Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

by John Crowley

  “Come along, come along!” his father called at him. He’d fly in the direction of the family freehold, then drive back furiously when it seemed no one was following, at length taking a perch on a pine branch and snatching needles from it in exasperation, at his wit’s end. It was Mother he seemed chiefly frustrated with. Unlike her mate in his passion, she seemed to have grown slow and distracted, sitting low and still on her branch, walking the ground, head turning this way and that, her Servitor walking anxiously near her but saying hardly a word. When at last she was moved to leave for the freehold, it wasn’t at Father’s insistence—he was gone off that way by then—but by a sudden motion of her own. Her Servitor sensed it. Of course he’d seen it before, had been watching for it, greeted it—even Dar Oakley could tell that.

  “Come on,” she called to Dar Oakley. “You’ll have to help too.”

  Her eye was not on him. If she saw anything, it was a thing not present, not yet in existence—that thing that Crows, female ones, know before its coming to be: can know because, in them, it already has. Dar Oakley said nothing in response, only flew with her, the Servitor coming after.

  The first thing to be done when they reached their freehold one by one was to roust the squatters who’d got there first and pretended that it was theirs, or this part of it was, or were anyway saying it was theirs now and they were staying, let these newcomers go elsewhere, who are you anyway? And Father without answering drove at them recklessly, screaming invective, as he might at a sleepy Owl caught in daylight. Seeing that the squatters weren’t going to put up much of a fight, Dar Oakley joined in, but his mother sailed past him and dashed at the fleeing Crows, as fierce as her mate. The Servitor and Younger Sister yakked and cursed from the trees and scattered the sticks the squatters had begun laying for a nest in an Oak’s crotch there. How dare they! By evening that was done; they slept in their own trees in their own place, and in the morning fed on their own snails and bugs, and then when the sun was high began to work and to build.

  In what way exactly the Crows of that far time and place built their nests, Dar Oakley doesn’t any longer remember, having now for so long built nests in the way it’s done hereabouts. If it was the same there and then as here, it began with selecting a site, crotch of a tree just high enough, just secluded enough but not too far out of the warming midday sun. Younger Sister said that the place the interlopers had chosen looked good to her, but Mother would never choose someone else’s nest, not even one only just begun; no more would she use a nest of her own from the years before—the collapsing remains of some could still be seen on the freehold if you knew where to look. No. Owls and Hawks and others have long memories, she said. She said Younger Sister would understand when her turn came.

  Because the Oaks of the grove weren’t yet in leaf, she chose a place amid the evergreens at the grove’s edge, less comfortable but less visible. Yes, when it was built, and housed her and her young, the Oak would be deep in leaf, but before then any hunter could note its placement and plan to return to it. She pondered the possibilities of the Pine, knowing she would sense the right spot when she had rejected all the wrong ones.

  “This one,” she declared. “Here.”

  “You already said no to that place,” her mate said, but she paid him no mind, turning and turning in the Pine crotch to be sure. And Father said nothing more.

  After the choosing of the spot came the making of the new nest. The mates shared the task, with a lot of bickering and dispute. The laying of the big sticks that would brace the whole isn’t easy for beings who have only a bill and one foot to use, even if they’ve done it many times before.

  Through the days the nest grew, round and strong and habitable. Despite an abundance of deadwood everywhere, Mother or Father would spend time hacking with their bills at a green branch, wrestling it and finally breaking it off, or giving up on it. Father’d lay a stick and fly off to get another; Mother, left alone, would throw out that stick and fetch one she liked better. Sticks that were dropped in the making lay scattered at the Pine’s base. The builders would never retrieve a stick once dropped.

  “Why is that?” Dar Oakley asked.

  “Because,” said the Servitor.

  “Sure,” said Younger Sister. She’d tried to contribute a stick or two that had been rejected.

