I didn’t tell Amelia about the dream the next morning. I wanted to try to figure it out by myself before I told anyone; it felt like a secret I needed to keep, at least for a while.

Dennis offered to drive me home when he came back, but he looked so exhausted I told him I’d take the bus. Amelia hugged me at the door and looked sharply at me, like she was silently saying: Not a word of last night to Killian. I nodded.

When I got off the bus on my street, I saw the last person I expected. Charon Demetrias was just leaving a house that sat only a few houses from ours. A bit confused, I raised my hand in greeting. He smiled and waved at me.

Behind him, another person left the house, yelling something in a foreign language to someone still inside. It was a girl, maybe one or two years younger than me. She carried a black case on her back that probably had some sort of instrument in it, but I didn’t know which one because I never did band.

I walked over to Charon, not really because I wanted to talk to him but because I would have to pass him and who I presumed was his sister anyway if I wanted to get home.

“Are we neighbours?” I asked him.

“If you live on this street, yeah,” Charon said sheepishly. The girl looked at me curiously. She had Charon’s dark hair and tan skin, but she was a head shorter.

“Oh. Cool,” I said.

“I never introduced myself properly. I’m Charon, and this is my sister Cassandra,” he said and held out a hand. I shook it, and then Cassandra’s. Charon seemed a lot more confident now than at school.

“I’m Oscar. I live in that house over there,” I said and pointed at my home.

“We’re gonna be late for practice,” Cassandra grumbled.

“Sorry,” Charon said. Cassandra started walking the other way, and Charon followed. He took the first few steps backwards to ask me: “See you around?”

“Yeah. See you,” I said.

Elvira was on our porch smoking when I got there. She had dark bags under her eyes and there was a barely visible tremble in the hand that held her cigarette. I dropped my backpack on the floor and joined her.

“Friend from school?” she asked and nodded towards Charon’s house. She kept her eyes on Charon and Cassandra’s backs.

“I wouldn’t say friend,” I said.

“Yeah. Those are overrated anyway,” Elvira muttered.

“Are you okay?” I asked carefully.

Elvira laughed dryly. “What gave it away? The lack of sleep or the smell?” she asked.

I sniffed the air. Yeah, she definitely hadn’t showered. Still, I said: “Neither. Just asking.”

“You’re a good kid.” Elvira blew smoke and leaned on the railing. She feigned a carefree grin. “Fiona and I just had a bit of a lovers’ quarrel last night. Nothing serious.”

“I hope you can make it up,” I said.

“I’m sure we will. I’ll just… stay here for a few more hours, if that’s cool with your uncle,” Elvira said. She crushed her cigarette into the almost full glass jar balanced on the railing.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I meant her staying at our house, or whatever was going on with her and Fiona.

“Did you have a fun night? I heard you were with Amelia,” Elvira said, probably just for the sake of changing the subject.

“Yeah, it was alright,” I said.

“Just alright? Man, when I was your age I would have killed to be alone with a girl for a night,” Elvira said half-jokingly. She lit another cigarette. I wondered how many she had smoked before I got there.

“Maybe we just have a different taste,” I said. I considered telling her, then, that I wasn’t sure if I liked girls at all that way.

Elvira looked at me quizzically. “That must be it,” she said.

I started making my way to the door. I asked, just to be sure: “Are you gonna be okay?”

“I’m fine,” Elvira chucked. Her shoulders did seem less tense.

“Okay. I’m gonna go do my homework now,” I lied and opened the door.

“Stay in school, kid,” Elvira quipped and raised her cigarette like a toast. I wondered if she realised summer vacation had started.

Killian was in his study with a steaming cup of tea. I knocked on the doorframe and wished him a good morning, to which he replied with a tired grunt.

Back in my room, I decided to follow Dennis and Killian’s footsteps and dug up a dusty empty journal from the bottom of my desk drawer. I’d seen it before, but I wasn’t sure where it had come from. It was leather-bound just like Killian’s, but smaller and emptier.

I sat down and grabbed a pencil, but found myself wondering what exactly I was supposed to write. I knew I wanted to clear my thoughts, try to make sense of things, but when I thought about the dream and the shadow and everything, I couldn’t form a single coherent sentence in my head.

So I drew the crow, first on a TV showing static, and then again on a windowsill. I drew Ewart on the phone, sketched every line on his angry face, the flames on his desk and his monstrous pet scorpion. Sibyl was hard to draw — I couldn’t get her face right — so instead I mapped out the cruise ship made of smoke.

