Hollow Kingdom

by Kira Jane Buxton

  I kept quiet, unsure of what to say or whether I wanted to say anything at all. Dennis and I were outnumbered, weak, and exposed. I waited, resisting the temptation to gular flutter so as not to give away my emotional state.

  “Blackwing,” the voice continued, this time like the chiming of cathedral bells, as a large black corvid dropped from the sun and onto a low maple arm. I cocked my head at him, hopping onto one foot. He craned forward, the brilliant blue of his sheen lulling me into a false sense of comfort. You might think we all look alike, but again, it just takes a bit of focus, attention, consciousness. MoFos tend to be too locked in the beautiful basements of their minds to notice certain subtleties. Sorry, I said I’d be honest. No, this wasn’t your run-of-the mill trash-raider. This was a bold and charismatic presence with a perfectly polished charcoal beak. I saw his game—this sneakster was out to disarm me with charm.

  “Are you alright, Brother Blackwing?”

  “We are fine and I’m not your brother,” I answered.

  The beautiful crow bobbed his head, a submissive offering. “We see that you have command over the dog.” Ahhhh, there it is, I thought. An angle. Big Jim says there’s always an agenda, that’s why you’ve got to batten down the hatches, fight for what’s yours, and look out for numero uno. That’s why you don’t let anyone in. Big Jim’s philosophy, sound and clear as Windex-ed glass: everyone wants to steal your Cheetos®. I refused to answer the crow, keeping burning questions about what had happened to the MoFos in my plumage. I would seek answers from a trustworthy source.

  “He’s hurt,” said the annoyingly flawless fancy of feathers, whose wings looked like something out of da Vinci’s sketchbook. “Here.” Another crow—smaller, with a burn-patch on the underside of her right wing and singed contour feathers—dropped from above. She released a petite bushel of herbs at my feet. The boss crow gestured. “Yarrow. For the dog. It will help with healing.”

  Dennis didn’t like me approaching the Cannabis Cup flyer, his hide erupting in a shudder of flinches, but he allowed me to peel it from the wet red and press the yarrow against his wound with my feet as the crow crowd looked on in awe. A sense of importance warmed my throat like Woodinville Whiskey.

  The Prince Of Perfect started up again, “You need to be careful out here—”

  “We don’t need your help,” I spat, surprised by my venom.

  “You are the one who called for help on Aura,” said the crow, his legions gently chirruping in agreement. “We didn’t know you knew about Aura or the ways of the Blackwings. We’ve watched you for some time now.”

  “Yeah, watched, harassed, threatened. Nice job, guys,” I said, adding more of the stalks and miniature white flowers of the yarrow to Dennis’s red, red hole. “Listen, I thank you for chasing off the grizzly, truly, but Dennis and I are doing just fine by ourselves.”

  Main Crow fluttered his wings, his head darting from side to side, displaying his displeasure to the black bodies around him. “I will apologize for any misgivings. I am sorry to hear of them. Perhaps I can help you—”

  “I need to find Onida.”

  “Onida.” Suddenly the crows were statues as the wind exhaled through the maple tree, its leaves dancing like a 1920s flapper.

  Onida, it whispered, The One Searched For.

  The crows waited, monuments of reverence, for the secrets to take the wings of the wind.

  “Onida. How do you know of Onida?” asked the crow chief, his nictitating membrane licking his eye.

  “Onida!” came a crow’s voice from a collage of emerald leaves. “The one who moves between worlds!”

  “The one of many names! The one of the stars!” cried another.

  “The sayer of truths!”

  “The master of escape!”

  “Onida! The one of many minds!”

  “How do you know of Onida?” the beautiful crow asked again. “Onida can only be found if Onida wants to be. Onida is everywhere and nowhere, and knows tomorrow’s sun. If Onida calls, you are summoned like tides by the moon.”

  I would never tell them that I might have accidentally tuned in to their unavoidably noisy ass Aura a couple of times in the past, where I might have heard about The One Searched For, this so-called prophet, by mistake. I would never tell them that I was so desperate and in need of answers that I’d do anything, even follow the directive whisperings of Aura, to help my Big Jim. “Respectfully, that’s not your business. And I definitely wouldn’t tell those ass trumpets.” I bobbed my head at Bonnie and Clyde, my two regular harassers. He gave them both a dark stare.

