Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

by John Crowley

  There’s an ancient Crow strategy—not unique among flocking birds—of all for one and one for all: a Crow under attack by a Hawk in the air can call for help, and quickly there will be other Crows in the air, a tight mass of them, dodging in and threatening and shrieking; the commotion brings in others. The Hawk can ignore threats, but the mass of Crows going every which way, Crows nipping at her tail, confuses and distracts her; she can’t make a choice of one Crow to go for, and so (if the Crows are lucky and steadfast) she doesn’t get any. She might, of course, and sometimes does; but every Crow has an equal chance of living another day.

  The trouble now was that the old ploy was getting Crows killed every day, and not by Hawks.

  Crows anywhere within earshot can’t ignore the cry of a Crow in trouble, which was what made Crow shooting as a sport or enterprise possible. The perfected Crow-call—like a big wooden whistle—mimicked the common distress call with sufficient exactness to draw Crows, whose calls drew other Crows. Hunters hid in blinds, two or three of them, and with shotguns the numbers bagged grew rapidly (it’s likely that Dr. Hergesheimer, like other Crow hunters, favored the pump-action shotgun that John Browning brought out in 1893: more shots before reloading). The Crows could see People building their blinds at the edge of the cornfields or in open country, piling brush on wooden stakes or on chicken wire, but they thought nothing of it; just more human labor, meaningless to them. If the hunters entered the blind with their lunch pails and whiskey and boxes of shells before sunrise, the Crows wouldn’t know about it.

  On a still, damp morning an urgent call, well-blown, could travel far. Crows would be overhead quickly, in crowds, all shrieking at whatever unseen enemy had got hold of a Crow. The shooters then had many targets, sometimes too many. And here’s the surprising—the dismaying—thing: so long as the shooters kept hidden, so long as the blued guns couldn’t be seen, the noise of their firing and the dropping of shot Crows wouldn’t send the others instantly away. They’d discount the noise; they’d interpret the falling Crows as Crows falling on an enemy, Fox or Owl, and join in. Even when they’d scattered, the Crow-call could bring them back.

  “It’s not a Crow!” Dar Oakley would cry, buffeted by the mass of hurrying wings.

  “But what if it is?” they’d yell.

  “It’s not!”

  “But what if it is?”

  If the Crows could have listened to him, Dar Oakley could have explained to them about hunting and hunters—though not why Crows should have become hunters’ prey. But he couldn’t explain it to all of them: the flocks now were too huge, they covered too wide a range; they filled not one tree or two in winter but tens and dozens, branches breaking beneath their weight. So there were always naive Crows, Crows Dar Oakley didn’t know, for hunters to call.

  But it was more than that. Any bunch of Crows will come eventually to recognize a Crow-call, and know it’s not really one of their own. Old wise ones will tell young eager ones; parents will tell children. Expert Crow-callers can vary the calls to some extent, but in time every Crow-call loses much of its power over a flock.

  Every Crow-call but one.

  Dr. Hergesheimer prized his Crow-call even above his Browning shotguns. The reed was metal, the stopper of golden cherry. The barrel was of two woods: walnut over ebony (I believe this is what Dar Oakley has described to me); the walnut was cut away so that the ebony below showed through, and the black wood was carved with great skill and delicacy into a Crow. A dead Crow, wrapped around the barrel, wings awry, eyes closed, beak open. This call of his could draw any Crow, at least as Dr. Hergesheimer used it, and not once or twice only but many times, until the last time. It was unrefusable. Crows heard in it the cry of a lost young one. They heard the desperate voice of a mate in trouble—not any mate, my mate. They heard a Crow mourning for a killed friend, could believe they knew which friend, even if that friend was alive and nearby. They heard the whicker of nestlings, far from any nest.

  The Crow-call of Dr. Hergesheimer was hung around his neck on a lanyard woven of snakeskin; he called it a new Eastern model, scientific, but other hunters thought it possessed a dark magic they would never have. Its call could draw Dar Oakley even though Dar Oakley knew its secret. It was Death’s own siren, for as long as Dr. Hergesheimer possessed it. He hunted with it in the summer, when unwise young Crows in their first adult plumage could be drawn even if oldsters called caution; he hunted when Crows were in molt, stayed apart from others, and were harder to draw into the air, ashamed of their scruffy and clumsy old coats. He hunted in the fall, when flocks were dense, and Crows came in masses from the roost at morning, then passed over again at evening. And he hunted in the spring: that was when he could catch one of a mating pair with his Crow-call, and likely her mate would be near and rush to help her. Get them both. And be pretty sure their young would starve in the nest.

