#stone crow

So you do!! A common little fellow but still immensely likeable :)

There were a lot of drawings, at first. A sketch of the forest edge that could be seen from the upstairs window between their two beds, the old rusty weather vane shaped like a hedgehog that their grandpa had made years before when he built the house, and the image of their mother from behind as she played the piano in the parlor downstairs. Despite only having had the colored pencils for less than a day, Bran had always liked drawing and painting, so the pictures he made now were beautiful, almost lifelike. And when their mother saw them she gasped in delight and praised them mightily. She asked if there was a story that connected all of them together, because she knew that Than liked to tell stories like that, stories that connected people and places, connected things in unexpected ways. So he told a story. He told of how when the wind came from the North and blew just enough to turn the old hedgehog weather vane towards the South, and the sky was overcast with thunderous gray clouds, a path would appear that led deep into the old pine forest beyond the house. If you went that way, past the woman who played Tiersen’s “Comptine d’Un Autre Été“ on the piano, down the lawn, and towards the towering pines of the woods, you would find a road through the trees that hadn’t been there yesterday. It led to a little house in the darkest part of the forest, built into the base of the oldest and biggest tree in the whole wood. There lived an old Witch who could grant wishes to in exchange for a light from a lantern, which she could never obtain because she had been cursed by the North Wind. Whenever she tried to light a lantern herself or gather the light from one she found, the breeze would snuff it out before she could get close. It was a whimsical tale, but a delightful one, and everyone thought it was wonderful. Bran was so impressed that he drew a picture of the Witch with his pencils, making her old but kind looking, and giving her a hand of stone. When Than asked why, Bran could only say that it felt right. The second day was when Than disappeared. A storm had come in the night and blown part of the roof down, so in the morning, nobody thought to check and see where Than had gone. He was already gone when Bran got up, so his brother simply assumed he had already gone downstairs, and their mother assumed he was still abed. It wasn’t until the debris  had been cleared away to make room for breakfast that anyone noticed that one person wasn’t around. All day they searched and found no sign of him. The police came, but they couldn’t help much. They took a description of him down and a smiling picture that had been hastily snapped by their Aunt Emma just before the school dance earlier that year. For the first time in all his life, Bran was alone in the room he shared with his brother, and it was a long time before he could sleep. When he did at last drift away, his dreams were uncomfortable and frightening. Filled with dark paths beneath towering trees and a cottage deep in the woods where a witch lived. When morning came again, the sky was grey and overcast and the wind blew in from the North. Bran looked out his window that morning to see that the weather vane had been blown to point towards the South, the rusted old hedgehog almost seemed to be looking out at something, at the old forest. Remembering his brother’s tale, Bran looked for a path, and there it was. So he borrowed an old lantern from the attic, an oil one that hadn’t been used since his grandfather was a little boy, and snuck past his mother who was playing the piano. It was the same song she always played, but today it was agitated, anxious. She was thinking about Than, and was only playing to keep herself occupied, to stave off her worries. Bran followed the path into the trees, and sure enough it was exactly as his brother had told. A winding dark road beneath the trees, and built into the base of the oldest and biggest tree was a cottage. When he knocked, the door was answered by an old woman who looked exactly as he had drawn the day before yesterday, right down to her left hand which was made of stone. “What is it you wish, child?” she asked him. And he explained about his missing brother. So she drew him in and laid out a spell for seeing things from afar. Her eyes traveled back to the night of the storm. She saw Than as he got out of bed and climbed out onto the roof where he liked to sit and write whenever he couldn’t sleep. The wind picked up and he did not go in. Thunder rumbled in the distance and he glanced worriedly up, but did not go inside. It wasn’t until the first droplets of heavy rain splattered down onto his notebook that he got up to go back in. But the storm had been growing for quite some time, and it struck. He wrestled against winds, pushing his way to the window. He never made it. The wind took part of the roof, and he fell. You may have wondered, as the old Witch did, why they didn’t find his body when they all went looking for him later on. Well when he fell, he went through the old cellar window hidden by the brambles and the bushes. That cellar hadn’t been opened since their great grandmother had died nearly seventy years ago. Bran’s mother hadn’t even remembered there was a cellar at all. She would recall it later on when police search parties in the woods would turn up no sign of Than, and she would break the lock on the heavy wooden door that someone had put a shelf full of cans in front of years before. She would find the body of her son, and she would hold him close. She would not cry. No tears could ever reveal the depths of despair a mother feels at losing her child. She would simply hug his body tightly and feel like the entire world had come to an end in a single moment. All this the Witch saw, and her face must have shown something, for Bran knew that she could not return his brother to him, not even with a wish. But the Witch was not about to let him go home with nothing. She offered him a chance at a different story. A story where he could explore wondrous places and meet all kinds of people who could never die and might even become close friends. A story where he did not have to return home to a mother whose heart was slowly breaking, to a twin brother who lay dead in a forgotten cellar, to a birthday which would never again be happy. And Bran? He said yes. He offered her the glimmer of light from the lantern, but she told him to keep it, and tucked it deep away into his heart for safekeeping. Then she transformed him into the shape of a bird, a crow to match his name, and gave him a body of stone and blurred his memory so that he could never be hurt by what had happened. Then as the distant sun was setting beyond the trees she sent him on his way, deeper into the forest and cross an ancient divide that few humans ever returned from. Midnight came, and Bran was seventeen. And Bran was no more.

