Ralph Travers, a curate in Exeter, struggles with his conscience after inadvertently making the Devil, Bucky, known to children through a rhyme. As children start disappearing, he faces the consequences of his actions.
At St Mildred’s, every blessing has a shadow. Cecily Scratcher waits beneath the lychgate to tell seven old warnings of beauty, grace, sorrow, roads, love, labour, and goodness, and of the children made to carry what adults should not.
About a 40-minute read or 1hr 3-minute listen. In Hagley Stile, magpies are never merely birds. One by one, the old rhyme becomes a reckoning as sorrow, joy, birth, theft, silver, gold and secrets gather beneath black-and-white wings.