The Bitching Tree

by Scott Hungerford

  The Bitching Tree

  A World Tree Tale

  Scott Hungerford

  I’d like to dedicate this book to my dear friend, Ryan Harris, one of the most avid fiction readers I’ve ever known. From watching lightning storms blast across Seattle from the roof of our Capitol Hill apartment, or trundling through Lovecraftian landscapes with characters doomed to die, The Bitching Tree is something that I’m very glad to share with him, as his passion for live and love, against all odds, has always been an inspiration to me.

  Contents

  [Won.]

  [Too.]

  [Tree.]

  [For.]

  [Phive.]

  [Sticks.]

  [Say-vin.]

  [Ate.]

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Two Years Later

  Afterword

  Crossroad Sneak Peek

  The Bitching Tree

  By Scott C. Hungerford

  Copyright 2018 by Scott C. Hungerford

  Edited by the ever-talented Sharon Turner Mulvihill

  Cover art by the amazing Christian Bentulan

  Learn more about my stories at scotthungerford.com

  Created with Vellum

  [Won.]

  Dawn rises over the Seattle skyline, painting rose over gray at the beginning of an early October morning. Bands of color warm the sky, spreading out across the sleeping city, warming cold brick and chilled metal with the first rays of day.

  Hungry, desperately so, he keeps moving along the edge of the rooftop, ticking his way alongside the gutters, scraping along the tar paper, occasionally stopping to check out a glistening tidbit or morsel stuck in the old metal edges. Hunched shoulders, bent back, intent eyes—a wriggling bug becomes another tasty, crunchy snack. It doesn’t satisfy his hunger, but it’s an early morning start. Other crows taw and fly by in the distance, on their way to meeting points and secret breakfast spots they keep to themselves. By the sound of their calls they’re nobody he knows, but they’re kin nonetheless.

  Hopping down, he makes an outstretched landing on the edge of an open garbage dumpster below, then conducts a hurried, quick series of motions along the rim, trying to mimic grace, balance, and dexterity. But just as he’s about to reach the center, without fluttering or flailing even once, he slip-slides off the slick metal. Instead of falling in, he falls out—and makes a hard landing on the pavement five feet below, a crash hard enough to clack his teeth, rattle his bones, and leave him sitting sprawl-legged on the sidewalk with pebbles and grit stinging his palms.

  “Fuck!” he yells at the world, at the rose color already starting to fade out of the morning sky. Hungry and wet and exhausted, he’s tired of being tall, of everything being so out of proportion, so giant, so skewed. He knows that after the long trip on foot up the hill from the University he’s almost to his roost. It’s just up there in the square of glass and concrete situated above the alley, in the place his body knows deep down as his home.

  He. He calls home.

  “Fuck!” he yells again, frustrated, dragging it out, making his displeasure known. A dirty gray gull on the wing, feathers ruffling with the sound of its passage, flies over the alley and steadfastly ignores his plight. His eyes follow the scavenger to make sure it isn’t going to circle around and pick a fight. When he is sure that the gull is gone, the man looks back at the ladder that led up to the roof of the three-story tenement—the accursed ladder that got him nowhere but standing above where he lived, and most certainly not within it!

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulls out the ring of metal bits, shiny and jagged. He remembers the fluid feeling of key in lock, of long appendages wrapping around a protrusion and clenching hard to open the portal wide. Getting up from the concrete, regretting the pain in his tailbone, he limps around the building to the glass entry at the front. He fumbles with the ring of puzzles until he finds the one he thinks he needs.

  Following the man’s memories, he manages to insert the metal bit and deceive the door into opening for him. Once inside, he intuitively sprints up the carpeted stairs and down the hallway to his own scratched white door, number fourteen, as if he’s running for his life.

