Well, then.
He called sharply to it, get up, go on. It looked up at him—understanding now that Dar Oakley had been following—and raised the stick, in welcome or gladness. Now how could Dar Oakley know that? But he was sure of it. He dropped from the branch and flew in the direction the young one should go, stopped and looked back. The two-legs still stood, but then, in the same sudden way that Dar Oakley had understood the being was lost, it understood that it was to follow the Crow. Come on, come on, Dar Oakley called, and the strange being, what could it be thinking, fell into a low crouch and began to move through the brush and over the fallen logs in the direction Dar Oakley had shown it, raising its head now and then to look around just like the Fox whose head and tail it bore! And it was Dar Oakley’s turn to laugh, for from where he sat above, it really did look for an instant like a prowling Fox.
In this way they went toward the thinning of the forest. The two-legs got tired of the Fox game and stood on its long legs. Dar Oakley never got very close to it—the young one seemed too lost and confused to be harmful, but Dar Oakley was no fool, and knew that trick.
Clouds smeared the sun darkwise. It seemed important that the little one reach its roost before night. He flew on, not straight but in long waves over the moorland, so that the two-legs child (he was sure now that it was a child) would see where he went. High up in an Oak he went—here he had rested on the day he had gone looking for a place where no Crows were, and almost got eaten. The child knew the way now, and was running as fast as its legs could go. It turned back once, though, and with its stick and a call seemed to summon Dar Oakley to come along.
So he did, flying on ahead again, then alighting and waiting for the two-legs to catch up. For the first time he thought how tedious it must be not to have wings. When they came in sight of the palisades of the settlement, he could see an older one standing there, one of those he had decided (without really knowing why) were females; when she at last caught sight of the young one in the tall grass, she came running to catch it up with cries, pull off the Fox’s skin from its head to tug at its hair, press her face to the young one’s face. The young one squirmed away, and pointed at Dar Oakley, though the older one wouldn’t look his way, only pulled at the young one to follow; and they went in through the gap in the palisade where the two fighters’ heads still stared down.
Dar Oakley mounted to the top of the palisade, found footing, and looked down into the settlement. The young one, seeing him there, called a greeting, and Dar Oakley, spoken to he was sure, answered with a calclass="underline" Here I am. He would think, long after, that this was the first time he had spoken in answer to one of the People. He wanted more. It was late in the day, he was hungry, but he was more curious than hungry.
He flew to the twiggy, rushy top of one of their shelters, and looked down into their places and their lives, their fires and the things they used, themselves coming and going in and out. He wasn’t the only bird there: there were the ground-nesting birds they kept, and Sparrows around him in the rushes, a Linnet that had got stuck in an arrangement of sticks by the entrance of the dwelling and couldn’t get out, singing its song. None of the settlers paid Dar Oakley any attention, except the one he’d led here, in the Fox cap. Older ones also tried to take the cap when the little one squatted among them, but they couldn’t snatch it. Their mouths moved constantly, making that long, soft murmuring they all made when together.
What were they saying, if they were saying anything, and not making sounds just for sound’s sake? If he could get close enough, maybe he could tell. Sometimes one would throw back her head and make a louder noise, the ka-ka-ka-ka that the little one had made in the forest, and the other would take it up in response. Mostly it was the low sound, the cooing like a fledgling Crow’s inquiries, but not that, and not the throbbing of Doves, either, whatever Doves meant by that noise they made all day long.
You might think that Crows must understand the languages of other birds at least, but it’s not so. Crows understand no one easily except one another. Everyone understands alarm calls, cries of distress or threat, anyone’s—the meaning’s clear enough—and Crows, like Jays and others, can imitate those cries when it serves them. Crows can understand some of the high speech of Ravens, but some words they share have other meanings when Ravens use them. For that matter, Crows don’t always understand strange Crows who come from other flocks and other places; their speech is one mark of their strangeness. But of the speech of Doves or Sparrows or Geese—or Boars or Wolves, if such beings have language—Crows understand nothing. Crows who can say a few words in People speech are common now, but Dar Oakley believes no Crow has ever learned it well enough to talk freely with one of them.
No Crow but he.
He dared to come a bit closer, though never staying long on any perch. He watched them, observed their ever-moving hands manipulate things, take them up, put them down, alter them. All that they used, he understood, they had made themselves—what other being did that? Was it a burden, that they had to? It must be that they spoke, for when one uttered a string of sounds another would take some action, just as though the first had said something and been understood.
He bent his head toward the gathering of them. Ymr, he thought they said. Ymr, ymr. His ears heard his throat make sound, and the tongue in his mouth tried to shape it.
Ymr.
Much later he’d wonder: Had he heard the sound and learned it, or made the sound and taught it to himself? Was it theirs or his own? By then there was no way to know.
The young one with the Fox pelt caught sight of him then, and pointed at him and drew the others to look. Should he flee? She—for now he had decided or felt it to be a young female, maybe only because she sat close among the other females as no fur-faced male did—patted herself, then pointed at him, cooing and yakking, as the others also looked up at him; and he understood. She was telling them the story of how he had found her and led her here.
He called to them, trying somehow to vouch for her. The single loud sound, the universal call.
“Ka!” she cried back at him, and spread her thin arms like wings; and he knew she had meant to speak, to call him, make meaning to him.
“Ymr,” he said to her. It was hardly a sound at all, a strangled gurgle as though he had swallowed a Tree Frog. Yet she leapt up, exulting.
She had said his word, or tried to, and he had said hers. They knew they had spoken, and that was all. It was enough.
From then on she sought him where she thought he lived—that sun-shot and open region of the young forest where he’d first seen her—and moped when he couldn’t be found; he in turn spied on the settlement, annoyed at the crowds she always seemed to be within, young or old, as though she belonged to everyone. When they did find each other alone, they’d each say the word they’d learned, and then try another, both of them good at imitation, but they hardly knew what they said when they spoke it.
It became clear soon enough that she couldn’t speak his language in his way, and he couldn’t speak hers in her way: their mouths and tongues and throats weren’t made to do it. But word by word as summer went by they came to hear each other’s language, and to know what was meant by the words in it. So that was the way they went on: she spoke in her language, he in his, and back and forth they began to understand each other. There are so few words in his language—she said the speech of Ka, calling it after the sound she’d first made, the one she heard most often—and they are deployed so differently in different tones and circumstances, that she learned slowly; he in turn had to remember vast numbers of her words, all sounding the same to him, mostly used in just one way. Over time he came to use some words of hers in his speech, and she words of his in hers—the mystery words for which their own languages had no equivalents.