Her feet are bare. The stones have cut the bottom skin into strips of shredded flesh. Blood darkens and melts the dusting of snow settling between frozen grooves of mud along the deserted, Illinois road. Around her, flat prairie stretches for miles, leeching into the horizon. Night is encroaching. She realizes the time has come to find shelter; knows this with deep, unerring instinct. But she is close, her journey almost at an end. She can't stop now, not when what she wants is so near, the promise so real.

She pauses at a gate that has appeared, as if from nowhere. The hinge screams when she thrusts it open. For a moment, her fingers refuse to let go. Lights are sparkling in the distance. Yellow-eyed windows and starry beams beckon to the restless part of her that still remembers. Christmas lights. She releases the gate and stumbles forward. There is no turning back.

In the branches of a barren oak tree nearby, shadows waver, darkness shifts. The first of the crows begin to alight. Their beaks yawn open when she passes. Sharp talons curl, digging deep into the shivering tree.

~

"Lily?"

The voice is faraway. Lily, yes. Her mother had called that name, exasperated, ringing over the swaying timothy grass under the heat of a summer day. She and Josh rode the top of the three-beam fence bordering the rows of straight corn. Her aim was good and she couldn’t help feeling proud of herself. So far, she'd pegged three of the "damn crows" her daddy was always on about. Beside her, Josh was sullen. He hadn't caught not a'one and was aiming for a large, black bird when Lily's mama called out.

"Leave them crows alone, Lillian Carver!" Her mama was headed toward them, arms waving. Long, dark hair was braided in a single strand down her back. Her mama was beautiful, a native american ancestry giving her an air of subtle mystery, even when she was annoyed. "Joshua, drop that rock!"

Josh dropped his stones, looking shamefaced.

"Mama, they're just varmints. Daddy says they're good for nothin'," Lily said.

Her mama had tapped her wrist, forcing her to let go the remaining stones. "Crows are magic, carriers of the dead. The two a' you got no call to be on those birds all a' time. You'll surely anger the crow goddess."

"Yes'm," Josh muttered.

Lily had looked into her mother's eyes. She saw intelligence, humor and the compassion that made her mama well loved by neighbors and friends. She also saw a shaman's daughter, with a belief in sacred stories older than her own people. Mama still repeated the folktales to her and Josh. Babd Cathe, mama called the crow goddess, a warrior and messenger of death, whose bloody mouth and black eyes still haunted Lily’s dreams. The name, mama once told them, was from ancient Sumeria, found in pre-Christian Rome and Greece and somehow, over the centuries, appearing in the old Navajo language.

Lily knew by now it was all nonsense, like the elf, Saint Nicholas, though his passing had left a tear in her heart. But mama's belief was strong, as powerful as death when a marked bird fell, wings silent, its insides exploding into a dozen, shattered bones as it hit grass.

"Ain't no such thing, Mama," Lily said.

"That so? Then why'm I sayin' it?" The crows watched, lined up like sentinels in the trees nearby. "You kill enough of them, they'll remember. Babd Cathe'll know. Come time for you to go, Lillian, she'll get you. I'd stay myself away from the crows, if I was you."

Her mother's voice, from long ago, deepens, becomes a male voice calling out of the darkness.

"My God, Lily!"

She is sitting on the porch stairs, letting the smooth, butter light from the rooms inside warm her, when the door opens. The man touches her, lifts her, helps her stand, and the familiar scent of home seeps achingly from his clothes, his skin. "It is you!"

He is tall. There's a wild, unfinished look about him, his ash-colored hair standing in tufts on his head. Bony joints and sharp angles protrude from his wrists, his elbows and the deep ridges of his face. He would've made a good scarecrow, his thin lips cut crookedly just above the jaw.

"I'm home," her voice is hoarse, unused to forming words, the complicated hook and slide of syllables.

The man swallows. "Welcome back, Lily."

~

It's Christmas Eve. He tells her this while pouring a hot drink. She holds it, shaking slightly, between numb fingers. The unfamiliarity of the room is disturbing, so different from the delicacy of her mother's furnishings. Lily can vaguely remember fragrant garland and cinnamon toasting in the kitchen. Now tobacco hangs in the air, and wood dominates the eye in vibrant, lacquered tones. A freshly cut Christmas tree is in front of the bay window. There are stacks of presents underneath; popcorn garland and tiny, white lights drip from its branches.

"Here, this should warm you." The man wraps some blankets around her and steps back. "You haven't changed, Lily. You still look as young as the last day I saw you."

