by K A Riley
I’m just settling into a pleasant meditative state when a few of the Neos and Juvens spot me and start gathering around.
The younger kids are feeling more comfortable and courageous around me than they were a few days back, and start asking me about my tattoos. A little girl with a frizzy mane of orange-brown hair asks if she can touch them.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
I ask her name, and she says, “Livvy.”
“Okay, Livvy. It’s just micro-circuitry under my skin. You’ll find you can barely feel anything.”
She reaches out with two fingers and traces the pattern of black dots and dashes leading into the long, swooping curves running from the backs of my hands and up to my elbows.
“How’d you get them?” she asks. Her voice is hushed in what feels like an act of reverence.
“They’re a gift,” I say. “A gift from my dad.”
“Are you a Modified?” a little boy asks.
“I don’t think so. From what my dad told me, Modifieds were about prolonging life, enhancing physical abilities, things like that. These are supposed to enhance my empathy.”
“What’s empathy?” Livvy asks. She pronounces it “empafy.”
“Well, in this case, it means my ability to connect with a certain special someone.” I point over to where Render is skulking around in the branches of a nearby tree. As if he knows he’s being watched, he lifts his head, puffs up his hackles, and struts along a branch like a runway model.
Livvy’s mouth hangs open. “Wow!”
Now the other Neos and Juvens come rushing over. Render’s been keeping himself scarce since our arrival, so this is the first time they’re getting a good look at him.
“Is he your bird?” one of them asks.
“Well, he’s a bird. But he’s not ‘mine.’ Let’s just say he’s my friend.”
“Does he bite?”
“No. He doesn’t even have teeth. He’s more of a gnasher and a gulper.”
“Does he do any tricks?”
“Actually, he can do tons. He’s slightly on the brilliant side.” I put my finger to my lips. “But, shhh…don’t call them ‘tricks.’ He thinks it’s demeaning. He likes to think of what he does as ‘talents.’”
A tallish boy with freckles like Cardyn’s but dark hair like Brohn’s introduces himself as Ven. He asks if I can show them all some of Render’s “talents.”
“I can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do,” I tell him. “But I’ll ask him.” I swipe my fingers in a special pattern along the tattoos on my left forearm. “This helps me to connect with him,” I tell the kids. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to help out. He’s a born show-off.” The sequence I employ is an old one that my father taught me. I don’t want to connect too deeply with Render just now. If my eyes go black, I can only imagine the screams and nightmares the smaller Neos might have.
With a few flicks of my fingers and a couple of verbal requests, Render jumps into an elaborate performance for the wide-eyed, open-mouthed crowd. He leaps from his perch, his wings extending out and beating in powerful strokes. He ascends to near invisibility, barely a speck in the sky high above the camp. At the height of his flight, he stalls out in mid-air, then dive-bombs like a glistening black missile.
With gleeful shrieks, the kids leap back as Render skims the ground at our feet, kicking up a vortex of dirt and debris from the forest floor before ripping his way up into the sky again. He completes a series of barrel rolls, skirts along the tree-tops, appearing and disappearing from view. He streaks upward again in a steep climb and drops into a dizzying corkscrew descent. He spreads his wings out like a billowing black cape, narrowly avoiding the ground below. He seems to defy gravity as he hovers a few feet above the earth and then, with a whoosh, he’s off again, rising back into the expansive sky he calls home.
I call Livvy over to my side and hand her a buckle I’ve detached from one of the pockets on my military jacket. “Try holding this up,” I tell her. “He’s got a soft spot for shiny objects.”
With a slight tremble in her hand and a matching one in her voice, she asks if it’s safe.
“Don’t worry. He’s not only smart and precise, he’s also super nice and would feel terrible at the thought of hurting you.”
She holds her slightly shaking hand up with the glittering silver buckle pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
The kids crane their necks and look up until one of the girls points to a small black dot out in the distance. “There he is!” she squeals.
