Rawhide Chronicles: In With a Flutter

        Cáitlín Cadera, 8 years old, stared out the window of her family’s front room into a cold winter afternoon. There was a light frost on the lower half of the window, captioned by a sprig of holly on either side. Outside, a lone pine stretched into a grey sky.
        “Cáit! Cáit!”
        She turned her head to her mother’s insistent calling.
        “Cáit, focus! We need your voice in this!”
        Sighing, Cáit returned to singing with the rest of her family. Her uncle Aedan plucked the tune on his harp. It was an old song, from the old country, an important song, full of meaning – and utterly devoid of interest for Cáit. Her eyes, green as the holly on the window, were inevitably drawn back to the old pine outside. As she looked again to tall evergreen, she noticed a dark shape moving in the upper branches.
        A raven.
        It fluttered down to the ground and landed not far from the window, on a rock nearly the color of blood, and cocked its head towards the house. Cáit thought it was looking at her, and its eyes were full of knowing. She stared back, forgetting, again, to keep singing. The raven, still staring, pecked the ground next to the rock – a single, solid, move. It raised its head up, and repeated the action. And again. It never picked anything off the ground, and it never took its eye off of Cáit. Only pecked that one spot.
        Suddenly, it launched itself into the air with a croak. Cáit followed its path – it was going west – and she noticed something else in the sky. Interrupting the song with unrestrained glee, she shouted.
        “It’s snowing, It’s snowing!”
        She ran outside, followed by her sister Saraid, both ignoring their mother’s protests. The family, abandoning the song for now, followed them as far as the doorstep. The girls’ mother shouted for them to get their coats on, but they ignored her. She went in and got them, and forced them to wear them, and then sent them out to play. Cáit fell backwards into the snow and laid there, letting it fall on her.
        There was suddenly a loud crack from the west, and Cáit started and sat up.
        “That was a rifle,” her uncle Aedan said. It cracked again. “Army issue, from the sound of it.”
        The adults quickly rushed their children inside. As she walked back towards the house, she noticed the red rock, its small peak sticking out of the snow. And next to it, deep black against the snow’s brilliant white, was a raven’s feather, standing upright with its haft plunged into the snow.

*

         Cáit awoke to a croak. She sat up quickly in her bed, arms crossed over her chest. She heard it again, from outside. She jumped out of bed and dashed to the window of her room, glancing behind to make sure she hadn’t woken Saraid.
         Outside the window, she saw only the moonlight glistened snow, and the tree. She turned away, put her shoes on, and went downstairs, careful not to creak the stairs, and out the front door. Her feet crunched into the snow, and it seemed to echo. She looked towards the edge of the forest past the lone pine, and it was suddenly illuminated by a bright flash. A loud boom hit her, and she covered her ears.
         A group of men, wearing green uniforms (greencoats) walked out of the forest, rifles in hand. Another bang, and they dropped into the snow where they stood. Cáit heard some indistinct shouting, and another crash lit up the night, and then a group of men in blue uniforms came out of the forest. They surrounded the smaller group of green-coated men, pulled their pistols, and shot them.
         Cáit screamed as sudden hands grabbed her from behind and covered her eyes. Her mother, screaming at her. “Cáit! What are you doing out here? What are you thinking?”
         “Calm down, Catri!” uncle Aedan shouted. “Get her inside!”
         More gunshots. Kate felt herself being pulled inside. Her mother’s hand slipped off her eyes, and she heard her Aunt Dubhea asking about Saraid. She looked back towards the forest’s edge, and saw it, again, the raven, flying above the scene of the battle. It croaked.
         Cáit’s mother shut the door behind her.