Hollow Kingdom

by Kira Jane Buxton

  Peering down at the mud puddle, I saw the waggish, saucy countenance of a crow reflected back at me. A bird with quizzical espresso eyes and twitchy head bobs that, much like the leopard slugs and the earthworms, had been on a great adventure. A bird who had survived a mass extinction, a grizzly bear attack, a python’s muscular strike, the jaws of a tiger. A bird who had a heart that had been broken again and again, but that had refused to stop beating. A crow who was seeking. In seeking for life and meaning and a return to balance, perhaps I had been blind to the truth about who stares back at me from the ripples of a murky puddle. It was a crow. In wanting to be like a MoFo, why did I have to deny the part of me that was crow? Perhaps Kraai was right. Perhaps Nature was balancing. And if you cannot evolve, you cannot survive—that is Nature’s way. I had to be honest with myself and admit that, dammit, I’d always known this. As well as I knew when a storm was coming or the speed of an oncoming car or when Big Jim was going to shit the bed because he’d had too much sriracha. It was madness to think that I could take on saving the domestics alone. Just me and Dennis and our poor little Cinnamon. It was a suicide mission. Hadn’t I always been the one to harp on the importance of murder? Of family?

  The cedars are not just one thing, they are many things—food, homes, protection, life-givers, communicators. Maybe it was time to get real and realize I could never sprout ten fingers and be just like a MoFo. Perhaps it was time to stop turning my back on my roots. I had been wrong. And lying in a gross puddle with the heart-stopping beauty of our world all around me was like an alarm clock’s call, the brassy crowing of a rooster at dawn. I had to change and evolve or I would become extinct. Even Dennis knew it. I could see it in him as he sniffed at the sky, wishing the crows had stayed. Hadn’t I admired Kraai? So what if he wanted to learn about how I could create a relationship with a dog? He wanted to share that knowledge with his family, for their survival. He saw evolution, intelligence, and ingenuity—perhaps my MoFo influence, or perhaps entirely the crow in me.

  Rejecting a part of myself had been rejecting all of myself in a world where you needed to believe in yourself to survive. If I could open my eyes and see the beauty in every sapling and shimmery dewdrop around me, and I could see the beauty in Kraai, perhaps I could also see the beauty in the spunky, twitchy scrutiny that postured back at me from the surface of a puddle. Maybe what really mattered was what was on the inside, as was the case with Big Jim’s refrigerator. Change had overtaken our entire world. And now it was my turn. It was time to be a crow.

  The only thing that I’d hurt during the fight with Kraai was my pride, so I shook off the mud and resentment and waddled over to Dennis. I hopped onto his back and apologized. I told him I was going to be more open, less judgmental; because for Twinkie’s sakes, Dennis and I deserved not only to survive, but to blossom and flourish. Big Jim would have wanted it, would have been cheerleading for his boys from the sidelines.

  Dennis, in classic Dennis style, had already forgiven me. He shook off a waterfall of damp and slobber, ears like maxi pads in a hurricane, and put his nose to the business of tracking down a murder of crows who would hopefully do the same.

  Chapter 23

  S.T.

  Despair Central, Seattle, Washington, USA

  Dennis and I plodded westward along the streets at the whim of his nose. Intermittently, I put out a call to Aura, gulping down my pride and asking for the whereabouts of the college crows. Northern flickers, barn swallows, and cedar waxwings darted past, absorbed by duty. Sharp chirruped responses told me that I’d been heard. A great blue heron cruised the sky like a giant Airbus. Dennis seemed particularly absorbed, lost to trailing the crows. He had abandoned his immediate surroundings and even his sense of sight—bumping into a signpost and then stumbling over a cooler filled with long-rotten organs—consumed by what the smells said and on pinpointing one particular odor thread among billions. Never had I seen him so utterly spellbound, so I made us into one entity to protect him. He was our legs and GPS; I was our eyes and ears, in charge of immediate vigilance. We passed storefronts, homes, a gas station whose bones were blackened and burnt. We came upon a sick MoFo whose fingers were missing from clawing at the road. It appeared that she had been trying to escape, to flee her vehicle, but the long, teal scarf around her neck had gotten caught in the wheel of her red Prius, snapping her neck and tethering her to its body indefinitely. Forever on a leash. Nearby, perhaps newly dislodged and with a story it could never tell, a MoFo’s lonely green head rolled down the street like a volleyball in a sandstorm. No amount of duck tape could put that back where it belonged.

