Dar Oakley’s heart all in a moment grew huge, as in love or at mortal threat. He leapt, grasped the thimble, felt nothing grab hold strongly of his bill.
Now run, said the Most Precious Thing, but Dar Oakley couldn’t perceive a way to run that was better than any other way. He turned to what might be the opposite of billwise, and winged that way. The thimble he carried, the nothing within it, had begun to feel strangely heavy.
While we go, he heard the Most Precious Thing say, I’ll tell you a story. It will pass the time.
Dar Oakley couldn’t object without opening his bill, so he only flew on.
I was not always as I am now, said the Most Precious Thing. Once I was an herb growing at the bottom of the sea. All was peaceful there for eternities. But then there came down through the waters a thing I had never seen before: white as a fish’s belly, with a squinty eye, limbs going all which way. The next thing I knew I had been plucked up out of the eternal mud by the creature’s ugly hand! Imagine my distress. . . .
Dar Oakley longed to tell the thing that he didn’t know what the sea was, and wanted no more stories, but of course he couldn’t open his bill. The thing grew heavier the farther Dar Oakley carried it. With every wing beat its weight pulled him closer to the ground. He labored to rise, his wings feeling numb and powerless. But now he saw that ahead as he went the trees were different, were smaller, were Birches rather than Beeches. That way led home, surely.
So after all it was the Snake that swallowed me, he heard the Most Precious Thing say, as though from far away. So Snake lives forever, not People. A shame.
Lying thing, Dar Oakley thought: it had said Crows live forever. Or was it another who’d said that? He could go no farther. He pulled up and settled on the ground.
No, no! said the Most Precious Thing. Go more! She’s coming!
Whether that meant Fox Cap or the Crow of this world, Dar Oakley didn’t know. He let the thing he held fall from his bill, shaking it off when it tried to hang on.
I can’t, he said. You’re too heavy.
Then hide me. Hide me quick. Where no one but you can find me.
A rushing wind had arisen fast in the windless forest, blowing from behind him. Turning, he saw Fox Cap, far off; the wind tugged at and tossed her mantle, stirred her hair. He thought he could see her face.
What had he done? Oh what?
Hide me from her! said the Most Precious Thing. She’ll steal me from you.
Where?
Here, said the thing.
Dar Oakley was at the foot of a Birch. It had a peculiar twisted root poking from the ground, that made a space where something could be hidden—indeed the tree seemed to display it welcomingly. A place like a place where a Crow might hide a thing, if he could do it without being seen.
You’ll run away, he said to the invisibility.
No, it said. I will stay here in this place under this tree.
You’re lying.
Don’t be silly. I can’t lie.
Dar Oakley cried aloud in awful bafflement, but there was nothing else to do. Scuffling with his feet and bill, he pushed the thimble toward the place, and when he thought it was concealed, he tossed up leaves over it.
Remain with me, it said in a woody, earthy voice—or was that the Birch that spoke? Someone had once told him to trust the Birch, or not to trust it. He dagged sharply at the Birch’s bark, cutting a mark. He hopped back and lifted off, turning to where Fox Cap was coming.
Soon he could see her face clearly, see her mouth form a word: Crow. But he couldn’t hear it. He seemed to make no progress toward her; it was as though he flapped away stone-still in the middle of the air while the trees rushed around him, changing places, and Fox Cap grew ever larger. Behind him he heard a weird commotion, a threshing of leaves and branches.
“Crow!” she cried. “Did you steal it, Crow?”
“No, no,” he called. “No! It ran away. I was chasing it.”
“You lie!” she said. He was too high for her to strike at with her staff, but she tried. “You stole it. I knew you would!”
“No!” Dar Oakley cried. “Don’t say that! I know where it went. I do. I know where it is.”
Fox Cap looked at him in despair. She seemed older than the Beeches.
“I know where it is,” Dar Oakley cried again. How could she not trust him? A Crow would never forget where a thing was cached. “Come, come!”
He turned over in air and flung himself back the way he had come. It wasn’t far. Where the Birches began, where the ground lifted, where a green land and sky could be seen far off.
But there was no such place there ahead. There were Birches in plenty, but all crowded together, almost no room between them to fly through, all regarding him smugly. He went in among them, searching.
“One with a mark,” he cried to Fox Cap. “With a twisted root at the daywise side. This one!”
He settled at its base. The tree wasn’t where it had been, the place he had committed to memory. Was he wrong? Maybe it was not this one but that one there, with a similar twisted root poking from the ground.
The same twisted root.
As though a Hawk’s foot clutched his breast, he saw. Each one of them, every Birch, had a twisted root at its base, a place where something might be hid. Each had a scuffle of leaves thrown up there, to hide something. And each had the mark of a Crow’s beak in its slim shaggy trunk, each mark the same.
Dar Oakley couldn’t see the end of them, rank on rank. He hadn’t been lied to: the thing lay where he’d put it.
“Fubun, Crow!” Fox Cap cried to Dar Oakley. “Fubun for stealing it. Why were you so wicked, why? Fubun!”
The word—he didn’t even know what it meant—felt thrust within him like a locust’s thorn. Fox Cap fell, defeated, at the tree’s foot. Dar Oakley thrashed at the leaves that hid the spot where the Most Precious Thing could be but wasn’t. If they spent a year and a day searching, they wouldn’t have begun. He ceased, and stood by her there where she lay in grief.
Why, why had he done it? How could he have been so foolish? He should never have done what he did. He ought to have seen through that trick, how could he not have? He searched in thought for the right thing he should have done and hadn’t and now never could. A storm of bitter feeling darkened his mind. Dar Oakley, first among all Crows, felt the sting of remorse.
“It’s done,” Fox Cap whispered.
The day that had begun not long before sank away; the trees ceased their agitation, the forest grew still and dead and dark.
When the darkness was utter, a wind of their former world sprang up, a little wind, a real wind, touching them.
Then all the trees went away, and stars could be seen.
Then the hollow in the barrow where they sat became clear, even to Dar Oakley, in the last light of the sinking moon.
Then he and Fox Cap looked down to see the basket that the shepherd and his boy had left for them, with a clay bottle of water and something in a rag of cloth.
The whole of a winter night had passed, but not more than that; the moon had crossed the sky darkwise, and now the sky daywise was lit red by the sun not yet risen. They were where they had been.
For a time they sat and nothing more. Even the Crow was still. As the daylight grew he could see that Fox Cap wasn’t as she’d become in the Other Lands, was no older than when they had set out, if they ever had; pale in the dawn light, but her hair red and full.
“The story’s over,” she said. She looked around her at the hill and the sky and the sun, and laughed, or wept—it was often hard for a Crow to tell. She undid the cloth, which held oatcakes, and broke them and shared them with Dar Oakley, and when they’d eaten she rose, took up her staff, and started down the path. The Crow winged ahead to lead her homeward from the North, the only North of this world.