Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr

The Horse was running in mad circles. The Crows were growing as weary as the little Horse they chased. There’d been little to eat these last short days. Then they had some luck: the Horse turned from the open ground and into a rubbled slew that led down toward the river. The Crows, all at once grasping what must happen, forced the Horse with their screaming and their black wings in its face farther down that way, and almost immediately it lost its footing and plunged sprawling down. It struggled to rise but couldn’t.

  The Crows were crazy with triumph. Who are the Wolves? they cried. We are the Wolves!

  Dar Oakley ceased his yelling and settled on the rocks above where the Horse lay. Somehow a foreleg had got thrust into a fissure of rock; perhaps it was broken. The Horse’s head twisted this way and that, lips drawn back, a sobbing breath from its throat, blood on a cheek where a Crow had dagged it. The beast wouldn’t live through the coming night.

  It was pleasant to sit and watch their prize, but night was coming fast and they had flown far from the roost. One by one they ceased crying, We are the Wolves! We are the Hunters! Two by two they ascended away. In the night the real Wolves would appear, the carcass-openers, and come day the Crows would eat. Eat and eat.

  Far behind in the fields, the Brother and the farmer stood arm in arm, afraid and praying: for surely they had seen devils in the form of birds set upon their Horses, drive them far away out of sight, and (for all they could tell) ride them down to Hell.

  It was for sure a hellish crew, those Crows in that day, as Dar Oakley now tells of it. The flock he flew with was tightly ranked and more battlesome than others, and the winners of their contests were fearless and fierce—though the winners weren’t always the biggest or the quickest, any more than the top Dogs in any Dog pack are always the largest. Winters, when these Biggers gathered in their favored groves, they socialized with one another; they foraged together, they fought with and cursed rivals and upstarts, and admitted the bravest to their ranks. They mourned those of the gang lost to Owls and accidents, remembered and spoke of them, but that never stopped them from getting out in front when another Owl was to be mobbed, or a Hawk chased off, or a dangerous game played, Come on, come on! The rest of the flock profited by their schemes and their daring, and got a share of the feasts they contrived, laughed at their jokes, avoided their thick bills.

  There was Va Thornhill and Kon Eaglestail: they went unchallenged and left alone, even by each other. There was Ta Blue-Eye and his daughter-wife Fin, both with eyes as black as any Crow’s. There was (Dar Oakley can still name them, like a retired officer remembering his old regiment) Big Stonybrook and Little Stonybrook, the tougher of the two; and Rowanberry, loutish and cruel, and sneaky Other Rowanberry. And there was Dar Oakley, who sat midway in this corps, not the strongest nor the most heedless of them but the smartest and most inventive. The plan about the Horse was his—he had in his mind an image not only of Wolves but of People fighters on a raid, and how they’d cut out the weaker animals or the slower females to surround and seize.

  Through that cold night he tried to remember when it had been that he had seen such a thing, if he really had. He pressed his memory back and back until, as always, it came at last to a night-darkness, a nothing, into which his thought could not go. Like the night’s nothing, which yields up a world when day returns, he knew this nothing within him wasn’t empty: but that was all he knew.

  At dawn when the gang went back out to the rubbled pass, three Wolves were going away, their whiskers black with Horse blood, their white eyes sated and sleepy. They would not have dared come close enough to the Brothers’ buildings and fences to have got this meal themselves.

  Now it was the Crows’ time to eat. There was plenty: not even Ravens, who disdained People, had found this place as yet.

  Va Thornhill called, and one after another they all joined him, and as the cold sun grew higher the others came in and settled noisily to eat at the Wolf-torn body while Va and Dar Oakley and Kon Eaglestail looked on from the branches of the lone tree that bent wearily there, hungry of course but keeping watch. When they did join in, room would be made for them.

  “Look there, Dar Oakley,” Va Thornhill said. “Your friends.”

  Dar Oakley looked. Across the frost-sparkling field, a Brother, surely the same one as the day before, was striding steadily toward them, white skirts curling around his bare red shins, and with him a farm boy carrying a halter.

