Ka

by John Crowley

  He picked up from near him another pot, or a thing like a pot, but covered over with something that might be the hairless skin of an animal.

  Who has taken it? Dar Oakley asked.

  You are her friend, the Singer said. I have called you to help me find her, and bring her back.

  Dar Oakley wanted to ask, Back from where? But he thought where would get no better answer than who. He said, When she finds her cap, she will come home on her own.

  The Singer shook his head side to side in the same gesture the Crows make to say no. They want her cap, he said, but even more, they want her.

  He took a thin, long, knob-ended bone, and with it began striking rhythmically on the taut skin of the pot he held, which produced a noise louder than Dar Oakley would have guessed. They want her. It seemed to Dar Oakley that he was at long last about to be told something that even Fox Cap would not reveal to him: that the People, who preyed on animals large and small, were themselves preyed on, sought for food, by beings who were their predators and no one else’s. But the Singer didn’t continue that way. His eyes closed at the striking of the bone.

  If you will help, he said, I will guide you to the place, though I may not enter it.

  Where is this place? Dar Oakley asked.

  At that the Singer hesitated, and the dark space, the pale man, the dull fire, all changed back into what they had been before those leaves were burned, though Dar Oakley hadn’t really seen that they had ever become different to begin with; and then with the striking of the bone they became again sharper, larger, more.

  Is it, Dar Oakley said, a realm?

  The Singer smiled to hear the word. A realm, he said.

  Whose?

  Ours, when we are there.

  The ceaseless beat of the bone on the skin made it harder to hear, but easier to understand. Dar Oakley said, How far?

  I will go with you, the Singer said, as far as ever I can. But they will bar the way to me. You are a stranger to them; you can pass.

  When?

  Soon. Today. Now.

  The dark and stifling place was now darker than when Dar Oakley had entered it. Day was going.

  Too late, he said.

  Dark is day there, the Singer said. He extended a long white hand toward Dar Oakley, a hand that was to Fox Cap’s as a Falcon’s foot was to Dar Oakley’s. It’s light enough, he said. Come.

  Dar Oakley once said to me, I remember how I came to agree to do as he asked, and how he and I went out from that place and abroad. But then he said, No, what I remember is that I don’t remember, that I didn’t know. And that was the way it was and would be, as I’d learn: I could always remember how it was to go out to there, to that place and to others in that realm, but all I’d remember was how I always forgot.

  What he remembers: flying over the People’s scored land and the bent backs of those who cut the golden-headed grasses growing there, and then to the margins of the lake. The Singer was there with him, traveling as fast as he did himself—how could that be? But when the Singer went out over the wrinkled gray waters, Dar Oakley could no longer see him, and he thought it must be that he had gone under those waters; and he remembered how Fox Cap had told him that the Singer’s mother was a wave on the water, so (he guessed) that would account for that, and yes, when he reached the island in the lake, he saw the Singer come dripping out of the lake and somehow stride onto the shore.

  In the center of the island—Dar Oakley hadn’t noticed it before—was a sort of circle of four large stones standing upright like People. Amid those stones was a flat one, nearly swallowed up in nettles and woodbine, that the standing stones seemed to look down upon. To this stone the Singer bent. He stooped so low his chin nearly touched it, and his long arms were stretched across it, feeling along its edge for handholds. With a long cry he lifted the great stone, staggering, and moved it some ways away. Dar Oakley on a branch of an Alder watched this in—well, you couldn’t say in disbelief, because a Crow believes what he sees; he watched.

  Beneath the stone was not damp earth and grubs wriggling from the light but a hole, Dar Oakley couldn’t see how deep. The Singer bent to look into the hole as though to question it, and a wind that came up out of it stirred his hair. He was lean and white as a fish. He sat down on the hole’s lip, pushed the skirts of his wrapping between his legs, and slid down in.

  Come, he called to Dar Oakley, or perhaps he only looked up to where the bird sat. Dar Oakley waited to see if this command would make any sense to him. Come?

  Come in, the Singer said. He went farther in. The hole was deep, and soon only his head was still visible.

