Chapters 1, 2 and beginning of 3

Chapter 1

He used to be a Brontosaurus.  It was a long time ago, but he remembers the days when he would go tramping through the rain forest, his head towering above the thick green canopy, his elephantlike toes crushing underneath: lizards, tarantulas.  He remembers when his stomach was as big as the foothills.  He remembers throwing his head back and trumpeting to the big open sky, making a sound that would resonate for miles.  It is the same gesture with which he gives a little body jerk, now, perched on the telephone wire, and rearranges his wings so the bottom one, dry and warm, gets wet now, and blinks in the rain.

Beads of water sit on his slick back.  Underneath the water are his feathers, underneath that, his skin, and underneath that, his warm beating heart, stuffed in there with blood and other organs and little hollow bones.  He curses to himself.  He thinks, if only it would stop raining, he could get around to thinking.  He thinks, if there was someone around to listen, and care, maybe he could finally put words to his misery.  But then, what are words anyway?  It's a difficult question.  Because he can't answer it with his mouth, or his stomach, or even his pancreas.  He can't answer it with the memory of being born, high in an oak tree, in a nest with a clutch of four other siblings, or with the dark, featherless memory of pounding on the roof of that speckled green sphere that was an egg, or with the cracking, or even with the light, the light of life that finally poured in as he was hatched.  Words, he thinks, what good are they for describing anything?  He rearranges his wings again, so that the one that was just dry and warm can get all wet and cold again.

His mother had been concerned from the start.  He was too small.  But he was also determined, and that is as important as anything.  He fought with his sisters over the worms she would bring to the nest, poking his little beak into a tender side, receiving a high-pitched squeal in return.  Like all crows, he was born without an organ for understanding his suffering.  Like all crows, as he grew, he would learn better and better ways to mitigate his own suffering, and then spend the rest of his life doing just that.

Even brontosauruses suffer, though.  And that was 65 million years ago, and the bones of brontosauruses have already fossilized, after their flesh had rotted, and fed the plants that his mother ate, which made up the protein that formed a shell in her body, in which he was forced out her backside, destined to hatch, and be a crow.  His sisters had been destined to die.  He knew that now.  He knew that there was something inescapable about death.  Or perhaps not inescapable-- this was the wrong word –but implicit, implied in the very act of living, so that he could not blink or even rustle his wings without ushering it in further, inviting it into the empty spaces.  It was not the crane of his sister's naked neck as she forced her head upward for the last time, letting out a little sigh, but the way space-time was bending around her neck as it fell, and the empty space that was left, and the cold air that was allowed to rush in, in the early morning, and accost his face.

The early morning rain eases into a soft drizzle, and then disappears completely.  The crow hears a small sound coming from far below.  He looks down, and sees a woman running through the field towards him, her face contorted with anger, one angry fist clutching the hem of her skirt in a bunch, and the other arm waving wildly above her head.  She is yelling something.  Then suddenly she stops and picks up something from the ground, and hurls it at him with her free hand, with all her might.  The something, which is a small rock, whizzes past the crow about 3 feet away.  He looks down and sees that the woman in stooping down to pick up another one.  Almost reluctantly, he opens his wings wide, and with a deliberate flap lifts himself off the telephone wire, and begins to fly east, toward the sunrise.  This was the third morning that the woman had greeted him at dawn with her angry face and her rocks.  He always flew, but usually returned in the afternoon to raid her chicken coop.  He would enter the coop with his feathers fluffed out menacingly, let out a deep caw, and watch as the hens fluttered nervously up from their nests.  They would gather on the dirt floor in a clucking horde, bewildered and desperate, as he helped himself to the warm delicate eggs in their abandoned nests.  Sometimes he would nudge an unfortunate egg out of its nest just to watch the hens jump and flutter their wings as it splattered on the ground.  Then he would leave as morosely as he came in, shuffling past the horde of chickens with his head bent and his belly full. 

This morning, the crow flies towards the pale pink blotch in the gray sky.  If he cannot spend his morning moping on the powerline, then he is going to make his way to a familiar red tailed hawk's nest.  She won't be expecting him this early in the morning.  He is flapping towards a line of telephone poles on the horizon when he sees her.  Calm and stately, perched on one of the poles, the growing light accentuating the golden hues in her feathers.  She must have already left her nest to her mate this morning, in search of the day's meal.  Her back is turned to the approaching crow.  He flies faster, sticking his neck out to split the sky with his black beak.  She turns her head just as he is swooping down towards her.  She does nothing.  He pulls himself upward again to gain momentum, and then swoops down for another dive, and then up again, and then down again, cawing in a noisy figure eight above her head.  Again and again, like a persistent rain.  Then the hawk stirs.  She leans forward and stretches her wings up to the sky, rising from the telephone pole in one elegant thrust.

