Raven Gifts

I sit out day after day in the northern sun that never sets. How can people sleep? And yet they do, billions of them do, forever now.

But I won't think about that.

I sit facing the midden heap. After a while, if I wait long enough, Lukas will come from the snug nest he's made in one of the mounds.

He scrambles out head first. Silver in the puff of feathers at his throat. When did that come in?

And then I remember. It was a little before he lost the ability to fly. Stiff-winged now, he hops or climbs with determined patience to get to where he's going.

A lot of work to make that nest. The midden heap was mostly mid-century plastic. There was a town here once. Or maybe just an arctic way station. Something to do with NORAD. A pipeline camp. Who knows. There's not enough left to tell.

In our early days at this camp, Lukas used to fly back a long way and not return for weeks. Three months once. I thought I'd lost him. But then he came back.

He used to seek out perfect twigs and branches. He thought it was the lack of a proper nest that stopped him from attracting a mate. He never said so, but I knew.

After that last trip, he never went out again. He figured out there were no more perfect twigs. He built his nest from whatever scraps of fabric and broken driftwood he could find.

I am not Lot's wife. I do not look back. Sometimes, though, I wonder what Lukas saw. The end of trees, I suppose. They all burned. And then it rained. For years it rained.

How did he survive? What did he eat? How did he get here?

For that matter, how did I?

Details fade. Memories smear. I keep forgetting things.

A lot more people were supposed to come here. They were going to make new land but then, somehow, they didn't. The water came up too fast. Or they decided to stay on their boats.

When it rains for years on end, what need for land? Or so it must have seemed at the time.

I don't remember.

Lukas has a low throaty voice. He croaks a song to himself as he hops stiff-winged around the mound. When it was new, the midden heap used to be all the colors of the world. This far north, where the sun never seems to set, colors fade.

Maybe they fade everywhere. Who knows.

“Hey, boy,” I say.

Lukas pecks at something. A hint. Anything edible was eaten long ago.

“Come on.”

He scramble-hops to where I sit. There's a stack of boxes in crates, but the stack is growing shorter. No one has come to replenish the boxes in a long time.

They are forgetting. When carbon dioxide reaches 3,000 parts per million, everyone is brain-damaged. Why do I remember that when I've forgotten so much else?

The can opener is old and sticky. It takes a while to get the can open. Sometimes, it just won't catch, and I have to work the old knife around to get the lid the rest of the way off. It's water-packed tuna. What a nuisance. I'll have to open a second can to be sure Lukas has enough calories.

“Fish breath,” I say.

Lukas doesn't mind. He has no one to build for and no one to smell pretty for either.

The last raven. The last old human. As far as we know.

We only see children now. They don't live long enough to grow old. An adaptation to the carcinogens in the environment. Breed young, breed fast, and it doesn't matter if you die at twenty. I suppose you don't need brains capable of calculus for that.

Lukas must be thirty or forty now. A great age for a raven, either way. Only it seems as if he's even older...

Best not to think about the silver patches at his throat. Self-conscious, I touch my own throat. Ridiculous to fear turkey neck after the world ends. I could have a neck smooth as a swan, and I'd still be old to the children. A fossil from olden times.

Lukas is on the midden heap. I must have dozed off long enough to miss his slow hopping progress back. He tugs at something.

Gold, I think. Although I can't know, can't see anything from here. A bit of chain, maybe.

And yet I do know. He scramble-walks back toward me, the offering clutched in his sturdy beak. I open my hand, and he drops the heart-shaped locket in my palm, only somehow I can't grasp it, somehow it slides through.

It looks as if it falls right through the flesh of my hand. Although, of course, that's impossible.

“You can sleep now.” Lukas can't speak, and yet I'm not surprised when he does. It suddenly seems to me that we've talked like this before.

“You'll starve if I sleep,” I say.

The raven evolved with the wolf. Despite the legends, they were not mere thieves and tricksters. They flew high and spotted herds from above, showed the wolves where to go. They spotted danger too.

Still, the ravens failed to spot the greatest danger, and all the wolves are gone. They were among the first to go.

And ravens cannot hunt and kill their own food, not enough of it. They cannot employ can openers.

“We can both sleep,” he says. “I grow weary.”

I say nothing.

“You can't haunt this place until the end of time.”

It seems to me that we already have. Though you can't haunt a place where the sun never sets.

I must nod off again. When I wake, Lukas is tugging a chain out of a mound of vintage garbage. A sudden pop, and he stumbles back fluttering his wings to regain his balance.

And then he hops toward me. Slowly, stiff-winged, but legs and beak still strong.

He drops the locket into my open hand. It falls through to the ground.

“After the asteroid struck, the average global temperature warmed by fourteen degrees Celcius. The oceans died. Most of the land animals. What land there was. Mostly, it was underwater. Thirty million years later, the world was full again."

Lukas cannot say that. Lukas is incapable of human speech. And yet I hear him say it.

“We can't sit here by this midden heap for thirty million years,” he says.

I open a can of tuna. I say, “Fish breath.”

He goes back to dig up the locket again. Somehow, it's back in the midden heap. How did it roll all the way over there?

“We know a lot of things we could tell the people who come next,” is what I finally say. “We should wait and tell them.”

He's the silent one now.

“Well,” I say. “Then how long can we wait?”

More silence. Finally: “The island is underwater now, but while it was there, people regularly reported they saw ghosts of a battle fought at Towton during the English War of the Roses.”

And when was that? Hundreds of years ago, I think. Not even thousands.

Certainly not millions.

He's a smart bird. He has a point. It's easy to grow weary when you're waiting.

Lukas is back on the midden heap tugging at a golden chain. One day, he'll understand. One day, he'll come around to clasp the heart-shaped locket behind my neck, and all our memories will be restored.

That will work, I think. It must. Yes, lockets aren't meant to be dropped in a hand. He must place the chain around my throat.

I have to remember.

We are not ghosts. Ghosts are the last flickering images of the dead. We are not dead.

We have memories. Some memories anyway.

Sometimes, the children bring offerings. They ask for favors we have no way to grant.

They can't remember. We must remember for them. That's the only favor we can grant.

We can remember everything. I know we can.

When Lukas clasps the locket around my neck. When he gets his body back. When he gets his hands. When it's night again, candles on the table at the restaurant, Lukas laughing as he clasps the gold chain about my neck, his hand sliding down to help the locket fall at the hollow of my throat...

When did he put on his feathers? Why can't I put on feathers too and join him in his nest? How did I forget that part?

I must remember. It seems to be the most important thing I can remember.

When I get that part back, we'll start the world over. Lukas and I, the two of us together, snug in our nest, we'll do it. As long as you can start the world over, you're not a ghost.

If you liked this story, please hit the <3 button. Tips gratefully accepted. I created the composite illustration from images created by these photographers:

Raven by Meg Jerrard via Unsplash

Landfill by Andrei Ciobanu via Unsplash