Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap.

  Faint and directionless, the sound began.

  It emerged as though from a great distance, as though from an unfathomable depth. Floating toward the edges of her awareness—indistinct, unobtrusive. Submerged as Edda was within the warm embrace of sleep, in that blissful place where sense and thought are dulled, she barely heard it. Even when she did, when a syllable or two took shape into a sharp tip or a piercing tap, her mind slumbered. It connected no meaning to the sound.

  Perhaps it did not want to.

  Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap.

  How long did she linger there—in that languorous, unthinking state, with tip after tap hovering, persistent, but just out of reach? There was no way to tell. Sleep warps time; stretching and compressing it simultaneously, a distortion made all the more potent by the sweet, foggy haze of the sleeping powder. Like cotton over her eyes and stuffed into her ears, it resisted every attempt to rouse her.

  Yes, perhaps she remained there for hours. Perhaps only minutes. But it was not long enough.

  Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap.

  Against her will, the sound began to solidify and her consciousness grasped it, like slippery fingers finding purchase on a ledge. She knew it, then. A comfort in the deafening silence with only her slow, laboured breaths as company. An anchor to a reality where she had withered away awaiting death. A familiar, unwelcome sound. She lurched, trying to pull away, but it only grew closer, unwilling to release her.

  Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap.

  It was there, in the corner of her cell, behind the cracked, clay chamber pot; that steady, inescapable drip. And then, it grew louder, and she was there, too, upon her paltry bed of straw and stone; her very essence reduced to skin, bone, and agony. No. Not here. Not again.

  Another lurch, more violent this time, more desperate. And then hot, hard pain, blazing up her injured wrist and blooming across the side of her head and hip. She must have cried out, but she could hear nothing except that ominous, relentless tip, tap. Her eyes were open now, rolling wildly from side to side, but there was no light to see by.

  Her entire body shook as she lay there, crumpled in pain and terror. The heaviness of sleep had dissipated almost entirely and yet she did not move, for fear that her prison cell would materialize around her. Confusion battled with panic as she struggled to make sense of the situation. Mother and maiden, please. Not the dungeons. Not again.

  But it was carpet she lay upon, not straw and stone. She was clothed and warm. No hunger gnawed at her breast. But where did the sound come from?

  Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap.

  As though compelled, she jerked her head upward. Already, her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness, but through the window, she caught the moon’s glow; full, round, and white amidst a sky black with clouds. And there before her, silhouetted against that forgiving light, was the unforgiving black outline of a massive crow. It watched her with one shining red eye, and with malicious deliberateness, rapped its great beak upon the glass.

  Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap.

  The witch’s messenger had returned, and it wanted to be let in. She knew it as well as the crow knew of the suffering it caused her. And it intended her to allow it entry, just as it intended to drive her to madness with that abominable tapping if she did not.

  “No, no,” she whimpered, lips dry and quaking along with the rest of her. She clapped her hands to her ears, frantically attempting to drown the sound out. “Marta,” she called, her voice breaking as it faded into the silence without response. Then again, louder, more urgently, “Marta!”

  But nothing and no one stirred in the shadows of the chamber. Each time she tore her eyes away from the crow’s unwavering glare, she could make out only the faintest shapes in the darkness beyond the moonlight’s reach. And yet, she dared not take her eyes off the bird for long. She knew that Marta must be there, asleep in her pallet, and yet she may well have been alone with the ominous creature. A memory stirred within her, fleeting but sure—Marta’s round face creased with fatigue, her brown eyes smudged with sleeplessness, and Edda’s own instruction to drink the sleeping powder this night.

  A sob escaped her lips. Tip. Tap. Tip. Tap. She pressed her fingers into her ears harder, but still the sound persisted as though it came from within her, louder even than the thunder of her own heartbeat. And perhaps it did, dredged up like some rotten thing from the deepest parts of her memory. She could not forget it. How could she ever forget it?

  She thought first to crawl to Marta. To shake the woman awake, to demand the salt and the garlic and the wine, that they might somehow drive the cursed animal off. But try as she might, she remained rooted in place; paralyzed by her fear and unable to overcome it. For as long as the crow held her in its gaze, for as long as it tapped upon her window, she could do little else but cower.

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  Or let it in.

  Her breaths felt raw in her throat. Her head had begun to throb, a heavy pulsing from where she had hit it in her fall. Her abused left wrist grew swollen and stiff as she held the hand to her ear; the effort futile, as the noise continued uninterrupted. She did not know how long she endured like that, locked in that losing battle. Seconds blurred together into minutes, as though she were trapped in some black dream. But the pain reminded her that this was no such thing. She would have no such luck, to wake from this.

  But somehow, as the fear settled like a familiar veil around her and her panicked frenzy calmed to a steady dread, a horrible understanding, a terrible acceptance began to grow within her. It was only a matter of time; if she did not open the window tonight, or tomorrow night, or the night after, she would open the window eventually. The crow’s unblinking eyes promised her that.

