Song of the Crow

by Layne Maheu

  Noah was pleased.

  And the family of beastmen went about the business of feeding with something akin to singing steaming up out of their heads. When the compartment was empty of them, I flew over to the window. The waves of the sea moved like a thousand clipped, tiny mouths snapping up at the air. The bright, briny bubbles, the cloudless haze of the sea. The steady wind pushed the ark along without raising the seas but was still strong enough to make the ark list.

  I could not fight the urge to fly out into it all.

  The blue was so welcoming.

  I spread my wings and flew out over the open, airy sea.

  It was like flying for the first time. Only better. There was none of the terror and struggle. It was how every bird wishes its first flight had been. The field of air was a solid cushion. I braced my pinions against it and rose above the green seawater pastures, hardly flapping, until the whitecaps below formed patterns like rolling fields of wheat. The sunlight sparkled off this watery welcome. The air cleaned my feathers and made them shine, and the wind purified my thoughts. Soon I landed on one of the uppermost branches of the ark. I could have kept flying as I had when Plum Black was a mirror-like flashing above the water that had no far shore. But now there was no shore anywhere. And if I did find land, would it have trees? Would there be crows? Who would show me the wonders of this new place? All I knew of beauty in the world was our old aerie and its everlasting song, and all of that was imprisoned down in the dark, foul, heavy stench below.

  Fighting my urges, I made my way back inside the dismal portal, passing the body of my patron oracle, Old Hookbill of the Lost World, still laminated to the bulwarks, but broken up now by the storm and flecked like shale.

  Why should I have returned?

  My knowledge would not fit into theirs.

  —W. S. MERWIN, “Noah’s Raven”

  7. Ostrich-Egg Omelet

  When Noah opened the window, he also let in spring, or a slight glimmer of it. Though this springtime was dim and nearly nonexistent in the lower decks, many of the she-birds still laid eggs, which were quickly swooped upon by the mother of Noah’s children. Quietly, the one known as Momma, or Namah, had day by day assumed the overseeing of the creatures that her sons and daughters had done during the voyage. Noah himself increasingly exhausted his energies on what he considered the more remarkable creatures—the pachyderm, the panda bear, the penguin. Feeding them less and less, he lectured them instead, or admired them as if they were his to admire. Anything out of the ordinary would be noticed by Namah. She slipped hay under the heads of sleeping animals. She refreshed their cages, climbed onto their fresh hay beds, and hugged them to sleep. Confused, an otter tried to escape her, but Namah followed it, stooped over with open arms. “So cute, so cute, so cute.”

  Soon, from their pantry, came the sound of frying eggs. All the beastmen squealed with pleasure as Namah cracked open an enormous ostrich egg, which took some pounding from a cudgel. The ample yellow yolk of it slip-slopped back and forth in the pan, following the rocking of the ark.

  Meanwhile, Old Hookbill the Dog Now stood before the open window, guarding the beastmen’s stall. All day the sun burned away the milky cloud cover, and Hookbill stood as mute as ever, as if guarding the very sea. The muscles on her face lifted her ears to different sounds and pulled her eyebrows back, but mostly she sat, unmoving like a lion statue at the gates, squinting from the cloud’s brightness. A human couldn’t walk out of the quarters, nor a rat scurry down a rafter, nor a dolphin plunge into the sea, without first passing the watchful gaze of Hookbill. Hookbill the Hound Now knew this and watched over the sleeping of the beastmen, or the wheeling of their carts, all the while keeping her attention on more distant matters.

  That evening all of Noah’s clan took the time to gather for supper below the open window of the stars, and after the meal, Noah began to recite the history of his kind. He constantly feared that this story would die in its entirety right there in his skull if he weren’t always reciting it. And he wasn’t much of a poet either, swilling down extra portions of his narcotic juices as slippery bits of omelet slid to the ends of his beard and made it stick out, stiff and shining. But also the fresh breeze and the returning stars spurred him on, and now there was an absurd hilarity pushing the story of humankind along. He lisped and made slithering movements with his neck when he played the role of the serpent, talking with Eve. “‘Oh, I’m afraid, I’m not afraid,’ says the mother of all of humankind. ‘What? What do you want of me?’‘Sit right here. By my tree, and I will show you.’”