  “I see. Well, if you’d be willing—”

  “I don’t think they’d be willing to associate with a hybrid like me.”

  “But you are a hybrid, aren’t you? A hybrid Blackwing. Enslaved by the MoFos, caged and clipped—”

  “Clipped?! My wings work perfectly! Probably better than yours!”

  “We aren’t judging you, Blackwing. We say how it is. My name is Kraai.” (This is my best attempt to phonetically translate his name for you.)

  “Look, Kraai, don’t call me hybrid, or Blackwing; my name is Shit Turd and I am what I am. Just tell me where I can find Onida, please. And we’ll be on our way.”

  “Since you are a hybrid Blackwing, you walk the way of The Hollows, you live trapped in a—”

  “Enough!” I squawked, mimicking his earlier cry. “You don’t know who I am! None of you fuckers do!”

  This caused a frenzy among the crows, a bluster of throaty keening. I reeled, backing up and bracing myself. Dennis sprang to his feet, racing to the trunk of the tree and unleashing his warnings at the maple full of life. I’d only ever seen the dreaded UPS trucks inflame him in this manner. I beamed, my breast feathers puffing to inflate me. I had my own protector, my own murder. Kraai silenced his brethren with one slash of his beak cutting through the air.

  He took his time with a slow nod. And then he gave me directions. I’m afraid I’m not able to precisely translate these for you. I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but if you haven’t been airborne, you have no context and the translation is complicated. I will try to simplify it for you. Basically, the sky is a bird’s nature, home, an extension of the soul. They know it and remember it better than earthly destinations. Feathered ones, except penguins and turkeys because they’re fucking morons, have wonderful memories—not sure why elephants get all the damn credit. They travel by tips heard through Aura (sort of like GPS) and by their relationship to the sun and stars who engage them in a sensory conversation. All this forms what we call a mind map. Conversations with no words are understandably very difficult to explain to MoFos, but they are happening all the time, all around. The hardest part to explain is the earth’s magnetic field, which can always be heard, much like Aura. Think of it as the strings of a McPherson Camrielle 4.0 acoustic guitar in your heart, the strumming of which gives you insight and instruction. All flora and fauna listen to the earth’s magnetism. It is how the sand, soil, clay, and dust communicate, how every element of our Infinite Universe and shared home talks to us, sometimes guiding us through our journey. I guess the closest MoFo comparison is how your gods speak to some of you, or the emergency broadcast system. We perceive ultraviolet light and wavelengths of color that allow us to see sexual dichromatism, which is how I could tell, aside from looking up her skirt, that the petite crow with the burn patch under her right wing was a girl. UV light paints a kaleidoscope of patterns and signals that MoFos appear to be blind to, a literal blindness, different from the commonplace numbed blindness of closing off the mind. I think it would just be fucking rude of me to harp on about what beauty and insight you’re missing out on there. So, mind maps. I guess I could tap into all this majestic shit more often, but I’ll be honest, I use landmarks like Starbucks, the Space Needle, and McDonald’s. Way more practical and iconic.

  Kraai and the college Blackwings watched us leave. A pair of cabbage-white butterflies danced around me, pirouetting in the sunshine. Butter
flies live short lives because they have mastered the art of living. They serve to pass it on with luminous bursts of joy, bright flickers from the other side. I listened to their bell-like beckoning. “Onida calls you! Onida calls you!” they uttered, breathless with excitement. The paper-winged ones are truth-tellers, postage-stamp sized messengers who paint the air into a watercolor of magic and taste with their feet. We are best advised not to blast them with Roundup.

  Knowing I had a fairly decent audience at this point, I decided to ham up my exit by sitting on Dennis’s back while holding his leash in my foot, riding him like a stallion into the Wild West. I could hear chirps and incredulous murmurs all around. It was pretty freaking awesome. Well, it would have been had I not been more scared than a KFC-bound chicken. There was a corn nut of truth in what Kraai said. I was, after all, “clipped”—a crow who’d never really left his own nest. And Onida was far from home. And the West was wilder than I could have possibly imagined.

