The Secret Of The Raven

Chapter Three - The Dark Room

I was lying on my bed in the palace kitchen, Gilbert looking at me worriedly. Joan was sitting beside me, applying a herbal paste to my forehead, soaked from perspiration.

"So the wee birds made ye see a dead lady, and made ye feel like ye were drowning?" she said after I had finished explained my tale, and all I could do was move my head in a way that could only be perceived as a small, barely noticeable nod, for I felt too weak to do anything else. "Sounds like a load of nonsense tae me, hen! Laddie, Gil - what do ye think?"

Gilbert shook himself out of his daze, and cleared his throat. "I believe the birds, ravens more specifically, have some involvement in a traumatic event of Emeline's past, and that the whole incident with the woman and the water was both a visual and tactile hallucination." Joan looked at him, evidently confused, for she was certainly not the most intelligent woman to walk the earth, and raised an eyebrow. "A visual hallucination, Miss Joan, is when you perceive that something is there that you are able to see, but is actually not there as those around you are unable to see it. A tactile hallucination is where the person involved is able to feel things, in this case, the water, thus creating the sense that she is drowing. It was all fake. It wasn't real. It was her mind - her memories - playing cruel tricks on her."

Geoffrey looked at me. "Is what Mister Hodges says correct, Emmy?"

I looked down at the floor and shrugged. "I- I must say, he isn't far off. At least, I don't think he is. It happened so long ago that, traumatic though it was, the exact events are difficult to visualize," I mumbled quietly. Then, when I looked back them, I noticed Joan looking at me questioningly.

"Are ye telling me that a wee bird was involved in it too?" she cried, throwing her arms up in frustration. "I've told ye; Alice has told ye; everybody else had told ye: a group of sacrificial Christian numpties didnae murder yer mither!"

Gilbert looked at us curiously. "Sacraficial Christian numpties? Why, that sounds most peculiar, and interesting too, mind you. Do you mind telling me the tale, as I assume there is one."

Joan rolled her eyes and grinned, slowly shaking her head at Gilbert. "I'll tell ye. When this lass was a wean, about five years old, her mither died. An accident in the kirk - a fire started and she didnae make it oot. When some lads went over to put the fire oot and inspect the wreckage, they heard screaming among the wreckage. The wean was found hiding beneath a loose floorboard-"

"I wasn't hiding there!" I protested, looking at Gilbert desperately. "I was shoved in there by my captives, and they put a heavy pile of books on top, and because I was so young and small, I couldn't lift them. After almost two hours of pushing against the floorboard, I managed to get the books to move just enough to escape, only to find the place was burning down and the door of the room was sealed off by flames!" Gilbert looked at me with increasing interest, his strange eyes lit up with fascination and his pupils dilated, and a smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

"Captives? What did they look like?" he asked. I shrugged.

"I don't know. As Joan said, it was nine years ago, I can't remember much from that far back," I said. "I believe that the leader was dressed in black. He was like a giant bird. A raven. That's why they scare me."

The boy stood in thought for a moment, running a hand through his curls of silken ebony hair. His eyes seemed almost purple, like they had when we first me, rather than the golden hazel I had later believed them to be. "What if it wasn't a bird?" he asked.

Joan chuckled. "Nae, the lass is certain it was a bird. And besides, it didnae even happen. The wean made up a wee story about a big bird, some candles, her mither, and a murder because she couldna accept that her mither's death was an accident."