Wedged between door and jamb the letter is a pale scrap caught and fluttering between wooden jaws, at the mercy of the autumn air. It is spotted by bead-bright eyes, carefully plucked free and carried to the youth's hand as
a human thing, a curiosity, an item of interest. And perhaps, the crows hope, a distraction.
They find him not far from the lodge, where brambles and berry bushes cluster around a small clearing with a flat stone at its centre. He sits hunched with arms wrapped about his knees, huddled into a too-large coat still greasy with lampblack and dubbin that hides deeper stains, a shock of white fur at his collar and a mess of black hair above. Silent as he has been for days now, barely acknowledging the concerns of crows or rats or hounds, lost behind his own eyes.
The letter draws only a dull glance before he looks away again, the faintest shake of his head to signal his disinterest; the crow bearing the letter - Bone Button, hatched the spring before last, already earning a reputation for
stubbornness - croaks impatiently and sets the scrap of paper down on the flat stone, working with beak and feet and clawed thumbs to unfold it, weighting the corners with twigs and pebbles. For a time sharp eyes inspect the marks and scratchings with an unseemly shrewdness before the crow feels confident in assembling
shapes into
sounds, the hoarse voice of a young boy speaking in stilted monotone.
"I - know - that - there - was - a - man - that - you - loved - who - called - him - self - bert - ram."The youth's spine stiffens, his gasp sharp enough to give Button a moment's pause before forging on, encouraged by having prompted any kind of a reaction.
"He - did - not - love - you - there - are - three - "The recital abruptly becomes a corvid shout of alarm and reproach as the letter is seized,
snatched from beneath its reader's feet, the boy's lips moving silently continues the crow's task of deciphering the letters inexpertly scribed. A moment to feverishly check the back of the paper for more before he starts again, reading the message a half-dozen times through before he sits back, staring at nothing, the paper forgotten and crumpled in a fist clenched white.
* * *
An hour after, and the woods echo with the calls of crows; they move with purpose through the treetops in groups of two, each pair keeping a steady distance from the next, bead-bright eyes scouring the forest floor below.
Searching.