The Bitching Tree

by Scott Hungerford

  “I’m just trying to get to … Cordova.” He thought for a moment. “What do you mean, stay there? At the airport?”

  She took a moment to gather her calm, to center herself, still a shadow against the light. “My father called me on the radio,” she said in a much quieter voice, trying to avoid scaring Cobb any more than she already had. “He had a vision that you’d arrived. I’m here to pick you up and deliver you to him. Tomorrow morning. In one piece.”

  “Your father?” Hope grew in Cobb’s breast. “The two-in-one? The teacher?”

  “Yes,” she said, still irritated. “The teacher.”

  “But how did you—was it the raven? Did the raven tell you?”

  “I don’t talk to birds,” she said curtly, before she turned and headed back to the truck. “Now get your ass in the truck before it gets any colder.”

  “What’s your name?” Cobb asked her once he’d climbed up into the truck’s passenger seat. He put on his seatbelt as she peeled out, driving down the road as fast as her old truck would allow.

  “What’s yours?” she demanded, turning the fiddle music way down with a twist of the radio knob.

  He blinked, then decided to answer her question. “Cobb. Cobb Edison.”

  “Cobb is a funny name, Cobb.” In the glow of the dashboard lights, he could see she was wearing jeans and a ratty blue pullover knit sweater, tucked beneath a pale blue winter coat. Her dark wet hair, braided over her left shoulder, had left a damp patch on the front of the jacket. She had dark skin, not pale like his own borrowed flesh. “What was your name before that? Before you became a two-in-one?”

  He tried to think of it, to remember the emotion and challenge that could be put into a single ringing cry. But his own name was just as beyond him as the tongue of ravens and seagulls and everything else in between. He struggled but said nothing, not sure what to say.

  “Never mind,” she finally said. “It isn’t important. How long have you been on the ground?”

  “Grounded? You mean, human?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A day and a day.”

  She gave him a somewhat shocked look. “You made it up here to Alaska, all on your own in two days? That’s impressive. Most of the ones that come to find my father take months before they’re ready to find their way out to the edge of the world.”

  “I never said I was ready. But the need is urgent. The Red Crow—”

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” she admonished without taking her eyes from the road. She slapped the steering wheel with both hands for emphasis. “I don’t get involved. I don’t want to know about the drama. I don’t want to know who is doing what to who and why. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Cobb said, shocked and stinging at her abrupt rejection.

  She calmed herself, and took a few moments to choose her next words, just a bit more carefully. “Sorry. I just want to know who you are, and what this person you’re wearing is like.”

  Cobb nodded. “I think I understand. Are you one of us? A two-in-one?”

  “No. I was born human. But I have one foot in each world whether I like it or not. Have you eaten anything?”

  “Some bread. And some eggs, this morning.”

  “We’ll get you something to eat before bed.”

  “What’s your father like?”

  “We’re not going there either, Cobb,” she said. “My relationship with my father is personal and exceptionally complicated. But I bring people like you to him to be tested. The rest is up to you.”

  “Tested?”

  “Within an inch of your life. It’s not enough just to be human or think like a human. To fight like a human, that takes a certain kind of character.” She looked him up and down. “I don’t think you have that quality, Cobb. You’re too unassuming.”

  The truck hit a bump in the road with a jolt; Cobb nearly bounced out of his seat belt. But she just clenched the wheel, like she’d hit that particular pothole a hundred times before.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Hawna,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does Cobb mean?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t get to name him.”

  “Cobb sounds like the stick that’s inside an ear of corn. Edison is the name of a famous human inventor who invented just about everything under the sun.”

  Cobb remembers liking corn, both as a human and as a crow. “And Hawna?”

  He could just barely see her smile, a line of white teeth in the glow of the dashboard lights. “It means ‘river.’”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “A name is a name, like any other.” With that she turned up the fiddle music again, loud enough to blot out any further attempt at conversation. But Cobb didn’t mind. He settled back into his seat and felt himself start to become warm under the constant barrage from the heater vents. While the vehicle still felt claustrophobic to him, it was far better than the cramped car earlier today.

  As they crossed over a huge concrete bridge, he saw that some of the serpentine riverbeds below were empty and some were filled with snowmelt, as if the water had cut hundreds of paths over time through the silt and stone. Change seemed constant here in Cordova; it made him wonder why people lived in such a strange northern place.

  As Hawna tapped her palms against the wheel in time with the music, Cobb turned and stared out the window into a world lit by moonlight, and wondered where her father was amid all the cold and black.

  The long straight road finally began to turn and twist once they rose up out of the river plain. Within the space of another fiddle song they were running along the edge of a long black lake tucked up against the skirts of a mountain. Looking out of the passenger window, Cobb could see a few lights across the water, from houses scattered here and there among the trees.

  After turning off the main highway, Hawna powered down a road surrounded by towering trees, the truck’s headlights casting strange shadows as she drove through the forest. Cobb could imagine whole flocks of ravens nesting in those trees, dreaming sharp, bloody dreams, black-ivory beaks tucked beneath massive wings.

