Chapter Text
Poe didn’t like the boy as soon as he saw him. Tall. Skinny. Pale like the exposed ribcage of roadkill. Made Poe feel sick and then Poe was sick.
The boy shrieked and scrubbed a hand over his face, looked at Poe with disappointment and Poe hopped in place. The feeling was mutual.
~*~
“Caw!” Poe had situated himself by the boy’s ear and he woke with a shout. Good.
The boy was undisciplined. He didn’t appreciate the nighttime and took it for granted. He stayed cocooned in his bed like a bug, something small and writhing and disgusting. Poe couldn’t resist, he dipped his head, tried to pull a chunk of his flesh from his bones and the boy shouted, swatted at Poe and sent him tumbling away.
Ungrateful! Poe cawed. Unworthy!
The boy rubbed at the skin on his cheek, glared at Poe.
He then pulled the duvet back up over his head, tried to burrow down beneath it. Poe ruffled his feathers, hopped back up onto his body and pecked him hard again. He cawed. The boy shouted and Poe didn’t stop until he admitted defeat and swung his bony legs over the side of the bed and got up.
He was learning. Reluctantly. Stubbornly. But he was learning. It was just Poe’s luck to get stuck with a defective human. He cursed the red string of fate that bound them together. That colour he saw even when he slept.
~*~
Poe pretended to die one day. It seemed like a good idea to start preparing the boy for encounters with death. Also Poe wanted to see what he would do.
So Poe glided across the room to the chaise lounge where the boy was sat with his knees drawn up, a book open in one hand.
Poe landed on the boy’s knees and caws, bent his neck to peck him hard on the leg. The boy looked up, pushed Poe away with a weary sigh.
“Not now, Poe, I’m trying to read.”
The boy said it like it was a matter of importance. Poe was not so easily fooled. The boy was always reading.
Poe flapped his wings, this time settled on the pages of the book. The boy scowled and opened his moth as if to say something when Poe dropped.
He stretched his wings out and turned his head, even stuck his little pink tongue out and stared unseeing straight ahead.
“Ek!”
Poe heard the boy gasp, cradle his body oh so carefully.
“Poe?” The boy asked. “Are you alive?”
Poe didn’t answer. He lay very still, didn’t want to give the game away.
Poe pretended he couldn’t hear the boy sigh in relief.
~*~
They were speaking about him. About Poe. Mean, callous words about how he was wrong. How Poe shouldn’t be a crow at all.
The ravens laughed at him. Stretched their throats of cobalt plumage to shriek again and again and again in ugly birdcall.
Poe wasn’t wrong. The boy was wrong.
Poe was tied to a writhing worm of a human with a soul-bond so tight Poe would never be able to peck at that red string of fate hard enough to sever the tie between them. He was cursed to remain at the child’s side until either one of them died.
It wouldn’t be Poe.
He would live long enough to see the boy die and then he would soar far, far away. Finally free.
He would find those ravens and their masters again. He would peck out the men’s eyes and finally those ravens would understand what it was like to be tied down by such a sorry excuse of a human. A mewling, meek little thing that cowered in his own shadow. Poe would have to work on that. He’d been trying but the boy hadn’t taken to his training. Poe worried he was a lost cause.
Poe heard the boy choke out apology after apology and Poe had had enough. Could be driven mad by the boy’s pitiful squawking that sounded so similar to the ravens’ cruel laughter.
He twisted in the air and dove for the boy, saw his eyes widen and arms flail and then Poe felt the boy’s long fingers close around his tiny body.
And he was held.
Brought in close to the boy’s chest and Poe could hear his heart beating as quick as a rabbit’s.
Poe felt safe. Didn’t like it.
He flapped and flapped so that the boy had to let him go and then he did and Poe had been thrown from the sidecar of the motorcycle. He was airborne again. He stretched his wings but it wasn’t enough to stop him from cutting through the air.
Poe hit the large, firm trunk of a tree and fell to the forest floor.
His body hurt. He ached, felt pain all over all throughout and cawed weakly, miserably. He knew the boy heard.
