The day after the rain the air grew cleaner, and people's tempers worse.
That often happened. When the damp finally lifted, the work remembered itself twice over: fences didn't mend themselves, sacks didn't shift themselves, and even the mud on the road seemed to grow more stubborn out of spite.
His father was in a poor mood from the morning. Jack too. Ellie had quarrelled with Michael over wet boots left in the wrong place. Tom almost welcomed the ordinary country irritability — in it there were no ravens, no crossroads, no strange voices.
By midday that feeling had passed.
He was carrying boards to the back fence with Jack when from the road there came the sound of drunken laughter. Tom recognised the voice before he had seen the man himself.
Ned Crane.
He lived a mile and a half to the west, kept a crooked patch of land, drank more than he ploughed, and was known not so much for outright fighting as for being always nearby when something unpleasant happened: a stolen sheep, a foal with its throat cut, a missing tool, a neighbour's dog found dead. Nobody could ever prove it all at once. And yet he was not some walking curse, simply a living man from the next district: he argued, laughed, haggled at the fair, and somehow scraped through to the following week every time.
Ned went past on his cart, sitting sideways with the reins held as though they annoyed him. The horse under him was old, vicious and nervy. Ned himself was bawling something indistinct toward the road and waving his flask like a trophy.
Jack watched him go with a heavy look.
— One of these days that fool'll break his neck.
His father, standing at the gate, only grunted:
— Taking long enough about it.
Tom said nothing.
He simply watched the cart roll away toward the western road, where the old ford would be especially bad after the rain.
In his previous life this small scene would not have touched him.
Now it did.
Not through memory.
Through something else.
As if the world had grown thinner for a moment.
By evening the tension had not lifted.
It wasn't growing noticeably, wasn't pressing at him, wasn't putting words in his head. It simply stayed — a quiet splinter. Tom had learnt not to argue with things like that. If a feeling would not release by dark, there was usually something behind it.
After supper his father remembered he had left an iron hook for the cart at the western shed, and sent Tom to fetch it before it grew entirely dark. Tom nearly swore aloud.
The western shed stood right on the road to the old ford.
Of course.
He walked slowly, holding the lantern lower than usual. The road was slippery, water still standing in the ruts. In the distance, beyond the dark fences, a wet strip of field stretched away. The sky had already nearly merged with the earth.
The shed was where it should be. So was the hook.
Tom had taken it and turned to go when from the west came the sound of wheels.
Faint at first.
Then closer.
Then with it — a drunken, thick-throated song that Ned Crane seemed to have been bellowing for at least the past mile.
Tom stopped in the middle of the road.
There it was.
The cart appeared out of the dark slowly, as if it were not so much travelling as surfacing from the damp murk piece by piece: a horse's head, the arch of the collar, a wheel, a sleeve, the slack motion of a hand on the reins.
Ned noticed him only after a moment.
Then looked up.
— Oi, lad, he drawled. — What're you standing there for?
Tom said nothing.
The ford was no more than a hundred yards away.
Say one word.
Just one.
Ned, stop.
Turn back.
Don't go any further.
Tom felt the words rise into his throat, and with them — fury, shame and something close to a child's hatred of the situation itself.
Ned tugged the reins.
The old horse tossed its head.
— Well? I'm talking to you.
Tom gripped the hook so tightly his palm went numb.
You will not call out.
You will not stop him.
You will not ask others to do it for you.
He stepped aside, clearing the road.
That was all.
Ned muttered something foul under his breath as he passed, and the smell of cheap drink hit the air almost as hard as the horse's sweat and the wet horse-cloth.
A few seconds later the cart was swallowed by the dark.
Tom stood alone on the road.
And only then understood that his heart was pounding as if he had just fought.
He stood staring into the place the cart had disappeared.
Five heartbeats.
Ten.
Then out of the darkness came a shout.
Not very loud.
Brief.
And immediately after — a splash, the crack of wood, and a horse's strangled scream.
Tom closed his eyes.
Now it was truly done.
His feet lurched forward of themselves.
He stopped them with such force his thigh ached.
No.
Too late.
Or perhaps not too late — but that was precisely what was being waited for.
He stood a few more seconds, until from the dark there remained only the harsh gurgle of water and the faint knocking of a wheel still trying to turn somewhere.
Then he turned and walked back to the house.
Not fast.
Not slow.
Straight.
His father met him at the door.
— Took your time.
Tom held out the hook.
— Road was bad.
Almost true again.
His father took the iron and was about to turn away when from the west, muffled by distance, there came another sound. Something between a shout and a whinny.
Jack raised his head.
— Hear that?
His father peered grimly into the dark.
— Maybe Crane's missed the ford again.
Tom said nothing.
His mother, standing by the hearth, moved her gaze from the door to him.
There it was.
Again.
Only now there was neither relief nor plain horror in his chest. Only a heavy, blunt knowledge that he had kept quiet where he had wanted to speak.
They went for Ned that night.
Not immediately — only when it became clear that neither he nor the horse had made it home. They found the cart on its side in the water at the eroded ford, the axle broken, and Crane himself a little further downstream, already dead. The horse had survived. Ned had not.
Tom heard this only in the morning.
His father said it at the table, briefly and without regret:
— He had it coming.
Jack shrugged.
— Wonder it took this long.
Ellie crossed herself. Michael asked who would get the horse. His mother said nothing.
Tom sat over his bowl and tasted nothing.
He had not liked Ned Crane and would not grieve for him.
But now he understood how it worked: in the right moment you are left precisely as much freedom as means you cannot afterwards lie to yourself.
After the meal he went outside, as though for wood.
What he needed was air.
There was no rain. Dull morning light lay along the edges of the puddles. A bird called beyond the fence. The world looked smooth, as it always does after someone else's death.
Tom stopped at the chopping block and only then noticed something black on its edge.
Not a raven's feather.
Too small.
Too smooth.
He had not seen it there before.
The feather lay without moving, as though placed there deliberately.
Tom did not touch it.
He simply looked, and understood: he had been marked again.
He knocked the feather off with his sleeve and walked on.
His head was clear.
Too clear.