  Hawna turned again, and then again, this time down a little dirt road, ending up at a pair of wooden log houses that sat side by side. One was clearly new, looking clean and pristine with lights on inside. The other was decades old, its dark windows cracked and broken like shattered teeth. The older house’s roof sat at just enough of an angle to give the idea of imminent collapse, but Cobb did notice something like smoke coming out of a hole in the mossy roof and wondered what that was all about.

  “Out,” she told him as she parked the truck. She opened the door, hopped out, then slammed her door shut. Getting out himself, he just barely remembered to grab his backpack, then slammed the door just as hard. He followed her into the nice house on the left, through the unlocked front door to the cozy space inside.

  The gigantic stone fireplace was the first thing that struck him. Aside from the intriguing flames trapped within, the mantel above it was covered with pictures, odds and ends, spare keys, empty wine glasses, and a pair of hurricane lanterns at either end. In front of it, a tattered couch, two comfy chairs, and a bare, scratched, scarred dining room table cluttered the front room. All of them sat together on the scratched wooden floor like old friends.

  Then he noticed a thing on the little table by the kitchen doorway, a boxlike device with a long metal antenna and an orange light. The box gently hissed and crackled a bit as he walked past, like a thing alive.

  In the kitchen, small and tight with a single window on one side, sat a black iron stove that seemed to be held together with more rust than bolts. Next to the kitchen door was the open bathroom door, revealing a toilet and a tiny shower with red-and-blue fish patterned curtains. As Cobb nosed around, fascinated by all of the clutter and furnishings, Hawna went into her own room. From where he stood, he could see that it was dominated by a giant bed covered with a multicolore
d explosion of handmade quilts and throw pillows.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she told him as she shucked off her coat and tossed it on the bed. Following her lead, he took off his own coat and set his backpack down on the floor, out of the way where nobody would trip over it. “You’ll be staying the night here. I’ll drive you out to my father’s place in the morning.”

  “Is it far?”

  “It’s far enough that it would take you days to walk there. Not like you could ever find the place without my help.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you tried wine?” she asked as she came out of her room.

  “Wine?” Cobb thought about it, dredged through memories. He remembered drinking wine as a human, followed by laughter, followed by great pain the morning after. It wasn’t pleasant.

  “Would you like some? I have red and white.”

  “No thanks. Do you have any water?”

  Hawna nodded, got an earthenware mug from the rack next to the sink and filled it from the tap. After he took it from her, he drank, gulp after gulp as she leaned into the fridge and pulled out bits of bread, sausage and vegetables to eat, along with three glorious hunks of cheese. As he set the empty mug down on the counter, she pulled out a bottle of red wine and two glasses from the cupboard above the sink.

  “You’re going to need a robe and a towel,” she told him while she chewed a choice bit of meat. “They’re in the bathroom cabinet, just below the second shelf.”

  “For what?”

  “For the sauna. Go ahead. You can find them.” As she finished laying out snacks on a scarred wooden cutting board, he did as he was told. Going into the bathroom and opening the cabinet, he grabbed a threadbare red towel from the pile, and then a strange robe that was many, many sizes too big. It was made of a loose, shapeless white fabric, with long sleeves. Cobb thought it seemed strange, as it didn’t seem like any clothing he’d seen humans wear before.

  When he came out of the bathroom, Hawna was holding the bottle and the glasses in one hand, and the tray of food bits in the other. At her gesture he followed her out the front door into the cold, taking a moment to close the door behind him. To Cobb’s surprise, she didn’t go toward the chain-locked door at the front of the little stone house, but to a swollen door at the back that she kicked open with her heel.

  The smoky, steamy air that billowed out from the inside made his eyes water, and freaked him out a little bit. But she gestured with the wine bottle that he was to go inside first. He entered, plunging from near freezing temperatures into a room smelling very much of steam and heat.

  Much like the other house, a huge fireplace dominated the room. But unlike the nice place where Hawna lived, this room was smaller and empty of furniture, all except for a rough table and a couple of benches pulled up in front of the fire. With rough rock walls on all sides and a smooth rock floor under his feet, it seemed to him more like a cave than a house. Everything smelled strongly of damp and woodsmoke, with a touch of a more pungent, sharp smell mixed in. Whatever the smell was, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it made Cobb want to sneeze.

  “Watch your step,” Hawna told Cobb as she put the wine and the little tray down on the table by the fireplace, in between the two benches. “The floor can be slippery.” She then took two cedar logs from a pile next to the hearth and added them to the fire. The guttering flames quickly took to the dried wood, filling the room with new light, warmth, and the delicious scent of cedar smoke.

  “What is all this?” he asked, gesturing at the things he didn’t understand.

  “It’s a sauna. It’s a kind of a steam room where you can get warm, sweat out sickness, and find yourself at the end of a hard day. My family had one for years out behind the house. But after my dad built the new place, we decided to put the old house to good use. You just get a good fire going until it’s nice and hot, heat up the stones on the rolling rack beneath, then pour water over the stones from the bucket until the room gets steamy enough that you can’t hardly see each other. Then you just sit, breathe, meditate, and let it all out.”