  Father brought in another stick. His mate, after trying it here and there, tossed it out too, and it joined the litter of discarded matter on the ground. He glared. The others, watching, fell silent and motionless, Father too, as all of them waited for an outburst of wrath from him. Mother took no notice, though; all her attention was on the interior she was shaping. No: one eye turned quickly on Father and away again. But there was no point in wrath, no point in saying, And what was wrong with that one? Because she didn’t know what was wrong with it, only that it was wrong, and it was she who’d have to sit there. When his posture had altered, bill opened and closed in a sigh, and he’d gone off again, she looked up from her fussing to Dar Oakley and the others, and he saw amusement in her black eye.

  Younger Sister went to help, or to learn, leaving Dar Oakley and the Servitor on watch.

  “Why was it never you she chose over him?” Dar Oakley asked.

  “Oh, well,” the Servitor said, as though the answer was too obvious to state, or the subject too huge to address.

  “You’re nicer than he is.”

  “Oh dear,” said the Servitor. “I don’t think that matters so much.”

  “No?”

  “He’s a great provider. Look at him laboring. A good mate.”

  The mates were rarely apart now, not only at the nest but in flight, on watch, searching for food. They hardly noticed the others. When they weren’t eating or building they preened devotedly, bills searching each other’s breast or head, grooming the feathers, plucking away the scraps of food, bugs, skin, or other matter. Lift your bill to have your neck worked over, bow your head to have the black cap cleaned and put to rights. They’d stop what they were doing and bill-wrestle, one taking the other’s bill and holding while the other twisted away, then swapping, tails spread and trembling. Now and then the play reached a kind of intensity and they’d fight for real, their bills open and their eye-haws flashing white. Then for a space they’d part, whether ashamed or just wearied Dar Oakley couldn’t tell, but anyway they couldn’t sulk for long, and it was back to work again. It was marvelous and yet alarming to watch.

  At evening they left the nest site for the Oak grove. No need to let night-goers see you near where your young would soon be coming forth. The others gathered from their hunting and feeding to be with them—all but the Vagrant, rarely seen these days, loitering at the outskirts of the demesne, uninterested apparently.

  “Was it this way when I was . . . ,” Younger Sister said, and Dar Oakley said, “Yes, was it this way when we . . .”

  “Yes, it was,” said his father. Only in the nights were the mates at rest, and the nights were growing shorter. “It’s always the same. Unless it fails.”

  Mother had closed her eyes, but opened them a bit at that.

  “In one spring,” Father said, “a storm blew away all that had been built. Nearly done, too.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Began again.”

  The siblings were quiet.

  “In another year,” Father said, as though unable at last not to speak of these things, “weasels. Weasels took all our brood, just hatched.”

  Mother, eyes again closed, flitted restlessly.

  “And,” Dar Oakley said, “did you start again?”

  “Too late,” his father said.

  “Too late?”

  “The moment had passed. There is a moment, and it passes; and it had.”

  Small birds could be still be heard—some sang now through the night—and the insects, filling the air after the winter’s silence.

  “I never will,” said Younger Sister. “Not me.”

  “You don’t know,” Father sa
id. “You know nothing.”

  Dar Oakley roused a little, suddenly hot, why? “Well, it’s hard!” he said.

  “It’ll be harder soon. You’ll all have to help. You’ll see.”

  “But why do we keep doing it this way?” Dar Oakley whispered. “What if we did it differently, or better? This is . . .”

  “This is our Fate,” his father said, his eyes fierce in the low light and farseeing. “There is this for us to do, to do in this way; we have always done it and we will do it.”

  Dar Oakley fell silent. With awful gravity Father turned from his son and closed his eyes. They all grew still; their legs as they settled in sleep locked their feet around the branch they held to, so they wouldn’t tumble off in the night. Their bills sank to their breasts. Dar Oakley heard a soft cry, a whimper, from his mother, or was it Younger Sister perched up billwise? He felt restive and dissatisfied. He wanted something more to say, or to be said.

