Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“What did you think of that?” Davey asked.

Mia scowled and turned to him. What she saw, though, wasn’t Davey the pain; it almost wasn’t like her little brother at all. He still had a glow that lit him up from the inside. She remembered the way he’d leapt out over nothing, the small spell he’d woven there in the woods. And she found herself smiling.

“It was pretty cool,” she said. “Really cool.” And Davey looked surprised, and then he smiled back.

“It was like you were flying,” she said, and she fingered the feather in her pocket.

Mia went outside and headed towards the woods. She looked for the raven and he wasn’t there but she saw that he had left more feathers for her. She picked them up and put them in her bag. Then she looked into the trees. She had thought she would be more afraid, but she was not. It was easy to hide when you were alone, and besides, she had the feathers. She scanned the ground for them, found one among the exposed roots of a tree. She went on, looking for the next; it led her into a bramble patch and she stepped carefully, picking the black thing out with care. She was following a trail, she realised, like Hansel and Gretel, but this time it was the birds which had left it instead of eating it up.

She found another feather beneath a curling fern, then a whole pile of them on a knoll of grass. It was as if they had been left for her to find, as though the birds knew what she needed. Mia looked up. There must be a lot of ravens living in these woods. She wondered if they were watching her now through their little black eyes. She swallowed, but forced herself to go on. It wasn’t so bad. There wasn’t much time to be afraid when there was something you really needed to do.

Mia’s favourite story was The Six Swans . A maiden’s brothers were bewitched and cursed to live their lives as the white birds. So the maid wove them special shirts to turn them back again, and it worked, except she hadn’t time enough to make the youngest brother’s sleeve and he was left with a swan’s wing for an arm. The sister loved them dearly, and was dutiful and kind all her days; she married the king and lived happily ever after.

There weren’t any swans near Mia’s house, but there were the ravens. And she knew that they were good, really, that they had looked after her and Davey on that day in the woods. She knew because she had dreamed of it. In her dream, her little brother Davey had leapt for the rope, and his fingers had brushed it, making it shiver. Then he had started to fall.

He fell until there came a loud rasp like a chain coming free, and the raven swept in and bore Davey up. It saved him from the sharp branches and the long fall and the slimy wriggling things that waited, and carried him up, over the treetops and far away.

Mia took the glue and spread it on the fabric. It had been a skirt, but she had taken her mother’s scissors and cut it so that it looked like a cloak. She knew her mother would be angry, but Mia had never liked the skirt, and anyway, it was black; that was good, because it wouldn’t show if she missed a bit.

She pressed a feather into the glue. It shone for a moment, blue and green and white before returning to black, and she felt a throb of excitement. Davey would love this. He would be king of the air. She had always wanted to turn him into something else, but she knew by the tingle in her fingers that this time it would be different.

This time, she would turn him into a bird.

Mia led Davey along the path to the woods. He huffed and puffed, kicking at loose sticks. She turned and put a finger to her lips. “It’ll be great, Davey. You’ll see.” She smiled at him, and it must have been a good smile because he tossed his head and half smiled back.

She picked her way down the path, following old footprints and bicycle tracks. There weren’t any feathers, she noticed that as she went, and that was a sign; the ravens had gifted the feathers just for her, and for her alone. Now they were done, and it was up to her, Mia, to do the rest.

She carried a bundle under her arm. It was bulky and Davey had cast odd glances at it as they set off, almost as though he knew.

The others hadn’t been near the woods and that had been another sign, a good one. This was a thing for her and her brother, the one she had been dutiful for, had thought of all the time she had been making the cloak. That was why it would work: because she’d put herself into it, and all the care for him she could muster. Davey would see that. He would appreciate the time she’d spent, her caring.

She led the way to the swing and Davey turned on her. He shrugged. “Well? What is it?”

Mia ignored his words. She took the bundle and unrolled the fabric. She straightened it. And the cloak shone, but it wasn’t like she’d imagined, some soft, glowing, magical thing. There were spaces between the feathers and in the bright light of day you could see the gaps after all, dull and glue-spotted. Feathers were falling off, or had split when she’d rolled it. At the top, where she’d tried to make a collar, you could see it was only a waistband after all.

Little Davey wrinkled his nose. “What’s that?”

“I made it for you, Davey. So you can fly. It’s special.”

“It’s a skirt.”

“No, Davey, it’s not. I mean, it was a skirt. Now it’s a cloak, and I made it for you, because—”

But Mia could no longer think why she had made it. She looked at the thing in her hands and saw it was a sorry thing, a poor thing. It wasn’t something you would present to someone as a gift. Not something that could hold magic within it.

“It stinks.”

“It doesn’t.” But Mia realised it did stink, a mixture of animal and glue that almost burned her nostrils. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before. She turned the cloak, trying to make the feathers catch the light. Some of them did and she looked at Davey, hoping he had seen. She started when she saw his eyes. He was rolling them, as if looking at something ridiculous. He was rolling them at her and the start of something painful rose in her chest.

Davey started to laugh. He put his hands on his hips and leaned into it, and she heard how he was forcing the sound out, making it as loud as he could.

“You idiot,” he said. “Oh, you idiot. Wait till I tell the others.”

Mia’s cheeks flooded with heat. “Davey, no.” She looked down at her work. It was already ruined. Feathers fell from it to the ground. And then she heard something coming towards them through the woods: the ching, ching of a bicycle bell. She looked at Davey in alarm.

“Go on the swing,” he said.

“What?” Mia glanced at the old rope hanging down over nothing.

“Go on the swing and I won’t tell.”

Davey smiled a slow smile. Mia wished, harder than she had ever wished before, that he would turn into something else: anything else.

The sound came closer. She looked down at the feathered mess at her feet. She couldn’t bear the thought of the others laughing at the work of her hands, throwing it between them, scattering the birds’ gift. She picked it up and ran towards the swing. She heard Davey calling her name but she didn’t stop, just went faster and faster over the ground. Then, when she was almost at the rope, she skidded to a halt and threw the cloak of feathers into the drop below. She watched it fall, spreading itself as if it was trying to take off. And then it hit a fallen tree trunk before slipping down into a gap among the earth and the slime and the beer cans and the spiders and the cigarette butts, and she wanted to cry.