The crow has won.

Crows are not normally solitary creatures.  Most crows are highly social, traveling in feeding in large flocks.  And, mobbing a red tailed hawk is usually not a job for a single crow, and is usually done for a purpose, to keep it away from a nest, for example.  This morning, as the crow follows the red tailed hawk even after she has risen from her perch, swooping and cawing, there is a certain animosity in the air, a certain bitterness that seems to follow the crow wherever it goes.  A darkness blacker and bigger than the crow itself.  He gestures with the particular fierceness of one who has been wronged.  His body is electric with desire; his eyes wild with the gleam of the sunrise.  The red tailed hawk flies steadily and patiently, as if she knows, and does not care.

"People say that I am what I eat, but what if what I eat is eating me?"

"What?" replies the red tailed hawk.

"I want to die," says the crow.

"Say again?"

"I want to die, and rot," replies the crow.

The crow pulls his wings in for a short dive, narrowly missing the hawk's tail, and then swooping beneath her to come up on her left side.  He caws loudly.  The hawk keeps her beak pointed towards the horizon.  "I want to die," the crow continues, "and rot, and fertilize a seed, which grows into a plant, which gets eaten by a primary consumer, and then a secondary, and then a tertiary, all of them producing energy, which is broken down into the more fundamental elements of energy, and which releases heat into the big wide world, making it bigger and wider, pushing molecules around on a whim."

"Death is inescapable,” replies the red-tailed hawk, a note of calm bemusement in her voice. “Someday, you will die, I promise."

The crow flies up and then barrels down for one last dive.  Then he banks and begins to fly eastward, leaving the hawk to continue her flight alone.  He makes his way back to the powerline.  About 300 yards east of the powerline is a medium-sized structure in a small field.  This slaughterhouse is always where he eats his breakfast if the woman from the other farm succeeds in driving him away from her chicken coop.  He continues in a downward direction to the large open door of the slaughterhouse, and at the last moment spreads his tail feathers out and towards his belly to slow his flight.  He drops to the grass without making a sound, and then rests his wings, one underneath the other, on his back.  He walks gingerly to the door of the slaughterhouse and peeks in.

At first glance, it appears empty.  The ceiling is high, and the walls ascend into darkness.  A cold wind blows through.  The dirt floor is spotted with large pools of blood in various stages of drying.  A group of birds near the door at the other end of the slaughterhouse are pecking at the ground, scooping up bits of tripe and mouthfuls of blood.  Their bold white markings glow in the cascade of light from the open door.  They are magpies.  The crow regards them with wariness.  He steps gingerly into the slaughterhouse.

For a moment the small black figure is swallowed by the larger blackness.  The crow blinks.  His eyes adjust.  The stench of the dried blood is strong in his nostrils.  He tilts his head to look up towards the ceiling.  On the high walls of the slaughterhouse, hanging on nails, are large sharp implements for cutting flesh and spilling blood.  The peak of the roof is dissolved in darkness.  There is an almost imperceptible creak and sway to the entire building, as if it were adrift on a silent and colorless sea.  The cold silence is comforting to the crow, and so is the emptiness.  He takes a few more steps forward.

It is then that the magpies notice him and cease their pecking.  They stand staring silently.  The crow, intimidated by their number, pretends to peck halfheartedly at the ground below him, tugging at an isolated tuft of grass while keeping his eyes level with the magpies.  He feels their disdain sliding off his feathers like water.  For good measure, he spreads his wings and flaps them forward wildly, digging his dactyls into the cool, moist earth.  The cold air rushes into his armpits and his metabolism slows ever so slightly as his pupils shrink into tiny little pinholes.  He caws loudly.

The magpies look at each other.  The sun is still glinting off their bright white markings.  The crow draws his wings back in and tucks one under the other.  The magpies resume their pecking.  The crow edges closer to their group in a quick spurt of walking.  They continue to ignore him.  Another scurrying of the feet, and he is close enough to know their thoughts.

"Pretend like you don't see it."

"It must not know.  It must not guess."

"We must keep quiet and leave as quickly as possible.  You never know with other birds, especially with other corvids.  They have better ways of knowing what you're thinking."

The largest magpie shuffles its wings while continuing to peck, peck, peck at a trail of seeds along the open doorway.

"It's coming closer."