And he came across a grove in the forest. A grove of trees where seven mirrors stood in a circle. The sunlight shone green through the canopy above and glinted through vines and ivy growing over the frames and surfaces of the mirrors. Each mirror was spider webbed with cracks, shattered beyond repair. Yet when Ardri looked within them, he thought for a moment that other faces looked out at him, faces that were not his at all. But then that moment ended and he wondered if he had only imagined it. He asked the Stone Crow what the mirrors were, but the creature would only reply that their story was a tragic one and better left for when they were no longer present in the grove. So Ardri turned reluctantly away from the mirrors and left the silent grove.

Ardri bowed to the creature and it it slowly nodded its head before submerging once more. Riona stood not far away, her hand behind her to grasp at Brin’s as if looking for comfort. “Have you been this way before?” asked the Stone Crow. Riona shook her head, “Nay. I’ve only heard of it from those who returned, bits and stories. I can get you to the end of the sea, but you’ll have to search yourself for the one you seek beyond it.”

“But what if,” protested the Raven. “What if I can’t do it? What if I never succeed? What if I’m not good enough?” The Stone Crow was silent for a long time, then it spoke. “That’s okay too. You don’t have to succeed at everything. No one can. What’s important is that you didn’t give up after the first failure.”

Lonely. The Night was so lonely. Ardri walked beneath the ancient trees and tried not to long for the home he had left behind not so very long ago. No fire was his to sit by, no place to sleep in comfortable  hole or home, not even a patch of moss beneath the stars alongside the sleeping form of friends long known. Just the pathless wilds of the Deep Woods. It was a surprise when his dismal thoughts were interrupted by a harsh caw. A tree nearby held what appeared to be a crow of stone. Its wings flapped against the air like a true crow, and its caw was certainly realistic. But being stone, it could not fly. “Who are you?” asked Ardri. The Crow laughed. “I am who I appear, unlike some. A crow of stone. A creature of air made from the bones of the earth. A contradiction if you like. If you don’t like it, well... It doesn’t change much.” Ardri couldn’t help but smile in amusement at the creature. It made no pretense at politeness, but he knew what it was about. That was rare in Faerie. “Do you require aid?” He asked of it. “I cannot fly,” said the Stone Crow. “So I have little choice but to ask for your help. But I would not accept it without knowing what you ask in return. As they say, trust not those who offer gifts freely. They are here to deceive you.” So Ardri considered what he might ask of the creature in return. After a time he smiled. “Might you consider traveling with me? I am in need of companionship and wisdom, both of which you might supply.” The Stone Crow flapped its wings and cawed thoughtfully. “It is a good deal,” it said. “In exchange for companionship and sage advice on your journey, you will bear me with you wherever you roam so that I might not be trapped in one place by my own form.” “Deal” said Ardri, and held his arm against the tree so that the Stone Crow could climb up it to his shoulder. Together they continued on into the dark of the Woods, no longer feeling quite as alone anymore.

A field was chosen for the place to meet the coming army. Some Fae had already fled, but others chose to stand with Ardri, for it was he who had foreseen such events and prepared, they believed themselves to be safer with him. The sun was high when they met there. A figure of humanoid form wreathed in dark fire that danced across his flesh, burning and healing in the same moment. To gaze upon him was like looking upon a void. No darkness, no shadows. Not even empty space. Just...nothingness. Ardri stood opposed to him, still garbed in the simple rags and leafy vines of his forest home, yet standing firm and tall, immovable and stern. “It has been a long time since we have met any who would stand against us. How brave. How foolish.” The voice was calm and quiet, at odds with his frightening appearance. A voice that wound its way into your mind and teased it with complacency, with promises of friendships and reason, until you let down your guard...then it was too late. Yet Ardri stood firm. “Why have you come? Would you bring devastation where none have yet challenged you? To claim to defeat defiance when it is your own actions that bring it about?“ And the figure of dark fire laughed, a horrible sound that was like discordant sounds mocking what ought to have been a sweet melody. “You know why we have come, little elfling prince. You dare to seek the First Crown. Not that you could ever find it. After all, it has abandoned Faerie. We have merely come to teach you what comes of those who hold impossible dreams.” They attacked then. Creatures of indescribable horror. Great beasts with a thousand heads and a thousand reaching rotting arms, monstrous amalgamations born of Fae who were once individual but were devoured one by one and became a tortured furious giant of too many screaming minds, twisted shapes and beings who had long ago left physical bodies behind and become furious shades of who they once were. Silvamune burned that day. The great hills perished in dark fire blacker than the blackest of nights. Through the smoke Ardri led those few who stayed with him to the shore where Selkies had brought boats for them to escape. As he boarded the final boat with the Stone Crow carefully tucked into his arm so it couldn’t be lost, Ardri turned to look behind at the highest hill where the prophet had dwelt near the ancient grave in a house of captured starlight. The building had crumbled, and the grave was no more.

“What lies on the other side of the Flowered Oceans?” asked Ardri one day as he walked along the shores. The Stone Crow on his shoulders ruffled its feathers with the sound of grinding stone. “Its a border to the Human World. To Earth. Distant shores that wash up on their world. Sometimes in places where no water should ever be. You could be in a crowded inland city and hear the sound of seabirds and waves from a lonely alleyway. Or out in the desert and see what might be a mirage but might be the surf on the sand. If the humans aren’t careful they might get washed away into Faerie before they know it.” Ardri pondered this. “Why aren’t they careful then? If they know how dangerous it can be?” The Stone Crow laughed. “But they don’t know! That’s the problem! Most humans have no idea about Faerie or anything outside their own little worlds. Some can’t or won’t believe in such things, for their own sanity. Those who do know, well...everyone makes mistakes. They might not realize what it is until its far too late.” “That sounds...scary.” “I imagine it is.” And on they went.