by Grace Draven
“Not always. It didn’t before, so it came from somewhere else. I never heard it before just as the warm season drew to a close.”
“You heard it?” Raven asked in astonishment.
“Well, yes. You kept waking up and kicking me, then acting like you were listening, so I listened, too. I asked Ronk, but he never hear it. What makes that noise?”
“The Thing in the old forest,” Raven replied, with the patience a big sister needed to have.
“I know that.” Havraní clacked her tongue in annoyance, just as their mother did. “What about the Thing makes that noise?”
Raven hesitated. Perhaps Havraní was too young to know and would be frightened. Of course Ċawlun had been young, too, and had perished between the Thing’s teeth. Raven had no reason, other than her dreams, to believe the Thing with fur also had teeth, long and sharp ones, but she believed regardless. What else could make blood fly?
“I’ll show you,” she told her baby sister. “But only if you promise to go back to the tribe. I’ll bring it and show Mother, Father and Ronk, too. Then we can all decide.”
Havraní hesitated, ducking her head and scratching with one toe at the bark of the log she perched on. “I don’t think you should be alone out here. If it’s because you don’t want me to know your hiding spot, I promise I won’t mess with it.”
“Not even to get the shiny blue rock?” Raven asked archly, partly teasing, partly testing.
Havraní sighed wistfully. “I love that one, but no—I promise I won’t—because I love you more, Raven.”
They gathered around Raven’s find, her family in their comfortable home. Uwak and Con Qa both devoted considerable effort to keeping it warm and dry for all of them. They were good parents.
And both looked on in dark-eyed dismay as Raven laid the tuft of fire-colored fur before them, Havraní dancing from foot to foot in irrepressible excitement. Raven hadn’t let her carry it, the youngling had gotten so overwrought. Afraid, yes. But also alarmingly curious.
For the first time, Raven understood Burung Gagak’s cautious wisdom in advising to leave the Thing be. Havraní had wanted nothing more than to race off to find the Thing the fur belonged to, chattering all the way back about what it might be, to have so much bright fur, that made so much noise.
“Where did you find this, Raven?” Uwak asked, her tone and mien disturbingly repressive.
She told them all the story of how she’d heard the noise at night, and then again—and had followed. Both of her parents clacked their tongues in alarm.
“How could you be so foolish?” Uwak demanded, while Con Qa shook his head from side to side, as if shaking the image from his mind. Or examining the tuft of fur from each eye, to get a better fix on it. He did that at times, giving him excellent understanding of the world, which was partly how he’d become an elder while not yet so advanced in age.
“It wasn’t forbidden,” Raven replied, stung by the accusation. Burung Gagak had called her wise. “I played there as a youngling and you never said not to.”
“Raven,” her father said, cocking his head to eye her now. “Do you really mean to try to convince us that you had no idea that the noise presented danger?”
“I was curious,” she protested, though the defense, which should have been the strongest, sounded weak. “And now we have a clue about the Thing!”
“So we can do what?” Con Qa shook himself, more aggravated than she’d ever seen him. Uwak touched him, soothing his ruffled feathers. “Even if we know what has entered the old woods and hunts us, we have no recourse against it. The elders have been discussing this. If it doesn’t leave, then we will have to.”
“Leave?” Raven almost couldn’t understand the concept in this context. “The entire tribe? But this is home!”
“There are other homes, Raven,” Uwak said, casting her a warning eye. Havraní and Ronk were wide-eyed with exhilarated uncertainty, looking from one of them to the next.
“What homes?” Ronk asked. “Past the meadow?”
“Many, wonderful homes,” their mother replied. “But we only discuss this. No decision has been made.”
Con Qa nudged the fur with his toe. “This may decide the matter. We have no other option.”
“We can fight,” Raven insisted. “This was our home first.”
“Yes!” Havraní crowed, Ronk joining in with her, their excitement feeding each other.
“How?” Con Qa asked, a harsh caw that cut through their starry eyed determination. “We are not a people who fight.”