  This door yields for him as well. Inside, it’s warm and safe. He knows he’s alone, in a small number of rooms with nowhere to hide anyone but him. After a lifetime under open sky and living at the roosting bridge by the University, the empty, low-ceilinged set of chambers seems impossibly vast and impossibly cramped all at the same time. Pictures, drawn with lead and charcoal and chalk, are displayed on the walls, showing people and places from all around the city. The bed is a mess. Clothes are scattered across the floor and the laundry basket is full to overflowing. The sink is filled with dishes that stink. The bag in the plastic bin beneath the sink smells of metal and spoil.

  Taking off his coat, he drops it on the floor by the edge of the bed. Struggling, he manages to wrest off his shoes without untying the laces, mostly by standing on the heels and shoving down with his misshapen feet with all his might. When he is barefoot he feels better, he feels—

  —like his mind is breaking. Wriggling, naked white toes instead of talons. His beautiful feathers are gone and his face is ripped apart, delicate beak replaced with brittle teeth that feel like they would break if he accidentally chewed a stone. Panicked, his body reacts, and he flees by instinct into the tiled room off the hallway. Presented with a low bowl of water and an empty knee-high basin partly protected by a hanging sheet of plastic, he chooses the latter to vomit and splatter into, not wanting to foul any water he might need to drink later. He messily throws up all of the bits and bugs he’s eaten since it happened last night at dusk. He is shocked at the fluid feel of his body giving up precious sustenance so easily.

  When the spasms cease and he has the strength to stand again, he rises and washes his face in the sink. Cold water numbs his fingers and the skin of his face. He looks up, and that’s when he sees himself for the first time. Ridiculous rounded ears and brown hair and slight nose, the curve of his jaw and the strange hollow depression resting between his nose and mouth. He touches the weird spot, the inversion, marveling at its distinction, its lack of purpose, even as his wide brown eyes dart back and forth between his hands and the mirror, trying to make sense of his reflection’s naked truth.

  Eyelashes are ridiculous, he decides, then looks away, unable to take the shame of his visage. No one would recognize him now, no one he knew and loved. He is a human now, with feet and hands and a history. He is a crow, too, lost in this skyscraper of a body, looking out through twin round-lensed windows at the ground far below, without wings to carry him and prevent him from falling. Just useless hands and elbows and knees, a featherless automaton that moves and repeats and remembers without being told.

  Drying his face on a towel, he staggers into the kitchen looking for something to clear the taste of sorrow out of his strangely shaped mouth.

  On the countertop he finds bread, a whole dark loaf of it, filled with cracked bits of grain and seeds. Stunned, never having seen such a cornucopia unguarded before, he messily tears open the plastic bag and lets the pieces of bread fall and tumble to the floor. Dropping to his knees, he begins to eat, cramming in mouthful after mouthful with both hands, ripping at the soft fabric of the food, stunned at the taste of freshness and softness that fills every bite. He resists the nearly primal urge to call out, to alert other crows to what he’s found so they can share the meal and safety in numbers together, proof from jays and gulls and whatever other thieves are nearby. But he manages to keep silent, to keep his mouth stuffed with bread, preserving the prize all to himself.

  When he’s
had his fill, when most of the loaf is gone, he lays down among the torn, yeasty remainders to make sure that no other crow gets his feast. There, half tucked beneath the sink, his head resting on a fallen hand towel, he looks at the art-covered refrigerator. He looks up at the early morning clouds moving slowly outside the window and feels a strange calm coming over him.

  He remembers himself for a moment, from back when he had feathers instead of fingers. Amid all the noise and words and images that are in constant tumult within the human mind, he grasps a fleeting memory of why he is here in the human world, lost and alone. Of how it all started for him yesterday morning beneath the canopy of the Bitching Tree, a great sprawling oak with branches reaching high enough to meet the sky.

  Protected by Old Thom, the sacred tree is the center of every crow’s world for three days’ flight in every direction. It is where the flocks that live throughout the vast human city come to argue disputes and serve justice upon one another with all the authority the tree offers. The old oak is the heart, their sanctum, the shared place where the old power rises up to aid those who seek wisdom or waking dreams within its sheltering branches.