  The young of Digs Moss for Snails grew through the spring, changing their plumage from camouflage brown to black, not as brilliant in iridescent color as it would be, breasts barred to keep suitors away, their eyes still baby-blue. They still begged for food, and the pink insides of their mouths continued to arouse their parents’ need to feed them; but they had begun to eat on their own and learn to fly, too. Short, clumsy hops that made Dar Oakley wonder how any Crow ever learned it. He’d follow Moss and the more daring fledglings to the margins of the Pine grove where her nest was hidden high up; she’d stop now and then for them to rest and gather courage, and set off again. She laughed with Dar Oakley—it was funny, it was heartening, it always had been, always would be.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s see who follows.”

  She set off over the greening spring fields, and toward a big pile of saplings and waste that People had cleared there. One fledgling followed, calling, Wait, wait. Dar Oakley, suddenly troubled, went to a branch of the last Pine of the grove and watched.

  An unseen Crow called for help.

  Moss, hearing it, called in response, and so did Dar Oakley—the call welled up in him before he could stifle it—and Moss turned in the air, seeking the Crow in trouble. Her mate came winging in at her call, couldn’t have been far away; the compelling call for help came again and Dar Oakley cried with all his might, Fly fast, fly away fast, but it was too late.

  Moss’s mate was struck first. Seeing him fall, Moss screamed and beat toward where he’d gone down. Another thud of a gun, and she twisted head over tail in a cloud of feathers and fell.

  Dar Oakley raced, yelling, toward them and pulled up—nothing he could do for them—but the fledgling batted around the air that its mother had departed from, confused and crying piteously. Dar Oakley, dodging and twisting as though a Hawk were after him—an invisible Hawk he couldn’t evade—tried to push the fledgling away toward the trees, but it couldn’t listen or understand.

  The third shot brought down the little Crow, hit but not killed, still flying, landing near the blind.

  Dar Oakley, sensing which way the hunters must be looking—toward the woods and the nests—got himself around low to the ground and into a Poplar already in leaf. From there he could see into the blind and see the hunter: there was only one.

  Dr. Hergesheimer, gun over his arm, came out from the blind, walked toward his kills. Moss and her mate were still; he gave each a glance and a kick. But the fledgling had righted herself and was staggering, dazed. Dar Oakley expected it’d be shot now, and wondered if his duty was to attack the hunter, distract him, maybe be killed himself instead. But Dr. Hergesheimer bent on one knee, laid down his gun, and picked up the fledgling. He examined it for a time. Crows were scolding now from out of range; Dar Oakley, too. Dr. Hergesheimer gently folded the little Crow’s wings against its body and put it in the big side pocket of his duster. He picked up his gun and set off, taking great strides, toward the road some distance away, followed by the curses of the Crows.

  The obsequies for Moss and her mate that day were short and not well attended—this time of year Crows
had duties to life, not death. Dar Oakley, crying loudly for his lady and her mate, felt a fury he had never felt before. He had known Pity. He had known Wonder. He had known a life past death. But this was an emotion unlike any a Crow had ever felt—as far as he knew, as far as a Crow can know what all Crows are capable of feeling. Dar Oakley now knew Vengeance. He wanted revenge for this, and he knew upon whom he wanted it, and he would bend all his powers to get it. He had yet to learn—but he would learn—about this cold drive and its imperatives: that it could take a long time to enact; that even when he got what he wanted, he would gain nothing by it; and that none of that mattered at all.

  The remaining fledglings of Digs Moss for Snails still needed to be tended to, and Dar Oakley did that—his own hundreds or thousands over the centuries had taught him what he must do and how to do it, playing both parents’ parts. When the three were on their own—two males and a female, all now forever at threat—he began to travel. At first only around the circuit of Crows he knew, the nervous Crows of the local flocks that Dr. Hergesheimer had terrorized. And when he was sure they were with him—as sure as he could be, for Crows (like People) can listen and agree and be brave when the threat’s far off—he left the flock and went darkwise to new places and new Crows.