Despite the tender bruises, Poe’s feet twitched and he felt the bond between him and the boy tighten, compel him to get up, take flight again and chase down that spluttering motorcycle.
~*~
The boy was timid. Far too timid. Poe had to do all the work.
He soared across the field, circled the oak tree, looked at the other little boys with their round cheeks and wide, stupid eyes. None of them knew the danger they were in. The adults didn’t either.
All Poe could focus on was the ravens and their wailing, warbling warnings of impending doom. Nobody took notice. Nobody could even understand them. Poe could. All Poe heard was their squawking that bounced around his head until it sounded like a death rattle.
He needed to find suitable humans for his boy. The child had no survival instincts and Poe had better things to do than watch over him all hours of the day.
He spotted two children standing opposite each other in stilted conversation. One seemed guarded, had arms folded across his chest and his eyes were red and puffy. He had been crying but was trying to be brave. The other was broad and sturdy-looking. Carried himself with confidence. Perfect.
Poe swooped down, pinched his boy’s leather jacket between his beak and pulled hard.
For how much bigger the boy was, he put up little resistance, let Poe drag him across the field in between the other boys. Then he left.
Poe couldn’t tell the boy what to say.
The boy wouldn’t listen to him anyway.
“Nice bird.” One of them said.
“Is that bird your curse?” The other added.
They had it all wrong. The boy was Poe’s curse.
The boy adjusted his glasses. Shuffled in place. Nervous. It was pathetic. Poe couldn’t bear to watch. He could still hear him, though.
“He’s a crow; he’s meant to be a raven.”
Poe was meant to watch over a child that didn’t waste away tucked inside his house. One that was brave – or at least not so timid – a boy that Poe could proudly sit on the shoulder of.
No, Poe wasn’t wrong.
He flapped his wings, flew away only to spot another child lingering on the outskirts of the little group. He was stood next to a tall man. The boy was quiet and intense and Poe somehow knew his boy needed him.
Poe descended gracefully and landed on the boy’s shoulder. He stiffened under Poe’s talons and turned his head in time to see Poe flop over, spread his wings out and fall into his palms.
The boy froze and Poe could feel the panic on him even if he couldn’t see it. He was more concerned than Poe’s boy had been when Poe had tried the same trick.
“Oh- oh, I’m sorry, that’s um, that’s Poe. He’s a- he’s a rascal.” It wasn’t long before he heard his boy’s voice, felt his hands delicately take Poe’s little limp body and cradle him.
“It might be dead.”
“No, no he’s just messing with you.”
Poe stretched his wings out even more, let out a little noise like a dying wheeze. “Ekkk…”
“Sorry, I- I didn’t kill it. It landed on my shoulder and then died.”
“No, he- he’s trying to make a- a- a point, I think.”
“What point is he trying to make?”
The boy folded Poe’s wings in and brought the bird to his ear. He shook Poe and listened. He shook Poe and listened again.
Poe turned his head, blinked at the boy. “Nevermore!”
He was disappointed again, even more so than the first time Poe had played dead.
“Yeah, he’s fine.”
~*~
“Where is he? Where is the crow?
“He’s, um, circling somewhere.”
Wrong. Poe was in the tree. He was right there, watching over them all, but mostly the boy because that was what Poe was meant to do.
“He should be on your shoulder.”
“I- I- I can’t- he’s not listening to me. Sorry. We’ll patch it up, I’m sure.” The boy looked around, couldn’t spot Poe in the shadows. Of course Poe’s boy had poor eyesight as well. It was Poe’s luck that he was stuck with the most irritating, weak, incompetent human of- “I just wish I had a raven like you and Father.”
Poe wished he had a different boy.
It was an exercise in futility. Poe had been wishing for a different boy since he first rapped on that damned window.
In that moment though he wished really, really hard. Hoped it would take.
“So do we, that’s why we’re here, Edgar.”
“S- sorry Grandfather.”
“It’s alright, it’s not your fault, but it is up to you to solve this.”
