On a rare day in October when the Sun broke through the dense clouds, three sisters gathered with their friends and parents on a beach. It was the youngest sister’s seventeenth birthday and the family had decided to celebrate at the edge between forest and ocean, amongst the yellow Salmonberries and autumn Mushrooms. After the usual ceremony of birthday cake and gift unwrapping, while the parents lit a small bonfire beside the covered picnic table, the sisters and their friends traipsed down to the beach to follow the ghostly paths of their childhood spent clambering over driftwood and building a fort under two fallen Spruces at the forest’s edge.
“Remember when we left food in the fort and the Ravens found it?” they reminisced. “Remember when the tide came in so high that we pretended the driftwood tree was a pirate ship?”
‘What did you find, Ina?’ the eldest sister asked of the birthday girl.
“It’s too small to be a Raven,” observed Ina as she pulled a bird skull from the creek beside the children’s fort. “It must be a Crow.” The others all crowded in close, eager to see Ina’s treasure. Though she held it out for them to see, Ina felt very protective of the delicate skull, and soon withdrew from the crush of curious sisters and friends. No one noticed her slip away. Clutching the skull to her breast, Ina wandered the beach and soon found herself blown along the water’s edge by a chill wind. Seagulls screeched and dispersed when a cacophony of Crows — the largest flock she had ever seen — flooded the beach, surrounding her with their wingbeats and rasping caws. The Crows paid Ina no mind, but set to work devouring the Mollusks and Sculpins at the edge of the tide. One Crow, however, lie on the beach, blood oozing from wounds, wings and legs mangled.
“You poor bird!” cried the girl, tenderly lifting the battered bird to rest beside her breast beside the Crow skull. “I have to get you to the raptor center so they can help you.”
Much to Ina’s surprise, the Crow spoke in a rasping voice, “No raptor center can help me, but there is something that you can do to ease my suffering.”
“What is it?” the girl whispered, not quite trusting that she hadn’t imagined the Crow speaking.
“I fear it is too much to ask of you,” demurred the Crow.
“Tell me what it is and I will do it.” Ina did not understand her own conviction, but some part deep inside of her, the part that tenderly held the Crow skull in her hand, felt certain that she needed to care for this Crow no matter the cost to herself.
“I will not blame you if you feel what I ask is too much,” the Crow eyed her sideways, “because you must not return home, but stay with me in the children’s fort in the forest above the beach. As you might have guessed, I am more than I appear, and I have the ability to hide the fort so that people will not find you if you do not wish them to, but beyond that I cannot do. In the night, things will come to frighten you, but no matter what, you must not scream, otherwise my suffering will double.”
Ina agreed. What other choice was there? She carried the Crow back along the beach and up to the fort. The wind had died down, but they did not encounter another Human on their way. Two Spruce trees had blown over in a windstorm years before, and the town’s children had piled branches and bark against them, binding it all together in a kind of black mud adobe. They had dug out the loamy earthen floor so that the whole space was both wild and cozy. The Crow’s magic encased the fort so that water flowed off the steep sides, down the nearby creek, and out to the ocean.
Ina made a little bed for the wounded Crow and a shelf for her Crow skull, then spent the rest of the day gathering firewood when passers by and their Dogs would not see her.
The Crow’s cryptic warning about things coming to scare her in the night rattled around Ina’s mind, especially as the Sun sank low behind the clouds and islands, and the temperature dropped along with it. She stoked the fire, her mind turning over all the possible hauntings that could come in the night. As darkness wrapped its cloak around the little fort, Ina heard the rustle of wings and the scraping of talons over wood and bark. She bit her lips together to keep from screaming when the shadows began to fill her sanctuary. Crow after Crow sauntered in and hopped over to where she shrank into the deepest recess of the fort, pecking at her clothes and biting her fingers. Though she resisted every way she could, they pulled her out of her shelter and hauled her down the beach. Perceiving they meant to drown her, Ina pushed back harder as they neared the ocean, but she kept her mouth tightly shut. Then, just as Ina felt the water lapping at her toes, the Crows ceased their torment and the entire flock took to the sky. Ina looked around to see what had caused their sudden change and saw the first rays of sunrise peeking up over the mountains to the east.
When Ina returned to the fort, exhausted and relieved, the wounded Crow looked up from the little bed Ina had made and thanked her, “If you had not been so strong, they would have pecked me within a feather of my life.”
Ina collapsed beside the wounded Crow and slept until late in the day.
