At evening they left the nest site for the Oak grove. No need to let night-goers see you near where your young would soon be coming forth. The others gathered from their hunting and feeding to be with them—all but the Vagrant, rarely seen these days, loitering at the outskirts of the demesne, uninterested apparently.
“Was it this way when I was . . . ,” Younger Sister said, and Dar Oakley said, “Yes, was it this way when we . . .”
“Yes, it was,” said his father. Only in the nights were the mates at rest, and the nights were growing shorter. “It’s always the same. Unless it fails.”
Mother had closed her eyes, but opened them a bit at that.
“In one spring,” Father said, “a storm blew away all that had been built. Nearly done, too.”
“What did you do?”
“Began again.”
The siblings were quiet.
“In another year,” Father said, as though unable at last not to speak of these things, “weasels. Weasels took all our brood, just hatched.”
Mother, eyes again closed, flitted restlessly.
“And,” Dar Oakley said, “did you start again?”
“Too late,” his father said.
“Too late?”
“The moment had passed. There is a moment, and it passes; and it had.”
Small birds could be still be heard—some sang now through the night—and the insects, filling the air after the winter’s silence.
“I never will,” said Younger Sister. “Not me.”
“You don’t know,” Father said. “You know nothing.”
Dar Oakley roused a little, suddenly hot, why? “Well, it’s hard!” he said.
“It’ll be harder soon. You’ll all have to help. You’ll see.”
“But why do we keep doing it this way?” Dar Oakley whispered. “What if we did it differently, or better? This is . . .”
“This is our Fate,” his father said, his eyes fierce in the low light and farseeing. “There is this for us to do, to do in this way; we have always done it and we will do it.”
Dar Oakley fell silent. With awful gravity Father turned from his son and closed his eyes. They all grew still; their legs as they settled in sleep locked their feet around the branch they held to, so they wouldn’t tumble off in the night. Their bills sank to their breasts. Dar Oakley heard a soft cry, a whimper, from his mother, or was it Younger Sister perched up billwise? He felt restive and dissatisfied. He wanted something more to say, or to be said.
Fate: the Crows only name it at this season, or at the memory of this season. It’s the closest thing that Crows have to a belief about the world and their place in it, which otherwise they never think of: why the world is what it is, and why they do what they do in it. They can say, It’s the way we are at any time, but only at certain times can they say, It’s the way we must be. Fate says nothing more than that.
The nest was done, lined with soft stuff—underfur of a dead Rabbit the family had been feeding on, fuzz plucked from plants they had no name for but for which they knew this use. His mother and father now spent much of their day in behaviors that the Servitor seemed to find touching and even gripping but that their children thought comical and disturbing at once.
“Ah. Ah,” said the Servitor, imitating the odd chuckle Mother was making for her mate. “Ah, look.”
“Oh no,” said Younger Sister.
They’d begun feeding one another, little morsels of this and that which they’d place in each other’s mouths, clacking their bills in delight and approval. They’d beck deeply almost in unison, she’d back away from him and he’d step forward, and then they’d reverse. She’d fly away from him up to the nest, beck coyly from there till he followed, and they’d repeat it all again. Father flew off to find her more treats, doing a few rolls and dives to show off for her. “Like a young one again,” said the Servitor. “Happens every spring.” Dar Oakley and his sister could stand no more and went away laughing, untouched, they thought.
They hadn’t been gone long when a commotion arose back that way, the Servitor’s cry of alarm or botheration. “Ignore it,” Younger Sister said. The Servitor often went off without real reason. But the sound grew urgent, and Dar Oakley turned to go back, and Younger Sister groaned and followed. Even as they approached they could see Mother down on the forest floor below the nest site amid the white Hawthorns, and the Servitor leaping from branch to branch above her in distress; and near to her, Father, his wings open and his tail spread tautly and trembling. Hers too, her head lower than his and her wings cupped, nearly sweeping the ground.
Except that it wasn’t him. The Servitor was yelling because the Crow down there with their mother was not their father but the Vagrant. He was the one she bowed low to, murmured to.
“Uh-oh,” said Younger Sister. “Stay away from this.”
Just as they understood what was happening, a black mass of whirring feathers shot from nowhere and into the Vagrant, rolling him over, and rolling over Father, too, who’d bowled into him. Mother shrieked, and the Vagrant leapt up and got aloft, all disordered, rising to a branch and nearly tumbling from it in his haste to make a stand. Father dodged at him where he sat, bill-snapping, foot-grabbing.
“Traitor!” he shrieked, in a voice Dar Oakley had never heard before. “Traitor!”
The Vagrant got away to a farther tree, then turned again, prancing, mocking. “Go die!” he called. “Old Crow! You’re not wanted! Go far and die!”
At that Father pecked viciously at the branch he sat on. Chips flew. He tore away twigs and scattered them. “Oh, I’m mad!” he yelled. “I’m so mad now! We let you in. Now this!”
“You’re mad? I’m crazy mad!” the Vagrant yelled back. He too plucked twigs and shook them from his bill. “Mine now. You go. You’re done!”
As they cried out on each other they moved closer, branch by branch. Their heads were fuzzed, their throats and shoulders enlarged by the standing feathers. Dar Oakley felt the feathers of his own throat erect. His mother on the ground looked up at them, making no show, as though it had nothing to do with her.
“I’ll fight you till you die,” Father shrieked. “I’ll eat your breast like a Hawk!”
“Oho, you will?” the Vagrant called, wings alert to go. “No, I will!”
“Get, get, get,” Father yelled, and went from his branch at the Vagrant as though flung through the air. TheVagrant was younger and quicker, Father older but stronger, and the Vagrant arose, backing away, spiraling out toward the open air, fighting and fleeing at once, Father spiraling after him, the two rising as though borne upward by one another. Black feathers that they thrashed or clawed from each other flew away in their thudding wing beats.
Then the Vagrant breaks and flees, just like that. Father rolls out, surprised, then sets off after. Both of them silent now, Father relentless and heedless, harrying the other, falling on him, dagging at him with his sharp beak, trying for the eyes, the face. He chases him like a whole band of Crows chasing a Hawk, dodging at him from below, taking a nip at his tail, backing away when the Vagrant turns to snap back.
Dar Oakley and the Servitor stay in the nest-tree. They were on watch, weren’t they? Yes, and here they are.
His mother rises to the nest, to sit gripping the strong armature of it, unalarmed, watching for Father to return. She looks Dar Oakley’s way, and it is as though she shares a secret, a funny secret but not so funny really, with him alone. And as she bends her breast toward the nest, and her tail spreads wide and her bill opens and her eye-haws close and withdraw, Dar Oakley feels the strangest, deepest, sweepingest impulse. Almost irresistible.