Weirdbook 31

by Doug Draa

  In his desperation to complete a fresh collection that fully covered his tree, the King promised immortality to the first cadre that could gather fifty eyes within three months’ time.

  Back then, we were three: Chi, with his strong wings; Ro, with his chilling voice; and me, Ta, the runt, with my broken feathers and twisted leg. I was the cleverest of us all, and so Chi and Ro followed my lead, even though I could not swoop or grab as fast as they.

  The misty fall mornings that year proved lucky for those in the Raven King’s court, for the humans had started a prolonged and costly war that left hundreds of bodies on their battlefields and the rest of their camps too busy caring for the wounded to properly bury the dead. We had shining seas of armored knights from which to pluck fresh eyes, and so it looked for a bit as though simple speed would determine the winner of the King’s gambit. Our competing cadres would descend onto the battlefields en masse, darkening the already grey sky. The men feared us as a bad omen, but they were the bloodthirsty ones and we thanked them every time we stole a soldier’s eye from its socket and flew triumphantly to the King’s nest.

  He liked green eyes best that year. We quickly learned to search the battlefield for men with red hair, for their skulls more likely held emeralds fit for our King.

  Chi, Ro, and I made excellent time that season. I could anticipate the men’s movements, Ro could scare away other predators with his loud calls, and Chi could swoop down and pull away our prizes before others had a chance. Our branch at court quickly filled with little silver rings, which swayed in the evening breeze and made a sweet tinkling sound. I found their bright gleam much more pleasant than the reflection of the rotting eyes around the King’s nest, but who questioned a King?

  At court, our successes quickly made us favorites. Younger ravens crowded around us, happy to perch nearby. They often brought us their prey, eager to win our favor and, by extension, the King’s.

  Unfortunately another cadre threatened our success. They had overturned tradition and roved as four rather than three, which made their gathering all the easier. These four made the court nervous, for they did not follow our ways: they hunted out of season, seldom accepted the gifts of other court members, and never bobbed their heads in recognition to the King. That he did not punish their rudeness simply showed his maniacal focus on jeweled eyes that season. Normally, he made the court fall upon those who ignored protocol with claw and beak, encouraging us to such frenzy that miscreants wound up a quivering mass of dead flesh fallen on the sacred ground of the royal clearing.

  Little white flowers sprouted where the blood of ravens dripped on the royal ground; each spring we looked thoughtfully at these natural gravestones with our own bright eyes and vowed not to meet the same fate.

  By the time the men sowed their winter crops, we had forty-eight rings on our branch. The foursome lagged behind us by two eyes. Yet the winter had cooled man’s penchant for warfare, and many had retreated to their castles to rest wearily by their fires and pat their aging dogs. In winter, man died indoors, protected from our quick beaks, laid out on kitchen tables until the moment a whole host brought the body to its welcoming hole in the loving earth. We gave a collective sigh each morning as we headed out, circling uselessly over the peaceful land.

  After a week of no progress, I had an idea. In our community, news spread slowly. Ravens on the outskirts of the King’s lands had only recently begun the hunt for jeweled eyes, for word traveled on the wind between us, and even the wind was not instantaneous. Perhaps the same was true of man? Our King lived near man’s king; was it possible his soldiers further out did not know to cease fighting?

  On an unseasonably cold morning, we set off to find out. We reckoned that four days’s flight would make a good gamble: far enough that perhaps the men hadn’t gotten the message, but close enough that we could race home with our prize before our competitors found aught to please the King.

  The wind picked up as we flew, and we struggled to keep on course and stay moving at a consistent pace. The smells seemed wrong: magic sat heavily in the air, and my feathers quivered in their sockets as the thought of meeting something unnatural in the woods. In those days of myth, more than one of our number lost his life snatched up by a nervous dragon or thrown to ground by the angry hooves of an enraged unicorn.