“We are brave and clever enough,” Raven replied stubbornly.
“Bravery and cleverness only go so far, my daughter,” Con Qa answered, more kindly. “Our tools are simple and small because we are. We have no teeth, no claws to speak of, no means to build weapons. The Thing in the old woods is a predator and we are not.”
“If we do not wish to become prey, we will do what we must,” Uwak agreed with gentle firmness, touching her beak to his in solidarity. “The tribe will survive.”
Before the elders could make the final decision, however, another of the tribe died.
Not Havraní or Ronk, to Raven’s great relief, much as it shamed her to acknowledge her selfishness after that first rush of gladness. No, this time it was an adult—poor Ċawlun’s father—who disappeared sometime between the sun’s setting and the dawn hours. When the tribe assembled, Holló shamefacedly admitted that her mate had taken it into his head to drive the Thing from the old woods, much as the tribe worked together to run off the raptors that sometimes thought to invade their home.
“But... he was alone.” Kara Karga sounded shocked. “Even with a smaller hawk, we never go after it with less than three. And this Thing is furred, and large, with teeth and claws.”
“And at night.” Con Qa shook his head. “Even the youngest of younglings know not to go out at night. Our eyes are not as those of the owls. We are not meant to be about in the dark. It is not our nature.”
Holló scuffed her toe in the dirty snow. “He asked me to go with him and I wouldn’t. I told him we still have Varnas to look after.” Varnas, Ċawlun’s brother, huddled under Holló’s wing.
Raven couldn’t imagine losing both her sister and her father. “Right there is the reason neither of you should ever go looking for the Thing,” she hissed at Havraní and Ronk. The latter at least looked equally aghast. Havraní, however, had a stubborn gleam in her eye.
“Not alone, anyway,” she muttered.
Before Raven could round on her—as fortunately their mother hadn’t heard that and their father was too far away, being up at the front with the elders—Fiach Dubh spoke over the restless crowd, weariness in his voice.
“This is not a Thing we can drive away. We are a proud people. Proud of our community, our strength and our curiosity. But there are Things in this world we cannot fight. Sometimes the best solution is to flee. Therefore, the elders haver decided that the tribe will leave this place.”
Clackings of dismay echoed through the clearing, with various questions jockeying against the snow and sky and each other to be heard.
“But where?”
“How can we go?”
“But it’s winter?”
“How will we carry all the food we’ve stored?”
“What if the Thing follows us?”
“But where?”
Mostly it was where. Where, where, where echoed until it became a cacophonous refrain cawed by many throats.
“Enough!” Burung Gagak’s harsh call cut through them all, leaving shocked silence in its wake. Never had Raven heard the elderly female be so loud and forceful. Burung Gagak told a youngling to watch her stones and hobbled over to first rake the elders with her one good eye, then the rest of the tribe. “None of you are asking the right question. Have we fallen so far in our wisdom that none of you can think to ask what needs to be asked?”
Raven thought furiously while the tribe scuffed at rocks and bark with their toes, chuffi
ng and resettling wings. Havraní edged closer to Raven. “What’s the right question?” she asked quietly and Raven loved her for it.
“I don’t know,” she muttered, looking to her father. Con Qa conferred with Kara Karga, their heads bent close together, while Fiach Dubh surveyed the tribe with all evidence of serenity.
They didn’t know either.
It rocked her world, shaking her to the core much as the first time she’d carelessly forgotten to consider the flow of wind and her own height, nearly dashing herself to the ground. A youngling’s mistake, Uwak had reassured her, all did it at least once, but she’d burned with the embarrassment. She hadn’t miscalculated—she’d forgotten to think at all and her world had turned upside down. No longer a friendly place that lifted her up, but one of harsh truths, ready to yank her from the sky. Just as in those dreams, when the Thing bit into her.
The elders knew no better than she did. Con Qa and Kara Karga finished their conversation, aligning themselves behind Fiach Dubh.
