Stillbird
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During the first few days in the cave, Stillbird noticed that birds came and roosted in trees nearby: an owl at night to warn her when death would come to visit her and various crows who took turns guarding her by day, to warn her, when she ventured out of the cave, of the men who might pass by and find her. When she heard their warning cries, she hurried to hide herself down among rock outcroppings or behind the upended root systems of fallen trees, overgrown with mosses, clutching rocks in twisted, grasping root fingers and protecting Stillbird, now a child of the earth as completely as her mother ever dreamed. As Stillbird grew bolder and wandered farther from her cave by day and night, the crows followed, watching over her as they did their own young. Once, in mid-summer, when she fell asleep in the warm afternoon sun in a field of tall grass, and Charles wandered very near to her, the crows all flocked to her and landed on her body, dozens of them, to hide her sleeping form from the man, and he went his way, not understanding the birds, not even listening to them. Abel might have guessed what they were about, but Abel still sat in the rocker back at the cabin, barely eating, preparing for death, recalling each day of his life, slowly and carefully.