Shadow of the Ravens Read online

  D.A. Rice

  Independently published

  Copyright D.A. Rice ©2019

  Cover Art by: Starjewel Book Covers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process other than for “fair use” as defined by law, without prior written permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  The hat shop is dusty and unused. Cobwebs line every corner, and shadows dust every surface with just a touch of unnatural density.

  I remember, once, when this place had been full of people. Now, as I make my way through the peculiar hats, my gloved fingers stroke each counter surface, making lines in the grime. Its emptiness calls out to me.

  It’s the call of the Ravens that broke me into so many little pieces.

  I pause as I contemplate a small top hat, one designed to fit on a woman’s head, just to the side. It’s a copper color with an almost filigree design that would shine if not for the dirt that covers it. I pull it up, blowing off the dust. It clouds in a puff that tickles my nose as I hold the hat close to my scrutinizing mismatched eyes.

  It is this hat I’d thought of the first time I met Emma.

  I set it back down as I lean over the counter on my palms, my black jacket scuffing the glass below me with its inset red roses. I can feel the collar that scruffs my neck, the hat that never leaves my head, my black gloves that squeak just a little when I ball my hands into fists. The shadows tense around me with my emotions.

  I have plenty of them to spare.

  The bell jingles over the door, and my head straightens with a tilt. I know who it is before I turn, my arms crossing my chest as a grin spreads across my face. I do not look up. “I really must fix that.”

  “The bell?” The new voice asks in amusement. To him, I am just the madman everyone underestimates.

  They should really know better by now.

  My head tilts the other way. “Is that what it is? It’s far too merry.”

  The other man says nothing for a moment. I smile with his fresh nerves, the moments I taste on the air from him, the decisions he hasn’t made yet. “This shop has seen better days, hatter.”

  I laugh in a low and dangerous way, not moving an inch even as the man in front of me shifts on his feet. It is silent for a hairsbreadth, and he shifts again. He is a card soldier from the Queen of Hearts, and he has something I need. He pulls the pouch from his armor now, ready to be rid of me. I let him set the pouch on the counter beside me. “The herbs you requested…”

  I finally meet his gaze, and he stumbles back. There’s a burn in my eyes that tells me they’re red and predatory. He takes another step back but halts as the shadows thicken around us. I don’t move from where I lean back against the counter in my shop, my head tilting once more as I side-glance a clock in the corner. “I heard you’ve been a bad boy, Jack…”

  Jack of Hearts tenses in front of me as the ticking of the clock reaches my ears. I close my eyes as I listen to it, an unnerving calm taking over my body. He hasn’t yet figured out why he’s here. It isn’t for the herbs, although that is certainly a plus.

  “The Lady Time… she said you weren’t a threat to us anymore…” Jack is getting scared, but he can’t move.

  I bring up a hand as if to study my fingers. “The Lady Time didn’t send me, Jack.” I sound bored, even to my own ears. Bored is always dangerous.

  “I- I don’t…” Jack sounds confused. I don’t blame him.

  I smile again as I straighten, then I’m in front of him, one of my arms lazily around his neck as I make his eyes meet mine. “You don’t what, Jack?”

  I can see the moment he realizes what he’s done, and my smile disappears. I tsk him before he can get a word out, my grip around the back of his neck tightening. “Nighty, night, Jack. Time to shuffle the deck.”

  In the next moment, Jack’s head is on backwards, and he is falling to the floor of my discarded shop. I tilt my head as I kneel over him, my eyes narrow as the shadows thicken around the two of us. “Hm,” I tap my chin, finding the hat I’d always meant to give to Emma. My eyes cool as my emotions do. I twitch my fingers and the hat flies to my hand. I smile a genuine one this time as I dust the hat off again. “I can make this better,” I say aloud as I rise, then I let the shadows take me.

  ~

  “You didn’t have to kill him.” Emma greets me in a quiet way. There is no judgement in her voice, only disappointment. She sits in a chair in the study, a book in her lap as she contemplates the fire before her. I don’t respond as I toss the pouch of herbs in the air and catch it, a grin spreading across my face. She sighs deeply. “I will never hear the end of this.”

  “I expect you won’t.” I point at her as I twirl. She gives me a look and I shrug, my eyes narrowing. A knife appears in my hand and I slam it blade-first into the fireplace mantle. It shakes for a moment as the shadows do, but Emma doesn’t budge behind me. I take a deep breath and turn, a smile on my face as I bow. “I am the only mad apothecary that’s allowed to mess with Time.”

  “Chronos should not have told you.” She glances out of the doorway and I still, not looking away from her. “He wouldn’t approve.”

  “Yes, well, he’s not here, is he?” I bow again, another knife twirling into my fingers as I rise. I contemplate it for a moment, the red star that glitters with Time.

  She watches me for a long time, her eyes sad. I tighten my grip on the knife in my hand. I want to cut those eyes out, but I remember the last time I had an urge to do so. I vowed I’d never let it happen again. I force my grip to relax as I turn, shrugging again. “Little C is but a child, as you continue to preach.” I graze the knife handle in the mantle with my fingers.

