Blackgrave Manor

Blackgrave Manor

Chapter 4.

Narcissa woke to the sound of thunder. The storm must be directly overhead: the very ground was shaking with its force. Yet although her white dress was still clinging to her, Narcissa didn't feel nearly as soaked as she ought to be, and she couldn't hear the rain. Confused, she sat up, throwing off the large black overcoat which someone had wrapped about her.

The sky was a deep shade of blue, and the moors glowed green with the rain they had received. Where was the storm? Narcissa looked about in bewilderment. She didn't recognize this area, but somehow it seemed familiar. There was the steep slope, there the distant mountains wreathed in cloud . . . And there was the smoking ruin where her house had been.

Narcissa thought about screaming, but her throat already hurt, and her house seemed beyond rescue. The man had genuinely blown it up. She hadn't believed he would do such a thing. He had done a very thorough job, too; none of the remaining wall fragments seemed to reach higher than her head. Narcissa shuddered as another thought occurred to her: had Lucius . . . ? Was her dear little Draco left half-orphaned, fatherless, to fend for himself in a cruel world? But no, Lucius was far too slippery. After the ritual ended he had probably left with that horrid Verdigris person. Narcissa was not thinking about either of them right now. She was thinking about why on earth someone had decided to reduce her house to a large pile of rock, and where he had gone now.

Narcissa picked her way into the rubble, searching for clues. She had not gone far before she heard a strange noise. It sounded as if an extremely hoarse toad was trying to sing a lullaby. Maybe her house had been destroyed by vicious attack toads? While Narcissa pondered this idea, she walked around one of the wall fragments and found herself staring at a gray ball of fluff about three feet across. A gaping pink maw emerged from its center. The mysterious stranger knelt beside it, humming softly. Narcissa wondered whether the ball of fluff had been his accomplice in house-destruction. Somehow she couldn't quite believe that: although it was making a terrific din, the creature seemed innocent and very young. It even had big, round blue-gray eyes.

"Isn' this wonderful?" asked the stranger. "She's a baby storm raven. I don' think any others have been born in the last hundred years."

Narcissa had never heard of a storm raven before, but the idea didn't really surprise her. She remembered falling unconscious to the sound of great soft wings beating against the clouds.

"Awww, aren't you a sweet widdle girl?" the stranger asked the raven. "You come from a really holy place, yeh know that? An' we're going to get you some nice dinner just as soon as we can."

Narcissa was distracted by the creature's big blue eyes, but not distracted enough to miss important details. "A holy place? This was my house!"

"An' what kind o' abomination is that, buildin' yer house on top of a place that's been holy for centuries?"

The raven squawked even more loudly, as if in punctuation.

Narcissa felt offended. "I told you, this house was a wedding present. How was I supposed to know it was holy?" (Though it was a very exciting idea. Just think, all those childhood summers spent on sacred ground! It was a pity little Draco had always preferred their house in town.)

"Yeah, well, I guess yeh might not have realized. It's holy to--" the stranger looked embarrassed--"to, er, the people I've got me diplomatic mission to. This is really their land."

"So you're trying to get it back for them?"

"Um, er, gesture o' good faith an' all that." The stranger seemed rather uncomfortable, but the storm raven's loud complaints soon distracted him, and he resumed cooing: "How's it just bein' born, huh? My, you're an impatient little darlin'. We're going ter get you some dinner soon, but first we've got ter find you a name. What's your name going ter be, sweetheart? Awww, look at those big blue eyes! How about Iris? Doesn' that sound pretty?"

"You can't call it that!" Narcissa protested. "That's my middle name!"

"Awww, you're named after a beautiful woman, sweetling," the man said to the raven. "Isn' that nice?"

Narcissa was not sure whether she should be flattered or upset. The creature did have lovely eyes. It was still phenomenally ugly, however, and its current protector did not seem at all inclined to listen to her, even though she had several questions that needed answers. "How did this raven find its way into my house?" Narcissa asked. "It wasn't there when I left."

"She's newborn, isn' she, the sweet little girl?" the man answered. "Did you have an egg? I don' quite know what their eggs look like, I tol' you there hasn' been another hatched in a hundred years or so."

Narcissa did not remember any mysterious eggs. She was sure that if she had found one she would have looked after it, keeping it safe and warm. On the other hand . . . "There were an awful lot of strange-looking rocks in the cellar."

"That's an idea." The man began questioning the ball of fluff: "Did yeh hatch out of a rock, Iris, darlin'? Do yeh want ter show me where it was?"

Iris screeched. She reminded Narcissa of baby Draco in his more helpless and bored moments. All the rocks in Narcissa's cellar had been there for a very long time. It must have been stunningly dull, being a rock-shaped egg for hundreds of years. Or maybe it had been comfortable, as comfortable as the mist that Narcissa had floated in for years and years, until something happened to shock her out of it . . .

"I know!" said Narcissa. "Iris hatched because you blew my house up."

"I don' understand."

"It's like those wildflowers they have in America, that only bloom after a forest fire. I suppose storm ravens can only hatch if there's an explosion." If only Iris were as beautiful as a wildflower, or even an iris, thought Narcissa. It really was not fair that the mythical creature born from the rubble and ashes of her house had to be so gray and mundane. But perhaps this was only her baby coloring; perhaps as an adult Iris would fly through the stormclouds, striking lightning from ebony-black wings.

The stranger's voice interrupted Narcissa's reverie. "Ma'am . . . I think yeh may be right. An' if so yer brilliant. Absolutely brilliant."

Narcissa was pleased. She was referred to as an ornament of society on a reasonably regular basis, but brilliant was a much more exciting compliment. She began to thank the stranger, but he spoke first.

"I think maybe you'd better come with me, an' explain yer theory. I'm always much better when somebody helps me explain things."

"Come where?"

"Ter visit the giants, o' course." The tall man grew suddenly quiet, as he realized what he had just admitted.