Chapter 1

I don’t remember dying.

Yesterday, and every single day for 25 years, I woke up alone and unknown in my tiny room within the gray stone walls of Rosencranz Asylum for the Insane. I languished amid white coats, and ancient, abandoned bodies whose owners lacked awareness that they lived, but couldn’t seem to die.

Perhaps I was one of them—at least for the first 16 years, where my awareness of the outside world, and most of my memories were hidden within a gray mist inside of my head—the Graying. I could see my immediate surroundings enough to not bump into walls or other inmates, but nothing beyond.

I spoke to no one. The white coats ordered us all around, and understood everything that was said, I pretended not to. I raged with anger for I don’t know how long. Perhaps until they tired of gagging me and tying me to the bed. Or perhaps when I figured out how to make them stop that—and the lightning bolts.

I went limp.

I became docile.

I understood everything they said. But I spoke only the language of crows. 

The white coats would come and take me by the hand or in a wheelchair to the dining room, to the toilet, to bathe, to sit on the patio, or to the Great Room. I gave no resistance. Over time, I became invisible within the loud chaos of certain other inmates that demanded the attention of the white coats. They paid me less and less mind, and I slowly started moving around on my own.

To the dining room. To the patio. To the Great Room. To the toilet. To my room. I gave no trouble, so was left wrapped in my cocoon of solitude—the Graying—a refuge  within and against the wailing grief and suffering echoing endlessly within the asylum’s impenetrable stone walls. 

I don’t remember how or why I had come to be at Rosencranz. Or who I was before Rosencranz. I had few memories of anything but Rosencranz. But Charlie’s pecking on the window to the Great Room 8 years ago changed everything.

I remember Charlie, my best friend from childhood—most of which is obscured by something darker than the Graying. Eight years and 23 days ago, Charlie pecked repeatedly at the window in the Great Room until I looked up. 

Robust memories surfaced—of the two of us wandering the woods together, sharing a picnic basket of food. I remember flying a big red kite, while Charlie was up in the sky flying circles around it.

Within the Graying, many ‘pocket-memories’ such as these float around now, unattached to any particular time or event. Charlie’s presence on the other side of the glass—and even now—helps me remember. 

I didn’t know I had hidden memories, until Charlie, then Jayzu showed up and awakened the broken shards of my past, though I could not make sense of most of them. They terrorize and tantalize me. Charlie believes all the pieces of my lost memories are concealed somewhere in the Graying. 

I had grown unaccustomed to the passage of Time at Rosencranz—a thing that does not exist in the Graying. But after Charlie came into my world, I quickly became a prisoner of Time, waiting and longing for his next visit—even though we could do nothing but touch the glass that separated us. 

When Jayzu appeared out of nowhere, I left my moment-to-moment existence for good, and sought tomorrow with all my heart. Jayzu could not come every day—he lived on an island and worked in the City. Impatience and hope bloomed within me.

Prior to Charlie and Jayzu’s visits, the sun had risen day after day over the gray walls of Rosencranz, though I barely noticed its passage across the sky. The sun was in the sky, or it wasn’t. Day or Night.

After Jayzu taught me about time, I noticed the clocks. Everywhere clocks with big white faces suddenly demanded my attention. I could not escape the two black pointers—one longer faster and the other shorter and slower—and one tiny red one that went faster than the fast black ones. 

I spent many of the hours waiting for Jayzu—watching the long black one, never looking away until it had gone all the way around the white circle, while the shorter one advanced only a small part of that distance. And the red pointer went sixty times around.

I kept track. Every single day.

That’s how the illusion of time came back to me. Watching it second by second…minute by minute, hour by hour. The red pointer touches the black tick mark on the clock face, and then it is gone. As if it never was.

It mattered not, I observed. Another moment arrives with or without my attention, or yearning. It seemed this train of moments occurred even as I slept, or when I wasn’t watching.

I learned how to ‘tell time’ from Jayzu. He said I learned so quickly, he thought I had known how, once upon a time—before Rosencranz. I shrugged. Time before Rosencranz was a black hole with but a few twinkling shards of my brief and unconnected memories.

After I learned about time, it dragged even more dreadfully between Jayzu’s visits.  Moments that used to be barely noticeable expanded in all directions, enduring for weeks it seemed. But the moments he visited me flew by like the wind.

When Jayzu came, time was not. When he was gone I retreated into the Graying to escape the torture of time, but I couldn’t find Jayzu there. He did not exist in the Graying. 

I dreamed of him, night and day, and of things that grow wild and free. None of which I could find within the isolated pocket memories of the Graying.

