by John Crowley
One Ear raised his face to the sky, and saw Dar Oakley.
“Do you know Crow People words?” he asked. “I’ll tell you a story.”
And he did.
These bones, he said, were the bones of his brother. The two of them were born together, like two birds in a nest, or like the Good Son and the Bad Son who in the beginning made the world the way it is. They were unalike: his brother had been small and not strong, but he followed his bigger brother everywhere, and learned all the skills of fighting and hunting. When the Crow clan raiders surprised One Ear’s band returning to their home place from a hunt with skins and meat, his twin brother attacked them, first in the fight; when he was overcome, One Ear tried to rescue him, and was taken himself.
He told how this brother had died on the trail in this place, which Dar Oakley knew about, though he listened with care anyway.
Then One Ear rose from where he sat by the stones, and made his way down to the river. He removed his Deer-skin skirt and leggings and his feathers and necklaces. He walked into the water and sat to lave himself, wash the black from his face. He spoke softly in that language Dar Oakley didn’t know. When he was done, he stood and shook the last drops from his fingers.
“Now he’s not scattered,” he said in Crow-clan words. “Now he rests. Now he can be forgotten.”
Dar Oakley never afterward heard One Ear speak a word in the language he was born to, only the language of the Crow People. Yet from that day One Ear recognized Dar Oakley when he was near, welcomed him and gave him scraps and watched him. It was as though with Dar Oakley nearby, he could have his old self and not be in danger from it: his old self, kept in a Crow. The other People watched him greet Dar Oakley or summon him from hiding, and acknowledged his special power. They didn’t know that the two talked together when alone, in the way Dar Oakley had talked so long before with Fox Cap: One Ear in the People’s language, Dar Oakley in the Crows’.
People can have many names, or they could then: they shed one and gain another, or they have a name in one place and a different name elsewhere; a name they give and a name they keep. Dar Oakley’s name for One Ear was Hider; his name for Dar Oakley was Seeker.
“The Beaver said, ‘Old Turtle lives at the bottom of the Beautiful Lake of the North. He is the oldest being there is, and therefore the wisest. Also his ancestor was the being on whose back the world was made. Many say it was the Muskrat that piled up dirt on the Turtle’s back to make the world, but the Beavers say it was the Beaver.’ ”
The People were on the yearly journey to the Dawn Land, and they were carrying Beaver pelts for trading, so they’d asked One Ear for a story with a Beaver in it. They told stories to allay their fears: all through this part of the world, peace was supposed to hold, councils had made agreements, and female elders had ratified them. But you couldn’t be certain. Peltry was easier to get by robbing than by hunting.
“The Beautiful Lake was far away, and the journey was long,” One Ear said. He had told all his stories many times, making the different voices, imitating the waddle of the Beaver and the bobbing of the Crow so exactly that the listeners could hardly keep from laughing. If they’d been at home he’d have made rain fall (seeds in a long gourd) or played the voices of birds on his pipe.
“When they came to the Beautiful Lake, the Crow thought it must be the water that surrounds the earth on all sides, but the Beaver said no, it was just a big lake. Old Turtle’s home lay deep down in the middle of it. So the Beaver took mud and stopped up the Crow’s nostrils, and she took clay and stopped up the Crow’s ears, and telling him to keep his eyes tight shut, she dove with him to the bottom of the lake and Old Turtle’s house.
“Old Turtle didn’t want to come out—he never does—but the Beaver called to him that they had come to get wisdom, and had brought gifts. And after a while Old Turtle let them in. You know how slow the Turtle is—just like his clan, ha-ha—but Old Turtle’s even slower because he thinks so much.”
The long summer day was ending. The river flats where the loaded canoes were drawn up shone in the last light. Dar Oakley knew the story would go on into the darkness, but he’d sleep. After all, he knew the tale, even the tale as One Ear told it: how when the Beaver’s gifts had been shown and Old Turtle had fingered them approvingly, and the tobacco the Beaver brought had been smoked, it was time for Dar Oakley to tell his dream and ask his question.