The boy stared admiringly at the ravens on the old men’s shoulders. Poe wanted to peck his eyes out as well. He knew he couldn’t. The red string of fate would sooner tangle his claws up than let him kill his charge but Poe could think it. Could shit from the branch he was perched on as a show of distain.
“It’s just Thaddeus and Persimmon are such good ravens, they, uh, I just wish, uh- you know, I- I had a friend rather than, a sort of pecking, pooping meanie is all.”
“I know. I know.”
“I was looking for advice, I suppose.”
“It’s just- it’s never happened to us before. It’s on you now, that’s what it means to grow up.”
Poe took flight, circled the boy’s head once to find the best angle then descended to jab him on the head with the tip of his beak.
~*~
Poe didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all.
This was the danger the ravens were shrieking about. This was evil in its most sinister form. The fog surrounded him, clouded Poe’s senses, had him flying in a circle. There were areas of the fog that were thinner and Poe aimed for it, cut through the sky until he reached that little clearing. There was something in there.
There was something laid on the grass.
Poe saw a body. Poe saw the body of his boy.
His limbs were all broken and his flesh was pale and his face was twisted in horror as he lay there dead. His ribcage was pulled open, had entrails spilling out over his side onto the ground while blood mixed with black feathers. A bird was sat over him, had its head bowed to pull bits of the boy’s flesh off of his bones and swallow it in large, meaty chunks.
Poe cawed and the blackbird turned to him.
“Nevermore!”
~*~
The boy’s room was small, felt even more so with the knowledge that he shared it. It was barely big enough for Poe let alone Poe and two children. No, he would be finding some nearby tree to nest in. Surely the boy could manage sleeping without needing Poe to guide him.
The boy set his briefcase on the bed and flicked the latch open. He pulled his spare clothes from where they had been tucked around his books as well as a little bag of bird care supplies. Poe stepped closer, squawked in indignation.
It was a raven care kit. He ducked his head to peck at the boy’s hand but missed. Ruffled his feathers in embarrassment.
The boy was slow and nervous. Poe had better aim than that, would make sure to jab the boy extra hard next time to make up for it.
Poe shuffled in place as the boy fussed over working fine metal legs into a plastic base. He tipped his project upright and Poe found himself staring at a bird cage. It was made for ravens. The bars were too far apart. They were made for the board, clumsy beaks. Ones that curved at the end slightly like a claw. Poe was more nimble than that, was far more dexterous and twice as deadly as a raven could ever hope to be.
He would sooner perish than let himself be shut away behind those bars. He turned in place and shat disapprovingly on the bed.
To his credit the boy didn’t try to force him inside. He just placed the cage in the corner of the room along with the rest of the supplies and gave up the fight. He was far too quick to abandon his resolve but just this once Poe found himself happy for it.
~*~
The boy was hiding again, had his shoulders drawn up and head ducked down like a coward. Poe rustled his feathers, already felt weary.
“I’m just a librarian, really-“
“Yeah! With a crow!” The very tall boy said. He seemed to understand that Poe was something special. Poe wished he ended up with him instead of the human he got.
“I don’t know how a crow is meant to- sorry…”
“But it does stuff though, doesn’t it?”
Poe did more than the boy realised, had more power over him than the boy realised too. The boy couldn’t see the red string that tied them together, couldn’t feel it tighten and pull Poe back like a rubber band if he strayed too far away.
At first Poe wanted what was good for the boy. The boy wanted to be left alone to wallow in his own insecurity.
Now Poe just wanted out. The boy… the boy hadn’t changed.
Poe had been so excited to meet his life companion.
Now when he thinks back on that day he feels embarrassed.
He’d wanted a partner, someone to watch over and guide, who would look for Poe as Poe did him and they’d work in unison. Never truly on their own in a world so cold because they could look to each other, Poe could follow that red string home to his boy.
But his boy didn’t want him and Poe didn’t want the boy.
“Not when I want it to.” The boy shuffled about again. If Poe was close enough, he’d jab him with his beak to get him to keep still. “You know, it just sort of- Poe just kind of does his own thing.”
