Make It March - March 23 Crows Part 3 (Final)
Things are supposed to happen in threes, to make things neat. Something about the asymmetry, or something. Once is a fluke, twice is even, three makes for solid weight on your side. But life doesn't wait for threes, doesn't work out like a story. It's unfair like that, more solid and hard-edged and jagged, holes and pieces mixed together to make a puzzle more like the broken debris on the forest floor than a pretty, tidy mosaic. I hadn’t helped the crows again, hadn’t even seen them. And the years had blurred, passing me by.
I was back in the woods again. I always came back, always. More years had passed, and my possessions had been whittled away until all that I valued fit in the worn-thin-canvas pack on my back. Life had been unfair, as life was, and unkind to my luck. My job had soured, then been cut. Friends moved away, and debts piled up. I'd run out—run out of time, run out of cash—and then I'd been run out, evicted. My mattress doubtless still carried the imprint of my body in the tiny one-room apartment I'd lived in, my mismatched dishes still strewn on the counter for all I knew. I'd had anything worth anything with me, anyway, so when I came home and found the notice pasted to the door, the new lock resisting all my pulls, I did what I always did. I went out into the woods.
My hair had grayed, and I couldn't feel the wrinkles on my face, but I knew they were there. My hands and legs were still strong, though, and I'd found mushrooms, raspberries, wild greens. I'd gone farther and farther in, so far that I'd lost the constant sound of humanity at my back, even the distant roar of cars and planes silenced in the muffling distance. I'd seen almost no animals, but I'd no interest in them as food, anyway—I hadn't had a gun in years, and taking lives to support my own had lost all appeal. I'd come to the woods to die, but to die on my own terms. Not that I thought of it like that. I was just… done. Done with humanity, done with responsibility, done with a system that broke you if you weren't convenient. I was broken, I was done, and so I was gone.
Once you got this far in, animal trails were really the only trails that wound easily through the undergrowth. There were the occasional patches of pine and fir trees, which made for soft and warm sleeping, but I stayed close to the river I'd found, following it more or less as well as I could, boiling it for water and sometimes just sitting and taking in the glinting light, the sounds of the forest sinking into my bones and making me as much a part of the scene as a fallen tree, a once-growing thing now a carcass, ready to feed hungry fungi and insects. It was a cycle I didn't want to escape, not anymore. It was likely no one would find my bones, not even the crows.
The crows. Why had they come to mind? The shape of the tree next to me reminded me faintly of that strange day when a crow, white and massive, had spoken to me with a human voice. I'd locked that memory away until now, letting it fade into rational obscurity, as hallucinations should. I'd lost the feathers I’d found on my pillow, somewhere, in the past years; lost parts of myself I couldn't get back, too. I'd been so careless. But the name still shone ivory-bright in my mind, and I lifted my head, looking up as the wind cracked the branches above me into one another, startling and rhythmic music of isolation.
I rolled the word around on my tongue, saying it clearly. The clicks from the k's tasted like stones clacking together in my mouth. The wind died down, silence descending again on the afternoon light of the forest. I said it again, meditatively. "Karrik'ka." I'd never said it before, but it seemed fitting, here, in this place, as I walked to my death, timing and location not here but soon.
The silence stretched. I blinked after a couple minutes, lowering my chin to look around. It was a strange hush, as though a predator approached, and all the living things had silenced themselves to hide, but even the trees and the wind were still, the stream barely splashing in its course. I heard a whirring flap and then a faint grinding crunch not far from me, turning my head in slow motion to see what I suddenly knew without a doubt would be there, shivers nibbling their way up my spine and down my arms into my hands, making my fingers tingle.
It was the crow, the crow, the white crow with scarlet eyes and living ivory beak. Karrik’ka. I stared, silent and tired but intensely aware, as it regarded me with one bright eye, then the other, neck feathers ruffling up. The beak opened, and a wave of dizziness washed over me as the crow spoke.
"You are late in calling, human. You needed me long before now. What do you ask?"
I was late. I was always late, always off, baggage weighing me down that I thought I'd cast off with cutting myself free of the bondage of civilization. I opened my mouth, then closed it, swallowing, and looked down at my open hand resting in my lap. I hadn't believed it, but it was real. I'd hidden it from myself, trying to do it all alone, but I'd failed. "I lost the feathers," I said. It sounded like a non sequitur, but I meant it as an apology, as a regret. I tried again. "I… I never asked, I didn't know what to ask. I don't have proof of anything."
The crow clacked its beak abruptly, its eye filled with impatience and seeming disgust as it flicked its head from side to side. "Human. I did not forget. Do not mistake me. Ask."
I felt a shiver like cold water running down my neck. I knew what I wanted, impossible thing. I looked the crow in the eye, my own clear and wide and certain in my lined face, framed by iron-gray hair. "I don't want to be this anymore." I gestured at myself. "I don't want to be me. I'm tired of trying. Make, make me…" I closed my eyes, struggling, then forced myself onward. "Make me what I should be. I want to belong." I knew it was impossible.
The crow laughed. It was a sound that was far too clear, far too right, but also wrong. I opened my eyes to see it ruffled up, satisfaction and confidence apparent in its gaze. "Finally. You asked." Out of the surrounding trees more crows flew: one, two, four, seven in all, black as night. The white crow cawed harshly, jarring from a bird that had spoken like a human before. "You will belong." It hopped forward, and I closed my eyes, resigned. My head was spinning, whirling, dizzying as the crow cawed again, the others joining in to make a sudden cacophony that stunned my ears and froze me in place. Everything hurt, suddenly and jarringly, and I felt like I was falling.
I opened my eyes to find myself drowning in fabric, and struggled and clawed to find an opening, finally bursting into the sunlight to find myself surrounded by gigantic birds calling "Welcome! Welcome! At long last, welcome!" One hopped toward me, and I braced myself clumsily, looking around, then finally down at myself. My body was small and sleek, black and feathered, my beak strong and my feet nimble. I looked up, and up, and up at the now-massive white crow who I finally recognized: my liege. I bowed, still awkward in my new shape, wings outstretched. The crow spoke, voice rich with sounds I hadn't recognized before.
"We've been waiting for you a long time, sibling. But you finally came."
"Thank you," I said, my voice strange to my own ears, but rich and soft, true. Right. I stood up, tucking my wings close, and the others clustered around me in welcome, preening and sharing space. I belonged. I finally belonged.
My old pack, my clothes, all my useless things—we left them behind as we took off together, one white crow leading, huge and regal, followed by eight jet-dark crows, the last dotted with gray, flying into the forest and my new, true life.
