The Last Child

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Levi woke disoriented, vision blurred, and it was the sound of a gunshot that woke him. He didn’t think it was close, but sound did funny things on the river. The gunshot could have come from anywhere.

He blinked until his vision cleared. There was the memory of pain, and when he tried to sit, the pain woke up, too. Something sawed at his gut, and when he put his hand there, it came back red. He looked and saw the end of a broken branch sticking out of his stomach. It was as thick as a pool cue, a jagged stump of wood that jutted out on the right side, just below his bottom rib. He put a finger on the rough end of it and felt it move deep inside him. He blinked back tears and tried to pull it out.

The next time he woke up, he knew better, so he left it alone. It hurt when he moved, but not so bad he couldn’t move at all. He had to not think about it-so he thought about not thinking. He struggled to his knees, placed his forehead on the box, and spread out his hands. He asked God for the strength to go another day, to do what needed doing. He felt sure that God would talk to him, but when he opened his eyes, he saw a crow on a limb. Black-eyed and unmoving, it stared at the box, and Levi felt a stab of fear. He didn’t trust the birds. They were too still, too intent on the doings of people. And there were stories about crows, stories from his grandmother’s grandmother, from way back-stories of crows and the souls of the newly dead.

Tales of souls that twisted and burned on the long fall down.

Levi spread his hands and leaned protectively above the box. For a long second, the crow considered him, then flapped to the top of another tree. Its trunk was charred from a lightning strike, and the fork on the river side had gone dead to white. The bird landed among a dozen of its kin, called once, and fell quiet. Not a single feather moved. They looked at Levi, and cold touched his heart. It was a murder of crows on a crown of dead wood. He heard it like a whisper.

A murder of crows.

The voice startled him. It was not God’s voice. It was oily smooth and sweet. It filled his head and put the taste of sugar in his mouth. He tried to stand, and pain ripped through him again as his ankle crumpled. He bit down hard, then rolled onto his back. Hot air rose around him, and when he looked up, the birds took wing in a rustle and flap that made the dead wood groan. Levi gripped the ankle and felt the wrongness of it, the cantaloupe of swollen flesh. It was sprained, maybe broken, and he guessed it must have happened in his dash down the riverbed. He’d not even felt it. But he felt it now; he pushed on his foot and felt the blade in his nerves, so sharp and eager it made him cry.

He looked at a slash of gunmetal sky and heard the same strange whisper.

A murder of crows.

The voice scared him. “Where are you?” he pleaded, and he was talking to God. But no one answered. The sky was empty of crows, and the dead wood still moved, up and down, side to side, long after the birds had gone.

It took Levi an hour to find the courage to try and walk again. When the same blade went off in his ankle, he decided he had to crawl. So that’s what he did, along the bank, upriver, weeping soft as he pulled the box behind him.