“Have you tried training him?” The boy with hair the colour of autumn said.
“Crows are wild and they want- he wants- he wants to train me.” Oh, so he was getting it. The boy understood what Poe was doing as he was being contrary on purpose. “He wants me to be sort of outdoorsy and I’m a library boy.”
“Okay well it’s a bit like to control my power what I do is I avoid beans, and like too much rough- roughage food, or like fast food as well.”
“Smart.” The boy said quietly but his mind was elsewhere, looked up at least, searched for Poe in the shadows. He focused, looked right past Poe, then his eyes shifted and the pair were looking back at each other.
“So why don’t you maybe try to maybe change the diet of the crow?”
The boy snapped his eyes down again, looked to his friend. “He just takes what he wants.”
“What does he take?”
“Whatever locals don’t protect.” The boy scrambled to think. “Pies.”
“Poe takes a whole pie?”
“He can lift a whole pie.”
“Wow!”
It was impressive. Poe tipped forward, glided down from his spot in the rafters.
“It’s a small pie.” Poe landed gracefully on the boy’s shoulder, bristled his chest and let out a little caw to draw the eyes of the others in their circle. Poe’s boy shifted under feeling Poe’s weight but he recovered quickly, seemed to be making an effort not to move too much. Stupid boy, thinking Poe could be so easily dislodged. “He can take small to medium-sized pies.”
“I think he understands what we’re saying.”
Poe couldn’t believe that all other young boys seemed smarter than the one he’d got stuck with. Typical.
“He takes insects, obviously.” Poe’s boy was still going on. “Earrings.”
“So he’s not a lost cause.”
No, it was the boy that was a lost cause.
“He eats earrings sometimes. I’ve seen him eat beard trimmings – I don’t know why.”
Because Poe was a born survivalist. Poe filled his stomach with whatever he was brave enough to eat, with whatever he was at least a little sure wouldn’t kill him outright. Because Poe didn’t doubt for a second that the boy would lead him somewhere awful that was stripped bare of luxuries and he would have to survive on cigarette ash or loose threads or sweet wrappers or something. And when that time came Poe wouldn’t fuss. The boy would and he would die but then Poe wouldn’t have to wait for him. The red string between them would snap and Poe would think in that moment that it would be worth it to swallow another hundred earrings.
~*~
“How much control do you have over your crow?” The boy’s stocky, short-haired friend said.
“Like nothing! He just wants me to go outside and get into fights.”
Well, the boy wasn’t wrong, but his logic was embarrassingly simple. Poe wanted his boy to flourish. To bloom and weather the worst life had to throw at him.
And unfortunately for him, that started with drawing his swords and running something through, feeling the rush of blood; feeling the blood run over the dual blades and down his forearms. Tasting it too.
Poe could hope.
“One day I think you’ll have total control.”
If Poe could laugh he would have done so in that moment. He settled for squawking instead.
As if the boy would be able to control him. Humans could see so very little, didn’t feel magic in the way Poe could.
Poe could see the red string that bound the two of them, even if the boy was the one that pulled him about. The boy was also Poe’s to control, his maddening curse, his stubborn, stupid boy, his responsibility.
Poe flapped his wings, soared high above the dinner hall the boy joined the queue with his friends, tray in hand, to receive his lunch. Poe settled in and got comfortable, decided to preen while he waited for his boy to eat.
He wasn’t even watching when he heard it. Poe turned his head, saw his boy covered in beans and red sauce and tearing into the elemental distributing food. Poe hopped, watched even closer as his timid, quiet, pathetic excuse of a boy and his friends tore the elemental without abandon.
Poe swooped down, landed on the boy’s shoulder though he barely seemed to register the added weight as he scooped beans with his bare hands into a bowl.
The boy sounded like a warrior as he shouted. Triumphant. Victorious.
Poe ruffled his feathers, stuck his break in the air.
“Caw! Caw! Caw!”
The boy looked up from the bowl he had been devouring as if just remembering Poe was with him. As though Poe would be anywhere else.
