The Blood Keeper

  Pan slunk out of his chair in a boneless fashion, and I held out my hand. He took it, and after grabbing a big loaf of raisin bread I’d baked yesterday, we left.

  Outside, the sun pushed down. I stood in the middle of the front yard and broke the bread into pieces. The grass tickled the tops of my bare feet. Several of the crows gathered around, and I offered Pan half the chunks to scatter for them. For the other crows, I threw little pieces of bread into the air. They darted down from their lazy, gliding circles to catch the bread in beaks or claws. My tosses arched high, almost like I was juggling. My arms knew the patterns, for I’d fed the crows this way since I was twelve. Soon all the birds were in the sky, taking turns in an intricate pattern as I ripped bread and pitched it, again and again.

  “What are they?” Pan asked.

  “This is Reese.” I spread my arm out in a wide gesture, glad he knew there was more to my crows than appeared. “He used to be a boy like you, before wild magic transformed him into crows. Each of them is a piece of Reese. He’s my friend, and a protector of this land and everyone on it. Now that he knows you, he’ll keep you safe, too.”

  The crows called out in unison, one loud, merry bark.

  Pan didn’t seem afraid, relaxing enough to sink onto the ground with his legs crossed under him. He reached out a hand to the nearest crow, which hopped toward him, wings out. “Hi,” Pan said quietly.

  I held still, watching, wondering how much of our magic this boy knew, and hoping it wouldn’t take long to win enough of his trust that he’d tell me his story.

  “Nice,” Nick said from behind me. I hadn’t heard him come down the porch or the slap of the screen door.

  One of the crows immediately flapped up to land on Nick’s shoulder and nuzzled the flat of his beak against Nick’s cheek. Nick scratched under the crow’s left wing, just as the crow liked best.

  I asked Nick, flicking my finger back toward the house, “How’s Donna?”

  “Fine. I just hate it that she knows me so well.”

  “She should. She’s your mother.”

  Nick grunted under his breath, and the crow on his shoulder flew down to Pan. The boy had a pink pebble from the driveway, and he threw it for them, in a sort of fetch game. Nick and I stood side by side to watch. I hoped he wouldn’t notice there was one fewer crow than usual, so that I didn’t have to lie to him. Or to Silla. “Is she still mad at me?” I asked quietly, annoyed that I sounded meek.

  “Oh, well.” Nick pulled at his earlobe. “She’s too busy to be angry.”

  “In other words, yes.”

  “You did say some shitty things.”

  The way his eyebrows drew together, I knew he took her side. But then, he always did. I tilted my chin up. “So did she. I’m not my mother, and it isn’t my fault the crows chose to stay here with me. She’s the one who always tried to force him to—” I stopped because I didn’t want to argue in front of Pan. The boy pretended to ignore us, but the slight lean of his head gave him away.

  We fell into silence again, watching. Three of the crows flapped their wings, arguing over the stone they’d fetched for Pan. As if they were three different minds, instead of part of a whole.

  “Does he seem less …” Nick paused. “Less human? Than he used to.”

  I wove my fingers together in front of me. “Sometimes.”

  “I just remember he used to follow conversations—he’d watch us, and one of the heads would move between us as we talked so that it was like he was at a tennis match or something. I haven’t seen him do that in a year.”

  I said, “It doesn’t mean he isn’t listening. Maybe he’s better at it now, at following only with his ears.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure that’ll make Silla feel better,” he said with a sarcastic edge.

  “He knows his name,” I offered, quietly.

  Nick lowered his voice. “I’m not sure that one does.”

  My eyes went to Pan, holding his palm out with the pink stone in its center, waiting for two of the crows to decide which would pluck it up. If he didn’t know who he was, he’d come to the right place. We made new lives here, as the crows themselves could attest.

