Feathers

30. Enid's Secret

"We should do CPR or something," Gretchen said, kneeling down next to Enid's body with Kobie.

Spencer crouched down and put two fingers gently on the side of Enid's neck.

"We don't need to do CPR, it would only risk breaking a rib. You should only do CPR if someone is in cardiac arrest," he looked up at the girls, "I can feel a pulse too. That's good news."

Michael joined the others, sitting on the ground on the other side of Enid's body. They formed a small circle around her. He imagined If they had a crow's eye view looking down on the scene, the comparatively large shapes of their bodies would make Enid's frail form seem slight, curled up between them. unconscious on the neatly trimmed grass of the graveyard. Not moving, her skin pale, somehow made her look even smaller, even closer to not existing at all.

"Guys we have to do something, we have to get her to a hospital!"

Kobie's words should have sounded more frantic. But to Michael, it seemed the four of them had slipped into a deep and abiding calm. As much as they were all fond of Enid, as much as Kobie loved her, the mood around them was so so quiet, and so so still. A great storm had just descended upon them. Now it was passed.

Enid slowly opened her eyes.

"I'm still here," she said, her voice soft and croaky.

Kobie squealed and threw herself on her grandma.

"Gentle darling", Enid said, muffled from under Kobie's body.

"Thank fuck for that," Gretchen laughed and lay back on the grass.

Michael nudged Kobie gently,

"Darlin, let her breathe."

Kobie sat up, wiping her eyes and grinning. Spencer and Michael carefully helped Enid sit up. With one of them on either side of her, they helped her shuffle herself along the ground a few feet until she was close enough to a nearby gravestone to rest against it, sitting upright.

"Thank you" she wheezed before losing herself in a coughing fit.

When the coughing subsided Enid turned to Kobie.

"I'm so sorry darling."

"Grandma don't be silly, you don't have to apologise, we realised what you were doing. You were just pretending to hurt me, to lure the Crow here. You fought him all by yourself."

"Speaking of old grandma bad-ass here," Gretchen chimed in, "Was that an insane insane group hallucination we just had? What happened to the Crow?"

Enid grabbed Kobie's hand again and pulled her closer so that she was sitting next to her grandmother. Enid leant forward, audibly groaning with the effort and kissed Kobie on the forehead.

"That's what I'm sorry about darling. Not what I've done so much. For what's about to happen."

Kobie's face froze. She was still smiling but her eyes shifted.

Enid looked from one of their faces to the next, smiling at each of them in turn, then she patted the ground next to herself.

"Sit down everyone, I need to tell you something."

Kobie who was already sitting down shuffled closer and leant into her grandmother. Enid wrapped an arm around her and gently rubbed her back. Spencer and Gretchen sat down near Enid's feet and Michael sat on her other side.

Enid let out a sigh.

"I didn't tell you the whole truth before," she began "about the Crow. And what happened when Kobie was a baby."

She turned to Kobie.

"I was there when you were born. Sitting in the room with your mum. I obviously had no idea what was happening at the time. How it was happening. But I've learnt since that it has to do with connection. The new love that you and Michael felt, the lightning bolt that struck right when you were kissing - it tore open the veil that normally stops us from seeing things from other dimensions, things like the Crow.

"When I saw your mother die, moments after giving birth to you. That unimaginable grief that I was feeling and the love I had for you, my brand new baby granddaughter. Well, that was kind of like the lightning bolt for me. It broke open that hidden place that other people can't see, so when the Crow came to take you, I saw it. At that moment, seeing the crow, and you on the table in front of me, small and blue and not breathing and with doctors all around you. I knew somehow, what the Crow was, and what he was there to do.

"I don't know how I did it. But I spoke to him. Not like this, not with words, but silently, in our heads, with a language of pure emotion. And what I said to him was 'I'll do anything for you to spare her'. I don't know what possessed the creature to agree to it, but he did. On that day we made a pact. To spare your life, and in return, when you were of age and the time was right, it could take my life in return."

Tears were streaming down Kobie's face. She hugged Enid even more tightly than before, ignoring the old woman's pained groan.

"Grandma no. I refuse. I won't let you do it."

Enid smiled sadly at her granddaughter and gently peeled her hands away, holding them instead in her lap.

"It's too late darling, I already have."

At this Enid fell into another coughing fit, this one so long that near the end of it she started going red in the face, struggling to breathe.

Michael patted her firmly on the back and then gave her a series of small thumps. Trying to dislodge whatever was stuck.

Enid leant forward and spat a pool of brackish, black slime onto the grass in front of them.

She looked up, her calm smile now tainted with a look of urgency.

"We don't have long. You need to carry me..."

She broke into another fit of coughing, pointing while she coughed in the direction of her family plot, to where her violent failure of a son-in-law, and beloved daughter were buried.

"Grandma we're going to get you help, we'll call an ambulance."

Gretchen stood up as Kobie did and grabbed her as she turned, presumably to find the early-rising gardener, to call for help. Gretchen held Kobie firmly in place and spoke with a harder edge than Michael would have the courage to.

"Kobie. Your grandma is dying. If you don't stop running away from it and spend these last few moments with her you're going to regret it."

Kobie looked for a moment like she might headbutt Gretchen and then a second later, like she might just crumple into the ground and die herself. But then, somehow, miraculously, she did neither.

"Okay, let's move her."

And so the four friends very carefully lifted Enid's body and carried her the short distance to the two gravestones they'd visited when they first arrived.

They laid her down in the grass and as they had done before, sat around her in a small circle. Enid's coughing fit passed and once again she smiled up at them.

"After I go, ring for an ambulance. It will be too late but it will clear you of any suspicion. Tell them I collapsed. That we were visiting your mother's grave. And I collapsed."

Kobie nodded. She didn't cry, she smiled down at Enid, and held her hand. For a few minutes, they sat in silence and listened to the birds in the graveyard and Enid's slowing breaths.

"In a moment I'm going to discover the greatest mystery of existence. And when I go, the spirit of the crow, which I've invited inside me, which is pulling me away from here. He'll be gone. Hopefully forever. Or at least for a very long time."

A few moments later, Enid and the Crow were gone.