Читать книгу Song of the Crow - Layne Maheu - Страница 15

The soul of Aristaeus, also, was seen at Proconnesus flying out of his mouth in the form of a raven; this subsequently gave rise to the invention of many stories.

—PLINY THE ELDER

8. Burnt Offerings

“Surely you are my last lovely simp, for I will not live to have another.”

And though Our Many flew far into the tree of her sorrow, she never neglected her feedings or duties to me. When it grew hot, she’d fly back from the cold stream, moving her feathers as little as possible so that the water might drip from her wings and cool me. When the nights grew cold, she would ruffle her belly feathers down over me as if I were a clutch of unborn eggs, even though I was far too old for it, but since I was alone, it was tolerable, smothered up against the walls of the nest. While my own coat of feathers spread out dark and thick, hers grew prickly and slate-gray underneath and lost their luster in the hot summer noon.

“Oh my last, sweet last, hatched next to the Promise,” and from her horn came sounds that made me doubt the very world around me and believe only in the pale shroud of her song floating between me and the woods, while I sensed My Other come back and sit in the nest beside me and cry out. Her fading loves, drifting in and out of her last season, were sung for my ears and mine alone, one nestled beneath the stray, washed-out emanation growing beneath my eye.

It rained without end.

The water came down in such thick sheets that my mother sat there bathing in sorrow. After the loss of My Other, she had many strange, bewildering episodes and I thought that this overwhelming water from the sky was one of them. She watched distantly as my siblings shook and flapped over the nest, shrieking as if that might empty it of water.

My father spoke. “Oh, hapless bit of birdlife.”

I knew he wished I was My Other, so there still could be the promise of Pure Flight. Fly Home’s feathers were slick and no longer repelled the rain. He nudged Our Many to save me from the water pooling up in the nest, but she only shivered, staring into the onslaught. Their feathers were so waterlogged, their pale skin showed through, and it sickened me to see how much our skin was like the human’s. Soon I had to strain my neck, unable to call or else have the foamy water rush down my throat. The water weighed me down and kept me from climbing up on the nest top.

That was when the terrible whack of Keeyaw’s implement shook the base of Our Giant and moved through the branches. The pool of water in the nest shivered with each blow.

Our Many stuck her head beneath the fowl soup and dislodged some of the twigs and began throwing them over the edge. As the rainwater drained, she spoke. She put her beak right against mine and said these words: “Now. It’s time. I know it doesn’t seem like it. But you’ve been able to fly for a while now. You’re just shy of the wind. Don’t worry. I’ll stay over you until your feathers are dry. But be quiet when you’re down there. Nothing. Not a sound.”

“After I jump?” I felt just like the worm, no feathers, no wings, no eyes, no feature anywhere except the twisting of my guts through the middle. “What? What do I do then?”

My mother leaned back so she could take me in with both of her eyes, blinking with her alert, cloud-yellow love. She slid her beak through my feathers and gave me one last kiss.

“Why—you’ll be able to fly,” she said. “You’ll follow us, through the sky. It’s what you were born for.”

· · ·

So I climbed my way out into the storm.

The rain seemed thicker but somehow warmer out here. I edged my way out along the branch that shook from the grim attacks of Keeyaw, and soon my family called from their different trees.

“Fly!” they called, and it caused a break in the rhythm of Keeyaw’s implement. When I reached the edge of the heavy, sagging leaves, where it would be easier to jump, Keeyaw stopped, and through the spongy fronds, I saw him. He stood there staring at me in silence. My family stopped making their racket, too.

All that could be heard was the rain falling on itself.

In the dull calm, I spread my wings and flapped but still held on to my perch. The branch dipped menacingly.

Keeyaw was still looking up at me when he took his tool and slammed it once against the base of our tree, not in his usually pounding fashion but in anger, with just one arm. Then he threw his maul spinning through the woods. As if he’d suddenly proved something, he stood again in silence, staring at the woods all around him. Then he started to whack at the bushes in the vicinity of his tool. But the going was hard for such a lowly, groveling creature, and he stumbled. Falling made him angrier, and he complained, standing up against the rain. He stood stoop-shouldered and emaciated, with his clothes stuck to his bones and his beard plastered down to a thin rope hanging from his face. Waterlogged as he was, he reminded me of a tree with that likeness that always evoked such a strange pity, and I climbed even farther out onto the branch for a better view.