The boy was covered in food. In red sauce and baked beans. His conquest. His kill.
The boy scavenged a spoon from the table, dipped it into the remains in his bowl and raised it to Poe.
“Try them, Poe, they’re really good.”
Poe didn’t enjoy legumes. He preferred raw meat when it was still a little bit bloody. But it was his boy’s first victory and it would only be polite to accept his offer to share in the spoils.
Poe pecked at the spoonful of beans delicately, made a show of picking one up in his beak and swallowing. It seemed to make his boy happy.
The boy tilted his head, was looking at Poe warmly. Poe shouldn’t indulge him but he supposed there was a soft spot nestled somewhere in his little chest, where his heart beat as pink and squishy as the boy’s flushed cheeks as he panted. He took another bean.
“Poe, what’s your favourite food?”
Poe didn’t even have to think. It was tender meat marbled with red as blood dripped from it, the sort that was still warm when Poe took it down his gullet. “Nevermore!”
One of the boys shrugged. “Probably bread though, innit?”
“Yeah, probably bread.” The boy nodded. If only he knew.
~*~
The boy reached out into the space in front of him. Poe saw his fingers twitch, thrum with energy as he focused, drew shadows up into his hands and pulled them tight like a blanket.
Poe waited quietly in anticipation. He had seen the boy work magic moments prior, knew he was capable of simple tricks – the sort kids learned to create smells or lights or sounds – but this was better. This was a cloak of inky blackness in the palm of his hands (quite literally), it was stealth and it was impressive and it was-
It was a disaster.
The boy had messed up and pulled the shadow over his friends, failed to have it cover himself and left his whole body exposed to the Hexmaster. Poe shifted in embarrassment on his shoulder. He should know better than to believe the boy capable of anything more than the most basic of magic.
The Hexmaster turned, started upon seeing Poe and his boy stood there. He cursed quietly, flicked his smouldering cigarette into the shadow of his robes where it was swallowed up and extinguished.
That was how you commanded shadows. Not whatever pitiful display the boy had managed to perform.
“He- hello!”
“Boys, hello, eh, erm, Edgar, how’s it going?”
“Just- just me.” The boy’s voice was nervous. His grip around the shadows tight, had them pulled over his friends in a white-knuckled fist. “Just me, I, uh, I wanted to get some fresh air.”
“Yeah.” The Hexmaster wafted the air to disperse the smoke that hung around him. It was a shame, Poe rather liked the smell. “Yeah, yeah.”
“-And make sure Poe got a run around, a flap around, a fly around.”
“Mhm”
“He’s a bird.”
“Good, good, good…fitting in?”
“Yes, uh, having- having- it’s a very nice school you have. Thank you.”
“-Ask him if there’s a forest nearby.”
Another voice joined the conversation, painfully loud even though it clearly was meant to be a hushed whisper. Poe twitched his head. This was painful. He considered flying away, wanted to, even, but though he flapped his wings, stayed in place on the boy’s shoulder.
“Who said that?” The Hexmaster looked about. Poe didn’t know why he was nervous.
“I wanted to- What I was just saying to myself.”
Poe blinked. The Hexmaster blinked. There was no way he was that gullible-
“Oh, sorry, I forgot you could create words out of thin air.”
“Out of my mouth, yes.” The boy cleared his throat. “Is there a forest n- nearby, for you know, just being in. It’s good to- because Poe needs to, uh, Poe needs to go be in nature.”
“Sorry, I didn’t know your crow was homesick, was it?”
“No, he’s just sort of, you know, wild. He’s a crow.”
“There are areas of the Plagueround that are malleable. And they can sometimes manifest as a forest, aye.”
The chatter sounded up again. Poe felt the boy tense where his talons dug into his blazer. The boy’s anxiety only made Poe restless and there was no good reason for it. He shouldn’t care. Poe didn’t care, he wasn’t sure where the sudden sympathy had come from.
It was the curse. That had to be it. That red string that bound Poe to the boy wrapped around his throat tight, had him feeling choked and on edge.