Around the drawings, I jotted down short notes. Visions are not what they seem, under Sibyl’s cruise ship. November new moon, eighteen months, along Ewart’s desk. For the crows, I could only write question marks.

It wasn’t as detailed uncle’s journal, but it was a start. However, I did decide to look for a good place to hide it. I didn’t want anyone reading it, and getting to Dennis and Killian’s journals had been too easy.

After rummaging around my room for half an hour, I happened on a loose floorboard under my desk. The plank didn’t come all the way off and I had to press on a specific spot to get it to move. The space underneath was just enough for the journal and maybe one or two other things if I needed a spot in the future.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Once my new journal was safe and sound under my floor, I went downstairs. The study door was closed, and I could hear hushed voices behind it. A part of me wanted to intrude, but I was still overwhelmed by what Amelia and I had found the previous night.

I walked across the street and invited myself in to Elvira and Fiona’s. I had learned a while back that the door was always locked, but opened to family.

I found Fiona in the garden, kneeling over a flowerbed. She weeded them aggressively and without gloves, but her hands didn’t have a single scratch on them.

“Hi,” I greeted her.

She didn’t pause to look at me, but forced a smile on her face and said: “Hi.”

“Need help?” I asked.

“I was just about to finish,” she said, “but you’re welcome to have a cuppa with me.”

“Sure,” I said.

Fiona got up and dusted the dirt off her clothes with a single swoop of her hand. It must have been some sort of a silent spell because her jeans and shirt were spotless.

I grabbed us tea (she had Irish Breakfast, I preferred Rooibos) while Fiona filled two cups with water. She only had to hold them in her hands for a few seconds before the water was boiling hot and she set them on the table gently.

“Was there something you wanted to talk about?” she asked as we sat down.

“Yeah, actually,” I said. “What do you know about crows?”

“Crows?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, or— Or any birds, really. In regards of magic and stuff,” I said.

“Can I ask what sparks this question?” Fiona asked.

“Nothing,” I said. She knew I was lying, but she didn’t mention it.

“That’s fair.” Fiona sipped her tea and set the cup down. “Crows can be interpreted as a bad omen, but one has to take into consideration that they’re extremely intelligent animals. Their bones, feathers, beaks and claws are used in some spells and potions, both malicious and well-intended ones.”

“So… They can mean anything?” I deduced.

“Basically, yes,” Fiona agreed.

“What about that song that you sing sometimes?” I asked.

“It’s an old story. Every family tells a different version,” Fiona said. She tapped her cup with her fingernails and leaned back. “The version I heard when I was a wee younger than you, it was about the son of a kind healer. They lived in a village with a tightly knit community, like a big family.

“One year, a terrible plague happened on the village. The boy’s mother fell ill, but the boy himself was immune. He promised that he would fix things, no matter what.

“And so he started journeying across the land in search of a cure. He spent all his savings, of which there was not much to begin with, on tricks and potions. Nothing worked. He sold his clothes, his mother’s tools, his house and his shoes, for naught.

“Finally he came across an old warlock, wise and sly. The warlock said to the boy: I can banish the plague, but you must not return to your family for you shall carry it for the rest of your days.

“The boy questioned how he was supposed to go anywhere if he carried the plague. He didn’t wish it upon anyone else. The warlock, perhaps pitying him or perhaps for his own amusement, turned the boy into a crow. He said: Now, you needn’t set a foot on land.

“And so, the village was cured. The boy’s mother thrived, but could never be truly happy without her son. The boy himself was cursed to watch his village from the skies until his wings gave out,” Fiona finished.

“Oh,” I said. “That’s a sad story.”

“Some versions are much worse. You were lucky to hear that one,” Fiona said. She smiled, but there was a sadness in her eyes.

“Is it a true story?” I asked.

“Some old stories have truth in them,” Fiona said.

“Does that mean witches can turn themselves into animals?” I said. It was an exciting thought. I imagined soaring through clouds as a hawk, or swimming across oceans as a dolphin.

“No. Witches can’t,” Fiona said.

“But some creatures can?” I guessed.

We heard the front door open before Fiona could answer. It was Elvira. Neither she or Fiona looked at the other in the eyes.

“I think I better go,” I said awkwardly.

Before I left, Fiona told me: “It’s just a story. Don’t think too hard about it.”

It didn’t stop me from thinking about it. Quite the opposite, I spent the entire summer thinking and dreaming of crows and warlocks.