  I can’t go in there, Dar Oakley said. Just the thought of the close, earthy darkness made his feathers compress around him.

  You can. You must.

  The Singer disappeared entirely. Dar Oakley, in distress such as he hadn’t known before, dropped to the edge of the hole in the ground and put his head in. It was darker down in there than any darkness he had ever looked into, darker than his mother’s underwing, darker than the backs of his eyelids closed in the night.

  Hurry, he heard the Singer say.

  I can’t. I can’t see in the dark. I’m not an Owl.

  There’s no dark, the Singer said. Come.

  Out of the blackness the Singer’s white hand and arm appeared, and Dar Oakley thought he could see farther down the glitter of an eye. With a hopeless cry he hopped off the hole’s lip and onto the flat of the Singer’s hand, and was lowered into blindness.

  It was indeed light enough out under the sky (how they had gone out under the sky is what he can’t remember now), though it didn’t seem to him to be a sky you could fly up into. Dar Oakley kept to a low flight, as though he might strike it if he went up too far. Below him the Singer crossed the moorland with great strides, leaving no path in the grass.

  Then there came up over the rolling margin of the earth a dense wood, one without an end that they could see (for now the Singer seemed to be up beside him as well as down on the ground). If they kept on, there would be nothing else below them forever, a forest as dark and closed and unwelcoming as the hole in the ground where he had suffered. He hoped that it wasn’t where Fox Cap was lost, even as he knew for sure that it was; and the Singer was drawing or pressing him down to enter it.

  But now when he came close to it, it wasn’t so drear. It opened up to them, sunlit and green (hadn’t it been late in the year when they set out?). The easy way to go within was clear, and they took it. There was a tall Oak there, not far from the field’s edge, all alone.

  Your Oak is strong, Dar Oakley heard the Singer say, but the Birch is the wisest of the trees in this realm. The Birch knows all of life and death.

  I’ll rest, Dar Oakley said, and sat a branch of the Oak. It felt to him that he rested on an outstretched hand. Down below, a Boar—no, it was not a Boar but a Pig, one of the People’s beasts, like Boars but not—looked up from snuffling in the acorns.

  The beings of this realm are these, the Singer said, his voice—if it had ever been a voice—grown dim: the Birch, the Roe Deer, the Lapwing, the White Stag, the Pig, the Little Dog. Listen when they speak, but don’t answer.

  Dar Oakley had never been spoken to by any of these, and never by any tree. Yet the black Pig in the mast looked up and considered him, as no beings but his own and the People ever did.

  Crow, the Pig said.

  Dar Oakley made no answer.

  Crow, you have taken something from my mother that does not belong to you.

  No, Dar Oakley said, I would not do that.

  The Pig considered this. Very well, he said, but one day you will. And ever after you will regret it.

  Dar Oakley did not know what regret might be; no Crow then had ever felt it. Listen but don’t answer, the Singer had said, and Dar Oakley clapped shut his bill. The Pig returned to his mast, as though he hadn’t spoken at all, but Dar Oakley felt that now he might proceed farther in. He flew from the Oak to a Birch down along the open
way, and took a perch on a low branch.

  Pay no attention to the Pig, he heard. Remain with me. If you go farther, you will regret it.

  Who said that? No one and nothing was near. Only the Birch he sat in. Dar Oakley was here alone: the Singer was gone. The forest waited in stillness to see what he would do, go or stay.

  He called.

  He called in his own tongue, not in the language in which he and the Singer had spoken, nor the language of the Pig and the Birch. A plain call of inquiry that, where he had been born, would very soon have brought a response; he would have heard Who are you? We’re right here! Go away! What do you see? Any of that. But Dar Oakley heard nothing, only felt the forest shudder, as though no such sound had ever been made there.

  Then down on the ground in the low undergrowth he saw a flash of red: a Fox slipping off, looking back to see or hear him, then vanishing.

