• The Black Birds
    By: Roxanna D. Lyons

    I looked through the ragged and dingy window of the small withered hut as candlelight flickered around the windowsill. Shoulders tense, eyes fraught. My mother looked over my shoulder as thunderclouds rumbled in the distance. A disapproving groan from the walls confirmed that the winds were strong outside and another horrible storm was making its' way to New Orleans again.
    "Five." My mother whispered grimmly to herself.
    I whirrled around to see her face, eyes cold and distraught, "By all means, what on Earth are you talking about?"
    "Counting Crows." She sighed heavily, looking to the floor and shaking her head. A strand of her silver-blonde hair escaped from her braid to wisp into her eyes, and she did nothing, "One is bad, two is luck, three is health, four is wealth, five is sickness, and six? Six is...", But she failed to finish her sentence, her voice cracking and failing to say the final word of her odd superstision.
    I looked back out the window and swallowed, a lump forming in my throat. Five hulking black birds sat in the bare, intertwining trees only yards away from their home. The sat perfectly still, even though the window blew this way and that. The eerie thing was, they were staring at her. Waiting. Waiting for what?
    "I wish there was three," I whispered, "For Sokatra's sake."
    Mother looked to my sister, eyes prudent, as a response.
    For two months now, my little sister, Sokatra, had been horribly ill. Every doctor in east Louisiana had seen her, all with different diagnosis. Pneumonia, Influenza, Tuberculosis, Typhoid fever, Smallpox, Scarlet fever, Tooth infections. They's all been tested, but none of them were right. The tests only made my little sister weaker, and risking her life even more. I'd wanted to scream at them. Fight them. Make them stop, but they kept poking her with needles as though she were some defensless lab rat instead of my 6-year-old little sister.
    I shook the thoughts away and looked to the small cot set up in the corner for her. My heart dropped into my stomach as I saw the small lump under the moth-eaten blankets, ragged strawberry blonde hair hng lifelessly over her thin features. She didn't look like the energenic little girl who cried whenever someone ate meat, who had refused presents on Christmas and her birthday because there was a little girl in the alley on Main Street who had nothing. She looked lifeless, like one of the little girls she used to help.
    I krept over to her bedside and held her frail, clammy hand.
    Her large blue eyes opened the tiniest bit to look at me, "DiaVolona?" She murmmered weakly, voice raspy and complexion pale enough to make snow look charred.
    I nodded, "It's me, Soka."
    She looked at me pitifully, "Are you okay?"
    The question stunned me. Out of all the things that mattered right now, was I okay? Not herself. Of course not herself...
    "I'm just fine, Soka... I'm just fine..." I whispered.
    She smiled as if everything were perfectly all right and her hand went limp, head relaxing into the pillow as her eyes closed.
    "Soka?" I asked, voice raising slightly with alarm and hinted with fear.
    No answer.
    I felt her pulse and grimaced with agony, looking to Mother, "She's-"
    "Dead." My mother muttered.
    My eyebrows narrowed, befuddled, "How did you-?", I began, but my sentence was cut off again.
    Her eyes cut away from the window as the dim shadows of candlelight danced across her face, "There are six crows." She said stiffly, "Six...Is death."

    The End.