  In all his many lives Dar Oakley had had to make his way among strange Crows, avoid being mobbed or murdered, take on the ways and words of others. He had had no single home of his own, which made him a little at home everywhere. Always careful to make the proper obeisances to the strong and the wary; always sleeping and foraging at a polite but not hostile distance. And, when he could, talking. That was what he did on this voyage: talk, when they’d listen.

  About Crow-calls. About guns, and how hunters hid in blinds. What did they know, he’d ask these Crows, what could they tell Dar Oakley? Did they stay far away from hunters and guns? How did they warn young Crows that the Crow they heard might not be a Crow at all? They talked of these things at evening, the questions and answers passing from group to group, generating Crow noise that People a mile away could hear. Stay away is best, some Crows said: if you hide, you’ll be safe; they have to see you to kill you. Yes, if you hide you’ll be safe for a time, Dar Oakley would reply; but what if you banded together, went on the attack? No, no! If Crows ever could spy out hunters and mob them, they’d be shot even quicker! Well, maybe not, Dar Oakley said. A big gang of Crows might overwhelm a few hunters if they got in close enough, so close the guns couldn’t pick them out—why, they might shoot each other! Fly at them as though they were Hawks or Weasels, find them out in their blinds and let them have it, madden them with shrieking, spoil their day, steal their lunch, mob them as you would any threat—they’ll give it up. Maybe they will.

  When he’d got a band of them thinking, and learned their thoughts, Dar Oakley went on. He felt, now and then, like those People the Brother had talked of: Brothers who walked alone from land to land telling their one story, carrying the rules for living and dying, winning over the strong and the thoughtful, who then won over others. Often he felt lonely: there were too many Crows in his life he missed. He’d go on.

  He came to a wide region of treeless plain where there were no Crows, or at least no Crows who’d talk to him: singletons, shy and silent, not answering his call. There was a broad, shallow river as brown as earth, and a line of islands where water-loving trees grew—or rather where they had been growing, for all that remained of them were their trunks and a few large limbs. The tops had been lifted or torn away and were scattered leafless at their feet, and in the river, and for a wide distance around.

  The destruction caused Dar Oakley to ponder, and to fear; he was reluctant to come close to it, as though hostile Crows kept him away, though there were no Crows at all. Far off across the flatlands a train crossed daywise to darkwise, a plume of furry black smoke, too far away to hear.

  Two birds came and settled on the snaggled branch of a ruined tree. Ravens. It had been a long time since Dar Oakley had seen a pair of Ravens; he didn’t know what had become of them all. You could almost believe there were no more of them in the world, as though it didn’t suit them any longer and they were gone somewhere they liked better. But here were two, croaking in Ravenish.

  He went closer, but not close. “Masters,” he said, and becked deeply.

  The two turned to look at him, not particularly interested, but not moving away. Dar Oakley took that as sufficient permission and went to perch near them, though on a different shattered branch (what had, what could have, torn it in this way?). “Masters,” he said. “What can you tell me of the Crows hereabouts?”

  The two Ravens turned to one another with a look that seemed to say, Has a question been put to us? Then one bent forward a little toward Dar Oakley. “Of Crows,” it said, “there are gnone.”

  “Where have they gone? There are Crows everywhere.”

  “As you say,” said the other Raven. “But gnot here.”

  “It was a storm,” said the first.

  “A storm?” Dar Oakley said. “Did a storm break these trees?”

  “Oh, more,” said one Raven.

  “It was a storm like no other storm,” said the other.

  “How short it blew.”

  “How loud.”

  “But,” said Dar Oakley, “a storm will lay trees down, not take their tops. Was it ice? Ice will break treetops.”

  “It was gnot Ice, it blew gnot Over but Up. Up.”

  Dar Oakley tried to imagine this. “And the Crows? Was this a roost of theirs?”

  Once more the two Ravens regarded one another knowingly, and turned to Dar Oakley.

  “This was.”

  “The storm carried them off.”

  “Carried them Up.”

  “Then all Down!”

  They laughed their strangled Raven laugh, and ascended ponderously away.