  “In search of their Horse,” Dar Oakley said.

  “Ha,” said the bigger Crow. “Our Horse.” He let himself fall from the branch toward the cadaver, which was so tugged and pulled this way and that by so many Crows that it gave an odd impression of fighting back against them.

  They weren’t Dar Oakley’s friends, the Brothers and their other People; Va Thornhill spoke that way because, yes, Dar Oakley took an interest in them, and liked to frequent their stone buildings and watch them come and go on their inexplicable errands. Now and then he’d forget himself so far as to come down into their kitchen-midden, and find a bite or two there to swallow as he listened to them. They clearly despised him, but despite that he thought that in some way he belonged to them—as though his parents (whom he couldn’t remember) had long ago nested among them.

  They were like a flock themselves, in some ways. Their dress was all the same, like the pelts of a species of beast, where the clothes of the other People who came now and then to visit them were more varied. He’d thought they were all alike too in being almost bald, like Vultures, but then on a warm day he’d seen them one by one sit down on a stone in the sun while one with a tool clipped away at the hair of their heads and made them all look the same. They scraped the hair off their faces, too, most of them, so it was impossible to tell if any were females (a bare face was a sign of a People female, he knew, and seemed always to have known), but there were never any young among them.

  All this Dar Oakley found it good to think about; and because his knowledge gained the Crows advantages, they didn’t much mock him for his interest. Long ago, the story among them went, there had been a Crow in a far demesne who studied People and found a way to feed his flock on rich People flesh, with no trouble in the getting of it either.

  But those days were past, if they had ever been, and the trick was long forgotten.

  The Brother, one of the scraped-face kind, was close enough now that he must see, yes, the Crows eating the flesh of the Brothers’ Horse, and he began to run toward them, crying out and lifting the harmless stick he carried. Unafraid but cautious, the Crows arose and went away, though not far—they gathered on the rocks or in the dead tree and yelled from there. The Brother warned away the boy, and came stumbling down the rocks on his near-bare feet, and when he reached the remains of the Horse, he went down on his knees before it. He clasped his hands together as though he held something in them, though there was nothing, and made a rapid series of noises, varied and soft, like brook water running over stones; now and then he lifted his face to the white sky.

  “It’s all right,” Dar Oakley said to those around him. “They do this.” He had seen them at it, though he hadn’t understood it. This was as close as he had ever come to one, close enough to hear. He’d never seen one do it beside a dead beast. It was hard to tell if he was old or young—neither very old nor very young was all Dar Oakley could tell—but his back was bent and the gizzard of his long neck stuck out like a Vulture’s.

  He got up from his knees, plucking at his skirts, and looked around himself at the Crows. No beast with enemies likes to be stared at steadily, but as long as Dar Oakley stayed, calmly observing, the Biggers would all stay, and as long as they stayed, most of the others would too. The Brother made no threatening gestures or cries; he only went on, mouth moving, as he had when he had knelt beside the dead Horse, but now—there was no mistaking it—looking to them, to the Crows.

  He raised a long, bony forefinger and shook it at them.

  He put his closed hands on his hips, and thrust out his chin. />
  He spread his arms wide, his palms turned up, like branches they might sit on.

  And all the time he went on making his stream of noises.

  “Let’s mob the being, drive it off,” Va Thornhill said, still flush with the victory of the Horse. He assayed a sharp attack cry. No one took it up.

  “What does it mean by this, Dar Oakley?” Kon Eaglestail asked. “What is it doing?”

  Dar Oakley had no answer. But he felt the presence of an answer within him—so he’d put it later, remembering this moment. He left Kon’s side and went closer to the Brother, who took notice of his approach and spoke as though to Dar Oakley alone. For yes, it was speech, Dar Oakley was certain of it. Not speech he knew, but like speech he had once known.

  “Have no fear,” the Brother said to him. “No fear.”