  She says nothing, then sighs as she stands, the rustle of her dress the only sound she makes as the glow of Time dust moves around her. “I can see why you did what you did.” She speaks softly, and the gentle caress that is Time envelops me. My eyes flutter closed as I let it. “But, Ren, you cannot protect Chronos like this forever.”

  Then she is gone.

  She doesn’t understand, but how can she? Chronos risked his life to protect mine, to bring me back to my sanity. He did it without knowing just how much I truly owed him. Little C is not the Chronos I knew, but I will protect him all the same.

  I stride out of the study, the knife in my fingers twirling around again as I contemplate what only Time can know.

  I am the reason Chronos is dead.

  My eyes narrow as I pause in front of a door, my head tilting as the knife halts in my grip. I lean in the doorway, my shoulder against the doorframe as I watch the child Chronos. He looks so young, five or six if he were human. It was not so long ago that the Guardian brought him to me like this, and I walked across the desert, crying with him in my arms.

  I step inside the room on silent feet. A chair appears before me and I take it, leaning back as far as the chair will go. My legs cross on little C’s bed as I contemplate my knife again. There is so much I should tell him. There is so much I wish I could tell Chronos as he used to be.

  I want him to understand I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean to break him. My power is nothing compared to his. He could have killed me, but he never did. Instead he let me be me, even at the cost of his life.

  When Time restored me, I remembered everything, but sometimes I wish I hadn’t.

  1

  Broken is an understated way to describe me, but there was a time when I was far more broken than my twisted ways now. A time when the Ravens consumed much of who I used to be, an altered personality that I could never remember taking over.

>   Or at least, until Chronos confined me to his timestream with those blasted tattoos. Then, it was as if I were locked in a cage, always watching my other self relish the hurt and destruction he caused.

  Sometimes I miss him. At least then I had an excuse for the blood on my hands.

  The darkness that consumes my heart now is so much thicker. I don’t know how to be a better man when Chronos is no longer here to help me.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  This story takes place after I’d forgotten who I was, what I could do. After I forgot I was Kairos, and it begins just before Chronos found me struggling to survive in the Chess Valley. He’d felt so guilty for forgetting me, but I could never blame him. I’d forgotten myself long before he did, my moments corrupted by the Nightmare that’d begun to form inside me.

  My hat shop had been alive and well then, running self-sufficiently with little interference or need for me to be there. My imagination was so full of ideas that they ran by themselves, making and creating all the hottest looks the Queendoms had ever seen. The hat shop ran like that for years, until I’d become so consumed with my reenacted duties as Kairos that I forgot to leave some imagination around for its self-maintenance. I’d been using most of it keeping myself occupied.

  Being bored is a dangerous thing for me, even with my misplaced sanity returned. I am still me after all.

  When my hat shop was alive, it was full of color and life. Everything made itself, and there was a continuous flow of people coming and going. Pranks to be had everywhere! I didn’t have to be there, but I ended up there a lot in those days.

  It always amused me to no end to give a hot cup of tea away with every hat. Everyone reacted differently with every herb I used.

  I’d just returned from a stint in the Forbidden Queen’s realm, the corruption well and truly in my blood. I’d had blackouts once in awhile, but I was always amused by them, to find out what I’d done while the Ravens took over. For me, it was nothing but a game.

  How far could I push myself with my pranks before the demon took over? It was different every time. I didn’t know I had to be afraid until I’d met Chronos again. I’d already forgotten who he was by then.

  I knew of him, of course. He was the Timekeeper, a legend in Wonderland almost as potent as myself, but I’d forgotten his kindness. I’d forgotten everything about who he was, that I’d known him almost as well as I’d known myself once.

  When I entered my hat shop on this particular day, the butterflies I’d set up to sewing and creating were fluttering in a frenzy with a deadline they’d set. It was a colorful greeting. They were practically the only beings in Wonderland who didn’t know to be afraid of me. They knew of the madness of course, but they just accepted it as a part of who I was and who they were.

  They were my creations after all. The madness that leaked into them existed only to make my hats look and feel a certain way when finished. Of course, no one knew at the time just how corrupted pieces of clothing could become, but that’s a story for another moment.

  This is the story of how I broke a Timekeeper.

  Well… the first time, I should say. The ultimate time. If my darkness hadn’t corrupted him, made him half-human, all the other times I’d broken him wouldn’t have existed. I’ll never understand why he never gave up on me. I didn’t deserve it.

  But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  The butterflies in the shop began to sing as soon as I walked in. I grinned, humming along with them as I danced through their creations, inspecting each as I passed, giving my nod of approval or harsh guidance with my lack of it. I was waving my knives around, as if directing a chorus, when the bell above my shop rang.

  I never thought about what I did in those times; I reacted. In this instance, it meant a knife that went sailing through my hands to barely miss the customer who had just walked in. He dodged in time; he was a warrior for the new Red Queen.

  I twitched my fingers, and my knife came back to them. My grin dropped as I took him in. He rose from his crouch next to my door. It was a five of the Spade family. Low on the totem pole, but that was what made his instincts so fierce. He was dressed in armor, flat against his card-shaped self. I giggled, then turned. “What can I do for you, Five?”

