Corvid

. . . evidence of the earliest true civilization was a healed femur . . . such healings were never found in the remains of competitive, savage societies. There, clues of violence abounded: temples pierced by arrows, skulls crushed by clubs. But the healed femur showed that someone must have cared for the person—hunted on his behalf, brought him food, and served him at personal sacrifice.

Apocryphal

I. Errands

I’m going to try this one more time, and if this asshole still doesn’t understand what’s happening, I’m going to peck him in the eye. Once again, I pick up the hard-circle with my beak and drop it right next to his foot. He shoots me another big stupid smile as he tosses his bread toward the swim-beaks. Do I need a different hard-circle? One of the smaller brown ones? Does he want me to show the face side or the bird side? I look to his friend on the bench to see if she can help.

“Is it giving you a coin?” she asks.

Coins! They’re called coins.

“Yeah, I think it wants some bread. If he gets one more I’ll give him a whole slice.”

He tosses me a piece, and I scarf it down in an instant. I accept his challenge, and fly back to the tree. It’s annoying to take two trips, but it gives me time to think. I could just take some bread from the swim-beaks, but that would be dishonorable. I’d have to lie to the murder about how I got it, and I’m a bad liar.

I wonder whose face is on that coin. Are they alive? Are they important? Are they real, or do the giant-swarm trade in vague reflections of themselves?

About a minute later I get to the tree. I have a hard time squeezing my way through the entrance hole these days—I’m either getting fatter or stronger. Soft-Feather is tinkering with some twigs. “You’re back early,” she teases. “Slim pickings?”

“No, actually I think I’ve found something good. Where do we keep the coins?”

“Coins?”

“Sorry, hard-circles.”

“Under that pile of leaves right there.”

“Okay, thanks. And they’re called coins by the way: Scribble that down.”

I grab another coin and fly off, as she takes a blue soft-writer and etches “c . . . o . . . i . . . n . . . z” on the back wall of the hole.

Flying back to the bench, I notice a plume-tail fighting with a swim-beak. They are one of the few things in this world that I fear. They skitter around and dig ferociously for nuts they’ve buried in places they can’t remember. One time I saw one violate another in a profound way—I rapidly dart my head back to the front and swerve out of the way of the tree branch I almost hit just now. I don’t know why I’ve developed a habit of zoning out at random intervals. I think something in my brain is trying to revert itself back to the way it was before the dream. I used to think in grunts and squawks, and now I think in language.

I get close to the bench. He’s still there, thank god. I place the coin right next to the other one. He looks confused and a little bit scared. He tosses two slices of bread to the swim-beaks, and two to me. He gets up and walks away. I turn to the woman on the other end of the bench, and give her one of the coins as a “thank you” gift. She just stares at me for a second before turning away awkwardly. I wish I understood why they always have this reaction, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I got what I needed. I take one slice in each claw and fly back home.

I arrive to find Broken-Beak in the hole with Soft-Feather, fiddling with his namesake. “Black-Wing, I think I fixed it!” He’s oddly eager to show me whatever desperate fix  he’s come up with this time. To plug the hole where his top beak used to be, he’s taped a small blue piece of plastic to some sharp sticks and made a crude imitation.

“It looks good,” I lie, “but does it work?”

“I guess we’ll see. Soft-Feather, do you want us to bring anything back?”

My nest-mate answers, “Yeah, some more twigs for the nest, maybe a sweet-rock—”

“Those are called Candies. I heard one of the giant-swarm say it the other day,” Broken-Beak interrupts.

“Right, let me scratch that down.” She darts to the back wall, picks out a red soft-writer, and writes “candeez” on the wood, under a list of red words topped by “food,” next to a blue column topped by “materealz,” a green one titled “animalz,” etc. There seems to be an elaborate color coding system, one that’s at critical mass, as there’s little space left on the wall.

She notices this. “We’re getting pretty smart. I think we’ve figured out most of their words.”

“Yeah,” I sheepishly react. I feel like I should be more amused by this. “Let’s go, Beak. We don’t want to miss the rush.”

We fly over the southwest corner of the park, carefully zooming past the metal tree to perch on the black line attached to it.

“Welcome to the line, brother,” a stranger greets me.

“The line sees all,” I reply, following the script. I’m on board with all of our rituals and pleasantries but this one has always confused me. Why do I need to be welcomed to the line every time I go? That just doesn’t seem necessary.

In contrast, I never grow tired of the view. Even on the dreariest day, this place that the giant-swarm have built . . . it feels impossible. The soft gray clouds accentuate the hard gray of the concrete buildings, an army of them in varying sizes. They’ve decided to segment the ground in an odd way; a bounty of space for the metal-beasts, which frequently run over and kill individual swarm, who in turn get small strips of concrete on either side to walk. If you observe them long enough, you’ll get to see their companions, of sorts. The leash-born. Their visual diversity also feels impossible, ranging from small and adorable to large and terrifying. Our elders tell horror stories of them snatching us out of the air and swallowing us whole, much to the chagrin of the giant-swarm. It’s an interesting dynamic, one species being in control of the other, but not entirely. I think of fashioning a string around the neck of a plume-tail and making it find food for me. That’s not a bad idea, actually. I’ll bring it up at the next gathering.

