The White Raven

The raven flew fast to­wards the Edge of the In­ferno, where the King of Tyre was wait­ing for him. His wings were slightly touch­ing the dark green branches of the tall trees. From time to time, he raised high above them just to see the sur­round­ings bet­ter. The cold­ness of fresh air was hurt­ing his feath­ers like thou­sands of needles. He con­tin­ued to fly for a couple of hours un­til his wings bore no more. The pain was flood­ing his en­tire body like a dis­ease that in­stalls and is trans­mit­ted fast from one cell to an­other un­til it com­pletely en­vel­opes everything.

The raven closed his grand wings and star­ted to des­cend from the sky. From a dis­tance, he looked like a spear thrown from Val­halla. His feath­ers were as dark as a cloudy night when the moon is hid­den. His eyes were as glassy as the wa­ter sur­face, and his claws were big enough to catch a baby from its mother’s arms. His beak was sharp and dark col­oured. At night, the mys­ter­i­ous creature could not be spot­ted due to his black colouration. 

The raven landed on the ground and shook his wings. A rain of wa­ter drops was thrown in all dir­ec­tions as if the raven had brought the rain from the clouds with him. A few rain­drops sat still on his left-wing and looked like white crys­tals. Un­der a new light, his feath­ers looked dif­fer­ent, a com­bin­a­tion of black and dark blue. 

The raven star­ted to walk through the dense forest as if he walked through his own king­dom. The en­tire forest looked deser­ted, the bird seemed to be the only ex­ist­ing liv­ing creature. He found an old tree to rest on and he fell asleep, with his eyes still open. Dark­ness un­veiled it­self and light won the battle one more time. The creature blinked as a sign of wak­ing up. He raised his wings and got back into the sky again. He flew for many hours un­til he fi­nally reached the edge of the world. There, an enorm­ous gate was open, as a sign that someone was ex­pect­ing the raven. He reached the en­trance and the gates sud­denly closed with a tre­mend­ous echo. The raven re­turned every other day as if he had a jour­ney that would never come to an end. He some­times passed un­ob­served, his wings flap­ping the air in silence. 

Once, the mes­sen­ger got tired again and had been forced to land on the soil. That time, the ground was covered with snow. His claws were freez­ing and his feath­ers were barely able to move. The bird sat on a branch in or­der to stay away from the bliz­zard. Sud­denly, he felt a strong smell of blood. Starved, the scav­enger star­ted to look for the dead corpse. Strange noises were heard from the forest as if someone was griev­ing deeply. Some­where be­low the trees, a little girl was ly­ing on the ground and hardly crying. 

The raven ap­proached her with curi­os­ity. At first, the girl didn’t no­tice the creature. It seemed that she was wounded and she wasn’t able to get up and leave the woods. After a few minutes, the girl ob­served the bird, but she wasn’t afraid of the mys­ter­i­ous pres­ence. The raven got closer and closer un­til he reached right near the girl. Des­pite the hun­ger, the raven couldn’t tear her apart and star­ted to feel pity and sor­row. He flew away, and the girl star­ted to cry be­cause she thought that the only liv­ing creature that could stay with her and caress her had left her with no remorse. 

After a time, the raven got back with food in his beak. The raven stood there for many days, for­get­ting that the gates of the other world were open and wait­ing. He looked after the little girl every mo­ment, day and night. The raven watched over the girl as if she were the most im­port­ant thing in the world. 

After a while, the girl’s wound star­ted to spread over her tiny body. The Raven flew away in search for help and got back at the King of Tyre. He re­fused to help and ban­ished the raven away from his kingdom. 

The raven hur­ried back to the wounded girl, hope­less and really afraid for her life. He flew as fast as the wind, without stop­ping even if the pain was grasp­ing his body. The fog was dense, but the raven’s sight was very sharp and he man­aged to find the girl again. 

He pro­ceeded through the fog as brave as a sol­dier who pro­tects his queen with the cost of his own life. When he found the little girl, she was ly­ing on the ground in the same po­s­i­tion as the last time. The snow had covered her like a blanket, while icicles had dec­or­ated her lashes and eye­brows. Her skin was as pale as the purest snow, but with shades of purple as a sign of de­cay. Still, she was such a beauty that even the snow­flakes hap­pily agreed to fall and die on her cheek, just to touch her for a mo­ment and then melt forever. 

The raven tried to wake her up and del­ic­ately touched her frozen cheek. Noth­ing happened. He re­fused to give up on her and covered her still body with his wings. He stood there, mo­tion­less and tried to pro­tect her from the cold. After a while, the raven’s feath­ers star­ted to change their col­our and turned into a lighter shade. The ice had slowly spread on the black feath­ers un­til the cold had frozen them com­pletely. Lay­ers of snow kept fall­ing on them, over and over again, in si­lence. The raven stopped blink­ing as if the frost had claimed him too. 

Seen from above, the two creatures seemed majestic. The snow­flakes stopped feel­ing happy when they landed on their corpses be­cause they could not melt any more. The two re­mained there, with the snow still fall­ing from the sky, a poor dead girl and a no longer doomed white raven.

Anamaria Stan