I had to come out.

“Take me with you, Jayzu!” I had begged one day as he was leaving. “Far away from here! Take me to your island! I want to live in all the colors of the outside world!”

He told me he didn’t know how to get me out of there, but promised he would never stop visiting me. I went back to the clock and watched and waited for his return.

And then it happened. Miracle of all miracles!

Jayzu, Charlie, and an army of crows showed me how to escape the gray walls of Rosencranz and its clock. Jayzu walked with me to the gazebo near the edge of the grounds. I slid under a fence that Jayzu showed me behind the gazebo.

“Now, run!” he said. “I will see you at the Treehouse.”

The Treehouse! 

I ran through the woods with Charlie flying overhead. Laughing all the way. It was so easy!

We came to a big river; after awhile a small boat that seemed more like a small island floated to the bank. A big burly man, the Captain—that’s what Jayzu and Charlie called him—with many strange and wonderful tattoos on his huge arms picked us up.

I could hardly keep my eyes off the Captain’s tattoos as he rowed. Birds and fish seemed to fly and flow, merging with river and sky. He seemed in command of the river as much as his boat. I loved the sensation of floating! And watching the growing group of crows following the Captain’s boat.

The Captain rowed us down the sparkling river toward a green island thick with trees. Jayzu’s island. Charlie called it Cadeña-l’jadia—misty island of green trees. I shivered with excitement and anticipation.

The island came into view. Ravens perched on tall gray cliffs above the river, watching us pass. The Captain brought his boat into a place Jayzu would tell me later was called the Sanctuary. 

A stream flowed out of the cliffs and separated into many smaller streams that fed small ponds. I bolted out of the boat as soon as it stopped, toward the pools where water birds floated or played or dove their heads under water.

“Is Jayzu’s Treehouse here?” I asked.

“No,” Charlie said. “It’s further into the forest—but it’s not far from here.”

I now wake up in the Treehouse—built in the boughs of a very large tree. The memory of the gray walls of the Rosencranz prison fade.

For this first time in my spotty memory, I do not fear being harmed. What is there to harm me here? I am with Jayzu, the only other yoomun whose protection I am sure of—on an island of mostly crows and ravens whose language I speak. 

Is it real, this forest, this island, this man? 

I don’t remember dying, but I don’t remember living either. I remember so little  of my life. Charlie connects me to my childhood and its memories. Jayzu connects me to the land of the living.

Maybe I don’t need to remember anything more. Maybe just being here with Jayzu and Charlie is enough.

Or so I thought…

===

We stayed up late on the deck of the Treehouse that first night, Jayzu and I. Charlie, Rika and their kreegans had disappeared into the branches above just before dark. With my head thrown back against the deck railing, high up in this tree with stars overhead, I was speechless.

Jayzu pointed out the constellations—“That’s the Big Dipper, Charlotte.”

For a moment the Treehouse was gone. I stood on a roof looking up at the stars. A man stood next to me pointing it out with his pipe, whose sweet aroma evoked vague memories of somewhere familiar.

“And if you follow those two stars…” he picked up my arm and told me to point my finger… “all the way to here…” he moved my arm a few inches until my finger touched a bright star.

“That’s the North Star,” he was saying.

“What are you doing here, Ms Steele?” a harsh voice asks.

Dizziness enveloped me. For a few moments I had no idea where I was—up in a tree or on a roof looking at stars, or wrapped in a remote pocket of the Graying imagining I was somewhere other than Rosencanz.

“We will go for a walk all around the island tomorrow afternoon,” a familiar voice was saying. “I will show you all my favorite places.”

For a moment I seemed trapped amidst many bubbles—each containing a different person talking, all in different landscapes. I recognized the stony prison of Rosencranz, but not the names and places I did not recognize. I didn’t know where I was or who was talking about taking me for a walk—until a kreegan argument in the branches above our heads took my attention. 

Jayzu’s laughter brought me back to…the Treehouse! I am on an island called  Cadeña-l’jadia  with Jayzu and Charlie and his wife Rika and all their youngsters! Far from Rosencranz.

“That would be lovely, Jayzu!” I said, smiling at the noise above. “You told me about your cottage, the hermit’s chapel, the rocks you like to sit on and look at the river. I want to see everything!”

“And I will show you everything, starting tomorrow afternoon.” Jayzu said.

We talked till I was hoarse and unable to stifle my yawns. I had never known such a happy day, though it was hard to bear somehow. So many years of non-existence in Rosencranz made me forget how large and alive it is on the Outside. 

Large, alive and overwhelming.

