Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman Read Free Book Online Page A

sacred and prophetic bird.’ Moon spoke as though she was addressing not one person but a group of students in a lecture room. ‘The hero Bran was possibly a personification of a raven god. There were also several crow or raven goddesses: Macha, Nemain, Badb and the Morrigan.’
    Lol stood up but moved no closer to her.
    ‘It fell dead at my feet,’ she said again. ‘It was a gift – from the ancestors. A greeting on this the day of my homecoming.’
    ‘Like a housewarming present,’ Lol said before he could think.
    He expected her to flare up, but she smiled and her eyes glowed.
    ‘Yes!’ She looked at Lol for the first time, and began to cry. ‘Oh, Lol, I can’t tell you. I can’t express…’
    Her hand came out of the crow then, full of organs and intestines and bloody gunge.
    Lol felt sick. ‘Moon, if it’s a gift—’
    ‘The gift,’ Moon said happily, ‘is prophecy ! And inner vision. The point is that the crow was endowed with supernatural powers. It was honoured and feared and revered, OK? When this one fell to the earth, it was still warm and there was a small wound in the abdomen and I put my little finger into the wound and it just…’
    ‘Why did you do that?’
    ‘Because it was meant , of course! By bathing my hands in its blood, I’m acquiring its powers. There’s a legend of Cuchulainn, where he does that. I…’ She held out the bird to Lol. ‘I don’t know what to do next.’
    ‘Bury it, I think,’ Lol said hopefully.
    And Moon nodded, smiling through her tears.
    Lol let her put the mutilated bird into his hands, trying not to look at it, fixing his gaze out over the city, where the Cathedral tower still merged with the steeple of All Saints under an orange-brown cloudbank.
    Down below the ramparts, in the bowl of the ancient camp, they covered the crow with damp, fallen leaves. Lol wondered if maybe he should say some kind of prayer, but couldn’t think of one.
    ‘You’ll fly again,’ he said lamely to the leafy mound. ‘You will.’
    He felt dazed and inadequate. Poor crow.
    Poor bloody Moon.
    She stood up, her long grey dress hemmed with mud. As he followed her out of the hollow, Lol thought of Merrily Watkins, whom he hadn’t seen since leaving Ledwardine. Would a priest conduct a funeral service for a carrion crow? He thought Merrily would.
    Moon gathered her dark woollen shawl around her. Numbed, he followed her along the slippery path. Ahead of them was a nowfamiliar oak tree with the single dead branch pointing out of the top like a finger from a fist. This was where another steep, secret path dropped towards Moon’s new home in its dripping dell.
    When the path curved to the left, and the barn’s metal flue poked out of the trees, Moon’s mood changed. Her face was a tremulous dawn.
    ‘I still can’t believe it.’ She stopped where the path became a series of long, shallow earthen steps held up by stones and rotting boards. ‘I’m back. I’m really back. And they want me back. They’ve given me their sign. Isn’t that just…?’ Moon shook her head, blown away.
    Leaving Lol in a quandary – his hands sticky with crow bits and blood. Should he tell Denny about this? Or just Dick? Or not mention it at all?
    ‘I’d like to sleep now, Lol,’ Moon said.
    ‘Good idea,’ he said gratefully.
    ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful I feel.’
    ‘Good,’ Lol said. ‘That’s, er… good.’
    Driving the old Astra back through the semi-industrial sprawl of Rotherwas and into the city, he couldn’t even think about it. He thought instead about stupid things, like maybe buying a bike, too, and getting fit like Moon who insisted she’d be pedalling to the shop in Capuchin Lane six days a week all through the coming winter.
    He parked in a private yard behind the shop, in a spot which would have been Moon’s if she possessed a car, and he walked through an alley and into Capuchin Lane. It was also known these days as Church Street, but he and Moon both