It began when a crow grew tired, and had a rest on a very strange stone building. It was full of the bustle and hum of voices, and seemed very old and tired-worn among its big steel nestmates. Now and again silence flourished, broken only by the quaver of one human speaking.
“Strange,” said the crow to herself. “What’s all this then?”
“It is a church,” said a deep-voiced alleycat beneath her, uninvited (which, of course, to cats is as good as any invitation).
“Oh? And what are they doing?” she asked.
“Praying,” said the cat with perfect disdain. “That’s what a church is for. You don’t know anything.”
“Oh I do so know, I do!” said the crow, annoyance filling her from beak to tail. “And what does this praying do?”
“They pray to god,” said the cat, “to give them mercy. And favours. And that sort of thing.” He yawned, flashing her every one of his teeth in what she thought was a needlessly showy manner. “I don’t see much point in it.”
“Well, I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” she said. “Gales, it’s not like you’ve ever needed or wanted help, not even when you got your tail broken, or your ear chewed off, or starved yourself half-thin like you are right now. Not at all.”
The cat looked unconcerned, but his ears twitched. “Insults won’t help your ignorance. Besides, that sort of thing’s for humans, not nosy little featherbags.”
“Oh how would you know,” she said. “And I’m sure you’re right disdainful of ignorance, being nothing but an overbearing old furball who’s never had the curiosity to get past bone idle stupidity. Fie on you and your kittens too! Your mother was an alley rat, your father was a mongrel mutt, and you were born in a cut-rate mouse-nest!”
The cat proceeded away nonchalantly, his tail giving him the lie with every vicious lash.
“Tramp!” she called after him, his pace quickening with each word. “Fleahouse! Dirty scallawag!” The last she’d heard a wrinkled old human use to cow a younger, and she fancied anything that lived that long must know what it was doing when it came to insults.
That should’ve been it. It could’ve been it. It might’ve been it. For any bird of smaller thoughts – one of the thousands of pigeons that littered the city – it would’ve been it.
But something had been touched there in the crow’s vain, too-big-for-its-own-good brain. A desire half-contrary, half-curious, and all-mad in its quiet little way.
“Just for humans,” she muttered and grumped. “Anything humans can do, a crow can do twice over or it doesn’t need to be done! What does an old rat-catcher know? Nothing!”
And with that she set out on her way to find a god for crows. And other birds too, of course, because admitting humans to be better than any relative of a crow’s (even….pigeons) was simply not to be borne.
There were complications to be overcome, of course.
“What is god?” said the big, scraped-up seagull the crow asked. “What is why do I care? I don’t. Pfaaark!” he spat, and went back to eating a bag of chips.
“What is god?” the sparrow chirped. It flittered to its fellows and exchanged some sharp words, then flapped back. “Nobody knows. Can’t be too important then.”
“What is god?” said a pigeon. It stared. “What is god?” it repeated.
The crow waited.
“Yes?” she said.
“What?” said the pigeon.
“Never mind.”
“What is god?” the dog said. She wagged her tail slow as she considered, idly chewing her way up the length of its leash towards the limp hand of its gently snoring, bench-bound owner. “What a strange question. Well, as far as she says” – a sideways shake of the head here indicated the comatose human – “it’s a really big, really perfect human. Lives somewhere called heaven, which is also perfect.” She chewed more intensely for a moment as she considered something. “Maybe it’s in the clouds? I’m not sure.”
“I think I would’ve heard about that by now,” said the crow firmly. “It’s all nothing and hot air, just like all the other human things. I bet they just made it up because they’re jealous of us, as usual.”
“Of course, of course,” said the dog carelessly. A finger, innocent and carefree in its slumber, brushed her lip, making her twitch.
“Besides, everybody knows you can’t make a nest in the clouds. You just fall right through them. Though I suppose they wouldn’t know, being so stubby-legged.”
“Right.”
The crow dipped her wings in thanks and fluttered away. Behind her, a small chomp and a sharp scream echoed in farewell.
“So,” she told herself. “God is a perfect thing. Well, obviously then it must be a bird. God is a bird, therefore god has a nest. God would have a splendidly big and perfect nest, where nothing would try to rob its eggs or eat it. Also, since humans think so highly of it, I’m sure they would help it somehow. Maybe it just tells them it’s a human. That’s what I’d do.”
That was what a crow would do, of course.
