The Girl and the Crow - Part 1

The crow arrived three days after the funeral.

It was waiting on the rusted iron fence outside Elara's bedroom window when she woke, black feathers slick with rain and one pale gray eye fixed directly on her. Most birds fled when people approached. This one merely tilted its head and tapped the glass twice with its beak. By sunset it was following her through the graveyard behind Saint Brigid's Church, hopping from stone to stone while the fog crept between the names of the dead. When she finally asked what it wanted, the crow opened its beak and spoke a single word in a voice that sounded impossibly old.

"Below."

That night Elara awoke to find the crow perched on the foot of her bed. In its claws was a tarnished silver key she had never seen before. Outside, somewhere beyond the cemetery wall, a bell rang once despite there being no church service, no storm, and no one awake to pull the rope. The crow dropped the key onto her blanket and stared toward the darkness beyond the window.

To be continued...

Part 2

Elara did not touch the key at first. She lay still under the quilt while the crow watched her with that pale graveyard eye, the little silver thing caught between its claws like a tooth from some larger mouth.

"Below where?" she whispered.

The crow clicked its beak. "Saints lie. Stones remember."

That was not an answer, but it was enough to get her out of bed. She pulled on her boots and her black coat without lighting the lamp. The house was full of sleeping sounds: pipes ticking, rain worrying the gutters, her aunt breathing through the wall like someone trying not to cry.

Outside, the cemetery gate stood open. Elara knew she had latched it before dusk. She knew because Aunt Mara had made her check twice, the way she checked every lock since the funeral, as if grief might be kept outside if the hinges were stubborn enough.

The crow flew ahead, low and silent, leading her past the fresh mound where her mother was buried. Elara stopped there only once. The soil had sunk in the rain. A ribbon from one of the funeral wreaths had come loose and twisted around the grave marker like a red vein.

"Not there," said the crow. Softer this time. Almost kind.

It led her to the oldest corner of the churchyard, where the stones leaned into each other and the names had been eaten down to ghosts. Behind a cracked angel with no face, half-hidden by nettles, was a narrow iron door set flat into the ground. Elara had walked this cemetery all her life and had never seen it.

The key warmed in her palm when she picked it up. Not hot. Alive.

From beneath the door came the sound of someone knocking back.

You know how to give a cliff hanger!

Thank you, much appreciated. I enjoy writing it.