  A trembling took hold of Dar Oakley’s throat and cheeks, as though he were about to bring up his food. Instead he brought forth a word, a word the Brother had said.

  Fear, he said.

  The Brother stopped speaking.

  Mine, Dar Oakley said.

  He wasn’t able to say many words in their language—but from close observation of the Brothers, he had come to understand some and to mimic a few. He could tell from the way the Brother looked at him now that he’d understood the Crow. When he spoke again, Dar Oakley knew his words.

  “Crow,” was what he said. “Did you speak to me?”

  Dar Oakley becked rapidly, head up, head down—which he just then remembered or conceived was a sign to People for yes.

  The Brother fell to his knees. He clapped his hands together and with his eyes on Dar Oakley spoke too fast for Dar Oakley to catch any meaning. Later on, when the Brother retold to him the tale of that morning—as often he did—he’d say that he said, Sin no more, bird of death! Steal no more from those who have so little. Don’t be Wolves but, black though you are, be Doves. We are Doves among Wolves and we can’t harm you. But God will love you and feed you for our sakes if you don’t steal from us.

  Whatever it was, Dar Oakley becked. He said words he knew: Yes, he said. Wolf, he said. Steal. Each word arising from his gut or his crop and making its way out, wringing his throat and twisting his tongue. From a safe distance the other Crows were laughing in derision at this absurd exchange: Were they speaking? The Brother on his knees smiled upon them—which seemed threatening enough, his long yellow teeth showing—and he held out a hand to Dar Oakley as though that Crow would be fool enough to just walk up onto his palm. But that’s just what he did. Yelps and cries of warning from his gang.

  The Brother rose, Dar Oakley clinging to his hand. “Deo gratias,” he said. He raised his other hand and drew it down; then he crossed the line he’d made in the air with another going billwise-otherwise. He lifted the Crow up, and stared into his eyes as though to see within; and the Crow looked back.

  A century or more later, when hagiographers wrote down in their lovely uncial script the full story of how the lowliest and least of the Brothers of that Abbey had preached to the Crows, they would write how at the name of God and the sign of the cross of his Son, the shaggy little pony that lay dead before him had stirred, stood, and gathered in his mutilated parts; and when he was whole, he had bent his knee to the Brother. And all the guilty Crows had bowed their heads, and in the Saint’s own tongue had begged forgiveness.

  The Crows had a different tale, in which the Horse’s well-cleaned gray bones are still there come spring.

  Once, Fox Cap had perceived invaders coming who couldn’t be stopped, and they had come, but now they were invaders no longer. They had coupled with the women and sired young and made farms and kept beasts, and centuries on they were the People of that place, as much as Fox Cap had been. There were more People now; they had gone on building walled villages, and with the Brothers to protect them, they were unafraid of cutting old trees, so that the land looked different, wider, barer, more theirs. The other beings—the Wolves, the Elk, the Boar—had grown warier, and stayed farther from them. The People disliked and feared the forest and the mountains even more than they had before; they kept to their well-traveled roads if they could—and so they saw Ravens less often, but Crows they saw every day. They chased Crows from their grain and the farrow of their sows and the eggs and hatchlings of their hens and ducks. They looked up at Crows crossing over their houses and lanes on business of their own; they heard Crows calling to one another but seeming to speak a word to the People below. Maybe it was in those days that young People began to discern their fates in the number of Crows they counted:

  One for sorrow

  Two for joy

  Three for a girl

  Four for a boy

  Five for silver

  Six for gold

  Seven for a secret never told

  The Crows of the region could have told them that there are almost always more Crows around them than they can see; but like the few snowflakes that fall on your tongue or autumn leaves you can catch, it’s only the ones you can count that matter.

  The People had stories, but no history; everything that had happened was still happening. The tall stones that gods and giants had cut and erected in the beginning of the world were still standing, and the Brothers wouldn’t or couldn’t throw them down, though they warned the villagers away from them, except for those (the Brothers knew which) that had been placed by Saints and angels as lessons. When the Brothers had first come, they brought a history with them that they insisted on, a history with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But by now it was stories too, of things that had always been, and still were, and had no end.

