Crow & Raven

Mid-winter before dawn, when the warmth of summer is furthest away. The north is desolate.

The forests are cleared as the animals are down for their long sleep. The skies are clear. The

moon reflects off of the snow. The deer know that an open field is never safe, even at night,

even in the dead of winter. Something is always hungrier than they are fast. Something is

always watching, waiting for a momentary lapse, a turned head, a blind eye.

On the edge of the forest, a young buck was looking for water. He had only two or three

winters behind him, enough to give him a few points on his head, and no more in front of it.

This was its first winter on its own. It was looking for water. Eating snow would be good for

hiding his breath - his father showed him – but it was bad for thirst. It only makes the body

thirstier.

Weird shadows cast from the light of the full moon reached out from the forest and

onto the barren field. The recent snowfall had been untouched. It looked that way. There were

horses nearby, friends of the deer, a few chickens, and pigs besides. This was mostly a safe

place. There were other weird animals, long, tall things that made noises with their mouths, but

they left food and did not disturb while drinking. In their way, they were good. Buck kept to the

shadows anyway. He was a while without his spots, but not confident enough to walk in the

field without his mother or one of the women present.

Buck looked at the places where the animals slept. The horses, a lot like him but slower

to react, slept in the bigger of the two. The animals with the food slept in the other. Sometimes

there was light and noise, but not now. It was quiet. It felt safe.

Buck stepped carefully out of the shadows. His auburn fur looked a darker brown in the

moonlight. His eyes glistened with stars.

He walked to the flats where the water was good. He would have to watch his step to

avoid falling in the sinkholes. He had done that a few times as a fawn, and struggled ferociously

to get out again. If he walked too far he would reach the creek. The water was only drinkable

when it flowed in one direction. The other way it was no good at all. But the best water was in

the holes. It drew from the creek and cleaned the water. Sometimes he would see a crab or

some minnows that had made their way in. Those times, he found another place and left them

be.

Buck took his time walking across the snowy flat. It crunched softly with each step,

coming up a little ways past his ankle. He settled on a sinkhole a short way out on the flat, one

that was brimming with water from the high tide. In a few hours, just after daybreak, it would

drop down again and be too low for him to drink. He took advantage of the timing and filled his

belly with the cold, fresh water.2

Across the flats, under the moon, there were two sets of eyes watching him. One was

off to the right in the trees. They belonged to the hunter who had Buck in his sights, but Buck

never saw him. The other belonged to a buck as tall and sturdy as an oak tree. The elder buck

was bright white with deep blue eyes that told Buck many stories. The two of them locked eyes

for a long time, and something in the elder buck’s eyes told young Buck to step forward and not

be afraid.

And so they walked together, side by side, out of the world and into the long summer,

where there was always water.

Taka remembered the story every time he went hunting. Every animal, he once heard,

has a story. They have lives, they have hearts, they have spirits and ancestors.

Taka was not one of the Old People. His ancestors had come to the land hundreds of

years ago when the Old People, the Siritzi, the Tandandi, the Migmak, when they were being

forced out so that people like his ancestors could take the land for themselves. Along the way

they kidnapped women and made them slaves, forced the women to speak their language and

adopt their customs, knowing full well that those women could never be the men’s equals –

even if they were the same people as the men. But the women were smart. They taught the

children in secret, away from their fathers. They gave the children charms and stories and songs

which they passed to their children, and their children, and forever until they made their way to

Taka and his sister. The Old People survived in other places, flung from their homes and

separated from the land, he knew. For him there was some distinction. Maybe it was in the way

he saw himself. He was not one of The Old People, but he was not one of the new people

either.

He thought of the stories often. He had time, living as far in the woods as he did. He

remembered stories from primary school, where an old teacher had taught them about The Old

People’s ways of living. They learned to trap beavers, muskrat and rabbits, the children did, and

learned about how to use their pelts and meat to live comfortably. They never actually caught

the animals in school, of course, but they learned about the traps and how they worked. That

was enough for Taka.

He had improvised his first trap using a bit of wire from his grandfather’s barn. The old

mariner had every kind of tool that a person in his line of work would ever need, anything one

would need to build, mend and repair a boat, or to hunt a deer in the dead of winter. There

were a few summers of tools and supplies going missing. Nothing too big or expensive, nothing

obvious, but the wire spools were always a bit shorter and the tools often had a bit more wood

in them than the old man remembered.

Taka often remembered the music on his morning hunts. He might have been ten or

eleven when he first heard the drums and flutes that his teacher had played for them in class.3

That had been years ago. How many, he was not sure, but it was some time. The sound of the

flute against the running water of the creek that ran out behind their school, the smell of the

spring grass and saturated sweetness of the trees’ new growth were all etched in his memory.

They burned there and kept him warm through the long, cold winter hunts.

