’s evading the question. Putting her off in the hope she won’t pursue it. Why? Before it becomes an issue she stands up too, feigning a breezy mood and a keenness to be on her way.

She mimics Mr Keeper’s packing up of his bedroll and follows him as he makes sure they have everything before blowing out the candles. The only light now comes from the passage leading up to the door of the library. He guides her out and up, pulling the door shut with a solemn thud. The horses look as though they haven’t moved and seem very content considering how they’ve spent the night.

Mr Keeper puts his horse into a trot and Megan’s mount follows its lead. She does have questions but they are fewer than she imagined. Much of their trip is silent but for the sound of hooves on hard ground. Everywhere Megan looks and in all the creatures and plants and shapes of the land, she sees the touch of the Crowman. He may no longer be with her but it is as though he has been there before them and left his sign. She can no longer put it into words but it she understands better now than ever she did before. She smiles and is glad in her heart because she
knows
the Crowman is close and real. He is more real than she.