Special Sneak Peek

Where Ravens Wait: The Blood Remembers

This is a peek at the first few pages of Chapter 1 “Magic is Real”. It is not the full chapter, just the first few pages. Future peaks with be open only to subscribers.

Chapter 1 “Magic is Real”

Before the world teaches us the weight of disbelief, a child lives in a hall of wonders. The veil is thin in those years, and the marvelous walks openly through it. Santa rides the sky with a sleigh like a king’s barge; the tooth fairy slips coins beneath pillows; leprechauns hide their gold in rainbows—these are not fables but truths as certain as breath. Children know of scraped knees and cruel words, but the slow, deliberate thing called Evil is not yet theirs to know. So when a figure appears in the night beside a child’s bed, there is no question, no doubt. It is accepted, as real as the fever burning in the body.

Our house sat just beyond the southern edge of the city, in a quiet patch of Cook County called Garden Homes. A sandstone cottage, squat and weathered, with two towering trees in the front and a great oak in the back. The oak stretched wide, older than the house, older than the street, its branches reaching like arms that touched both sky and soil. Inside, the house still wore the seventies—wood-paneled walls, orange carpet glowing dimly in lamplight, calico carpet on the stairs and in the small bedrooms tucked beneath the roof’s low slant. Upstairs, the closer you pressed toward the walls, the lower the ceiling bent, as if the house itself stooped to listen.

My father was in his mid-twenties then. Average height, thin but strong, his hands roughened by long hours of work. Black hair, blue eyes, a bushy mustache, and stubble that never seemed to leave his face. He was the youngest of nine, raised in McKinley Park among crowded houses and louder streets, grandson to immigrants who had worked and scraped and bent themselves into this new country. My father carried that history in the set of his jaw and the leather of his palms.

My mother was younger still, in her early twenties. Short, pretty, with green eyes and long, straight brown hair that spilled down her back. She was the second youngest of five children, raised in Blue Island, where her family’s roots stretched both across oceans and deep into American soil. Her grandmother had crossed the Atlantic before the great war, and her grandfather’s line had been here for generations, their stories tied to rivers and wood, boats and crossings. She stayed home, keeping the house warm and steady, her presence softer than my father’s, but no less strong.

As for me, I was the third to carry my name. A child of four, born on a Friday.

My eyes opened into a silence that felt held in place. The only light was the thin slice spilling in from the hallway, turning my bedroom into a world of shadows. I was sick. My skin burned, my ear throbbed, my chest rattled with every breath. I wanted to call for my parents, sleeping across the hall, but my voice would not rise, not even to a whisper.

I stared instead at the bookcase shaped like a giant yellow bird. In daylight it was cheerful, but in the dark it changed. Its round head became the shape of a crow, its painted eye an unblinking blackness. The longer I looked, the more it seemed to shift. And then I felt eyes staring back at me.

“Young one,” said a deep voice.

A large black dog stood beside my bed. I turned my head and saw him clearly, though I had not seen him enter.

“I am not a dog,” he said.

What are you? I thought.

“I am what your people would call a great dire wolf.”

His fur was all black, but without sheen, as if it swallowed the light that touched it. His eyes glowed faintly green, steady as lanterns. Somehow, sitting there beside me, he made me feel stronger, not weaker.

My mother had read me stories about wolves—the boy who cried wolf, the three little pigs, Red Riding Hood. Wolves in those stories were dangerous, always lurking, always devouring.

“Not all wolves are bad, little one.”

I believed him. I was not afraid.

Then, without warning, the books from the bird-case toppled to the floor. I turned my head slowly from Dark Wolf to the sound. My parents stirred.

“What was that?” my mother said as she entered the room, my father close behind. She saw me awake but did not see the wolf standing inches from my bed. I turned back—he was gone.

“Jimmy, he doesn’t look good.” My mother pressed her hand to my forehead. “He’s burning up again.” I tried to speak but only a crackle came out.

“He’s really congested,” she said.

My father went downstairs and returned with a bottle of pink liquid. I liked the taste of it—sweet like bubblegum, a small comfort. My mother listened to my chest, checked the thermometer, and frowned. “104.”

“Jimmy, he needs to go to the doctor,” she said.

“We can take him tomorrow if the fever doesn’t break.”

My father poured the medicine into a small plastic cup, and my mother tipped it into my mouth. I swallowed, the syrup coating my throat. My father sat down on the bed and put his hand to my forehead. “Hang in there, boz.”

I shared his name, as my father had shared it with his father before him. Too many Jimmys in one house meant I was JJ, or whatever nickname struck him at the moment. Lately it had been “boz” or “bozenover.” I never knew why. Still don’t.

My mother returned with a folded washcloth, cool against my burning skin. She took the place beside me while my father rose, muttering about the dresser and shims as he picked up the fallen books.

Then they left, voices trailing downstairs. The soft house turned into a storm-ship. Their argument rose like thunder, words thrown sharp as hail. Then the clash of voices grew louder, too loud for me to follow.

The bird-case shadow bent again into the shape of a crow. Dark Wolf was back at my bedside.

They are fighting because I’m sick, I thought.

“No, little one,” he said. “They are arguing over things that have nothing to do with you.” “Your parents have fears too.  Things you do not yet know of, and shouldn’t.”

I’m afraid, I thought.

“Would you like me to take that fear away from you?”

Could I pet you?

“If you do something for me, something that will help you.”

Ok.

“Imagine your fear is in your hand, like a green apple.”

I held out my palm. Slowly, faintly, the shape of a green apple appeared, ghostly, fragile, yet real enough. Dark Wolf lowered his head, bit into the apple, and tossed it up in one smooth motion. It spun, caught the light, then fell into his jaws. He swallowed it whole.

“There. Do you feel better now?”

I’m not scared.

“Good. Now get some sleep.”

You forgot—you said I could pet you.

“Very well,” he grumbled, and rested his giant head on my bed.

I wrapped my arm around him, my fingers lost in fur that drank the light. He yawned. I yawned back. His green eyes glowed steady, and I drifted into a sleep without dreams. I was safe and under the protection of my new friend Dark Wolf.