The Crow and the Deer, page 4
He breathed in deeply, his mood lifted by the clarity of his thinking, feeling for the first time in many days fully himself. But he couldn’t help a moment of relent. Perhaps there would be a time again when it might be right to bring in the deer… No! Nyx immediately admonished himself. This whole idea needed to be marked down to a moment of simple madness.
The Crow Elders had stayed up finishing war preparations for the greater part of two nights. They now stared grimly at the assembled group, eyes blood-shot, feathers askew, not yet groomed for the morning. The Chief Elder stepped forward and cleared her throat, fixing a watchful eye on the gathering.
“You all know the where’s and when’s. This will be a long campaign, but we will be successful. It will show off our intelligence, and foresight. And it will change the landscape for us all. We crows have first claim on this forest.” She paused briefly for dramatic effect.
Now was the moment to channel pent up energies. She raised her voice.
“We have decided on the target. We have identified their main weakness: what it would cost them most to be without, the possessions that we know that humans hold most dear, the things they care for even more than the animals they live with. Their shiny hand toys that are their constant companions!” The speech reached its crescendo. The Chief Elder almost spat out the final words.
“We will destroy their pets!” The gathering erupted in prolonged and derisive caws. The young shrieked their excitement. Long-standing envy frothed with a good measure of crow bombast. The Elders looked on, nodding, satisfied.
“Smash their pets! Smash their pets!” began a chant.
Then a counter chant from the younger ones: “Steal their pets!” and “We want their pets!” The Elders waited for the noise to subside. Not bad rallying cries, they thought.
“But let us first see whether we agree,” suggested the Chief, once her voice, now weakening from her earlier effort could be heard again. This was a formality, and the crows knew it. It was rare for anyone to challenge the Elders, even less likely now that conflict was looming. Nevertheless, the birds collided with one another in their enthusiasm, jostling into smaller groups. Everyone was eager to stamp their ideas on how the campaign should work. In Nyx’s group a hot debate started among the older birds on the best tools to use, the right stones to drop. The fledglings could barely speak for excitement at the thought of playing with plundered toys. “Don’t just smash them – steal them!,” they shrieked.
Not one bird was arguing that the Elders had chosen the wrong target. A light-headedness swept through the gathering; a certainty that this was a defining moment for the crow story, a reckoning whose moment had finally arrived. The humans had crossed a line into a world it was the crows’ right, and no one else’s, to do with as they liked.
*
Nyx threw himself into detailed planning with his peers. Dividing tools into their categories and organising squadrons of birds for every site the crows would attack put Nyx on solid ground. Let’s hope this lasts, he muttered to himself. Messengers had to be recruited, briefed, and sent to each spot to ensure crow numbers were bolstered by more members of local families. The messengers would alert the birds to watch for breaks in the humans’ activities, for when their ‘pets’ would be withdrawn from their storage places, stared at and stroked, while humans ate their food.
Nyx was busy alongside birds he had grown up with from the nest. They were bunched so close together as they huddled over their maps, that he could feel the comforting warmth of their bodies. There was satisfaction too in the familiar task of puzzling pieces together into a plan.
Next morning the crows set off purposefully in a series of family squadrons, the youngest and most vigorous birds distributed around the group. They set a direct course following pre-planned landmarks proud of their efficiency in flight. Their purpose was set starkly in dense formations against the sky: in their sleek and elongated shapes, their co-ordinated wing beats, their beaks stretched impatiently forwards. Their numbers swelled as other family members rose from the trees, neatly joining the tail end. Looking around at the size of their flock all united in common mission, each bird found itself filled with a splendour, proof on a grand scale (were it ever needed) of their right to launch such an assault. The rest of the forest watched in alarm as they passed.
At their assigned spot the crows waited, concealed, with an armoury of stones and hooks, ready to mob the human feeding break. Their instructions were simple: snatch or destroy as many of their pet-toys as you can. Human machines criss-crossed the ground beneath them, as the sun marched the day towards its appointed hour. Then all activity stopped. The humans began to clamber down from their machines. The raid began.
*
Telling the story afterwards, humans would remark on the silence that had briefly reigned after the ringing in their ears had stopped – once all machinery had been switched off – and the familiar cadences of human voices had taken over as lunch was retrieved. It was a profound silence, as though all life in the forest had sensed good reason to hold its breath. And then the doors of hell were slipped. The crows plunged down as one, shrieking. A few of them, emboldened by their number, and seeing so much food laid out before them couldn’t resist a quick raid on the enemy’s lunch. These were angrily pecked. Soon the birds were raining a shower of stones onto the hand tools, knocking them out of unsuspecting palms, creating crazed patterns on their surfaces. Others used weighted hooks to yank them from the desperate scramble of fingers, or off tables, or from the roofs of travelling machines from where they had been momentarily left. The crows could barely hear each other over the human noise as they flapped above lunging arms and fists. Before they knew it, a rain of stones and other hard objects was being hurled towards them from the opposite direction. They rose as one above the range of these missiles, circling the fury erupting below. A few loosened feathers made their way raggedly earthwards. Nyx looked around, checking for any absences. Not one. Lost plumage was the sole cost of the adventure.