  The wind pushed us south, and we decided to keep with it to make better time. It herded us, and I grew increasingly nervous, but Chi and Ro wanted to trust destiny, and so we wheeled in whichever direction it sent us. I knew it far before I saw or smelled it: a dip in the landscape far to the south promised some tragic violence. As we approached, we saw the thick, unnatural black smoke of war, far different from the pleasant smell of a wood fire. The scent of burning flesh met us on the wind and cradled us as we approached.

  The marks of battle scarred the landscape: huge ruts lay in what had once been a verdant field. Broken spears and swords cluttered the ground, and someone had dragged a dead horse off to one side of the battlefield. These people, though, had not been too busy to retrieve their dead; the site was eerily empty of bodies, except for one lone knight lying in the middle of the field, face up.

  He had the most stunning emerald eyes I had ever seen. The afternoon sun fell on his face just as we approached, and his eyes glowed brightly even in death. I knew these eyes would fit snugly in the spot above the King’s nest, the one he had diligently saved for the most beautiful two jewels his ravens brought. As we landed, all three of us shivered in unison, the sharp ruffling sound of our feathers cutting the unnatural silence.

  Magic was afoot.

  After so much time on the battlefield, we knew much about mankind. This knight was poor; perhaps that was why no relative had come to claim his body. His battered chainmail was ill-fitting and poorly repaired. A big hole gaped open just above his heart, but he hadn’t been wounded there; he must have come into battle with his mail in such dangerously bad condition. He wore a rough, cheap tunic under his armor, and yet a woman had repaired it with loving care—I could see the careful stitches around the collar from my perch. I felt the shiver again. Someone cared for this man, but where was this companion?

  As if on cue, a hawk darted out of the trees across from us and fluttered down to his chest, sitting on the hole in the chainmail. Chi spit angrily and Ro clamped his beak around a creaking branch. Hawks often caused us grief, and this one had the cruel eyes of a trained hunting bird. Their years in hooded darkness made them angrier and crueler than their wild cousins. He dug his thick claws into the knight’s chain shirt, rattling it softly in the eerie quiet.

  “What shall we do?” asked Chi.

  Ro bobbed his sleek, triangular head at Chi. “You could rush him. Lead him away.”

  But the hawk, with its broad wings, looked faster than any of us, and Chi bent his head in shame. I cocked my head sideways and studied the hawk, whose face turned sharply towards me. It puffed out its feathers and rattled the man’s chainmail again defiantly, but did not pull at his flesh.

  “He’s protecting the soldier. The man must have owned him.” I turned my head over to the other side, considering.

  “Friend hawk,” I called, louder than I needed, forgetting that the sounds here were setting with the sun.

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. I invited attack. Chi and Ro shuffled a few steps away from me. “You are no friend of mine.” His voice was thick, raspy, his accent strange and somehow human.

  We ravens could not outfight him, but we could outwit him, perhaps. “We have not come to hurt your man.” I leveled my head so it seemed I told the truth.

  He turned around in an agitated circle, puffing up even further. “Liars. You ravens lie always. What truly brought you here?”

  I let myself float down from the tree and land on the ground near him. I heard Chi’s intake of breath at my audacity. I bowed my head deferentially. “We have come here on the magical wind, drawn to
this place of battle by the will of the Raven King himself.” That much, at least, was true, and I held his eyes as I said so.

  “Continue.”

  I pressed on, looking at the dead soldier. “The Raven King has asked us to honor your master.” Behind me, Chi and Ro bobbed their heads in agreement.

  He shuffled sideways down his master’s torso. “Honor how, liar bird? By tearing off his face? I know the honors of your master. They leave men and animals heaps of distressed flesh. I will give your leader no sway here, for this man has loved and cared for me, and I love and care for him.”

  I looked up, trying to find a line of magic, that slight silver mist on the wind that might let me work a quick trick. I seldom worked any witchery, for not all ravens approved of magic, but Chi and Ro had seen me make miracles before and had not objected in less serious circumstances.

  There, just on the wind rising above the trees: a light shining dust, almost like motes in sunlight. I drew it down toward me, wrapping it around my wings, letting the magic settle on the surface of my feathers. My skin crackled with its gentle energy.