"It's been a long time. Everything is strange and I feel -- out of place." She looks at him. "Do I know you?"

He nods, looking self-conscious. "I'm sure I look different. But we grew up together. We used to fish and camp when we were kids. Even had a running bet going, who could shag the most birds in your Daddy's cornfield."

"Josh." The cup and saucer she's holding begins to rattle. "Josh Keegan."

Vague memories briefly appear, silhouettes against her mind. Josh takes the cup and saucer from her, kneels by the armrest, his hand on hers. "We were in the apple groves the day you disappeared. You were climbing the trees. When I turned around, Lily, you were gone. "

Lily draws the blankets closer. The room is terribly cold. Not even the fire in the hearth gives off enough heat. A hard coil of desperation constricts her throat. She looks at the empty family room doorway and there's a liquid vision of Mama, smiling, her hand held out. The wavering hump on the corner couch is Papa at rest, the television printing black and white stripes across his weathered skin. And she can see the vague outline of Josh's youthful face at the window, drawn by the smell of pumpkin pie.

He pulls a chair closer, straddling it so they are face to face. The pulse in his neck beats strongly; a living testament to his spirit, his life.

Her being here is a mistake. The awareness is sudden, undeniable; a knowledge as deeply rooted as the belief she'd seen in her mama's eyes so many years ago. She starts to get up, to run, but Josh's words stop her. "Your parents waited for years, praying you'd come back. I bought the house so they could retire to Florida. We were all sure someone took you, Lily. You were fifteen years old. Where've you been these past seventeen years?"

My God, seventeen years. She is caught by the reflection of herself in the hallway mirror. Something dark flickers, blurring her image; a sleek ribbon of blue-black shining as bountifully as the lights wavering on the tree; long, hooked, features disappearing into shadow; predatory eyes, luminescent and glowing.

Lily blinks and the distortion is gone. There's only her face, her tangled hair looking, for a second, like the gleaming surface of a piece of onyx. She is frail, her skin so colorless she could have been mistaken for dead had her eyes not been staring, wide-eyed and unutterably sad, her thin mouth stretched into a taut, red line.

Her breath releases in a short gasp. She speaks quickly, propelled to hurry. "That day in the apple grove, something happened. The sky was so blue it hurt my eyes. I started reaching for an apple..."

"And?" Josh asks when the silence stretches.

Lily's spine straightens abruptly, her face in half shadow. The chill dissipates, inch by crawling inch. After so much time without it, the warmth is a blessing. And a curse. "I couldn't reach the apple. I balanced myself on a branch and then..." A smile begins. Her voice lowers and she whispers, "Josh, I lost everything. Everything!"

"What do you mean?"

His eyes move to where her fingers are curling, nails digging into the soft leather armchair. "Funny, now I can't remember."

Shadows fall away and her face is full of firelight. The memory of the apple grove disintegrates. No need for it now. She has what she wants. Her eyes meld into night, a black as intense as the darkness outside. The fabric against her nails quietly bursts.

~

"You've forgotten the past seventeen years?" Josh asks.

She enjoys the feel of a smile, the sickly, unfamiliar curve of lips foraging around the teeth. "I remember the old stories, the superstitions about the crow being death's messenger."

Josh stands. "Lily --"

Lily unfolds her legs and rises. "Stories about the ancients worshipping the Crow Goddess and the giant, ivory carvings they made for her."

Josh looks confused, impatient.

"She brought the dead to the river. She transported the souls. But some of them never made it. The crows saw to that." She holds Josh's gaze in a searing grip. "Mama tried to tell us. We didn't listen, did we?"

"You're talking about that bird I slipped into your pocket the day you disappeared? I'm sorry for that. I was a kid and, you know," he shrugs, "showing off."

Lily reaches into her overall pocket. When she pulls her hand back, it's thick with blood. A bird lies on her palm, its neck broken.

"Is that what you call it?" she extends her arm, "showing off?" The bird turns agonizingly in her hand. Josh takes a step back, startled.

In a faraway place and time, what remains of Lily remembers falling, arms stretched until each muscle, each bone, pushed elegantly against the still, summer air. There was the scent of honeysuckle and corn; the musky, fervent smell of rich, black earth, and finally, the ripeness of grass as her body hit and shattered.

A terrifying beat breathes into the air around them, distant, like wind carrying the far-off rhythm of a Native American drum. Her lungs shudder, her skin no longer cold, but ripe with blood running hotly under the flesh. The sound begins to build.