Jayzu stood up and said, “It is well past my bedtime, Charlotte, and yours too, I am sure.”

Inside the tiny Treehouse cabin perched on one end of the deck, I watched as Jayzu lit a candle on a little table. I flopped onto the thick mattress stuffed with leaves on a stout wooden bed, a big grin on my face. I wondered again if I had died and gone to heaven.

I watched him stoke up the fire in the little cast iron stove, and heat some water so that I might wash my face. It was all such happily acquired grime, I might have joyfully slept in it, had it not borne the stench of Rosencranz as well.

I looked down at my coveralls, with Charlotte Steele printed onto the pocket, and the short-sleeved white t-shirt underneath. For the first time I considered my wardrobe. Or my lack of wardrobe. I had not given clothing a thought in more than 20 years.

“This is all I have, Jayzu. I have no clean clothes to wear for bed…” I frowned, envisioning myself naked… 

“We will make it so, my Lady,” he said grandly. “You shall have clean clothes.”

He pointed to a shelf above the bed, laden with a few stacks of neatly folded clothing. “I had to guess at your size and the things you like. I have only ever seen you in this—” he tugged on my sleeve. “And being a priest for close to my entire life, I hardly knew where to begin. So I asked for help from one of the ladies at St Sophia’s where I am a priest. I told her I needed some clothes to donate to a woman who had to leave an abusive situation quickly, with only the clothes on her back.”

He grabbed one of the items and handed it to me, saying, “You need not spend another night clothed in the stench of Rosencranz. After you get changed, toss these out onto the deck. I will burn them tomorrow.”

I unfolded a long green and blue plaid flannel nightgown. So rich and thick—nothing like the dingy gray nightshirt I had worn every night for all those many years.

“It is perfect, Jayzu,” I said, hugging it close. “I have never had anything so beautiful.”

To my great surprise—and no doubt his—I burst into tears.

He took me in his arms and held me, whispering into my hair, “You are home now, my Charlotte. Everything is going to be all right.”

I don’t know how long we stood there, while it seemed an ocean flowed unabated from the depths of my being. He held me all the while, whispering, “Charlotte, my Charlotte.”

I drenched his shirt, and still he held me, gently rocking us both back and forth. 

Jayzu stepped outside the cabin for a few minutes while I changed into my new nightgown. “Sleep tight,” he said, tucking me in after he returned. “I am right outside the door. If you wake up during the night, call out my name, and I will be right here again, holding you.”

I woke in almost complete darkness, but for a tiny window of pearly gray light. For a few moments I was safe in the Graying, until a dark shadow covered the window. Fear washed through me. I tried to cry out but could not. Paralyzed, I waited for the whitecoats to enter. What would they do to me this time? A needle suddenly pokes my skin. 

“Good morning, Charlotte!”

The world turned upside down for an instant, and when it righted back up, I saw the outline of a crow in the tiny window. No Whitecoats. No needles.

“Charlie!” I cried out and leapt out of bed. He hopped from the window sill to the table and brushed his wing feathers across my cheek.

Rika appeared in the window and hopped onto the table scolding, “The Lady is not ready to receive visitors, zhacho. Now be off with you!”

Charlie obediently left, and I arose. I quickly splashed cold water on my face, and wiggled out of my nightgown and into a pale, sky blue long-sleeved t-shirt and forest green coveralls. I marvel at how well these clothes went on me—fitting like the asylum garb never did. I stepped outside onto the deck, my new clothes burst into even richer color. Everything seemed brighter and more alive than anything I could remember. As if the sun had finally come out after many years of low-hanging clouds.

I wondered where Jayzu was, but other urgencies required my first attention. I didn’t mind having to navigate the spiral steps down the tree trunk to the ground, nor the short walk to relieve myself. I often had to wait to use the toilet at Rosencranz, which was quite a bit less scenic. And not at all private.

Nothing was private at Rosencranz. Nothing was hidden from the whitecoats, or other inmates. I scarcely remember ever caring that my naked body was exposed, or who might be watching.

Relieved, I walked back to the Treehouse. With each step, I was overtaken by the sweet fragrance of the island’s awakening forest. Through a carpet of dewdrops, I inhaled with all my senses wide open. The colors!—I had forgotten the infinite shades of green, and the enormous variety of shapes and colors in the flowers.

At the Treehouse, Jayzu had made us tea, which we shared with Rika and Charlie on the deck.

“That teacup you are drinking from, dearie,” Rika said, pointing a wing. “That was Bruthamax’s.”

Jayzu’s island, though most humans called it Wilder Island after a famous hermit who lived and died there in the past century.

