Sometimes, it's good to revisit old friends.

The Crow Girls have never been major players in Charles de Lint's collection of Newford novels and short stories. They appear infrequently, in a smattering of short stories and one or two novels -- most prominently, if memory serves, in Someplace to Be Flying, in which their corvid theme is admirably suited -- but whenever they appear, I smile, and I can easily picture them in my head.

They, like so many of de Lint's characters, have become real to me over the years.

Newford Stories: Crow Girls is a slim collection of their stories. It contains five tales, most of which I have read, in one form or another, before. I'd previously seen "Twa Corbies," for instance, in a briefer form, illustrated by Charles Vess and published in Vess's graphic collection Ballads.

Even so, picking up a copy of Crow Girls seemed like an obvious and reasonable expenditure. It's cool to have these stories together in one place.

The eponymous crow girls, Maida and Zia, are cousins -- not in a familial sense, but a mythical one; they are shape-shifting beings from a time before time, older than mankind, both avian and humanoid and something more, changing form as their whims dictate. They are mischievous, existing always in the now, flighty, easily distracted, with malleable views on personal property and space.

Another thread running through the book is perennial Newford favorite Jilly Coppercorn, one of de Lint's longest-running and best-developed characters. A seasoned artist, she is credulous when it comes to a wide range of impossibilities, so she has experienced a great many things that a more skeptical person would miss altogether.

Here, she provides the perfect balance between the mundane world and the hidden magic overlaying it.

Coming in under 150 pages, Crow Girls is not a big time commitment. You'll read through it quickly, but I bet you'll come back to it again and again ... whenever you need a quick reminder that there's magic in the world.

[ visit Charles de Lint online ]