Song of the Crow

by Layne Maheu

  “He sent me to fetch news of land.”

  “News—?” The Stranger’s shoulders worked heavily with each flap. “No. That was the raven.” He spoke like an old bird, full of dull knowledge. “The raven claims to have found land. Except the raven never returned with any word. It took the doves to bring news—the dove, the dove, the frightened dove, in the form of a twig, they say.”

  “No. That was me.”

  “You? You brought back news of the Giants? To help Keeyaw?”

  “I didn’t bring back anything. Not even myself.”

  We flew in silence—except for the faint, odd wheezing of the air through his feathers.

  “You’re so old now,” he said, “much older than your years, and, as the Hookbill foresaw, truly a Misfortune. Why don’t you fly on and find your way elsewhere in the world?”

  “I’m keeping a watch over the beastman,” I said.

  “Of course,” he said. “Their kind must be watched. Much can be learned—no. Must be learned. I fear we have no other choice.”

  Just then it became clear that this was the Strange Bird of the Withered Coat. But he looked different now, in flight. It took him a great effort to work those large, elegant, ragged fans through the sky.

  “You’re the bird who talked with Keeyaw,” I said.

  “You were there, too?”

  “In the arms of the beastwoman.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember it.”

  I stared at him with suspicion, because, if he knew so much about me, then surely he would remember me as the bird in Nanniah’s arms, too shocked and sea-drenched to fly. But like the Old Bone, he could guess at my thoughts.

  “Of course, I look different now. Around the beastman, I’m a curse, a pest, a malaise, am I not? But only because that’s what he asks of me. When he’s not around, what harm can I do? But you. You are moved by something other than your wings, I know, for I look down, for only a second, and then up again, and you are halfway across the sky. Before you take off again and leave me, I must ask one thing of you.”

  I watched him from the pale side of my head.

  “At the Winter Roost,” he said, “there we can abide by each other, you and I. And I hope you will stay ’til then and be the teacher of lost songs. You must, because here, on this side of the waters, I have heard you sing, when you thought no one was around—at least I know now it was you—and when you sing, you find the place where lost birds live. I want to call you Finder, the Misfortune of Lost Birds, or some such thing, I’m not sure.”

  “It’s not hard,” I said, “when we have no place of our own.”

  “It must be inside you, then. The songscape is in you, like no other. When I hear you, I’m there in the old aerie, with your Mother of Many above you in the nest, and all your siblings in the trees. Even crows you never met, they come back to me. I’ll call you Memory of Many, if I may.”

  He stopped paddling and fell in behind me.

  “Maybe it’s your own memory playing tricks,” I said.

  “Perhaps. Still, your song pleases me. May I call you that?”

  “How should I stop you? And who’s here to care?”

  “For the sake of those gone,” he said. “And those soon to come.”

  He descended, heading for unknown skies. It could have been to the aerie, or Noah’s wreck, or nearby foraging grounds, bursting with plenty. But all of these were the other way. As I watched the broad, fantastic fray of his wings rise and fall, slower and with greater effort than I’d ever seen, I felt that it was under such a flight that a bird journeys off to the Tree of the Dead.

  “At the Winter Roost,” he called back, already distant. “Sing of us then.”

  He flew beyond sight.

  So every night I dreamt of the Winter Roost. I dreamt of a sky filled with birds. But what good was the old pull, when there were no birds anywhere to accompany me? Instead I found refuge with the spirits in the wind. The long lines of wind came in off the ocean with too much swirling energy and too many things to say. I tried to listen and become them. But in the winds, I was the absence of wind, and when I reached out to gather them in my wings, they were gone, just as more came. The spirits arrived in gales, in eddies, in mirthful pockets where they were strangely silent. The wind laughed and raced all around me and filled me with a longing for my fledgling days when I had tried to follow the Many, or Night Time, or the Old Bone, or any gang of youthful thugs, back when I couldn’t gauge distances or updrafts and I fought against the currents and lost. As I flew into the winds, I flew into the past, and the winds matched my every move, winds of Old Aeries, of the Perished, of Loved Ones.

  In the old songscape, I remembered how the winds had grown friendly, and even the furies that seized hold of my feathers also taught my wings how to reef closed and dive, and the same violent wind shot me wherever I wanted. A tuck, a plummet, a flick of my pinions and I’d just miss a tree, and for long days at a time, the spirits of the wind took me, as if I were flying back to deeper woods, where I’d learned how to follow the whereabouts of my family, not by sight but by their long-ranging voices. Is there any sound more beautiful and expressive than a crow’s lonesome caw? Each elder had a larger repertoire in which this call note popped up with what seemed like randomness until you grew to learn that crow’s song. And the way it was sung, from a distant copse of trees, or flying overhead, or anywhere in the distant echoey world, helped us to forage collectively over a great, wide expanse.

  “What? What did you bring us? From far off? From far off.”

  “Open your beak, and I will show you.”

  In the spare trees of the new world, I found Our Aerie and flew into the black feathers of my dark dream joy and lit beside her.

  “What? What is it?”

  “From the flood banks. By the sea.”