“That is true, Charlotte,” Jayzu said. “I told you about Maxmillian Wilder—the old hermit who came to the island over a hundred years ago and built this Treehouse—with Charlie’s ancestor, Hozey the Great! Yoomuns named it after the hermit—Wilder Island. A few of the items in the kitchen have been here since he built the Treehouse.”

I held the teacup reverently, imagining Bruthamax’s hands as my hands. For a moment I had a vision of the old hermit tending a vegetable garden, and a flock of crows in a nearby apple tree giving him advice.

“We will have a garden in the summer,” Jayzu said, as if he had heard my thoughts. “I found the remains of his vegetable plot, near a very old apple tree.”

“You ate an apple from that tree yesterday,” Charlie said.

“I remember!” I said and put my teacup down on the bench. “Jayzu! Let’s go for a walk now! The sun shines and the emerald forest calls! Show me everything! The apple tree, your cottage, the bridge—all the things you told me about.”

“I would love to, Charlotte,” Jayzu said as he put his empty cup on the tray. “This afternoon, as I promised. But now, I must leave you in the care of Rika and Charlie. I have to attend to some matters.”

I frowned and tried to resist pouting like a child. “What other matters, Jayzu? Don’t you want to stay here with me?”

“I do, Charlotte,” he said and put his hand on my knee. “But I have a prior engagement I must attend to.” He stood up. “In fact, I must go now and make preparations.”

“Right now?” I said, wrinkling my forehead into a frown. “Take me with you!”

“I am afraid I cannot, Charlotte.” He paused for a moment with a troubled look on his face. “It is complicated. I need you to stay here.”

“What is complicated?” I asked as he stood up. “Tell me, Jayzu!” I stood up, eye to eye with him.

“I will explain when I get back this afternoon,” he said, bringing my hands to his lips.

“But what shall I do while you’re gone?” I wailed. “Can I even go for a little walk?”

“I am sorry, Charlotte, but no. I need you to stay right here where I can find you. Charlie, JoEd and Rika and the kreegans will keep you company.” 

“Afraid we can’t,” Charlie said. “Both JoEd and I have Keeper Training this morning. But listen!” He unfurled a wing and gestured toward the trees that surrounded the Treehouse.

For the first time I noticed the chatter of many birds all around us. Mostly crows—so I could catch a few words now and then.

“Yah, the Captain brought her—”

“Jayzu—”

“—sprung her he did—”

“Charlie —he—”

“Mizsharlit and Charlie—they—”

“Everyone’s dying to meet you,” JoEd said.

“See?” Jayzu said with a smile. “You will have plenty of company! I am sure you want to get acquainted with them all, Charlotte!”

“Today, my first day here, I only want to be with you!” I almost blurted out—but I swallowed my words and managed a smile as he pulled me toward the corner of the deck.

“Come!” he said, holding my hand tightly. “I will get a fire going for your bath. You told me last night you want to wash the stench of Rosencranz off you.”

I did say that—and it’s true. I wanted a bath. And then to go for a walk around this island—my new home. With Jayzu. Resigned to my fate, I followed him down the spiral steps to the ground below the Treehouse.

We left the shade of the tree, and stood in the sun at the brink of a small oblong hole with stone floor and walls.

“Bruthamax built it,” Jayzu said. “A small fire under that pipe, will warm the water it carries from a nearby spring to the bathtub. If the spillway is open—” he turned a small switch on the pipe, “water flows into the bathtub. If it is closed, the water flows from the spring into one of the many small streams on the island.”

As we watched the water flow into the bathtub, I put my hand underneath the stream coming from the pipe. “It’s warm!”

“On demand, My Lady!” he said and bowed at the waist. He drew me into his arms. “And now I must go, Charlotte. I will be back this afternoon, I promise. Please stay here at the Treehouse until I return? I do not want you to get lost. We will go walking in the forest when I return. I promise.”

I nodded into his chest, wanting to shake my head no and whine like a child. After a few moments he relaxed his hold on me and made me let go. He waved one last time before disappearing. I watched him cross the little meadow and enter the dark forest beyond.

I planned to follow him. After my bath.

I should be there now, celebrating. Without me, Wilder Island would have been lost. Only I could save it.

Provincial Father Superior Thomas Majewski gazed irritably at the steamy late summer afternoon in Washington D.C. Buildings outnumbered trees, or so it seemed. Asphalt and concrete covered the Earth. The noise. The heat. The cars. The unbearable boredom of his job.

