The Crow's Wonderland

Before the orange specks of dust called light began awakening to take place of the stars in the sky, or else they were only the stars returning to ash because they’ve simply had enough of the world’s burdens of nightlights, and decided to leave it whilst they had a moment of daybreak to conceal in; it was at that particular moment where the stillness of the early morning was marked by the rustling of feathers outside of the lone windowpanes. 

A flock of crows is called a murder. 

A premonition. 

To which it was the moment where I recognized the stillness’ interruption as I awoke bleakly from my dreary daze and recalled the name of the crow’s flock. It held perhaps the same weight it did for me then, as the crows left the weeping willow from their hallowed perch atop the canopied branches, a tree long since dead by the crow’s murder.

The rain began as I commenced to drag myself over to the window in boggled interest of whatever plagued the crows. Falling more rapidly than anticipated, the droplets began to pound against the tin roof in a most irritable noise that I still find myself weary of recalling. The sound of nickels in a can, if you may imagine, being shaken by the most drunken man one’s imagination can muster, with the strength to prick a thousand pinpricks into the weakened metal.

I brought my pale brown gaze upwards to a lone crow on the zenith, retracting from all sight in a slow sort of retreat at the flash of lighting brought suddenly in a roaring cloud of thunder beginning slowly in the recesses of the cottage’s soul, reverberating its tempest drumbeat onwards throughout the first room and the second of which I shared with my father, bringing his heart of seventy-five years to a start with the sparks of lightning throughout Inverness’ aged roots.

“Stop the racket, Sean,” muttered him as he returned to Wonderland.

I dare say that I’d like to go to a land as such, one that hasn’t been written in the books yet, perhaps one I shall write in my feverish manners after this compilation has dotted its last i and crossed its last t. Or perhaps these words to the mystery ink drinker with a fancy for the melancholic tales of a man at twenty, while speaking in the past from current reflections at an age lost to record, perhaps these words shall be the claim to the Peregrine surname, one that may-- in vain hopes-- traipse throughout Europe until it reaches the places where the name hasn’t been soiled yet and all whom inherit the Peregrine surname are those uninvolved with the holy ministry’s scorn. And perhaps then I shall receive some sort of dignity, be it posthumously if the fates decide upon it.

“Oh, marvel,” whispered a sudden gravelly voice from the other room. “The brilliant soul of the earth. Mother Nature is crying this morning, weeping for the loss of her crows.”

And I went into the other room. 

Let us include it to the ever-growing list of things I desire to return to the past and rewrite, word by word, breath by breath, feather by feather until the ink spills out into the waters and pollutes Mother Nature’s tears with blackened sins. 

Movement rippled from the shadows, tracing against the iridescent shadow of the droplets against the wall in the struggling daybreak, gold specks of burnt stars. 

I saw the deacon’s brown hand caress the wall. “Oh, spectacle, the visions we receive upon opening our eyes in the morning glory.”

“Can I help you?” asked me irritably. 

“Can you?” asked him. “May you? Your fate is in your freckled hand, Master Peregrine.” His words were a wind lost to the storm. 

The man of the ministry and the thorns he’s scraped across my ancestors. 

The raven-cloak brushed against the wall as the shadows encased his movements until his charcoal eyes met mine. And lowering the black hood from his head, he whispered, “Well?”

“I’ll collect my father,” said I. 

“Tsk,” he sighed as I bowed out of the room in a terribly concealed mad dash. “It is a shame that my scribe hasn’t awoken from his dreams.” He muttered incoherently as the tiniest sliver of him disappeared. 

“Who?” asked my father in the bedroom. 

“The deacon,” I said. 

“Eh? I’ll be there in a minute,” he promised. And hence in a minute’s time with some allowance, my father went to the front and greeted the air drearily. 

“How do you do, Mr. Evergreen?” asked him, kindly addressing the wall where he had been only moments before. 

“Indeed, how do I do?” breathed Ruadhan Evergreen, brushing his cloak against the backs of us. He came again in a whisper to my father. “‘Tis a shame you had to awake from your dreams so soon, Cailean. Do not fret, my dear boy,” said as if he wasn’t three times my father’s junior, “there comes a time when all dreams have to end, and we can toast to the once upon a times in spite.” His voice came like punctuated keys against a typewriter’s best judgment, yet with the sort of mysticity a Peregrine could only hope to master. “All dreams come to a close, Cailean. ‘Tis time for me to take them to Wonderland where they lie… awaiting the presence of your soul.”

“You do not die in the adventures of Alice,” I said bluntly. 

“No one truly knows, now, do they? Dreams can await you on the left side of the tea table if you’ve a mind and a thinking soul. But it is time to cease dreaming, Cailean.”

“You shan’t take a thing from the Peregrines, no! far too much has gone in twenty years, lost to your ministry, and in the ancestors’ good name I shall not allow it.”

“How I despise the light,” said Ruadhan, lifting the hem of his feathered cloak ever so slightly, withdrawing a candle from the recesses. “And yet I am illuminated.” 

And he was, a dark face aglow in the glory of candlelight and daybreak where the storm clouds parted. He wore a grim smile prepared to mark the rest of my years from the moment it curled at the sides and ascended upwards in a misty shroud. 

“Mother Nature ceased to cry,” said he, drawing another hand in to retrieve crow feathers. “Even she knows the good must go sometimes.”

“Nothing of ours shall go in your hands,” declared my father with some brevity. “Maybe in another life, those of our fathers, but never mine! No sir, I shan’t allow it!”

“But I’ve taken it,” laughed the deacon’s wispy tone, “I own the ground on which you stand, the shack in which you live, and the dreams inside your head. I own the streets you walk on and the plot you shall be buried in. And I’ve taken it all freely. I’ve taken the crows from your tree. I’ve stolen your dreams and yet, you still refuse them to me.

“And on what pretenses?” continued he. “The wealth you possess, the property you’ve inherited?” The deacon laughed, blowing out the candle in a whisper. “It’s the way of the world, Peregrine.”

“And what, pray tell, makes you think you know the dreams in my head, Ruadhan?” asked my father. 

“You dream of refusal.”

“I dream of anything but!”

“Then I’ve taken it already; I’ve yet to take your refusal, Cailean Peregrine, and I dare say it keeps your soul afire with air.” The deacon returned to the shadows, drawing his hood around his face. “Will you meet with the court?”

“As I’ve done for decades,” said my father.

“Which only means I’ve taken the refusal, too. Good-day, Cailean Peregrine. The ministry awaits my finances.”

He left without the door.

And the crows returned to their Wonderland. 

The crows returned to death.