The Crow Talker. Jacob Grey

tonight been different?

      Caw threw off his blanket and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. The nest was a platform high up in a tree, three metres across, made of scrap timber and woven branches, with a hatch in the floor he’d made using a sheet of corrugated semi-transparent plastic. More branches were knitted together around the nest’s edge with pieces of boarding he’d scavenged from a building site, making a bowl shape with steep sides about a metre tall. His few possessions lay in a battered suitcase he’d found on the banks of the Blackwater several months ago. An old curtain could be pinned across the middle of the nest if he wanted privacy from the crows, though Glum never quite got the hint. At the far end, a small hole in the tarpaulin roof offered an entrance and exit for the crows.

      It was cold up here, especially in winter, but it was dry.

      When the crows had first brought him to the old park eight years ago, they’d settled in an abandoned tree house in a lower fork of the tree. But as soon as he was old enough to climb, Caw had built his own nest up here, high above the world. He was proud of it. It was home.

      Caw unhooked the edge of the tarpaulin and pulled it aside. A drop of rainwater splashed on to the back of his neck and he shuddered.

      The moon over the park was a small sliver short of full in a cloudless sky. Milky perched on the branch outside, motionless, his white feathers silver in the moonlight. His head swivelled and a pale, sightless eye seemed to pick Caw out.

      So much for sleep, grumbled Glum, shaking his beak disapprovingly.

      Screech hopped on to Caw’s arm and blinked twice. Don’t mind Glum, he said. Old-timers like him need their beauty sleep.

      Glum gave a harsh squawk. Keep your beak shut, Screech.

      Caw breathed in the smells of the city. Car fumes. Mould. Something dying in a gutter. It had been raining, but no amount of rain could make Blackstone smell clean.

      His stomach growled, but he was glad of his hunger. It sharpened his senses, pushed back the terror into the shadows of his mind. He needed air. He needed to clear his head. “I’m going to find something to eat.”

      Now? said Glum. You ate yesterday.

      Caw spotted last night’s chip container on the far side of the nest, along with the other rubbish the crows liked to collect. Glittering stuff. Bottle tops, cans, ring pulls, foil. The remains of Glum’s dinner were scattered about too – a few mouse bones, picked clean. A tiny broken skull.

      I could eat too, said Screech, stretching his wings.

      Like I always say, said Glum, with a shake of his beak. Greedy.

      “Don’t worry,” Caw told them. “I’ll be back soon.”

      He opened the hatch, swung out from the platform and into the upper branches, then picked his way down by handholds he could have found with his eyes shut. As he dropped to the ground, three shapes – two black, one white – swooped on to the grass.

      Caw felt a little stab of annoyance. “I don’t need you to come,” he said, for what seemed like the thousandth time. I’m not a little kid any more, he almost added, but he knew that would make him sound even more like one.

      Humour us, said Glum.

      Caw shrugged.

      The park gates hadn’t been opened for years, so the place was empty as always. Quiet too, but for the whisper of wind in the leaves. Still, Caw stuck to the shadows. The sole of his left shoe flapped open. He’d need to steal a new pair soon.

      He passed the rusty climbing frame where children never played, crossed the flower beds that had long ago given way to weeds. The surface of the fishpond was thick with scum. Screech had sworn he saw a fish in there a month ago, but Glum said he was making it up. Blackstone Prison loomed beyond the park walls on the left, its four towers piercing the sky. On some nights Caw heard sounds from inside, muted by the thick, windowless walls.

      As Caw paused by the empty bandstand, covered in graffiti scrawls, Screech landed on the step, talons tip-tapping on the concrete.

      Something’s wrong, isn’t it? he asked.

      Caw rolled his eyes. “You don’t give up, do you?”

      Screech cocked his head.

      “It was my dream,” Caw admitted. “It wasn’t quite the same. That’s all.”

      The nightmare forced its way into his mind again. The man with the black eyes. His shadow falling across the ground like a shard of midnight. The hand reaching out, and the spider ring …

      Your parents belong in the past, said Screech. Forget them.

      Caw nodded, feeling the familiar ache in his chest. Every time he thought of them, the pain was like a bruise, freshly touched. He would never forget. Each night he relived it. The empty air beneath his wheeling feet; the crack and flap of the crows’ wings above.

      Since then many crows had been and gone. Sharpy. Pluck. One-legged Dover. Inkspot, with her taste for coffee. Only one crow had remained at his side since that night eight years ago – mute, blind, white-feathered Milky. Glum had been a nest-mate for five years, Screech for three. One with nothing useful to say, one with nothing cheerful and one with nothing to say at all.

      Caw scaled the wrought-iron gates, gripped the looping ‘B’ of Blackstone Park, and hauled himself up on to the wall. He balanced easily, his hands stuffed casually in his pockets as he walked along the top of it. For Caw, it was almost as easy as walking down the street. He could see Milky and Glum circling high overhead.

      I thought we were getting food, said Screech.

      “Soon,” Caw told him.

      He stopped opposite the prison. An ancient beech tree overhung the wall, and he was almost hidden by its thick leaves.

      Not here again! squawked Glum, making a branch quiver as he landed.

      “Humour me,” said Caw pointedly.

      He stared at the grand house across the road, built in the shadow of the prison.

      Caw often came to look at the house. He couldn’t really explain why. Perhaps it was seeing a normal family doing normal things. Caw liked to watch them eating dinner together, or playing board games or just sitting in front of their TV.

      The crows had never understood.

      A shadow in the garden snatched him suddenly back to his nightmare. The stranger’s cruel smile. The spider hand. The weird ring. Caw focused intently on the house, trying to drive the terrifying images away.

      He wasn’t sure what time it was, but the windows of the house were dark, the curtains drawn. Caw rarely saw the mother, but he knew that the father worked at the prison. Caw had seen him leaving the prison gates and returning home. He always wore a suit, so Caw guessed he was more than just a guard. His black car squatted in the driveway like a sleeping animal. The girl with the red hair, she’d be in bed, her little dog lying at her feet. She was about his age, Caw guessed.

       AWOOOOOOOOO!

      A wailing sound cut through the night, making Caw jerk up. He dropped into a crouch on the wall, gripping the stone as the siren rose and fell, shockingly loud in the moonlit silence.

      From the four towers of the prison, floodlights flashed on, throwing arcs of white light into the courtyard and on to the road outside. Caw shrank back, sheltering under the branches, away from the glare.

      Let’s scram, said Screech, twitching his feathers nervously. There’ll be humans here soon.

      “Wait,” said Caw, holding up a hand.

      A light blinked on in the upstairs room where the girl’s parents slept.

      For once I agree with Screech, said Glum.

      “Not