What he told himself was that he wanted to remain near those beings on the plain. He might not have gone far in his young life, but no one else had ever come upon those ones. He wanted to keep watch on them, his own discovery.
“Come along,” Father said to him, startling him; he hadn’t heard him step close. The big Crow (he seemed bigger than ever this day) was in a state, imperious, impatient. “We’re off.”
“Off?”
“Home. It’s what’s to do now.”
If you are a Crow barely full grown, it’s hard to grasp the coming of new seasons. It takes a longer life not to be taken by surprise, not to ask yourself, What? What’s this? and get no answer. The answer is, This has been, and will again be, but even older Crows sometimes forget that till it comes around again, and then they know.
“Home?” Dar Oakley asked, but Father had already flown to rouse another of his family, the one Dar Oakley called Younger Sister. She’d returned to the roost after first flying off after the departees, and now sat sullen and regretful. Then he went on around the fast-emptying roost, calling for kin he couldn’t see. The Vagrant answered, but wouldn’t follow, indifferent to Father’s urgencies. Dar Oakley decided he’d do nothing until others did who knew what it was they were to do. Maybe he’d go look for something to eat.
“Come along, come along!” his father called at him. He’d fly in the direction of the family freehold, then drive back furiously when it seemed no one was following, at length taking a perch on a pine branch and snatching needles from it in exasperation, at his wit’s end. It was Mother he seemed chiefly frustrated with. Unlike her mate in his passion, she seemed to have grown slow and distracted, sitting low and still on her branch, walking the ground, head turning this way and that, her Servitor walking anxiously near her but saying hardly a word. When at last she was moved to leave for the freehold, it wasn’t at Father’s insistence—he was gone off that way by then—but by a sudden motion of her own. Her Servitor sensed it. Of course he’d seen it before, had been watching for it, greeted it—even Dar Oakley could tell that.
“Come on,” she called to Dar Oakley. “You’ll have to help too.”
Her eye was not on him. If she saw anything, it was a thing not present, not yet in existence—that thing that Crows, female ones, know before its coming to be: can know because, in them, it already has. Dar Oakley said nothing in response, only flew with her, the Servitor coming after.
The first thing to be done when they reached their freehold one by one was to roust the squatters who’d got there first and pretended that it was theirs, or this part of it was, or were anyway saying it was theirs now and they were staying, let these newcomers go elsewhere, who are you anyway? And Father without answering drove at them recklessly, screaming invective, as he might at a sleepy Owl caught in daylight. Seeing that the squatters weren’t going to put up much of a fight, Dar Oakley joined in, but his mother sailed past him and dashed at the fleeing Crows, as fierce as her mate. The Servitor and Younger Sister yakked and cursed from the trees and scattered the sticks the squatters had begun laying for a nest in an Oak’s crotch there. How dare they! By evening that was done; they slept in their own trees in their own place, and in the morning fed on their own snails and bugs, and then when the sun was high began to work and to build.
In what way exactly the Crows of that far time and place built their nests, Dar Oakley doesn’t any longer remember, having now for so long built nests in the way it’s done hereabouts. If it was the same there and then as here, it began with selecting a site, crotch of a tree just high enough, just secluded enough but not too far out of the warming midday sun. Younger Sister said that the place the interlopers had chosen looked good to her, but Mother would never choose someone else’s nest, not even one only just begun; no more would she use a nest of her own from the years before—the collapsing remains of some could still be seen on the freehold if you knew where to look. No. Owls and Hawks and others have long memories, she said. She said Younger Sister would understand when her turn came.
Because the Oaks of the grove weren’t yet in leaf, she chose a place amid the evergreens at the grove’s edge, less comfortable but less visible. Yes, when it was built, and housed her and her young, the Oak would be deep in leaf, but before then any hunter could note its placement and plan to return to it. She pondered the possibilities of the Pine, knowing she would sense the right spot when she had rejected all the wrong ones.
“This one,” she declared. “Here.”
“You already said no to that place,” her mate said, but she paid him no mind, turning and turning in the Pine crotch to be sure. And Father said nothing more.
After the choosing of the spot came the making of the new nest. The mates shared the task, with a lot of bickering and dispute. The laying of the big sticks that would brace the whole isn’t easy for beings who have only a bill and one foot to use, even if they’ve done it many times before.
Through the days the nest grew, round and strong and habitable. Despite an abundance of deadwood everywhere, Mother or Father would spend time hacking with their bills at a green branch, wrestling it and finally breaking it off, or giving up on it. Father’d lay a stick and fly off to get another; Mother, left alone, would throw out that stick and fetch one she liked better. Sticks that were dropped in the making lay scattered at the Pine’s base. The builders would never retrieve a stick once dropped.
“Why is that?” Dar Oakley asked.
“Because,” said the Servitor.
“Sure,” said Younger Sister. She’d tried to contribute a stick or two that had been rejected.
Father brought in another stick. His mate, after trying it here and there, tossed it out too, and it joined the litter of discarded matter on the ground. He glared. The others, watching, fell silent and motionless, Father too, as all of them waited for an outburst of wrath from him. Mother took no notice, though; all her attention was on the interior she was shaping. No: one eye turned quickly on Father and away again. But there was no point in wrath, no point in saying, And what was wrong with that one? Because she didn’t know what was wrong with it, only that it was wrong, and it was she who’d have to sit there. When his posture had altered, bill opened and closed in a sigh, and he’d gone off again, she looked up from her fussing to Dar Oakley and the others, and he saw amusement in her black eye.
Younger Sister went to help, or to learn, leaving Dar Oakley and the Servitor on watch.
“Why was it never you she chose over him?” Dar Oakley asked.
“Oh, well,” the Servitor said, as though the answer was too obvious to state, or the subject too huge to address.
“You’re nicer than he is.”
“Oh dear,” said the Servitor. “I don’t think that matters so much.”
“No?”
“He’s a great provider. Look at him laboring. A good mate.”
The mates were rarely apart now, not only at the nest but in flight, on watch, searching for food. They hardly noticed the others. When they weren’t eating or building they preened devotedly, bills searching each other’s breast or head, grooming the feathers, plucking away the scraps of food, bugs, skin, or other matter. Lift your bill to have your neck worked over, bow your head to have the black cap cleaned and put to rights. They’d stop what they were doing and bill-wrestle, one taking the other’s bill and holding while the other twisted away, then swapping, tails spread and trembling. Now and then the play reached a kind of intensity and they’d fight for real, their bills open and their eye-haws flashing white. Then for a space they’d part, whether ashamed or just wearied Dar Oakley couldn’t tell, but anyway they couldn’t sulk for long, and it was back to work again. It was marvelous and yet alarming to watch.