The Edge of My Life
an excerpt

I returned to my room and slid between the heavy drape and the narrow lead window that looked over fields. Hidden thus, I felt the sharp, but faint draft of the cold winter air outside though the old window. The gray-washed white sky perhaps threatened more snow, I thought, perhaps only a dull, bitter freezing rain as dusk began to form on the land. The sky stretched out on all sides to meet the edge of the snowy fields, smooth and stark against the black stones of the gate below the window. I studied the black stones, shining with ice, and at the jagged black branches of a bare tree at the gatepost. As I watched, first one black raven, then another, dropped from high white flight to settle on a branch. Several more descended, squawking and tumbling for position on the ice-wet branches. In a short space, the black branches against the darkening snow sky filled with the sound and shape of black ravens pecking and fluttering in the cold November wind. “What news,” I asked the ravens, my breath fogging the glass and blurring the ravens and tree. “What news? News of David?” I asked. David, breaking a path through the snow, even now, as night began to fall. Carrying our message all the cold miles of necessity. “Succeed,” I thought, my prayer desperate and terse, “Succeed. My heart walks with you.”