The hot heaviness of Corporate Jesuit Headquarters in Washington D.C. posed an alarmingly stark contrast to the near-weightlessness he had felt in the brief time he had spent on Wilder Island. Exerting a sort of gravitational pull on his attention, the island fostered a fantasy of himself living a scholarly life of fascinating discussion, writing peer-reviewed papers  with his colleague and protégé, Dr Alfredo Manzi.

Paradise hung before his eyes, obscuring for the briefest moment the pile of paper on his desk. The cool island under the trees called to him almost constantly.

I should be there now. Anywhere but here.

Majewski had been depressed ever since he returned, a mere two weeks ago, though it had seemed more like a year. God I hate this place. He started praying to the Almighty to provide an opportunity to leave the hellhole suffocating his life.

Today Manzi and Kate, Sam, Jade and Russ are celebrating their victory over Henry Braun. I should be there. 

Majewski was proud to have been instrumental in bringing about the Friends of Wilder Island Conservation Land Trust that saved the island from development. He had used his powers over the Jesuit Purse in his domain—all of North America. He, that is the Jesuit Order, had funded the legal set-up of the Conservation Trust that would keep the island from development forever.

It was simple to use Jesuit money for this purpose, thanks to the little chapel built by their own Brother Maxmillian Wilder a century ago. And thanks to the wisdom and foresight of his predecessor, Antoni de la Torre, to claim the island under the Homestead Act.

He loved thinking of his Order and by extension, himself, as owning an island. Truly his best piece of work. Majewski had rarely felt proud of his career as a Jesuit Father Provincial, until now.

Wilder Island had blown his eyelids off. It wasn’t just the historical significance of the place where Brother Maxmillian had lived and died as a hermit on an island full of crows. He had left behind truly one of the most endearing and humble little places of worship ever built. Manzi had called it ‘the hermit’s chapel’—all in lower case, as a testament to its simple offering of a humble man to the majesty of the Creator.

Majewski’s job irritated him more than ever today, and he could no longer blind himself to the truth. He had risen to the top layer of Jesuit administration—meaning that he was not particularly holy, but an intelligent, hard-working, loyal, dedicated servant of the Order, and by extension—so the mantra went—Jesus.

In reality, Provincial Father Superior Thomas Majewski was nothing more than a bureaucrat with a priest’s collar. He’d never felt the deep, irresistible calling to the priesthood. Off and on, he had hated his entire adult life. Starting when Mother had shoved him into the Jesuit priesthood—all Polish mothers wanted their eldest child to take Holy Orders. That was her official story for why she did it.

He never forgave her.

The Jesuits had given him a superlative education however, and for many happy years he had taught Linguistics at several universities. He was promoted to Chancellor at the last one. From there it was Washington D.C., and a few short years later Provincial Father Superior.

He had enjoyed those positions of minor power for awhile. After a time however, he had begun to miss the scholarship that had made his life at least fulfilling and interesting, if not actually happy at times.

The mundane balancing of budgets, and dealing with attorneys for the pedophile priests was neither fulfilling nor did he derive a moment of happiness from any of it. Majewski had borne it all like a good Jesuit. Like a corpse—as he was taught in seminary school.

Wilder Island had taught him something else entirely—the possibility of a life not being lived like a corpse, but one downright happy.

Happiness would be enjoying some quiet yet stimulating conversations with Alfredo Manzi on the cool, quiet island of crows. Majewski was not fond of crows however—the birds were ugly and a nuisance. Crows had been inhabiting his dreams in a variety of unfriendly and disquieting ways lately. But the language they shared with Manzi, Brother Wilder (and Majewski’s sister Stella) fascinated him.

There must be others. Oh! The possibilities! The research with Manzi! The papers they’d present at international symposiums! No longer would he be remembered only as a high level clerk, scheming with the rest of them for more power. The end game for most on the upwardly mobile ladder of Jesuit echelons of power was the Pope. But there could only be one Pope.

Majewski was definitely not Pope material. Whereas the scholarly pursuit of a breathtaking and unique shared language between humans and other species!—tailor-made for him. And more accessible.

He had so looked forward to returning to the island for the celebration with Manzi, and the rest of the Friends of Wilder Island. Unfortunately, the Patron Saint of Spontaneous Obstruction had intervened. Dignitaries from Jesuit headquarters in Rome had suddenly and unexpectedly descended upon him. Four days of mind-numbing meetings about the most irrelevant trivia made him wish he was indeed a corpse.

Majewski was trapped. Required to play host for what seemed like an eternity of ennui, he had to smile and nod, and even participate in the usual litany of genuinely insincere platitudes with his brethren from Rome. He seethed inside, while maintaining the requisite pious expression and making benign, meaningless yet apparently agreeable comments here and there. 