  SEVEN

  WILL

  I was avoiding sleep and nightmares by fighting electronic half-lion monsters online with my soccer team’s keeper. The sound track to a battle scene from some epic movie blared from my iPod. The TV showed a UK vs. US game recorded from the last World Cup. And two upright fans shoved air at me with mutual whirs. My can of Dr Pepper was nearly empty. I needed another. Weirdly enough, the sweet carbonation masked the coppery taste in my mouth better than anything else. It had bugged me all day, it and the bruise on my chest. At least the bruises had to be touched to irritate. But this taste stuck with me, waiting to grab my attention again from around every corner.

  The TV suddenly shut off, popping a level of sound, and I spun around in my computer chair.

  Ben had closed the door behind him, and after setting the TV remote back on top of the monitor, he leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Want to kick the ball around?”

  “It’s dark out.” It was after ten p.m. And I was hot and wanted to just sit in my room with all the noise and melt.

  “So? You guys used to play out there till midnight if they let you.”

  Yeah, Aaron and I had. But when Ben left for the academy, I’d barely known how to dribble. I just stared back at him, not sure how to say, You aren’t Aaron.

  The epic movie sound track burst into some serious bass action, and Ben frowned at it and turned it off. He leveled a Superior Officer stare at me. “Get off-line so we can talk.”

  “About what?” I twisted my chair back around to face the desk and winced to see my player down half his life since I’d looked away for two seconds. One of the undead lion-monsters had nearly ripped my arm off.

  “Come on, Will. I don’t know how long I’ll be home.”

  Gritting my teeth, I nodded. I clicked on Matt’s icon and told him I was off for a bit, then put my computer to sleep. Ben had moved to my bed and was shuffling around the open textbooks and loose-leaf papers sprawled over the summer quilt. “Dad says you’re getting a B in Spanish.”

  Great opening line, Ben. I shrugged. “And in English, and a C in History if I don’t bother to memorize seven thousand dates for the final. So?”

  “What’s your GPA?”

  I jerked my shoulders in a shrug. “Low three something. I get As in all the science and math classes, okay?”

  “You need a decent class rank to get into the academy.”

  The only sound for a long moment was the whir of the fans. My tongue tasted like yelling, and I thought suddenly of Mab’s fingers squeezing that heart. I said, “I’m not going.”

  Ben shoved his neck out. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I don’t want to go to the Naval Academy, Ben. There are other things in the world.”

  “You want to go to some state school and then join up through the OCS? Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of ROTC.” He spread his hands as if he was clutching a giant ball between them. And probably imagining it was my head.

  I leaned back in my chair, stretched my legs, and tried to look unconcerned. Why hadn’t I just gone outside to play soccer with him? The last year had exploded all the things I’d thought I wanted, but Ben probably couldn’t understand that. He hadn’t done anything unexpected in his whole life. I was not prepared to argue about my lack of ambition and upending four generations of Sanger family tradition. I cleared my throat. “I’m thinking of traveling. Like to New Zealand, actually. Somewhere different. And college later. When I know what I want.” Ben was turning green. “If I decide on the Corps, sure, I can always go to Officer Candidate School after I get a degree.”

  “You’re just saying this to piss me off.”

  “I’m not applying to the academy. That’s a done deal.”

  Ben crossed his arms over his chest. He was only wearing a T-shirt and jeans, but it was like I
could see the ghost of his dress uniform hovering over him. “This little rebellion is because of Aaron?”

  I stood up, probably proving his point. “No. It’s because I don’t know. Sorry I’m not as perfect as you, but I just don’t know.”

  “You’re afraid of it.”

  It was almost a relief for somebody to call me a coward instead of a hero, just because of Holly. We hadn’t talked about the earthquake yet. Today was all about Ben. Not me and my not-heroics.

  When I didn’t reply, Ben shook his head and adopted a baffled expression. “You’ve always wanted to join.”

  “Have I?” I wouldn’t have called it want. More like assumption. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I just don’t know.”

  “It’ll be good for you. I love it. Dad loves it—it’s what you’re meant for, Will.”

  “You talk like I’m some long-lost heir or something. It’s just a job.”

