The Bitching Tree

by Scott Hungerford

  “I’ve seen those people before. It’s a scary job, standing in the moving cars.”

  “It is. But if I keep saving up my pennies, maybe I’ll have enough money to go and see the world. New York City, then Egypt, and then maybe Tokyo. For now, you’re probably just thrilled to be away from people, to be out here in the vast unknown. For me, when I was growing up as a teenager, it felt like Cordova was a prison. But after I figured myself out a bit, I realized out how nice it is here, sheltered from the world between water and the mountains, between the earth and the sky. Besides, helping people like you gave me a purpose. To record the weirdness of the world for posterity in my own unique way.”

  “But what’s the purpose of it?” Cobb asked.

  “Purpose of what?”

  “The world.”

  “That’s a big question. Can you be more specific?”

  “My people—we flock, we find a mate, we nest. In time we die. The cycle continues just as sure as the sun rises every morning and sets every night. But why should anyone feel the need, feel they have the right to destroy the cycle of life for so many others? It’s so selfish. Because of the Red Crow, I have to risk everything I am, just so my flock’s cycle can continue. It seems very unfair.”

  “I suspect it’s about sacrifice,” Hawna said. In the fireplace, one of the cedar logs popped and split, scaring Cobb just a bit with the noise. “Bravery. Honor. Loyalty. My father will tell you a lot of things. But I personally think it’s the sacrifice, the giving up of your meat, your flesh, your identity so your people can stay whole. That’s the purpose of it all. That’s your destiny.”

  “Why would you call it sacrifice?” he asked. “It’s a duty. It’s my responsibility. It will be over someday.”

  She paused for a long, strange moment. “Because it may not be over someday.”

  “But the Red Crow—”

  “Remember, Cobb. I don’t give a shit about the whos or the whys. I’m trying to talk to you about you. I’m trying to tell you that for everyone who comes here to see my father, no matter how different their situations are, it’s always the same story over and over again. You’re just playing your role. If you succeed, then you stop the bad things. If you fail, then bad things continue to happen. That’s a given. My father and I understand that. You should too.”

  “Right. I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. Well, I think I do.”

  “But if you succeed, then what?”

  “What do you mean?” Cobb thought about it hard for a moment, surfing a strange wave of human emotions he hadn’t tasted before. “Then the Red Crow is dead, his army disperses, and Old Thom continues to reign with wisdom until Mother Death calls him home.”

  Hawna looked at him, long and hard, firelight flickering across her face. “But what happens to you? You know, right?”

  Now Cobb started to feel uneasy, like there was a hidden truth to her words. “Old Thom puts me back. He puts me back into the … body … I was in before. He puts me back into … me.”

  “Cobb, I know all about the power of the sacred trees from my father. I’ve heard stories about the spells and charms that can be worked with that kind of power. How if you give yourself into it enough, if you allow yourself to be bound to a sacred tree’s possibility, you can be reshaped by it, and maybe even reshape the world. But I don’t know of any spell or charm, word or song, that can get you back to what you were, Cobb.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From everything I know, in the same way a person gives up their ghost when they die, you gave up your ghost to become Cobb. You gave up your body, your wings, your heart. There is no way home now, even if you win. Even if you strike down your enemy and save the day. You already died to save your people, Cobb. But because of that sacrifice, you will always be human on the outside, for the rest of your life.”

  The very small crow in Cobb just stared up at her, eyes wide.

  “You’re lying,” he finally said.

  “I’m not,” Hawna said. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. But your king did you a disservice by not telling you there is no way home again. It’s an essential thing you need to understand, or your enemies will use it to destroy you.”

  “I’ll never … fly again?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m afraid you won’t.”

  Cobb looked away, unable to bear her gaze. He could still remember the first day he flew, fighting the air for every beat, exhilarated by the wind that wanted to lift and carry him wherever it went. Flying with a thousand other crows at dusk, dodging and wheeling with the currents, then coming to rest on tree branches with wings outstretched, talons grasping, eyes wide with wonder.

  He turned his head even further from her, feeling sick and dizzy from more than just the wine.

  “You’re very cruel,” he told her.

  “Your enemies are likely crueler,” Hawna said softly, with no little remorse in her voice.

  “Why wouldn’t Old Thom tell me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why couldn’t I have made the choice?”

  “If he’d given you that option, would your answer have been different?”

  To that, Cobb had no words. Because he knew that if Old Thom had asked him to give up his life, he would have. But this was much, much worse, to be trapped in human skin for the rest of his days.

  As he started to cry, breaking into sobs for the life he’d lost, he mourned for the sun and the wind, mourned for the adoration of his flock as he looped and dove around the high trees, mourned for the thermals that climbed up to impossible heights where he challenged hawks in their own domain. He would never feel the sun on his wings again, and the understanding of that nearly broke his heart.