Suddenly, from somewhere outside the slaughterhouse comes the sound of a door slamming.  The crunch of boots on gravel.  Someone heavyset, and determined.  The crow comes to a standstill.  The magpies perk their heads up, listening.  The person is approaching the slaughterhouse.  About 50 feet east of the slaughterhouse is a big green barn with white trim.  The person is headed there with a bag of alfalfa sprouts to give to the horses.  As he passes the slaughterhouse his stony profile comes into the bright sunlight of the early morning. When he is almost out of the crow's sight, he stops suddenly.  He glances toward the door of the slaughterhouse.  Then he sets down the bag of alfalfa and comes running, grunting and waving his arms in the air.

"Git," he says gruffly.  "Go on, git.”  The magpies take wing in one motion.  The crow scurries into the corner and allows himself to be swallowed by the blackness.  From his hiding place he can see the flock of magpies ascending into the air, and in his heart he feels a sudden charge of loneliness.  The man is gone from the door, and has his back toward the slaughterhouse now, marching towards the barn.  The crow scurries back into the light and out the door of the slaughterhouse, and takes wing just as the man reaches the door of the barn.  The man turns and sees the ascending crow as a black smudge on the great expanse of blue sky.  The man reaches into the barn for his rifle, which is hung on a raft just inside the door of the barn.  The crow has one eye fixed on the man, and the other fixed on the long tail of the slowest magpie, some 20 feet ahead of him. The rest of the birds are obscured by bright sunlight.  He feels his blood like boiling water in his veins, his body a surge of adrenaline.

A shot rings out.

The flock of magpies has disappeared.  The crow now flies just for the sake of flying, for the sake of putting distance between himself and the last place that he was, for the sake of slicing space-time like a needle pulls through fabric.  Warm air below, pushing up and up beneath his long black primaries, his secondaries, and the air cooling as it flows up his beak, over his head, and down his back.  He flaps like trying to sink a lily pad in a pond.  He is not thinking, only being, and quite rapidly, replacing his old self with the space behind his new self at such a speed as to make his changing existence almost imperceptible.

The crow has put at least 500 yards between him and the man with the rifle when his shoulders suddenly become very, very stiff, his wings like lead weights.  He remembers that he hasn't eaten in two days.  He is weak and tired.  There is a cornfield below him, and he descends toward it, letting himself float on cool air and then dropping the last 10 feet with carelessness.

In the cool shade of the cornstalks he begins to forage for food.

"Here," says a voice.

The crow perks up his jet black head.

"Here."

The crow follows the sound.  There, on the ground between the cornstalks, is the corpse of a jack rabbit, probably killed only just yesterday by a coyote or a rambunctious border collie.  The exposed entrails are still red and soft.  The crow hungrily takes his beak to them.

"Didn't I tell you?” the voice says.  The crow realizes it is coming from one of the cornstalks.

The crow ignores it.

"Do you know what photosynthesis is?"  The cornstalk must really want to talk to him, or it wouldn’t be asking so many stupid questions.  Cornstalks have no brains.

The crow continues to ignore the cornstalk's questions.  There is silence for a while.  Then the crow jerks his head up only for a moment, to address the cornstalk. "What does it matter anyway?"

"Photosynthesis is like kissing an angel, and entropy is like the angel of death," the cornstalk explains eagerly.

"Entropy?" the crow asks incredulously.

"Entropy is you tearing at that poor rabbit's red innards, pulling spleen from spine, disordering what used to have a high degree of order, destroying its anatomy.”

The crow swallows a hunk of rabbit flesh.

"When you die, and your body rots, your basic elements will be given back to the soil, to nourish a producer, which will use them to create energy from sunlight.  This is also called entropy."

"Oh yes, now I remember."

"You do?"

"Yes.  When I was younger, my mother explained it to me.  She said it was all part of the heave and ho of ecosystems.”  The crow shrugs and jerks his head to sling a piece of raw flesh from his beak.

"The eternal turnover,” the cornstalk replies, seeming to nod its head.  Or was it the wind?

"Energy into energy into energy," the crow finds himself intoning.

"Angel into angel into angel," the cornstalk finishes reverently.

The crow, who has only eaten half of the rabbit and now finds himself full, turns to go, and then hesitates.  "Do you think we were meant to die?" he asks.

"What a question!" replies the cornstalk, "Of course we were.  We are born, and we die, and it is meant to be.  It is what is meant by being, the meaning of being."

"I think if you could move around you would think quite differently," says the crow, knowingly disrepectful.

"You only say that because you are headstrong, and foolish."

