Winter’s Murder

How hungry winter left them. They had feasted mightily before the snow. During the battle, the streams had run red, and the corpses had burst in the autumnal sun. Now there was no warmth, not even a waning warmth, and the bones had no marrow more to suck. The raucous murder no longer sounded with that delightful energy brought by excitement, but languidly, their hoarse caws came from the bare and ruined trees. It is said, under certain circumstances, when a carrion beast, especially, a carrion crow, eats the tongues of dead men—if he eats enough of them, of the right kind of sinner, he may begin to speak, to learn intercourse with men.

And a man might hear a beak pecking at his window, and a voice, too, might beg to be let in from the cold winter, beg to be let near the fire. It might be a voice the man knew.

That winter’s over now, and it is said that if you walk through that field where flowers grow red from blood, where they grow and cover the bones of the slain, you may hear, amid the calls of the birds, concourse, strange and devilish, in the air.

Art by: https://twitter.com/welderwings?s=20