Eyes of Crow

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “It is my pleasure.”

  Rhia waited for the tall creature to begin testing her as the snake had. But she only said, “Speak.”

  “Pardon?” Rhia asked.

  “You must have questions.”

  Rhia recovered from her surprise. “What are you called?”

  “The people where I live call me ‘twiga.’ Those who lived here long ago called me ‘giraffe,’ but I prefer my native name.”

  Her mind roiled in confusion. “Wait. The people who lived here long ago, how did they know you, if you live far away?”

  “They traveled around the world, and brought some of my creatures here to keep for themselves.”

  “To eat? To ride?”

  “To possess.” The twiga/giraffe gave a modest tilt of her head. “And to admire.”

  Rhia understood the impulse, but it seemed beyond her people’s capability. Then again…

  There were those who believed in the Reawakening, the moment in the distant past when the Spirits chose her people to share their magic. Before the Reawakening, humans had dwelled in disharmony with the world and its creatures, placing themselves in the role of gods, as the Descendants now did. The natural world turned against them, and it was only by the grace of the Spirits that her people had survived.

  Few Asermons believed this myth. But why would the twiga tell a false story? Though Spirits didn’t lie outright, some offered incomplete truths unless asked the right questions.

  “Your land, what is it like?” Rhia said.

  The animal swung its head in a sweeping arc. “It is much drier than your forest, with grass as tall as my knees. There are few trees, except at the watering holes, where we all gather. Even our enemies drink with us, those who would eat us, for water is the most precious thing in our lives.”

  Rhia couldn’t imagine what would be large enough to eat this creature. “Who are your enemies?”

  “Cats, nearly twice the size of your cougars, who live in groups instead of alone. They hunt our babies.” The twiga tasted a pine branch with a long black tongue, but declined to take a bite. “Would you like to ask about your own journey, or did you want to talk about me all day?”

  A shadow of last night’s fear hovered over Rhia. “What lurks in the dark, here in the forest?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things, I imagine. Owls, bats, mice—”

  “What came to me last night? What will come again tonight?”

  “Oh.” The twiga’s ears flicked back and forth. “I cannot tell you. Another question, please. I would so like to help.”

  “Will I—will I survive this ordeal?”

  The creature blinked her huge brown eyes. “Of course.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  She bowed her head close to Rhia’s and breathed warm upon her forehead. “If you need me, come and get me.”

  The twiga disappeared so quickly that Rhia put her hand into the space where she had stood, in case she were merely invisible. She wished she had been less self-concerned and asked more questions about the Reawakening.

  A low buzzing came to her ear. She turned to see a golden dragonfly the size of her finger hovering over the side of the boulder. It darted to and fro, then alighted in the center of the stone and lowered its iridescent wings to the side.

  “What do you see?” Its voice, neither masculine nor feminine, sounded out of breath.

  Now Rhia was the questionee again. She squatted to peer at the insect.

  “I see—” She hesitated to utter the obvious: a dragonfly. Perhaps the insect was referring to her surroundings, asking her to describe the forest.

  “What do you see,” it repeated, green eyes bulging, “when you look at me?”

  Unable to devise a better answer, she said, “A dragonfly?”

  A wave of heat burst over her as the insect suddenly stretched and swelled, growing up and out until it was the size of a bear. Rhia was too terrified to scream. She fell back on the rock and moved toward the edge, unable to look away.

  Its four rear legs fused into one heavy pair upon which the beast now stood. Smaller front legs clawed and grasped as it loomed over her. Its huge green eyes slid apart and shrank to pierce her with their gaze. Its tail slashed the air, glinting gold in the sunlight.

  It spoke again, in a language she didn’t understand, a language that was guttural and fluid at the same time. It continued its diatribe without pausing, speaking while exhaling and inhaling. She knew then that it was not from any part of this world.

  “What are you?” she whispered.

  Smoke poured from its nostrils as it seemed to struggle against its own will. Then its voice rolled out again in a rasping, gasping effort, as if its tongue resisted forming words she could understand.

  “Dragon,” it said. “Fear not.”

  Rhia nodded, her eyes wide, afraid to blink.

  “Fear not.” The dragon shook its black-and-gold wings. “It is a command, not a suggestion.”

  She shuddered at the threat inherent in the words, but sat up and looked into the beast’s leering face.

  “Are you trying to scare me into not being afraid of you?”

  The dragon’s eyes narrowed, then relaxed into an almost approving regard. “You are clever, little one.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Before the word was out of her mouth, the tip of the thorny tail whipped past her head. The dragon glowered at her. “It will be your undoing.”

  She dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  For catching on to your game, she thought.

  “I heard that!” The tail hissed in her ear again. The dragon crouched on the stone, but its lowered posture only made it look more imposing. It growled an incoherent oath. “You learn faster than you understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Know one thing.”

  She cocked her head and waited for enlightenment. When the dragon only sat, quietly puffing, Rhia grew impatient.

  “Know what one thing?”