Craaaawk, Craaaaawk, Aaaaaaawkk… The birds called exultantly to each other. How had they pulled this off? Triumphantly they started victory laps of the scene, calling their contempt downwards, before dispersing to their perches, deliberately making themselves a difficult target for counterattack.
On the long flight back, his head pounding, Nyx slowly pieced together the events of the day splintered in his exhausted mind, all the while adrenaline clenched his beak tightly to his prize. Gradually, he was confident he had built a reliable picture of the raid. The vein throbbing hard in his temple, began to slow down.
Wherever they returned to roost the crows feasted late into the evening. They had been anxiously awaited. Food was ready, foraged in extra quantities through the day. The birds returned exhausted, landing heavily onto branches. But their news soon had their communities in ecstasy. Crow power had been affirmed in one momentous blow in a way none could have expected. Each raiding hero was bursting to tell their tale, and each insisted that their story be heard fully, and repeatedly, and when finally, they had talked themselves to a standstill and the community was gorged on triumph, the birds found their minds blurring. They began to lean into each other and drop off, some literally, narrowly escaping a bruised wing as they crashed through the branches.
*
On one treetop Nyx was perched with two of his closest friends. They swayed together in the night breeze. Wings were draped around each other’s shoulders.
“I’m a seriously happy crow,” slurred one of Nyx’s companions. It was taking giant effort to stay upright. But sleep could wait. He turned to stare at the others with eyes like moons. Such shows of intimacy were normally highly uncomfortable. But now his friends were surprising themselves. They were returning his gaze.
“I’d never trust anyone else as much as you lot,” mumbled the bird, encouraged.
“Well, no surprise – we’ve known your ugly beak since the nest,” said Nyx.
“The handsome bunch!” added another. The crows chuckled. Shoulders dropped. No one else was around. They were the last ones still awake.
“You know,” cackled the second friend, “after they lost so many of their precious hand toys today, won’t they be so upset!”
“Yeah, I knew we were good,” said the first, “but this good?” The birds cackled softly. They couldn’t resist another mini celebration, hopping up and down together a few times to a muted chant of ‘Smash their Pets!’.
Thoughtful for a while, they began again:
“I wonder how they’ll respond. No one followed us, did they?”
“How could they?”
“Well, they have flying birds…”
“No one’s seen any of those.”
“After what we did, I don’t think we’ll ever see a single human here again!”
They jabbered happily.
“Hey,” said Nyx, after a while, “Here’s an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, they want this land for themselves, no? They want to chop the trees down till there’s nothing left. Right?”
“Hang on, I thought we said they’re not coming back?”
“Give him a chance – go on, Nyx.”
“Well, what if we had our own goal for them?”
“And?”
“I was thinking… Well, say we won’t stop till we’ve smashed every single one of the toys they love so much…”
“OK?”
“So, how about: ‘Zero Pets’?!”
“Or even ‘Pet Zero!’”
A ragged cheer croaked from throats sore with celebration. Too loud for slumbering family members next door who hissed at them to keep it down. It was time to find a perch for the night. The three crows pulled each other into comradely headlocks, drew apart and retired for the night, convinced that the world would right itself again, and soon enough.
Chapter 8
The following morning Nyx woke late, a hero. He had four destroyed ‘pets’ to his name, a high score. Then he remembered the trophy he had managed to carry home. The memory broke through his grogginess. The hand toy was now lodged in a hollow next to his night perch. Two eager young seekers had found it, drawn by the sunlight glinting on its screen, which cast strange shapes onto the canopy. Their excited cries had pulled Nyx from his dreams. Seeing him awake, the young ones began hopping and pleading to play with it. The branch they were on was shaking furiously.
“You’ll get your chance soon enough,” assured Nyx through fog. “And can you please stop jumping,” he implored, his head thumping now.
“If you let us play with it, we might learn how to use it!” tried the fledglings. “And show you!” they added.
“True, true,” replied Nyx, his own curiosity beginning to stir. Wryly, he noted their guile. “Come back after tool class,” he said. “Remember, we need as many good tools as possible,” he added, hoping he had sounded encouraging. “That way you might even win your own toy.” He had to get rid of these two before his head burst. The young ones continued to beg.
“Go on, off you hop, get to your class. It is this morning, isn’t it?”