  The People buried their dead. The Brothers had taught them that those bodies were the vehicles of future life, and couldn’t be burned or given to Crows any longer as once upon a time many of them had been. At the end of all days (which the Brothers said wasn’t so far off), they’d come forth from the places where they’d been laid, and each be reunited with its separated and departed soul, to live forever in the sky, or in the Isles of the Blessed, or in this green land made better, sweeter, without suffering or winter.

  Fridays in the Brothers’ settlement were days of silence, and of fish. Since silence was enjoined that day of the week on the Brothers, so it was on Dar Oakley as well. On any other day, he might call from the window of the Brother’s cell or the top of the big building in the center of the compound, and listen to Crow answers come from here and from there. He might fly to where they were, to forage and bicker and take a turn at watch—though the Brother instructed him to give his fellows good counsel, as he gave good counsel to Dar Oakley. But not on the one day in the week when Christ’s death on the Cross was remembered. No, let him stay with the Brothers that day, bow his head, keep silence, and eat fish.

  “Corve,” the Brother said, “let us pray. Oremus.”

  The Brothers regarded Friday fish as a deprivation, though Dar Oakley didn’t mind, so long as there was plenty; it also spoiled quickly, which the Brothers objected to, but not of course Dar Oakley, who also enjoyed the guts, spoiled or not. From the midden where he had his meal he had heard the Abbot scold the griping Brothers and remind them that not long before they had eaten roots and drunk pond water, and not much of either.

  At first Dar Oakley’d been surprised whenever the fish day came around, since Crows have no conception of a period of days; he would anyway have had a hard time keeping as many as seven in his head. But the Brother made a sort of calendar for him that he put on the floor of his cell by the window through which Dar Oakley came and went: six dark stones in a dish, and one white one. Dar Oakley learned to take one stone each evening and put it in another dish, and when they were all moved, a week was done. Then Dar Oakley picked out the white stone and moved it back to the first dish: Sunday. On that day the Brothers did no work; visitors came, a Dux, a Rex, with their cohorts; and in the largest of their stone buildings the Brothers sang all in unison and performed their mysteries (which only certain visitors might w
itness, and never ever a Crow). When five dark stones had been added to the white stone, it was time again for fish.

  The Brothers questioned their youngest Brother’s keeping a tame Crow, a black bird of ill omen, and letting it follow him to work and prayer, and allowing it even to inhabit the little tower of the Church, from where they would see it peering down at them. What, said the Brother—did they want not to be reminded that they were flesh, and would die? He told them (Dar Oakley not then able to understand all he said) they should keep quiet, and not speak that way to him, because he had received a miracle from God, and a creature had been given tongue to speak; they should all go pray that such a blessing might be theirs and God’s favor might be shown to them, as it had been to him, the least of his servants, and if they wanted to argue it further (here pushing up his white sleeves) well, he was ready.

  The other Brothers didn’t like this. In fact, they didn’t like him, and he paid them back in kind. He’d been born the younger son of a Dux of that region, who hadn’t liked him either, and as soon as he was old enough, the Dux had taken him to the Abbey, a gift—along with other gifts of treasure and land and tenantry, so that the Brothers might in time pray for the ducal soul.

  “Oh, he was a great man,” the Brother told Dar Oakley as he carried his brace of milk jugs on his shoulders from the dairy. “Yes, he slew his hundreds, and sent them down to Hell. And then followed them there himself. And I was the price he paid that he might be forgiven his sins, for which he was not one bit sorry. Fubun on that man, fubun.”

  That was one: one of the words that Dar Oakley waited and listened for, one of those that had a sound he recognized in himself, each one like a stone dropped into a well, that made a sudden sound of meaning and then went down into darkness. It was to hear such words and learn new ones that he had come here, and why he stayed. He turned the word in his mind, trying to remember when he had heard it, who had said it in a past time, and what it meant: why it hurt him in his heart to hear it. Fubun.