The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

Mia put her hands in her pocket and felt the smooth feather. If she stroked it one way it was like glass; if she rubbed it the other it was rough and caught in her fingers. She could feel it splitting, each thread parting from the next in a way she would never be able to put back together. She did it anyway, thinking of the raven and the way it had looked at her. Its beady black eyes.

Mia wanted Davey to be a girl. They would have been princesses together. Of course, all the stories favoured the younger sister, but Mia wouldn’t be like the older girls in tales — proud, haughty, cast aside when the prince came along. Her little sister would have looked up to her, astonished by her beauty and cleverness. The prince wouldn’t have had eyes for anyone but her.

After a while Davey got down from the swing and Sam Oakey had a go, and then Jack said he couldn’t be bothered but Sarah tried it and so Jack did too. Each of them held onto the rope with both hands and pushed out over the drop; no one managed to get seated the way Little Davey had. None of them seemed to expect Mia to try, and she didn’t care. Instead she spread herself on the grass, pretending she wore some great sparkling dress. What princess would go on a swing like that? She waited until it was time to go, and rode back with them through the woods, and the others said goodbye and headed away.

“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.