“Boring, boring,” mumbled the young ones, and shuffled off casting longing looks over their shoulders. Alone once more, Nyx’s eyes were drawn to the empty perch next to him. Sapph’s absence pierced him. How could I have forgotten? he thought, suddenly hunched over in his grief. Who better to be sharing this crow triumph with; the trophy he had brought back – and of course the strangeness of his conversations with Sard, than with her. The raid had proved a trickster. It had dangled a promise it couldn’t hope to keep.
*
In a day or two the whole forest had learned of the raid, and the rumours that it was to be the first of many. All life could sense that the power of humans had been dented. These destroyers who seemed to want to claim the landscape for themselves, weren’t invincible after all. But the news was not received everywhere with the same undiluted joy of the crows. The roe deer had heard it from several sources, mostly from smaller birds too frozen with fear to flee and had witnessed events first hand. The deer listened silently, perturbed, bending to graze to absorb its meaning. Beneath the forest chatter, there were melancholy notes jarring with the jubilation. What had started now, sensed the deer, had its own momentum. And the path did not promise to be an easy one. They exchanged glances, moving closer together, acknowledging this shared anxiety. But there were also clear notes coming through the music: The forest was speaking:
“What is in your hearts, deer?” it seemed to say. “What will you do now?
Sard prepared to speak. She tracked the steady movement of her breath and allowed the weight of her body to find the forest floor. She waited for the right words to arrive.
“The crows are angry,” Sard said, and paused. “I see I am angry too.” Another wave of emotion followed, softening her anger. The tension in her neck and haunches began to dissolve. “And sad,” she added. The herd left some moments for her to continue.
“We know that humans also have good hearts,” she went on. “Not just for each other. When my young one fell, remember? They stopped to bring her broken body to us. Away from danger. Yet still they break the land we all live on. Why does this go on, and on?” Sard broke off, too pained to continue.
“I feel these things too,” admitted another. “I am sorry to say it, because crow violence is not in our nature, but I feel grateful to the crows.”
“We should remember,” noted the herd’s Elder, judging this was his moment to step in, “humans have lost the language of the forest. And if they ever had it, it was well before our time. Even our ancestors’ time.” A sigh grew in his chest. He recognised the burden he carried of years of sadness at the desecrated wilderness. His body knew before his mind could catch up, that he could not let the sigh out now. But it would soon be time for the whole herd to face these feelings. He found his body leaning against the tree beside him. The cool bark of a birch offered solace. The Elder accepted this, and his despair subsided. His heart was clear. The time had come for that conversation. The crows had served a useful purpose even if they didn’t know it. He turned to face his kin:
“I am sad, like all of us. I am sad that with our talk of anger that we are taking this part of the crow inside us without knowing it. We know that anger separates the world. We should not separate ourselves from the crows. They are vain to be sure, but they are our forest-kin, and we complete the forest together.”
“Are we not allowed to be angry as well as sad?” ventured a young buck, his voice shaking a little.
“There are no rules about feelings”, responded the Elder Roe kindly. The difference between us and crows is we can see the play of light in the world.” The Elder deer had never expressed himself quite this way. He knew as the words came out, that they were not entirely his own. They came from somewhere beyond the world he knew. But he had lived long enough to trust their source. He would be a channel. More words came:
“Do we only have pure sunlight, or pure shade? We don’t. We can see both together, crows do not. We can see anger and sadness together. Not crows. We listen to the music of the forest and catch it dreaming of its future. Crows do not stop to appreciate these riches. We can admire the crows for their skill in making tools and plans. But this plan… well, we might predict the consequences of this plan. Crows cannot.” The Elder paused. “We rarely speak of these birds, because until now, there has been no need to.”
A youngling spoke up.
“We cannot change the crow, but should we speak to them? Their war will surely make everything worse, as our Elder is saying.”
Then other voices:
“But will they hear what we have to say to them? They have no time for us!”
“We cannot persuade them to do anything. They are always right about everything…”
And so, the conversation unfolded, moving slowly through the herd, including all but the very youngest. The sun rose further, and unfamiliar light began to penetrate the dense cover of the thicket. The animals were longing to affirm again before they rested, their shared care for the forest, trying to sense what was this new ordering of the world that was emerging? This delayed their bedding down. Sard, waiting patiently to speak again, caught the moment, her body trembling. Here was a chance, as delicate as trapping a thin film of cobweb floating in the air, and guiding it carefully with one’s breath.
Could this be the start of the path? she wondered.
“You all know about the crow who has come to me twice now,” she began, “who lost his nestmate? I think we are being shown the bridge between us. This crow was not vain or rude, or busy with making the world for himself.” A memory returned of Nyx’s gaze from their first encounter, so confused and raw with sorrow.
“This crow was not striving to get anywhere else. He was just with me. And in that moment, anything seemed possible!”
With these simple words, joy returned to the herd. They were reminded again, that rapture was their nature. This nature of bliss needed no glory or achievement. It asked only for simplicity, for surrender to life as it emerged. And a steady gaze with fully cocked ears.
