You, it said.
Startled, Dar Oakley moved his feet in the mess of bones, which rattled faintly—surely that was all he had heard.
You, it said again. Living thing. What do you want?
Hush, Dar Oakley whispered. If he weren’t suffocating, he’d have said, I’m not one you can help: but he stayed silent, bill open to get the last of the air. He felt he was turning over in space, though he knew he wasn’t.
Living thing, the voice said. Listen to me.
He had nothing to reply. He listened.
You will be blessed, the voice said. You will betray.
What did that word mean? He thought he’d heard it.
You will sin.
You will be damned.
You will have mercy.
You will die.
You will never die.
All these words he knew, words kept in a realm made of nothing else. With each word the voice opened that realm farther, and yet the voice, if it was a voice, was wrong to suppose that it was his realm. He thought of explaining this, but there was no air left for talk, and Dar Oakley had ceased to hear, or to breathe, or to know anything.
Then the lid of the box was lifted away, light and air poured in, and in a spasm of returning life Dar Oakley broke free, scrambling upward and disordering the bones beneath him as he went. All the other Brothers were gone. Go, the Brother whispered. Out the narrow door of that place and into the golden air he went, up over the cloister and the church-top. Away, trying to shed that voice and its words like rain from his slick plumage. Soon, far off, he heard Crows, making sense.
CHAPTER TWO
Dar Oakley had never meant or really wanted to stay and live in that stone place; he never thought of himself as belonging to the white flock of Brothers, or as residing there. His flock was the one of Crows, and he always assumed he’d have a place among them whenever he returned. And when he did, yes, the welcome was loud, and the story was told again of the Horse, and the one of the Eagle-Owl, and others of the old days. But as he came less often and for shorter times, his own brothers and sisters began to class him with the People and not with themselves. As though something of the People, the smell of their fires or food, clung to his plumage, and marked him out.
“Anyway,” Va Thornhill said to him. “We’ve got our own People now.”
Dar Oakley noted how that we had been used. “Oh?”
“They provide,” said Va, with an air of smirk. The Crows around him laughed and exchanged looks. “Better than Wolves.”
“They are Wolves,” said Fin Blue-Eye, at that moment alighting. “They name themselves that.” Dar Oakley had taught Fin the People word for those beasts, Wolves.
There were far Crow calls then, coming from the edge of the forest that stretched far up into the mountains and on to where these Crows did not go.
“Ah,” said Kon Eaglestail. “That’ll be them.”
“Come see,” Va Thornhill said to Dar Oakley.
It was a fog-shrouded day. Flying took caution. The Biggers set out over the vanished fields, and Dar Oakley followed, keeping watch for trees that might snake a limb toward you before you saw. People, he thought, were afraid of fog too, and of what might come out of it.
Just as he thought this, something did appear ahead. Along a path that People used, some being was emerging from the trees into the open land. It was large—very large—taller than a Bear walking on two legs. The Crows, who had come down onto the branches of a shaggy Hazel, were crying in welcome.
What was coming out of the forest was a gigantic bird, its huge head and heavy bill and staring eyes alarming. Wings drooping, it stumbled along on shod People feet as though uncertain of the ground. There could be no such huge bird in the world—and yet Dar Oakley suspected that once upon a time, in a different place, he had come upon one, and been chased and nearly caught by it. The Crow of that world. A swift fear gripped him.
Behind the bird a different beast came out of the forest and the fog: one with horns on its head like a wild Bull and fur like a Bear, in fact a Bear with a People face and beard, an ax carried in his bare People hand and resting on his hairy shoulder.
The flock was calling to these beings, laughing at them and at Dar Oakley at the same time. The Wolves! they cried. Our Wolves!
The being with the ax raised it to them in welcome. The bird-being shook its wings and seemed to beck.
Dar Oakley laughed too. It was People, of course it was, making themselves appear to be something they weren’t, something other People would fear.
Three then four more People, not appearing as other sorts of beings but only themselves in the common cloth and leathers, came following the beast-People. They carried clumsy unraveling bundles, and were waved on by the Bull-Bear. Ahead the winged one stumbled—it seemed to have a hard time seeing the ground it walked on—and tumbled over, coming in two: the human part crawled out from the hollow straw and wood part. His crew jeered—that was easy to see—and the one who had been the bird set off dragging his bird part after him.
From away up in the forest came Crow calls. Far first and then nearer. A Crow could locate those calls and know just where they were coming from.
“Those are our own,” Va Thornhill said. “There, and there. Come on. They have something.”
“What?” Dar Oakley asked.
“Come see,” Va Thornhill said, and clacked his bill three times in anticipation. The Crows were already heading up the path into the woods that the weird People had come down.
“Long ago,” Va Thornhill said as he and Dar Oakley flew and rested, “there was that Crow who learned a thing. Learned that People are unlike other beings—they often kill one another.”
“But they never eat the ones they kill,” Dar Oakley said.
“Yes! So if you make yourself a friend of People—”
“Yes,” said Dar Oakley. The fog was lifting around him, the clouds lying on the earth returning to the sky: the world coming clear.
“Look,” said Va Thornhill.
Down on the ground, off the path that the People used, pale on the wet black ground, were People, naked and unmoving: one, two, and a child or small one. The Crows who had called, and Dar Oakley’s gang coming in, were closing on them, but cautious and calling. Dead, yes, all. No threats. No eaters. All ours. Here, this way.
“See?” Va Thornhill said. One of the People, one who lay faceup, had been chopped open. It wasn’t hard to guess that their wrappings and all that they carried had been taken by the band that the Crows had called “our Wolves.”
“It’s good!” Fin Blue-Eye called. “Let’s eat!” One by one and then in numbers the Crows went down onto the bodies. Va Thornhill and Kon Eaglestail surveyed them with pride.
“How did you know?” Dar Oakley asked. “What made you think that these would be here, killed by those others?”
“You don’t get it,” Kon Eaglestail said. “It was we who gave them the news that these three were on the path.”
“Their prey,” Va Thornhill said. “It’s what they do.”
The ruckus at the corpses was getting louder, and would soon bring in other eaters.
“And you—you’re their Ravens,” Dar Oakley said. “Ravens guide Wolves to prey. So do you.”
“We, Dar Oakley,” said Va Thornhill. “We.” He seemed to Dar Oakley so swollen with self-satisfaction that he might burst.