Miles to Babylon

I: The Weight of Wings

Awen knelt beneath the tree where the blackbird lay dying. With the light coiling in its yellow eyes, the creature looked almost as much a serpent. But it was neither, she knew, not truly; the wildborn would call it a corbie, hushing as they said it, and only behind closed doors. The corbies were gone, after all; buried in myth, where they spoke in tongues of man and fey and perched on the shoulders of gods. There'd be none here, not amongst the fair lilies of Ilvany School—this was Holy ground. Why, Awen thought, it's near as lost as I am.

All at once came the peal of the morning bell, calling the children to worship. Awen's heart jumped to her throat. She dared a glance over her shoulder; only the lampposts looked back at her, glowing through the morning fog. Nearby, the patter of footsteps on cobblestone mingled with the gentle rain—a knot of students on their way to Chapel, with little more than a slender hedge between them and the grove where Awen knelt. She could see the whites of their uniforms winking through the branches. The Lattery girls, Marta Hengel... she peeked through, counting. Three, four, five... only six. That meant Nali was absent again. Just a bad cold, she told herself, dropping down before they could see her. She crawled beneath the elderberry, taking care not to bruise the flowers.

A wheeze like a torn bellows leaked from the corbie's throat. One magnificent wing was splayed to the side, feathers reaching out like broken fingers. Awen's stomach clenched—I should never have stopped, she thought; guiltily, of course, but what was she to do? No physician would attend it, not these days; they would say she'd gone mad. Auntie Thea would be mortified. She should just look the other way; it wasn't her fault, after all.

"I'm sorry," Awen whispered, moving as if to get up. "You must've been attacked, is that it? I never would've guessed there were any more corbies, you know; I thought they'd all been killed. Tuck'll never believe me when I tell him. He always wanted to see one—not like this, of course..."

Atop the sanctuary the bell tolled, every peal both a summons and a judgment. I shouldn't be here. The sacramentum was about to begin; the vestals would be marking attendance, while Augur Frye lit his censer at the altar—yet here she remained, held by the gaze of a single, yellow eye.

"I am sorry," she insisted, twisting a strand of black hair around her finger, "it's only that—there's nothing I can do, don't you see?" If it weren't for the ache under her ribs, she might have laughed. Explaining herself to a bird—small wonder you've so many friends.

A few stray raindrops dripped from her hood as she moved to go; still, that fading eye followed her. And something in it gave her pause. It knows, she realized, mad as it seemed—the corbie knew she was lying. Wrong, wrong, pealed the bell.

"No," Awen hissed through her teeth. "Not here. They won't just forgive it—I'm thirteen! I'll be expelled, or worse, I'll have to—"

But too late: she could feel it—that unforgivable it— already coursing through her left arm, kindling in her palm. She dug her hand between the folds of her skirt, hiding it. Nothing there, nothing wrong with her, nothing... only her imagination, which had gotten her in trouble too many a time. She should run to worship and not look back; by the time she remembered the corbie, it would be gone. To take the other path, to reach forward, would be—

Unlawful. Echoes from Augur Frye's sermons bounced in her head. Unholy.

Wrong, tolled the bell. Wrong, wrong...

The voices bled away, fading into the distance as Awen's hand cooled against the corbie's damp feathers. How it got there, she couldn't say, but suddenly she felt everything—every dewdrop, every breath of air against her neck, even the rain trickling over grass and lilies. And as she so often did, Awen wondered if she was truly awake and not adrift in that pale, steady horizon just shy of dreaming. Agony tore the thought from her, a pain like a jagged knife through her chest—no, the bird's chest. Its suffering ran deeper than skin or bone. Yet it seemed to pulse with her own heart, drawing out a warmth that flowed as freely as the rain, a flame that burned through the ache like a sweet balm. No, it was more like... Like needlework, Awen realized. Not healing, but making.