  “It’s very warm in here,” Cobb said.

  “It’s going to get a lot warmer. That door over there? It leads into what used to be the bathroom. You can change in there. Leave your clothes and your towel in the chest so they don’t get totally soaked. Also, don’t use the toilet, because it doesn’t work.”

  “Change?”

  “Change. Take all your clothes off. Then put on the robe so you’re not naked. When you come out, sit down on a bench and have some food. I’ll be back shortly, once I get changed as well.”

  “You used to live here? In this house?”

  “This is where I grew up. My old room was back in that corner. My dad stayed out in the living room after my mom died, until I was old enough to cook and clean for myself. But after he landed a big score on a fishing trawler, we figured it was just cheaper to build something new than to try to fix the old place up.”

  Cobb looked toward the little bathroom door with trepidation, then down at the robe in his hand. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes, because otherwise your clothes will get soaked. Now get in there and get changed. You interrupted my first sweat, and I want to finish what I started.”

  Taking a big breath to fight down his nerves, Cobb went to the bathroom door, shoved it open on squealing hinges, then went inside. He closed the door up tight as far as he could, until he could only see a thin line of firelight shining through the crack. Flicking on the chunky black light switch by the door to turn on the overhead light, he saw the cedar chest in the corner. Taking off his shoes and other clothes, he put them into the chest one by one, until he was shivering, naked in the chill air. Pulling the long robe over his head, he was relieved that it covered him up all the way down to his ankles. He didn’t mind the idea of being naked; he just didn’t like the idea of being naked in front of her.

  When he came back out into the main room, Hawna wasn’t back yet. The stone floor beneath his feet, rough and irregular, reminded him of the river plain he’d crossed to get here, another sign of how beautiful this land was. Not knowing what else to do, he sat down on one of the benches in front of the fire. He liked the way the fabric of the robe quickly warmed up, creating a pocket of heat inside that was all his own.

  When Hawna came back in, she was wearing a similar robe, though hers went down to just below her knees rather than all the way to the ankles.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “Much better,” Cobb said, really starting to enjoy the heat. “It’s very toasty.”

  “We’re just getting started,” Hawna said as she picked up a long metal stick from next to the fireplace. She used the hook end to push a rolling rack of stones beneath the grate. “When these get warmed up, we’ll begin.”

  Cobb reached over and took a piece of meat from the little tray and tasted it—and found it amazing! The salt, the chewy texture—it reminded him of some of the best food he’d ever scavenged at a human festival. Stuffing it into his mouth, he grabbed three more pieces, the tidbits of food leaving his fingertips greasy.

  “You seem comfortable in your skin,” she told him as she sat down on the other bench, taking a small piece of cheese for herself.

  “I haven’t been in it very long.”

  “No, I suppose you haven’t.”

  “Is it different for you, being different than a human? The offspring of a two-in-one?”

  “Not really. Nature or nurture, I’m a little of both. Because I was pretty much like every other kid my age, I was never treated any differently.” She poured herself a glass of wine, then took a few robust swallows. “But let’s talk about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “You have things you’ll want to say now, to the world, before you get into my father’s clutches. Because after tonight, if he accepts you, you’ll never see the world in the same way again.”

  “What do you mean, if?” Cobb panicked a little at this.<
br />
  “Like I said, he tests everyone who comes to him. If you succeed, he teaches you. If you fail, he sends you home. Either on a plane or in a box, depending on how it goes.”

  “I can’t fail,” Cobb said. He couldn’t imagine flying home in a box; getting here on a plane had been hard enough. “Too much depends upon me learning what I need to learn.”

  “You’re too wound up. Let’s do something about that.” She uncorked the bottle and poured another glass of wine, this one for him. Cobb swallowed hard, not liking the look of the brimming glass of red liquid. “Drink,” she told him, handing him the glass. “Then tell me what it’s like, being Cobb. Being you.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to know me?”

  “I want to know you, Cobb. I just don’t want you to be defined by your drama. You’re more than the situation you’ve been thrust into. That’s the soul I want to know.”

  Cobb nodded, then drank the bitter contents down like medicine, gulp after gulp, as she took up her own glass and sipped a few swallows. When he was done, he put the glass back on the table, then ate a piece of luscious, creamy cheese to cut the bitter taste.

  “I feel … alive,” he finally said, trying to find the words. “More than I have since I was young. But I miss my flock … and Old Thom, my king, who sent me here. What I’ve done today was hard. I’ve left everything behind. I’ve also left everything that this human knows, as well, on faith that someone would be here to catch me. And you did, for which I’m grateful.”

  “It’s my job,” Hawna said, nodding acknowledgment. “At least it is for now.”

  “But why are you here? In Cordova? Is this what you do?”

  “More than I’d like. I’ve worked as a flagger for a construction company for about ten years now, ever since I graduated from high school. It’s hard work, but it pays well.”

  “A flagger?”

  “When construction crews are fixing roads or bridges, I’m one of the people you see holding signs and directing traffic. It’s dangerous work, but I’ve only nearly been hit by trucks twice.”