He trudged out onto the flat, dragging behind him the wooden toboggan that his

grandmother had made in the style taught to her by her grandmother, all the way back. He

stopped in front of the deer and took a knee beside it. He put one hand on the wound in the

deer’s throat, where the bullet had gone in, and thought about the story he told himself every

time he hunted. He wasn’t sure why he did it. Maybe it was part of the ritual. But he liked to

believe that the deer, the rabbits, the fish, all of the animals, had their own story that kept

unfolding, before him and after him.

A little later.

He had loaded the deer up on the toboggan and dragged it back home, only a short

ways away from the flat. Had the deer been a little further back on his uncle’s farm, he would

have been in for a world of problems, but the flats were fair game. It was more about startling

the horses than hunting. Taka strung the buck up by the ankles with some old rope, yellowed

stuff that had frayed and started falling apart, basically thick twine. He tied each ankle

individually and went over to the pulley to get it in place. Once strung up, he put a bucket

under its head, drew his knife and cut the buck’s jugular. It would take a while, but the bucket

would be full by the end of the school day.

Taka went in the back door. It was only marginally warmer in the porch than it was

outside. Sometimes it was colder in than out. He tapped his foot on the edge of the door to

clean his boots off, then switched to his inside shoes. They were made of doeskin and kept

good warmth. Most of his clothes were made of something hunted; beaver for the lower half,

doe for the upper half, and a bearskin button up with sleaves that was not quite a jacket but

was not a cloak or cape either. The hood was made from the bear’s head, its eyes and skull

removed, but he had wanted the teeth kept in, so his grandmother made a jaw plate and

affixed them. She had read his want and put some blue marbles in where the eyes had been.

They had no practical purpose, but he thought they looked cool.

Taka hung the bear up on a hook near the door. It had started snowing lightly, leaving

him with a few sparkling droplets once they warmed up and melted. The bear would be fine like

that, but he would want to get it by the fire for a few minutes before leaving for school.4

The fire had died down to a few embers. He anticipated that much before he made it to

the living room, and grabbed a few split logs from the hall on the way in. The iron door creaked

open revealing the glowing rubies inside. He nudged them around with the poker, put two of

the split logs on, closed the door and turned the handle.

He looked at the clock. Five am. In theory he could crash for another two hours, maybe

two and a half, before he would have to be up and on his way out the door. The risk that came

with that was oversleeping, missing the bus and feeling the wrath of the bear still yet sleeping.

He mulled it over while he kneeled next to the woodstove, waiting for the iron to warm up and

fill the one room while the rest of the house stayed one step above the refrigerator.

What would be the plan for the day? he wondered. There was school from nine until

three nineteen, the longest school day in the oblast for reasons unknown, particularly

considering the low graduation rate and tendency of students to take months off to work in

fishing, lobstering another industry. Then he would have to clean the deer, pack it away and

help his sister with the bread. She would take care of the wash and sewing, though he hated

the idea of her going to the creek as she sometimes did. They had a washer. Not often did they

have hot water, but they did have the washer. Shallah was just stuck on doing it her own way.

And what after that? There was homework to be done at some point, but he could

always save that for the bus ride. He had forty minutes each way to get that work done, but

more often than not the bus ride to and from school was a time for sleep, reflection and

shittalking with those few friends.

Taka opened the woodstove and poked around at the logs. The embers had grown to

fire which had spread up into the splinters and now the fire was starting to give off a little bit of

warmth. Taka prodded them a bit, getting them into position and put the other two pieces of

wood on. He closed the door and turned the handle once more, and felt his heart leap into his

throat when he saw the pallid hazel eyes glaring at him from the doorway.

The Shape stared right through him. The whites around the coloured irises had turned a

deep, cracked crimson, a sign that she had not slept again last night. She was standing there in

the dark of the dining room holding a glass of water, night gown draped over her, hair in knots,

not blinking. It was not sleepwalking, exactly. Sleepwalkers have to sleep. It was more of a

catatonic state that involved some moving.

“Mom,” he exhaled, “you have to stop doing that.” Taka climbed up to his feet. He had

made the mistake of rushing to help her before. She seldom remembered to cut her fingernails,

which was the first place his eyes went. He did not like that she was holding a glass. At least this

time it wasn’t a knife or a fork, or anything made of metal, but even a kitchen glass could be a

nightmare if she was in it deep again.

“Mom?” he said. The lights were on but no one was home. He stepped forward gingerly.

The hand with the glass trembled. She pulled her lips back over her teeth, eyes locked, staring5

him down. Her breathing intensified so that her chest rose and fell in heaves. It was like looking

at a skeleton with a very thin layer of skin over it, a mad stack of bones waiting to leap into new

flesh. There was only enough light cast from the one lamp to show about half her face, and that

half was enough to show the dead light in her eyes. Taka reached out slowly, knees bent and

right hand drawn back in case he needed the poker. It had never happened before, but –

He flicked the glass out of her hand onto the ugly, tiger print carpet of the dining room

and reached for her elbow. He took it gently, but firm. She did not seem to notice the glass, but

closed her mouth and turned to meet his eyes.

“Mom?”

“Hm?”

He breathed a sigh of relief and put her back to bed.