Song of the Crow

by Layne Maheu

  But as the thin light from outside spilled into the ark and the angry face of God turned to a calm, passive sloshing, the animals began to stir.

  When young Japeth went sailing by on his cart, his oldest brother’s mate, a plump, red-haired beastwoman, jumped on with him and clung to him tightly, trying to hush her squealing. As the cart stopped, she rubbed Japeth’s arms and squeezed him. With the cart still beneath them, the boy clouded over with confusion and hid deep within one of the pens, letting small primates and other creatures with clever hands sniff and paw his hair.

  The flank of a camel shivered massively above him and its tail whipped at a fly. The lamb bleated. And the lap cat trembled and yawned and stood shoulders first, then hindquarters as it stretched and sank back down into its own idle dreaming. Old Hookbill the Dog was awake as usual, and she trotted through the humid stalls of the beastman, alert to all the stirrings and half-wakings and excited by it all, as if this were spring itself. She sniffed at the air and dreamt of rabbits and diving into the bush. Her dreams were purely a dog’s now. Still, she communicated them to me and feared the angry hand of the beastman. The movement of the sheep nearly arrested her into an action she had no control over. Her authority in the barnyard stiffened her coat and pricked her ears to every sound. Below her ribs, her teats swung loosely, once suckled dry by mouths that had long since been filled with the stinging foam of the floodwaters but still with enough life in the gristled, hairy nipples to replenish the earth.

  The warming animal compartments filled her lungs like sunlight falling over a meadow. And as she ran her rounds, she swung her hips and the juices in her blood seeped out in sharp scents from the rug of her hindquarters. She kept circling here and there, loosening her haunches, remembering the sun’s lost rays and the mindless warmth of an afternoon a long, long time ago when she had lifted herself up to the heat. Soon an old hoary sheepdog was following her, sniffing at her tail so furiously that he pushed her forward. Then there was a growling behind that dog, and a fight ensued, for it was not yet established which dog would have her outright as he pleased and which dog would have to mount her in secret and finish quickly and slink away unseen. In the mongrel’s eyes, even Old Hookbill the Sagacious smiled.

  At night, when the pearl dimmed, the sleeping grew more constant. The creatures always slept, but the beastman never. One night, slowly, without the assistance of torchlight, one of the sons of Noah crept over to the horse stalls as if sneaking. There, he sat himself down, and pausing, looked up. When he saw me, I startled him, even spooked him, as if I had discovered him. At first the eyes seared through the darkness. Then they were like a pair of frog eyes that sink slightly beneath the surface, thinking this will make them safe. Ham lurked there with the horses and did nothing to draw attention to me but looked at me a long while, until soon his mate, Nanniah, crept into the horse stalls with him. It was true, the Mother of Many lived there, especially in her thick, glossy mane that shone wildly as if ready to fly. Ham huddled her into a corner and she sat with her arms crossed, looking inward.

  Ham said, “I awoke this morning to the dream of an island.”

  “Shhh.” Though her voice soothed him, her glance was sharp and shot quickly all around her, like a crow’s. “Before we’re discovered. Why did you call for me?”

  “Not only an island, but the dream of our journey’s end. An island of musical instruments.”

  “God drowns musicians.”

  “This music of my dreams, it rode up on the winds and dispelled the waters.”

  “Were these the same instruments invented by Genun the Canaanite, in the Land of the Slime Pits?”

  “Oh, you are too much like Father,” said Ham, “full of names, and who did what. Please, stop. It matters not.”

  “Of course, it matters not. Not to you. Your family didn’t drown.”

  “Oh.” Ham wrapped her in his wings. “Please. Forgive me.”

  She shuffled away.

  “This music,” he said, “in my dreams. It was unearthly. Yet it brought back the earth. On a wooded pathway, you danced and were lovely. This loveliness rang through my soul. My blood raced.”

  She kissed him shyly and said, “You mustn’t talk this way.”

  “We mustn’t talk.”

  And he succeeded in getting Nanniah in the embrace of his wings.

  “Take care. We’ll be discovered. Noah won’t believe my child outside the ark is yours, whether we lie here now or not.”

  “But I told Father that the child was mine?”

  “And look how he’s treated. You shouldn’t have lied.”

  “But I want to believe it. And if we give him a sister or a brother, he will feel more like our own. Then how can my father possibly deny him?”

  She answered only with silence, and night after night, Ham would follow Nanniah around and try to bring her into the thick hay of the horse stalls. From their talk I learned the story of the creature who floated behind the ark. It was Nanniah’s son, conceived during her life with the giants. When the world flooded, she had wept when Noah said he could not take this son, a giant, along on the voyage. Occasionally she still wept, and though Noah was persuaded to tow the large creature behind the ark, he could not be persuaded to bring the giant child aboard. In her falling hair and shoulders, I felt the pull of Our Many and her sad longing, and I wanted to sing the song of our aerie and call her back to me. Other times Nanniah and Ham would hold each other in the hay until I feared the sleeping horses would wander and trample them both. Sometimes Ham would try to mount her.

  “What?” said Ham. “What is it?”

  “Hush. Do you want to be discovered?”

