"Builders' Rites" by LB Waltz

“Well…?”

The crow gives a hop, sunlight catching on its beak. Those hazy rays tear, thready and crepuscular, their radiant tangles snaring in the teeth of broken buildings.

“Well?”

Dust floats down. Down, down, down, sticking to skin. Coating the gravel. Slipping off oil-colored feathers. One pristine talon—as sickle-sharp as a sliver of the new moon—pokes at a line scrawled into the grime. That shallow gutter wobbles, the gore within it coagulating.

“Well?” the boy prompts a third time, his initial timidity worn away by exasperation.

The crow cocks its head.

“That would be simple enough,” it muses, in a voice drawn from depths too great for such a small body to contain. Each word resonates, syllables and ankle bones shifting like tectonic plates do.

Like they so recently did.

“Is that what you desire, child?”

Again, the boy is left shaken. “W-what?”

“A well,” the crow clarifies. “Is that your wish?”

“No.” It is a reply that the boy feels more than hears, distracted by the sudden, blooming rancidity on the back of his tongue. He tastes meat. Bad meat. Tepid. Raw. It is no coincidence that the crow has begun to peck at one of the limbs littering the plaza: an arm, sprawled across the bloody sigil and starting to bloat. The hand on its end reaches out from beneath a thousand pounds of debris, wriggling as avian appetites grant it the illusion of movement, the illusion of life.

The illusion of help.

The boy clears his throat. “I want you to rebuild the town. You can, right? That’s what Mom’s book says.”

A crow should not be able to hum. And yet, there is no better way to describe the sound the bird makes as it considers its young summoner, seeing through the soot and the lesions and the thirteen years that he wears on his face like bruises.

“Rebuilding a town won’t rebuild a life, little one.”

“Maybe not,” the boy agrees. “But it’ll give the survivors a better chance at continuing theirs. I mean, we can’t just sit around and wait for aid that won’t come! Have you seen what it’s like out there? The government will drag its feet, the insurance companies will claim nothing is covered, and—and we can’t all fucking depend on GoFundMe!”

If ever a crow has given a sympathetic nod, it does so now.

“Very well,” the bird coos. Wings silent as gloaming, it perches atop a collapsed wall, meeting the child’s manic gaze. “If the modern ways won’t save your village, I can help you using… older customs. However, I will require your assistance. Is it a deal?”

“Yes, fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I wouldn’t have invoked you if I wasn’t,” the boy grumbles, wilting. Weary. The fist he scrubs beneath his eye comes away smeared ichor-black; grit crackles between his molars when he sets his jaw and sighs. “What do you need me for?”

Malphas smiles.

“A foundation.”

And the hungry ground opens wide. 

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​LB Waltz has been publishing creative works for over 20 years under various pseudonyms. They enjoy taking walks, biblically accurate depictions of angels, and reading about botanical folklore. Their debut collection, UNDERNEATH THE PERSIMMON TREE, can be found on Amazon, Timber Ghost Press’s website, and atop mossy tree stumps in the dark heart of the forest.

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