  Now, in the Garden, Adam had once lied to Eve, telling her that by just touching the Tree, death would come unto the soul. And the Accursed One knew of this lie. So he shook the tree and kept shaking it until the apples fell down and landed upon Eve’s lap. “‘There,’ said the Accursed One. ‘You didn’t die from that, now, did you?’”—and so spoke Noah, holy-appointed bard of bards, singer of songs, deliverer through darkness, planter of vines and mighty trees, inventor of libations, seer of visions, knower of knowledge, offerer of offerings, and queller of the Almighty’s passions. And here Noah’s posture drooped, as did his impromptu musical instrument, a broken antler he’d use to strike on the table, and he felt his forehead. He groped at it, reciting the disaster of Cain’s first offering. “Why am I not dead?” he asked. “Or with a horn sprung from my own head with roots that strangle my brain? For I made offerings of web-footed creatures, and even of eels, and I ate thereof, biting into the juicy belly strip before the God of Adam could have His fill. And now the world is drowned.”

  Just then Namah approached and put her hand on Noah and spoke quietly above his madness.

  “Perfection is God’s alone,” she said. “The giant corrupters were the ones who destroyed the world. You have worked hard to save it.”

  “Giant corrupters?” said Nanniah, Ham’s mate. She glared. “You only call them that to demonize them. And because our cities were made of such large stones, out of jealousy you said only a giant could lift them.”

  “They tried to eat me once.”

  “What?” said Nanniah to the youngest of the clan. “Who did?”

  “The giant corrupters. They wanted to eat me. I was on the highway when a band of ruffians captured me and soaked me in a huge tureen of marinade.”

  “We believe you, Japeth,” said his mother.

  “They did. I turned blue.”

  Shem’s wife, Mona, laughed. “Wouldn’t you taste good?”

  “Silence,” said Noah. “I can’t bear the thought of it, not even in a joke.”

  “Please, go to rest,” said Namah, urging Noah up from his chair. “We’ll see to the creatures tonight.”

  “But—” Noah hobbled to the open window, still possessed. “There’s more I could have done.” He stuck his head out the window. “I could have saved someone besides my own.”

  Though Namah pulled on Noah by the shoulders, he broke free in a fit and stumbled up to the raven’s cage.

  “Evil one! I will send you to fetch news of the outside world. Be off with you, at once.”

  Noah made fluttering motions from the cage out to the window. But the raven spoke in a derisive innocence that passed Noah by.

  “My good bard, God’s emissary, is it not nighttime? How will I navigate the darkness? Let alone find my way back?”

  Noah pulled on his filthy beard, trying to find the way through his cloudy thoughts.

  “The stars!” Noah’s eyes spun in their sockets, and he wore a strained expression as if trying to clear the way for both his own understanding and the raven’s. “We could navigate by the stars—if only we could steer this barge, and there was somewhere to go.”

  The raven puffed out his furry throat feathers and stood with his trousers enlarged.

  “Though my mate and I are only two, and considered unclean, I don’t think God, your master, hates us as much as you do. Have you forgotten his orders? To take seven of each clean beast and two of the rest? J
ust look at the doves—seven clean, fine, ripe-for-slaughter doves. If I should drop from the heat or the cold into the seas, your new world shall be longing for ravens.”

  Noah stood long, as though considering this fine argument as best he could.

  “Or,” said the raven, “is your lust for my mate so great that you wish her all to yourself?”

  Noah whirled around, as though he might throw all of his might upon the cage and crush it.

  “You don’t dare harm me,” said the raven. “If the blood of any one of God’s last creatures was on your hands, and yours alone, you would have failed Him yet again.”

  “Agh, these birds, especially this Evil One! Even my own wife is forbidden me while we are on this voyage. Tomorrow, with the morning’s first light,” said Noah, “I will send him off.”

