Corvus

It sat there, a horrific reminder of everything, and the memories were coming back, each one worse than the next. Father. Mother. Everyone. The girl with the dark hair had fled, and this man was now holding me, but it was more as though he was shielding me from something, and when I finally managed to calm down, I realised how much I ached.

“It is alright.” The man looked at me not with pity, but concern, which was a small mercy. “You must be tired, but you must try to stay awake a little. We did not know if you would wake up.”

“Who are you?” I asked, for the second time since I had woken up. “And where is this place? The girl, she said Mara’s Rock, but I’ve never heard of it.”

“My name is Oscar, and my daughter is Marianne. I call her Marie.” He paused. “Mara’s Rock is one of the northern islands, and I will get one of my maps if you wish to show me where you are from, but I think you must be more to the east of where we are, being that you’re Cloudborn.”

My brain seemed to be filled with fog that I couldn’t shake, but I understood ‘north’ and ‘island’ pretty well, and tried to rack my brains for a moment until giving up.

“How did I get here?” I asked, instead. He moved back, seeming to hesitate before shrugging, apparently giving up on whatever had been holding him back.

“My daughter carried you here from the beach, by herself. I did not understand at first, but she knew what was needed, and...you need not worry. She insisted I be the one to put you in clean clothes.”

I looked down, and found myself in a shirt too large for me, and trousers much the same, and understood, feeling my cheeks burn.

“Wet clothes are not good,” Oscar told me, his face serious. “If you had gotten much colder, you might have died, and we did not know then that you would not. The best we could do was warm you slowly, treat that burn of yours, and hope your heart would remember the rest. It was not a sure thing, and it still is not if you do not rest.” He picked the bowl of soup he had taken from me off the table, and firmly placed it in my hands. “It would be a great favour to me if you would eat this before it gets cold.”

His strange manner did not take away from the kindness, and I felt a rush of relief that these people did not know who I was, or that they had even offered this kind of compassion to a stranger. I tried not to look at my wings, but my eyes still stung as I ate the soup, which seemed mostly to be made of fish and root vegetables. Northern food, plain and heavy, but nonetheless I was grateful for it. I tried to make sense of how I could have ended up here – so far from where I was – and I could not. I remembered trying to fly, to escape, and then…

I shuddered, and looked up to see Oscar, his face still serious, before the bowl was taken from my hands and put in a small sink. I began to look around properly, taking in the grey stone walls, the large table, and the warm fire. This was certainly not like my home, to be sure, but it was clearly a home, though something of it felt empty.

Oscar looked at the bowl of soup that the girl – Marianne, they’d said her name was – had left behind, and sighed.

“She will be getting hungry, and this is getting cold. Do you mind so much if I take this to her?”

“No, no.” I held my hands up, and tried not to look at the dressing on the one hand, where underneath the burn sat, a grim reminder of everything that had happened. “I would not want her to go without.”

He nodded his head, and strode off up the stairs, carrying the bowl with him, and I was alone.

The north, and if I was east to them, they were to the west of me. Northern islands had not been my concern before, and placing myself was difficult, but I was certainly not in the high halls any more, and this house was...different, to say the least. The whole of the downstairs could have been in my quarters, but that did not mean that I judged it. Far from it – though it was compact, it was also practical, and gave the feeling of being lived in properly.

Upstairs, I could hear the soft hum of a quiet conversation, Oscar’s voice and the girl’s. I could not quite imagine her dragging me back from the beach, but then Oscar had been quite certain of that. It was not quite as embarrassing as being changed out of my clothes like a child, but with how tired I still felt, I knew that all action must have been necessary. Still, it frustrated me. I had been brought up to be able to defend myself, take care of others, and lead if necessary. Instead, here I was, being carried about and cared for, as though I couldn’t do anything for myself. Even worse, I most likely was unable to do much for myself as I was now.

I felt my eyelids growing heavy, and I sunk deeper into the nest of blankets I had found myself in, and drifting almost as soon as I closed my eyes, hoping that my memories would not tangle themselves with my dreams.

I woke up some time later, seeing that candles had been lit, and Oscar sat at the table, poring over books and sheets of paper. I must have made some noise, as he turned around and looked relieved to see me wake up.

“Ah, you are back with us.” He nodded upstairs. “Marianne has been tidying up my room, so you will have a proper place to sleep.”

“Your room?” I echoed.

“Well, you can hardly sleep in that chair forever. You shall have the room to yourself, when she is done with it.” He cleared his throat. “I...think that she will give you some space, for a little while.”

“But…” I hesitated. “You should not have to give up your room for me. You have already been so kind.”

“We could hardly send you on your way, either.” Oscar sounded stern. “You are still recovering, after all, and I would be angry with anyone who would do the same to my child. It is just basic decency, truly.”

That I knew to be true. Hospitality and kindness were supposed to be rules we all abided by, but I knew that it was not always the case. That any rule could be broken, and ‘basic decency’ was a rare creature indeed. I would have said as much, but something about Oscar’s manner made me decide against it.