  Fate: the Crows only name it at this season, or at the memory of this season. It’s the closest thing that Crows have to a belief about the world and their place in it, which otherwise they never think of: why the world is what it is, and why they do what they do in it. They can say, It’s the way we are at any time, but only at certain times can they say, It’s the way we must be. Fate says nothing more than that.

  The nest was done, lined with soft stuff—underfur of a dead Rabbit the family had been feeding on, fuzz plucked from plants they had no name for but for which they knew this use. His mother and father now spent much of their day in behaviors that the Servitor seemed to find touching and even gripping but that their children thought comical and disturbing at once.

  “Ah. Ah,” said the Servitor, imitating the odd chuckle Mother was making for her mate. “Ah, look.”

  “Oh no,” said Younger Sister.

  They’d begun feeding one another, little morsels of this and that which they’d place in each other’s mouths, clacking their bills in delight and approval. They’d beck deeply almost in unison, she’d back away from him and he’d step forward, and then they’d reverse. She’d fly away from him up to the nest, beck coyly from there till he followed, and they’d repeat it all again. Father flew off to find her more treats, doing a few rolls and dives to show off for her. “Like a young one again,” said the Servitor. “Happens every spring.” Dar Oakley and his sister could stand no more and went away laughing, untouched, they thought.

  They hadn’t been gone long when a commotion arose back that way, the Servitor’s cry of alarm or botheration. “Ignore it,” Younger Sister said. The Servitor often went off without real reason. But the sound grew urgent, and Dar Oakley turned to go back, and Younger Sister groaned and followed. Even as they approached they could see Mother down on the forest floor below the nest site amid the white Hawthorns, and the Servitor leaping from branch to branch above her in distress; and near to her, Father, his wings open and his tail spread tautly and trembling. Hers too, her head lower than his and her wings cupped, nearly sweeping the ground.

  Except that it wasn’t him. The Servitor was yelling because the Crow down there with their mother was not their father but the Vagrant. He was the one she bowed low to, murmured to.

  “Uh-oh,” said Younger Sister. “Stay away from this.”

  Just as they understood what was happening, a black mass of whirring feathers shot from nowhere and into the Vagrant, rolling him over, and rolling over Father, too, who’d bowled into him. Mother shrieked, and the Vagrant leapt up and got aloft, all disordered, rising to a branch and nearly tumbling from it in his haste to make a stand. Father dodged at him where he sat, bill-snapping, foot-grabbing.

  “Traitor!” he shrieked, in a voice Dar Oakley had never heard before. “Traitor!”

  The Vagrant got away to a farther tree, then turned again, prancing, mocking. “Go die!” he called. “Old Crow! You’re not wanted! Go far and die!”

  At that Father pecked viciously at the branch he sat on. Chips flew. He tore away twigs and scattered them. “Oh, I’m mad!” he yelled. “I’m so mad now! We let you in. Now this!”

  “You’re mad? I’m crazy mad!” the Vagrant yelled back. He too plucked twigs and shook them from his bill. “Mine now. You go. You’re done!”

  As they cried out on each other they moved closer, branch by branch. Their heads were fuzzed, their throats and shoulders enlarged by the standing feathers. Dar Oakley felt the feathers of his own throat erect. His mother on the ground looked up at them, making no show, as though it had nothing to do with her.

  “I’ll fight you till you die,” Father shrieked. “I’ll eat your breast like a Hawk!”

  “Oho, you will?” the Vagrant called, wings alert to go. “No, I will!”

  “Get, get, get,” Father yelled, and went from his branch at the Vagrant as though flung through the air. TheVagrant was younger and quicker, Father older but stronger, and the Vagrant arose, backing away, spiraling out toward the open air, fighting and fleeing at once, Father spiraling after him, the two rising as though borne upward by one another. Black feathers that they thrashed or clawed from each other flew away in their thudding wing beats.

