The Ravens Eye

The rapping stirred Edgar from his slumber. Just the wind, hurtling pinecones from the conifers against his door. Then it rapped again. He sat up, wondering who was there on this dark, blustery night, and his heart did flutter with a sliver of fear, though he did not know if that was right.

Sliding his fingers over the cold glass of his coffee table, he left a smear that distracted his thoughts as it obscured the collection carefully archived below. There were shells, a variety of multi-hued metal nuts and bolts, bits of dried bone, a single earring, paper clips in different colours, a set of car keys, and various colourful pebbles. The most prized was the silver charm of a baby swaddled with the inscription ‘Pallas’ engraved on the back of the blanket. This gift he had placed in a bed of cotton batting and displayed it under the glass in the very center of the table.

Elenore had marked her coming motherhood by feeding the crows that gathered at the forest’s edge. Edgar helped, though worry tugged at him more than he ever said aloud. In winter, he stretched a clothesline between two pines for the suet cakes, the cold biting through his gloves. In spring, he turned a wide wooden bowl on his lathe and hung it from a low branch. Elenore would climb the step ladder despite the weight of her swollen belly, steadying herself with one hand while she poured in sunflower seeds saved from the autumn garden. “You shouldn’t be up there,” he’d say, reaching toward her. She only shook her head, breathless but stubborn. “Let me do this. They know me.” And the crows came, black against the trees, drawn to the steadiness of her care.

When Elenore and the baby passed, the crows began bringing him these gifts, and each one he took and gently placed in a small glass Gerber’s baby food jar before arraying it under the glass top of the coffee table. The tabletop was now full, and the overflow of the collection was arranged on glass shelving throughout the room.

Again, a rapping but now at the window.

           “Who’s there?” he cried. But only the wind replied.

He stood, pulled his torn, stained t-shirt down over his scrawny chest, flung open the door and stared into the murky dark of the forest, but his eyes could discern nothing in the gloom beyond. He grabbed a packet of kindling from the stack beside the door and yelled at the dark once more.

           “Who’s there?” But only the creak of the swaying pines groaned a reply.

He was about to shut the door when a shape detached itself from the shadows—a raven. She was statuesque. Twice the size of the crows they had fed. She had a Bowie knife of a beak and a thick stole of black feathers around her neck like a sable. She bounded, hopping on two legs before spreading her majestic wings and gently alighting on the coffee table, where she nestled over the charm named Pallas.

           “What are you doing?” cried Edgar before he saw the gold ring clasped in her beak. She dropped the ring on the glass top where it rolled in ever-diminishing circles before settling with a metallic song.

“What is this? A gift? For me?”

“Evermore,” spoke the bird.

“A clever trick, you can speak.”

“Evermore,” repeated the Raven.

“Now you mock me. You twist the word. Nevermore. You understand? They are gone, both baby and Madonna. Gone.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard.

The Raven stretched her head forward as if to speak. Instead, she cocked her head and fixed her black eye first on the ring and then, twisting her neck, she peered at Edgar before looking once more at the ring.

Edgar stared and saw it was inlaid with an obsidian stone that mimicked the eye of the Raven. He picked it up, and he swore the jewel winked at him.

“Evermore!” spoke the Raven once more.

“Thank you for the gift. I will treasure it.” Edgar placed it into an empty jar, whereupon the bird advanced on him, plucked the ring from the jar and placed it back on the table. 

“Rest assured, I was going to give it a seat of honour.”

“Evermore,” repeated the bird, and she fixed her eye on Edgar and raised her wings.

“They’re gone. Don’t you see? I’ve built a small shrine from the gifts your clan carried to me, piece by piece, trying to hold on to what I lost. And now you’re here to seal it. I understand. Thank you. You may go.”

But the raven did not leave. She nudged the ring toward his outstretched fingers, her beak tapping it once, urging him on.

“You want me to wear it?” he said, a thin, incredulous laugh catching in his throat. “Fine. Why not. Looks like it’ll fit my stubby talon.”

The metal slid onto his finger with surprising ease. A faint warmth pulsed through it—steady, deliberate.

The raven straightened. Her wings lifted, feathers shivering as if caught in a wind he couldn’t feel. She rose taller, her shape lengthening, gathering light around her edges. Edgar blinked, and the bird’s dark outline softened into the slender form of Elenore, her hair falling in familiar waves, her eyes bright with something he had not seen in months.

Behind her, the coffee table blurred, its hard lines loosening into the soft curve of a crib. A wide-eyed infant lay inside, reaching toward a mobile that spun gently overhead—trinkets the crows had once carried, now turning in a slow, shimmering circle.

Elenore touched his cheek, her hand warm and sure.

“Cast out the darkness,” she said. “It’s time for light. Forevermore.”

She smiled, and for a moment he couldn’t tell whether she was stepping closer or fading, whether the crib was real or memory, whether the warmth in the ring belonged to her or to him.

He let the moment hold him.