Black Feathers by Joseph D'Lacey Page A

survive. The encounter almost killed him, left him crippled and blind. But the reward was great. The Crowman gave him new eyes with which he could see deep into the Weave. It was the gift of prophecy and it made him the first in our line. The Rag Man was his name.
    “Now, every Keeper can see a little way into the Weave but the Rag Man saw everything. He saw us. And I think he saw Megan.
    “In all the generations since the Black Dawn, there has never been a female Keeper. The Crowman has shown himself to one boy after another and their task remains unchanged. To tell the story. To keep it alive by journeying through the Weave and setting down the tale. This process keeps us all in touch with the Crowman. It keeps him alive inside us and that, in turn, keeps the land alive. But every Keeper so far has been fallible, even I. The risk always remains that one of us will journey in error and return with the story only half told. The farther away in time we travel from the days of the Crowman, the more likely that is to happen. Already, it may be that the story is not correct in all its facets. Already we may be forgetting the Crowman’s true nature and how he links us to the Earth.
    “But the Rag Man, he saw a girl in the Weave, generations in his future, when the Black Dawn was only a distant memory. The first and only female Keeper. He saw, too, that this girl would be the last Keeper. Either she would journey and rediscover the tale in its entirety, thereby keeping us united with the land for all time, or she would journey and fail. The story of the Crowman would be lost and our connection to the Earth severed as it was before the Black Dawn. Only this time, if that bond is cut, it will be final. Within a generation or two, all of us will be done for. The Earth Amu will die and the light from Father Sky will be snuffed out. For our lives and the life of the world are as one. We share the same destiny.”
    Mr Keeper pauses to reload and relight his pipe. Heather and Fulton Maurice sit, silent and still. Keeper slips his finger inside the pocket of the leather pouch and slides out a piece of paper. It is yellowed and its edges are nibbled and torn with wear. A pattern of thin, perfectly parallel blue lines covers its surface and between these, in a style too twisted to be readable, is a mass of spiky scrawl, apparently written in great haste.
    Megan’s parents lean forwards and frown over the handwriting.
    “I know,” says Mr Keeper. “Impossible to decipher without several years of study under your belt.” He grins. “Which, fortunately, I have. This, as far as we know, is the Rag Man’s only surviving inscription. There may be others but they have never been found. These lines are a prophecy, somewhat fevered, but nonetheless a vision of the future – the one we now occupy, if my instincts are correct.”
    He places the page in front of him on the kitchen table and is silent for a few moments before beginning to speak:
     
    be watchful for an innocent
    guided by a black feather
    chosen in the shadow of trees
    in a time of harvest
    in an era of plenty
    fair of face and hair
    yet her name is black
    this is the keeper of keepers
    in whose journey the land may live or die
    the boy cannot exist without the girl
    without the teller, there can be no tale
     
    Heather Maurice claps her hands with relief.
    “Well that settles it, Mr Keeper. It can’t be our Megan. Her name isn’t Black!” She looks to her husband for support but his face is vacant. Mr Keeper shrugs with a resigned smile. “Fulton,” she says. “Make Mr Keeper understand. It’s all been a mistake.”
    “I think Mr Keeper may be right.”
    “How can he be right? She’s not named Black.”
    Fulton sighs, his enormous frame shrinking.
    “Maurice is a very old name. It doesn’t mean anything now, but a long time ago it meant dark-skinned or black. I’m sorry, Heather. When I heard those words, my skin turned to gooseflesh. I don’t know if Megan has