  And I opened my beak and turned it sideways so that Plum Black could reach in with her sweet, ravaged hunger and clear my voice. Sometimes I bent down to the brood myself, where I really did feel like a ghost, missing the aerie while I was still inside it, looking over the dismal, blackened nest, and seeing how the piping, begging simps would soon fledge and take flight. How would these raw red mouths ever fly? And where would they go? I found myself either at the nest, or back to the edge of the flood, where I learned the austere beauty of longing held in check, and my heart filled with its ice floes, and the wind took me where it would.

  At the close of day, instead of a Roost, I always wound up here at the surf of the flood. In the foaming sand I found a crab, scuttling sideways, trying to box me back with its slow, ancient anger. Stubborn, ignorant, wriggling its legs out the side of my beak, its prehistoric armor would protect it for maybe a few seconds more before I broke it open, trying to decide how much I would eat just then and how much I would hide or bring back to the nest. As I looked out over the flood, or the ocean, or whatever it had become, I saw the ghosts of lost birds, flying below the saltwater pastures and pushing up waves. The waves seemed to me like open mouths waiting to be fed, open like crying beaks with something to say.

  And from the sky, down flew the God Crow.

  It came down from the setting sun, and landed just above me on a tangle of driftwood with roots reaching up into the air.

  It looked neither at me nor at the beach but made the soft, gurgling sounds of water flowing through a tube. It looked up and shivered as if drenched and made the clacking sound of wood against wood. It leaned forward for a better look at me, leaning so far that Its Mightiness almost fell, but It caught Its balance by extending the great span of Its wings the other way. Then the God Crow turned that magnificent horn to the darkening sea. And It opened that mighty horn, and above the vastness of the unabated waters came a light from Its parted beak—the light from the holy pearl hung in Noah’s quarters, now throwing its sapphire cast over the nighttime sea. God the Crow kept opening and closing those mighty clippers, shedding light upon the foam and the breakers, and then sending them back into the approaching dark.


  Then, right beside me, lit another bird, but how close I couldn’t tell. It hopped and shuddered, and then made the sound of a barnyard kitty.

  “Come here.”

  It spoke in a nasal mockery of Noah feeding the creatures of creation as if granting them the privilege of their hunger.

  “Come here. Fear not.”

  I knew then it was the raven of the ark, the thief of my rightful place in lore, even if it was just the beastman’s.

  “I Am! I Am!” He jeered and mocked me. “It wasn’t I who made the juices of the apple so sweet. I’m only here to provoke you.”

  He hopped across the mud with the same stooped posture as the Strange Bird with the Withered Coat. “So sing. Sing a song for me, would you? Your voice, it’s so beautiful—” he began to hop right toward me, “for a crow.”

  “Really.” I bristled and stood back.

  Still God the Crow was opening and closing Its beak, casting Its sudden light, making it even more random by dropping and swerving Its head. Just as I was about to puff up and sing, the light from Its mouth shone straight into my eyes, and the crab was torn from my claws.

  “Hah!”

  It was the raven. Seeing his success, he flew away with my meal, just beyond me on the beach.

  “Crow, remember,” said the raven, his nearby beak busy and full, “you are only a crow.”

  I looked over at the God Crow. The slow opening and closing of Its mighty portal kept lighting the floodwaters, as vast and benign and distant as ever. Then, with a mighty caw, It spread Its majestic wings and flew out over the flood, Its open horn glowing like a falling star over the sea.

  It was true. I Am! a crow, a crow hopping beyond the breakers, where the beach meets the flood. I Am only a crow, a crow you might hear awwk! Just the eiyyaawwck! of a crow, any day, outside your window.

  But you should listen.

  I may be talking to you.

  Acknowledgments

  The fundamental telling of this story is indebted to the work done by Robert Graves and Patai Raphael in their compilation: Hebrew Myths, the Book of Genesis. It is also indebted to the many marvelous, far-reaching sources I researched, all of which are included in the work’s epigraphs. I am especially grateful to these, as they seem to talk to one another, and tell a story all their own.

  You see crows every day. But to speculate on what I was looking at, and to think about the story I wanted to tell, I found the following works invaluable: Bernd Heinrich’s Ravens in Winter, and Mind of the Raven; Konrad Z. Lorenz’s King Solomon’s Ring; Lawrence Kilham’s The American Crow and the Common Raven; Candace Savage’s Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays; Catherine Feher Elston’s Ravensong: A Natural and Fabulous History of Ravens and Crows; John Marzluff and Tony Angell’s In the Company of Crows and Ravens; and the research of Dr. Kevin J. McGowan, at Cornell University, posted on the internet.

  Special thanks to the King County Arts Commission for their support of a project entitled Bird People, awarded to Ben Jacklet and myself, which led to our increased interest in birds, i.e. Crows and those who watch Crows. Thanks to Professor John Marzluff for his open-minded yet sensible advice as I researched my protagonist, and thanks to John Withey who showed me what to look for when finding crow nests.

  I can’t consider the writing of this book without the constant encouragement and guidance over the years from my agent, Jeff Kleinman, and to both the keen and expansive vision of Fred Ramey, my editor at Unbridled Books; and thanks also to Greg Michalson, Caitlin Hamilton Summie, and Alaine Borgias at Unbridled; special gratitude to Phil Bevis at Arundel Books. Ben Jacklet, Robin, Evan, Caleb, Squarehead Ed, Brian, Matt and Christi, and Misha—for the support over the years. Mom and Dad, and Isabelle Franklin, for the abiding inspiration.