  The card-man rose cautiously, as one should always do around me. His eyes took in my shop, his head oddly-shaped, even for a card soldier. He stood with a clank, and I imagined him saluting me from behind. I giggled again, then twirled, a wide grin on my face.

  He wasn’t saluting, but he was clutching a spear very close to his person as his eyes finally landed on me. “I come for a new helm, Hatter. I had not expected you to be here.”

  My gaze flicked from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Then my eyebrow rose as a teacup appeared in my hand. I huffed out a dark chuckle before turning away from him again. The Ravens cawed inside my head, a steady presence.

  “Yes,” I said in reply to his query, “I can see your head probably needs one. It’s vastly misshapen.” My fingers danced atop my own head, hat and all, as if showing him just how misshapen his was. I glanced back at him over my shoulder to find him narrowing his eyes at me. I smiled pleasantly. “Tea?”

  Butterflies fluttered around the soldier, measuring tape in hand as they flittered about, communicating what would be needed to make this particular piece of equipment. I suspected as I watched that it would be quite a bit more than they wanted to do.

  My fingers dusted an herb into my tea. My head was beginning to hurt. Mischief would be had this day. I took a sip of tea and shivered, before moving in front of the soldier, waving away the bugs that surrounded him. He stiffened with my nearness, which only made my grin wider.

  “Dents within, dents without.” I tapped his head with my knuckles, touching every part of his shaved, damaged outer shell of a skull. He cringed but did not move. “Perhaps with some guidance, what has been lost might be found.” My eyes heated up, then cooled down as I twirled around his back.

  I waved a hand, a helm appearing. With a tilt of my head, I placed it on his, then backed away. I tapped my chin studiously. “It seems to fit well, but I am not you.”

  Five rolled his head around his shoulders. “Yes. It seems perfect. What will you take for payment?”

  I smiled. He took a step back. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it now,” I stated, waving away his inquiry. “The butterflies will be by for the payment I require.”

  Five moved to take his helm off, the mistrust filling his eyes, only to find he couldn’t remove it. I raised an eyebrow at him as he struggled, then sighed, resigned. “What is this, Hatter?”

  I laughed, clapping my hands. “It is instinctive, Five! It will only come off when it is no longer needed!” There was more, of course, but he would figure all that out in due time. Within moments, in fact, if I recall correctly.

  Holding the door open for him, I shoved him outside the shop quickly, then locked the door behind him. I turned with a dark grin on my lips. “The shop is closed. There’s a call I must take.”

  The Ravens cawed.

  Interlude

  Little C stirs beside me, pulling me back from my memories. I let my feet hit the floor, the coat around me fluttering with my movements. I lean over his bed, pulling the covers around him, my eyes softening as I take him in.

  “Were we both so innocent once, brother?” I ask him softly, but he does not stir again.

  I know he is not the same. My Chronos was wise and experienced; this one remembers nothing of his life beyond what we tell him. He talks about Big Brother as if Chronos is still a presence inside of him, but it is more a link to the unknown, into death.

  My Chronos is never coming back.

  I think about what Emma said to me. I shouldn’t have killed Jack, but I can’t feel regret for what I’ve done. Little C may not be my Chronos, but he’s all that I have left. I will not let anyone hurt him, not when I’ve already done so much to hurt him myself.

&nbs
p; She worries about us both. It shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I don’t want her kindness, or her pity. I thought I loved her once, maybe I still do, but I can’t find it past the darkness that follows me. The shadows of my mind that no longer caw. They scrape, and I can’t escape it. She is my Timekeeper now; I will protect her just as I promised Chronos I would.

  But I can’t help but hate her for what Chronos did. I told him to bring her back. I hadn’t expected him to give his life for hers. I should have.

  I shake off my dark thoughts, looking back to Little C in his bed. A shadow falls across the doorway, and I know she’s behind me. She says nothing, but her sadness shivers in the shadows. She doesn’t know how to help me, and that’s ok.

  I don’t move from where I lean over Little C’s bed, my hands clasped in front of me. I expect nothing from her. She must know, to some degree, how I feel, that I’ll get over it in my own way. She meant too much to Chronos for me to do otherwise. All she can do is let me know every once in a while that she won’t give up on me either.

  All I can do is let her know that, right now, I hate that.

  My eyes narrow, and I move in a flash. The knife lands in the wood of the door next to her face, but she doesn’t flinch. The only sign of any distress is the sands of Time that stall beside her before they begin to move around her in a gentle way again.

  In the next moment, she’s gone, and I relax. I almost regret how I treat her sometimes, but we are both working through our own issues. I give her space, and she gives me mine. I know one day we will need to come together, but I can’t. Not right now.

  I pull out the hat I have for her, dusting it off one more time as I examine it. I will make this better. It will be the best creation I ever made, and it will look resplendent on her soft, brown hair.

  She did nothing but love him. I, on the other hand, deserve every bit of pain I feel, and I will feel it all.