Ten-year-old Eleanor Jane Kistler leaves Melitown Elementary and heads through City Centre where all the stores are, past the weird old antique shop that never seemed to be open and the cool house with all the neat statues. Crossing the plaza of elm trees with its maze of hydrangeas practically swallowing the memorial benches, she takes the Church Way exit west to the Melitown All Faiths Cemetery.
Walking by the tall angel statue wearing its garland of creeping ivy, she begins counting rows of grave markers of various shapes and sizes, speckled with flowers and granite niches filled with spent candles. Four, five, six… She turns at the seventh and starts a new count from the obelisk labeled DONKER until she arrives at the twelfth. The white and silvery gray veined marble columnar headstone’s base connects to an adjoining urn shape, a delicately carved peacock perched on its rim, tail draping in a swoosh the opposite direction of its turned neck as it gazes up into the purple pointed leaves of the Japanese maple shading the Kistler family plot.
“Hi, Gramma Jane!” she says, sliding her backpack off and getting to work, plucking the few weeds that have sprouted since her previous day’s maintenance. “I got the history test back, and just like I said, a solid A+.”
The wind rustles through the tree, wiggling its purple fingery leaves overhead. Eleanor sits down on the low-growing pony foot carpeting the plot and pulls out a paper bag with the lunch she didn’t eat at school, summoning a clamor of shiny green-blue-black wings. “There you are, buddy,” she nods to the crow, who hops down from the faceted point of Gramma Jane’s stone and accepts half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from her outstretched hand.
“So, like I was saying yesterday, it’s like they don’t even see me in class,” she says in between bites. “Even the teacher acts surprised to see my name on the attendance sheet. Like she is reading off the names and gets to Kistler, and every single time, she says it like a question. But I go to school every day!”
The crow tilts his head and eyes the paper bag. (The marble peacock continues its treeward observance.) “And so today, she’s already been confused by my name during roll call, and not two hours later, she’s passing out the tests and goes, ‘Oh! We did have a perfect score?’ and then she calls my name like she’s never seen it before in her life. And everyone kinda jumps when I walk past them to go get it.”
The crow lets out a throaty rattle and clacks its beak, which she silences with a sultana from the bag. “These are good, yeah?” she asks and is answered with a hop and a bobbing shiny head. “Gosh, you’re cute. And you always remember me. Thanks, man.” She tears the bag, turns it into a plate, and pushes most of the golden fruit to the side closest to him. “Help yourself.”
She flomps backward, resting her head on her backpack, and follows the peacock’s stare. “I don’t get it. It’s been three years since you left, and everything has been so weird. Auntie Lou is gone all the time—don’t get me wrong, I’m not a baby, so I’m fine on my own, since like she leaves money and stuff. And the family across the street is always there if I need anything while she’s away, and they at least remember me most of the time—but I miss you. I miss the house and the garden. Do you think the new people are taking care of it? At least we know the clematis is doing well. I walked by the other day, and it has climbed up to the balcony off Mom’s room. I was just getting used to missing her, you know? It feels bad. I feel bad all the time.”
The sultanas have been gone for a while, but the crow lingers, offering a few hoarse croaks and trills of sympathy as Eleanor spills a full day of pent-up conversation. “Do you think Auntie Lou would notice if I invited a crow over to hang out? I don’t think she would,” she answers herself, sitting up, tucking the now folded paper bag plate into her pack and zipping it closed. “Buddy, you probably have family nearby, but if you are ever bored, feel free to stop by. It’s the brick place next to the old wood house with all the windsocks and shiny glass spinning things in the yard on Orchard. I’m sure you know where all the shiny things are.”
An affirmative-sounding squawk made her smile for the first time all week. She brushes off the butt of her jeans and pulls her black fleece-lined hoodie down to cover it before swinging the backpack over her shoulder and tugging one of her braided pigtails out from under its strap. “See you tomorrow, Gramma Jane! Be safe, buddy!” she says with a little wave to the stone and the crow.
Retrieving the headphones stashed in her hood, the cord threaded into a home-stitched buttonhole near the collar, running through sewn-in loops along the inside until it fed into another buttonhole leading to the kangaroo pocket where it plugged into her walkman, she settles them over her ears and presses play.
Once the explosive percussion and trebly distorted guitar sounds surrounding Eleanor made it past the ivy-wreathed angel, the crow picks up a sultana he’d kept hidden in the hoof-shaped greenery underfoot in his beak and flicks it over toward Jane Kistler’s headstone. “Well?” he asked the long cup-like tongue that grabbed it. It was attached to a chameleon, the length of a bread knife, clinging to the stone and turning from a pale silvery shade to a vivid green. One oversized eye swivels toward the crow.
“Why does it matter to you if she’s Obvious or Obscure?” it asks the crow. “The job’s the same.”
“But I can’t give her the right dreams. They keep going sour and she’s going to attract gloom. If she’s Obscure, I can traipse…”
“And what? She has a dream where a crow tells her to cheer up or else?” it rolls the other eye.
The crow clacks its beak. “It’s not a job anyhow. It’s symbiosis. The better the dreaming the more I get in return. She’s too restless to even begin to weave around at night. I’ve never lost a kid before their time, and I don’t plan to now.”
“I dunno, friend, I’d cut her loose and find a newborn. Start over with an easy one.”
Feathers ruffle indignantly. “She’s a good kid! She’s just going through some stuff that’ll make her easy pickin’s for the gloom and fear eaters. I can’t abandon her to them. Would you ditch yours?”
“Well, no. I don’t suppose I would,” the chameleon pauses, playing back the girl’s one-sided conversation. “Do you know of any Obvious the veil blurs once out of sight?”
“She did say the other humans tend to forget her.”
“Sounds Obscure to me,” the chameleon shrugs and snaps up a ladybird who wandered too close.
“I’m gonna do it,” the crow announces.
Eleanor turns away from the plaza toward Orchard Street and slows to look at a flyer in the hardware store’s window. Illustrated eyes of all different sizes and types look out of a black background surrounding nearly illegible, tangled-looking lettering spelling NYCTOPHOBIA. Underneath, in a much easier-to-parse font, it says “Friday, October 31, 10 pm” and “@ Badger’s Combe.” She smiles her week’s second smile.
“I’m gonna do it.”