“Now, Old Turtle knew right away what it meant to go in search of nothing. He’d gone on that search himself, in a time back at the beginning of the world when he was young. Had he found nothing? No, he hadn’t, but he’d found something like it. As for finding nothing itself, he told them, none of us will, because it’s not for the likes of us.
“Who is it for, then? the Beaver wanted to know, and Old Turtle said, People. People want nothing, they want it more than anything, and they believe it belongs to them. They have never found it, or when they have found it they right away lose it again. And yet People have had nothing in their possession all along. At least a kind of People have had nothing in their possession.
“The Small Ugly People! the Beaver said, and slapped her tail on Old Turtle’s floor. The Crow, however, had never heard of such beings.
“Well, they’re small, said the Beaver, though not as small as a Chipmunk.
“They have narrow, hairy faces, said Old Turtle. But not as hairy as a Bear’s.
“They are ugly, said the Beaver, but not as ugly as a Toad.
“They hate big People, and stay far from their dwellings.
“Yet they love big People, and give them gifts so the People will love them.
“The Small Ugly People may give you nothing, said Old Turtle to the Crow. But they will want something in return.
“How will I find these Small Ugly People? the Crow asked.
“There is a Crow who knows of them, said Old Turtle. This Crow is the oldest Crow of this world, in the tallest tree of this world. You must seek and find that bird, and ask for her help. And now, he said, it is time for me to go back to sleep. And he clambered up onto his sleeping mat and drew his wrinkled old head into his shell.”
But no, no, it wasn’t like that, it was no such thing as that—down under the great lake to smoke a pipe with a Turtle—absurd! And yet though there was no Turtle in Dar Oakley’s story, there really were Small Ugly People, and advice from Ravens; Dar Oakley did in time travel to that lake, the one the People call Beautiful, and he went in search of nothing he knew of, toward the oldest Crow of this world: and this was the story that piece by piece One Ear had learned from him, and changed to suit himself.
It began the summer when he and One Ear first began to speak together, and One Ear came to know something of Dar Oakley’s history. Dar Oakley had no other business that summer—in spring he and Gray Feather had thought to dance that old dance, act that act, but something, maybe the weight of old losses, had kept them from it. Anyway he was alone with only his own mouth to feed.
He’d noticed, on his rounds through the realms of People and others, a pair of Ravens who seemed to take an interest in him. There were reasons a Raven might want to note the movements of a Crow; often the dense Crow clans and their constant here-I-am, there-you-are conversing brought Crows to big kills first, which the larger and more imperious Ravens following them could then dominate. But no—these Ravens weren’t watching Crows. They were watching him.
Then as he sat high in his Oak in the hot afternoon, vaguely hearing voices and thinking of nothing, he felt wings around him, and found the two Ravens, one on either side, regarding him.
“Masters,” Dar Oakley said, and becked gravely. It was the way Ravens were addressed, he seemed to recall, long ago and elsewhere. The Ravens exchanged a look and a sound at that—it might have been a laugh.
“You are,” one said, “Dar of Oak by Lea.”
“That’s your gname,” croaked the other.
“Well, yes,” Dar Oakley said, startled that Ravens, who would take n
o interest in a particular Crow unless it could do them some good, should know such a thing. Like all Crows, Dar Oakley knew the speech of Ravens; it was like his own, but grave and harsh.
“We have been sent in search of you,” one of them said. Dar Oakley thought they were a mated pair, though it was hard for a Crow to know for sure. “We have had to speak to many Crows.”
“Oh,” Dar Oakley said. “I’m sorry. But why . . .”
“Don’t question,” the larger one (female?) said. “We have come only to summon or send you.”
“Summon or send me where?”
“To marges of great lake of gnorth,” said the other, who Dar Oakley thought was the male. “To Crow of that place, who wishes Crow of your gname to come before her.”
“She does?”
The two Ravens now seemed to have exhausted their store of diplomacy, and flitted, ready to be off. “Will you go?” one asked, and the other looked skyward and murmured, “We would not want to have come so far for gnothing.”