  The crows had mostly flown over residential areas, home after home, each painful to bypass. But what could we do, just the two of us? I kept alert for signs of life, MoFo or domestic or animal shuddering with disease, but my heart focused on the task at hand. Dennis lifted his head only once, droopy eyes focusing on three protracted necks that stretched up to the top of Starbucks’ iconic mermaid sign. For once, long necks didn’t fill us with quick terror, and we fleetingly enjoyed the sight of the towering, long-lashed giraffes, their bodies a brown mosaic. With their tongues flickering out like blue lizards, they munched on the ivy leaves that were slowly consuming the building, draping over the Starbucks sign in a deadly hug. We pressed on. Soon after, a chestnut mare trotted past us, a cluster of weeds churning between her velvety lips. Her unshod hooves clapped against the dying cement. We locked eyes.

  “So, there you are, Crow,” she said, incredulous.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “I thought you were a fairy tale.” She let out a laughing whinny. There wasn’t much point in trying to engage with her—she was clearly a Happy Meal without any nuggets. Her coat shone and her portly belly was distended with her fill of abundant grass and perhaps even a foal. She was still saddled with her bridle and the ever-twitching, severed legs of a rider that didn’t seem to bother her or impede her sweeping freedom.

  Several blocks of a neighborhood were flooded and we chose to swim through them. Dennis paddled through the murky, frigid waters with his nose suspended in the air, still soaking up the scent of the college crows. I kept a lookout for ripples in the water, for the shine of eyes above the breathing line, for anything that might have made this its home. There was just no telling. Opportunity and danger were everywhere. We emerged, soaked but unscathed, and continued the trek, finding ourselves crossing the spacious grounds of Ballard High School, a sprawling brick edifice framed by a crescent-shaped driveway. Its walls and windows had been barricaded crudely with nails and wood. Spray-painted signs with ghostly, ephemeral messages said, “RUN!,” “Survivors Gather Here,” and “POWER OFF!”

  Survivors gather here. My heart started to race. Steady, S.T., steady. But maybe there was just one, hiding out, living here. I tried to tuck my excitement under my wings and kept alert. Intermittent pools of blood, mounds of weathered books, and a rogue pair of red-smattered sneakers told a story of panic and mayhem. I fixated on a lone backpack. Near the pink backpack were lumps of muscle and tissue, breathing and bubbling in that nightmarish way I’d seen before. I studied the army of lined candles and a chalkboard set up to pin photos and “missing” flyers. Tethered to its staff, the American flag fluttered gently in the breeze, a survivor. I bowed as we passed underneath it.

  In hindsight, it was probably my fault. I had dropped my vigilance again, distracted by the bus riddled with bullet holes, what sort of bomb had blasted such a gargantuan hole in the road, and wondering what had happened to the young MoFo whose haunting sign read “whAT wE plANTed haS COme bACk to STRAngle uS.” What I should have been thinking about were the pools of blood and the smell of fear that pinched the air. Dennis didn’t have a chance of seeing it coming; he was possessed, too engrossed in the flight path of black birds. They had seen us already though, had long-smelled us lumbering toward them. That is their way. And it was because of me, my particular condition, that had switched their genes on. Lit them up inside.


  The one time I had snuck into the Woodland Park Zoo, Big Jim and I had strolled around, me on his shoulder. It had been a quiet day, as the weather was weepy and most of the children were back in school. After what had happened with Tiffany S. from Tinder, Big Jim needed a distraction and this had been his solution. He didn’t want to be around other MoFos, and the calming beauty of our city’s fine zoo was nourishing to his battered heart. We had been watching the Malayan tigers lounging in their newly restored habitat—a mecca brought to life by a monolithic banyan, sinewy ficus trees and bamboo, with a keeper’s “up close” section to allow the zookeeper MoFos to touch and interact with the cats safely, offering them squirts of milk from a spray bottle.