The black dot gets bigger, banks hard to one side, and disappears behind a golden cluster of Narrowleaf Cottonwood trees. The kids hold their breath, waiting for Render to emerge from the other side of the dense woods. Instead, there’s an explosion of feathers and brittle brown leaves from the woods right in front of us. A blur of black blasts past our eyes and vanishes on the far side of the clearing like a ghost.
We all turn to look at Livvy. Her eyes are wide with shock. Her hand is still held high in the air, her thumb and finger pinched together. But the buckle has vanished. In total and absolute awe, the kids burst into applause even as they run in a screaming group toward the dark patch of forest where Render disappeared. They shout out to him, begging him to come back and show off some more of his “talents.” When they don’t get a response at the tree-line, they seem crestfallen at first, until they turn back toward me and see Render perched smugly on my shoulder, my silver belt buckle clamped firmly in his black beak.
Laughing, the kids swarm back toward us, and I have to stand up and take a big step back before they trample me to death.
“How does he do that?” Ven asks.
“I didn’t even feel him take the buckle,” Livvy squeals.
“Ravens are talented and complicated animals,” I tell her. I sit back down cross-legged, and the kids all plop down in a semi-circle in front of me. I put my hand out under Render’s beak, and he drops my buckle into my open palm. “Ravens have great memories. They can imitate a wide range of sounds. This guy here does a great wolf. He can also make a sound like a processor microbit-drill. He’s even been trying a bit of human speech from time to time.” I put my hand to the side of my mouth and whisper, “Although he’s not very good at it just yet.”
The kids laugh and continue to stare wide-eyed as Render twists his head around and ruffles the hackles on his throat again. “Cultures all over the world have complex relationships with ravens. In some cases, they’re considered evil demons because they eat carrion. In some cultures, they’re considered gods. They’re often thought of as tricksters, but they’re also known as creators. In some legends,” I tell the kids, “ravens are actually responsible for the creation of the world.”
I’m greeted with a chorus of Wows, and a bunch of the kids ask me to tell them more. “I don’t know how much more I can tell you,” I say with a shake of my head. “Just that these guys have a world-wide reputation…at least they used to, in the days before the war began. The raven is a guardian god in the nation of Bhutan in Asia. They’re an honored bird in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories in Canada. There even used to be a sports team called the Baltimore Ravens, right here in the United States. The coat of arms for a city called Lisbon in a country called Portugal features two ravens and the quote, ‘most noble and always loyal city of Portugal.’ In Norse mythology, the god Odin is accompanied by two ravens, Huginn and Muninn.” As I recount all the snippets of random raven trivia, I’m astounded once again at my ability to recall this wealth of information I didn’t know I had.
“Huginn and Muninn? Those are funny names,” a little boy with patchy blond hair says.
“They mean ‘Thought’ and ‘Memory,’” I tell him. “Two things Render here is very good at.”
“What else?”
“Well, the Tower of London is said to keep ravens around at all times. If they don’t, a legend says that the entire kingdom will fall.”
“Is that true?”
; “That’s one of the nice things about legends,” I tell him after a brief pause. “They’re as true as you believe them to be. Shakespeare makes a lot of references to ravens in his plays: Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Macbeth. A poet named William Wordsworth once wrote, ‘We saw a raven very high above us. It called out, and the dome of the sky seemed to echo the sound. It called again and again as it flew onwards, and the mountains gave back the sound, seeming as if from their center; a musical bell-like answering to the bird's hoarse voice.’”
Although I’m not sure the kids understand the quote, they seem super impressed with the fact that I remembered it.
“But the most famous quote is from another poet, one named Edgar Allen Poe. He wrote a poem about a raven who keeps reminding a terrified and heart-broken man that he’ll never again see his lost love, Lenore. No matter how angry the man gets or how much he pleads or how many times he asks the bird to tell him if he’ll ever see his love, the raven just sits there above his bedroom door and tells him ‘Nevermore’ over and over again.”