“We will leave,” their leader declared. “As the sun rises tomorrow, we’ll form a flock and go. Disperse now.”
Without acknowledging Burung Gagak’s challenge, or any of the questions posed, he took himself off, leaving the tribe to mill aimlessly. Con Qa came to nuzzle Uwak, nodding solemnly to his children. “It’s the best solution,” he said. “Fret not. We will all be fine and perhaps our new home will be even better than this one.”
“But what of our food?” Uwak asked. “All of our things are here. So much good bedding.”
“We will find more.” Con Qa shrugged that off. “The world is a rich and bountiful place and many tribes have no permanent home.”
“Many tribes starve in winter,” their mother replied tartly.
“We are smarter and stronger,” their father snapped at her, then relented. “Perhaps once settled we can come back and get some of the food and bedding.”
“What of the Thing in the old forest? If it’s not safe to stay here now, then it won’t be safe to return.”
Con Qa had no answer to that. Behind him, Burung Gagak had gone back to her stones, having shooed off the youngling she’d set to watch them. She muttered and clacked over them, rearranging a few. She would have to leave those behind, as well. No one went to speak with her.
“Did you show them the fur, Father?”
Con Qa tapped her on the head, not painfully, but not gently either. “Of course. That’s what decided us. We thought it better not to show the tribe, lest they panic. We want an orderly evacuation in the morning.”
Something about that bothered Raven, though it was difficult to tell what, so much seemed wrong. Havraní looked between them with bright black eyes, all curiosity and boldness, while Uwak comforted Ronk.
“Can I have it back then?” she asked.
“The elders will keep it for you.”
“But it’s mine.” The tribe had few laws, but all agreed that whoever found a prize remained the keeper of it, unless they chose to give it away. “I only loaned it to you; I did not give it away.”
“We are starting over, daughter.” Con Qa turned his back on her. “No one will have things for a time. You will find new ones.”
“It’s not fair,” Havraní said quietly, once their parents and Ronk had moved away. “That fur was yours.”
“Like you wouldn’t have stolen everything from my secret cache if you could have found it.”
Havraní cocked her head, then fluffed herself. “That was only a game. I thought if I could find your hiding spot, then you’d see I’m older now and that I can be strong and clever, too. That you’d maybe take me seriously.”
Raven eyed her little sister. No longer so little. And so much braver than Ronk. Perhaps he’d grow up soon, too, but for the time it was as if Havraní had taken the bulk of the spirit allotted to their birth year. If so, then Raven had taken so much that her own twin had died.
Another selfishness. And a kind of blindness, that she’d missed how Havraní could be a help more than a hindrance.
“All right then. Come with me to talk to Burung Gagak.”
Havraní hopped up and down in her excitement. “I can’t wait to hear what the right question is!”
“Burung Gagak.” Raven bowed her head in respect as she approached the elder, who remained absorbed in rearranging her stones. Havraní hovered just behind her, rustling with excitement. “Elder, this is my sibling Havraní.”
Burung Gagak cast them an impatient glance. “I have no words for young of the year. Come back when you’re older, youngling.”
“But what if I don’t live that long?” Havraní burst out. “I might starve in the new home or die in the old forest because the Thing took me, and then I’ll never hear what the right question is.”
“Eh?” Burung Gagak shook her head at them, then focused her good black eye on the stones, picking up one and weighing it thoughtfully. “What are you going on about?”
“Just now, Burung Gagak,” Raven reminded her patiently. “You said no one was asking the right question.”
“And we want you to tell us what it is,” Havraní inserted.
Burung Gagak tossed down the stone—in entirely the wrong place—and mantled in furious frustration. “This youngling I can understand being foolish, but you, Raven, I thought you paid attention to my words.”
Raven burned with confusion. She’d thought to look better in front of Havraní than this. “I don’t understand, Elder. I’m trying to find the right question to ask, but I am not as wise as you.” Asking a question about a question—it mixed up her brain.
