Song of the Crow

by Layne Maheu

  —PLINY THE ELDER

  2. Bird of Fodder

  On and on the pearl brightened and dimmed as if in a dream without beginning or end or change. Just the drudgery of the ark rising and dropping in the swell, the moaning of the trees, the wailing of the empty wind. Whether the pearl was bright or dim, always the beastmen were busy carting food up and down the decks. It may have been Noah, or his wife, Namah, or any one of their sons or daughters. First the torchlight would appear from far off and always from the same direction. Then the bleatings and stirrings of the creatures would increase as the light from the torch neared their compartments. Even the animals in the sumpwater perked up. When they heard the cart and the falling of fodder down into their cages, they scampered up through the ark and back into the mockery of their kennels, even the pea-brained rodents, not by cunning or intelligence but by the mindless habits that their glands had set up for them. The human was no different. The beastmen moved through the half-darkness like blind nudgers hugging the fodder to their chests. Now and then one would fall asleep, cleaving to a bucket that rolled beneath him. Another would come by and kick the sleeping one awake, and the two would resume their feeding.

  “Come. Come and eat.” They bleated. “There you go.”

  And the sons of Noah flung fodder into the cages.

  “Just look at us,” said the one known as Ham. “And we won’t even survive the trip.”

  The elder said, “And this gives you pleasure?”

  “Feeding,” said Ham, with a gap in his toothy smile, “pleases me not.”

  “Are you prepared for the alternative?”

  Neither spoke in the tree-heavy ark, except for the chirps and grunts they used to instruct the animals to eat, as if the animals had forgotten how.

  Just then Old Hookbill the Interpreter loped up behind Noah’s sons, acting for the most part like a dog, sniffing their legs, the wheels of the cart, the base of the cages. And I knew why I could understand them. Aside from the human itself, their faithful dog was the only creature allowed to wander freely in and out of all the compartments and up and down the decks, made more faithful now that Hookbill, the old dream-giver, lived inside the dog’s eyes, each of a different color, one blue and one brown. Sometimes Hook-bill favored one eye over the other. As the humans moved their cart down the gangway, the dog briefly looked up at me with a crow’s mirthful, one-eyed glance.

  When the torch was far enough away, but still shedding light, I flew through the creaking, twisted branches of the ark to the compartments where the various fodders were stored. There wasn’t much to do on the voyage but to stuff myself to the horn. Flying past the beastmen undetected was always easy. But I didn’t take any chances. After they’d spot me or just barely hear me, they’d rattle the cages and curse and make threats, inspecting the various compartments for ways to escape. When the beastmen receded, I resumed the search for my kind, but I couldn’t see anything in the hurling dark. The hooves of an occasional wanderer clamored across the decks, alone, like me. Voices were my only guide.

  Once I heard the trilling and clucking of the beauty of our aerie. I realized Plum Black had infused her soul in the song of Our Many more than I’d ever imagined. Her calls gave me a sharp woe of memory that made my wings ache, and all at once I wished for a familiar clearing and the tops of the forest and a wind that had traveled far to gather all the many names and familiar birds in its kindly draft. My heart bruised against the stones of its longing, and I felt more than ever the skyless, sunless prison of our existence. But I wasn’t alone. Hearing the sweet song of our Plum Black, other creatures tried to sing like the crow. All sorts of bellowings, bleatings, and chirpings filled the dark. And Plum Black, not only the beauty of the woods but also shy and modest and apt, rarely sang after that, not wanting to show up the other animals or cause a stir.

  Once the sound of the feeding cart caught me by surprise.

  I shuddered and landed as soon as I could and froze there. As always, the humans took a forever to be gone.

  “C’mon,” whispered a voice, in the exact words of the beast but too close and with a nasal inflection that was far too sinister and crow-like. “Come, eat up,” said the voice. I looked all around me in fear and wonder. Beside me was a cage of enormous birds of prey. Their magnificent feathers jumped out of the darkness and threw their speckled light back at me, though all the hunters sat in shock, neither awake nor asleep in the slow, desperate languor of the crowded cage. “Come,” said the alert voice.

