Chapter 1
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ROBBIE suspected bad times were coming when the biggest raven he’d ever seen took up residence like a weather vane on his raccoon-and-mannequin-infested house—better known as The Castle. Winter in Ohio was bare and brown—depressing to a kid like me used to the coast and the tropics. We were trudging across Robbie’s front yard when this black menace swooped in on the tower and crowed at us: Wonk! Wonk! “Whoa!” I said. “Get a load of that bird!” Robbie narrowed his big, blue eyes at the bird. It lifted its wings, glided from the rusty roof to a bare tree in the front yard, and tipped its head at us. “Ravens are a sign of bad luck,” he said. I glanced at Elijah, who knew about things in nature. He may not really be Creek Indian like he always hoped, but he’s the best I’ve seen at knowing things about trees and weather and animals: the ways of the wild. Elijah studied the bird and scanned the sky. “Common raven,” he said uneasily. “He’s out of his habitat. Ravens stay to mountains and gorges to the north, in New England and Canada.” He looked worried about the bird. Creek’s a little strange, but he’s all right. For reasons unknown to us at the time, Elijah Creek
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