  But he knows the Red Crow is coming. He knows their most ancient enemy is coming to claim the Bitching Tree as its own, with a winged army big enough to blot out the sky. That is why he is here now, in this body. He must find the two-in-one who will teach him to fight. Not just as a crow, but as a man, before all he knows is lost to war and death.

  But as terrifying as this knowledge is, he is exhausted. He lets himself fade into sleep, gently, bit by bit, until he makes himself dream of interlaced branches and the smell of warm feathers. But that soon changes and fades as the sacred tree vanishes from beneath him, from around him. Then he is gliding silently down into the unknowable darkness, with only the cold, wailing wind beneath his wings.

  [Too.]

  Awake. The light is different inside the apartment, and he is cold. Cobb doesn’t know how much time has passed, whether it has been hours or days. But he can feel from his stiff joints and the cotton towel’s imprint on his face that he’s been on the kitchen floor for a long time.

  Disoriented, he stares through the window at the glow from the streetlight, the electric radiance driving back the darkness of night. In the distance, the sky’s color indicates that dawn will be coming soon—a full day and night has come and gone. He reaches up, grips the counter with his oddly capable hand, then leverages himself to his feet. The floor around him is littered with stale bits of bread from his tasty meal.

  As he stares at the burners of the old electric stove, the spiraling metal pieces going around and around all the way to the center, he remembers Old Thom telling him that when he sleeps, when he dreams, he will gain more of himself. That in time he will have more access to the knowledge and memories of his host. But not at the beginning, when it will be the hardest.

  He feels the need to use the bathroom and does so, taking the time to close the door though he doesn’t know why. When he is done, he reflexively flushes the toilet with a tap of the handle. He looks in the mirror, really looking at himself for the first time in the reflection.

  “Cobb,” he says after a little while, in a voice that seems somehow unused to speaking. “My name is Cobb,” he says again. “Cobb Edison. That’s my name.” He suspects he’s young by human standards, and maybe handsome. Not old enough to be trapped under his mother’s wing, but not old enough to nest yet, either. Short brown hair, kind eyes, and smooth skin that feels a bit too taut around the bones.

  Everything seems clearer now, now that he’s slept, now that Old Thom’s magic has had the time to make the integration a bit more complete. Seeing the messy, bug-strewn vomit in the bathtub, he fiddles with the shower handle to turn the water on, to run the debris down the drain. But even though it is gushing down below, he can’t figure out how to get water to stream out of the tube overhead. After messing with the handles for a while, he finally clears his head, chooses to not think about it and lets the human pattern run by itself. Within seconds his hands lift the correct toggle—and the showerhead begins to noisily spray water, causing him to jump back in alarm and surprise.

  “This is the part where I shower,” Cobb says aloud, then strips down and steps in, scrubbing away the last bit of regurgitation on the floor of the tub with his fleshy big toe. Using too much soap, he lathers up, then stands beneath the water, trilling softly as the hot, gurgling spray pummels the tension out of his upper shoulders and back. It feels too unbelievably good to stop.

  When the water eventually runs cold, he does stop. He gets out, towels off, then attempts to brush his teeth. The buzzing of the powered toothbrush is too disturbing for him. It reminds him of electric cables—and everyone knows that buzzing power lines can kill. After the third try he drops the noisy device into the sink, digs out an old bristly toothbrush from the drawer and finishes the job.

  As he starts to get dressed, pulling on the same jeans, shirt, and underwear he wore during yesterday’s excursions, he also pulls on a black long-sleeved overshirt he likes from the laundry pile. There are heavy things in the back pockets of his pants. He pulls out one odd thing, a rectangle of smooth plastic with a shiny, scratched front. He taps at it, knocks it on the edge of a table, then even bites it with his weird, ineffectual teeth. But nothing of note happens. Shrugging, he puts the device back in his pocket, knowing that it’s important even if he can’t figure out why.