  “Friend hawk,” I said again, “Your allegiance to the man who entrapped you does you dishonor. The Raven King knows that we birds should fly free, not sit tethered to a man’s wrist by a leather cord. We should see the sun each morning, not be encased in the darkness of a man’s training hood.”

  He raised his beak defiantly, chopping at the empty air. “What would you know of it, lying bird? Of loyalty? Of kindness? Of companionship?”

  I tried to hide my birdish smile. “Of submission?”

  He lunged at me then, and I could hear the ruffle of feathers behind me as Chi and Ro prepared for battle. I focused my mind and covered his eyes with the silvery magic so he could no longer see. A started, strangled cry escaped him as he fell onto the muddy ground. I stepped lightly out of his way.

  “The Raven King curses your unnatural ways!” I cried. “Now you shall live out your days in the darkness of man’s hood, but no man shall come to reward your loyalty!”

  The hawk flailed about on the ground for a few seconds, struggling to right himself without his eyesight, covering himself in mud. He flew upwards clumsily, careening into the forest and only narrowly missing the trees at the clearing’s edge. I chuckled, knowing the trick would wear away by sunrise. “Good show!” cried Ro as the hawk disappeared, and I strode forward ready to take our prize.

  Luckily, Chi stayed vigilant and let out a shrill warning shriek. Out of the woods loped the largest hunting dog I had ever seen, a sleek silver creature with loving brown eyes. I took to wing immediately, looped in a tight circle, and landed in a tree across the clearing just as the dog lay down at his dead master’s feet.

  Ro let out a low curse in the old tongue.

  Ignoring us, the dog settled in, curling its tail sadly around its hind end and closing its eyes in sad resignation. I had more difficulty tricking dogs, for they were less intelligent than hawks.

  My eyes met Chi’s across the clearing. Perhaps a straightforward attack? Yet even three of us would prove no match for yet another animal that man had unnaturally trained to kill. I strutted up and down the branch in irritation, waiting for something to come to me.

  Perhaps the dog’s loyalty could be used against him. I pondered. The idea came to me on the breeze, along with the tinny smell of magic. I approached the dog cautiously, keeping my eyes glued to his master.

  “Oh, he’s here,” I said, flapping my wings at the man.

  The dog’s head snapped up, his ears swaying. He sniffed and wagged his tail experimentally. “Prey bird. Go. Will kill.”

  I shook my head, letting the little droplets fall from my eyes. “No, no. I’m not a prey bird. I was his bird.”

  The tail wagging began again, lazily, curiously. He rested his head more easily on his paws. “Not prey? Not seen before. You not his.”

  I let out a little gasp, as sad a sound as a crow ever made. “And yet he had birds. You knew of his other bird—the one here before. The one the color of earth.”

  The dog considered this, biting lazily at its own paw and then scratching up the earth with its thick black nails. “This true. But you not in house or barn.”

  I bobbed my head. “Yes, the man let me roam free so I could find your prey. You don’t think the hooded hawk could find it on his own, do you? Not when he lived in the dark so much.”

  The wagging had increased now, and the dog’s whole hind end shook with enthusiasm. “No. Hawk foolish.”

  “All that good meat you found in the woods—all that hunting—began with my work.” The dog showed a bit of tooth at that, so I hastily amended: “Although you did the much harder work of catching them.” I gave a polite bob of my head.

  He had raised his own head fully and looked at me carefully now. “Bird tells truth. Truth bird.” His tongue lolled out, and he gave his master’s foot a gentle sideways lick. “What does truth bird want?”

  I made a sad little moaning noise. “I would just like a few minutes alone with the master. Just to say goodbye by myself. I will miss him terribly.”

  The dog pulled himself to his feet. “Fair. Dog have all night. Dog return and wait for mistress to get here. Truth bird deserves his turn.” He slowly raised his thin gray body and loped partway across the clearing, still in sight. “Far enough?”

  I shook my head and said, “I would like to say a prayer over him, but to honor my gods, I should say it alone. Could you go just a bit further into the woods?”

