Gothikana
: Prologue 2

Corvina

Black.

It was the absence of color, the keeper of dark, the abyss of unknowns.

It was in her hair, in her mama’s clothes, in the vast sky all around them.

She loved black.

The kids in town feared it – from the shadows under their beds to the endless night that blanketed them for hours. Their parents taught them to be a little afraid of it. They taught them to be afraid of her mother too – the odd lady with odd eyes who lived at the edge of the town near the woods. Some whispered she was a witch who practiced dark magic. Some said she was a freak.

Little Corvina had heard it all but she knew they were untrue. Her mother wasn’t a witch or a freak. Her mother was her mother. She just didn’t like people. Corvina didn’t like people either, but then most people in town weren’t very likable.

Just the day before, she’d seen a girl her age throw pebbles at the crow that had been trying to replace some twigs on the ground for its nest. Corvina knew this because she knew the crow. There weren’t many of them in the woods here, but those that stayed knew her and her mama too. And it wasn’t because of anything witchy.

For as long as she could remember, her mother had taken her to a clearing a few minutes away from their little cottage every morning to feed the crows. Her mama told her on one of her good days where she was speaking, that they were intelligent, loyal creatures with the spirits of their ancestors, and they watched over them from the skies during the day, just like the stars did at night.

And they needed protectors, the two of them.

Her mama didn’t talk much but she did hear voices, voices that told her things. They told her to not talk to people, to home-school Corvina after that incident at the school, to keep her away from everyone. Her mama told her she couldn’t wander or they would take her away. She couldn’t leave her side in town or they would take her away. She couldn’t talk to anyone or they would take her away.

Corvina didn’t want to go away.

She loved her mama. Her mama, who smelled of sage and fresh grass and incense. Her mama, who grew their vegetables and cooked tasty food for her. Her mama, who took Corvina into town once a month even though she hated it to get her any books she liked from the library. Most days, her mama didn’t talk at all unless she was teaching Corvina or whispering to the voices. Corvina didn’t talk much either. But Corvina knew she was loved. It was just the way her mama was.

As she walked beside her on her little feet under the moonlit sky to the clearing – a rare Ink Moon that happened once every five years, an Ink Moon she was born under – she smiled. Her mama was happy after a long time and that made her happy. With candles and incense sticks that her mother made, and the tarot cards her mother was teaching her to read, and the crystals they were going to recharge, ten-year-old Corvina looked around at the darkness and felt at home.

If her mother was a freak, then maybe so was she.

After all, sometimes she heard the voices too.