  Then Namah and her sons pulled Noah away from the arrogant raven, who preened his shoulders and neck feathers and looked the other way.

  · · ·

  While the beastman Noah slept and his clan busied themselves feeding the last of creation, I perched upon the ledge of the window and looked out over the nighttime sea.

  The seas shimmered with an icy darkness—ghostly, and ongoing. The only light came from the stars and the dim light they cast upon the clipped, even whitecaps, like tiny open mouths that went on forever. It seemed an occasional mountain peak or iceberg stood above the sea, as if floating low in the sky, blotting out the glowing iciness of the horizon. Were they really the tops of mountains? I stared at them in the wishful silvery dark until they dissolved and reappeared and seemed to follow us before they disappeared again.

  “Hey, crow—”

  But I chose not to listen to the raven.

  “Hey, fodder,” he said, and my coat of feathers stood on end. “Beautiful, isn’t it—your home out there.”

  I looked at a mountaintop following us and shuddered.

  as the crow flies: In a straight line.

  8. Mountaintop

  The ark lurched and lifted with a shock. The mighty trees of the forest crashed their thunderous doom one more time. Broken-arked, bottomless, keelless, our island of dead trees seemed to wrap itself around the face of a mountaintop.

  Noah arose from his drink-induced sleep with a fury.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  He yelled at his son Ham, of course, who watched the wreckage of the ark from the window with a calm, hypnotic detachment.

  “Father, destruction is beautiful, is it not?”

  “Not when it’s your own, you fool.”

  “Are you saying there is a difference between the doom of others and your own?” Noah hovered over the shoulder of Ham, who still studied the cliff face out the window.

  “My good father, you have slept for three days under the spell of your strange libations. For three days I thought you sick, and besides, no one has steered the ark yet this entire voyage. What good would you and your sick brain have done awake? By what powers would you prevent or assist our journey’s end?”

  “Out of the way.”

  Noah pushed Ham from the window.

  Large mammals bellowed in the general chaos of shrieks and flutterings. I tried to listen for Plum Black or the other crows, to see if they had survived the wreck. But it was hard hearing anything over the sound of the sea rushing like a hundred spring waterfalls into the ark.

  “Ropes! Lashings! Vines! Gather all you can!” Noah yelled to his sons and daughters. “Bring them up top!”

  Noah ran about on the decks shouting nervous, angry orders that confused his family more than anything else. But they did manage to tie a few lines from the bulwarks to the rocky beach. Still, the ark continued to list farther down the side of the cliff face. The logjam of a vessel groaned under the tremendous strain of its own weight. The rocks used to fasten the lines were dragged into the waves, too, beneath the ark, bringing it even farther down. The one line that did hold stretched to an alarming thinness and wrung the water from its braids. Then that line snapped.

  But the ark behaved as before.

  Except the water at the bottom of the hull no longer rushed in but moved as a part of the ocean’s tide, rolling from busted rib to rib with waves sloshing around down there on their own. A few cages were afloat in the slosh. But it seemed to Noah and his family that all was safe for now, and they retrieved the animals from the tide.

  When it was safe enough, I flew to the window again.

  Outside, all was a cloudy expanse without form.

  If it was a mountaintop, you couldn’t see it, covered as it was with rushing waterfalls and whitewater rapids and the mist they cast, shrouding the view of the peak and the sea beyond. The mountain was like an underwater diver who’d been holding his breath for much too long and just then violently plunged up from the depths, frothing at the airholes. The water rushed down its slopes and made a great crashing noise.

  Constantly the beastmen walked up and down the ark, surveying it, kicking it, jumping up and down on its outermost extremes, so that if it was about to give way, they would only hasten the doom of all God’s handiwork.

  During their midday meal, one of Noah’s sons spoke.

  “Father,” said Ham, who hardly ate but only dangled his long, wiry whiskers into his bowl of soup and studied how they soaked like tendrils of seaweed. “Father, how do we know if the flood is really receding or if the mountaintop is still filling the world up with water, so that its own peak will also soon disappear?”

