Scar Tissue. Narrelle M Harris

hands had taken up the rhythm from his aching fingers. His broken finger was swollen but numb. He had begun to hum under his breath.

      Hush thy heart, great Hoor

      ‘I am weary with the waiting,’ grumbled Hoor. His ramshackle face began to sag.

      ‘Become undone, as was my brother in his blood,’ said Thomas, only he was singing now. Will sang softly beneath Thomas’ loud, clear voice.

      Hush thy heart, great Hoor

      This body be not thine

      ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Hoor.

      Dwell thee not on rage and pain

      This England is not thine.

      Wet earth and mouldering rubble sloughed away from the body Hoor had made for himself. For a brief moment, he diminished – then, alarmed, enraged, he opened his muddy maw and roared. His body began to form again. Made of mud, stone, ice, slaughterhouse bones and the waterlogged hulls of sunken ships, he reared up three, four, five times as large as before. God-like truly in his fury, yet like a mortal in his desperation.

      He raised his arms, as if to bring them smashing down.

      Thomas’ voice joined with Will’s then. Neither had sung this song before, yet the words came to them both, the magic of earth and air combining, and some of water too, where elements of air and earth were entwined in it.

      Hoor’s arms remained up, his feet melded with the riverbed, straining to move. Unmoving. Arrested by the magic in the music.

      A flash of dark feathers caught the periphery of Will’s vision again as he drummed the earth, hard now, feeling nothing but the slam of his palms against the cold ground and the slam of his grieving heart against his chest.

      A raven’s cawing voice suddenly accompanied them, making words in a creaking undertone.

      No god may truly perish

      Great Hoor, you cannot drown

      Hoor’s blind-eyed face lifted to the sky, then dropped. A groan vibrated through the air, Hoor’s protest against the song-spell that was undoing his Thames-hewn body.

      Surrender to the water

      Let slumber take thee down

      The mud and bones, the ice and rocks and lumber sagged to a sodden mound. In the centre of the mound was a stone jar sealed in silver and amber. The swell of the jar’s body was carved with runes and symbols. An archer’s bow was etched tightly bound in stylised strands of mistletoe around the centre, spreading up and over the seal.

      Wings flapped and a large raven alighted on the ground between Will and Thomas.

      ‘Drum on,’ it croaked at Will, then cocked its head at Thomas. ‘Your undoing and unwaking song is good. Sing again.’

      Thomas sang again. Will beat the rhythm and sang a harmony to make the song stronger.

      The raven tapped its beak on the jar, and the amber in it glowed, the silver shone, the stone swelled and thickened, so that the finest crack between seal and jar was rendered seamless.

      Then the raven seized the edge of the jar and flapped its wings, tipping the jar over into the turmoil of mud and melting ice. It cawed at the river.

      The monstrous shape that Will had earlier sensed roiled strangely under the thinned ice. It heaved, and was gone. Afterwards, Will could not name what he saw. It writhed like a serpent, but was large and thick and scaled, and long ribbons of hair, or weed, had streamed from it. A great, dark maw full of teeth had opened, and shut, and then it was gone. The stone jar, too.

      The raven hopped and swept its wings down, rising, then it flew across the frozen Thames, following the shadow of the thing beneath the ice. When it reached London Bridge, the raven came to rest on one of the bridge’s great curved starlings – the rubble-filled bulwarks that protected bridge’s pillars against the current, wayward boats, sundry debris and other things that lived in the muddy shadows.

      The raven clicked its beak and made sounds which Will could hear from the riverbank. Now a more trilling call, now a sharp caw, and then a strange warbling.

      ‘Did that raven truly speak to us?’ Will asked Thomas softly.

      ‘We’ve sung a god into a pot, and you ask about a talking raven?’

      ‘It seems the easier discussion,’ confessed Will.

      Thomas grinned at him, mad-gleeful. ‘Then yes, brother Will. I believe the raven who is singing to the river spoke to us.’

      Will nodded. ‘And the god?’

      ‘Sung to sleep into a jar, as far as I can tell.’

      ‘Good. Good. And we’re still alive?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘However did we manage these miracles?’

      Thomas looked down at the instrument he held in his hand. ‘With a yew pipe.’

      ‘I never even got to use my drum.’

      They fell silent again as the raven at the bridge took flight, returning to them. As it approached, Will could already feel the air becoming less cold.

      The raven alighted on Will’s drum where it lay on the ground.

      ‘Hoor was never very clever. You don’t have to be Loki to trick him into his prison,’ said the raven.

      ‘What are you?’ Will dared to ask.

      ‘I am Heimdal, charged by Odin to watch over his foolish son. I think he meant my name as a joke,’ said the raven. It tilted its head to stare at them again. ‘Loki’s mischief makes trouble for us all. I imagine it will make more trouble for you, as well.’

      ‘What kind of trouble?’ Thomas asked, but the bird had launched into the air again.

      Above them, the clouds parted and the pale sun gleamed through.

      Thomas and Will watched the bird fly east towards the Tower of London keep.

      ‘Should we warn King Henry that a magic raven is living in his tower?’ Will asked.

      ‘I think we should leave London, as Heimdal the Raven suggests.’

      Will fetched his drum, which he slung awkwardly across his back. The action caused his broken finger to throb painfully, feeling having regrettably returned to it. He cradled his hurt hand. ‘I know a place in Cornwall,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how quickly Loki may learn of today, but I think we can put some miles between us.’

      ‘The raven could be lying.’

      ‘It could be trying to help. It helped us once already.’

      ‘You have a point, Will. Come on, then. Cornwall it is.’

      ‘Or Ireland,’ said Will, ‘Which is across the sea and therefore further away.’

      ‘Dickon always wanted to see Ireland,’ said Thomas.

      ‘Then let’s see Ireland, for Dickon.’

      Thomas and Will fell into step, side by side. By the time London had finally stirred to the thawing day, the minstrels had left the city walls far behind.

      A few centuries passed and a raven again perched on the tip of the London Bridge starling, watching the elephant crossing the frozen Thames down by Blackfriar’s Bridge.

      For over 500 years, the inheritors of Thomas Rowan and William Hawk had come to do this duty – the rebinding of Hoor.

      ‘I thank you for coming,’ said the raven to the man and woman behind him.

      They were all three watching the fair taking place on the ice. Sheep were roasting with a sign declaring them “Lapland mutton”. Two men were charging sightseers to watch the spectacle, plus a shilling for a slice.