It began with the two most dangerous of things: a stomach that held too little and a head that held too much. And nowhere was there a more capricious vessel for these two traits than the body and soul of a common crow.
Well, the crow is an ingenious bird. There was no food available? Then he would find it! He flapped forth with purpose.
There was no food in the tall grey woods. They were quiet and dim with the late autumn air, berries plucked and rodents nested.
There was no food in the wide brown fields. They were emptied of harvest, emptied of care, lying cold and waiting for the white blanket.
There was no food by the rushing blue streams. They had sunk into a dull-colour fugue now, as dim as the skies. Fish no longer bothered to leap.
There was no food in the busy many-coloured city. There had been a glut of scraps and filth in the summer, steaming under the sun, but the cold kept people (and their garbage) indoors and out of the way.
And it was there, as he perched on the corner of a building, consumed by annoyance and the bite of an angry belly, that the crow’s eyes alighted upon a none-too-notable thing: two passing noble-men, heads bent, hands waving. Discussing serious matters as serious men did.
And for many animals that would have been that. But he was a crow, and an ingenious bird whose head held too much, and that set him straight-footed as to what was to be done.
The men separated at a street corner with a handshake. Business concluded, backs were turned.
A pebble. A perch. Bonk.
“What was that for?”
“What?”
“You hit me!”
“I did no such thing.”
“Liar!”
“Lout!”
And soon there were blades and shouts and rough things and there was a fine two-hundred-pound meal cooling in the crisp November air for the crow, and he got a good cropful out of it before other, paler, calmer men arrived to take it away. And the best bits too – the soft round things that had stared so emptily at the sky.
One of them threw a pebble at him, but the crow was a canny sort, and he dodged it.
A scant week later and winter had moved in, curdled the waters of the land into solid mass and bedecked the trees in frozen jewels. Food became scarcer still and the crow was not hungry alone. He and his murder grew thin and cold together, fat sleek-feathered bodies wearing ragged. Something had to be done.
Well, it was simple enough. Few things are smarter than a crow, but one of those things is several crows. And they have excellent memories.
Down the streets it trundles, the carriage of the great family, footmen clinging to it like monkeys, wheels dancing on ice patches. The memorial service for their lost boy had been delayed by shock. Nobody had expected to have to arrange such a thing, not now, so young; not here, so close to home and far from war.
They arrived at the cemetery, side by side with another procession, a very similar procession. The cut dealt to their own had been slower and crueler, but there had been no doubt of its result within hours. Their son had lived to help plan his own funeral.
The two groups devoted all their ears to their priests as best as they could, to stay civil. They ignored each other. They ignored the city. They ignored the tired, bare trees that stood around them.
They also ignored the crows.
Bonk.
“Did he-“
“Shh. Not now.”
Bonk.
“Why-!”
“Don’t-“
“I felt that, I saw him look at me!”
“Why would I look at you, murderer?”
“The same to your own!”
“Sto-“
“Shut up! I’ll say what we all should!”
Bonk
Bonk
and it all went along quite predictably from there. Alas, the gap between riot and cleanup was briefer this time, public as it was, but still there was time – and no shortage of targets – for the murder to fill itself to the point of bursting. They had been very hungry indeed, and in the weeks to come and the burials to arrange the glass-blowers found much work in artificial eyes. Ten pairs.
Winter reigned, cruel and clean, sharp enough to cut but soft enough to numb it away. The city shrank under it, and in such a tight space the fighting never quite ceased. In the streets, in the squares, under the rafters. It was beyond the close relatives now, of course. Both could afford to hire men to do this sort of thing for them.
A meeting was arranged. Cooler heads must prevail, this was all out of hand. Already lesser houses, smaller houses were beginning to rustle and rumble, to pick sides. Nobody really wanted this to get much larger. Surely they didn’t.
That’s what they told themselves as they all sat at the long, long table, face to face with those they could not look in the eye. None of them wanted this. It was the other ones. Their fault. Why did they force our hands?
The papers were already on the table, lying alone at its center, still half-unwrapped. Nobody wanted to touch them.
Tap-tap-tap on the glass. A welcome distraction for the man seated nearest to it, a private moment of relief noticed by no-one else. His son was dead, and now one of his cousins, and he had to keep quiet but it was so hard, so hard. Yes, this would take his mind off this room full of people he hated. Whatever was at the window. Just for an instant, he could be somewhere else, in mind if not body.
The crow met the man’s gaze cheerfully. Dangling from his beak was a single, hazy-brown eyeball.
He watched as the man rose from his seat and began to walk towards the far end of the table, and knew that his work was done. And he was thankful that he had remembered the colour of the soft, slippery meal he had enjoyed months and more ago.
Low winter now. Still harsh, but full of rot. Wet, but dead. Slush and slurry in every footfall, muck and mud spattering every drift. Snow turns to ice turns to water turns to slurry turns to ice. And everywhere, everywhere, the men added to the thaw with their own steaming red.
There was food in the tall grey woods, whose trees had been cut to serve as timbers in forts that lay half-burning. A great deal of food.
There was food in the wide brown fields, where farms burned to deny the enemy’s stomachs and many boots turned soil to mud.
There was food bobbing in the rushing blue streams – roiling and furious with the flow of water, churning flesh against stone until the blood ran out down to the sea.
And there was more and more food even in that cold, cold many-coloured city, where many more each day rose and found themselves lacking meals of their own. The beggars had been the first to feel its pinch, but that had been weeks ago, and now an empty plate was a natural plate.
The crow was happy. Its eyes were bright, its beak shone, its feathers were fluffed and contented over a strong and well-nourished body that had just recently passed muscular and moved into plump. Everywhere it went there was food. Everywhere its kin moved there was food. Necessity had mothered this grand invention, and in doing so had obsoleted itself. Its life was content. And look! More food down there, lying on a corner, slumped down to stare up at the heavens that cared not! And its eyes too – what luck!
As the crow wheeled down from the sky, eager and ready, small, trembling hands settled their grip on a primitive little wooden thing, a tumbledown patchwork of old bits of wood and hope and string made from its owner’s hair. It was frail and it was ridiculous and it was a remarkable invention indeed.
But then, its owner had been motivated, driven by the same thing that led to the perfect care in her wrists as she took aim with her little short-bow. Once she would have turned up her nose at such things, but little is a greater call to action than a stomach that holds too little in conjunction with a head that holds too much.