  It was the raven, both the he and she of their kind, speaking not only in ways of the beast but in tones specific to the beastmen, looking right at me, as if instructing me in the ancient art of eating.

  “No. C’mon,” said the ravens. “Come.” They blinked their bone-colored lids. “Come and eat.” And because I wanted to see if My Other was still inside them, I flew directly near the cage.

  “Oh. You again?” said the magnificent bird of darkness. “The other. At first I thought you were the God Raven. But you’re too scrawny. Now, be a good crow and open our cage.”

  “The door?”

  “Sure. It’s easy. First fetch the beastman’s fire in your beak, and fly with it the length of the ark. Then encircle our cage three times. Then sing to the primates. Then strike our cage from one end to the other with your beak. And lastly, you must pull one small twig attached to the door, and our cage will swing open. But you cannot reach the small twig from within. I can’t do it myself.”

  “Are you sure?” I sat there suspicious of the enormous black bird with his glossy black feathers and elaborate claws.

  Then the raven bent down close to me and spoke in confidence. “We didn’t do a very good job of fleeing the plague of Keeyaw, now, did we?” The raven’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yeah. We flew right to him,” I said.

  “Especially you. You weren’t even led here by an angel, were you?”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw the birds fly through Noah’s door. There was not a single albino feather in the lot. Now, I know you crows think there’s something really special about that . . . aberration. But to everyone else, you’re just fodder.”

  “Fodder?”

  I wanted to tell him all about our ancient ancestor Hookbill the Sagacious riding like a patron muse on the bow rail of the ark, and how she now lived in the dog’s eyes and had shown me the secret entrances to the ark, which only I used.

  “You are not part of God’s plan,” said the raven.

  “Yes. I am,” I said.

  “No. You’re not.”

  “God talks to me, I Am.”

  “But you are without mate. You are not.”

  “I Am.”

  “You’re fodder.”

  “Okay, so I’m fodder. To whom?”

  “To my friends here. The eagle, and the owl.”

  These two, as well as the other large raptors and carrion birds, evil-looking, hook-necked vultures without feathers on their scaly pink faces, were all in the same cage as the raven who spoke.

  “You see how they look at you. They know you are not with the Lord of the Universe, the God Raven’s protection. You were not led here by the angel of your kind.”

  “Raven god?” I said.

  “Look. I shall not argue the nature of the Endless All-Knowing with fodder. Did you, or did you not, see the hard time Keeyaw had feeding the chameleon? Until one day Keeyaw opened up a pomegranate, and out fell a worm, which the nearly starved chameleon devoured in an instant. Why would the almighty God Raven allow this to happen to worms? To be wiped out of existence forever? No, this worm was fodder. This worm was not led here by the worm angel. It was outside God’s plan, like the flies you snap at, and the mice in the granaries, and the bugs that the chickens peck at, and like you. Look. Just look at the eagle. You make his eyes water and the walls of his stomach work together like two grinding stones. He has not had flesh to eat since . . . since the days beyond counting.”

  “What do
I care what you think? You’re in a cage. I can eat until I’m stuffed to the horn, and still, I’m free to fly wherever. You stay there in your god’s plan. I like my own.”

  “You say that now. But listen,” said the raven, “if you free me, I will assist and protect you.”

  “Protect me? From what?”

  The raven narrowed his eyes to slits, then looked all around him.

  “If I tell you,” said the raven, “then why would you free me? We must strike a bargain.”

  “What do I have to fear from you?”

  “Not from us,” said the she raven, “but from God’s plan. Remember. All were wiped out. All except those led here by the mysterious ways of Raven.”

  “Not all,” I said.

  “But for how long? Now, open the cage, and for our freedom, we will protect you.”

  Just then the glow of the beastman’s torch shone directly from our gangway and the footsteps grew louder.

  I flew to a nearby beam and waited.

  When a creature ate an ancestor, you could very clearly see the bright burning of your song in that creature’s eyes. Even the pithy song of My Other, the fledge, still played upon the eyes of the raven. And the shiver I got from the ravens grew as I considered our conversation back there in the dark.

