He’s holding the two crow feathers in his hand.

“Are these the ones?” he asks as he gives them to me.

I nod.

Please let this work.

Once upon a time . . .

I’m not asking magic for me.

This is for Geordie.

My sweet and gentle friend Geordie, who doesn’t deserve having his life turned into a horror show. Who doesn’t deserve to lose that life just because he tried to help the Broken Girl who can’t be fixed.

Once upon a time . . .

I hold the feathers tight and call their names. Maida and Zia.

But nothing happens.

“With fairy,” Timony says, “everything is in threes.”

With the cousins, it’s usually fours, Honey adds.

So I repeat their names again, calling those crow girls to me. A second time, a third.

I don’t have to do it a fourth.

As their names are pulled away by the wind for a third time, they drop from the sky. Two black crows, changing into two black-haired girls as they reach the ground. Skinny in their black jackets and jeans, faces brown, eyes laughing.

Once upon a time . . .

I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I’d been holding.

Thank you, I think.

I don’t know who I’m directing my thanks to. The crow girls. Nokomis. The spirit of life itself. Or maybe magic.

“Hello, hello!” Maida cries.

Zia spins in a slow circle, arms held out wide. She stops when she sees Geordie.

“Oh, look,” she says. “It’s a seaweed man.”

Maida smiles and waves at the changeling that Geordie inhabits. “Hello, hello, seaweed man,” she says.

Zia turns from him to look at me.

“And Jilly’s gone all small and girly,” she says.

Maida grins and shrinks down until she’s a small dark-haired girl, my apparent age and size. Clapping her hands, Zia follows suit. Then the two of them dance around me, singing some nonsense song.

I lay a hand on each of their shoulders and make them stop.

“Please,” I say. “This isn’t a time for joyful prattle.”

Zia looks at me with this serious expression in her eyes that transforms all her lightness and silly humour into something old and wise and just a little dark.

“Sometimes,” she says, “that’s exactly when you need a dose of joyful prattle.”

“Yes, but—”

“We’ve just come from watching crow boys tear apart a gang of bogans,” Maida says, looking as serious as her companion. “Bits of flesh and blood and bone spraying everywhere.”

Zia nods. “Because Raven said find them, but those crow boys saw what happened to Anwatan and when they’re angry, mercy’s not a word in their lexicon.”

I have no idea what they’re talking about, but apparently I’m alone in that.

“They’re dead?” Lizzie asks. “All of them?”

“Veryvery dead,” Maida replies.