  He went that way. At once the forest changed, or what he could see of it changed. Something had happened to his sight: everything he looked at in every direction seemed larger and closer to him than it should, distinct and looming; but things farther off faded quickly into irresolution and vagueness, startling him as he came closer by suddenly turning into what they were. As now: he caught up to that Fox, now walking upright on its hind legs, and he knew who that was; and not far beyond, in a clearing where sunlight fell slantwise and dusty, why, it was a whole crowd of People, clear and vivid as anything; how could he not have seen them from the Birch where he’d sat? More than a Crow could count, they sat on seats they had placed there for themselves. Their big shaggy heads turned this way and that, grinning, cheeks like blushed haws. In their great hands they held pots of drink. And more of them came in sight, grinning and hale, bringing in burdens, armloads of their golden grasses, carriers full of things, foods, small animals, orange apples.

  Only none of them made a sound. No being anywhere, not in the trees or the sky or on the forest floor, made a sound Dar Oakley could hear.

  Fox Cap—now herself complete—sat herself down among them. Her cap was on her head, for (just as he had thought she would) she’d got it back from them. Those around her petted her and with their fingers they fed her this and that, a tiny wan thing amid their overbearing fatness.

  So there was nothing to fear, was there? Her own kind, come to live in the greenwood, wasn’t that all right? If they’d stolen her cap, they’d given it to her again. It was all right.

  Dar Oakley called in his own voice: It’s all right.

  The People seemed to hear that, and looked around themselves, troubled; one took hold of Fox Cap in a grip that seemed not friendly. A little black Dog that had been prancing there before them turned and sought the source of that call, head snapping this way and that, teeth bared. Fox Cap sought too, looking up, rising from her seat though the others held her.

  Dar Oakley flew nearer and called a third time into the silence, the universal everyday everywhere call, the Ka.

  Remarkable. The many, many coming into the clearing halted at the sound, or turned to walk away again and vanished. There hadn’t really been that many after all; only the trees were thick. Ka: Those in the seats grew pale and perplexed, they lost flesh, withered—even the furs they were wrapped in faded and grew thin. Fox Cap, though, darkened, or brightened; she thickened, grew distinct, and saw him.

  “Dar of the Oak by the Lea!” she cried, and he heard.

  “With the Fox Cap!” he cried back to her, dodging over the heads of the People, stalling and hovering. “Come! Come away!”

  At the real speaking of these names the People got to their feet, alarmed, staring and staggering this way and that like a flock of sparrows. Some had weapons, and struck out feebly with them at nothing or at one another. Fox Cap pushed them away from herself with one hand while holding her cap on her head with the other, dodging the People’s hands that reached to snatch it or hold her back.

  As loud as he could, Dar Oakley shrieked at them, Get, all you! I’ll fight you! I’m so mad now! This is mine! Calls that a Crow would cry at another Crow in a fight; he knew no other ones. They seemed to cause the People pain. Fox Cap broke from them and ran out into the forest beyond, chased by the little black Dog.

  Later Dar Oakley would remember that moment best, always with a blow to his breast but laughing, too: how that foolish young one had run not out but in, not toward but away from where he and the Singer had entered the forest. From branch to branch he went, in this forest that hated him, keeping her in sight, whether she appeared as Fox or Fox Cap, calling for her to stop. At last she did, and they fled together, girl and bird. The three black Dogs kept on in pursuit of her—Dar Oakley can’t remember when the one had become three, but they were now a lot larger too, heads as big as Horses’ heads and full of great teeth. They could do no harm to him—he could fly—and Fox Cap dealt with them as she did with bad Dogs in her home place: she’d eye them and kneel as though to pick up a stone to throw, and the cowardly Dogs would vanish, for a while. None of the pale People had followed, he couldn’t think why—soon they were all left behind, Dogs and People, and he and she walked on alone.

  They walked a long time. Sometimes she wanted to hurry toward home; she’d ask him about the Singer and the People at the settlement, or tell him of all the things she’d been given that she’d bring back there, things that if he saw them he’d envy and want for his own treasure, though she showed him none of them. At other times she wandered aimlessly, as though she meant to stay in this realm forever. From a high hill she showed him settlements of People that went on a great way, far farther than his new short sight could reach. Roe Deer wandered there; one raised its sleek head to look their way.

