THE CROW AT MY WINDOW - PART I: DANTE Three nights ago, a crow appeared outside my window. Those acquainted with the increasingly profane affairs of my dear friend Bexxy may understand why this disturbed me. Gerald. Of course, I thanked the old bastard. Perhaps that was my first mistake. Perhaps it was merely the first mistake you witnessed. For while Bexxy has spent her days negotiating with feathered brigands, receiving crowns of dead leaves and crooked twigs, appointing Generals, and discovering that Gerald apparently maintains a fucking dungeon beneath the earth... I have been watching. Not Gerald. The pattern. There are patterns one recognizes because they are familiar. Others cause some ancient, half-buried thing within the mind to stir some miserable remembrance entombed so deeply we mistook its silence for death. I knew this pattern. God help me. I knew it. The crow returned the following evening. Same window. Same branch. Same dreadful silence. He sat beneath the pallid moon, blacker than the darkness surrounding him, as though some small piece of the abyss had torn itself free and grown feathers. He did not caw. He did not hmmm. That particular obscenity belongs solely to Gerald. Instead, his beak touched the glass. Tap. Tap. Silence. Tap. Pause. Tap. Tap. Tap. I froze. Then came another sequence. And another. Slow. Deliberate. Patient. For the first time since Gerald sent the little bastard to my window; I was afraid. Not because the crow was speaking. But because I understood him. There are languages learned from books. Others whispered by our mothers. And then there are those acquired only after wandering too far into places wiser men avoid... after agreeing to things; better left unagreed to. Crow Law belongs to the latter. I opened the window. The night entered first, smelling of wet earth and something strangely old. The crow repeated himself. Slower. Every strike awakened another fragment of something I had buried long ago. And when he stopped... I knew his name. “Dante.” The crow bowed his head. My stomach sank. Gerald had not merely sent a watcher. He had sent someone with a name. And under Crow Law... a name freely given is never an introduction. It is a summons. I looked beyond him into the starless dark. Somewhere beneath that same night, Bexxy believed she had stumbled into something new. A stolen spoon. A walnut. A crown. A General. A King. A dungeon. She had seen the pieces. She had not yet seen what they formed. Poor Bexxy. Dear Bexxy. Gerald hadn't begun anything. He had resumed it. Dante shifted upon the sill. “Tell our dear General I remember the old agreement.” Dante remained still. Then: Tap. Tap. Tap. I smiled. “No, old friend. Not yet.” His wings opened, swallowing the moonlight and casting across my room a shadow which bore no resemblance whatsoever to that of a bird. Then he was gone. Consumed by the night. I remained at the window, wondering how much Gerald had told his newly crowned King. Probably nothing. That would be like him. But if Gerald has crowned another King... then the old agreement still stands. Something buried has awakened. Something unfinished moves again. And God help us; the crows are riding once more. Then something sounded beyond the trees. Low. Distant. Almost mistaken for wind. Almost. I had heard it before. Long ago. And somewhere in that impossible darkness, the General remembered me too. "Hmmm." I heard it, fading softly into the wind as it crept deeper into the chambers of what once was a sane mind; now rot.