  Chapter 7

  Byeonsanbando National Park, Just North of Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant, South Korea

  (as dictated by a young fairy pitta)

  We are airborne. Quick, quick, quick. Dart through the branches, call out, “Run, run!” No time to dillydally. Below the tree crowns, a thousand feet drum, tiki tiki tiki tiki. Marten, weasel, badger, they run in black and white and brown. Hare leaps, go go go, legs hope to fly. Snake and salamander run, squiggly limbs and slippery belly. Moth and butterfly knew first; they are ahead. They felt it coming before it knew itself. They knew it in the wise of them. The air is busy with duck and goose and Baikal teal and tiger shrike. Flying squirrel glides like quick leaves. We woke to a new smell in the air, sharp as hawk’s beak. Now we run.

  The message came from Echo on the waves that preen sand near where the heat is rising. The rising hot comes from big buildings that look like a line of eggs. They are from the nests of Hollows. We must fly as fast as we can before the eggs crack…

  I dart between trees; my family is a whirl of color through the tips of branches. Quick, quick, quick. Below us, cats with rangy legs skitter-skatter. Mice run alongside them, a bigger danger on their earthworm tails.

  I flit past crested ibis, beaky blur of white and pink, who says, “Faster! It’s coming!”

  We know it’s coming. We feel it. It’s a prickle on the beak, a soon sneeze. We hear it. We run for high ground.

  The trees hum and sing to one another, breathing love and story. They cannot run.

  Thin screams come. Fox shrieks below.

  Quick, quick, quick!

  Before the eggs crack. Before the waves swell with anger. Before the orange hot licks up the land.

  Quick, quick, quick! I feel it now! The rumbling starts…

  Chapter 8

  S.T.

  University Branch, The Seattle Public Library, Seattle, Washington, USA

  Dennis seemed to have perked up after the yarrow application. I admitted to myself that it was a better remedy than my weed-competition flyer and had to eat a little crow, if you’ll pardon the expression. Hey, in my defense, everything I learned about veterinary care was from Animal Planet and they didn’t tend to get overly technical on Breed All About It.

  We headed south, following Kraai’s directions. I used the snaking gray river of I-5 as my guide, soaring above to check our immediate vicinity. Dennis had no qualms about me riding him now and then, as long as he got to catch up on his pee-mail and work toward his unwavering goal of watering every grass blade in the Pacific Northwest.

  I-5 South was a ghost of itself, missing its pulse—the touch and droning hum of wheels. Cars were strewn around it, silent and sleeping. Some had crashed into one another, bodies black and crumpled with dents. I rapped my beak on the rear windshield of a mud-splattered minivan, tapping on the superheroes decal. Dad superhero, mom superhero and three little superheroes, even a superhero dog, all with capes and smiles and arms punching the air in victory. Other than a Pokémon toy, there was no trace of them in the van, but I had a good feeling about them because superheroes can survive anything—I saw Superman stop a bullet with his iris one time.

  I dropped earthbound to check for survivors intermittently, finding evidence of horror-movie endings in the form of sparkling shards or in a MoFo’s lonely bones and the tenacious blue and green skin that clung to them. And everywhere, that greedy reek of rotting meat haunting the air like a ghoul that grabs at your tongue. Many MoFos had perished there, in their vehicles, their destinations waiting forever. I thought of their families and felt a pang of gratitude that Big Jim was still mostly alive. My recon safety checks were frequent but cursory since I didn’t like to leave Dennis for long. From the sky, I could recognize clusters of sick MoFos, their humped backs and snapping-turtle necks, scraping with their fingers, smashing their heads against medians and trucks and fallen motorbikes. We took detours where there were sick MoFos. My keen eyes hunted for uprightness—the miraculously vertical, straight-backed glory and the steady gait that exemplify a healthy MoFo. I knew they were out there. Hope flickered like a tiny pilot light inside me, keeping dark thoughts at bay. I thought of the frolicking in the Cymbalta commercial, and knew we had to keep moving.

  A freeway sign caught my eye. It had been brightened with lightly faded graffiti, an intricate scene that had the runny, bubbled words BORN TO BE WILD over a realistic picture of a lion licking an ice cream cone. Instead of a ball of ice cream, the cone held a grenade. Anarchy or art—those MoFos certainly were creative. The doomed African king was surrounded by rudimentary scribbles. One said “rATheR NoT bE HuMan,” another “Kurt Cobain 4Eva.” Another scrawl said “the four horsEmEn are hErE. thEy camE on the wings of a breezE.” Ridiculous. Horses are way too heavy for that shit.

