X THE CROW
Life pursues death, and with death life begins.
1
“Never in the desert will glad tidings from heaven be heard unless the tomb’s stone drinks the crow’s blood.”
The sage asked the Tomb Maiden three times about remedies, and each time the Priestess replied with this same prophecy: “Never in the desert will glad tidings from heaven be heard unless the tomb’s stone drinks the crow’s blood.”
The nobles did not know how to interpret this prophecy and gathered for many nights in the venerable elder’s tent to debate it. They had asked the diviner’s opinion shortly before he succumbed to dementia, but the diviner had not been able to offer any gloss for the revelation. The Temple Diviner herself was equally unable to decipher the symbolism of the prophecy, and the jurists did not discover any key to the puzzle. Then the Virgin’s tongue repeated the statement with the same obstinacy and phrasing — as if this prophecy was a heavenly sign, as if this prophecy had been taken from some inalterable sacred tablet for which not even the number of its letters was arbitrary.
The first clause of the revelation did not confuse the tribe; it was the second half that provoked debate, caused disagreement, and confounded the most perspicacious people, the tribesmen who loved wisdom the most, and the ones most skilled at explaining dicta of the Spirit World.
The truth was that the second clause did not confound them in its entirety; the dispute centered on the meaning of the word “crow.” Some said the word referred to the bird they knew. They declared that a real crow had to be sacrificed. Most people mocked that interpretation and said that the Spirit World always spoke in symbols. They were likewise unaccustomed to hearing in prophecies something that even the jinn could not accomplish — such as capturing a bird like the crow, which was proverbial in the tribe for its wariness, ability to blindside hunters, mystery, wisdom, and immortality. There was even a characterization of the crow in a riddle that stated: “Ed yohaz afus. Waritiggah afus! So near at hand, but never caught by the hand.” This was because the crow kept moving between tent sites and never left the tribe’s eyes for an hour; but despite its ubiquity, the generations that had tried to hunt it as a treatment for sorcery had despaired of ever bagging it — forcing them to search for relief from other creatures like the chameleon. They had left this aged immortal to later generations, who in turn discovered the secret for themselves. So their children ignored the crow, and the nomads forgot that it existed. What destiny could be searching for it today as a sacrificial offering? What enormous sin had they committed to prompt the dread Spirit World to impose this impossible condition on them?
This faction insisted on searching for the real truth in another place and invited the community to continue mulling over the matter, because celestial wisdom comes cloaked in mystery. But they had also learned that it could not resist a stubborn quest. Then it would be disclosed in the light of inspiration with all the suddenness of a spark shooting from a flint. If they wished to escape destruction from drought, they merely had to be obstinate, search down the corridor, use the intellect, and proceed down the path of debate. But the wait for rainfall became lengthy, and patience provided no consolation.
2
The first peoples said that when the Spirit World wishes to cleanse the desert of defilement by its creatures or to punish its people, it imposes on them either of two opposites: water or fire.
It either deluges the desert with rains — washing the land with floods until it drowns the creatures — or imposes suns that breathe fires on the plains for years, scorching pastures, destroying plants, and leaving there only trails of mirages and wraithlike fumes.
The first peoples also learned from experience that the heavens aren’t stingy with water for the earth without reason, that the suns don’t scorch the pastures in vain, that suffering descends on the desert for a reason that will not remain unknown forever, because the times, which address them with the language of signs at the outset, must necessarily reverse course one day and turn against the secret they concealed and expose it till finally every matter they were initially keen to conceal is revealed.
This time the sages exerted themselves to search for the scourge’s secret too and discussed with each other a lot. Some found the cause in their subservience to the dirt and acceptance of the settled life that had always been their enemy. They had violated the law of nomadic migration once the leader’s tomb became a peg that tied them to the earth. Others thought that the drought contained a broader significance and said that there was a sign in the matter, a sign like an embryo born without features, although the days would fashion a face for it. They had repeatedly learned from experience that secrets, even the most significant secrets, exist only to become known.
They simply had to be patient and wait for an act that would fulfill the Law’s dictates.
The rabble were skeptical of the propaganda of the supporters of semiotics and spoke scornfully of their Law, which promoted a subservience that threatened the tribe’s life and brought its people only destruction and extinction. These ruffians continued to scoff and express their skepticism even after the diviner succumbed to dementia. Then rumors circulated among the tent sites suggesting that evil had gripped the hamlet for a long time because the tribesmen had violated the statutes by trading camels, saddles, and containers of clarified butter to the merchants in the caravans in exchange for gold dust. They had taken these ill-omened flakes to the smiths, who had worked the ugly metal into vile jewelry for these wretches to present to their girlfriends as a down payment on passion and fidelity. It was said, too, that the diviner also procured the vile metal and had it worked into jewelry he presented to the Tomb Maiden, with whom many knew he had fallen in love long ago, even before the disappearance of Lover of Stones. In another version it was said that he had not disclosed his secret until long after the migration of the Physician of Stones and that then she had repulsed him severely. The Virgin was said to have told him that a virgin who married the leader and befriended prophecy would never stoop to love people of the shadow world. But the soothsayer did not give up. He decided to resort to gold because he had long known that this hateful metal can imprison the hearts of virgins and realized that Wantahet did not introduce it into the desert until he had tested its frightening ability to transform intellects, baffle hearts, and distort intentions.
Passion blinded the diviner and caused him to forget the Law’s prohibitions. Then he acquired the forbidden dust from an itinerant merchant (according to another version: he acquired it from one of the tribesmen, who had secretly begun to deal in it) and had it cast as vile jewelry by a smith. Then he brought the present to his beloved in the temple. What is truly astonishing is that the narrators do not differ about the acceptance of the gift by the Priestess. Indeed they all agree that the Virgin took the jewelry and gazed at it for a long time before thrusting it between the stones of the tomb. Curiosity seekers swore that they themselves had seen her examine the jewelry with demonic, greedy eyes. She had held the gift up to the light before her face for a time and then had dangled the necklace around her neck and breast briefly while her lips smiled in a seductive way inappropriate for a beautiful woman who had chosen the Spirit World for her spouse.
The sages detested these reports. Many denounced passion and said that the curse was not actually in the forbidden metal but in passion, which shows no pity even to the people of the Unseen. The unwashed masses were amazed and said that the drought was a puny trial for a tribe whose diviner had acquired gold dust to present to a virgin who had dedicated herself to the rule of the Spirit World.