Newford Stories by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page B

perked up at the mention of the
crow girls. They were the real reason for her current interest in
all things corvid—a pair of punky, black-haired young women who
seemed to have the ability to change your entire perception of the
world simply by stepping into the periphery of your life. Ever
since she’d first seen them in a café, she kept spotting them in
the most unlikely places, hearing the most wonderful stories about
them. Whenever she saw a crow now, she’d peer closely at it,
wondering if this was one of the pair in avian form.
    “That makes it more complicated,” Meran
said.
    Sitting back on her heels, she glanced at
Lucius. He gave her an apologetic look.
    “I know he has buffalo blood,” he told
her.
    “Yes, I see that.”
    “What did Maida mean by ill will?” Cerin
asked. “He doesn’t appear to have any obvious physical
injuries.”
    Lucius shrugged. “You know how they can be.
The more they tried to explain it to me, the less I
understood.”
    Jilly had her own questions as she listened
to them talk, such as why hadn’t someone immediately called for an
ambulance, or why had this Lucius brought the injured man here,
rather than to a hospital? But there was a swaying, eddying
sensation in the air, a feeling that the world had turned a step
from the one everyone knew and they now had half a foot in some
other, perhaps more perilous, realm. She decided to be prudent for
a change and listen until she understood better what was going
on.
    She wasn’t the only one puzzled, it
seemed.
    “We need to know more,” Meran said.
    Lucius nodded. “I’ll see if I can find
them.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Cerin said.
    Lucius hesitated for a long moment, then
gave another nod and the two men left the house. Jilly half
expected them to fly away, but when she looked out the window she
saw them walking under the oaks toward the street like an ordinary,
if rather mismatched, pair, Lucius so broad and large that the tall
harper at his side appeared slender to the point of skinniness. The
crows remained in the trees this time, studying the progress of the
two men until they were lost from sight.
    “I have some things to fetch,” Meran said.
“Remedies to try. Will you watch over our patient until I get
back?”
    Jilly glanced at the professor.
    “Um, sure,” she said.
    And then the two of them were alone with the
mysteriously stricken man. Laid low by ill will. What did that mean?
    Jilly pulled a footstool over to the sofa
where Meran had been kneeling and sat down. Looking at the man, she
found herself wishing for pencil and sketchbook again. He was so
handsome, like a figure from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Except for
the braids and raggedy clothes, of course. Then she felt guilty for
where her thoughts had taken her. Here was the poor man, half dead
on the sofa, and all she could think about was drawing him.
    “He doesn’t look very happy, does he?” she
said.
    “Not very.”
    “Where do you know Lucius from?”
    The professor took off his wire-rimmed
glasses and gave them a polish they didn’t need before replacing
them.
    “I can’t remember where or when I first met
him,” he said. “But it was a long time ago—before the war,
certainly. Not long after that he became somewhat of a recluse. At
first I’d go visit him at his house—he lives just down the street
from here—but then it came to the point where he grew so withdrawn
that one might as well have been visiting a sideboard or a chair.
Finally I stopped going ’round.”
    “What happened to him, do you think?”
    The professor shrugged. “Hard to tell with
someone like him.”
    “You’re being deliberately mysterious,
aren’t you?”
    “Not at all. There just isn’t much to say. I
know he’s related to the crow girls. Their grandfather, or an uncle
or something. I never did quite find out which.”
    “So that’s why all the crows are out
there.”
    “I doubt it,” the professor said. “He’s
corbae, all right, but