He hated himself.

Once the Rome Legion had departed, Majewski’s calendar overflowed with regular end-of-the month meetings, budgets, and other nonsense that tied him to his desk. 

While Wilder Island consumed his thoughts…

“Father?” his secretary Luther’s voice came through the intercom on this desk phone. “Call on line one. Detective McDermott from Ledford Police.”

Majewski frowned and picked up the phone.

“Detective,” he said into the phone. “Have you found her?”

“We found a body,” McDermott said. “We need you to positively identify it.”

Majewski’s heart skipped a beat. “A body? Uh–”

“My apologies, Father,” Detective McDermott said. “I lack most social graces—allow me to rephrase and offer condolences for your possible loss. We need you to identify the body that might be your sister. It’s in bad shape, so we need your ID asap. ”

“Yes, I uh…,” Majewski said, his free hand moving back and forth over his heart.

A perfect escape! No one would bat an eye!

“I understand you are a busy man in Washington, D.C.,” the detective said. “But we have to ask.”

“Of course,” Majewski said. “I’ll, uh, get a flight as soon as I can.”

“Great,” the detective said. “We can also make a positive ID with DNA testing, in case the body is beyond recognition.”

“DNA?” Majewski said aloud as he wrote the letters on his desk calendar.

“It’s fairly routine anymore,” the detective continued. “We use it all the time. Matching a vic, that is the deceased, to a family member’s DNA is sometimes the only tool we have. We’ve got hers. Yours would give the answer.”

“In the event the body—” Majewski cleared his throat. “That is, if this poor woman turns out to be my sister, I would need to give her Last Rites.”

“Of course, Father,” the detective said. “I understand completely. Whenever you get here is good, but the sooner the better.”

After a brief conversation with his secretary, Majewski leaned back in his chair. Giving Snowbell his undivided attention, he scratched behind her snow-white ears with both hands. She responded with a distant purr, and opened her blue eyes halfway.

“Ah, to see Wilder Island again, my beauty,” he said to the cat. “One day I will be there again and never leave.”

For now though, a short respite. Stella had provided the perfect excuse to leave the soul-stifling, irrelevant nonsense that had become his existence. A perfect reward for enduring the absurd chatter of the sycophants from the upper echelons of the Jesuit hierarchy: a cool island paradise and long, stimulating conversations with the scholarly Alfredo Manzi. 

It would be like the old days, when he was on Manzi’s graduate committee. Manzi had specifically asked him to be, though Majewski’s area of expertise was Linguistics, and not Ornithology. Manzi never once even hinted at the idea of a Human-Corvid interspecies language. Yet he had written paper after paper on Corvid Behavior and Culture, and was recognized as the premier authority on the the subject. Majewski started to wonder why Manzi had never published on the language of the Corvids.

Completely envious that he himself had earned no such scholarly recognition, Majewski shook his head in disgust—his major contribution to the world was to root out sex-abuse by priests. He became known as ‘the Terminator’ for the number of cases where he had recommended a priest be de-frocked for violating their sacred vows of celibacy. Whether or not their infractions involved a child mattered not a twit to Majewski.

Stella’s disappearance was a gift from God, though—a blessing, telling him his plans had been approved. He was free to return to the island. Finally. Divine Providence. What else could it be? God had rewarded his diligent, uncomplaining patience.

“A body,” he murmured to Snowbell on his lap. “That would indeed be a relief from her suffering.” And his own. Snowbell tilted her head back as he scratched under her chin. “She really was insane you know.”

Snowbell stared at him.

“I’ve got you on a flight out of Dulles Monday at noon,” Majewski’s secretary’s voice came over the intercom, jolting Snowbell from her repose. “You’ll land in Ledford at 3:10 p.m.”

Stella had barely crossed Majewski’s mind since her admission to Rosencranz. Fifteen years after Mother and Father passed, the family trust fund that paid for her residence at the institution had dried up, and Stella became a ward of the state. After which, Majewski had almost completely forgotten her.

When she was very young, he had sent Stella books for her birthday, and for Christmas. Father had said she devoured them. Mother complained, “Stella is perfectly useless, having her nose in a book all the time.”

Does she remember me? Her big brother Tommy? He rather doubted it. I should have visited her.

But what would have been the point? She had been quite out of her mind the last time he had seen her, the day she was taken to Rosencranz. He had received no reports from the hospital that her mental condition had improved, so he assumed it had not.

“She understands very well what is being said to her!” Mother had maintained. “She just refuses to speak our language! All that comes out of her mouth is the foul sounds of those nasty crows.”