  The dog left with such trusting ease that I almost felt guilty for deceiving him, but when he cleared the tree ring, I leapt forward onto the man’s face, pointing my beak’s sharp end down like a human’s knife, ready to cut and remove.

  Yet the magic breeze blew up, wild and unwelcome, hitting me full in the face. I blinked my own bright eyes, shaking my head against the blast of pure power. With it came a young woman, stumbling out of the woods, clutching her back with one hand. At first I thought she, too, was an unusual casualty of the war, bent strangely because of a blow from man’s sharp metal sticks, but then I saw that she was heavy with child and stricken with grief to move gracefully. “Get away! Get away, foul creature!” she cried in a hoarse voice, waving her thin hand in the air as she bolted forward. She’d cried her eyes red, and I could see her swollen belly made it next to impossible for her to keep her balance as she rushed at me.

  Time slowed. I had a chance to plant my beak in the man’s eye socket, to feel its point connect with the bone behind the eye and scrape across as it pulled out the shining jewel. Yet her eyes held me. They didn’t shine like the ones we had plucked for the Raven King; in fact, had she been a corpse, we would have passed her eyes over for fear of insulting him with their dullness. The death in her eyes held me, the lack of light inside or on the surface. Her eyes weren’t jewels; they were the lights that illuminated the path to death, and their glow comforted me, thing of darkness that I was.

  Later I told myself that I hesitated just a bit too long and that by the time I had gathered my wits, she had come so close with a branch that I had to fly away or get hit. Yet all four of us knew this wasn’t the case. Her eyes of death held me like a warm embrace, and I felt our equality, our companionship, our sameness in them. I fought against the emotions flowing inside me, constricting as a birder’s net: pity hobbled me, and I felt my good leg twist under the weight of the magic in the air. I stumbled and cried out in pain and loss. I felt ashamed of myself for trying to take the man she loved, and I felt sorry for her because I knew she would soon die herself.

  Chi and Ro cursed with loud cries as I took to the air again. Fearing the overwhelming magic that hung over the field, they flew wildly back towards court. I lingered, however, wanting to see the knight’s ending. She knelt over him, clumsily pulling him up onto her back. The task should have been impossible, but the magic wind swirled a
round her and landed gently on her sleeves like silver dust. Red-faced and breathing heavily, she hauled him across the field, his heavy shoes leaving furrows in the muddy ground. The dog trotted by her side, getting in the way as much as helping, but she had only kind words for him, even then at the end.

  I followed them through the edge of the forest and to a little kirk where she drug him to a grave in which several other poorer soldiers lay. She lifted the mound of earth nearby with her own hands, kneeling and digging like an animal, her hair clinging to her tear-stained and sweaty face. She managed to fill the hole admirably, then lay down herself next to it, moaning with pain and loss.

  Soon I smelled the strange, stinging smell of blood, and I knew she had begun to bleed. Moaning and alone, feverish and delirious, she lay abandoned. The dog began to dig in the earth for his master, undoing a bit of her handiwork.

  I could have taken her eyes, for she stared up unblinkingly at the night sky. Two more. I could have redeemed myself, even though her eyes were nowhere near as handsome as his.

  Instead, though, I flew down and rested near her head. She let out a little cry when she saw me, but instead of attacking her, I tilted my head sideways and lay my cool feathers against her hot forehead. We ravens have no voice for singing, but I willed my coolness into her, to comfort her, to honor her as she had honored him.

  When I had stilled completely and pressed my head against hers, she, too, stilled, and closed her eyes. We must have lay together like that for the better part of an hour, until her temperature cooled to mine. Just before she passed, she whispered, “Show you have learned loyalty: return the jewels you have stolen.” She breathed out a last breath filled with silver mist.

  When she stopped breathing, I raised my head from my weary vigil and began the slow, defeated flight back to the Raven King’s court. The silver mist settled heavily on my wings, moist and thick, making my flight exhausting. When I arrived at court, my breath scraped from my beak and my wounded legs gave out. I fell on the snowy ground in front of the Raven King.