  “So be it. No. Watch this,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  The one known as Ham breathed strangely as he crept through the shadows cast by the glowing pearl, and returned from their pantry cradling a small, precious bundle in the folds of his robes and knelt back into the darkness of the horse stall. He undid the wrappings and plucked a morsel of food and held it up—an offering, for me. He acted as if he knew I’d be there, and had been all along. He made tick-tocking sounds with his tongue, a little crow-like, at least for a beast.

  “Shhh,” said Nanniah. “What are you doing?”

  “We’ve been feeding all the other creatures, but not this fellow. He hides there in the beams.”

  “What’s he doing out of his cage?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ham. “But I think he’s the one we keep seeing, lurking in the beams. He’s clever.”

  Ham held the piece of cheesy breadstuff up for so long I feared we’d all be discovered. But I didn’t like the figgy bread. No animal liked it, even though it was the beastman’s favorite. I had free rein over all the foodstuffs left in creation, and now I had to eat the figgy bread. Why would any creature want to be the pet of a beastman? I waited as long as I could, until I felt compelled to hop down to their clumsy offering. But no. Still, I decided not to.

  Nanniah’s face hovered so close to mine in the dark that I would have hopped back if she weren’t also carrying the well-traveled song of Our Many in her bones.

  “Look at his face,” she said. “Is there something wrong with him?”

  “I wonder,” said Ham. “His feathers mark him as if with an expression.”

  “Yes, that of crying,” she said. Then she laid her hand on her belly. “Sometimes I can feel the child inside. It moves. I just felt it.”

  “I will treat your child outside as I will this one,” said Ham.

  “Don’t,” she said again, as he moved toward her. “We’ll be discovered.”

  “When you grow large with child, we’ll be uncovered anyway.”

  “But why hasten it? Perhaps we’ll reach land first.”

  “Perhaps we will never reach land. How was it?” asked Ham. “With the giant?”

  “Why do you ask now? You make me dizzy.”

  “Did you or did you not love him?”

  “We were betr
othed at birth. At night, he forced himself upon me. I did what I could to survive.”

  “Do you love me now?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same?” said Ham. “In the same way?”

  “To me, you are life itself.”

  “Is it because my father had the power to save you?”

  “Shh. I hear someone coming.”

  “Just think,” whispered Ham, under the sounds of the footsteps. “When we return to the world, it will be like paradise. It will be paradise. God will give Eden back to us, just as Father says. Except this time around, God won’t tempt us. Except with beauty, which will be everywhere, and no longer a temptation. And when we find music, it will be because He invented music and He’ll be proud of us or even moved by beauty and sing along.”

  “From where do these mad thoughts come?” she said. “My village had many fine musicians, and now they all are drowned.”

  They both fell silent, and I flapped up to the beams in the dark when the footsteps approached.

  Night after night, I perched there and watched Noah limp past the sleeping bodies of Ham and Nanniah with an old man’s walk. He saw neither his family nor the body of horses asleep next to the oxen and sheep, whose ribs rose and fell as the air wheezed from their nostrils and the ark creaked and groaned, complaining under the weight of its burden. In Noah it seemed that all the world had fixed itself into a single sleepwalking purpose upon his brow as he pushed the feeding cart with that gangly limp of his, now hardened into his bones.

  And even animals were so corrupted with those not of their species, horse with donkey and donkey with horse and snake with bird, as it says, “For all flesh had gone astray. . . . And He destroyed all of creation which was on the face of the earth, from man to beast.”

  —JAMES L. KUGEL AND MIDRASH TANHUMA, “Noah 12,” The Bible As It Was.

  5. Greenhorn the Sailor

  Beyond in the darkness of the rolling logs that was the ark, I heard a strange commotion of sharp voices, both beast and bird, and it drew closer.

  “Let go of me.”

  It was the raven—the mocking, cunning bird—arguing with the beast-man Noah.

  “This bird has disobeyed my decree.”

  “Decree? Who are you to decree?”

  “I am Noah, God’s servant, who guides through the storm, appointed captain from above, keeper of the knowledge of Enoch . . .” Noah thumped the gangway grotesquely and wheezed so heavily that his beard caught in his mouth and muzzled the imposing history he used to describe himself.

  “You forgot apiarist,” said the raven

  “Enough.”

  Soon Noah had the raven in his quarters. He strangled the angry bird by the neck, the wings, then a single talon. All the while the raven bit and scratched at Noah and whacked at him with his wings and the beastman spoke through gnashed teeth.

  “It has not only mated with its own kind; it has done the unnatural and approached the she-eagle.”

  “Who’s to say this is unnatural? Does not the horse lie down with the donkey? And the wolf with the dog? The bee with any flower it can? Nature is always seducing itself and expanding its own beauty in new and unimaginable forms. How can you blame any creature? I act only as I am.”

  “And I found it hiding behind the she-eagle’s wing.”

  “I stood there only because you are so unreasonable and given to strange theories that make you abuse the rest of us and your own kind.”

  “Before the world is renewed, we must take no part in replenishing it.”

