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I sat down but Jack remained standing.

“I’m going to leave you here with A’rr’a,” he said. “You will be perfectly safe, I assure you. A few days and I’ll be back.”

“But…” I started to protest.

“This is your journey. You must go it alone. Besides, the sun here is too harsh, I need to find some shelter.”

He came up to me to say goodbye and there was an awkward moment where he kissed my cheek, his lips lingering a moment longer than was strictly necessary. There was the wonderful smell of him, of cinnamon, coffee and powdered sugar, and then he was gone.

The old man brought me a tin cup with a bitter kind of tea.

“Drink, drink,” he said, nodding at me with a smile.

I drank it, grimacing all the way.

But oddly enough, I didn’t feel scared. It felt like I belonged here, like I needed to be here.

It was cold outside, and he brought me a blanket.

He came to sit next to me at the fire.

“I’ve been seeing white crows,” I said. “Does that mean anything?”

He nodded.

“Very good sign, very auspicious.” But he didn’t say anything else.

“Take you long time to come here,” he said. It felt like an admonishment.

“I didn’t know,” I said.

He laughed. “You know! You know!” he wagged his finger at me, like I was a naughty child.

“No,” I said softly again, “I didn’t. My head…” I shook my head, unable to put my thoughts into words.

He leaned forward and put one of his hands to the side of my face, just off the top of my head.

“Here,” he said. His hand was hot, it almost felt like he was burning me.

I knew I had a scar there but I couldn’t remember if it was from the night of the accident or the attack in my childhood.

“And here,” he got up and put his other hand over my eyes.

Immediately, I had a sensation of icy cold, like cold water washing through me. It was a very strange feeling.

The old man removed his hands and muttered to himself. It sounded a lot like what Pearl’s mother had been mumbling to herself. Or was I imagining this? Was I hallucinating? Probably.

I felt myself slipping away into darkness, into a kind of dream world. I was vaguely aware of being led to a bed next to the fire. It was made up of blankets and furs and was incredibly soft. It reminded me of the bed that I had slept in as a child. I nestled into it, feeling completely safe and protected.

What came after that was hard to describe later on. Visions or dreams came to me. I was in some of them and, in others, I could see my family. I saw my mother and my father as they had been. I saw my brother as he died. I saw the creature that had attacked us. It looked like a bear but it wasn’t a bear.

I also saw the crows, watching us in the trees.

They were white and their eyes were friendly. They were on my side, yet they did not intervene.

Then there was the accident. I saw myself driving along the intersection where there was another crow sitting on a pole by the side of the road. A dark shape came towards me to push me off the road but a bolt of lightning struck the car, which spun back into the road, hitting a barrier.

This was what I remembered when I woke up. These were the images that filled my head.