Poe didn’t hear what the other children were saying but the boy picked up on it, kept his eyes on the Hexmaster but was addressing his friends equally. It would have been clever if his execution wasn’t so clumsy.
“-Malleable meaning sort of changeable or shapable, yes. Uh, uh, great. Um, would there be one of those sort of near to here maybe for Poe?”
The Hexmaster paused, studied the boy for just a bit too long, then that sharp sceptical edge fell away and the man nodded, acquiesced.
“Ah, we’ll try and work something out. Maybe we could have some trees planted for Poe.”
Poe lost his balance in his shared relief. He tumbled, fell sideways into the boy’s hands. Poe was never normally that clumsy. He lay there, pretended it was what he had intended to do. The humans seemed fooled. Idiots. “He’s not dead by the way, he just does that sometimes.”
“Yeah I think there’s some interesting quirks to your crow.”
“Yes?”
Poe pointedly did not make a show of reacting to that, though the talons on his right foot twitched just a little.
“You’re one of the Allans, right?”
“Yes! I- I’m from the Allan family. We usually get ravens but I’ve got, Poe here.”
Poe felt the disappointment in the boy’s words and resisted the urge to take off in his hands, maybe shit in his hair for good measure. He wouldn’t play into the boy’s schemes. He didn’t have to. Poe had shown him enough grace already. Yet, still, he laid there in the boy’s hands, couldn’t move and so convinced himself that he didn’t want to.
“I was here with your father when he was here.”
“Oh yes?”
“I didn’t know that your family had crows as well.”
“They don’t.” There was a slight hesitation there. Poe heard it. “It’s just me.”
“Right.”
“All of the others have a raven and the raven sort of helps them in battles, or in getting things done, or in finding things out and I got- I got a Poe.” The boy looked down at Poe in his hands, maneuvered Poe’s limp body so he was upright, little body held tight in those narrow fingers, hard and cold like bone. Poe flopped his head, refused to give up the charade until the boy nudged his thumb beneath the underside of Poe’s beak and looked him in the eye. God, it was unbearable. That kind of disappointment. Poe ached something awful. He gave up pretending to play dead to turn his head away, blink his glassy black eyes shut. “Poe doesn’t seem to want me to learn anything or do anything.”
“Sorry, your father’s raven helps him out?”
“Oh yes, all the time.”
The Hexmaster laughed. “It didn’t to begin with.” He shook his head, something fond and vulnerable in his eyes, Poe wanted to surge forward and steal it, take that little glimmer of nostalgia between his beak and crush it. “Your father’s raven was as unruly as wee Poe here.”
“Really?”
“Oh, aye. He was an absolute mess when he was here.”
The muttering picked up again. This time Poe didn’t worry about it, felt more annoyed than anything else. Even the boy’s fear waned into something more like frustration.
“I’m sorry, just also, I- I wanted to double check at this point in the conversation, did I find out where the forest is?”
“The forest-“ The barrel-chested boy spoke and Poe’s boy talked over the top of him in a poor attempt to hide his voice.
“I know you said you were going to plant it, which would suggest that it isn’t here yet. But I thought I’d ask again.”
“We could see a- the space in the garden for a forest. But no the biggest forest would be out in the Plagueround.”
“Let me just check if I understood that.”
The boy paused, heard his friend muttering again, louder this time.
“Wait, hold on.” The boy repeated. “I’m talking to you!” He repeated again, jabbed a finger in the Hexmaster’s direction and Poe took that as his opportunity to break free, perched himself on the boy’s head and dug his talons in just a little too harshly. The boy didn’t react to him and Poe was secretly a bit offended. “Listen, if you’re so certain, you talk to me.” The boy’s voice was just as confused as Poe felt. “Do you know?”
The Hexmaster’s eyes moved past the boy to the wall behind him, where his blanket of shadows fell away. The boys froze, shook it the rest of the way off their shoulders and joined them in the light.
“Sorry!” The blonde one said quickly. “Sorry Hexmaster!”
“Wh- where did you come from?” Poe’s boy tried for surprise but not one of them bought it.