  “Look at me. I’m Noah,” mocked the Raven, “keeper of secrets, greenhorn the sailor, slave to hunger, servant to lizards and bugs, grumpy old gimp, a jealous old gimp.”

  “Enough racket, bird. I should destroy your kind.”

  “Hah!” The raven blew out a contemptuous laugh. “As you well know, I am a necessary ambassador to a most striking and original species. The last hope of my kind. I dare you to undo any of God’s handiwork.” With that the wild bird grew calm and regal in the hands of Noah, who carried both the bird and a small cage over to the horse stalls.

  “Here. Wake, son, please. No, that’s okay. Good day, Nanniah. No. Don’t bother to dress. Just keep a watch on your friend here, the raven.”

  And Noah stuffed the bird into a cage so small that when the raven protested, flapping his wings, he whacked them on either side against the slats.

  Ham stood with his clothes bunched before him in his naked, already peeled state, and wanted to leave, but his father stood blocking the gangway.

  “No,” said Nanniah. “Don’t. You don’t need to hide, not from him, or anyone.”

  In the sharp points of anger in Nanniah the Beauty’s eyes, I saw the Mother of Many still cawing at Noah. But the old man only grimaced and turned away with that injured walk of his, as if the walk alone proved his point and gave him an undisputed sovereignty over all moral matters.

  “Look at you,” the raven called after him. “A creature far beyond the springtime of his life. Of course it’s easy for you to pass judgment, and pretend it’s martial law. You no longer live under the sway of your passions.”

  “If there are new generations on the ark—” Noah thumped with much trouble down the long gangway, speaking with a God nowhere to be found, “—how will I possibly feed them?”

  With the beastmen’s quarters empty of their kind, the raven stood as proud as any God Crow. His tattered feathers glistened. His curved hooks were knobby like the growth of ancient tree roots, and his beak, as large as the femur bone of a mammal, stuck out of the cage when he spoke.

  “Hey, crow. The beasts are gone now. You can feed on the chameleon’s worms.”

  The dark-feathered bird could even feign the omniscience of God. He spoke without turning my way but projected his voice as if he knew exactly where I was. I grew grim inside and felt the splay of my own nape feathers. I hadn’t flinched since Noah had pulled the raven in by the hooks.

  “Really, you should eat. What was that I noticed on your face? A mange, or consumption of some sort, stealing your color? What? Are you sad? There are always the worms to cheer you. What are you waiting for?”

  “I trust you not,” I said.

  But after a long silence, I flew back down to my normal feast anyway.

  All the while the raven studied the way I swooped down and dug at the camel-thorn cake and extracted one worm and flew back to my sullen corner. But there was no joy in it for me anymore. “Me, Me, I Am!” said the raven with his usual jeer. “I’m hungry! I Am!”

  I wasn’t sure if he was mocking me, or if it was the simp sounds of My Other ushered up from his hollow bones. I flew warily over to his cage with an offering, but before I even landed, he lunged at me with his heavy clippers and bit and tugged at my wings. I tried to drop the offering as I jumped back, but the raven already had it when I jumped clear of his reach.

  “And now for the cage door,” he said, chopping down on his morsel. “I’m not sure which of the many remedies open the cage. Or in which order they should be performed. But try a few, and see what happens.”

  The raven had the soul of My Other in his stare, and though I wanted to free them, I couldn’t trust him, and the raven sourly took note.

  “Very well. But you will wish you were my ally, after I’m free of this cage.”

  “My Child, what do you seek?”

  “I seek my brothers, the seven crows,” she replied.

  The dwarf answered, “My Lord Crows are not at home; but if you wish to wait their return, come in and sit down.”

  . . . All at once she heard a whirring and cawing in the air, and the dwarf said, “My Lord Crows are now flying home.”

  —The Seven Crows, GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES

  6. The Window

  Above the table where the beastmen ate was a window. Back when the ark was on dry land, this window, grown-over with dandelions and licorice weed, was constantly open and a favorite entrance for me to raid their table or the grai
n stores below. Now, as the brightness off the floodwaters grew, Noah thought it safe enough to lift the heavy latch of the portal and leave it propped open with a stick. But then the sea rushed in and its angry, salty lashes soaked their bedding and clothes. These they tried to dry above their small hearth and fire. But the animal reek of sweat and urine lifting with the steam from the saltwater was putrid. Even a crow could smell it.

  So the window remained shut.

  Soon the daylight shone through between the logs of the hull in sharp white stars, and the roll of the sea had calmed to a confused, sullen sloshing. The same tangle of driftwood gently knocked on the ark’s side for days, beckoning to its sad inhabitants. Though the holes were infinitesimal, you could sense the green out there of the fair-weather sea, and the green of the bubbles in the cresting waves, and the haze in the air and how it turned white at the horizon.

  Again, Noah tried the window.

  The sky was clear, and Noah stuck his head out into it. An even wind lifted his whiskers and his raw, organ-colored lips smiled, until he was making the strange whinnying sounds of his kind. His whole family crowded near and gawked and gurgled in the same strange banter, but in such happy squeals that I forgot myself and my nasty suspicion of them. Even if it was for only a moment.