The crow is silent.

"And wasteful," says the cornstalk.  The half-eaten rabbit lies at its stem.

"I can walk around and you can’t," defies the crow.

There is another silence.

"You should be more grateful, you know.  The earth does not exist solely for your purposes," says the cornstalk.  "Didn't your mother teach you that?"

"My mother told me to go away, and never come back," replies the crow.

"Oh," says the cornstalk, apologetically now, "I am sorry for that."

The crow is peering through the cornstalks again when he catches a glimpse of a long black tail.  The magpies have landed in the cornfield too.  As soon as he realizes it, the owner of the long tail reveals his crow-like face through the leaves.  Almost imperceptibly, he makes a little jerk with his neck, tossing his head, as if he wanted the crow to come closer.  The crow blinks.  The magpie gestures again.

"If you don't mind my asking, why did your mother tell you to go away and never come back?" the cornstalk asks.

"I think I have to go now," replies the crow.  In the shade of the cornstalks, he waddles across the damp ground to where he last saw the magpie.  He has completely forgotten his conversation with the cornstalk.  Suddenly he begins to see black and white feathers everywhere, spotting the empty spaces between the stalks.  The magpies have landed, and are gathered, discussing.

"We are running distressingly behind schedule.  It's time to pick up the slack."  The voice is clear and confident.  "We have promised to reach the southern border of the great waters before the ice forms.  We are still very far away.  We are far behind schedule."

"There has been word of hunters along the migratory route.  And you told us to be careful, and not attract too much attention, of any kind.  It's hard to go much faster with the kind of secrecy you are requiring," another voice replies.

"Nothing is impossible for a nearly immortal bird," the first voice replies.

Suddenly there is a tangle of voices speaking all at once.  A third voice raises itself above the din, saying, "Wait.  Wait!"  The other voices quiet down.  "Now, I'm the oldest one here, and so I think I should have a thing or two to say about mortality."

There is a silence.

The voice continues, "Yes, it's hard.  It's very hard.  And it keeps getting colder.  For the past month, every night there's been a rainstorm, I wake up with ice on my feathers.  The chill goes straight to my bones.  There's no denying that it's hard."

There is hearty agreement from the other voices.

"Quiet!" the old magpie interjects irritably.  "Listen to me!  I remember a time before any of you were born.  It wasn't that long ago, not as long ago as The Telling.  But it was a time when The Secret was closer to a bird's heart, just underneath the skin.  The whispers were palpable.  I used to wake from dreams in which I saw a billion years into the future, saw the destruction of the sun and the Earth.  And the fact that I was there, seeing it, that was how I knew, we were not meant for such things.  My dreams were messages, and they sustained me.  Few birds have dreams like this now, and if they do, they tend to take them for granted."

The old magpie pauses.  There is another silence.  "I guess what I'm saying is, I know it's hard.  But I also think -- I mean, I think things have changed.  I think things are different now than they used to be.  Perhaps now, we are too concerned with the importance of the message, the significance of The Telling, and we’re so busy flying about, and not considering the fact that --"

"That's ridiculous," the first, authoritative voice cut in.

"But I'm just --"

"There is nothing more important than The Telling.  There never has been, and there never will be."

"Well, maybe I'm just saying that it's hard.  It's hard on an old body."

"That's precisely the talk of someone who does not believe.  Someone who has lost faith."

"No, it's not that I've lost faith, I just..." this time the old magpie's voice trailed off into silence.  Then it started again.  "I do believe.  And I'm just trying to say that I think it's worth it.  Really, I'm just trying to say that I think it's all worth it."

"Good.  May we all be of the same mind."

The crow has been listening hidden behind a cornstalk.  There is something in the magpies' voices that sent a chill through his little body.  He fluffs out his feathers in an attempt to gather warm air close to his tender skin.  Doing so, he almost doubles in size, but the magpies still do not take notice of him.  The one who has gestured to the crow, a younger male, has his back turned now to the other bird, as if he were not even there.

After a pause, the lead magpie speaks again.  “By sundown tonight, we must reach the northern border of the plains.  No excuses.”

There is a heavy silence.  Then the oldest magpie begins, “Can’t we just—“

“NO excuses,” repeats the lead magpie.

The old magpie sighs.

“Will that one be coming with us?” a younger voice pipes up, full of curiosity.  The owner of the voice jerks her head toward the crow.

Suddenly there are eight pairs of eyes staring at the crow.  Almost automatically, the crow extends his neck and fluffs out his feathers even more, trying to look as big as possible.  He shifts his weight from foot to foot and extends his wings slightly, making a rustling sound that dissipates in the silence of the cornstalks.  He lets out a low, loud caw.