  Dar Oakley, alone, surveyed the distance. There were Crows elsewhere, surely, farther on; Crows and hunters of Crows, multiplying through the world as far as he could travel. Suddenly hopeless, he too rose and turned homewise.

  He had seen, there in the shattered wood, the depths of People’s Crow hatred. But he hadn’t understood what he’d seen.

  It had turned summer again when he returned to his home place: he’d been gone a long time. The Cattle had been let out into the pastures and the Crows and the Cowbirds followed their soft swishing tails, studying the dried plats of their dung for insects and worms, catching Grasshoppers and Mice stirred up by their big feet. Dar Oakley came to earth beside Ke Rainshower. “Say,” he said.

  She gave him a curt nod. She hadn’t forgotten the gun that had not been a toy.

  “Has that call been heard?” Dar Oakley asked.

  “Call?”

  “You know the one,” Dar Oakley said. “All us Crows talked about it, how it couldn’t be refused.”

  “Oh that,” Ke Rainshower said.

  “That.”

  “Hasn’t been heard.”

  “Crows haven’t been shot?”

  “Oh they have been. Plenty. You knew Muleskin? Him. And Gra Brokenfoot. Ord One Egg. Others.”

  “But . . .”

  “There’s something new,” Ke Rainshower said, eyeing him. It was certainly something bad, and she seemed to blame him for it. Between jabs for bits of food, she told him what it was, the new thing.

  It’ll be morning, she told him. On a branch protruding from a pile of brush or on a fallen shed roof, a Crow calls. It’s just an inquiry: Anybody there? Come here, come here. It’s a young Crow, a new Crow, and that’s interesting, so they come—hard not to. And when a few head that way, others follow. By the time they come close there are guns, and Crows go down, one, three, five. And when the unhit ones have fled, that cheerful little Crow begins again. Hello, hello! Jumping from perch to perch and stretching her wings. And the Crows return, cautious maybe, but how could there be danger? A Crow is perched there, not warning, not afraid.

  And the hunters fi
re again.

  “A Crow?” Dar Oakley said. “I’ve seen dead ones propped up to look alive, as if anybody’d be fooled. . . .”

  “No,” Ke Rainshower said. “Alive. Calling, Come, come. Nobody knows how it can be, but it is.”

  It was. It didn’t take a lot of walking and thinking and poking in cowpats till Dar Oakley knew who that Crow must be. He’d seen it crack its shell and come out into the world, had brought it food, had seen its first flight. “All right,” he said, and bent to lift off from the pasture. He could hear Ke Rainshower call, All right what? But he was away.

  There were changes at Anna Kuhn’s farm since he’d last seen it: the corn grew almost to the edge of the yard, but Anna’s kitchen garden hadn’t been planted; the house was gray, its whitewash fading. And in the little grave-plot where Dar Oakley had first seen Anna Kuhn was something that hadn’t been there before: a tall smooth stone thing, pink or gray—it was hard to tell—that narrowed as it rose to where a wide-lipped pot with handles rested, a kind of pot he’d seen People use, and beneath it a cloth, its folds draped down the stone’s side. A ring made of flowers lay at its base, the flowers she’d always stop to breathe in, all withered. When Dar Oakley mounted to the top of the stone, he found the pot was solid stone too, and so was the folded cloth.

  People.

  He perched on the lip of the pot to look in, but it had no inside.

  From the far side of the house he heard laughter, male laughter, which he connected to a wagon new to him and Horses tied up at the fence. He went over the housetop and into the big Cottonwood that grew there, whose branches shaded the yard that the porch faced. He moved carefully from branch to branch until he could see the porch and the People there. Dr. Hergesheimer occupied the long seat that hung by chains, his arms and legs spread wide. Others unknown to Dar Oakley stood or sat. And on Dr. Hergesheimer’s knee was a Crow. Dr. Hergesheimer put something in his mouth and held it with his teeth; the Crow leapt to his shoulder and plucked the morsel from between his teeth and swallowed it. The others laughed. The young Crow bent to Dr. Hergesheimer’s shaggy eyebrows, and one by one she drew the hairs through her beak, cleaning them as she would the feathers of a mate. Dr. Hergesheimer talked to her softly as she did this; then, laughing himself, he brushed her away. She mounted with a small cry to a perch of sticks that had clearly been built for her on the porch, and from there she becked and called to her beloved.