“So,” the crow went on, landing by a delicious pack of half-eaten potato chips and inspecting them vigorously, “god is in its nest, on the ground somewhere, with lots of humans looking after it, in a safe place. Outdoors. In the city.” She swallowed chip fragments (talking with your beak full, among corvids, is not considered rude). “That can’t be too hard to find.”
It wasn’t.
“That sounds like a zoo,” opined the grizzled little starling she’d cornered in a tree. “You’re sure you’re not gonna eat me?”
“Positive,” said the crow. “What’s a zoo?”
“A sort of human place where they have all sorts of animals in little nests they can’t leave and bring them food. Then they look at them. Don’t ask me why. Listen, I’m mostly feathers and bones this year, I’ve had bad luck scavenging.”
“Hmm,” said the crow, who wasn’t listening. “That sounds promising.”
“What? No, no, not at all. I’m gamey too. Had too many lean years when I was nearing maturity, warped up all my tender young flesh. Not that any of my mates ever understood that, oh no no, why they’re always on and on about how I’m-”
“Where can I find a zoo?”
“Uh, there’s a big one over on the east side of town. Just look for it near the park. Not that I ever spent much time in there, not with all of the big pushy shots taking up space like they were eight-pounds each and-”
“Thank you,” said the crow, and took off. The starling felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.
The zoo was easy to find, but god was trickier. There were a lot more animals there than the crow had guessed there’d be, and fewer birds.
“Well,” said the crow to herself, “if god were easy to find, I suppose it wouldn’t be very special.” But she was getting awfully tired of looking. Half a day gone already, and most of it on the fuel of one half-eaten bag of chips. A brightly coloured and only partially nibbled strawberry caught her eye with avid glee, and she swooped down to take it in all haste.
An extremely large tuft of hairy feathers stirred next to her, and a head poked out that was nearly half the size of her body.
“That’s mine,” said god.
God, according to the limited ability of the crow to read the sign outside heaven, was named “Cassowary.” She seemed ambivalent towards both names, and friendly enough once the crow apologized for the strawberry. Or at least, not hostile. Well, she didn’t mind the crow staring, even if it was a little impolite. But how could she not?
God stood taller than a human, and walked instead of flew. God’s feathers were long and slim and almost like hair. God’s head was bright blue and her neck was bright red and she had a strange crest on her head and oh my goodness and breezes she had such large claws on her feet. The crow realized she was staring again, and felt ashamed. Which is not a thing that crows do.
“So,” said the crow. “What’s it like?”
God looked at her.
“Being god, that is,” the crow clarified. “I mean, since you’re perfect.”
God considered this.
“Dull,” she said. “Sometimes cramped. Too many watchers. Too few trees.” Her voice was deep, very deep, so deep that the crow could barely hear her. It made her feathers hum, and her own caws sound tinny and chick-like to her ears.
The crow looked around heaven. There seemed to be a good number of trees to her, but she supposed that if god wanted privacy, there wasn’t much to be had.
“They could certainly do with a bit more respect,” she said censoriously, watching a chubby human chick burble and babble over the edge of the railing. “Honestly, if they’re going to smack up a big silly stone building because of you, you’d think they’d be willing to at least make sure to give you some space. And maybe someone to share it with.”
“The other one? He died. Choked on garbage.”
“Oh dear. Well, I’m sure he was very nice, whoever he was. What kind of mate do they give to a god anyways?”
God poked at her feathers. “Like me. Smaller.”
The crow hopped a little in surprise. “He was a god too?” Then the second thought hit her: “gods can die?”
God shrugged.
“Well,” said the crow. “Well. Well then.” The word “blasphemous” was new to her vocabulary, but she already had an inkling that saying some of the thoughts going through her head – such as how being able to die didn’t seem very perfect at all – would somehow be very rude. Which was strange, for a crow.
“What happens when you die?” she asked, shifting the conversation to a safer and less offensive topic.
God tilted her head to one side and examined the crow thoughtfully. She suddenly felt much smaller. “If,” she corrected herself, a little too quickly. “If you die, what happens? I mean, I heard that god gives birds mercy, whatever that is. And favours, which are nice. You can’t do that if you’re dead, can you?” Maybe that was what the being perfect solved.
“Can’t give anyone anything here,” said god, pointing idly at the fencing that blocked the small, leering crowd at a distance.