I’m too absorbed in my own internal monologue to realize that Broken-Beak has somehow gathered five shelled nuts, and nestled them into a corner near the end of the line. He asks me if it’s time to open them.

“You do the first few. I’m going to relax a little bit.” I watch him work—he’s better than me now. He clutches a nut with both claws and flies high above the ground. The metal-beasts follow a strange pattern that seemingly corresponds with the rhythm of several colored boxes around the area. They take turns navigating the pathways as the lights change. When one line of beasts is finished, there’s a brief moment when all four herds of them are still before the next one moves, and that’s when Broken-Beak swoops down, places the nut in between the white lines on the path, and flies away before the herd moves again. When the light changes, the black wheel of the metal-beasts cracks the shell. The light changes again, and he retrieves the contents. He repeats this process four more times, gathering the nuts in a small pile in a nearby tree-hole. I’ll help him take them back home, but for now, I just admire his skill. He’s felt the need to prove himself since he’s become such a burden. I can’t lie and say that helping him eat isn’t a chore, but I can say that it’s worth it ten times over.

II. Mass

“We are the murder, the murder of crows. Caw.”

“Caw.”

“We fly, we take, we perch, as is our birthright. Caw.”

“Caw.”

“This world belongs to the giant-swarm; their buildings tower, their whims provide. Caw.”

“Caw.”

“We honor the giant-swarm, for it is their cadence we follow. Caw.”

“Caw.”

“We remember the first dream: to survive and earn our place among the species. Caw.”

“Caw.”

“We yearn for the second dream: to live as the giant-swarm, after them or beside them. Caw.”

III. Wisdom

We hang out on the line for a while, chatting up some strange crows. They’re from a park two miles away. I’m struck by how far this thing has spread out. A few moons ago, my friend Scream-Tree tried to fly as far as he could—he had some weird sense that he could push it to forty miles. He still hasn’t come back. Did he find another murder? Did he spread the dream? I like to imagine he did.

We all look at each other, and silently agree to acknowledge the crow at the end of the line, who’s been staring into space all by himself this entire time.

“Don’t even try to talk to him,” said Shock-Claw. “He’s an elder, but he’s messed up. He saw some things. Something with the swarm.”

“We think he’s ten years old—which can’t be true, but he looks it,” adds Dark-Peck.  He barely finishes explaining before Broken-Beak flies over. I apologize on his behalf and follow him.

“I’m Broken-Beak, what’s your name?”

Silence.

“Can you guess why?” Beak has many positive qualities, but he’s not a natural charmer. He’s almost three years old, but he’s never had a nest-mate. We all sit there for a minute before our new friend introduces himself.

“Long-Flight. Pleasure to meet you. Are you part of the project?”

His words are benign, yet somehow make me more uncomfortable than his silence. “The project?” I ask.

“Yeah, this . . . thing. What do you guys call it?”

“The . . . dream? The second dream?”

“Yeah. You should stop.”

That’s . . . awfully presumptuous. “Why? We’re making progress, we’ve decoded most of their words.”

“Uh huh . . .”

Between his strained, gravely voice and the twinges of gray in his feathers, I start to believe the ten-years thing. “Why not?”

“You don’t want to be like them.” 

“Okay, whatever.”

Beak shoots me a “let’s stay” look, and I’m not really in the mood to object. This crow needs a friend and if Beak wants to be that, I support him. Several minutes go by before Long-Flight starts speaking, completely unprompted.

“The Swarm . . . they left. They were normal, then one day . . . I stood on this line and there was nothing. No metal-beasts, no leash-born. For weeks. And then some new metal-beasts came, big and white, they made this horrible shrieking noise. That’s all you could hear. That was the only sign they were still around. They stopped tossing us bread, they stopped dropping crumbs on the ground. A lot of us starved.”

“Wait, starved? To death? How long did this last?” Beak eggs him on.

“A while. I couldn’t keep track, it all just blurred together,” Flight responds.

“When was this?” I ask, letting my guard down as I become engrossed in the story.

“About three years ago. You guys were either just lain or hatchlings. Heh, I’ve been around so long that you guys still look like hatchlings to me.”

There are times where I wish our lifespans weren’t so comically short, yet after observing Flight, who is seemingly broken by the weight of even a few extra years, I lament it a little less.

I offer an end to this interaction, “Wow, that’s crazy. Thank god they came back though, right?”

“Yeah,” Flight agrees. “Yeah . . .” he repeats as he turns away from us.

After another moment of unbearable silence, before I can process the gravity of what he’s told us, Flight decides to unload the rest of his trauma:

“I don’t know what changed. One day, they were quiet. The next . . . there was fire. Fighting on the pathways. They would slip into this awful chorus, repeating things. They sounded like names, demands, some call to action. Blocks with words I haven’t learned to read. I don’t care to, not after that. I don’t want to be any more like them. And then . . .”

Don’t trail off now! “Then what?” I beg.

