Queen of the Crows by Harmony Wagner

Author:Harmony Wagner [Wagner, Harmony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 9781927502730
Publisher: Acorn Press
Published: 2016-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

Elsa crossed through the large field. Gulls peppered the park, but there wasn’t a crow in sight, which was odd. With the thousands of crows that roosted in the park, she couldn’t think of a time when she’d walked through the city and not seen a crow or heard a caw. But there was an odd silence today.

They must be searching the countryside.

Arr! Arr! Arr! A gaggle of gulls passed over.

It wasn’t really a silence, Elsa realized. It was the fact that the crow music was missing from the symphony of city sounds.

Elsa watched some other gulls pester each other as she crossed the road to the tennis courts. She thought about how they were just as much a part of the park as the crows were, yet she hadn’t observed them closely. They hadn’t captivated her in the same way as the crows, so she had ignored them.

I wonder if they have kings and queens?

Elsa decided to start paying more attention to the ways of the gulls. She also decided to start paying more attention to what she paid attention to.

The concept of taking in a High Crow version of the world tantalized her mind.

As she entered the wood, she practiced expanding her perception. Instead of just looking at the way in front of her, she softened her vision to take in the broadest vantage she could, including all her peripheral vision. She listened. She felt the wind on her skin. She smelled the mud, pine, and dry leaves mixing together.

There was so much going on.

Even with her gaze looking forward, she could still see a big brown dog bounding through the woods far to her right. Its owner followed slowly, walking with a slight limp of his right leg. In the distance to her left, a mother pushed a baby carriage, crunching leaves along a path. Behind Elsa, tennis balls bounced and a father coached his boy on his swing.

All around, the city was rich with layers of sounds, ranging from the hum of a cruise ship, loud trucks rattling down the promenade, and children playing on the playground beyond the wood to a distant pinging of city construction downtown.

Thoonk. Elsa’s foot knocked something under the leaves along the path.

She stopped and rooted through the leaves to find what it was. Brushing the leaves aside, she found a small, old-fashioned key.

She examined it more closely. It had been made by hand in a forge. It looked to be a hundred years old.

Elsa picked it up and put it in her pocket. How interesting that practicing High Crow perception had yielded treasure right below her feet. This new way of seeing the world intrigued her even more. She continued practicing all the way home.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.