  Then he pulls the other thing out, a slick leather animal-skin construction that folds open and closed and is filled with little colored plastic rectangles. This puzzles him more than the first thing. But he puts it back where he found it, as it feels just as important.

  As Cobb dresses, he looks around the sparse apartment at the furnishings and decorations that make up the place. Books, sketchbooks and pens are scattered everywhere on tables and chairs, as are old bills, unopened junk mail, and a few art magazines with strange covers.

  Amid the clutter, set up on the edge of the drawing desk like a shrine, is a framed picture of a beautiful human woman with blonde hair and a soft-looking curve to her neck. All around the frame, the clutter keeps a careful, if not respectful, distance. Cobb wonders who she is. He is sure the human would know if he could ask him. But the human is somewhere deep inside him, slumbering and senseless, beyond his reach.

  “Soon enough,” Cobb says as he picks up the picture frame, reverently wipes the dust off with the hem of his shirt, then puts it carefully back into place. “I just want to return to who I was, just as soon as we finish up all this business.”

  Business. Scratching his head, he tries to remember what he was supposed to be specifically doing right now. Thirsty, he goes into the kitchen to get something to drink from the refrigerator. He knows that he has to go north, to see a man who was also two-in-one, in someplace called … Carpeta? Cardoor? Corboba? But when he opens the fridge, when he sees the long carton on the second shelf—he knows instantly what lies within.

  “That’s barbaric!” Cobb announces to the room, to no one in particular, before pulling the carton out of the fridge, setting it down on the counter and carefully lifting open the top. Ten eggs sat among twelve pockets, all white and shiny, unlike any egg he’d seen before. He couldn’t recall being so offended at the idea of eggs being chilled, even as he cracked one open one-handed and swallowed down the delicious contents in a single gulp.

  Three more eggs met their fateful end before he decided he was satisfied. He put the remainder back in the fridge, then swept the sticky shells into the sink.

  “I need to be going,” he said, then headed back into the bedroom, looking for something to put things into. A set of clean clothes. An alarm clock, his toothbrush from the bathroom—all these things and more he unceremoniously stuffed into a leather backpack he found in the small closet by the front door. He gathered the things as if by rote, as if sleepwalking from moment to moment. Only occasionally would he stop and look around, delighted by some smal
l, shiny object he hadn’t noticed, before shaking his head and letting the body run its course.

  When he felt satisfied that he had all the things he needed, he took a heavy leather coat from the hall closet, smooth and oily smelling. He shrugs it on, impressed by the weight and the ruggedness. Then black socks and brown shoes, hiking boots with dark red laces he likes more than food.

  “Cor … Cordough … Cordova. Cordova!” He remembered it now, how Old Thom had taught him the human word over the course of weeks, ingraining the rhythmic, singsong nonsense phrase into him until he couldn’t sleep or eat without thinking of the sound. Now he just had to get there, wherever there was. He hoped that his person would know where it was, even though he was buried deep. Closing his eyes, he whispered the name over and over again like a mantra, hoping that the host would just take him there, perhaps just down the street or over the hill, where he could meet the two-in-one who would teach him how to save his people.

  But the body didn’t move. Opening one eye, he said the word again, this time more like an invocation than a prayer. He liked the way the v rolled off his large, thick, meaty tongue with all the extra edge and subtle motion. But the body still didn’t move. The human Cobb didn’t know this place, this location. He was going to be forced to puzzle it out.

  “Fuck,” he whispered quietly, before grabbing the backpack and slamming his way out of the apartment, not bothering to lock the door.

  Out on the street in the early morning light, Cobb looked around for signs that might indicate where Cordova might be, trying to make sense of the indecipherable symbols on the street placards. It amazed Cobb just how much of the human world was filled with these kinds of messages, how they needed so many reminders of which way to go and what to do. Old Thom had taught him about the ringing bells at the University, about how humans counted time with one arbitrary, artificial segment following another, rather than watching the sun and the light, or marking the wind that changed whenever the tides shifted from slack to flow and back again.