“Masters!” Dar Oakley cried. “I’ll do what you say. But how will I find this Crow?”
“Crows said to us only this: she is oldest of all Crows, one with whom Crows of this world began.”
“Oh. Oh?”
“Summer is old, Crow. Better be gone.”
“But why,” Dar Oakley asked, “would Crows ask you, you Ravens, to find me?”
The two Ravens shared a look, as though pondering whether to tell a tale or not. Then the female said:
“Once, in a time not now, this oldest Crow did great thing for Hravens. A time that no Hraven or Crow can now remember.”
“Is said to have happened when that clan of Crows first came into this country,” the female said, and the haws slid over her eyes, as though her own words put her to sleep. “When these tallest trees were sprouts on forest floor. And tall trees now dead and rotted were saplings.”
“For this,” the other whispered, “Hravens have always been ready to do certain services for Crows.”
“Certain small services. At certain times. If convenient.”
“But what was it,” Dar Oakley asked, “that that Crow did for Ravens?”
“Hravens have forgot what Crow did,” the male Raven said.
“But obligation remains,” said the female, and lifted her shoulders in a shrug.
The two Ravens turned then, and fell heavily from the branch they sat on, and set off without farewell.
“But how will I know this Crow?” Dar Oakley called after them. “What is her name?”
“We know no gname,” growled the female.
“We have not ever seen her,” the other called.
“Perhaps never was such Crow.”
And they were gone.
Dar Oakley thought, No one in this world knows that name of mine: no one.
“For every being there is an oldest one,” One Ear told Dar Oakley. “It was with that oldest one that the kind began: the first to be what that kind is. The first being with sharp needles on its back instead of fur or hair. The first with teeth strong enough to bring down trees. And believe it—that first and oldest being never dies, for if it dies, the kind dies too. There are then no Porcupines, no Beavers.”
“For People, too?” Dar Oakley asked.
“Oh yes. Before there were People, there was one man and one woman in the Sky World. They had a daughter, and the daughter had two sons, the Good Son and the Bad Son. Then it went on until the world was finished, and People were everywhere People can be. And those first ones are still there at the beginning, and also now.”
Weren’t all People like that? Dar Oakley thought. Wasn’t it how things were in Ymr? They had their first ones who’d died long ago and never died, they had their kings hidden in the hollow hills. They had their angels and Saints in the world above and others in the world below. He’d known all this long ago and knew it now again. But were there such beings in Ka, and could they be sought and seen? If there were such a Crow as the one who’d sent those Ravens to him, that Crow wouldn’t be just a thought, or what People called a dream. No, if there were such a being in Ka, it would be just one more of the things-that-are. In Ka, there aren’t any other kinds of things.
“Well, yes,” Gray Feather said to him. “I’ve heard there is an oldest Crow still living. A Crow that Crows began with.”
A chilly billwise breeze lifted Dar Oakley’s back feathers. He’d lingered, unable to make up his mind to go; he’d only pondered and put questions to himself and others. But it was autumn now, late to be staying.
“My mate, Rin Darkwood,” Gray Feather said. “He was born a Crow of another clan, a clan whose marches run up billwise to a great lake, he told me. He said that the oldest Crow lived somewhere in those lands. He said he knew a Crow who knew a Crow who knew.”
“Yes,” Dar Oakley said. “That’s what I’ll do. Find a Crow who knows a Crow who knows a Crow.”
Gray Feather laughed. The world was so rich now, so full. “Go now while it’s still warm in the sun,” she said.
“I could be gone long,” Dar Oakley said. “Never return.”
“I won’t forget you,” Gray Feather said.
“No? Because I, because of how you and I—”
“No,” she said, and lifted wings to go. “Because you have a name.”
He watched her out of sight. Then he dropped from the branch he’d shared with her, fell into the sweet air, stopped his fall with a wing beat, and pointed himself billwise.