  She came over and sat on the bench next to him, then took him in her arms, letting him cry on her shoulder. The human touch was initially shocking, but within moments he was crying harder, fists clenched full of her robe, unable to stop the spasms of grief that shook him from head to toe. He tried to imagine what home would be like in Seattle for the years and years to come, when all this was done. Now he would never roost, nor take a mate, or teach his own fledglings to fly their first day in the sun. It was all lost to him, his life having come and gone before he knew it.

  In time, he managed to swallow his tears back down again. Letting go of her robe, feeling exhausted, embarrassed, he wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. He tried to get his composure back, to become something more than just the embodiment of his grief.

  “Why didn’t Old Thom tell me?” he asked again, when he could speak.

  “I don’t know,” Hawna said again as she refilled his glass, then topped off her own. “But it’s done now, and now you are something different. You’re more yourself now than ever before.”

  At her offer, he took the glass and drank the wine down, more slowly this time. When he was done, she handed him bits of cheese and bread that tasted of earth and salt, all with a sacrament of cedar that permeated everything it touched.

  When the glass was empty and placed back on the table with his trembling hand, Hawna nodded to him, then stood up and got the metal hook from where it rested by the hearth. This time, she pulled the rolling grate out of the fire, so the hot stones glowed at his feet. Then she took a pail of water and reverently poured some of the contents over the stones. As the rocks spat and hissed, steam abruptly filled the room, turning solidity into ghosts of mist and shadow. When she was done, she went to the tap outside, refilled her pail, then brought it back inside. She used a pair of tongs to pick up a glowing rock and drop it in the pail. Just like that, water overflowed from the bucket as the contents steamed and boiled, adding even more fog to the air.

  When the water in the bucket had finished its show, she added the rock back to the pile, shoved the grate back in again, then threw another couple of logs on the fire to reheat the rocks. In the changed climate, Cobb could feel sweat trickling off him from every pore. As
hot and uncomfortable as it was within the little stone house, there was a kind of relief to breathing the damp, steamy air, as if the cedar were cleansing him inside and out.

  As Hawna sat down on the bench next to him, then folded her legs under herself and closed her eyes, he followed her lead and did the same, teetering a bit until he got his balance right. As he slowly breathed in and out, finding a kind of calm among the noise of his mind, Cobb slowly became aware of the simplicity of the room, of the fire, of the bench, of Hawna sitting next to him. In time, he could feel that all things were just parts contained within the vastness of the wider world, tucked under the endless field of stars above. As the logs crackled and the heat from the flames dried his robes, he could feel the heat sloughing off his old flesh, his old life, leaving him vulnerable and new.

  When the steam subsided, they sat beside one another for a time, nibbling bits of sausage and cheese. He felt he couldn’t cry anymore, which he was glad for. But Cobb could feel serpents running beneath his breast, the first seeds of anger at Old Thom for not warning him that this quest had no return.

  “How many others have there been?” Cobb finally asked, breaking the silence. “You’ve been doing this for a long time?”

  “I think you’re twenty-seven. Twenty-three men, three women, and one girl, a crow princess named Clara. The little thing was no more than eight when she came here.”

  “Do … do you do this for all the ones who come to you? The fire and the steam?”

  “In the last few years, yes. Before that, we would sit on blankets in front of the fireplace, or just stand in my kitchen and drink. Clara was the exception. Lost eyes, lost heart. She was an exile. She was sent to learn how to stop a war of extermination between two rival crow kings gone mad. Most of her family was dead by the time she got here.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “It is. It was. She understood more than most what it was to lose. It gave her a kind of tenacity that my father found hard to break. She had only herself. She had to learn how to live with the fact that she was the end of her line at such a young age.”

  “But what about you?” Cobb asked. “Why do you do this?”

  “My mother died when I was eleven. My father, who she kicked out when I was eight, came to me after the funeral and asked if he should move in for a while. I agreed, and within a few months learned who he was, and learned who I was. What I was, down deep underneath the skin. It explained a lot, about how people treated me, and how I treated them.”

  “The first hero showed up just after my twelfth birthday. He was a young man, college-age, who stayed for the night talking and drinking with my father in front of the fire. The next day the two of them went into the woods. Three days later, my father came back alone and wouldn’t speak of him again. A few months later, in the middle of the summer, another man came, this one older. But he returned with my father after a couple of weeks, ready to do whatever he had to do. The cycle continued, one after the other, until I was old enough to live on my own. I couldn’t have been more than seventeen at the time. But my father was adamant I could live in the house as long as I wanted to. Just as long as I brought his … students out to wherever he was living during the year.”

  “So, you never went through this … this ritual? His teachings?”

  “No. I’m not like you. I don’t want to know what it is that my father does to two-in-ones out there. I just help people like you, fresh off the wheels of circumstance. People who need a hand to understand the world they’ve been dumped into.”

  “It sounds like the two of you don’t get along.”

  “We get along fine. It’s just that we don’t see eye to eye on just about anything. But I do my part, just hoping that the people I bring to him aren’t going to make me regret my relationship any more than I already do.”

