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Part One

CHAPTER 1

A Murder of Crows

How five crows ed to lift a twenty-pound baby boy into the air was beyond Prue, but that was certainly the least of her worries In fact, if she were to list her worries right then and there as she sat spellbound on the park bench and watched her little brother, Mac, carried aloft in the talons of these five black crows, puzzling out just how this feat was being done would likely come in dead last First on the list: Her baby brother, her responsibility, was being abducted by birds A close second: What did they plan on doing with him?

And it had been such a nice day

True, it had been a little gray when Prue woke up that , but what September day in Portland wasn’t? She had drawn up the blinds in her bedrooht of the tree branches outside her , fraray It was Saturday, and the s up from downstairs Her parents would be in their normal Saturday positions: Dad with his nose in the paper, occasionally hefting a lukewarh tortoiseshell bifocals at the woollyproject of unknown deter in his high chair, exploring the farthest frontiers of unintelligible babble: Doose! Doose! Sure enough, her vision was proven correct when she came downstairs to the nook off the kitchen Her father lasses, and her brother shrieked, “Pooo!” Prue ,” said herher attention to the amoeba of yarn in her hands (was it a sweater? A tea cozy? A noose?)

“Mother,” Prue had said, now pouring rice o: no bacon” She had read that word, ergo, in a novel she’d been reading That was the first tiht, but it felt good She sat down at the kitchen table and winked at Mac Her father briefly peered over the top of his paper to give her a smile

“What’s on the docket today?” said her father “Re Mac”

“M around soh up some old ladies Maybe stick up a hardware store Pawn the loot Beats going to a crafts fair”

Her father snorted

“Don’t forget to drop off the library books They’re in the basket by the front door,” said her“We should be back for dinner, but you kno long these things can run”

“Gotcha,” said Prue

Mac shouted, “Pooooo!” wildly brandished a spoon, and sneezed

“And we think your brother ht have a cold,” said her father “So make sure he’s bundled up, whatever you do”

(The crows lifted her brother higher into the overcast sky, and suddenly Prue enuht have a cold!)

That had been their ranola, skiimmes in his crossword puzzle, and was off to hook up the red Radio Flyer wagon to the back of her single-speed bicycle An even coat of gray remained in the sky, but it didn’t seem to threaten rain, so Prue stuffed Mac into a lined corduroy jumper, wrapped him in a stratu, into the wagon She loosed one ar and handed him his favorite toy: a wooden snake He shook it appreciatively

Prue slipped her black flats into the toe clips and pedaled the bike intohappily with every jolt They tore through the neighborhood of tidy clapboard houses, Prue nearly upsetting Mac’s wagon with every hurdled curb and ave a satisfied shhhhhh as they carved the wet pavement

Theway to a warm afternoon After several randoht color, needed returning; the recent arrivals bin at Vinyl Resting Place required perusing; a plate of veggie tostadas wastime outside the coffee shop on the on She sipped steah theas the café employees aardly installed a secondhand elk head trophy on the wall Traffic huhborhood’s polite rush hour A few passersby cooed at the sleeping baby in the wagon and Prue flashed them sarcastic s camaraderie She doodled utter drain in front of the café, a hazy sketch of Mac’s quiet face with extra attention paid to the little dribble of snot ean to fade Mac, waking, shook her fro her brother on her knee while he rubbed the sleep fro Library?” Mac pouted, unco

“Library it is,” said Prue

She skidded to a halt in front of the St Johns branch library and vaulted frorabbed the short stack of books froed into the foyer and stood before the book return slot, shuffling the books in her hand She stopped at one, The Sibley Guide to Birds, and sighed She’d had it for nearly threenotes from librarians before she’d finally consented to return it Prue es of the book She’d spent hours copying the beautiful illustrations of the birds into her sketchbook, whispering their fantastic, exotic naer The whip-poor-will Vaux’s swift The names conjured the im

ages of lofty climes and faraway places, of quiet prairie dawns and aze drifted from the book to the darkness of the return slot and back She winced,of her peacoat She would brave the librarians’ wrath for one more week

Outside, an old wo around for its owner, her brow furrowed Mac was contentedly chewing on the head of his wooden snake Prue rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and threw open the doors of the library When the woer in her direction, sta, “E-excuse me, miss! This is very unsafe! To leave a child! Alone! Do his parents kno he is being cared for?”