Through the days he traveled, flying and resting in the slow Crow way, over lands not very different from those he knew. People towns and hamlets went by under him in his going over them; he looked down on the shaggy tops of their lodges, the black heads of women and the smaller black heads of their naked children, which sometimes turned upward and showed paler faces, hands pointing at his passage. Beyond their palisades, the long stretches of Maize-plants turning yellow—the Crows of this North hadn’t yet learned to live on it—and vines of squash and beans growing up and clinging around them. These passed. Then groves of tall nut trees, Beech and Hickory and Chestnut, the ground around littered with the mast that many beings lived on, People too; Dar Oakley flew too high above the spreading limbs to see any gatherers. The leaves were turning.
Farther North the People had begun the autumn burn, the low grasses and shrubbery set alight to keep the ways open, and to make the grass and berries come in sweeter in the spring, and so bring in Deer and Bison. And also just because People loved fire. Beneath him gray smoke like dense low clouds lay over stripes and sparkles of red like sunsets, as if the sky lay on the ground. Most beings feared fire and ran from it, and so People could use fire to force them to go where they could be caught. Many Crows, though, loved smoke, hopped and flew along the lines of the burn, wings cupped as though to clothe themselves in smoke, dizzy with it or stoned by it. Dar Oakley, a stranger, couldn’t stop to join them, might not be welcome. Aloft he smelled the sweet-acrid smoke, followed the silver rivers winding through the blackened woods. A line of canoes, there. He wondered if People had once thought of a thing that would do all that fire does, and then worked out how to create it, as they had made weapons and houses; or if they’d come upon fire in the world, tamed it over time and made it do what they wanted when they wanted it, as they had Maize, or Dogs.
Through all this he didn’t seek. He had no name to ask for or to call, no qualities to look for—what would the oldest Crow look like? He was among Crows who likely didn’t want him there, and so he kept to himself; there was food in plenty, and he had no reason to contest with any Crow.
He didn’t seek, but he was aware—and the farther billwise he went, the more he felt it—that he was sought. Single Crows and pairs would notice him, and go away without a call of inquiry. Or they’d follow far off, thinking that they weren’t seen.
And all the while a strange notion, an impossible idea, was forming inside him, forming as a spring nest is formed of many things from here and there, grow
ing stronger.
It was turning cold when he reached what was surely the great lake that the People called Beautiful. The day was dark and a sharp wind raised whitecaps on the stone-gray surface; white-winged birds sailed over it, and Dar Oakley did think of the sea he’d crossed, whether this could be some part of it.
Then Crows began to come around him in numbers, smooth slim birds blacker than the obsidian chips Crows love and hide. Word must have passed from Crow to Crow that the one they awaited had come: himself. Hard to believe that was what the calls and black eyes turned to him meant, but it seemed to be so. Follow, they said. That was clear enough. The Crows around him passed by and over him, settled, waited for him to catch up, then took up the guiding as other Crows went on ahead. Their calls were neither welcoming nor hostile, and Dar Oakley kept still.
How was it he knew that a great smooth Beech, at whose foot masses of nuts had fallen, was where he was being taken? Like Bees streaming all together toward the entrance to their hive, the Crows flew unerringly to it. On a high branch alone a Crow sat, and the incoming Crows alighted on lower branches; but Dar Oakley, as though he knew for sure he was meant to, took a seat there beside that Crow, a female big and glistening in many iridescent shades.
“Hello, Kits,” he said.
She raised her head to him without a beck. “Long time since I’ve been called by that name,” she said. “Hello, Dar Oakley.”
“The same,” he said. “The same for me, Kits. A long time.”
Once, in the time when they were mated, in that other world elsewhere, Kits had told him that if a Crow flew far enough daywise—or darkwise, it was the same either way, she said—then after a long time, many years, that Crow would come back to the very place it had started from. The world, which seems to go on in plains and mountains forever without any end, is really all curved: like the trunk of a great tree, maybe, she’d said. And like a Tit or any small bird searching a trunk’s bark for food, you could go right around the trunk of the tree of the world and return to where you started.
