After the crows swallow the girl’s eyes and everything she has seen, they lead her away. It is never specified where. The story only says that for the rest of her days, the girl made her way through the world by following the sound of her tame birds’ wings.
No other versions of this fairy tale have ever been found, despite the natural tendency of stories to travel far and wide, much like crows. How it came to be stitched onto the shirt of a steppe warrior, no one can say.
At the end of the fairy tale there is a date, unfathomably far in the steppe nomad’s future — June 17, 1985.
“It’s not the same carnival, of course,” the librarian, whose parents named her Marian, thus guaranteeing her future career, says.
She toys with her salad fork as she speaks. She’s shy, Walter has learned, but he’s also learned the second glass of wine, currently warming her cheeks with a delicate glow, has given her more of an inclination to talk.
“It’s a carnival. I went to it. one. when I was little. My father took me, after my mother left.”
Marian hesitates, and Walter feels as though he should say something, but he doesn’t know what. After a beat, Marian goes on.
“I don’t remember any of the shows. I must have been really young. All I remember is holding my father’s hand and being convinced we would find my mother at the carnival, and bring her back home.”
Marian blushes. It’s the most she’s said all night. Walter breathes out, and only then does he realize he’s been holding his breath. He finds himself leaning forward, as though his proximity will draw out more words, but it has the opposite effect. Marian reaches for a bread stick. Breaks it into pieces, but doesn’t put a single one in her mouth.
Walter leans back, trying not to let his disappointment show. The next thing out of his mouth surprises him.
“My mother is a psychic,” he says.
His fingers twitch, and he hides the motion by reaching for his glass. He can’t remember the last time he told anyone, and it’s not what he meant to say. The cynical part of him wonders if he’s manipulating Marian, giving her a piece of himself in order to keep her talking. But why? It’s too late for Charlie Miller and Lemuel Mason. He’s never been one to obsess over unexplained mysteries. Some things simply are, and cold cases don’t pay the bills.
But December 14, 2015, is still in the future, and there’s a possibility, maybe even a hope, that it is in his future. So he has to know.
Marian raises her head, her expression wary as though she suspects Walter is making fun of her.
“I’m sorry.” Walter shakes his head.
Marian’s expression softens.
“Don’t be.”
Then, in another move that surprises them both, she reaches across the table and touches his hand. It’s a gentle thing, brief, just a tap of her fingers along his bones, there and just as quickly gone.
Guilt comes like a knife. A rift opens in Marian, and Walter sees a wanting in her that goes all the way through. Suddenly, he doesn’t care about the carnival. Suddenly, Walter wants to tell Marian about holding his breath, pressing the phone to his ear, and listening as his mother dispensed fortunes. He wants to tell her a true thing, an apology for a deception he’s not even sure he’s made. The need wells up in him, bringing memories so sharp he is there again.
Rain pats against the window, streaming down and making odd shadows on the wall. Walter clutches the phone, holding his breath, wrapped in a communion his ten-year-old mind doesn’t have the language to understand. But he knows, deep in his bones, that he and his mother and his mother’s client are all connected. The rain and the telephone lines make a barrier, separating them from the world. He is essential in a way he can’t explain. If he breaks the connection, if he breathes out and lets on that he’s there, his mother’s prophecies will never come true.
The sensation is so real and overwhelming, Walter can scarcely breathe. Here and now, he is still holding his breath, listening to the whisper of words down the line. It terrifies him. He swallows deep from his glass, washing the memories away. They’re too big. He tamps down the impulse to speak, far, farther, until it is gone.
He will not ask Marian about her father, or the hitch in her breath when she said the word mother. He will not tell her about his own life. And with this decision, a new impulse wells up in Walter, one he knows he will not be able to resist. Before the night is through, he will show Marian something terrible; he will make her afraid.
Because he is afraid.
For years, his job has shown him how easily people can fall apart — friendships, relationships, even all alone. Humans are fragile. If he opens himself to Marian, if she opens herself to him, they will become responsible for each other, and that isn’t something Walter wants or needs. And, paradoxically, he is afraid precisely because he isn’t responsible for anyone and no one is responsible for him. December 14, 2015, is in the future, but what if it isn’t in his future? What if he isn’t essential and never was, only an observer, trapped on the outside?
Marian looks at him strangely and Walter realizes his hand is shaking. He sets his glass down, regrettably empty, and reaches for his water instead, swallowing and swallowing again. Even so, his throat is still parched when he speaks.
“Do you know anything about the Miller family? They lived in this area back in the seventies. They disappeared.”
As he says it, Walter knows it is the wrong thing to say. Something indefinable changes, a thread snaps. Marian tucks her hands back in her lap. Her shoulders tighten.
“My neighbor, Mrs. Pheebig, knew them.” Marian looks at her hands, her voice edged. “She’s ninety-one.”
“Does she have any theories about what happened to them?”
“No.” Marian has barely touched her pasta, twirling and twirling the noodles around her fork. Her plate is a minefield of pasta nests, cradling chunks of seafood, surrounded by rivers of sauce.
“Mrs. Pheebig told me everyone in the neighborhood suspected the parents were abusive, but no one said anything because people just didn’t talk about that sort of thing back then. I don’t understand how anyone could stay quiet about something like that.”
Marian finally lifts her head, and it’s almost like an accusation. In the rawness of her gaze, Walter finds it difficult to breathe. The terrible thing coming for him, for both of them, is almost here. Walter’s head pounds. He looks at Marian, and she’s nothing human.
She’s running ahead of him. Her eyes are inkwells. Her skin the finest kind of paper. The whorls of her fingerprints smell of the dust particular to libraries, the spines of books, the rarely touched yet time-stained cards of the archaic catalog, bearing the immaculately typed numbers of the Dewey decimal system. She is a prophet, an oracle. Somewhere, buried deep in her bones, are the answers to all his questions.
Because it had to be one or the other, kindness or cruelty, Walter reaches out to catch Marian before it’s too late.
“Can I show you something?”
Marian puts her head to one side, considering. For a moment, Walter has the sense of her looking right through him, knowing he’s dangerous, and weighing risk against reward.
“All right.” Marian reaches for her purse.
The bill settled, they walk two blocks to Walter’s office. He flicks the lights off, switches the projector on, and watches Marian watching the film. Walter doesn’t know what he expects, what he wants — a companion, someone to share the burden? Confirmation that he isn’t mad, someone to say, yes, I see it too? His pulse trips, watching the play of light reflected in Marian’s eyes. Despite the horror on the screen, her expression doesn’t change. She says nothing. Only her fingers curl, tightening where she leans against Walter’s desk. But even as her fingers tighten, she leans forward slightly, waiting.