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.
They may share the “cognitive capacities” of many primates. . . . To date, all the experimental results point in the same direction—in various trials, corvids [the crow family] have scored better than chickens, quail, pigeons, rabbits, cats, elephants, gibbons and rhesus monkeys.
—CANDACE SAVAGE, Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays
9. Wind of the Long Journeys
God the Crow spoke to me, and no other bird seemed to know or care. Maybe Its Mightiness kept in constant contact with everyone in the same way that the wind washed over the woods and moved the trees. The morning’s wind came in pure and steady and made the trees want to fly. They flapped their branches as best they could, wishing they were crows. And I had to be ready, as the God Crow had decreed. Everyone has a patron wind that guides his wings. I needed one to fly and forget, to go to a land beyond Keeyaw, where I was no longer the Misfortune, where no one would know my face.
But in the plentiful winds, everyone forgot about me anyway.
Alone in the nest, I had too much room to hop around and scratch the tufts of sooty feathers that grew from my skin. I’d reach my claw toes over my head. I’d stand up straight and stretch my legs, pulling them to make them longer and working my wings, flapping and flapping so that the great beyond might take me to its promise. But just at the moment of release, I had the same anxiety I had when I looked out over the edge of the nest and saw nothing but the air and the leaves below, all turning and swaying above the endless underworld. It was a great fear in me. It was glandular, ancestral. It grew up from my skin like my new charcoal coat. All I could do was to grab hold of a branch, hold my wings out, and wag them slowly.
Over and over again, between feedings, at night, awake or asleep, I had the same dream.
I’d leap from our tree and keep rising until the world dropped out from beneath me. In the sky there was no forest and no valley and no human city burning on the horizon. I’d be lost in the clouds without perch and keep going. That, or I would fall and my legs would weigh me down like the bough of a tree and pull me under and smash my hollow bones across the face of the underworld.
My nightmare was upon me one day when the wind blew in brilliant and clear and pushed the clouds from the sky. The sunlight swarmed all around me in and out of the nest. Trees rocked on their stems and creaked until they loosened. This wasn’t one wind but a treacherous force of many hidden currents and names. Under the conflicting