so I could see out over the edge, and the instant I lifted my wings, the wind ripped me away.
Before I even knew it, I was gone.
Was I flying?
Falling?
I rose and fell at the same time. I tumbled. My wings worked too fast for what little they did. I smacked up against other trees and branches and whacked into a tangle of twigs, where I tightened my talons and tore at the cones and needles, breaking the twigs free. But I managed to hang upside down, sideways, right-side up, until I edged my way to a thicker part of the branch and cried out. The wind engulfed my cries in the oblivion of its sad siren.
The elder siblings, when I saw them, kept playing in the violent currents. They were joined by strangers and dove in groups, in pairs, in singles. Crows swarmed in ragged formation, more crows than I’d ever seen, diving, rolling, lifting into the caterwaul. Some of the strangers’ caws I’d heard before. Some were entirely strange to me.
Seeing my brothers or sisters, I called back. But to no avail. Like shooting stars, the minute I saw them, they were gone.
And though I heard him through the trees, Keeyaw seemed much smaller now, his threat like the trailing off of the wind.
I called and called.
But the wind ate my caws.
“Where?” Our Many called back. “You are, aren’t you?”
“I am!”
“You are!”
Like a black fireball, the welcome Mother of Many lit beside me, her feathers rattling. She clipped at my eyebrows and neck. “You are, of course. You flew, didn’t you?”
“I did?”
“Such a strong flier,” she said, covering me with crow kisses and the exaggerations of a mother. “In such a strong wind, the Wind of Long Journeys. So—” she took me in with a proud, wide-blinking love, “that must be your wind.”
“I’m hungry,” I cried, and she bit me hard near my eye.
“Not so loud. You’re not in the nest anymore. And you can’t fly—not well enough. So you must be silent. You must. Wait here. Not a sound.”
But where could I go? I could barely hang on. And she flew to a split in our tree, where she withdrew a long and drooping head with a spine attached. “Here. In celebration,” she said. “Your first meal as a crow.” I pecked at the catfish brains, all mealy-good with rot. She watched me with pure love, following every movement of my clippers. “I thought I was going to have to coax you up from the underworld, which would have been hard to do today in this wind, your wind. Look how far you flew. But listen,” she said. “There is the hawk. If you cry out, he’ll pluck your feathers and you’ll watch as he eats your throat.”
“The hawk?”
“And the owl.”
“The owl?”
“At night you must be absolutely still. And quiet.”
She gave me the last bit of catfish. Even bone—hard nubs from the prickly spine.
“Owl?” I said.
“Listen. Do you remember the raven?”
I nearly coughed up the sharp, scraping bone.
“These are just as bad. No, worse. They’re waiting for the time you’re like this.”
Just a few trees away, I could still see Keeyaw, but his anger looked foreign to me, foreign and mute, just as it had sounded when I’d first come from the egg.
I was in the habit of wandering around in our garden every evening with a gun, on the lookout for crows—I’d long cherished a hatred for the wary, sly, rapacious birds . . . (the crows recognized me, and merely cawed spasmodically at a distance).
—IVAN TURGENEV, First Love
10. Lone Crow
In clearer weather I was still stranded, but managed to make a safe and comfortable home out of the tree where the wind had taken me. For rest I found a cleft between two branches, despite the tree rodent’s disapproval. Up here I could hop up the ladder of perches and finally see the world. I saw the sky where the trees leaned and where the clouds wondered. I saw where the river slid to every day in a lazy way that said, Come follow. And up here branches always wavered, bristling with danger. Songbirds never stopped prattling in their sweet, mindless anxiety, and large birds saw too much.
Up here I actually liked to watch Keeyaw fell trees. So did other crows—strange, meandering onlookers from foreign woods, here to take note of the changing geography of the trees. A loose, shifting daytime roost had gathered just beyond Keeyaw’s attack on the Giants. Then, right beside me, a stealthy presence made the branch dip.
At first it pleased me because I thought one of my siblings had come with food. But the more I looked, the more worried I became. I knew it wasn’t a raven, being too small and nasty and full of ragged feathers. Its dull, matted coat lacked the luster of my family’s, and there was a sleepy, greedy, half-opened look to the eyes. When the strange crow who’d been swinging his head in all directions finally looked at me, I had the sinking feeling it wanted to eat me.
“Hungry, are you, I Am?” He cawed my name with mocking derision.
“How do you know my name?”
The strange bird gave no answer but bobbed and shrugged nervously.
I said, “Keep to yourself. Unless you’re the Old Bone. Then I have business with you, for I Am the Misfortune.”
“Oh. I see. I thought it took seasons beyond counting for the Misfortune to appear.” The bird laughed to himself, or coughed, or gurgled, I couldn’t tell. “Great dangers, feats of daring. A little egg like you?” The bird’s laugh was a strange, derelict wheeze that seemed idle and corrupt. If this bird couldn’t learn the sounds of a crow, then how could it ever imitate nature? “But, your worshipfulness, your eyes are still blue. You can’t even fly—” the bird leered wickedly, “—or so it seems. And that wispy bit of fuzz on your face—”
“How do you know all of this?” I asked. “Are you the Old Bone?”
“Me? Oh, no, not me.”
The strange bird bobbed and pecked at the bark for no reason. It cringed. It pecked its own claws. Its eyes spun, then crossed. It shivered, startled by nothing.
“Then watch how you treat me,” I said. “For I bring bad tidings.”
“You’re