The magpies only stare in response.

Chapter 2

"Do you ever wonder what you might have been, if you weren’t a crow?"

The question is sudden, but somehow not all that unexpected, coming from his sister.  They are perched on a branch in the shadow of the oak leaves, and she is preening the feathers on the back of his neck.  At first all he hears is the sound of her voice, and then as she continues preening he is able to realize that the sounds have meaning, although he is not quite sure what meaning they have.

"What do you mean?" he asks her.

"You know, if you hadn't been a crow, what would you have been?"

"Well, I... well now, I... well, that just doesn't make sense.  I mean, when?  What would I have been when?"

"Instead of a crow," she replies.

"But I have always been a crow.  It doesn't make sense to talk about my being something else instead of a crow, if ever since the day I was hatched, I have always been a crow."

There is a silence.

"Does that make sense?" the crow asks his sister.  There is slight exasperation in his tone.

"Yes," says his sister.

"Good."

 "But, continues his sister, tentatively, patiently, “before you became a crow.  Back when God made you.  What would God have made you, instead of a crow?"

"Oh, I see.  You're talking about God, then."

"Yes."

The two crows lapse into silence again, the crow's sister still preening his neck.  A goldfinch flies by, making a little dip in its flight by pressing its short wings against its tiny body, accompanied by a drowsy, ascending chirp.  The crow smiles in the only way a bird can smile, with his heart.

"Well?" his sister prods.

"I think I would have been... a grub."

His sister bursts out laughing. "Why a grub?"

"Because I am a sad, pathetic creature."

His sister looks at him quizzically.

"At least on the inside," he says. 

"Oh," replies his sister.  "Then what would you be on the outside?"

"On the outside, if I wasn't a crow, I think I would be... I think I would be... I would probably be one of the Religious Birds."

"Really?"

"Yeah.  A Religious Bird, like an Arctic Tern, or a Canada Goose."

"I've heard they're not very smart."

"No, but they're dedicated.  And I think I could be dedicated like that."

At that moment his sister succeeds in pinching a black feather from its sheath embedded in her brother's neck.  She turns it over in her beak a few times, feeling it with her tongue, and then opens her beak and lets it drop to the ground.  The crow watches as it flutters the ten or so feet down to the forest floor and disappears into the mosaic of leaves covering the soil.  He searches the forest floor for a long time, trying to locate the feather.  Eventually he gives up and turns to look at his sister.  She is not there. 

Suddenly, he is no longer perched on an oak tree in a quiet forest, but hunkered down in a nest made of twigs and paper.  He is only a few weeks old; his belly is incredibly large in comparison with his short stubby wings.  His head is just a big mouth, and it is open, screaming.  His mother is a large black flurry of figure 8 shapes hovering just above the nest and she is screaming too.  Next to him in the nest is a creature who looks exactly like him, except inanimate, the skin ashen, the body cold.  In an instant, the mother dives into the nest, scoops up the dead body with her beak, and nudges it over the edge of the nest.  It falls to the ground below.

The crow is looking at the ground, but not looking for his dead sister's body, now he is once again looking for his lost feather, frantically searching the orange and brown leaves for a spot of black, panic surging in his breast. 

"Not everything has to make sense, when you're a Religious Bird.  You just trust that when winter comes, and you start to head for where you're trying to get to, you're going to end up in the right place.  That's dedication.  I think I could be dedicated like that."

"Oh, I see," replies his sister.  “Don’t you have to memorize a lot of weird stuff to be a Religious Bird?”

“Yeah, but I could do it,” crows the crow.

“Oh yeah?  Prove it.”

The crows plants both feet on the branch, stretches all twelve of the vertebrae in his neck to their full height, and recites:

“The world is an egg gently resting in the beak of God.  There is a great force at either end of the egg that draws the egg into itself, into a pinpoint, rounding it.  I know that the world is round because I can watch my friend flying towards the horizon over a desolate landscape and watch him disappear beyond the horizon, and the next day he will come back to me, and tell me what he saw, and I will know that he did not fall off the end and die.

“The world is an egg gently resting in the beak of God.  Every once in a while, God reaches out her tongue and pushes at the egg, making it go around.  When this happens, North becomes South, and South North, and the soul of a bird is changed and prompted to fly in the opposite direction.”

His sister looks at him quizzically.  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she says decidedly.

"A lot of it doesn't make sense, if you don't have faith.  You have to have faith."