The kids shiver like I’ve just told them a ghost story. I laugh and tell them not to worry. “Render here is more of a happy raven than a scary one. And he’s very protective of his friends. My friends and I are part of his Conspiracy. And now that you and I are friends, you’re part of ours. That means he’ll always help you and take care of you. He’ll let you know if there are dangers coming, and he’ll remember your faces forever.”
The kids all beam at this, and one of the girls asks if she can pet him. I say, “Sure. I think he’d like that. But one at a time.”
The kids approach one by one and reach out to touch the very happy bird. Some kids give him a small, gentle stroke. Others barely make contact with him. Some of the braver kids give his head and body good, firm pats, which Render leans into, rumbling deep in his throat like a jungle cat.
After the kids have all filed through and had their turn with Render, he gives a few little chirps and then a jubilant kraa! and launches himself from my shoulder, soaring over the clearing and then zipping like a missile into the woods.
When the kids turn their attention to Brohn and the others coming back with canvas sacks of rabbit, roots, and berries, I decide I could use some alone time, so I decide to make a quiet exit and have a quick hike through the woods.
I give Brohn a wave and mouth, “Going for a walk.” He gives me a thumb’s up, and I slip out of the clearing to head into the dense, dry forest.
After a zig-zagging clamber up a steep embankment, I come to a clearing on a wide plateau. I call Render, and he glides his way down to my shoulder and outstretched arm. His heart is still racing from his impromptu performance for the kids, but I can feel he wants more. “Such a show-off,” I say. “And a total adrenaline junkie.” Render responds with a happy kraa!
Finally, we slip solidly into each other’s minds. I let him know how much he means to me and how proud I am of him. He may have just given those kids a much-needed break from this castaway life, not to mention a reason to go on trying to live a better one.
Render’s thoughts are simple at the moment, and crystal-clear: More play.
“Okay,” I sigh. “Hide and seek?”
Kraa!
I hand him my Special Ops pin—the symbol of a black bird with its wings spread wide—which I’ve had tucked away in my pocket. He snags with the tip of his beak. He flies out over the canopy of trees while I sit cross-legged on a bare patch of ground with my back to him and my eyes closed. When he returns a few minutes later, I know he’s dropped the pin somewhere out in the woods. It’s my job to figure out where, find the token, and bring it back to him. Normally, I’d just connect to him, tap into his ocular implants, and infiltrate my way into his neurological memory pathways where I’d see what he’s seen and remember what he’s remembered. But I know that would mean breaking the rules of this particular game. So instead, I have to try to tap into him without really tapping into him. I have to think like he does, to find my way to where he’s gone.
This form of treasure hunting is a game we used to play in secret in the Valta. The first few times we played it, I did tap into him, and he made it crystal clear, across any inter-species barrier that might exist, that what I was trying was a total cheat.
Keep your mind to yourself.
For someone who doesn’t talk in human language, Render sure knows how to make himself understood.
So now we have new rules: I must find the object on my own. It’s a perfect diversion. Thinking like him without connecting with him is exactly the distraction my overburdened mind needs. Forget yoga, warrior poses, meditation, and Buddhist chants. Those aren’t enough to make me forget about the possible treachery of President Krug and my government, the loss of two of my closest friends, or my destroyed town.
Even if it’s just temporary, Render’s game calms my mind, soothes my breathing, and evens out my soul.
A thunderous flutter of wings and a vortex of kicked-up dust let me know Render’s returned. Just in case I’m not paying attention, he hops up next to me and lets out three shrill kraas! and a guttural grunt in my ear.
That’s my cue.
I spring up and sprint toward the tree-line. Bounding into the woods, I skip over shallow ditches in the ground and vault over a series of downed trees. Following nothing but instinct and intuition, I plunge deeper into the scarred forest and over the perilous terrain. It’s a dizzying array of vegetation and towering White Fir trees, Blue Spruce, and Quaking Aspens. Many of the trees are leaning over, brittle from bombings or perhaps from infected, irradiated soil. Tendrils of some kind of vine whose name I don’t know and whose small leaves I don’t recognize twist their way up many of the trees. I wonder if the sinister-looking parasitic vines are feeding off of whatever nutrients remain in the trees that have managed to survive the chaos of the last ten years.
