Queen of the Crows Read online

  “Now!” “She’s getting away!” They pulled wings in and aimed beaks down at her.

  She turned again but saw the mass of black advancing at her from the woods. She was trapped between the two forces!

  All of a sudden, she seemed to leave her body. It was as if her soul hovered high above her body over the clearing and time slowed down. She could see herself panicking as the two waves of black advanced in slow motion on either side, squeezing the space between her and the Hollowing Tree.

  And then it popped into her head.

  Instantaneously, she was back in her body and she knew exactly what to do. She ran at full speed at the Hollowing Tree and leaped. As her head entered the hollow, she whispered the name.

  “Vista.”

  Her body continued to soar forward into space. Instead of smashing her head into the back of the hollow, she zoomed through a rose-purple sky with a silver-blue ocean lapping below her. The breeze was gentle and warm.

  She was flying!

  She stretched out her arms and laughed. It felt amazing. All the tension began to melt out of her body as she soared, chest open, parallel to the water.

  “Yooooo-hoooo!” she heard to the side of her. She turned to look.

  “Cracks!” she beamed. “What’s happening?”

  “We’re hollowing!” he said with a broad smile.

  The wind lifted them. They flew side by side at high speed.

  Cracks swooped up, doing a loop-de-loop. “C’mon!” he urged her.

  Elsa willed herself to follow him. She did a perfect loop-de-loop, too.

  “This is incredible!” she glowed, doing somersaults, flips, and twists through the air, continuing along the ocean surface.

  The water and sky shimmered with an electric sparkle expanding as far as the eye could see.

  “We all come from an egg and need the wind to fly,” grinned Cracks, flying by playfully.

  Elsa giggled, realizing it was true for humans, too.

  “Become one with it,” he said.

  She closed her eyes and drew her palms to her sides. She felt herself zoom along, completely supported by the wind. She couldn’t remember feeling this relaxed and safe.

  “Surrender yourself completely,” she heard him say.

  As she breathed she felt herself expand into the sky, the edges of her skin losing their border and joining into the electrified expanse of calm beauty.

  Without opening her eyes, she saw Cracks dip his beak and he soared straight down into the water and disappeared.

  Erased of doubt, anger, and all things “Elsa,” she followed suit, with no fear of what might happen or how she would get back.

  Her body tipped upside-down and her face breached the surface of the water. As it entered, she suddenly burst right-side up out of a small pool by a mossy glade surrounded by soft, leafy trees. Her body rose up gently into the air and then slowly settled on the ground.

  Cracks stood beside Elsa, shaking off his feathers. “Welcome. Welcome, dearie.”

  Just beyond him sat the queen.

  “I guess you need no introduction, since you already know her name,” Cracks giggled happily.

  “Hello, Elsa,” she said with a warm smile. Her luminous black eyes sparkled and her soft matte black feathers reflected the warm golden light all around them.

  Elsa found herself falling to her knees in the moss. “It’s a great honour, Your Majesty,” she managed to stammer, with her head bowed low.

  The queen laughed. “No need for formalities here. Come sit next to me, girl. I am so glad you’ve made it.

  Elsa scrambled up the mossy mound and sat comfortably at the queen’s feet.

  “I have something to show you, my dear,” whispered Vista joyfully.

  The queen lifted her soft wing to reveal a pure white baby crow.

  “Ah, so cute! I guess this is why you needed to leave?”

  “Aye,” the queen nodded.

  Elsa looked down at the tiny fledgling. His eyes were black, but all of his feathers, beak, and feet were completely white.

  “Crows don’t normally give birth at this point in the season, so I knew he would be special.”

  His full eyes seemed bright and aware. He held his body with great strength, despite his young age. He looked deep into Elsa’s eyes and seemed to smile as if he had known her forever.

  “Now, if we can just get past all this hating someone because they are different business, I know in my heart of hearts he will be our next king.”

  This is going to be a problem with the pale-feather-hating crows.

  “Aye,” said the queen, a twitch of sadness in her tone, as if she had heard Elsa’s thought. She smiled again as she stroked her son’s back tenderly with her wing.

  “So,” said the queen, looking at him with great love, “we have decided to name him Cirrus.”

  “We?” said Elsa with great surprise, turning to Cracks.

  Cracks puffed up his chest with a proud smile and a mischievous little wink.

  “Congratulations to you both!” said Elsa with a great big smile. “But if he will be king, how come you are telling me his name?”

  “Only the Highest Crows can know, my dear,” said Cracks, looking proudly at her.

  Elsa was at a loss for words.

  “We loved what you said by the Hollowing Tree,” said the queen.

  “You can hear through it?” Elsa wondered.

  “When you are one with the wind, you know all it knows.” Vista waved her wing towards the pool of water.

