Page 4 of When Among Crows
“What is it you see, my lady?” the leszy finally dares to ask.
She looks at him as if only just noticing him, though they’ve met before. Few mortals make it to this point, but “few” is not “none.”
“He will have the flower,” the noonwraith says.
“My lady?”
“That is my word. And my word is my word.”
With that, she turns and walks away, and with each step she takes into the church sanctuary, she descends farther into the earth, as if walking down a staircase. The man’s ribs knit together over his heart, and his muscle and skin layer back over bone, and he collapses forward with a moan. He is sweat-soaked and trembling.
And just out of reach in front of him: the soft red light of the fern flower, now in full bloom.
2A LATE SHOWING
His grandmother was the one who taught him how to spot them. She took him to the town center and sat him down at Basia’s Cafe for a coffee and a biscuit, right by the window so they could look out at the street. He was only twelve years old, so a coffee with foamed milk with the woman who liked to wink conspiratorially at him across the dinner table was a rare treat.
“Look across the way there,” she said, pointing a crooked finger out the window. “At the bank, at the market—someone there is not right. Can you tell me who it is?”
He’d been tested before, but only verbally.What does a strzyga turn into when provoked?“An owl—well, a creature the size of a human, with an owl’s face, an owl’s wings—andclaws—”When does a wraith appear?“Any time of day, unless it’s a noonwraith, and then it thrives in sunlight.” But this…Can you tell me who it is?How was he supposed to know?
Dymitr sipped the thick foam dusted with cinnamon that covered his coffee, and searched for the face that wasn’t like other faces in the little crowd across the street. At the bank, a man in a wide-brimmed hat stopped at theATM to get cash. As he turned to tuck it into his wallet, Dymitr saw him in profile. Nothing unusual in the dusting of whiskers and the watery blue eyes.
A little girl stopped to pick up something on the side of the road. As she crouched with flat heels, her red skirt brushed the damp bricks, and her mother tapped her on the head to get her to stand. She did, lifting what looked like a hoop earring to the light. Nothing unusual about her face, either.
Just behind them was a woman alone, middle-aged, with brown hair tied at the base of her neck. She raised an apple to her nose, one of the yellow ones with shiny red patches. Ordinary.
“I could guess,” he said. “But it would be random.”
His grandmother smiled. “I told your father you were wise.”
The woman set the apple down and picked up another one. This one she hardly looked at before tucking it into her shopping bag.
“Watch me carefully,” his grandmother said, and he set down his mug. She breathed deep, and her hand tightened. She dug into her palm with her fingernails, and then—he saw a red glint in her eyes, brief as a bolt of lightning.
“It’s her,” she said, her voice rougher than before. She pointed to the woman with the apple.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“When you become one of us, you will tap into a wellspring of power within yourself,” she said to him. “You can unleash the full extent of that power, or you can let in onlya trickle of it—and when you do so, you will see the monstrous parts of our world for what they really are. It requires tremendous control, but you are capable of it. You willbecomecapable of it.”
Dymitr nodded, though he couldn’t imagine what she meant.
“What is she?” he asked, nodding to the woman across the way. He had reached the bottom of the foam in his cup, and the first bitter taste of coffee touched his lips as he drank.
“She is a zmora,” Grandmother said. “Have you studied them yet?”
“Zmora,” he said. “A nightmare?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Grandmother snorted a little. She scratched at the age spot that kissed her cheekbone. “The old stories say they wear the faces of women and creep into a man’s bedroom to perch on his chest, pour horrors into his mind, and drink down his life force. He wakes exhausted, not knowing why.” She shrugged. “Like all of the old stories, there is a little truth and a lot of fancy.”
“What do they eat, then?” He’d learned that was always the most important question.
“Fear,” she replied.
He watched the woman approach the register. If the cashier sensed there was something strange about her, he didn’t let on. He peered into her shopping bag and started to tally what was inside it.
“The old stories also say they’re shapeshifters, and can turn into a crow, or a horse, or a stoat—or even a hair, slightenough to slip through a keyhole.” Grandmother shook her head. “Nonsense. But they can make you see whatever they want.”
