Part 3 - 5

Proven to be true, Picky headed towards the Neverwoods with rumors she believed true: cave-dwelling Hermits that stole children, boars that burned people alive with their fire, and ghosts of dead lovers that cursed all who walked near their graves. But cresting to the mouth of the Neverwoods, Picky’s legs went wobblier than an unbalanced spinning top. Unease seeped from every blade of grass Picky walked upon, and whatever way she turned her head something noticed. Hares listened with upturned ears, and fellow ravens lingered on branches. Birch trees watched with knots like eyes and blinked when thinking Picky did not notice. She heaved air, sucking it up through her mouth like it would run out.

“Picky, I can’t sense a thing with all that breathing,” the Raven grumbled near her ear, “but something else may like that.”

“Like what?” she said, and clenched up her stomach tight as a sail, trying not to breathe so loud.

“Bigger things in the Neverwoods,” the Raven drew in another breath, and his eyes went milky once again before he said, “there are berries nearby. Come on.”

Picky’s eyebrows drew together closer like a dress cinched tighter. “But in winter how do berries grow?”

“They just do. Now you’re in on a secret nobody cares about keeping,” the Raven said, and inhaled again. “I think head a little northeast.”

Nothing stood out of place in the patch of wood, with its powdered snow still pristine and tree branches dripping in icicles like frosting. At least until a gap between two pines emerged, both leaning on one another with no others close enough to touch. Picky neared closer, and without the Raven ever saying to do so stood before it. A wind blew from within, and oddly not anywhere else. A perfume trailed out, like ripe strawberries and mint.

“Is it magic?” Picky said, not stuttering on the word for the first time in a long while.

The Raven almost gave a cluck, which was the closet thing to a laugh he could manage. “That you ask me that says enough.”

But a rustle shifted, and every hare and raven that watched flew into their warrens or nests. Picky turned and found a lumbering creature hidden in the underbrush with eyes glowing like fire. She stared at the old path now blocked, and the one ahead.

“Is that the something?” Picky said and found the Raven quaking and silent.

That’s what dug a pike into her stomach and made her take off.

Picky ran within the gap, unable to stop the prickle of goosebumps that broke out like static on passing through. Headed northeast, only until no sound came behind her did she slow down and began to notice an oddness coating this place. Every step she took deeper into its coils, reminders sprung up that magic was woven like a hidden thread in a tapestry. Bramble spidered across the ground, but with thorns tipped in gold. Winter draped its thin veil of snow and ice, but the cold was hardly a bother in the patches of sunshine. And in that pale, splendid light missing from all of northern Applejack lay bushes pregnant with berries, weighted to nearly touching the ground.

“Let’s feast until we can’t button up our vests. Or… your vest,” the Raven said and flapped his wings. The limp one lifted a little more than last night. “We head back when the moon rises.”

“Then into the library, and death won’t get us,” Picky said, and a smile cracked for the first time in weeks. “Is that right?”

The Raven’s eyes blinked over like a dense fog, “you’re getting how it works now. Your heart isn’t even beating all wild-like. You’ll take over my duties at this rate.”

Picky, who’d reached for the nearest berry, hovered her fingertips over it for a moment.

“Nevermind. There your heart goes again,” the Raven said. “I’m kidding. It would take you forever to get anywhere on a pair of legs.”

Snatching a berry, Picky offered it to the Raven who gobbled it down. “There. Won’t be so scared if can’t say anything.”

The Raven, without another word, opened his beak and was fed another berry in silent agreement. They both gorged until nightfall, made a bundle of food to keep, and near midnight without a single eye upon them, slinked into the library, curled up near the fire, and slept until sunrise. But neither rose early the next morning, and it was the quiet nothingness that woke Picky.

No bustle of merchants chatted on the way to the market, nor did the children race and jest on their way to school. Headed to the front windows, Picky found frosted panes of glass and a world of white beyond the stoop. Few people walked outside, and those that dared slipped around like they wore banana peels for shoes.

“An ice storm,” Picky said and wiped off the patch of breath she’d made on the window. She took in more of Hamfrill Lane, with all the shops darkened, and the morning droves not headed to the market. “There’s no one out.”

“More than people are gone. Berries too,” the Raven said and gave a triumphant caw at their spoils of the previous evening.

“No way to eat. Or to get anywhere. We would have frozen outside. Like snowmen,” Picky said and furrowed her brow.

“Oh dear, think my morbidity is rubbing off on you,” the Raven said, as both cracked a smile and left the outside world to melt.