Newford Stories Read Free Page B

it
somewhere.”
    “In someone’s pocket.”
    “And you never did?”
    Maida grins. “Just wish I’d seen it first,
that’s all.”
    They watch the disc some more, content.
    “What do you think it’s like down there?”
Zia says after a while. “On the other side of the spiral.”
    Maida has to think about that for a moment.
“Same as here,” she finally announces, then winks. “Only
dizzier.”
    They giggle, leaning into each other,
tottering back and forth on their perch. Crow girls can’t be
touched, can’t hardly be seen, except someone’s standing down there
on the sidewalk, looking up through the falling snow, his worried
expression so comical it sets them off on a new round of
giggles.
    “Careful now!” he calls up to them. He
thinks they’re on drugs—they can tell. “You don’t want to—”
    Before he can finish, they hold hands and
let themselves fall backward , off the fence.
    “Oh, Christ!”
    He jumps, gets a handhold on the top of the
fence and hauls himself up. But when he looks over, over and down,
way down, there’s nothing to be seen. No girls lying at the bottom
of that big hole in the ground, nothing at all. Only the falling
snow. It’s like they were never there.
    His arms start to ache and he lowers himself
back down the fence, lets go, bending his knees slightly to absorb
the impact of the last couple of feet. He slips, catches his
balance. It seems very still for a moment, so still he can hear an
odd rhythmical whispering sound. Like wings. He looks up, but
there’s too much snow coming down to see anything. A cab comes by,
skidding on the slick street, and he blinks. The street’s full of
city sounds again, muffled, but present. He hears the murmuring
conversation of a couple approaching him, their shoulders and hair
white with snow. A snowplow a few streets over. A distant
siren.
    He continues along his way, but he’s walking
slowly now, trudging through the drifts, not thinking so much of
two girls sitting on top of a fence as remembering how, when he was
a boy, he used to dream that he could fly.
     
    * * *
     
    After fiddling a little more with her sketch,
Jilly finally put her charcoal down. She made herself a cup of
herbal tea with the leftover hot water in the kettle and joined
Geordie where he was sitting on the sofa, watching the snow come
down. It was warm in the loft, almost cozy compared to the storm on
the other side of the windowpanes, or maybe because of the storm.
Jilly leaned back on the sofa, enjoying the companionable silence
for a while before she finally spoke.
    “How do you feel after seeing the crow
girls?” she asked.
    Geordie turned to look at her. “What do you
mean, how do I feel?”
    “You know, good, bad…different…”
    Geordie smiled. “Don’t you mean
‘indifferent’?”
    “Maybe.” She picked up her tea from the
crate where she’d set it and took a sip. “Well?” she asked when he
didn’t continue.
    “Okay. How do I feel? Good, I suppose.
They’re fun, they make me smile. In fact, just thinking of them now
makes me feel good.”
    Jilly nodded thoughtfully as he spoke. “Me
too. And something else as well.”
    “The different,” Geordie began. He didn’t
quite sigh. “You believe those stories of Jack’s, don’t you?”
    “Of course. And you don’t?”
    “I’m not sure,” he replied, surprising
her.
    “Well, I think these crow girls were in the
Cyberbean for a purpose,” Jilly said. “Like in that rhyme about
crows.”
    Geordie got it right away. “Two for
mirth.”
    Jilly nodded. “Heather needed some serious
cheering up. Maybe even something more. You know how when you start
feeling low, you can get on this descending spiral of
depression…everything goes wrong, things get worse because you
expect them to?”
    “Fight it with the power of positive
thinking, I always say.”
    “Easier said than done when you’re feeling
that low. What you really need at a time like that is something
completely unexpected