  When we arrived, the tigers were luxuriating, sprawled out, one tracing his ebony stripes with a barbed tongue. Their fiery fur was tinged with the moisture of recent rain. A small crowd of MoFos had assembled to admire their serene dominion. One young MoFo started to roar at the tigers and Big Jim told him to shut his fucking face up. The mother, fear glistening in her eyes, scuttled the little MoFo away sideways like a crab. Then a curious thing happened. A MoFo with glasses and an oxygen tank on his back, life-sustaining wires snaking across his face and up into his nose, was wheeled into the tiger viewing area. It happened at a speed too fast to comprehend; The Terrible Three shot toward him like bullets. Pounding paws on mesh, their ocher eyes fixated, trained on the wheelchair MoFo with sheer and utter tunnel vision. They had been switched on. Tigers are triggered, summoned, awakened by weakness. They react to it instinctually, a knowing in the stripes of their souls.

  Here again were those Terrible Three. And now, I was that weakness. They had smelled the damage in my wing, perhaps from miles away, and here we had walked right into them. The larger of the three brothers, with eyes like burning embers, took two steady steps toward us, massive paws pressing into the earth. Tall, unruly grass framed a feline face, a coconspirator in his stalking. Dennis bayed, formidable deep-chested, long, low howls that reverberated through me.

  OOoooooooo, Ooooooooooo, OOooooooooo!

  Brothers two and three stepped forward, forming a triangle of teeth and stripe. The largest brother’s lips curled, whiskers hiking upward into a snarl that could stop a heart.

  A V of geese flew overhead with harried honks. In desperation I called out to them, “Help us! Help, please!” In a flash they were gone, honks echoing behind them. The biggest tiger wrinkled its broad nose, narrowing its burning eyes, baring its canines, porcelain smooth and yellow. Meat-tearers. The gravelly growl released in a slow, shuddering stream that rumbled the earth. The fur along the three tigers’ backs stiffened. Dennis bayed and bayed.

  Oooooooooooo! Oooooooooooo! Oooooooooooooo!

  He paced on the spot, stamping his paws, and I dug my feet deep into his back, holding on for life, preparing for the wrath of Panthera tigris. The shoulder blades of all three cats rolled like slow waves as they slunk toward us. They froze. The largest tiger lowered, distributed his weight onto his back legs and haunches, readying to pounce. My beak was open, panting clouds of distress into the air. Three brother tigers would now share the bird that got away.

  Ting. The sharp chime startled us, tigers flinching. The tiger brothers scanned for the source of the sound. Ting. Another ringing clatter that spun our heads to the left. Something had struck a row of glass vigil candles, shattering one of them. Dennis whined. I looked up. The sky was dark, filled with the bodies of hovering birds that emerged from over the tops of red maple trees. More and more crows, black beauties, clouding the airways above us, claiming the sky with their magnificence. Their wings filled our ears with ceaseless whooshing as they flapped with intention. Ting. Ting. More tinkling, the shatter of glass, a New World soundtrack. Ting. Ting. Ting. The crows were releasing objects from their clutched feet: rocks, pebbles, quarters, wristwatches, batteries. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. The tigers lowered their heads, pacing to avoid the raining projectiles. New masses of crows appeared, pelting down their treasures. Missiles from beak and feet. Ting. Ting. Ting. Ting. Nails, bolts, light bulbs, screwdrivers, crab claws, the mandible of a mouse, scrap metal. Ting, ting, ting, ting, ting. Forks, coasters, salt shakers, Alcoholics Anonymous recovery medallions, dentures, figurines. Dennis seized the distraction by its lapels, running for cover. I crouched, splaying my wings to stay on his back and we tucked under the broad branches of a nearby Norway maple.