  With every step Dennis and I took, there was palpable agitation, airborne collywobbles clouding the air. Even the sun peeked through the clouds cautiously, unsure and perhaps afraid of what she might illuminate in the broken city below.

  A swift flight to the west allowed me to hover over Gas Works Park on the north shore of Lake Union. From my bird’s-eye view, the park was almost unrecognizable. Big Jim says that most things can be fixed with duck tape, but staring at the changed park, I was dubious. At some point, a Boeing 747 had tumbled from the clouds and collided with the red skeleton of the old gasification plant, birthing a mangled mess of aluminum and demolition and bloody rust. Bobbing gently in Lake Union, yards away, the tail and blades of a King 5 helicopter peeked out from above the waterline. The park’s beautiful sundial—centrally located on a grassy hill, which allows a flightless MoFo to enjoy Seattle’s skyline—was charred and burnt, its face forever scarred. Black bruises kissed the park where small fires had erupted. A couple of skeletons, big and small, cowered under a picnic table. Then a flurry caught my eye: a ghoulish gaggle of vulture-necked MoFos were huddled in a mass by the park’s concrete arches—the gray ghosts of old train trestles. MoFos crawled over one another, a living tumor of blood and tissue. I couldn’t see what they were scrambling for, what was at the epicenter of this pileup of doom, but knew better than to get close. No, the healthy MoFos weren’t in Gas Works Park. They’d found shelter elsewhere. Sadness tugged at my tail feathers. Although whatever had taken over Big Jim had obviously hit my neighborhood the worst, it had spread farther than I thought, desecrating my home city and its gorgeously iconic bits.

  In Lake Union, boats bobbed aimlessly, sails lying flat against the water like soaked surrender flags. The sky was painfully silent without the brassy blare of brightly colored seaplanes overhead. Everything felt too quiet, like held breath. This was no longer the fastest growing city in America. This was a battleground. A war zone. And yet, on the far side of the park, I saw deer grazing on the dense, jungly grass that grew everywhere, stretching their necks to reach the vines and creepers that hung down from tree crowns.

  I told Dennis we should get a move on and we made our way farther down the phantom of I-5, stopping to fill ourselves with black
berries and salmonberries from the brambles that threatened to swallow part of the freeway alive. A section of the road was flooded, forcing Dennis to paddle through an algae-lake as I hopped alongside him across the tops of vehicles, acting as his neurotic swim coach. Once across, I stared back at the freeway lake, marveling at the soupy devastation, while Dennis shook himself dry, releasing a halo of wet. I pillaged a small blanket from an abandoned SUV with punched-out windows, gingerly dabbing at Dennis’s wound to dry it. I hopped in place, anxious to move on. I was stress-stuffed, a Hot Pocket of angst. Who knows what might have been lurking under that quiet film of green scum?

  A red-tailed hawk, talons tightly clutching at old habits, looped above the freeway, searching for roadkill—an extinct species. She started to follow us, but Dennis, full of piss and blackberries, told her where she could stick her razor-edged bill in strangled bugle-howls. Dennis was really getting into this murder thing.

  Several streetlamps later, we approached a gruesome scene. Seven colossal rib cages adorned with nubs of rotten meat sat on the freeway like a horrifying art installation. The road was stained deep red with blood and the slimy residue of entrails. Bovines. These were the foundations of what used to be some sort of cattle, picked almost clean by something. A bright rainbow suddenly streaked above us, almost too fast to register, a flock of colorful birds I couldn’t identify or understand. So I was distracted, looking skyward, when a goat—skin stretched tight over bones, eyeballs bulging with the stress-shits—shot past, startling us. We both noticed the purple wound where his tail used to be. He didn’t make a sound, skittering into the trees, gone before we could get answers. Very un-goatlike. He had survived something unspeakable, hooves propelled by survival instinct. Dennis sniffed at the bone sculptures and raised his head toward the bold frontline of evergreen trees. He didn’t need to convince me further. We picked up the pace from there, knowing that Seattle had seen a change of Mount Rainier proportions and that whatever it was, it was big and destructive and largely hidden from us. It was also safe to say, at this point, that I-5 South was officially the freeway of death. In all fairness, I’ve heard it described this way many times on the radio before, so not much change in that respect.