It wasn’t mimicking the foul sounds of crows that got Stella sent to Rosencranz in the first place. She had been pregnant with an illegitimate child. Over the years Majewski had conveniently forgotten that small and no longer relevant fact. He never knew and never asked what became of the infant.

“They’re taking non-violent, mental people,” Mother had informed him months after Stella had given birth. “Mostly Alzheimer’s patients, but with her babbling, she’ll fit right in.”

Aside from the occasional legal paperwork or checks he had to sign on her behalf, Majewski had pushed Stella’s existence out of his awareness for at least twenty years. Until that small, random and insignificant act by his sweet princess kitty Snowbell had changed his life. Surely Divine Providence had guided her. 

Snowbell had knocked what he thought was the book, Treasure Island, off his bookshelf. When Majewski picked up a metal box, he discovered it was not a book, but a metal box painted to resemble Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel. Inside, he found a letter from over a hundred years ago to Father Superior Antoni de la Torre from Jesuit Brother Maxmillian Wilder—and a deed to a tiny island in a big river.

Treasure Island, indeed. Majewski still chuckled over his predecessor Antoni de la Torre’s sense of humor. 

Majewski had thought de la Torre’s nephew was insane, like Stella, until he visited Maxmillian Wilder’s island. His former student Alfredo Manzi, had taken up residence there and much to Majewski’s shock and dismay, spoke this same, strange language of the crows.

Maxmillian Wilder and Stella, and finally Manzi, were all seemingly afflicted with the same disease. When he returned to D.C., he started to  entertain the thought that it was not a disease, but an actual complex language shared among sentient beings of separate species.

All three, Manzi had claimed when Majewski had told him of Stella’s affliction, were of a lineage of ancient humans—the Patua’—whose only difference from other humans was an innate ability to converse in the language of the crows. As a linguist, Majewski had taken the traditional view, and pooh-poohed the very idea of a complex animal language.

At the same time he was totally intrigued by it. He highly respected Dr Alfredo Manzi, whose research had advanced the intelligence and sentience of crows.

The island called…incessantly. All day long, derailing his thoughts, his work. All night long, the dreams…

===

Jules Sackman stood before the gigantic picture window of Henry Braun’s Riverside Drive Mansion overlooking the River. Wilder island seemed like a black hole, a singularity into which all light and matter disappeared. Gorgeous sunset colors bathed the sky and the other half of Ledford across the river. But the island’s trees swallowed all light and color, reflecting back only shadows. No one could see into its dark secrets.

Henry Braun had lost an epic battle to own the island. And now it was killing him. Right after the debacle he had staged for investors in his scheme to turn Wilder Island into a gambling resort ended in disaster, Henry pretty well went berserk. His wife Minnie called an ambulance, which took him up north to Kafka Memorial, the new state mental hospital.

Aside from having had a moment of destructive insane rage, Henry had also been diagnosed with a serious respiratory infection—most likely the consequence of being drenched in bird shit. Had it not impacted Jules’s financial wherewithal, he might’ve found it all quite amusing…the way the birds rose up en masse and crapped all over Henry—but no one else.

Jules had been grateful to provide legal services to Henry, which provided him with an excellent income, no matter what he had to do for it. Jules could live without Henry, but not without his money. His wife Julia had no income of her own, and had spent much of their married life trying to bankrupt him with her gambling debts. If he only had his own debts to pay, he would have been just fine with what he made as Henry Braun’s attorney.

Jules sighed. He’d be in a world of hurt if Henry died. At least he still had the secret stream of income he had set up several years ago, that funneled money into what looked like a bill-paying account buried deep in Henry’s financial empire, complete with bogus statements and invoices. With it he had tapped a small yet steady flow of cash out of Henry’s vast wealth and into his own bank account.

As long as Jules could hold on to his position handling Henry’s finances, he’d have no worries. Even if Henry were to die, probating Henry’s will would pretty well set him up for life. He knew full well how to milk more dough out of the estate than the usual percentage regulated by law. He might even be able to keep up with Julia’s gambling.

“Are you ready?” he said as Minnie came down the stairs.

“Yes,” she said. “Please have Robert bring the car around.”

“I have my car here, Minnie,” Jules said. “I’ll drive you.”

“As you wish.”

In his hospital room at Kafka Memorial, Henry Braun sank into a gray envelope between sleep and non-sleep. Velvety fog surrounded him, whispering a siren song of sweet nothingness. A trestle bridge floated by, and a two-story brick mansion, followed by his Bentley, and then his first bicycle—a Schwinn with a headlamp and tail-lights. 

