Free Silvertongue by Charlie Fletcher Page A

closer.
    “Or Arianhrod,” said the other.
    “Who?”
    “Different names for the same White Lady. The moon goddess,” explained the Queen. “You see, you are wrong. You’re not on your own. No one ever is.”
    “Goddess?” snorted Edie. “There’s no such thing as goddesses. It was an owl. In a dream. That’s all.”
    “A goddess comes to you in a dream and you think it’s nothing?” hissed the Queen in disbelief.
    “I don’t believe in goddesses. Or dreams. Or magic,” Edie said flatly. “I believe in me and what I can see and what I can do.”
    “What about your power? What about your glinting?”
    “Not magic, is it? It’s just what I do. I can feel the past in stones like dogs can hear high-pitched noises humans can’t. It’s not magic. It’s just a thing.”
    Edie balled the red thread and stuffed it into her pocket.
    “You don’t make sense, Edie,” said George. “After all that’s happened to us, you can’t—”
    “Yes I can,” she said. “I can do what—”
    And at that point Hodge leaped for the Raven, and the Raven lofted into the air and came to rest on Edie’s shoulder, so neatly that the cat got nothing but a face full of snow and embarrassment.
    Cats hate looking stupid more than anything else in the world, so Hodge twisted in a fury and prepared to spring up at the Raven again.
    “No!” shouted Edie.
    Hodge stopped dead. He looked at the girl. He looked at the Raven. And then he slowly walked away, as if suddenly bored by the whole affair.
    “Takes one catamount to know another,” said Dictionary, stooping to pick the cat up and stroke some dignity back into the affronted animal.
    The wind, which had been entirely absent until now, picked up a light swirl of snow and blew it across the empty space between the arch and the war memorials.
    “You don’t believe in goddesses?” repeated the Queen in a voice no warmer than the ice crystals dancing across the top of the snow.
    “No.”
    “Or gods?” asked one of the daughters.
    “No,” said Edie. “Sorry. I believe in me. And what I can see, and what I can touch.”
    She cinched the belt tighter around her fur coat, as if that finished the discussion.
    “Fine,” said the Queen, standing. “You see that Raven on your shoulder?”
    “Er, yuh . . .” grunted Edie, as if it were the stupidest question in the world.
    “There was another god, a one-eyed god, a hanged god. He was called Odin, and he came to this island with the Vikings. He had two birds. One was Thought, one was Memory.”
    “And?”
    “They were ravens.”
    “So?” said Edie, suddenly not liking where this was going.
    “So I suppose you don’t believe in that god either?” said the Queen.
    “No.”
    “Interesting.” The Queen smiled. “But complicated. Because you’ve got his raven on your shoulder.”
    “It’s the Walker’s bird,” said George, looking at the Gunner, who shrugged.
    “It is Memory, the raven whose name is also Munin. The Walker was a mage before he was cursed by the Stone. He enslaved the bird with a spell, the spell that appears to have been broken when your friend broke the red thread and made the bird her own,” explained the Queen.
    “It’s not my bird, it’s free to go,” declared Edie. “Seriously . . .”
    She shrugged her shoulder as if to dislodge the bird. The Raven rode the rise and fall without turning a feather or going anywhere.
    “It has seen everything and forgotten nothing. It certainly has seen enough to know that a favor left unthanked and not repaid will always come back to haunt you. It knows how the world balances accounts. I think Munin is with you until you are done with it, child, like it or not,” said the Queen.
    “I don’t mind it. I just don’t like animals and birds tied up or caged. Or people,” muttered Edie, thinking of the woman with the sewn eyelids in the House of the Lost.
    The wind buffeted again, whirling the powder off the top of the surrounding snow and dancing it