  “Old Thom, my king,” Cobb started hesitantly, not knowing whether she was going to deny him his story. But she just sat there looking at him, waiting to hear what he was going to say. “Old Thom is a wise old crow, with a mind for faces just like the rest of my kind. Just before the first snow, he witnessed an older man killing a young woman with a length of rope. The man strangled her to death and Thom saw the entire thing. He tried to wing by him, to strike and distract him from his kill, but the murderer had too much intent on his prey. She died. But Old Thom never forgot his face.

  “Whenever the man came back to the University to look for fresh prey, Thom and the biggest, strongest lieutenants he had would dive and stoop the man, screaming warning to all those nearby. My king was the first to be struck, to be knocked out of the air by the murderer with a heavy fist, but he survived his injuries. Two others didn’t. The man kicked them to death, stomped them flat under his boots. But Thom didn’t relent. He knew the man’s face and taught it to all those he trusted. He spread the word throughout the city to all the other flocks to stoop and dive and tear at the man in the hopes of driving him away for good.

  “On the night of the first snow the hunter came again, again hungry for the kill. On a path where students traveled back and forth, he attacked another young woman. This time Thom was alone, following his luck. He righteously flew at the man, struck him, blinded him in one eye and then rode him to the ground. In the fury of the fight the man struck Thom and broke his wing, ensuring he would never be able to fly high again. But the woman escaped. Her screams alerted the … police. Who captured the man and took him away.”

  “That’s amazing,” Hawna said after a few moments. “Your king is very brave.”

  “Old Thom is very brave. He is my friend. I learned what it was to be crow from him, to stand aside from the squabbling and do what needs to be done. I’ve never had need to attack a human, or even stoop and dive on one apart from mischievous play. But his lesson stands about doing what’s right, what’s needed.”

  “About sacrifice.”

  “Yes. About sacrifice.”

  Hawna paused for a moment, looking down at the water. “I have a picture of each of you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “On my wall. I have a picture of every last one of the two-in-ones I’ve taken into the woods. I go to sleep every night looking at the wall in my bedroom, remembering their names and faces, their stories and sorrows, wondering if I did the right thing by them. Every time I take one of you into the woods to face my father, I don’t know if they’re going to return. It’s like I’m the last way station, the last sanctum, the last stopping point on their path to their destiny. More than anything, I want to make their last meal, the last person they talk to before they change, something meaningful. Something memorable.”

  “This is very memorable,” Cobb told her. “All of this. The food. The steam. The fire and the water. I’ve never had a day like this in my life, and probably never will again.” He caught himself, seeing her point.

  “That’s exactly it,” she said, smiling just a bit. “Do you really see yourself coming back here to Cordova? After you’ve fought your battles and won? Or will you haunt me with your ghost if you die, take roost in my trees and keep me company as I grow old?”

  “I would come back and visit,” Cobb said, “if I were alive. But not as a ghost. That’s creepy.”

  “You wouldn’t haunt me?” she teased.

  “No,” he replied, serious as could be. “But I will visit you. If I survive.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Yes,” Cobb said, feeling his words take hold.

  “Well, I’d like that,” Hawna said, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. He squeezed her hand back, marveling at the strange sensation of human touch. “I’d like to have a friend who knows who I am. Who might visit from time to time to talk about movies and the sun and life for a while.”

  “There’s no one else like you in the world, is there?” Cobb said.

  “I would very much like to think so,” she said back. “I don’t think there’s anyone like you either, Cobb. Of those who have come through, you’re differ
ent than all the rest. Softer somehow, down deep. Wiser, too, even if you don’t know it yet.”

  Twice more Hawna steamed the room, until the water bucket was empty and the stones were cold. Feeling somewhat out of his head, Cobb felt like he was flying when he stood up, as if the world wasn’t quite real. Together, they gathered up the things from their dinner, then carried them barefoot across the freezing ground between the houses, giggling at the icy burn climbing up through the soles of their feet. Back in the house, as they put all the dishes in the sink to be rinsed and washed, Cobb realized that even in his ridiculous gown, soaked through with acrid sweat and the smell of cedar, he felt comfortable around her. That Hawna was his first human friend.

  As she washed dishes and put things away, Cobb ambled around the living room, looking at this and that, touching many of the small, odd objects that littered the cluttered mantel. He finally came to her bedroom door, the way into her sanctum of quilts and throws, and saw the wall at the foot of her bed was covered with small framed photographs. Going into the room, he stood and looked at the heroes who had come before him, who had come to the north to learn what it was to fight, to be human, to be a two-in-one. Some looked happy, some looked sad. But most shared the same haunted quality in their eyes, like they knew they were about to fly into the storm.

  When Hawna called out to him, he came back into the living room before she could realize he’d been in her bedroom. He found that she’d made a bed for him on the long couch, in front of the burned-down logs in the fireplace. In her hands she held the same earthenware mug as before, filled to the brim with water.

  “Drink this,” she said. “Steaming makes you very dehydrated.”

  Even though he didn’t understand what the big word was, Cobb took the mug and drained it dry, the contents tasting like the best puddle of rainwater he’d ever drank from. He handed the mug back to her and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Thank you.”