  It gazed at her without reaction, as if it hadn’t heard her question. Rhia wished the twiga would return, or even the snake. But the Spirits sent those who could teach her best. So why did she feel like she knew less now than when she woke this morning?

  The more she asked, the less she understood. It reminded her of the carved wooden puzzles she’d played with as a child, each piece interlocking to create a whole. But this puzzle only grew more incomplete with each addition, as if adding more pieces resulted in a larger picture. She would never figure out what she came to learn. Her Bestowing would be a failure.

  Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She wiped at them in shame.

  The dragon frowned at the sight. “Your despair is premature. You will face much greater hardships than your own ignorance.”

  “I’m not ignorant. I just don’t know the one thing.”

  “But you know all the other things, correct?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “What are the things you know?”

  “I know that…” She searched her mind for one truth that hadn’t yet been demolished. Hunger, thirst and exhaustion had stolen her ability to think in a straight line. Doubt and fear swarmed inside her.

  “Tell me,” the dragon rasped, “what do you know?”

  “I don’t—” Her hands twisted in the folds of her coat. “I can’t—”

  “You can’t tell me? Is it a secret?” The dragon rubbed its claws together in mock anticipation. “Tell me what firm ground you stand upon. Share your knowledge, your certainty. I’d be so pleased to hear it.”

  Her thoughts scrambled back and forth in time but couldn’t land on any one fact, one certainty that didn’t slither out of her mind’s grasp.

  “Rhia.” The monster inhaled her name slowly, until she felt as if her very self were being subsumed into its throat. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Nothing!” She held her empty hands palm up. “Nothing makes sense anymore.
No one is what they seem, including me. I don’t know why I’m here, what I’m supposed to learn, what I’m supposed to do.” She stared at the dragon, hoping it would forgive her honest but insufficient answer. “I know nothing.”

  The creature gave Rhia a broad smile, then shimmered into oblivion.

  The night had swallowed her whole.

  She lay gasping—on the ground or on the flat boulder, she no longer recalled. Something was tearing her apart, rending her from the inside.

  The night was squeezing her out of herself.

  She had few thoughts to spare for why it was happening or who or what it might be. Every scrap of her mind concentrated on holding herself together, clinging to anything she remembered. Her family, friends, Arcas.

  Arcas…was this what he meant when he thought the Bestowing would kill him? Rhia was dying, she was sure, but not a death of the body, like her mother. This was worse. She dreaded the thing that was on the other side of this nothingness, the thing she would become.

  The presence in the woods, a living void, had come at sunset, before she even built a fire. It mattered little, for she would not be able to attend the fire, and whatever devoured her kept her…not exactly warm, but not cold.

  Not heavy, not light. Not happy or sad, parched or soaked, hungry or sated.

  Not anything at all.

  She was turning into nothing.

  The night had swallowed her whole.

  The sky above Rhia was a deep periwinkle, but she didn’t see it, only saw through it. She no longer even saw her eyelids when she blinked, if she blinked. She was too busy watching the end of the world.

  In a vast vista before her, a river of fire ran next to a river of clouds. They flowed forth toward a distant mountain range, cutting two gouges into the earth, bearing close to each other but neither meeting nor mingling until they converged at the foot of the mountains. At this place, every element fused into one, in the end as at the beginning.

  The world was dying and being born over and over before her eyes. She felt as though she could watch forever, that she was seeing the world’s Forever inside her own Forever, a Forever doomed to be interrupted soon.

  The sky shone a bright blue. Her awareness now included the forest around her, though it felt less real than the visions that had filled her sight every moment she could remember. Her life before the last two days felt like a myth, a dimly recalled bedtime story.

  we

  are

  came a whisper. Something swished in the corner of her eye—a feather, or perhaps a furry tail.

  We

  Are

  it came again, louder. The movement repeated itself, so quickly that Rhia could not even describe the color of the object that passed through her vision.

  WE

  ARE

  She sat up, the ground solid and cold beneath her. “You are?”

  NO

  WE

  ARE

  The voices came from everywhere at once, pressing on her head. She stood and turned in a circle.

  WE

  ARE

  Rhia resisted the urge to cover her ears. In the presence of these voices, seeing nothing was almost worse than seeing monsters.

  Then the chorus melted together to make one clear voice.

  WE

  ARE

  Out of the empty space between two pine trees, from the air itself, a tiny brown rabbit appeared—a baby, ears round and legs stubby. Rhia almost smiled at the little creature, until she noticed its feet were not touching the forest floor. No dry leaves rustled at its passing as it moved toward her.

  The baby rabbit was about ten paces away when it sat back, fluttered its forelegs and turned into a hawk. The hawk flapped its wings and lifted into a nearby branch. Its wings made no noise, and the branch did not dip and bend under its weight. It grew in length, head and tail fading to white, then uttered the scream of an eagle. The eagle stretched its wings forward as if to grasp the branch it sat upon, and morphed into a squirrel, which chattered and shook its fluffy tail at Rhia.

  On and on it went, from squirrel to dove to bobcat to bear to bee and trout, on and on as the day progressed, one blurring into another, some as unfamiliar as the giraffe, until she no longer remembered any of the animals, much less all of them.