  We watched the tigers spin and snarl at the avian onslaught, swiping and lunging at the air. The pounding was relentless, bits and bobs, knicks and knacks, tokens of MoFo creativity raining down on them like a tropical monsoon. The tigers flattened their ears, roared their contempt, and bounded away, tails whipping behind them. A swarm of black trailed them from above to make sure the job was done. I fluttered my gular, utterly amazed at the ingenuity of the college crows, how they worked together as a single entity. A damned smart one at that. The objects had been valuable ones, honestly good enough for a sneaky cache. And they’d all been sacrificed for me and Dennis.

  The whooshing of wings signaled the landing of many crows onto the thick grass surrounding the Norway maple. Some perched in the branches above us. More breathtaking than the image of the Greek mythological angel Ichabod who flew too close to the sun, a glossy sheen of feathers drifted down to the ground in front of me. Kraai. Silence floated in the air between us. I didn’t know how to start, how to pull myself together and stop fluttering my gular. Dennis slumped into the mud at the tree’s base, utterly exhausted.

  “I…I’m sorry. I was wrong. Wrong about everything. We came to find you—” I started.

  Kraai cut me off with one curt bob of his head. Such a simple and powerful gesture. He was absolving me of everything. Like Dennis, he was quick to forgive. He shook the feathers of his neck, the living embodiment of grace. Dropping down from the sky was a tiny, feathered puff I instantly recognized. The house sparrow jutted along the branch, head darting to and fro, performing a jerky little series of jumps.

  “I told the crows about you, I told the crows how you saved my life,” cheeped the sparrow. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “The sparrow tells me that you pulled him from a Hollow home,” said Kraai, his voice as steady as the tide.

  “Yes,” I answered. “We are trying to free the domestics that are trapped in homes. I want to preserve the last living legacy of the MoFos.”

  Kraai nodded slowly, his eyes shiny. “All of them?”

  I felt a sharp pain inside. Overwhelmed. The dread of defeat. “We are doing the best we can.”

  “You and your dog?”

  “Yes, Dennis and I. And Cinnamon, but…but we lost her to The One Who Spits.”

  Kraai nodded; he’d seen it before. “We can help one another. It is time. Show us how it is done.”

  “How what’s done?”

  He leaned his magnificent beak toward me. “Teach us to touch through the glass.” Crows cawed in rampant excitement from the surrounding branches.

  There was an angle to this; I felt it. “Why do you want to know how to break the windows, Kraai?”

  Weighted silence. A multitude of dark eyes looked down from the forks of branches. What would breaking glass allow Kraai to accomplish? A muffled slurping sounded out. All eyes landed on my bloodhound partner. Dennis had picked yet another stellar moment to polish his peeper. The little sparrow looked on in revulsion. I cocked my head sheepishly.

  Kraai delivered his answer in a grave tone: “We don’t have a lot of time. Listen to me. Danger is everywhere and something bigger is right now on its way to us. There is a war coming, Blackwing. And you have very little time to decide whose side you are on. The Hollows are dying. The Unbroken—bear and wolf, cougar and coyote—are coming down from the mountains, growing stronger, feeding and birthing young, increasing in their numbers. Creatures have escaped the zoos and parks and the homes of Hollows. With the top predator changed and gone, Those Who Hunt are looking to claim the land with tooth
and claw. This is a fight for territory. The War Of Land is coming, and every single species has begun to slaughter for the biggest piece of it. Every predator is vying for space. Look around you, Blackwing. Look at the ravenous green—the trees, the weeds, the grass. There is an explosion in all directions, life colliding with life. Nature is looking for her balance with unbridled brutality. There are no longer barriers to hold anything back. And someone will become the victor, someone will swoop in. We were The Hollows’ black shadows, living by their sides. The land in our flight path is crow territory. It is known. We are strong in numbers and I intend to claim what’s ours. My murder wants access to the Hollow homes, to make them our own and claim the inside treasures. We have an opportunity here, a chance. We must help one another. We are more powerful when we work together because we look out for one another by being one. That is the code of murder.”