  And then there was the beastman called Noah, who’d not only dragged our Mother of Many asunder but who’d sat like a dull rock before the burning of the fallen trees, staring without blinking and no life in his limbs. Not Noah, nor any one of his sons, none of them showed any sign of her or her varied, mellifluous song. It just ended there in the pale, blunt brow. Slowly Noah took his forked instrument to gather the pig dung and heap it into his cart. Like his beard, the contents of his barrow slopped and steamed, and he pushed it along the gangway and wore a cross expression down at it and his soul was elsewhere.

  After all were fed, after all the beastmen had fed throughout both day and night, and the cast from the holy pearl was a wan fog neither night nor day, Noah would crack the hatch to his window. He’d barely open it, just enough to lower a bucket of food outside the ark. After poking my head out of one of my secret portals, I beheld the recipient of this strange overboard offering. A giant followed behind the ark and kept his head above the whitecaps by clinging to a rope ladder. There, in the gray light of the water, the monster’s gasping between the waves sounded like the hissing and escaping of vapors from a rotting corpse. But no, in the morning, there it was again, large, dumb, expressionless, and soaked pale, gaping up with that vacant, hungry look that always made Noah appear so guilty. And day after day, he remained there, the giant from that other world, sexless, alone, unable to continue his race, clinging to the rope and blowing the waves from his face so he could suck in more air.

  Only the lion among wild animals shows mercy to suppliants; it spares those bent down before it, and, when angry, turns its rage on men rather than on women, and only attacks children when desperately hungry. Juba believes that lions understand the meaning of prayers.

  —PLINY THE ELDER

  3. Sign and Lament

  Bears hibernated.

  The great browns threw hay atop one another and formed a heaping mound that didn’t quite cover their enormous hindquarters. Still, the weight of the hay and barley was enough to induce the deep sleep that they knew as winter. Frogs, turtles, and toads all buried themselves in the mulchy humus of fodder at the foot of the sumpwater as if it were the edge of a swamp, and they too slept their deep winter sleep. Caterpillars wove themselves into cocoons. All the creatures that could shut down, did. And the more voracious ones shut down against their will. The lion, constantly besieged by the feverish sweats of seasickness, was unable to prey on the creatures of God’s plan. Instead the lions sustained themselves by eating grass like oxen, which made them troublesome and ill-tempered.

  The long days of darkness turned into seasons.

  When the beastmen weren’t feeding, they were busy with the buckets of pitch, plugging up the constant leaks that weighed the ark down and threatened to roll it over so far that not even God could right it. Down in the swill, the water rolled in even waves from keel to stern, even though there was no forward or back to the ark, just God’s will pushing it across the face of the flood. The animals in the heavy sumpwaters rolled, too, their calmly spooked eyes turned upward, sometimes having to dive below the surface to avoid a beam that threatened in a hurry. Ducks were especially adept at this.

  One by one, I found all my secret accesses to the outside filled with a mix of pitch, sticks, and hay. So if I really was fodder, as the raven claimed, I was trapped now inside as one to be eaten.

  The chameleon was starting to wear on Noah, who had to keep a ready supply of fresh worms for the lizard. He and his family kneaded shoots of camel-thorn into a cake and the worms were extracted from the pomegranate. Being mere fodder and outside God’s plan, the worms were the only creatures in all of the ark allowed to procreate, there in the peat of the camel-thorn. Then they were fed to the chameleon, who was the envy of the ark. All the other animals complained. But how could the chameleon care, moving once every three days? My own hunger for the worm was tempered only by the knowledge that I was fodder myself and if I flew down to the wormy thorn cake, then perhaps I, too, would be discovered and offered up to some other hungry creature as finicky as the chameleon.

  In his rounds, Noah would mumble to himself. He’d fall into such a foulness that whoever assisted him in pushing the cart would lag behind in order to preserve any hope of sanity. The physical rancor and disgust Noah held for his own kind always simmered just below the surface, ready to lash out at the animals in his charge.

  “Oh, Great God of the Garden!” he cried. “I beg You for a sign. But no sign comes. Is there no way out of my prison? My life grows heavy with the smell of bulls, bears, and lions.”

  The Man Called Noah wailed this just as he neared the lion’s stall.