“What’s faith?” she asks incredulously.

The crow is still frantically looking for his lost feather, searching desperately with his eyes but with his feet bolted to the branch that he perched on, he can't move his body because he is too scared, of what he doesn't know, until he opens his eyes, and realizes that he's dreaming, the toes of one foot with a death grip on the oak branch below him, and his beak buried deeply underneath a fold of feathers on his back, as deep as if to peck at his soul.

The old magpie, perched beside him, is looking into his eyes.

"You've been dreaming," she says.

The crow is suddenly and shamefully aware of his blackness, his short tail.  "Yes," he replies.  He is taking in the bold white stripes on her wings, her long narrow tail, trying to remember where he is and why, and how.  As she continues to speak, it starts to come back to him.

"Dreams are precious, I think."  She pauses, waiting for a reaction.  The crow is still coming to.  She continues, "Dreams can be great teachers."

The crow is beginning to remember the terse agreement from yesterday afternoon.  He would stay with the magpies for three days.  They would feed and shelter him.  If he proved to be trustworthy, after three days, they would tell him a secret that would change his life forever.  He is remembering this, and the wary eyes of the other magpies, as the old magpie continues to speak.

"Do you know that feeling you get, when a cold wind blows through, and your skin prickles, and every feather on your body stands up?”

The crow nods.  He is remembering the rich dinner the magpies led him to last night.  A dead coyote, shot within the hour, probably when he came too close to a farm.  The meat was still warm and slipped juicily down the crow's throat.

The magpie continues.  "And then the air gets trapped under your feathers, and you are wrapped in this invisible layer of warmth?"

The crow nods again, listening but not really understanding.

"I think dreams are like that.  An extra layer just underneath your skin, holding you there, holding you still.  Protecting you.  Mostly going unnoticed."

The crow continues to nod, only out of politeness.  He won't remember the magpie's words until later.

"When you are like that, that is when the most important secrets get told."  The magpie is looking straight at him now, and he gazes back with eyes glazed over from sleep.  She turns her head away.  The crow is relieved that she has stopped talking, and the flesh all over his body raises in a thousand goosebumps, lifting his feathers to let in the first warm breeze of the morning.  He gives a shake with his whole body and then the feathers drop.

            The roost the magpies have chosen is in a secluded area, the deepest part of the forest.  The crow remembers the long flight back from the farm over the dark green treetops shrouded in night, and then finally the lead magpie's signal to descend and roost.  He had been grateful to rest, with his crop still heavy with the coyote meat he had gorged himself on.  He had never known a flock of birds to take flight so suddenly after such a large meal.  But they were on a "tight schedule," the lead magpie had said, with a very "important agenda," and what's more, they must try their best to be "secretive."  This morning as the crow awakes most of the other magpies are still sleeping, as still as statues on the branches surrounding him.  He is grateful for this, because when they are awake he feels awkward in their presence.  He knows they are wary of him.  What's more, he feels as if they look down on him, look down on his small size and his uniformly black feathers, his short, rounded tail.  Last night he spent most of the time just slightly outside of the circle feasting on the coyote carcass, slightly behind the flock in flight, hiding his body behind a large branch or in a shadow.  He preferred it that way.  After all, he still has two more days before he has to make the decision to commit himself to their company.  And if he falls out of liking with these birds, there is always the big open sky.

            “Birds must be supernatural, because why else do angels have wings?”

            The crow suddenly remembers this other nonsensical question his sister used to ask him.  It was always hard to explain something like religion to his sister.  Her logic was sometimes as circular as the round bubbles of her laughter that would go floating up to the sky on a breeze and burst in the sunlight.

            "Angels are an invention," he would reply.

            "Exactly," his sister would intone.

            "So," he would continue, certain of making a valid point, "birds can't be supernatural, because they're too real.  Whoever believes in angels probably doesn't understand the mechanics of flight, and has certainly never worn a pair of wings.”  He would always feel very older-brotherly when saying this.  “Stop thinking like a squirrel,” he remembers adding, now with a pang of regret.

            But then she would reply, "You only say that because that's what the elders taught you."

            And then he, defensive, would reply, "Have the elders ever been wrong?"

            She would think about this.  Often it was enough to make her go away and stop pestering him.  If she didn't go away, he would add, "Only little fledglings still believe in angels.  When you're older, you'll understand."  She would turn a big black eye away from him to gaze out at the horizon, as if she were still thinking.  He always hated how his little sister seemed to know so little and yet appeared so much smarter than he.

