Melody & The Search for Crows

The old man doesn’t notice. He’s always been rather clueless, and Melody noted this about him the second they met. It’d been years, but, after all, he’d barely spotted her spread across the haystacks in his barn that night, and that was very telling.

Melody slips a hand into the pocket of her peacoat. The young girl feels around for a moment, her heart idly lodged between her ribcage and calmed lungs, then bites her lips when she fishes out a small pocket knife. The old man cranes his head over his shoulder to watch her slowly rise. 

“Hey, Melody, lemme ask you sum’,” he asks, voice thick with nothing but interrogation. “Why’re you runnin’ away from sweet Maya, anyways?”

For a time, Melody stays silent, eyes darkened by the shadows of the night. When she turns her head back to the empty trail, they’re passing a small lodge, then a herd of deer hunched over the dewy grass. 

“…Wasn’t giving me what I needed,” Melody replies shallowly. The old man attempts to acquire past that, but she shoots him an offhanded, disdainful glance. “And it’s none of your business, old man. Doesn’t concern you.” 

She keeps that same pocket knife tucked between her cold, white knuckles, and the letter she’d written for Maya pressed to her palm in the pocket of her small coat. She’d been gifted it by her when she was just a child, maybe nine or ten, and she’d grown out of it a long time ago. But nobody in the town could afford much else, and it was only tight around her elbows, anyway. 

“Sorry for my asking,” the old man repeats. Melody licks the sour taste from her chapped, frozen lips, hugging an amount of the hay closer to her fragile body. 

The old man returns to the path. The horse lets out a grumble of dissatisfaction when they don’t stop to mess with the deer or the loud crows overhead. 

“So much for school then, huh,” the old man asks after a brief pause in the conversation. “Does Maya know you’re out here past dark?”

“Never cared for school,” she says through clenched teeth, “and never cared for Maya much, either. Girl doesn’t have a brain in her head.”
The crows flock off as the white horse trots along a muddy patch between the broken gravel. It neighs, then huffs and stiffens when the old man pulls it backwards by the saddle. Melody holds her breath and the knife between delicate fingers. 

“You don’t get to say that about her,” the man says sternly. Melody tries to think of a time when he’d looked so helpless, but nothing comes to mind. She stays tucked between stacks of hay, drawing her legs closer to her chest as the horse continues along that familiar path she’d run down so many times. 

The lodge fades into the distance as the herd of innocent deer scurry off into the forest, the lantern hanging from the wagon illuminating the way for them. Melody remembers hurrying down the path, her messenger bag slung over her shoulder, stuffed to the brim with letters she’d written for everybody who’d passed away in the fire, dancing through the music of the crows and the wind singing, just for her. 

“That girl cared for you when nobody else did,” the man tells Melody. She narrows her eyes to understand his unfriendly eyes better, then stares blankly at the horse and the dark abyss ahead. “And you best be thankful she did. Or else, you wouldn’t be here.”

“That don’t matter,” Melody grumbles. “She didn’t seem to care much for me, either.”

“She kept you alive, and that’s all that matters,” he insists. 

Before Melody can form a retaliation, a swarm of midnight crows comes flocking through the darkness, their beaks sharp and raised at the man, then at the crazy horse as it frantically shoots its hooves into the air in an attempt to fight back. 

The wagon jumps, and the old man stumbles off the horse with the lantern in hand. He reaches into the bed of the hay for the shotgun he’d kept hidden from Melody, but she lunges forward and snatches it from him. 

“Little lady, you don’t know what yur’ doing with that ol’ thing,” he replies anxiously. 

The crows peck at the old man’s face, then to his droopy eyes, pointed mouths tearing at raw, wrinkled skin. He yelps in agony, and Melody just watches, face stone, with a shotgun slung over her shoulder. 

The flock of crows attacks, pecking out the eyes and striking the face of the old man with their beaks. He writhes in pain, then slips into the mud, his back to the gravel trail, and the stallion huffing like it’s out of breath. 

Melody glances up at the crows, their truce ringing through her ears. The wind rustles through her silky hair, then down the back of her gifted peacoat, and she shuffles on top of the horse with the saddle and all. The horse raises its hooves, cutting through black air, smelling briefly of the blood pooling from the old man’s face, nose-first in the gravel below, then staggers off and into the misty night.

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