Giving up on his tool, he thrashed his way back through the bushes. From his mule pack, he pulled out dry grasses, kindling, and wood and placed all of it beneath a thick overhang of branches. He arranged his kindling as best he could and struck two stones together to release the sparks and smoke that hid within the rocks. But he couldn’t summon his fire. Keeyaw blew over the strange source of smoke. Even his breath couldn’t summon the fire, and the air was thick with the dampened smoke. The smoldering hung in the air all around him, staying below the overhang of branches like the anger of his predicament.

From his mule’s pouch, Keeyaw pulled out a bright orange sucker fish with one whisker on either side of its face, giving it the appearance of wisdom, even though rigor mortis had set in. He hung the fish by twine from a low branch above him. He pulled out a chicken with its orange feathers still dry, and the chicken tried to fly out of Keeyaw’s arms. Why did it even bother? Could I fly? If our tree fell? Keeyaw stuck its throat with a blunt knife, and feathers stuck to the blade as he pulled it out. Rather than cutting the bird, the knife bludgeoned it and the bird’s head hung, barely attached. Then, out of the mule’s pouch, Keeyaw pulled a large white goose with an orange beak, and he stabbed it, there in the crook of his arm. Even though his dull knife penetrated the breast feathers and wishbone and lodged in the heart, the goose managed to bite Keeyaw’s nose. It honked and flapped and walked about Keeyaw’s feet with the knife protruding from its bloody white breast before it collapsed, its webbed feet paddling the sodden forest floor.

Keeyaw muttered to himself.

Then he hung the creatures one by one—the fish, the bird, and the other bird—from a strand of twine attached to the branch above him. His smoking heap was already too soaked to catch flame. But he cupped his hands over his mouth and blew into the smoldering. He searched but could find nothing more in his mule’s pack to add to this strange arrangement.

Then God appeared.

At the time I didn’t know It was God. I lacked the experience or knowledge needed to understand my wonder. It flew in so silently, no one saw It or where It had come from except me. Like all crows, It could fly in between the branches and land just above the human without his knowing. While giving all of Its attention to Keeyaw, the mighty God Crow craned Its magnificent head to the side and studied the branch just above It. It scraped and sharpened Its bill, both sides, on the branch It clung to.

Keeyaw looked wearily at the three creatures turning from the twine above the smoke. He moaned.

“You can hardly call it a burnt offering if it won’t burn.”

With the God Crow above him, Keeyaw’s words came to me as clearly as my own. Still, he seemed unaware of God and complained to the trees, to the dampness, to the three sorry creatures that turned in the air above the hissing hovel of smoke all around.

“I know these are not much, as far as offerings go,” he said. “I know you prefer the creature with hooves, the creature with hooves and horns. But I wasn’t planning on the flood starting so soon. This is the best I can do, on such short notice.”

With his dull knife, Keeyaw sawed away at the string above the carp, and with a thud, the fish disappeared into the damp cushion of smoke. The God Crow turned Its back completely on Keeyaw, then stretched a wing to the side and scratched Itself with Its claws. But It was intently fixed on Keeyaw. This was the way not only of God but of all crows. You can watch creatures better if they think they’re not being watched. So God turned Its back.

“There,” said Keeyaw. “Happy now?”

Then Keeyaw stood, arms open, as skinny as a tool handle, his wet robes matted to his bones like his hair and his beard, and the blood of the birds still awash on his clothes. Keeyaw’s own blood shone brightly from the wound on his nose where the goose had bitten him. The wash of blood ran down him like the rain.

“What else can I do?” said Keeyaw. “You’re flooding the world before the ark is finished. It can’t even float. I never asked to save anything in the first place.” And Keeyaw collapsed in a gray puddle on the forest floor and sat, rubbing the heel of his palms hard against his eyes. “After all, it was You who asked me. What did You expect? Am I more worthy? Is it too late to pick someone else? Or maybe a few others, nearly as worthy, to help out?”

Keeyaw trod off again, hacking away at the bushes in search of his maul.

“And those strange black birds,” he said. “Why do they mock me?”

But before he could find his tool, the rain evaporated. The great God Crow arose in the humid mist and left without notice from anyone, man or bird, except me, to whom It cawed out in a loud, ornery voice, “You! You!”

I shat my guts. Its dark wingspan grew ominous, and I thought this would be the end of me, that I’d be plucked away to the other realm along with My Other.

“Yes, you!” said the God Crow.

“Me?” I moved quickly along the branch to get back down into the filthy mulch of my own beginnings.

And It flew over me and beyond, just as silently as when It had appeared.

“Be ready when I call,” It said, and was gone.