Barnaby's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Barnaby was halfway to the music when Caw veered off his shoulder and flew back toward the gate. Barnaby grumbled and followed. Caw landed on a loose board high in the gate's old frame, pecked it twice, and the board swung open like a door. Behind it hid a cramped attic Barnaby had never known was there. It was stuffed with twigs, bottle caps, and stolen Halloween lights, all stacked into neat little desks. A crooked sign hung over the entrance. Inside, a dozen tiny crows scrambled. One wore a thimble as a hard hat. Another had a candy-wrapper tie. They held up hand-lettered signs and cawed at him, loud and frantic, like workers caught mid-shift. Caw hopped down and joined them, suddenly sheepish. Barnaby stared. His crows did not have an office. A fat crow pushed through the crowd. She wore bottle-cap glasses and carried herself like she owned the gate. She ruffled her feathers and fixed Barnaby with a flat look. The little crows went silent the second she appeared. In her beak she gripped a huge black feather, glossy and sharp. "You," Barnaby said. "You sent the flyer." She dropped the big feather on a desk with a crack. The small crows flinched. Then she nudged a messy stack of papers toward him with one claw. Barnaby picked them up. They were entry forms, dozens of them, specked with glitter and worm stains. Every one said the same thing in scratchy claw writing. BARNABY. Costume: Sunflower. Event: Bash Tonight. SIGNED: Totally Not A Crow. He read the dates. They went back years. "You've been entering me," he said slowly. "Every single year." The fat crow tapped the big feather twice. The whole room held still, as if the thing forced the truth out of them. Caw stepped forward, hung his head, and clicked a long guilty string of clicks. The little crows raised their signs again. Barnaby could not read crow, but he understood protest when he saw it. They wanted him gone. Off the gate. In the square. His vines tightened. All these years he thought they sheltered near him because he scared the dumb ones off. He thought the backwards landing was an accident. It was not. They had been pushing him out the door for longer than he could count. He should have been furious. He waited for the anger. It did not come. Instead his carved grin cracked wider, and something in his chest went loose and light. "A sunflower," he said. He almost laughed. "You picked a sunflower." The fat crow nodded once, sharp, like a deal closing. She shoved the big feather into his glove and screeched an order. The crew burst up around him in a flurry of stolen costumes. Barnaby tucked the feather into his vines beside the flyer. His agents had a plan. He was done fighting it. "Fine," he said. "Make me a flower. We're winning that trophy."