The crow gave the humans an unfriendlier-than-usual glare. “Can’t you just command them to let you out? You’re god, humans listen to god, it seems sensibly straightforward.”
“No,” said god.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said the crow, feeling more than a little let down, “heaven seems less perfect than I’d heard about. They won’t listen to you, they let your mate die after letting garbage get in (and they can’t have given you a very good mate if he choked on garbage, honestly, who makes that mistake who’s made it out of their nest), and they won’t give you enough space to get away from all that peeping and peering. They stare worse than hawks.”
God nodded mildly.
“And,” said the crow, “to top it all off, they won’t let you do any favours. Or mercy, I guess. Maybe they know you’ll just give it all to proper birds, and they’re just jealous. I bet they are.”
“True,’ said god. “Get me out.”
The crow didn’t take much convincing in the first place, and only offered up the smallest of objections, that being “but it’s heaven. Where else could you go?”
“Not proper perfect,” said god, not unreasonably. “So can’t be heaven.”
This argument made a lot of sense, especially as to how a perfect bird could die. No matter how perfect you were, if you weren’t in a perfect place, too, you could still get in trouble.
“How nasty of them to trap you away in a nasty little imitation!” said the crow. “If there’s a way, I’ll get you out of here. Besides, I know a few birds who could use some favours. A few at least. Well, none as much as me.”
“Of course,” said god. “Little man feeds at eight. Watch keypad.”
The crow waited and watched. In a suitably reverent manner, of course. God generously gave her the gift of a single strawberry, half-nibbled. The crow passed the remainder of the day humming crude approximations of some of the verses she’d heard in the church.
The human that came in with the food – he left it at a respectful distance – didn’t seem very little to the crow, especially around his belly. Nevertheless, her eyes were keen and his fumbling at the lock was slow, and the combination was securely tucked away in her mind soon enough: 8-6-3-5. He left one of his gloves tucked under the dish, she noticed with disdain. Honestly, wasn’t it enough for them to kill one god with garbage?
“Good,” said god. “Put it in.”
The crow put it in, god nudged the gate wide, and that would’ve been it if the human hadn’t just chosen that moment to remember his glove.
They stood there for a moment, god-to-ape, eye-above-eye (god was taller than him by maybe a foot, the crow judged).
Then god stuck out one foot with gentle force and shoved the human head over heels, then legged it.
She really could go at a tremendous clip, the crow marvelled. By the time she thought to follow, god had ducked away through the park and out of sight – and at night, too, with scarcely a friendly eye around to tell the crow when and where she’d gone.
“You’re crazy,” said the seagull.
“Not a sign,” said the sparrow, after a quick chat.
“What?” said the pigeon.
“Might have been, might have been,” said the starling. “I thought I heard something last night, but that could’ve just been my hearing playing up on me, what with the problems I’ve been having since my last mate pecked me in the head until I started bleeding everywhere. Now, that was a –”
When at last every trail had been proven cold as a corbie’s heart, the crow took her dashed hopes back to the church’s eves, where she’d found a nice sort of nook of miscellaneous twigs that she suspected had been a forgetful pigeon’s attempt at nestbuilding. It saved effort.
“Come crawling back with more questions?” asked a sardonic voice, and she knew the cat was beneath her again.
“Not at all,” she said, turning up her beak in disdain. His voice didn’t even sound particularly deep to her anymore.
“Oh really?” he said. “I don’t hear any more insults. You’re awfully thin on your bragging, little mouthful. What’s wrong, did your bird-god fly away?”
“She ran,” said the crow, with perfect dignity. “I let her out, and she ran. And soon she’ll be back in heaven any day now, and the very first favour I’m asking for is for you to lose all your fur to mange and fleas. So there.”
The cat chuckled, but his tail twitched alarmingly as he walked away. That was good enough for the crow, who was too busy consoling herself to trouble much over whatever he was up to.
“Of course she’ll get back eventually,” she said. “It’ll just take a little bit of time. Heaven’s a long way away or everybody would know where it was, and she does have to walk all the way – not that walking makes her less perfect, of course. Of course it’ll take a while. Of course”
She listened to the singing in the building underfoot, and began to hum along to the fancier, more interesting tunes.
“Well,” she said, after a minute, “maybe she could just spare a few little favours on the way. One at least. Surely.”
So she cawed along to improve some of the songs, and she prayed a bit. Because anything a human could do, a crow could do twice over.