  Then the Vagrant breaks and flees, just like that. Father rolls out, surprised, then sets off after. Both of them silent now, Father relentless and heedless, harrying the other, falling on him, dagging at him with his sharp beak, trying for the eyes, the face. He chases him like a whole band of Crows chasing a Hawk, dodging at him from below, taking a nip at his tail, backing away when the Vagrant turns to snap back.

  Dar Oakley and the Servitor stay in the nest-tree. They were on watch, weren’t they? Yes, and here they are.

  His mother rises to the nest, to sit gripping the strong armature of it, unalarmed, watching for Father to return. She looks Dar Oakley’s way, and it is as though she shares a secret, a funny secret but not so funny really, with him alone. And as she bends her breast toward the nest, and her tail spreads wide and her bill opens and her eye-haws close and withdraw, Dar Oakley feels the strangest, deepest, sweepingest impulse. Almost irresistible.

  “No,” says the Servitor—Dar hadn’t known the old Crow was so near to him. “No.”

  And then Father’s there, his feathers all still erect and flecks of blood on his cheeks, taking his place on the nest’s edge and there making a few hasty becks and motions, just enough to count, and it seemed to Dar Oakley that the drumming of his father’s heart could be seen in the feathers of his breast. His mother moved for him, tail rising, so that he could press beneath. It wasn’t easy; it never is. She cried aloud as he did so, strange noises Dar Oakley had never heard before; and the Servitor made them too, or his own sounds that were like those of hers. And in a moment it was done.

  Often in that day and subsequent days was it repeated, not always succeeding, but often enough: “Enough,” the Servitor said, “so that he knows every one of those eggs she makes will have a chick of his inside it.”

  Fate went on unfolding more things for Crows to do. Mother began producing a clutch of blue-green eggs speckled browny-black, and the others had to feed her where she sat—she’d starve before she’d leave them unguarded for more than moments. There were spring-hungry beings abroad. Even other Crows wouldn’t mind getting an egg if they could catch her off the nest. Standing too close, threatening and horridly friendly, till they were driven off by Father returning.

  She sat all day and night; her mate slept near her, and in the evening and at morning the others, farther off, could hear them talking together in soft voices, call-and-response, things they’d said before: old nests, old days, young ones long gone off. In the morning the others went out to get from the thin spring provision enough for themselves and more for her, to keep her hale and fat so that her eggs were thick-shelled and held strong young.

  “How many are there now?” Dar Oakley asked. He put a morsel into his mother’s mouth.

  “Five.” In general, five is as high as Crows can count. Five is the last number before many
.

  “Will there be more?”

  “I hope not. Five is quite enough.”

  Flowering plants filled the sunlit edges of the grove, glowing in the long sun; a multitude of gray sticks had produced in the usual way a multitude of colors in a multitude of shapes, as though they had been hidden within, waiting to be brought forth. Birds whose names were unknown to Dar Oakley but whose songs he knew were also brought forth by the season. Where had they all been? He could hear but not see them.

  “They’re nesting too,” his mother said, “and don’t want to be seen. But keep your eyes open.” She moved gently on her brood. “It’s a good sound,” she said. “A providing sound.”

  She seemed to feel something below her, rose a little, settled again.

  “I was the first out of the nest, wasn’t I?”

  “First out?” his mother said. “Oh yes. You fell out.”

  Dar Oakley laughed—he knew the story, which was why he asked for it.

  “Kept poking your head out and over the edge, no matter how often I’d push you down. Big gawky head on you, long scrawny neck. Then one day as I was stuffing the others, I just saw your little backside go over the top.”

  It was his own earliest memory: hurtling down through the branches to the forest floor, his fall broken by undergrowth. Everything for a moment still and silent, even himself—something made him motionless, bill shut, calls stopped. After a while—a long while, it seemed—his father came down to him, bringing a shred of some fatty flesh, and popped it into his pink gaping mouth. Keep still. He was many days too young to even try to fly; every parent of every kind of being in that wood had babies to feed; Dar Oakley had scarce odds of not being eaten before he could fly.