  A breeze rippled over the surface. As the water stilled, it showed Lustre huddled on a barn beam, looking miserable.

  The queen waved her wing again. The pool rippled and changed to reveal the group of crows, panting and stunned, gathered by the Hollowing Tree. Boughbend stood in the middle and addressed the group.

  “It seems we have been looking at this all wrong. Darkness is upon us now. Let us take our roost,” he said humbly.

  The group picked up and followed Boughbend in a daze of shock.

  The queen looked back at Elsa. “Cirrus still needs some time to strengthen.” Then she looked at Cracks with a smile. “And my lovely mate’s wounds will heal more quickly here.”

  Cracks beamed rays of adoration towards Vista and the boy.

  “The dawn after tomorrow, I want you to return to the court and sit on the throne.”

  “Me?” asked Elsa, confused.

  “Be my interim queen and try to influence their hearts to a Higher level. We are all in great danger now.”

  Elsa breathed in the weight of the assignment.

  “Boughbend is almost there. He will listen and help support your efforts. The others will want to have the Hollowing described to them, but, of course, what happens here can’t be described in words, it can only be experienced. You must lead by example and they must figure it out for themselves.”

  Elsa swallowed. She wasn’t sure she was up for such a challenge.

  “Just keep your head, Red,” tutted Cracks in his usual scratchy tone.

  “It’s soon time for you to return, Elsa,” said Vista softly.

  Elsa grasped the necklace around her neck. She knew crows liked shiny things.

  “Please accept this gift from me,” she said, taking it off and placing it humbly in the moss at the queen’s feet.

  “Keep it, my darling. You have given me true shine and that is all I need. Cracks and I have worked for seasons to teach our crows the real meaning of High Crow and Low Crow. You are the first to see past the small way of looking at things and learn to perceive in this other way. It gives us strength to continue in this difficult time.”

  The queen bent down and picked up the necklace with her beak. She lifted it up into the air and inserted her wing tip to open the circle of chain. She pla
ced the necklace gently over Elsa’s head and settled back down on the moss by her son.

  “Keep it to remember what kind of shine has the most value. Even though you know my name, the Hollowing Tree won’t let you pass if you slip back into Low Crow thinking.”

  Elsa awoke in darkness, curled on the couch. She had no memory of how she got there.

  A plate of pad thai sat cold on the coffee table. She realized she was hungry and ate in the dim stillness.

  She climbed the stairs and saw Claire lying stiffly in her mother’s bed. Elsa slipped into her own and drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

  Elsa was sullen and withdrawn the next day at school. She doodled a sketch of Cracks with his wings spread wide, two feathers missing. Ms. Witherspoon picked on her with snippy questions all morning. Elsa could barely get her voice to work as she answered them, not looking up from her drawing.

  At recess, she leaned against the wall. She continued to detail the picture of Cracks.

  Breagh, Gabby, and Lenore passed by and gawked at the cuts and scratches on her arms.

  “Do you think she’s a cutter?” Breagh said, purposely loud enough for Elsa to hear. “I hear some crazy girls cut themselves just so they can feel something.”

  The mean girls turned back to see if she’d heard.

  “I can think of something I’d like to cut,” said Elsa in a cold, flat tone, not even looking up.

  “Oh yeah?” taunted Breagh, “Like what? Your hair?”

  Gabby snickered.

  “You look as ragged as that crow of yours,” sneered Lenore.

  Elsa looked up with rage. She was sick to death of their bullying.

  “Good. Because you know what a group of crows is called?” Elsa paused for added drama. She narrowed her eyes at them. “A murder.” She added a little crazy to her eyes for good measure. The girls scoffed, but she could tell that inside they were scared by the wildness she could conjure.

  “Elsa! Look!” shouted Eh Ta Taw suddenly from the grass.

  He pointed to a black fox with a white-tipped tail that scuttled down the street in broad daylight.

  This broke the tension between the girls and they scuttled off as well. Elsa rose to join him.

  In the past two years, the coyote population had risen in the countryside. This had pushed the foxes into the green spaces around the city, but they had soon figured out it was easier to find food amongst the human waste and they had moved right into town.

  People had worried for their cats and small dogs when the foxes had first arrived, but so far an uneasy peace remained between the factions. It was now common to see the reddish-orange foxes periodically in the core of the city, even during the day. But it was still quite rare to see this black-and-white type, ironically called a silver fox, a genetic remnant of the fox-fur trade.

  They watched quietly as the beautiful fox slithered by, crouched low in trepidation.

  “You and me,” said Eh Ta Taw after it had passed, “we are like that fox.”

  The recess bell rang and everyone made their way back into the school.

  “What do you make of it?” asked Popcan of Ruffle, who was staring off at the field by the river. In the distance gulls squawked, fighting over an old ice-cream cone.