  Noah looked alarmed again and screwed up a bleary face.

  “I will pray.”

  But instead he crawled down into the hull and scratched a mark into the ark’s wood at the present water level. Noah did nothing but examine that mark from different angles, crawling on the beams for a different view, putting his finger near the mark and holding it there. He waved the foam of the waters away from his mark. He blew at it.

  “Ah,” he said. “I can’t get a bead on this flood. Will it never end?”

  Noah ran back into his quarters, his clothes soaked to his lank frame. He looked as wretched as his skeletal cattle with their hips protruding like sticks above their thigh bones. All of the creatures, in the new light of the day, looked malnourished and infested.

  “You!” Noah pointed a crooked finger at the raven’s cage. “It is time for you to see whether the floods have abated!”

  The raven tucked and pulled at a loose feather and arranged it carefully as Noah opened the cage and thrust his hands into it. With his beak open and his head craned sideways into a question, the raven blinked his bone-colored eyelids in mock ignorance.

  “So it is,” said the raven, only after he was in Noah’s clutches. “You wish my mate all to yourself.”

  “Evil One! Quiet. Cease! May God curse this beak.”

  All the creatures listening hissed, “Amen!”

  “Isn’t separating us into different cages enough?” said the raven. “Must you banish me from this world as well? Wait!”

  The raven bit at Noah’s hands, and the beastman thrust the dark bird back into the cage and shut the door. Then he sucked at his hand where the raven had struck him.

  “Carrion.” Noah spat.

  “Take a look at me,” said the raven. “Look at all the creatures aboard your most excellent ship. I’ve fed on nothing but seeds and grasses, hardly sustaining for a creature of such a rich diet as myself.”

  “This bird will need sustenance to fly. But where will I find something—dead enough?” Noah made an ugly face.

  “Many of the creatures we eat are murdered by methods other than our own—yours, other creatures’, acts of nature. It matters not. Such concerns are not for the birds but for hairsplitters, of which your kind is the only lot, always in a delirium over your impulses verses the covenants through which you exist in a social realm.”

  “Ah, yes.” Noah’s features grew large. “The pomegranate, the worms.”

  “Exactly,” said the raven. “To navigate by the stars, as
you suggest, would entail a long journey. Would it not? I wish to eat a worm.”

  I recoiled in fear, expecting the raven to expose me to Noah.

  “Worms.” Noah laughed. “You like these.”

  And he extracted one worm from the heaping camel-thorn cake and held it just outside the ribs of the cage.

  The raven gobbled it up quickly.

  “I wish for another. I demand it for the long and arduous journey ahead. It’s the least you could do. I need at least a meal of worms to sustain me.”

  “Agh. Cease! My ears. Is there no rest from that beak?”

  “Just bring them, in bunches. For one condemned as myself, that’s not too much to ask. A meal, a last meal. Not just for me but for my own species.”

  Annoyed at the horrid, squawking noises, Noah snatched up an entire section of the thorn cake, and to keep the precious worms from falling to the ground held it up with both hands. He could barely open the cage, which he did finally using only his smallest finger.

  The raven took his leisure, eyeing the cake of worms before him, wanting to pick the largest and juiciest of them all. And just as he bent his head out of the cage, he hopped entirely outside it and lifted fluidly into the air. There was a dry whack and rattle to the clap of the feathers, dormant from flying for so long, but still the spread of them was monstrous and majestic and horrifying as the wings whacked at the air with an erratic speed and the raven slowly lifted.

  Without looking at me, the raven gave a grim leer and one short blast of a laugh.

  “Haw!”

  Like a bat disappearing down into dark catacombs, he disappeared among the beams above the beastman’s quarters.

  “Shut the window!” ordered Noah. “And find him. Find the accursed one.”

  to eat crow: forced admission of a humiliating error; alleged to have originated during the War of 1812, when a British officer forced an American soldier to eat some of the crow he had shot in British territory.