my claws, one claw at a time, and made sure they had a good hold of the branch. Then I held out my wings as if ready to fly again.
“Now,” I said to Keeyaw, “be gone! How many times must Our Giant beat you?”
I kept guarding Our Giant with my wings outstretched.
Keeyaw stepped back and looked up at me. He walked backward, wide-eyed and suspicious. Then he joined his mule and petted it as he reached deep into his knapsack and began other preparations.
“The birds, the fish, the snakes, the wild things. They never plot and scheme. One day of life to them is as a thousand.”
—ROBERT GRAVES, King Jesus
12. Burning Creatures of the Sea
Everyone was there to watch me chase Keeyaw off again, including the rude, gawking foreigners from other lands. Except this time Keeyaw wasn’t packing up his mule and disappearing into the trees. Instead the sad creature had a strange, preoccupied walk as if freshly awake from bad dreams as he reached inside the knapsack and began searching its contents.
Perched above him in our fierce Giant, I was sure I’d scare him off again.
Silently my father lit near me and studied Keeyaw, first with sidelong glances, then counterbalancing himself with his wings, then facing the other way, then idly cleaning his beak against the bark. It was a manner of watching that I’d first learned from him, though I’d seen it in the gods and other crows. If you intentionally watch a creature, it is more likely to take note of you, for better or worse, and act differently either way.
Using twine, Keeyaw hung three strange, eelish creatures from the lowest branch of our tree. Below them, he gathered firewood and took out his special rocks and struck them together, summoning the specks of lightning. He blew into the smoldering, and his breath added to the fire. His whiskers rose and fell as he huffed. With the fire going, he lowered the three eels, dry and wrinkled with their fins stuck to their sides, just above the flames. I found the creatures, with their webbed fins and flecked scales and dried-open eyes, slippery and exotic, suggestive of flight.
At just that moment, the God Crow appeared again and perched far above us. There in our severed tree, I saw It, the Bird, Its head craned to the side, looking far into the mysteries of the mute green cedar palms, then turning Its back, flipping Its tail and wing feathers out in quick, random motions, like eye batting. Yes, It was watching me, I was sure, watching me and Keeyaw, yet turning the other way as the beastman spoke to It in Its supreme grace and indifference.
“Hey, You with all the names, You must remember this—my special tree! Your favored Ennouch, my grandfather, labored long and taught me to plant it. Just as he did with the tree You gave away to the Nephalem. Long have I labored, and now this tree is denied me, too. What have I done that is wrong?”
Keeyaw waited for an answer.
The God Crow was pecking away under one of Its wings.
When none came, Keeyaw continued.
“I offer You my favorite, eels.” Keeyaw gave a sidelong glance at his mule. “I know how You like the creature of hooves, hooves and horns. I ask only that I might be Your servant, and to do so, I turn to this tree.”
The eels spun idly on their strings. Their oils dripped into the flames and sputtered. Their lowermost fins turned black and crispy. Keeyaw threw more kindling and pine needles onto the fire, and they burst out in bright, metallic colors.
“Okay,” Keeyaw muttered to his mule, but mostly to himself. “He doesn’t want me to have it?” He scratched his head. “The whole thing’s off, then, I hope.”
Without a sound, the good God Crow flew away, while our severed tree held fast against its mate. Keeyaw cursed into his thick mane and kept cursing as he disappeared into the bushes, every once in a while poking his head back out through the vegetation, making a face at his eels and his fire, and then disappearing again.
But he couldn’t stand it. Looking around guiltily, Keeyaw clipped one of the eels down from its string and chewed sullenly on its belly, afterward restoring it half-eaten to its string. Then, with a grunt, he gathered up his defeated tools and led his mule away with him into the tangled secrets of the hollow.
II. Fledgling
600 years, less than 600 years, passed.
The country became too wide, the people too numerous.
He grew restless at their noise.
Sleep could not overtake him because of their racket.
Ellil organized his assembly,
Addressed the gods his sons,
‘The noise of mankind has become too much.
I have become restless at their noise.”
—ATRAHASIS, MESOPOTAMIAN FLOOD MYTH.
And God looked upon the earth,
and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh
had corrupted his way upon earth.
And God said unto Noah, The
end of all flesh is come before me; for the
earth is filled with violence through
them; and, behold, I will destroy them
with the earth.
—GENESIS, 6:13
In the beginning, God was a perfectionist.
—BLU GREENBERG, GENESIS: A LIVING CONVERSATION.
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