  Though it pained the lion even to open his eyes, the great cat raised his head from his sickly, curled-up sleep. He watched with contempt as Noah kicked the grass about his cage, and this was the lion’s food. Still, the lion did nothing. But Noah, who noticed the lion’s belligerent stare, turned around with equal anger and belligerence.

  “What?” said the beastman. “I spend all my days feeding, and get this in return?”

  The lion roared and swung his paw like an immense cleaver and sent Noah flying across the stall. The lion batted Noah’s leg around a few times, then purred as it stood above the skinny creature with a forepaw on the mammal’s throat and chest.

  “Puny man. I am four times your size. My stomach can digest bone and hide much thicker than yours. What can you do?”

  Noah was still lying down, straining his neck when he spoke.

  “Why, I built this ark.”

  “I’d eat you right here if it would give me any pleasure. But I’m sick of eating, especially grass and your figgy bread. Leave me now. Before my anger returns.”

  And the lion released the beast-man Noah, who hobbled away, bleeding heavily and guilt-ridden.

  “You should have done me in,” said Noah. “You do me a disfavor.”

  All of his family ceased what they were doing and gathered around the skinny, bearded beastman, who insisted no harm had been done to him. Though all of his family saw his shame and the bloodied flesh from fang and claw and how he limped. The clan of them was moving no faster than Noah himself, and this was my chance.

  I flew steadily through the shadows and around the beams of the beastman’s quarters and landed upon the camel-thorn cake that housed the worms. I pecked at them and slurped them up. I chopped them into tender pieces and cached them here and there in various hiding spots throughout the ark. I ate so many, so quickly, I could barely fly.

  “Oh, look at, look at here.” It was the raven. “Oh, Noah. Loose bird! There is a worm thief among us!”

  After all the raven’s commotion, the clan of humans looked up and saw me.


  “The dark bird,” they cried.

  “Check the cages.”

  “Keep sight of it.”

  I flew easily to the places where I knew the humans would be useless in catching me. But as I flew to my deeper, usual hideouts, a fanged creature jumped out at me and knocked a few feathers loose. Then a creature with claws lunged at me. And another. Armed ones, winged ones, spotted ones, predators with large, sharp eyes. I bounced against the ribs of the ark, avoiding their lunges, weighed down as I was with worms.

  “You see what you are,” the raven called after me, with a wicked laugh, “—fodder!”

  And if I have just spoken of a young male jackdaw falling in love with a jackdaw female, this does not invest the animal with human properties, but, on the contrary, shows up the still remaining animal instincts in man.

  —KONRAD Z. LORENZ, King Solomon’s Ring

  4. Island of Musical Instruments

  I hid in the beams above Noah’s floating barnyard. There the domesticated creatures were well fed, always sleeping or on the verge of it, and had no interest in eating me. Also the beastman was often absent, so it was easy to lurk there in the shadows above the precious worms in the camel-thorn cake.

  Each day, the weather outside brightened, and this brightness leaked in through the fissures between the logs, as did the hissing of the sea and the gurgling of the slack water. The ark leaned into the trough of the waves. And the strange aquamarine light of the pearl began to mingle with the pale overcast from outside.

  Old Hookbill’s life as a dog allowed me to catch every word that the beast-people grunted to each other and the animals in their charge. But their meanings were lacking and sadly repetitious as they moved like sleepwalkers through the machinations of tossing hay down into the stalls, or herbs, or barley, or all kinds of mixed pulse, constantly administering to the needs of each species. They filled the tubs with soured water, emptied the cages, and kept the blood barely pumping beneath the hide of the earth’s creatures that mostly slept and yawned and ate, then slept again in their own animal discharge. This was hardly the case, though, with the youngest, the beastchild, Japeth, who would get a running start with the cart. Once it gained any speed, he jumped onto it and sailed it the entire length of the deck until it came to a standstill, and he rocked on its wheels slowly back and forth in the movement of the ark. When he found himself under the charge of one of the older members of his clan, he’d slink down in a submerged mean streak and throw the fodder at the animals as if hurling rocks. The stocks and grains fell like wisps of dust from his flailing arms.