            This morning though, he mostly just misses her.  He thinks, sitting there among all those magpies in their secluded roost in the innermost part of the forest, that his sister could outwit even the smartest one of them any day.  And the smartest one of these magpies, he thinks, probably isn't even the leader.  He is just the loudest, and the biggest, and they are following him up and down miles and miles of country without really knowing why, but just because it feels like it needs to be done.  The smartest one has probably told herself, before even speaking it out loud, that all her thoughts aren't really as grandiose as they seem, if she can't turn them into a plan for others to follow, with some end result or destination in mind.  And so she is flying, probably a little bit below and apart from the others, thinking her life changing thoughts, but keeping her ears open for the call that means someone has found this evening's dinner.  They all eat, and sleep, and take flight again in the morning, in pursuit of something they have promised to explain to him, but the crow wonders now, if he ever does find out what they are so obsessed with, if it will even bring any clarity or purpose to their strange behavior.  Then, he also wonders, even if it doesn't, will the emptiness of their actions even matter to him, or will he sink into somnambulant compliance, allowing himself to be hypnotized by the methodic flap-flap of the magpie immediately in front of him, following closely and in perfect imitation, partly because he has been sworn into secrecy, but mostly because he knows she will lead him to his next meal?

            “Sometimes it's hard to tell what you're thinking,” his sister used to say to him.  “Sometimes you just get so moody and distant.”  But she had no idea.  He was much happier then.  After her death he had sunk even deeper into his own thoughts, until his black eyes grew empty and began constantly shifting to evade everyone else's.

            Suddenly the voices of two magpies conversing on the forest floor below enters into his consciousness.

            "She was electrocuted," one of them is saying.  "Someone said they saw it happen.  They saw her wings go up in two huge blue flames and then she was thrown to the ground with the same force that she might have used to dive after a rat."

            "Such is the fate of the uninformed," the other says, with a worldly sigh.  "It does tug at the heartstrings when it happens to another bird, though."

            "It makes me want to work that much harder, fly that much faster."

            "Yes, I guess in the end it makes my belief in the cause that much stronger.  If only she had known."

            "Everyone will know, when the time is right."

            "Well, not everyone."

            "Right," the other one admits, "only the ones that matter will know."

            There is a pause.  The crow is listening with wary interest.

            "Did you see what we picked up last night?" the first one begins again, her voice at a higher pitch, almost scornful.

            "Yes.  Yes, I certainly did."

            "Don't you think it's kind of too soon?"

            "It's hard to tell.  It's hard to tell if anyone besides another magpie is ready to know what we know.  This has been a magpie's secret for centuries."

            "Exactly."

            "But then to hear stories about eagles being electrocuted --"

            "I know.  I once had a friend who was a vulture.  He died because the carcass he had been feeding on was shot by a hunter, and it was poisoned.  And I'm always thinking, if he had known our secret --"

            "Shhhh.  Someone's listening."  The second magpie, who seems, by the sound of his voice, to be older, grows suddenly cautious.  There is a tense silence.  The crow, perched high above, feels his heart beating suddenly faster, despite himself.  Who cares if they find him listening? But still, something in him gives him pause, and he scoots a few inches to the left on his branch, behind the leaves where no one can see him.  He feels their shiny black eyes staring up at him from below.  Then comes a sudden rush of courage, or maybe, just plain audacity, and he peeks out from behind the leaves, and deliberately stares down at the both of them.

            The magpies continue to stare up in silence, blinking.

            "Good morning," croaks the crow.

            "Good morning," replies the younger magpie.  Then she begins to peck at the ground, unsure of herself, it seems.  The older magpie just nods.  The ground is dappled with the light of the morning coming in through the leaves.

            The younger magpie looks up from her pecking.  "You must be tired," she offers.

            "Oh," said the crow, a little caught off guard at her frank kindness, "I guess so."

            "I mean, we fly pretty hard and fast.  If you're used to slower flocks, it might be kind of a shock."

            "Oh," says the crow again, "I guess so."  Then he suddenly opens his wings and jumps off the branch, floating to the ground in a single, adept, parachute-like movement.  He doesn't know why, but he doesn't want her to think he is tired.  Upon landing, a ray of sunlight hits his black body like a blast of warm water.  He feels suddenly self-conscious, all black and shining in the middle of a pool of sunlight.  He turns his beak to preen his feathers.

            "Is this your first time flying with magpies?" the younger one tries again.

            "Well, yes," the crow replies, without looking up from his preening.

            "It's very nice to meet you, boy," the older one suddenly bursts in, all loud and self-important.  His voice is gruff.  Then, in a flutter of black-and-white wings, he suddenly takes off, leaving them behind.