Fiona and Elvira seemed to make up, at least on the surface. There was still a strange tension between them that had never existed before. They did their best to hide it, though, and tried to live their lives the way they used to.

Amelia was busy training. Dennis apparently refused to teach her anything but practical, protective and defensive magic, which frustrated her immensely. They didn’t interest her as much as illusions and hexes did. I helped her with those ones the best I could, but there was still no sign of my magic so I couldn’t do much.

Since Amelia didn’t have time to hang out with me, I spent a lot of my free time at the library. There weren’t many books I considered reliable sources regarding magic, but I looked up everything I could find on different creatures, rituals and history.

I also befriended Charon. It wasn’t a conscious choice, at first; I just happened to run into him every now and then when he took Cassandra to practice (I learned that she played the cello and the clarinet) and he usually ended up hanging out with me at the library while he waited for it to be done. He didn’t question my choice in books, but I still told him that I was just really into sci-fi and fantasy.

Outside of school, Charon seemed like an ordinary teenager. He liked The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and X-Files, he read comics instead of books at the library, and he carried a small orange bottle in his jeans pocket. He told me it was medication for anxiety.

Sometimes when he was in big crowds and public places, he would get sweaty, quiet and disconnected. He told me that when it happened, everything became overwhelming; the noise, the smells, the lights, even the feeling of his clothes against his skin. I said it sounded awful. He reassured me that he was used to it, and that the pills helped a little.

Charon’s family came from Greece. They usually spent their summers there, but apparently moving to California had eaten up so much of their funds that they couldn’t this year. One day, we were sat on a curb outside of the building Cassandra had her cello practice in, and I asked him: “What’s Greece like?”

“You’re always close to the sea. Everything is really old, which is cool,” he told me.

“Greek mythology is cool,” I said because it was one of the only things I knew about the country. A lot of the monsters in the library books originated from those legends. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them actually existed.

Charon looked at me curiously.

“Sorry, was that a weird thing to say?” I asked.

“No,” he said and smiled. “No, not at all.”

Another time we talked was on the concrete steps of the library after it had closed for the day. I had borrowed a book about witch trials; I assumed it was a big part of my history.

“That friend of yours,” Charon started slowly as I stuffed the book in my backpack. “Amelia Highmore. Have you known her long?”

“Since I moved here. That was ’94,” I said.

Charon frowned. It was one of his expressions that the girls at school went crazy for; deep in thought and mysterious. “You know her well, then?” he asked.

“Yeah. She’s my best friend,” I said. I figured he must’ve thought we were dating, since that’s what people usually assumed.

“And she’s… okay with you?” Charon asked carefully.

My heart skipped a beat and my belly lurched. I hadn’t told anyone, I had barely come to terms with it myself. I knew of just one gay kid at school, and he got brutally bullied. I preferred staying invisible, thank you very much.

“She doesn’t know,” I said.

“I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry,” Charon said quickly.

“Thanks,” I mumbled.

It wasn’t anything I was ashamed of, really. I knew everyone in my life would be okay with it because no one made fun of Fiona or Elvira. Still, I wasn’t even sure yet. I was just vaguely aware of the funny feeling in my gut when I saw Hugh Grant in Sense and Sensibility when Amelia dragged me to see it in the theatres, and the late nights reading her Spider-Man issues under covers with a flash light.

“How did you know?” I asked. Was it that obvious? Did everyone else know as well?

Charon looked confused again. “I just… knew,” he said.

“Are you, uh… you know, as well?” I asked.

“Kind of,” he said. My shoulders relaxed. It was nice to know I wasn’t alone.

Later that night over dinner, I told Killian, Fiona and Elvira as well. Killian nodded politely and thanked me for telling him. Fiona smiled and hugged me. Elvira welcomed me to the club and gave me a high five. I had a feeling they had known all along, but it was still a relief.

The summer ended too quickly, like summers usually do. By the start of the new school year, Amelia had grown even taller and knew a whole catalogue of spells by heart. She charmed our skateboard to be trip-free (“Well, at least harder to trip on,” she admitted) and started working on a fake ID for herself. (“It’s just handy to have one,” she said.)

When I asked if Dennis had told her anything about the shadow person, she shook her head defeatedly. Dennis had found out that she knew how to get to the safe, so he had cast some extra charms on it to keep us away. Amelia hadn’t figured them out yet.

“Bit by bit, yeah?” she said. “We’re making progress. Trust me.”

“Yeah. Bit by bit,” I agreed.