“That is exactly the point!” Burung Gagak flapped her wings in agitation. “I don’t know what the right question is either. None of us know, because no one has asked it. The elders pose and attempt to look wise, to seem as if they aren’t simply fleeing. But that’s what we’re doing. Fleeing before the predator as if we’re nothing more than animals. We have let fear win over curiosity.”
“But you told me only sorrow can come of chasing the Thing in the woods,” Raven protested.
“So I did.” Burung Gagak clacked her disgust. “You might think on what else brings sorrow. None of you listen. Go away.” She swiped a toe across the stones, scattering them.
“Okay, so...” Havraní sounded tentative and Raven didn’t blame her, given Burung Gagak’s tantrum. “It’s bad to go look for the Thing, but it’s also bad to run away. And what we need to do is ask the right question, but no one is asking it because no one knows what the right question is. Do I have it correct?”
Raven sighed a little and bumped shoulders with her sister. “I don’t understand it either.”
“But what should we do?” Havraní drew the question out in a whine.
“We leave with the tribe tomorrow.” Raven tried to shrug it off. “They’ve decided.”
“But you don’t think we should,” Havraní insisted. “Neither does Burung Gagak.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” Raven replied slowly.
“You want to leave our home?” Havraní asked, aghast.
“No, but I don’t think that’s the right question to ask.”
Havraní huffed at her. “Now you sound like Burung Gagak.”
Raven watched her sister fly off, for some reason pleased, though Havraní had not meant it as a compliment.
That last night, lying in the circle with her siblings, warm in their big nest, she awoke from a dream of falling from the sky—just before hitting the ground. The noise of fur growled in the distance, a sound as familiar now as the rest of her home. Never again would she wake in this place, hear that noise. She’d spent her entire life in one place and had been happy. Until the Thing with fur drove them away. It had been their home first, she thought, with the same fierce possessiveness as she felt over the tuft of fur, taken from her. That had been hers first, too.
So unfair, Havraní’s voice echoed in her head.
She turned to look, but Havraní hadn’t truly spo
ken. But she was awake, just as she’d said, eyes bright in the moonlight, watching Raven listen.
Moving with all the stealth of becoming, Raven extracted herself from Ronk’s clutching toes, and her mother’s sheltering wing, knowing Havraní would do the same. Once clear, they glided down to the ground, so as to make no flapping noises, as if they’d agreed on and practiced it before.
“We need a third,” Havraní whispered.
“At least,” Raven agreed. And went to find Burung Gagak.
The elder female, however, was not in any of her sleeping spaces. Nor was she playing with her stones. She’d left them unguarded, some still scattered, the snow dirty where she’d scuffed it in her impatience.
“Where has she gone?” Havraní asked.
Raven didn’t reply, instead staring off over the snow-covered meadow, bright in the moonlight, to the shadowed old forest beyond. The fur made its prowling noise, and she cringed, waiting for the shriek of death to ring through the night.
Not yet.
“Perhaps she’s gone to find out the question to ask,” she finally said.
“What if she finds out, but the Thing takes her before she can come back to tell us?”
“I think,” Raven said slowly, “that you’ve asked a very good question.”
“We’re going over there.”
“Yes. Yes, we are.”
As she’d done once before, though it had been day time, she picked her way from tree to tree. This time she kept to the higher branches, keeping well above where the Thing might prowl, though not so high as to land on ones too thin for her weight, or where the owls might see. Our eyes are not as owls. Never before had she disregarded her parents’ advice. At least, not so directly.
“I’ve never been about at night,” Havraní said, edging beside her on a branch. The moon filtered silver from above, dappled and shifting with the leafless twigs, making Havraní look silver instead of black. “It’s different. Quieter.”
“Listen,” Raven told her, rather than admit she never had either. But Havraní was right—it was quieter. Perhaps that’s why she’d always heard the noise at night. Could it be the fur made its noise all the time, and only at night did it quiet enough for her to hear?