  Ben’s arms tightened, and I imagined I could hear his muscles creaking with tension. “No,” he said through his teeth. “It isn’t. If you’re going to be a baby, fine. But don’t pretend what Dad and I do isn’t more than that.”

  “Then don’t pretend you give a shit about playing soccer with me in the backyard. Don’t pretend you have any motive other than recruiting another Marine.” I knew as I said it that it wasn’t fair, but didn’t care. My chest was tight, like the bruise there had dug into me and pulled.

  “Do you have any respect for anything?” Ben demanded.

  “I know that Aaron should’ve been in some fancy engineering school learning how to build spaceships, and instead he was going halfway across the country to fix Humvees.”

  “That was his choice.”

  “Yeah. You keep telling yourself that.”

  “So you’ll just make the opposite choice no matter what?”

  I hunched my shoulders.

  “Will, just …” Ben stepped forward. “Promise me you won’t make a bad decision based on Aaron. Or because you’re afraid. It’s okay to be afraid—you should be. But you can’t let it cripple you. You’re a Sanger.”

  “I’m not afraid.” I jerked forward, grabbed my soccer ball from the carpet, and stomped outside to kick it alone against the backyard fence.

  MAB

  The sun scorched the western horizon as I hurried down the south face of our hill, past the sunflower field, to my silo. It was a great, hulking tower made of orange tiles, four stories tall, with a rusty ladder striping one side and a tree growing out the roof.

  I climbed up through the violet twilight, avoiding the rotten rungs and rusty nails, glad I’d remembered to change into a camisole and loose pants. At the top, I swung myself over the rim and into the shade of the redbud tree. It spread its wide, heart-shaped leaves over the silo like an emerald cap.

  Wind blew from the north, tugging at my hair and making the bells that dangled from my tree shake with music. There were the chimes, too, made of river reeds, and long, bright ribbons that fluttered in the wind, old bracelets, and tiny pillows filled with lavender and rose petals.

  From the bag hooked over my shoulder, I withdrew a tiny star I’d carved months ago out of firewood and covered in silver sequins. Pan had chosen it out of my box of charms.

  The tree was covered in such charms. I’d made them myself, or with Arthur and Granny, shaping them out of clay or wood into the kind of magic I wanted here: warmth, abundance, safety. Some I’d hung for whimsy and laughter, and some represented people who’d passed through our gates. There was a butterfly for Granny, a howling coyote Arthur had made, a flock of tiny bluebirds for Faith, a plastic soldier Nick had brought, Silla’s blue theater mask and Justin’s pewter moon, a toy ax for Eli, three kinds of fairies for Hannah, and a bright red apple for my mother.

  I stared at it, at the chunks of red glitter still clinging desperately to the skin of the apple.

  My mother’s name was Josephine Darly, and when I was young, I thought she was the best creature in the world. I lived for the great smile she only offered when she saw me after a long time away, for her sharp nails trailing gently against my scalp as she washed my hair. For her cool voice singing to me about my father’s bones turning into coral at the bottom of the sea. My last memory of her was seeing the moonlight catch the white flower embroidered on the shoulder of her dress as she ran. Like a mountain lion, all control and power, away from the house, from me, over the lawn, toward the forest, until she was just a brief orange flash between dark trees.

  Until she was gone.

  And the day I grew up was the day I found out she wasn’t the best but possibly the worst. That when she left me that night, she went out to kill two people, and turned their only son into crows.

  I reached up and took hold of a branch of the redbud tree, then tied the blue ribbon of Pan’s charm to a twig. When I released it the branch snapped up and the star bounced, throwing flecks of light everywhere.

  Silla, who was the only part of her family left living, had killed my mother for her crimes and bound her into the ground hundreds of miles away. Josephine’s bones were the bones of a faraway forest, now and forever. Then Silla had come here, bringing her brother-who-was-crows; her boyfriend, Nick; a suitcase; a handful of questions for the Deacon. She’d come for help with the magic, and with the hope that Arthur could return her brother into the body of a man.

