Page 60 of We Live Here Now

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The car sends clouds of steam and smoke up to the sky as it disappears down the lane. The raven watches it go, the man inside. The raven does not like the man, no, not at all, not anymore, nevermore , but doesn’t know why. He used to like him, but now the man makes his feathers twitch and ruffle. The man has been in the house too long.

Bright Wing is waiting for him somewhere beyond the wall. It’s the cusp of dawn, and as much as he wants to fly, he will wait until light. He does not like leaving his dead mate alone in the dark. It reminds him of how he left her to die in the darkness of the chimney, and then he finds he cannot move. Guilt turns his wings to heavy lead.

Bright Wing calls for him again, impatient. She is more impatient than Broken Wing was in the happy days when her wing was whole, before the shotgun blast brought out the worst in her. The pecking. The rage. The frustration. Peck peck peck. Sometimes he’s sure he can still feel her pecking him in the night, her beak sharp and cold on his soft, warm chest. He thinks she would still peck him if she could, for being whole and healthy and clean-winged.

He waits until the sky begins to wash away the blackness with blue hues, and then finally he prepares to leave for the day. To join Bright Wing and hunt and enjoy the skies with bloodied beaks and full bellies. It’s only as he leaves the roof that he sees the window below is open. He hovers, staring at it, that slit into the house. The hungry house. He can’t take his eyes from it.

Feed me , the open mouth whispers to him on the wind that his black spread wings surf across. Give her back to me.

Before he knows what he’s doing, before he can change his mind, he darts to the roof and picks up her vanishing husk, now just a few feathers clinging stubbornly to brittle bones, and tosses her through the open maw of the house, into the upstairs bedroom.

She lands, facing away from him, a ghost of his love on the floorboards, and as soon as she does, a gust of sharp wind blows, and the window rattles free and slams shut. He stares through the glass, as inside the bedroom door slowly closes too, trapping his dead mate’s corpse inside.

At least she’s in the warm , he tells himself as he turns and flies away, wishing that the heavy weight of guilt was so easily disposed of. At least she’s out of the cold. He’ll come back one last time tonight to say farewell. And then he’ll be gone.