  Choose, the crow had said to her on that night in the forest. Even though it knew there had never been a choice at all.

  She could delay the inevitable, but that was all she would be doing. She could hold herself here tonight, through hours of that haunting sound and the mind-numbing anxiety it brought with it. Morning would come and, with it, relief, and when the sun set next, she and Marta would take the necessary precautions. They would rally themselves and sit together through the night. In the nights to come, perhaps they would take turns sleeping—one standing guard while the other lay restless and terrified of the crow’s return. And then, when they had worn themselves down, when they were almost delirious from the constant vigilance and lack of sleep, it would come back.

  The crow would find a way in; and whether that was before it drove off her sanity, or after, was up to her. That was the choice she had been given now.

  As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, the crow paused its incessant tapping. Slowly, hesitantly, she dropped her hands from her ears, which seemed to ring in the sudden silence. Her heart pounded within her chest as she considered what she was about to do. Quickly, almost guiltily, she snuck a glance in Marta’s direction. There was no indication that she had been disturbed, that the tense confrontation had reached her at all.

  Just as well. The burden of speaking with the beast would be hers alone.

  Still shaking despite her resolve, she stumbled to her feet. The distance between where she had fallen and the window felt unbearably small. Her only consolation, and it was one that still puzzled her, was that her last conversation with the crow had given her, so far, the only hints as to how she might save herself. She swallowed thickly. She had heeded its words, and—as far as she could tell—the path she was on now diverged from the one she had been on before.

  It had helped her, after a fashion. Perhaps it would again.

  Raising her hand to the latch of the window, she struggled for a moment to bring the trembling limb under control. Even the thought of something that might help her did not eliminate her terror, and her strength seemed to have vanished as a result. It was a witch’s messenger she faced, after all. Who knew what blight it brought with it? Who knew what blight she now invited into her chamber?

  Tip. Tap, the crow reminded her upon the glass. Edda turned the latch down and pushed the window open.

  Frigid air spilled into the room, icy with winter’s last breaths. She backed away swiftly, never taking her eyes from the crow as it hopped past the threshold, alighting with a flutter of wings upon the writing desk. The bed came up behind her, preventing her from putting even more space between herself and the beast. And there they remained for a tense moment, each regarding the other.

  “Why have you returned?” Edda whispered, barely able to manage the words but unable to tolerate the crow’s silent scrutiny any longer.

  “You do not listen to the whispers,” the crow replied in its otherworldly voice. Gooseflesh rose along Edda’s skin and she pressed the back of her legs to the bed harder, wishing that she might find herself on the other side of it. “You do not listen to the whispers, and they wane with each moon. Soon, new whispers will take their place, and by then, it will be too late.”

  Edda’s mind raced. Indeed, she had not much considered the second piece of advice the crow had given her. “I haven’t heard any whispers,” she said, bewilderment tempering her fear, “What-what do you mean by too late?”

  The crow cocked its head at her, ruby eye glinting in the moonlight. “You escape from the darkness, but the whispers are within it.” It paused, and for the first time that night, took its eyes off her. Ruffling its feathers slightly, it looked pointedly in Marta’s direction. “Though there are other things awaiting you there as well.”

  Edda felt a foreboding thrill run through her, as though a glacial droplet raced down her back. Wrapping her hands around herself, she stammered out, “I-I don’t understand.”

  The crow faced her squarely once again. “But you do.” Edda shook her head vehemently. “You have always understood more than you let on.” The crow’s eerie voice seemed to take on a harder, more severe tone. “You understood, and yet you did nothing, and now you squander the gift you have been given pretending that you do not understand.”

  Edda’s eyes widened and the very core of her seemed to convulse. And yet, through the rush of shock, and fear, and confusion, a trickle of anger found its way. Her voice grew louder with her frustration, “It is no gift to return to this cursed place!”

  Caw caw caw, the crow seemed to laugh—but there was no mirth to be found in it. Its red eyes were cold, unforgiving, and Edda could only ball her hands into fists beneath their judging glimmer.

  It knew. Oh, it knew. She could not escape its knowing. It would not let her.

  The crow spread its massive wings, then, and for a horrible moment, the moon seemed to disappear behind it. The chamber was plunged into a darkness so absolute that Edda felt her heart stop. She gasped, scrambling backward onto the bed. In a voice that seemed to surround her, to penetrate her to the very bone, the crow intoned, “A gift or a punishment. You will be the one to decide.”

  With a mighty heave that sent everything upon the desk flying, the crow launched itself toward the vanity. In the blink of an eye, it grabbed the folded packet of wax paper that had been left there, before circling back around to the open window in a fluid glide that left Edda’s bed curtains rustling.

  “No!” Edda cried, as she realized, too late, what had been taken.

  But already, the witch’s messenger was little more than a disappearing speck on the face of the moon.

  It watched her with one shining red eye...