“I don’t know if they’re part of the swarm . . . or . . . something else. Another species. They came with new metal-beasts, bigger and stronger than the others. They had these tools, they launched these balls. They exploded and the air . . . became toxic. My family was flying overhead. I heard my hatchling start to cough, and I turned back and saw him cry and fall towards the ground. My nest-mate and I swooped down and tried to get him. They started throwing these tiny rocks that erupted, and made a noise louder than anything I’ve ever heard. It sounded like the end of the world. My nest-mate’s ears started bleeding; she never flew right after that.”

“How long did this last?” I ask, shaken.

“A few moons. Maybe even longer. After that . . . they just sort of went back to normal.”

The three of us take a few minutes to sit with all of that. We motion to leave, and he offers us some advice:

“They have these buildings, as big as some parks. Every square inch of them is filled with food. When things got bad, they took what was inside and burned them down. But usually, they just take it back to their homes. They store it in these special boxes, some of them with fruit—hell, some of them even have one just for bread. I applaud your commitment to the dream, but if you change your mind: pick a target, go in, take as much as you can, and fly away from here, as far as you can.”

Later that night, as Beak, Feather, and I are eating the nuts in the tree-hole, I ponder this. The blue plastic has fallen off of Beak’s face, so Feather has to take nut fragments and carefully place them in a hole, so Beak can swallow them. Not too big, or else he’ll choke. She does this while she sits on the eggs. Hours have gone by and I still can’t stop thinking about it. After dinner, we rest. Beak has his corner, Feather and I nestled against each other, picking aphids off each other’s feathers, playfully scratching each other with our claws. She falls asleep, and I dart towards Beak. I peck his face, he looks at me, and I tell him all I care to tell him:

“We’re getting that bread.”

IV. Old Routine

Peck. Peck. Squawk. Scratch. Flapflapflapflapflapflapflapflapfalfpaflalfpalflaplplpadlfap–perch. Look this way, look that way. Look at them. Look at them. Fly down on this—swoop down further–land right here. Peck. Peck. Peck peck. Squawk. Sit. Poop. Flapflapflapflapflap–land. Eat this. Peck that. Eat that. Grunt. Follow them. Peck them—fly away fly away fly away fly away fly awayflyawyaflyaywaflaywyaldflayflyayw—crunch.

V. The Harvest Heist

The four of us perch on the wiry metal construct outside of their quarters. Dark-Peck and Shock-Claw make their way towards the sheet of glass that interrupts the outside wall; Beak and I fly towards the one a few feet away. On my signal, Peck and Claw begin to ferociously tap the glass, alerting the male swarm, prompting him to open the glass and shoo them away. Just before he returns to his bed, Beak and I tap on our glass. The swarm’s nest-mate rises, we listen to her footsteps as she darts towards the glass. A leash-born is barking in the back. We jump above the glass as she opens the window. She peaks her head through but can’t find us. As she turns back to alert her nest-mate, we both slip small fragments of wood where the glass meets the plastic. She shuts it, not realizing the wood obstructs it from closing. She walks away. We wait until it’s quiet for a few minutes before we go in. I squawk lightly: “Now.”

It takes the full might of four fully grown crows to push the unlocked glass open. We all flap as softly as possible and scatter, looking for food. It takes the full might of three of us to grab the handle and open the door of a tall metal box, as Beak hops around the home to scope out the scene. I sit on a surface across from the box and marvel at it. It’s filled with things I don’t recognize, things that don’t even look like food. Glass bottles filled with strange liquids, plastic ones filled with water, pieces of meat between pieces of bread. It occurs to me that I’ve never tried meat before. I motion for Claw to help me grab it and prepare it for extraction, placing it by the open glass. I take note of the leash-born rustling in its bed. I’ve never seen one like this, short and stout, with a face that looks dysfunctional, smashed-in. Teeth protruding from its bottom jaw. Beak is too close to it; I whisper-scream at him to back away.

Peck opens some more containers attached to the elevated surfaces, grabbing small metal tools presumably used for eating. We grab them, loading them and the food into a small mesh bag that Beak stole from a closet.

On one of the surfaces, I notice a smaller white box with a handle on its hatch. I open it and . . . Flight was right. It’s just bread. It’s just a million different types of bread. A stupid amount of bread. Where do they get all of this bread? This one’s round? I can smell this other one through its plastic casing, it smells sweet and earthy, probably emanating from the brown swirls. One says . . . gluten free? What is “gluten?” Is it bad? Should we not be eating bread?

Peck and Claw are ready to go, I grab Beak and ask him to help me with all of this. We load three packages before running out of room in the bag, but I want all of it. We grab the last one—the round kind, I just now notice the holes in the middle. I claw the scrunched up bit of plastic on one end; Beak carefully punctures and grips the plastic sheen on the other. It’s heavier than we thought, but we can handle it. We fly facing each other, delicately lifting it towards the exit. After a few seconds of this, I turn around to see Peck and Claw are already gone.

Confused, I turn back to face Beak. The plastic rips and the round bread tumbles to the floor, as the leash-born leaps into the air and clenches its mangled jaw on Beak’s wing, cleanly ripping it off as it lands.