Black Feathers

Black Feathers - By Joseph D'Lacey

PROLOGUE

When the final days came, it was said that Satan walked the Earth in the guise of a crow. Those who feared him called him Scarecrow or sometimes Black Jack. I know him as the Crowman.

I speak for him.

Across the face of the Earth, in every nation, great suffering arose and billions perished. An age of solar flares began, rendering much of our technology useless. The cataclysms that befell us, the famine and sicknesses, the wars – it was all the work of the Crowman, so they said. Yet it was ignorance that fuelled our terror of him and the rumours of his wickedness.

Ignorance and convenience; we needed someone to blame.

None who beheld the Crowman, whether in dreams or in reality, ever forgot him. Nor will he be forgotten now. We still recall his deeds of war and sacrifice. We tell his story to our children so that they may pass it on to theirs. Only in this way can we keep him close and dispel the lies. This you must understand: the Crowman is no more evil than you or I.

Hear his tale now. Take it to heart.

Though it pains me, I will tell it, clear and true.

I do not want to recount it. I do not want to recall the casting out of so much goodness, nor the reaping of so much pain. But, for the sake of all of us, I must and I will. Mark it well. Tell your kin and those you love his story. Tell them this: Satan walks nowhere on this Earth, nor has he ever, save where he treads within the human heart. Tell his story and let us keep the Crowman alive for as long as our kind walks the greening byways of this world.

Above all, make them understand one thing: the Crowman is real.

Where does his story begin? It begins in England, not really all that long ago. It begins with a nativity; the coming into the world of a special child. It was this infant who changed everything. This lonely boy, who became a man in the harshest of times; it was he who was destined to seek out the Crowman, only he who had the grace and strength to find him. It was this wondrous boy who revealed the Crowman to the world.

I am an old man now, broken and blind. But I still see the boy’s journey. I see it with great clarity, as though I’m sitting on his shoulder or holding his hand. Sometimes I look out through his eyes, other times I watch from above. I see everything, even the things he couldn’t. I find I want to shout to him, to push him this way or that, to warn him about what I know is coming. But I can’t, of course. His story, and the story of the Crowman, is already over. It finished long, long ago and there’s no changing any of it now.

All I can do is tell it. And in the telling, resurrect him for the good of all. For, without the teller, there is no tale. And without this tale, there can be no world.