“Mr Finch, Mr Thudberry and Mr Creeley.” The Hexmaster said dryly.
“Hello headmaster.”
“Hello.” The one with a ring of fire for hair raised his hand in a sheepish wave.
“So about this forest…”
“There’s one on the Plagueround you were saying?”
“There is one that is accessible via the Plagueround. It isn’t always there though. The Plagueround is ever-shifting, always malleable.” The Hexmaster’s hand twitched. Poe suspected the man wished he had a cigarette burning down between his fingers.
“Okay.”
“It’s on the other side?”
Poe’s boy spoke up again. Repeated himself yet again. “Malleable means sort of changeable; shapable.”
“It’s on the other side of the Plagueround?”
“It is within the Plagueround. The school is surrounded by it.” The Hexmaster pinched the bridge of his nose, pushed his fingers up under his glasses to rub his eyes. “Okay well if that’s all, I’ll be on my way.”
“Yes, sorry, thank you.”
“No problem.”
“The dinner was lovely.” The one that was not tall but not short called out. Poe felt that politeness was forced, came from a sense of nervousness, he rocked up onto the balls of his feet and then fell back down again on his heels. His fingers twisted in knots behind his back.
“Really good.” Large fingers toyed with the blunted edges of the sun-shaped amulet that hung from his neck. The boy’s words were sincere at least.
“So good.” The sentiment was echoed by the last boy, the one who didn’t seem to realise he was a part of the group yet. He lingered on the outskirts at his own volition, held himself at arm’s length from others because he wasn’t quite sure how to act when faced with the alternative.
“You may need to check on Mr Beans. He’s in some distress.”
“Oh, he’ll bounce back, don’t worry.” The Hexmaster waved their concerns off, edged toward the door of the school.
“Is there a Mr Custard? Or Mrs?”
He shuffled back a little further, rested his hand on the door handle. “We have some variations.”
“Or Doctor.”
“Dr Custard…”
“Right, well I’ll let you all get settled in.” He finally got the door open, still seemed more than a little eager to end the conversation. “Remember, get plenty of rest tonight. Classes tomorrow.”
Poe’s boy nodded. “I’ll try.”
~*~
Poe saw it.
It was out there.
He didn’t know what it was but he knew what it wanted. It wanted the boy. It was probably after his friends as well but Poe didn’t care about that.
He didn’t think he cared about his human either. The sooner the boy died the sooner Poe would be free from that burden.
But he was.
Poe’s big black eye was round and glassy and afraid of what the monster wanted.
He couldn’t have it. The boy was Poe’s responsibility and only Poe would decide when he died, thank you very much.
(Poe knew this wasn’t how the world worked but he didn’t care for he was convinced that he was above the generic fates other humans or birds or monsters were at the mercy of. He had never suffered loss and was blinded by delusions of self-importance.)
(Poe knew this could never end well.)
Regardless, Poe’s boy was stupid and timid and far too weak to fight a monster. Poe needed to warn him.
Poe cawed, flapped his wings and pinched the boy’s blazer, tugged him towards the window. The boy was frail, didn’t put up much of a fight and Poe let go when the boy was facing the outside, looking down at the courtyard.
The boy frowned, saw the outdoor gym and the 3rd years lifting weights in the evening, lit by hanging lanterns fixed to walls. He shook his head and stepped away.
“No, Poe, I won’t! I won’t!”
Poe couldn’t believe how stupid his human was. He flew after the boy into his room, and landed on the window frame. He took urgent little hops over to the window, looked frantically about for that creature. It was there. Poe tapped on the glass.
“Nevermore!”
The boy ignored him.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Nevermore!”
The boy huffed, tried to burrow under the duvet on his bed, but his brows were pinched. Poe nearly had him.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Nevermore!”
The boy got up with a groan. He rubbed his eyes and stumbled over to where Poe stood. He looked out the window, set his sights on the gym first and sighed, then he noticed it. Poe saw his throat work around a mouthful of caught air, eyes wide and body tense. Then the boy blinked and when Poe looked back at the window the creature was gone.