Ink Portals

A late night visitor

13

That night Arthur was caught up in a string of strange dreams. There were visions of a harsh land where enormous bears roamed the sloping mountain sides. He saw a gang of ravens picking at the carcass of a wolf, pulling out and feasting on its tongue and eyeballs, shaking their shiny, blood-drenched beaks with the trophies of its flesh.

Arthur shot up, sweaty and disoriented, and stared straight into the beady eyes of a visitor perched at the foot of his sleeping mat. The raven sat staring at him, its feathers snugly draped around it, like a tattered black winter coat.

"Wh- what do you want?" Arthur whispered, rubbing his eyes.

"Wadio want!" the bird squawked like a parrot, turning its head to peer at Arthur with its other eye.

"Sh!" Arthur said, holding a finger to his lips.

Abby stirred under the blankets beside him and mumbled something. Arthur and the bird continued to stare at one another with a kind of mutual intrigue.

"Can't sleep, huh?" Arthur said. "What do you say we go exploring, what do you think about that, little buddy?"

The raven bobbed up and down, as if in agreement, then turned and walked over to the door, scraping it's talons along the floor as it made its way out of the room and down the hall. Arthur was watching through his puppet's eyes. He could see the door to the guest quarters where Pierre slept; the bird waddled by and kept going until it reached the second door. Arthur could hear Jack snoring from behind the paper door panel, it was strange not hearing with his own ears but, instead, hearing with his mind; he was hearing what the raven heard through a form of telepathy.

The bird glanced down the hall at the last door and snuck towards it, as quietly as its cumbersome feet would allow. It pushed at the wooden door-frame with the tip of its beak and slid the door open without a sound, then it shuffled inside and looked around. The inside of the room was dark with only a narrow bar of moonlight slanting in through the window by Kazunori's bed.

Arthur was delighted to see a flat screen television mounted on the wall in front of the bed, and a gaming console on a little coffee table below it.

"Would ya look at that?" Arthur said, smiling from where he sat on the sleeping mat in his room. "The old master is a closet gamer. So that's what the solar panels are for."

The raven flapped its wings and hopped up onto the coffee table to inspect a stack of games next to the console.

"Would you like a tour of my room while you're here?" Kazunori said, snatching up the startled bird with one hand around its neck and the other cupped below its belly.

"Oh shit!" Arthur blurted out, with a surprised spasm, kicking Abby in the back next to him.

"What the hell, Arthur?" Abby moaned, rolling over on her side, still half asleep.

"You should respect the privacy of others, Arthur," Kazunori said, speaking softly into the raven's ear while holding it close to his lips. "We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, try to get some sleep."

Arthur blinked in the darkness of his room and the raven in Kazunori's hands vanished into a dwindling pile of feathers at the old man's feet.

Kazunori chuckled and shook his head as he got back into bed.