In the Hour of Crows by Dana Elmendorf EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Dana Elmendorf
- Language: English
- Genre: Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2.4 MB
- Price: Free
Dog Finger
Fourteen Years Later
Omens come in all manner of ways. Warnings to let you know death is
coming. Pretty much everything portends death when Appalachia is deep in
your family roots. If a bird flies into your house, somebody in your family
is going to die. Same for a broken clock that starts ticking again, or cows
you hear mooing after midnight.
Or black ferns that grow where there were none the day before.
Grandmama calls them Devil’s Weed, says they’re black because they
feed off the Devil’s soul. Papaw said they were black because of the coalrich earth they grew on higher in the mountains.
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Mrs. Penny Hammer, my eighth-grade biology teacher, said it wasn’t
nothing to do with coal or evil. It was the anthocyanins pigment that
colored them black, a purple-black like blackberries. Except…Mrs. Hammer
didn’t account for the fact that folklore is stronger than science around here.
No amount of biology will convince local folks black ferns are harmless.
They eat up the forests, you see. So much so, they gave us our town name.
Black Fern, Georgia, isn’t just a town named after its foliage. It’s where
death shrouds with a heavy hand. Furtive ground for a Death Talker to
reside.
The wind chime of trinkets hanging in my bedroom window clinks and
twinkles in the morning wind. Lost or discarded objects that no one would
miss. Shiny things. Tiny things. A piece of Christmas tinsel. A broken car
key. Cracked crystal droplet from a chandelier. The silver propeller of a toy
plane. A shiny copper button with the black corduroy fabric still attached. A
cracked mirrored lens from Cindy Higgin’s sunglasses.
Barely ten items.
One for every time the crow boy has visited me.
One for every life I have failed.
It’s been years since I’ve seen Rook—a walker of souls; a boy who is
sometimes a crow. Years since I failed to save someone. The more time that
passes, the more I start to wonder if I made him up. One of those imaginary
friends children create to keep themselves from being bored or lonely or
sad.
The ching of a bike bell rings, yanking me from my thoughts. Tires from
my childhood pink pedal bike have long since melted in the dirt. My cousin
Adaire, expectant. Hand firmly on her hip. Her expression a clear, Are you
ready? Or are you wasting the morning daydreaming?
I never will be ready for today.
Besides, daydreaming might be the only gift I get. I glance at the
calendar flipped to June. The nineteenth. Happy Birthday to me.
I remember what Adaire wore the last time I saw her at church. Her
favorite goldenrod-yellow T-shirt—it was plum ugly by itself and worse
with that green-plaid wool miniskirt she cherished. For the love of Jesus, it
was hotter than sin that day. Why in God’s good name she ever bought that
outfit I will never know.
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