Chapter One
My Sweet November
Birds were often found dead in Falls Peak.
A phenomenon no one could quite understand.
It wasn’t a rare occurrence to find a pile of muddied feathers and twig-like bones about the town’s edges.
In my earlier years, midnights were mostly spent under quilts beside lamp light, reading stories of these winged harbingers of doom with the hollow bones, stealing souls from those who were dying and carrying them up into the next world. Passengers, some would call the birds.
For this reason, I always believed that for the immortals, each time we died, our returning souls is what caused them to fall from the sky.
Except the raven I stood over on my fifth birthday wasn’t dead.
Not entirely.
It was a late afternoon, and Ophelia had allowed me to play on the stoop alone, not to cross the road in either direction. And on this day, I was wearing the new coat she had gifted me for my birthday—sleek black velour, oversized pockets, with fur-trimmed collar and cuffs.
In all the days leading to this one, I’d never witnessed anything dying. I’d also never killed anything before, either.
From a street gutter, the dying raven cried out into an empty sky, my only guess for his mate—as ravens usually flew in pairs, known for their unbreakable bond—but no echo returned his desperate call. This one was all alone.
It was that cry that led me to him, and I remember lifting my dress off the wet curb and crouching down to get a better look at the lonely, dying raven. Its glossy feathers were as dark as the night sky, shimmering an iridescent indigo, like how the waterfall looks when the moon’s light touches its waters. Oh, how they were twitching ever so slightly.
My instinct was to reach out and touch its silk—more so, to comfort it. So he wouldn’t be alone in his final moments. But before I could do so, a shadow fell over me.
My sweet November, in other stories, the narrator would probably tell you how they would never forget the sound of the voice that followed. But this isn’t other stories. What I will tell you, however, is that I will never, until my dying day, forget the effect the voice had on me.
“What have you found there, Nova?” had said the man.
I’d become dizzy, my vision foggy. It was a cold October thirteenth, my birthday, the heart of autumn. Even so, sweat slid down the back of my neck beneath my new velour coat. It could have very well been because of the sight of the dying raven; but, this reaction hadn’t happened until the man spoke.
One thing I’m certain of is that I was not scared. For the first time, I was sad. Death was only moments away for the raven, and he would soon leave without ever knowing love.
My eyes latched to the bird as its wings caught on the river of rainwater flowing down the edge of the street. It was safer to keep my gaze on the raven, you see. I didn’t have the nerve to look the man in the eyes as tears left mine, the taste of salt and sorrow upon my lips when I’d admitted that I didn’t want the raven to die.
He crouched down beside me and rested his hand on my back.
“I’m told death is but sweeter than the hollow in living forever,” I remember him saying. Then he leaned in closer, as though to tell me a secret. “Go ahead, pick him up.”
It took both of my hands, and the heavy raven fell limp in them as I cradled it. I had shifted from crouching to sitting because I recall my dress soaking in the gutter.
The man then sat next to me. “A fleeting existence,” he said. Still, I never met his eyes. “That’s what someone once told me, that birds are seen as a metaphor for our fleeting existence.” At the time, I didn’t understand, so he went on to explain. “Have you ever seen a bird flying in the sky, then after taking your eyes off it, even for only a millisecond, it’s gone? Just as moments and thoughts do, they all pass by before we can catch them. They’re not meant to live forever, reminding us to be grateful for the time we do have.”
I didn’t know then that I was immortal, but if I did, I would have told him in that moment. Coming from a five-year-old, I doubt he would have believed me, anyway.
Then he said, “If you care for him, you’ll put him out of his misery.” His hand was comforting when he added in a whisper, “There’s no saving what’s already dead.”
These words hung heavy in the air. Even at a young age, I understood what they meant. They were all I needed to make the difficult decision to snap the raven’s neck.
My sweet November, I should have prepared you better for what was to come, so I will lead with this universal truth ...
This story is one that begins and ends with death.
But as the man once said, death is but sweeter than the hollow in living forever, and there is sincerity behind these words.
I can only imagine your immediate thought of it to be a tragic one, but this is faraway from the truth. No matter, in the fog of judgment and opinion, know this: Orion and I had a love that was inescapable. One that could only be felt when looking up into the night sky.
Expansive, eternal, and woven into the stars.
In the end, our love was a fortunate magic more than tragic.
So if the occasion should ever arise when people tell you otherwise, correct them when they’re wrong if you must.
This story may also make you feel uncomfortable at times, but there is no other way to tell it but to let the lantern glow upon the most intimate moments.
Besides, this story isn’t only for you. It’s our legacy.
There were many times when I never thought I’d leave October to tell this story, and many times I had no desire to leave, either. Nonetheless, my sweet November, you were the season I’d always longed for.
But first, I must start from the beginning.
Before you.
Before Orion.
Before my birth.
Even before the hunters arose from the rubble.
I must start at the first drink of the cursed waters.
Ghost of Nova Graves
© 2024 Nicole Fiorina
