Dellfriar was a nightmare of bleached clouds and a radiant white void of nothingness. On the outside it had a hard medieval shell, like a gray castle of battlements and towers and flying buttresses. In bedlam I lay tormented, grinning and giggling and moving spasmodically, eternally bound to the timeless pale night.

Sitting in the office of Dr. Aureus meant seeing my crow. Cory wasn't himself these days, cawing and staring, unable to communicate. I shrugged, happy because the drugs made me so, although I resented the imprisonment.

"How are you feeling today, Mr. Briar?" Dr. Aureus asked me.

"When is the funeral?" I asked, wondering who had died.

"You already went to the funeral." Dr. Aureus frowned and made a note.

"I did? Oh my." I thought and tried to recall the memory but it was a blank. I believed Dr. Aureus, but I couldn't remember the funeral while I sat there.

"Tell me other things. How are your feelings, at this time?" Dr. Aureus probed.

"I feel confused. Happy, but confused. I also feel like I want to leave and take my crow with me." I told Dr. Aureus.

"Resentment? Do you feel resentment?" Dr. Aureus asked.

"Not really." I shrugged. I had a high threshold for resentment. While I did feel that way, I could deny it with confidence. Dr. Aureus watched me with suspicion then made a note.

"How about your crow? How do you feel when you see Cory?" Dr. Aureus asked.

"Worse." I choked. I just sat there without elaborating. Dr. Aureus eventually said:

"Interesting." And wrote something down.

They lowered my dosage after that and I recalled that conversation and much of what happened next, in Dellfriar. Dr. Aureus grinned with shimmering glasses while we sat there in the group therapy. I was back in a gown and sat comfortably listening to the others. I felt relaxed and ignorant of their speeches about themselves or their random thoughts. None of it really meant anything to me, but as I listened I realized I was hearing descriptions of insanity from the insane. I wondered if I was insane.

"Where is your crow?" Gilmore asked me. I looked at Gilmore and noticed all the features I had not, before. Gilmore spoke directly to me and then everyone looked at me, waiting for my answer.

I looked up with my eyes from their shadows cast into the darkness. For an instant I could see the Folk of the Shaded Places as they danced-macabre. I could hear the shriek of my youngest daughter, Penelope, seeing such monsters reflected in her television as she zoned out and listened to her father, although nothing but a distant flicker of the man she had known years before. I felt her terror, compounded from my own and I screamed too, into the darkness. That was the end of the group therapy.

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Instead of increasing my medication I was taken to Dr. Aureus's office. I was asked, by Dr. Aureus: "You saw something? When you were asked about Cory?"

I said nothing. It was then that Dr. Aureus, quite unexpectedly, opened the silver cage that Cory was in and let him fly to me.

"Is that better, Mr. Briar? If you are to keep your crow, will you be able to focus?" Dr. Aureus asked me. I nodded eagerly and Cory said nothing. Cory and I were taken back to my cell where we were left alone.

"I am glad to be with my Lord instead of in that accursed cage." Cory devised in English.

"Not as happy as I am with the difference." I assured him.

"My Lord, that person is quite evil." Cory told me.

"Dr. Aureus?" I asked.

"Yes. Dr. Aureus has many evil secrets and great magical powers. Dr. Aureus has learned much from the mad reveals of this house of wisdom." Cory explained.

"My mind was empty. I know very little anymore. I have no certainty of my memories or what is happening outside these white walls." I complained.

"I flew far to be here. It is much worse that I can describe. Men are acting like savages and the animals are feeding upon them. Great beasts cast shadows upon the land as they fly out of the seas and clouds of poison come from massive sea anemones that tower above the oceans like nuclear reactors. The humans are blowing themselves up, is the word among crows, with bombs that destroy entire cities." Cory told me of his travels.

"And the other crows spoke to you?" I asked.

"My Lord has done something so profound that the laws among crows provide absolution for me, a bringer of great words. I am called Stormcrow now, among the creatures that listened and availed me with their secrets. As money can collect handfuls more, so can a keeper of knowledge. One begets another, as is always the way with all things." Cory advised me, sounding overly confident, as a joke. I chuckled, glad to have him with me.

At the next group session I had Cory on my shoulder. Gilmore looked at us and was quite thrilled, having little to say that day. The others were equally pleased that my crow was there. They had heard all of my stories and now my crow was with me. I could believe that everything that had happened was real. I had my crow to corroborate. The rest of the group enjoyed their own benefits. Cory represented many things. He didn't speak in front of them, and they never really seemed to expect him to. It was enough for him to click at them or caw at their jokes. His limited responses were for the benefit of Dr. Aureus, whom Cory did not wish to speak to yet. I couldn't blame him, after Dr. Aureus had kept Cory in a silver cage for so long.

When we were alone again I told Cory about my vision of the Folk of the Shaded Places and how I had known that Penelope had seen them, somehow listening to me over such distance and years without me. Cory told me it was no longer uncommon for children descended from sorcerers to exhibit magical talents. I found what he told me to be amazing.

"Penelope is using her powers? Hearing me, or feeling what I feel or seeing what I see?" I wondered.

"Perhaps unconsciously. It is not something she has control over, I would expect." Cory predicted.

I had many questions for Cory and he could fill in all the blanks. With his advice I could piece together all of our time together and even the things that had not happened. Of the things that had not happened I had the most questions, how many lives had we lived, or paths had we walked or dreams had we encountered? I couldn't comprehend any of it without my crow. From his perspectives it all made some sort of sense.

From then on I was able to think and to recall my time in Dellfriar, although in my wellness I was to face horrors far beyond any that I had already known. And a cure for my mind is only the comfort provided by one that I love.