  She hadn’t expected to find me, a girl with familiar eyes and the same lioness hair, with blood under my nails and a laugh as wild as my mother’s.

  Standing at the lip of my silo, my toes digging into the sparse grass, I spread my arms out to catch the wind.

  The silo stood at the base of the forested hill protecting the Pink House, and in all other directions there was nothing but gently rolling fields of long-forgotten wheat and prairie flowers. Besides the county road cutting across the east, there wasn’t a neighbor or single touch of civilization for almost three square miles. It was only me and the world here.

  And sometimes, the crows.

  They always seemed to know when I came. Even now they approached, and I lifted my hand to wave, spreading a smile for them.

  In the end it had not been Josephine who came between Silla and me. She knew I couldn’t be responsible for what my mother had done, and I knew my mother’s fate had only been magic balancing itself the way a fire will cleanse the prairie.

  No, the center Silla and I spun around and around, as fierce and angry as tornadoes, was only the crows.

  From the moment I’d seen them, cutting a smooth line against the sky, I’d known they were unique. I’d felt the power humming through them, and given them a lock of my hair within moments of their landing in the tree around me. They moved as one, they spoke as one, and when the stiff primary feather from the bravest of them brushed against my face, a thrill of magic burned through me as if I’d cut my chest open and sung a spell for fire.

  They lived with us, with me, here where it was safe, and Silla came back to learn between semesters of college, trying to cram years of practice and spellcraft into only a few months. She was focused and determined and nearly kept up with me, especially when it came to magic that might lead to saving her brother: possession and regeneration and transformations. Silla fixated on what—on who—the crows had been, but I fell in love with what they were. New and perfect: all the strength of a blood witch, transformed into flight. As the summers passed, we both became more powerful, but it was my magic the crows slowly linked into, each one a finger of my power, each becoming a piece of my intricate familiar.

  Silla didn’t understand that until last month, when Arthur died.

  We stood shoulder to shoulder, in front of the spill of violet flowers marking Arthur’s grave, and she said, “It’s over, then. The Deacon is dead, and the new Deacon has no interest in undoing her mother’s curse.”

  I frowned and glanced toward the crows weighing down the branches of Granny’s linden tree. “The crows aren’t interested, either.”


  “You don’t know that.” Silla stepped away from me and pointed sharply at them. “My brother wanted to live. He wanted to go to school and be a farmer, he wanted our family’s land, and to grow up and get married and have, like, a half dozen kids, Mab. You never knew him. You can’t know what he would have wanted.”

  “I know what he wants now, and that is magic and flight. You don’t know who he is, because you never listen to him.”

  “He can’t talk, Mab, he’s crows. Don’t you see? I’ve spent so much energy just to be able to hear him talk again!”

  “But not for him.” I leaned in on my toes, to make myself as tall as she was. “Only for you. You’ve only ever done any of this for you. You’re selfish! You want Reese back. You want to turn him into a man again. You, you, you. Did you ever think why Arthur didn’t clap his hands and create Reese a new body? He could have, you know, he could have done that in a half a day—my God, I could do it myself in three! But Arthur did not give Reese a human body no matter how many times you begged, because Reese never asked.” I stumbled back, surprised at my own vehemence.

  And Silla, who I’d always admired for the way her barrettes matched her cowboy boots, for the smooth polish on her nails and the graceful way she drew runes; Silla, who made me feel, with my unkempt hair and holey jeans, like nothing so much as an explosion; that Silla’s face cracked open for the briefest moment and she said, “And so Josephine has taken everything from me.”

  The silence then was a hole in the world, deep enough to draw Nick and Donna out of the house to observe the final wound.

  In that moment, I only thought about my mother’s pride and boldness, not any of the horrible things she’d done. I drew myself up, and wind from all around pushed hair exactly like hers back from my face and shoulders. I said, “Reese was not taken away from you. You lost him.”

  Her eyes glared past me, flicking among all the crows, and as one they raised open their wings as if about to leap into the sky.