His wife Minnie sat in a chair next to his bed reading the newspaper. He turned his face away and stared out the window into the gray rain. Two crows perched on the windowsill, laughing at him. Weak from days of coughing and rage, Henry was positive he had contracted bird flu from the attack he had suffered on Wilder Island. He had directed his attorney Jules Sackman to sue the Catholic Church, and Alfredo Manzi personally, for inflicting great bodily harm upon him.

“But you don’t have bird flu, Henry,” Jules had said. “Getting plastered with bird shit is not considered great bodily harm.” He flicked a piece of lint from his jacket. “Besides, neither the church nor the priest shit on you. Birds did it. You can’t sue birds.”

Henry hated that sanctimonious smirk Jules wore. I should fire his ass.

Water droplets streaked down the windowpane next to his bed, corrugating his view of the cloudy sky. Beyond the laughing crows, a young man’s face appeared in the rivulets, pale and sad, morphing slowly into the shock and disgust on Father’s face. Henry had only been in love that one time, so long ago he’d almost forgotten.

Leonard.

Humiliation had long ago taken any lingering sweet memory of their short time together. Henry swam again in those old, cold waters of fear, remembering the door flying open. The look on Father’s face. His mother sobbing. Grandfather’s voice in his ear: “We all make mistakes, son. A man learns from his mistakes, resolves to never err in that way again, and then he moves on.”

Father arranged for him to marry a local socialite, Minerva duBois. He hadn’t wanted to at all, but he was given no choice if he wished to inherit the Braun family’s fortune.

For the first few months, Henry had met clandestinely with Leonard—until that last day. They were supposed to meet at their usual place. Leonard never showed up. The evening news said a body had been found in the river.

After that Henry had devoted himself to his grandfather Henry IV’s sound advice. “Forget love, my boy. Forget sex. The only thing that matters is money, and the more the better. Money is the one and only thing you can count on.”

 Minnie never asked any questions. She hardly spoke at all—never made a single demand. She ran the house well, took excellent care of him, and always stayed within her budget. She never complained. And why should she? He had given her a rich, comfortable life with no worries that she would never would have had without him. Who would would want her—sullied as she was?

 It was a good marriage; an entirely satisfying arrangement for them both. Henry and Minnie had long ago given up on anything as foolish and dangerous as love.

Minnie Braun did not look up as another coughing fit wracked Henry’s body and turned his face purple. She looked at her watch. Jules Sackman was down on the first floor, waiting for her while she sat in bedside attendance. Henry turned his face away from her. As always, he did not require that she talk to him. 

Minnie stared down at the headline of the newspaper in her lap:

Woman Escapes from Rosencranz Asylum

Rosencranz! Her hand went to her heart, which felt as if it had skipped a beat. The newspaper, the hospital room, Henry’s coughing melted into the distant horizon of her past…

Rosencranz Asylum for Unwed Mothers—that had been its official name in her day, many years ago. Historically an opulent Art Deco party house built by a hedonistic wealthy atheist, Hobart Rosencranz, the facility had answered a greater need after his death—a clean, safe place for unwed, underage mothers from wealthy families to have their illegitimate babies.

Minnie shivered at the memories of herself, and the other young mothers–spending the last months of their pregnancies at Rosencranz. After they started to ‘show’, they sat in secret isolation with each other, well-fed, and well-housed, until they went into labor. 

Moments after the umbilical chords were cut, the babies were whisked away and  immediately placed into the arms of childless couples. Adoption fees collected, and everyone went home happy.

Except the mothers.

The girls never saw their babies, never got to hold them in their arms, nor even learn their gender. Even the babies who had been stillborn or who had not survived their own birthing. Like Minnie’s. She never knew if it was a boy or girl.

“Better that you not know,” the nurse had said, patting her knee. “It’s easier to get over that way.”

“How would you know?” She wanted to sneer at the nurse. In fact, it tore her heart out every waking moment, and she doubted she could ever forget. Neither indelible shame nor the passage of time could eclipse the profound sorrow that dwelt in her heart.

Rosencranz had a few plans to help the families get past the shame. But none for the mothers.

“Your daughter will be but a number in our records,” they had told Minnie’s father. “No one will ever know her name. Or that she was here. We shred all the records, once the babies are adopted out. When your daughter leaves here, her number will vanish, and all medical records relating to her and her baby will be destroyed. As if she had never been here. She will forget this unhappy experience in time, and move on to a happy life. No one will be the wiser.”

“36257,’ Minnie whispered.

I was there. I did not vanish. I did not forget.