  It was turning winter again. He had ceased to be able to tell which direction they went in, couldn’t tell daywise from darkwise, the red sun appearing through the trunks at dawn where it shouldn’t be and seeming to stare at him amused. When had he last eaten?

  “You must remember all this,” she said to him. “You must remember it, so that you can remind me if I forget.”

  “All right,” he said, feeling it all run away from him even as he promised, so that he would have to re-create it, beast by tree, long after.

  Then they were no longer there.

  “Here we are,” she said, arms outstretched. The forest thinned; it began to cease, not as though they came out of it but as though it marched backward away from them as they stood still.

  Here was the lake and the lake island. The rising land beyond.

  “What realm was that?” Dar Oakley asked. “Was it . . .”

  “The Happy Valley,” she said. She looked pale and hungry now, as the ones who sat around her had looked when Dar Oakley had called his call: filled with some distracted longing. But here wasn’t there.

  “Why,” he asked, “did we come back by the way we did? When it wasn’t the way I went in?”

  She was looking far off, hand shading her eyes. “You never come out the way you went in,” she said. “And if you go back in again, you never go by the same way.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because,” she said, “you never do go back anywhere. You only go on.”

  She set off with her long stride into the grass. Dar Oakley flew to the old Oak from where he had first seen People, which—well, well!—stood there, right there. He called a farewell to her, thinking he might never see her again, though that couldn’t be so. Ka! he called. Just that. But as he said it—Ka!—the world around altered: the lake, the moor, the mountain heights, the running girl raising her hand without looking back, all flew away from one another, becoming a vastness that yet was sharper, far sharper, than before.

  Dar Oakley had his Crow sight back.

  The trees ceased looking at him, the sky didn’t ponder him, and the sun lost its face. The cold air rising from the lake was blue. The world around lay all open to his eye.

  There, far off, over in that place there—he saw a shimmer of blue-black-violet iridescence: Crows on
the ground, busy together at something. Clear as could be. What had they found there to eat?

  He called again, Ka! Ka! and from as far off as his call could be heard, cries came in answer. Who are you and what do you want? they said, but Dar Oakley answered only Ka!, and the others called again, and together their calls wove the world. Another call came from another direction, clearly billwise, yes: Come closer and I’ll drive you off, you bet. Dar Oakley laughed, and at his laugh the dun fields and golden woods, the far river, the Crow demesne, grew stronger, plainer. His long sight looked over it. Ka was, and he was there.

  Only when Fox Cap returned to her village did she understand that not one season but years had passed in the few days since she had gone into the forest after her stolen cap. Those she had known had grown older, and some were dead; new dwellings had been built, and new families lived in them. She nearly died of strangeness. The Singer, more aged but not changed, was the only one not surprised to see her, the only one not to keep a cautious distance from her. He took her in his arms as she wept, and for a long time she stayed with him, pale and speechless, and he cared for her.

  All this she later related to Dar Oakley.

  For Dar Oakley, too, years had perhaps passed in a season, but it was harder to tell. Certainly he found many strangers at the new winter roost, but then there always were strangers there. The one he called Younger Sister had returned to the flock, alone and gloomier than ever: the Vagrant her mate had one day gone out to the far border of the little freehold they had got, she told Dar Oakley, and not returned; she couldn’t find him ever after. There was no more to be said about that. It did puzzle Dar Oakley that, when he asked her if she’d had young after all, she sighed profoundly and said, Oh yes, many, many. But when he tried to question the other Crows about how long he’d been gone, they mostly said they hadn’t remarked his going away, and so hadn’t noticed him return again.

  He took a place among them, and asked no more.

  So that’s how Dar Oakley, who wished to go to a place where there are no Crows, became of all the Crows a traveler for real, and without flying far, to pass from his own realm into another, a realm so distant that life and death were different there, and then come back again with news of it, if back was where he came to. He believes that he was the first and only being not of Ymr to know such a realm—and though it may be that he’s wrong about that, he is certainly the first and only Crow to go on passing between Here and There from that far time down to this. How that long power or burden came to be his is the story that he tells—it might as well be called the story that he is.