What was she doing? She put the pressed fruit down on the table and backed away like it was something live and dangerous. She spat out what was already in her mouth and not yet down her throat or her front. She liked sweet stuff, but not that much, not that intensely. Yet she could see her fingers glistening and had the overwhelming urge to suck the syrup off them.

She made a conscious effort to stop herself. Boiling the grain up, making a porridge, it would take time. She could do that: she didn’t have anything else do. Crows wasn’t around, and judging from what was missing, he wouldn’t be coming back. This was her castle now, and it certainly seemed to be responding to her presence by becoming more complete. She filled a metal pot with grain, listening to the way they bounced against sides, and carried it outside to fill it with water.

The sun was setting, and the sky was turning purple with dusk. The crows were coming back to roost, their black shapes wheeling above her and around the incomplete tower. They called to her, and she watched the way their wings snapped and flapped as they turned.

She felt a longing, a terrifying ache, that told her she should be up there, with them, and not concerning herself with such mundane things as cooking. Birds didn’t do that; they lived off the wild bounty of the world.

She clenched her fists and closed her eyes, and the feeling passed.

Crows had piled up firewood and set the pot over it. She tried to copy what he’d done, but inevitably she was unpractised, and she hadn’t been paying that much attention. The wood, she could find, stacked away in another room, but it came with no instructions on how much to use or how to lay it out. She guessed, and caught it alight by willpower alone. When the first flames had died down, she dropped a scorched, sooty flat stone into the middle of the fire, and carefully placed the pot on top of it.

The heat reached her, and made her shy away, her feathers trembling. The pot settled on the stone at an angle, but it didn’t spill. She’d need to remember to pad her hand when she retrieved it later. When she looked up, the crows were still circling and calling. It would take a while for the grain to cook down. Time enough to climb the tower.