“Where will you sleep?” I asked.

“Oh, we have an attic. This house is bigger than most, really.” He sounded a little embarrassed by that. “I usually keep my papers down here, but my wife had a bed put up there with all the other things. It will suit me well enough.”

That seemed strange to me, but Oscar shut his book and headed over to the stove, where the soup still sat in a large pot.

“Marianne said she would make dinner once you were awake. Is there anything you do not like?” He seemed almost cheerful, as though it was perfectly normal to have a stranger passed out in your kitchen. That being said, it seemed as though it was both kitchen and living area for them.

“I…” I hesitated. “I do not like beef.”

“Well, we do not have beef, so you are in luck. Fish? It is fresh as it can be. In fact, you and it were both plucked from the sea this morning.”

I stare at him for a moment, and he holds up a hand.

“Sorry. My wit can be an acquired taste. Do you like fish?”

“I...can eat it.” I thought of the fish we had eaten at home, always beautifully presented and seasoned. It was never my favourite, but it had not been terrible, either. Oscar nodded, and went to the bottom of the stairs.

“Marie! He is awake!”

A pause, and then her voice called back.

“Bring him up, then. Your room was such a mess, I’m lucky he slept for that long. Do you never put anything away?”

I was a little shocked to hear her speak to her father that way, but Oscar was smiling as he came back to me, shaking his head.

“You know, she sounds so much like her mother sometimes,” he said to me, nonchalantly. “Up you come.”

He hoisted me to my feet before I knew quite what was happening, and I swayed, my exhaustion hitting me once again. Anger and frustration rose in me, to be replaced by a childlike need to cry out. I had just been sleeping – why did I have to be quite so tired? Why could I not shake this off, and be back to how I knew myself to be?

If Oscar noticed how I felt, or even saw my face, he didn’t show it. Instead, he slowly helped me up creaking stairs, and along a small corridor to a room lit by candlelight, where Marianne stood, her face carefully neutral. The bed had been made, and Oscar made a face at the clear desk that was jammed into one corner of the room.

“And where did that go?” he asked, only for Marianne to raise an eyebrow.

“That mess has been tidied up properly. You’ll find it upstairs.” She waited, and Oscar helped me to the bed, sitting me down there.

“I had a system, Marie.”

“Your system was in the way.” She walked forward, pausing in the doorway. “Dinner won’t be long. Did you decide what it should be?”

“Fish seems to be acceptable for our guest.” Oscar gave me a smile. “Of course, no one we know.”

“Da.” She sighed. “I apologise. My father regrettably thinks he has a sense of humour.”

Their back and forth was bittersweet, in a way I did not yet think I was comfortable with. Too many memories surfaced, but before I could even reply half-heartedly, she was gone, grey skirts swishing away.

“And my daughter is far more serious than she needs to be sometimes,” Oscar said, shaking his head. “Now, there are clothes in the drawers here, and I will bring some books for you once you are feeling better. There is nothing worse than being ill and bored, but for now, rest will do you good. Marie will bring your dinner up, if I know her, and if there is anything you need, simply tell us and we will do our best.”

I looked around the small room, and Oscar turned, as if to leave.

“Will you bring me a map?” I asked.

“Ah, that I can do.” His eyes lit up a little. “Anything else?”

“No.” I shook my head. I knew that I would be able to find out where I was from that, though I had a rough idea. I would need to figure out my next moves, and once I found out where I was (had they called it Moray’s Rock?) I would be better suited to know how to move forward. And I would need to move forward, for my family’s sake.

Oscar left, and returned with a rolled up parchment, spreading it out on the desk and waiting for me to stumble my way over. I leant on the desk once it was within reach, and Oscar unrolled the map, spreading it out. I saw bits and pieces I recognised, and with a lump in my throat, saw the area I knew to be my home, the one my earliest tutors had pointed out to me. Oscar’s finger pointed some way to the west, at a cluster of islands I had never paid much attention to.

“Here. This is where we are. Mara’s Rock is this island to the right, the further flung, and then you have Hather, the bigger one below us, and as you can see, the rest around it. Hather is closer to us than any mainland, so to us it might as well be.”

I could scarcely believe my eyes. Here? I was all the way here, in this little patch of nothing that I had barely even been taught about? I leant over, squinting, trying to make out how big the islands might actually be, and it did not give me much hope. More to the point, it made no sense. No conscious person could have made there way from my home to these islands in the sea, let alone someone in my circumstances. I looked between my kingdom on the map and the islands, trying to think how long it would have taken me to wash up on these shores, and could not understand it, looking back and forth between the two.

“I...will leave this with you, but for now we better get you back to bed.” Oscar paused. “Oh. I probably should have asked your name, before. I cannot keep calling you nothing.” He smiled, ever so slightly. He really did have a very strange sense of humour.

I hesitated for a moment, mind still spinning from the revelation of where I was apparently stranded, but nodded as I made my way back to the bed. “Corvus. My name is Corvus.”