Crow's Changeling

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Before Paphos by Loretta Casteen

By Sarah Prineas

8 January 2007

5 September 2005

It starts again. The baby At the dead time of the year, the gray snows begins to cough and choke. o Fiction of winter lay thin on the ground. It was too Locked Doors early for crocuses or daffodils, but not too o Poetry early for mud. The crows had arrived, by Stephanie Burgis o Reviews announcing something they thought was terribly important, gathering in dark hordes in 1 January 2007 o Archives the row of trees along the road. I didn't mind the starlings, the other garbage birds of the You can never let anyone ABOUT US suspect, his mother told Midwest, because they gathered and disappeared like clouds of smoke. But the him. That was the first rule o Staff crows were ill-omened and I hated them. I she taught him, and the last, o Guidelines went out, turned on the truck, and honked the before she left him here horn at them; they wheeled up shrieking and alone with It. o Contact complaining, but soon settled down again to Heroic Measures wait. o Awards by Matthew Johnson I trudged back inside, shivering. A cluster of o Banners bottles and rubber nipples awaited my 18 December 2006 attention in the sink, and the diaper pail SUPPORT US Pale as he was, it was hard behind the door was beginning to smell. o Donate to believe he would never I'm too old for this. I closed the door softly rise from this bed. Even in o Bookstore behind me, hanging my sweater on its hook. the darkest times, she had Too old to begin at motherhood all over never really feared for him; o Merchandise again. And too young to be a he had always been strong, grandmother—I'm only forty, for God's so strong. COMMUNITY sake. I paused, listening. The sound of the Love Among the Talus crows outside was muted; there was no o Forum answering cry from the baby's room. Time o Readers' enough for tea, then, before she awoke from by Elizabeth Bear Choice her nap. 11 December 2006 o

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Crow's Changeling

I'd barely gotten the kettle filled and the gas Nilufer raised her eyes to on when something stopped me. Silence. The his. It was not what women crows had stopped calling. I went to the did to men, but she was a door, twitched aside the curtain to look out. princess, and he was only a A crow man dressed in black feathers stood bandit. "I want to be a Witch," she said. "A Witch on the doorstep, peering in with a yellow, darting eye. I flinched away, then, curious, and not a Queen. I wish to peeked out again, but now he was just a man. be not loved, but wise. Tell your bandit lord, if he can Dressed in a tattered black raincoat over give me that, I might accept jeans and a dark sweater. his gift." My house was at the end of a long, muddy road which, in turn, was at the end of a long Archived Fiction Dating back to 9/1/00 stretch of highway that led to the nearest town, about twenty miles away. I looked out at him. Saw no car in the driveway, no mud