  Finally, as the shadows lengthened, there coalesced before her a furry, feathered, scaly creature nearly half the height of the trees. It consisted of every animal she had ever seen, and many she didn’t recognize. Horns, paws, tails, ears poked out in all directions. It hovered like a soap bubble over the forest floor.

  Her jaw slackened at the sight. It was beautiful rather than grotesque, this melding of all life. It was like viewing the whole world in one place.

  WE ARE, it uttered, and she knew it was right. All one. To separate and divide was to corrupt this truth. She ached with awe at the simplicity and complexity of life, and with regret at the mistakes she had made during her short existence.

  The every-animal body swelled and twisted in the fading sunlight. As the last rays slipped over the hill, the creature began to tremble, faintly at first around the edges, then violently from within, as if a great force were trying to hatch out of it.

  The sun set, and the body burst. Out of the center flew a giant raven, luminous, iridescent—each feather containing every color as it had at the moment of the world’s birth.

  Rhia fell to her knees, then her stomach. She had never expected to be in the presence of Raven. The twiga, the dragon, the void-creature, the every-animal—none had provoked the terror she felt now, faced with the Creator of the World, the Bringer of Light, the Spirit Above All Others. She had dared look upon Her for a moment that stretched to an eternity. What punishment could pay for her brashness?

  Raven flew overhead, the rush of Her enormous wings creating a melody that pierced Rhia’s heart. The Spirit circled around to alight in front of the trembling Rhia.

  “Rise and behold.”

  Raven’s voice belonged to another world. It was the sound of the stars flickering in the sky, the pulse of the sun’s rays, the wind that shifted the sands of the moon.

  Rhia rose on unsteady legs and gaped at Raven. Looking at Her, she felt alive, calm. Complete.

  “You are not complete,” Raven said. “Not yet.”

  It was time, then.

  “Are you—are you my—”

  “I am no one’s. My duty, my love, is to all who walk this earth. I appear at every Bestowing to introduce each person to their Spirit.”

  Rhia dropped her gaze, ashamed at her presumption.

  “You are ready.” Raven folded Her wings to the side. She darkened until all Her feathers turned a deep violet-black. Her beak became pointier and the ruff under Her neck smoothed. Her body shrank until She was no taller than Rhia.

  Until it was not Her at all anymore.

  It was Him.

  Crow.

  13

  Rhia stared at the bird-shaped place where the night had become blacker than itself.

  “Good evening,” He said with a gallant half-bow. His voice sounded more affable and human than the other Spirits.

  Rhia bowed in response. “Good evening.”

  “You are not afraid.”

  It was true. Her uncertainty, her hesitancy, her fear, had all dropped away. Whatever she did or said in the presence of this Spirit, He would accept her.

  “I’ve lived with you for many years,” she said. “To see you at last is almost a comfort.”

  Crow seemed to smile, if a beak could conjure such an expression. “Follow me. Bring your belongings. We won’t return.”

  They moved out of the clearing into darker forest, and though Rhia was conscious of walking, her feet, like those of the Spirit, no longer rustled the fallen leaves.

  “A comfort, you said.” Crow chuckled. “You’d be surprised, or perhaps not, how seldom I hear those words. People are rarely happy to see my face.”

  “That’s why you need me, isn’t it?
So that they’re not afraid of you?”

  “Yes, to make a person’s crossing a time of peace. I do not relish yanking someone out of their life, struggling like a fish in a bear’s paw.”

  Like my mother.

  “Yes, like your mother,” Crow said. “You have acknowledged your part in the nature of her death and learned from it. But let guilt burden you no more, or it will stunt your powers.”

  “But why did—” Rhia cut herself off, anticipating Crow’s interruption, which never came.

  After a few moments, Crow asked patiently, “Yes?”

  “Why did you tell me she would live another day?”

  He sighed. “I would never lie to you, Rhia. Because we had not given ourselves to each other yet, our communication was unclear. It was like trying to speak to you underwater. You only caught part of the truth.”

  “And filled in the rest with what I wanted to believe.”

  “Yes.”

  “But once I’d made a pronouncement, couldn’t you have waited?”

  “Changed the speed of my flight to prove you correct?”

  It did sound audacious, now that she thought about it. “I suppose death keeps you busy.”

  “Even if your mother had been the only person in the world to die that night, I would not have changed the time I took her.” He clicked His tongue against the roof of His beak. “The Spirits do what they will.”

  “Then what’s the use of prayer?”

  “If you define ‘prayer’ as trying to change a Spirit’s mind, then it’s not much use at all. Sorry. But prayers focus your intentions and define what’s important, which may change your own actions. Besides, it pleases us to hear from humans.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we love you.”

  Rhia stopped, dumbstruck. Crow turned to face her.

  “Is that such a surprise?” He said.

  “No. I always felt it.” She took a step toward him. The trembling began again, this time only on the inside. “Especially your love for me.”

  “Yet you resisted it.” His midnight-blue eyes glittered in the moonlight.

  “I did.”