            There is a loud call from far off.  "Oh, it must be time for breakfast," the younger magpie intones.  The crow looks up from his preening despite himself.  "Shall we?" the magpie offers.  The crow nods, a little too excitedly.  But the younger magpie doesn't seem to notice, for she has already taken flight.  The crow follows suit, his empty stomach churning.

            When they reach the clearing where the call came from all the magpies are already gathered in a circle around a large deer carcass.  The bright red entrails, sticky with flies, gleam in the crow's vision.  But no one is eating.

            The magpie with the clear confident voice that led the discussion in the cornfield yesterday is speaking again.  This time his tone is less urgent; more hushed.

            "I know we are all hungry," he begins.  "But I would like to begin with a story that will remind us all of why we're here, doing what we have to do, enduring what we have to endure.”

            There is silence.  A rustle of wings; a few magpies are shifting their weight.  One steps forward from the circle at the nonverbal command of the lead magpie.

            "I had a brother," begins the magpie, and then unceremoniously adds, "well, come to think of it, I wasn't exactly sure if he was my brother.  But we were definitely related.  We used to go foraging together.  And then, I noticed that he just wasn't….” the magpie pauses, then lifts his right foot to scratch the right side of his face. Continues, "Well, he just wasn't himself a lot of the time anymore.  He would lag behind me in flight.  And sometimes when we got to the trash cans he would just land on the concrete and let me do all the digging, just kind of standing there blinking at me, kind of sagging.  And then he started hanging out on the back porch near the window.  That's when I really started to worry, he must have known that this wasn't a good idea.  There was one morning he was up at dawn with me like he always was, and we flew over to the trash cans like we always do, but he didn't make it all the way.  He stopped at the back porch and just perched on the concrete, in that sagging way that he had been doing, just blinking and not saying anything to me.  And so I dug around and found what I could in the trash cans, and I kept trying to signal to him that it was time to take off, I kept flying in circles over him and buzzing him, and he just sat there blinking and not moving.  And so I left --" here the magpie suddenly jerks his head towards the ground and spoke into his breast -- "I just left and came back later that day…. and he was dead.  In that same spot where I left him.  Sprawled out all stiff on the concrete.   And they came out and wrapped him in some kind of strange shiny bedding, and took him inside.  We never saw him again."  Then, just as unceremoniously, the magpie steps back into the circle.

            Then the old magpie, the one who tried to strike up a conversation with the crow that very morning by offering her unsolicited and rather distasteful opinion about dreams, suddenly steps into the circle.  A shiver passes over her.  Her eyes glaze.  One wing droops in a mock display of injury.  Then slowly, in a thump-drag circle that brings her very close to each bird, she travels back to the spot where she was standing.  Words come from her in a shriek.  “Oh, how I am encumbered with existence,” she cries.  “How I am beleaguered with being me.  Oh, may The Telling of the Great Secret endure from ear to breast and back to ear again for many journeys northward, so that eventually my great burden may be lifted, and I may fly forever.” She repositions her wings and rejoins the circle.

            Later, with his belly full of deer entrails, shambling along in a low flight just behind the last magpie, the crow makes a promise to himself to stay as far away as he can from that old magpie.

Chapter 3

            A long time ago, there lived the first magpie whom was ever born for greater things.  How do we know this?  The magpie knew it.  Ever since he was large enough to have feelings in his little black-and-white breast, those feelings told him he was destined for greater things.  And that is all that really matters for this part of the story, because you would never really notice that this magpie was special just by looking at him.

            No, especially not now, now that we have things like trash dumpsters that conniving magpies root around in for their suppers; you would never notice this magpie if he were alive today.  Magpies have always been clever, but if you invent the necessity of a trash dumpster, and then begin to label certain items as “trash” (for going into the dumpster), then it will certainly follow that a magpie’s cleverness will come to be labeled as “connivance,” and you will dismiss them all outright as dirty, greedy nuisances.  You would never notice anything special about one particular magpie.

            But back then, this particular magpie was especially special, because he was the first of the magpies to ever be special at all. Magpies, back then, had very short tails.  Their bodies were also proportionately smaller, and their wingspan shorter as well.  Back then, it never rained, but the earth was replenished with water by a cool mist that was simply absorbed by plant life and then evaporated into the atmosphere, where it began to condense before being absorbed again.  So, magpies had no need for flying long distances to find sources of water.  They rather hopped about, like sparrows—but it was not lowly—and fed on leaves swollen with all the water they could ever need.