I can’t think about it too much, though, and I can’t do anything about it anyway. I’ve got a game to win.
Looking skyward, I see openings in the forest canopy where light streams through. I imagine myself soaring overhead. Which opening is the most inviting? Which offers the best point of entry? Once I narrow it down, I begin scouring the area of fallen leaves and scrub-brush dotting the forest floor. I kick at some of the leaves and roll a broken tree branch over to expose the soft patch of earth underneath. Nothing. I keep looking. I’ve got a good feeling I’m close.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a series of small marks in the soil. I scurry over, and sure enough, it’s the tell-tale marks of Render’s four-toed feet, three toes facing forward and one facing back, pressed into the ground. Most tree-dwelling birds leave side-by-side tracks. But Render, like other birds who mostly hang out on the ground, leaves footprints in a nearly straight line. There are probably other birds—crows, jays, warblers, and owls—in these woods. But I can tell these tracks belong to Render. He leaves a distinctive drag mark with his backward-facing claw. Also, most ravens have an inward-tilted middle toe on each foot, but Render’s middle toe sits relatively straight.
I spot a rock sitting at an odd angle at the foot of a small tree. Render is strong. He can fly for hours, and he can move branches and stones and even carry fist-sized rocks in his powerful beak.
Gotcha.
I kick the rock over with the toe of my boot, fully expecting to see my Special Ops broach underneath. But no. Render’s tricked me. Led me to the wrong place on purpose. But he was here, which means I can figure out where he probably went next.
I backtrack and am able to pinpoint the direction he was facing when he took off from this spot. A black feather clings to the bark of a tree at the edge of the clearing. Another feather sits at the base of the tree after that one.
“Fool me once,” I say out loud. Dismissing the two feathers as another red herring, I turn in the exact opposite direction. Render knows I can’t fly, which means he knows I can’t get up to the top of most of the trees around here. He also knows that much of the
se woods have suffered from the drone strikes and radiation fall-out from the war. He wouldn’t risk my safety by hiding the badge anywhere too high or in any tree that might crumble to ash if I try to climb it.
The dark tree that’s leaning on a 45-degree angle over a narrow ravine and against an outcropping of smooth white boulders, however, is a perfect hiding place. It’s strong enough to hold my weight, slanted enough so I won’t drop to my death if I slip and fall, and challenging enough to push me to my physical limits but not too far beyond.
“Stinker,” I say as I leap up onto the large tree trunk. The bark is brittle under my boots, but it holds. I swing myself under one of the protruding branches and clamber over another. Shuffling sideways, I work my way through a tangle of thin branches toward the top of the tree as the trunk thins down to the size of my wrist. From here, I cling to a spindly cluster of twigs and brace my feet against the tall tree’s final feeble branch. There’s about ten feet between me and the nearest flat-headed boulder. I take a deep breath and leap out over the chasm beneath me and land with both feet firmly on the other side. I’m greeted by a small pyramid of white and gray stones, which I topple to reveal my Special Ops badge.
Panting from the effort, I give a wheezy little laugh and say, “Clever bird” out loud. My voice echoes back at me from against the side of the mountain.
Now, I just have to get back down from here. Jumping from a weak branch onto a strong rock is pretty easy. Reversing it might be more than I can handle. I look down into the narrow ravine. There was probably a gurgling little creek running down there at one point. Now it’s just an uneven, empty trench. It’s bone dry, fairly wide, and about thirty feet down.
It’s something I’m suddenly certain I can do.
Before I have a chance to think about it, strategize, or weigh all the pros and cons, I leap from the rocky outcropping and down into the scraggly void. The ground rushes toward me, but it slows as I get closer until one of us—me or the ground, I’m not sure which—seems to be moving in slow-motion.
