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Image courtesy Christy Corp-Minamiji

She had a brown paper napkin pressed to her lips. Passersby, worrying about whether the gathering greyness above would coalesce into heavy drops, told themselves she was stifling a sneeze, or laughing, or spitting something out, that her gesture was anything other than that of someone pressing a fist into the tears and animal noises burrowed into her throat.

Her maroon sweatshirt drooped, Flashdance style, from one thin shoulder, giving a border to curved lines of black ink creeping up her neck where they met the pigtailed end of careful braids. Her black and white check backpack looked far jauntier than her hunched, scurrying walk. 

A cry cut diagonal to her path, but in the city, someone is always shouting at an intersection, or honking, or waving a clipboard. Over time the noises become mosaic tiles on one’s ears, just more of the urban mural. Three young men – boys really – yelled something and crossed to her, clustering near her and parting as she walked on, faster now.  Was he one of them?

Black wings flapped overhead, dipping inked feathers toward her braids, lightly kissing her hair before soaring up again and perching above the metro station.

Her rush into the station, against the light, brushed air past the bumper of a tan car, shoving aside the gasped “Are you okay?” from a woman on her own commute.

She pushed at the emergency gate, a guttural cry now audible when the steel refused to yield. Slumping onto the curb against the station windows, she buried her face in her hands. “Honey, are you okay?” Two more women joined the first, forming a semicircle of lionesses around an incoherent cub.

Two demanded, “Did they do something to you?”

“Are you okay?” another asked, hoping for an answer.

An answer came, but not from the girl. “Yeah, what, you think we had a fight?” He was maybe 20, shorter and slighter than the older women, in black sweats cut at the knee and a white sweatshirt. His pencil mustache couldn’t compensate for missing and unstable-looking incisors or the loathing in his eyes – for her, for the women, for himself, or the world?

“She’s fine,” he said, voice flat as a knife blade. He moved to pull at her but was blocked by a closed circle. “Come on, let’s go. You’re fine. They’re calling the cops. Let’s go.”

Golden eyes watched from above as the girl stood on shaking legs.

“You don’t have to go with him, honey.”

She moved to his side anyway. He grabbed her forearm; she didn’t even flinch. “Yeah. She does.”

A silver ring slid from her thin fingers as he forced open the turnstile gate and shoved her through. Black wings swooped down as the crow snatched the thin, sparking circle. The crow bobbed once before the women and flew from the station. They followed, sliding around the building into an alley.

The women nodded once to the crow and vanished in wisps of wind, rain, and feathers. It nodded again, heading for the sky.

The girl woke the next morning in a room she hadn’t occupied for years. She snuggled under the princess bedspread in sleepy confusion. As she burrowed into the covers, her hand brushed something slightly rough. She reached out, picked up a black feather, and smiled.

The police report mentioned the body of a young man found overnight. Roughly 20 years of age, slight build, dark mustache, clad in black sweatpants and a white sweatshirt. Cause of death unknown, but both eyes appeared to have been pecked out by scavengers, and a silver ring was found in one empty socket.