  “I don’t know what to think,” sighed Ruffle.

  “Lustre will tell us, once he returns from the Tree,” said Careen loudly from a branch above. She said it partially to calm the lower crows, but also for the princess to hear.

  “I hope he returns with my mother,” said the princess to herself.

  “Nobody actually saw him enter the Hollow,” said Boughbend sternly, but nobody seemed to listen.

  “We should just declare war on the gulls right here and now!” cawed Wrapper.

  “Hear, hear!” agreed many others all around.

  “We should take one of their own at least!” howled Billow.

  “For Berry!” “Berry!” “Berry!” a crowd chanted wildly.

  “Stop your screeching!” screamed Ruffle, fluttering up into the sky before the trees. “If we stoop to killing their children out of spite, we are no better than whoever took my girl.”

  “She’s right!” shouted Boughbend in a deep voice. “Silence this ugly song. You sound like a bunch of gulls.”

  Boughbend regretted that last comment as soon as it came out of his mouth. But it had done the trick. The crows were silent.

  “Disperse,” said the princess in a firm voice.

  Boughbend gave her an approving smile.

  Each took flight.

  For the rest of the morning, Elsa couldn’t stop thinking about the Karen boy and what he had said.

  At lunch, she approached him in the schoolyard.

  “What did you mean when you said we are like that fox?”

  Eh Ta Taw looked out at the children playing around the schoolyard.

  “We are different from the others, so we have to be careful not to get too brave.”

  “But you were brave when they bothered you and it scared them,” reminded Elsa.

  “Brave, but not too brave. I scared them just enough.”

  Eh Ta Taw kicked a little stone with his foot.

  “The fox knows if it doesn’t bother too much, then the city doesn’t bother. But if he gets too wild, the humans won’t tolerate him sharing the space.”

  Elsa understood that he was trying to warn her to keep a low profile. The mean girls became syrupy sweet and innocent when it came to manipulating the grownups.

  “But doesn’t it bother you that those girls are awful to you when you’ve been through so much?” she asked at last.

  “They are children. I am happy for them they still get to be children.”

  Elsa was quiet. So was Eh Ta Taw. The other children laughed and ran around them.

  “They can’t even imagine what we have known,” Eh Ta Taw said, kicking at another stone. After a long silence, he looked at her with his straight spine and stern brow. “I don’t know what you have been through, but a fox can sniff another fox before the people do.”

  It felt good to be recognized. She admired how unabashed he was about himself, despite all the setbacks he had faced. He was a warrior.

  “My mother is in the hospital,” revealed Elsa. After beating me, neglecting me, and stealing from me! “She has a mental illness. I have been keeping it a secret, but I was living on my own for a while, without any money or food.”

  Elsa felt pressure release. It felt good to admit at least some of it to someone.

  Eh Ta Taw nodded thoughtfully, without judgement. “My father was killed in the resistance when I was very young. Uncle was like a father to me until he died two years ago. I was born in a camp in Thailand. I have never seen my homeland.”

  Elsa nodded quietly, feeling honoured he would share this with her. “I hope we can be friends,” she said at last.

  Eh Ta Taw’s serious eyes brightened a little bit. He gave her the tiniest nod.

  The lunch bell rang.

  Elsa was happy to have made a friend, but talking of her mother had brought the heaviness of the situation back to the forefront of her mind. She festered while she was supposed to be working on a quiet writing assignment.

  What if she doesn’t want to come out? What if she doesn’t want me back? Claire said she doesn’t want children. What is going to happen to me?

  Tension coiled in her stomach, twisting ever tighter. She felt like a balloon about to pop.

  Plop! A crumpled piece of paper landed in front of her on her desk.

  The mean girls silently celebrated their good aim while Ms. Witherspoon had her back turned, writing a paragraph out on the board.

  Elsa glared at them and quietly opened the paper.

  Inside was a VERY rude drawing of her naked on her back. Underneath it said:


  Elsa loves black birds and brown boys.

  Her rage surged to the breaking point and she popped. She stood up and hurled the crumpled note back at them. “Caw!” she shouted out, spreading her arms like menacing wings at them.

  Ms. Witherspoon whipped around. “Elsa! What’s going on?” she questioned sternly.

  Gabby quickly covered the note with her foot.

  “Caw!” screeched Elsa fiercely at Ms. Witherspoon. “Caw! Caw! Caw!” She flapped her arms, jeering at the whole class, with her neck jutted out.

  Breagh, Gabby, and Lenore and the rest of the class couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Eh Ta Taw looked away.

  “KrrrawwwllK!” shouted Elsa one more time and she soared out the door.

  “Keep to your desks,” said Ms. Witherspoon firmly to the other students and she chased down the hall after Elsa.

  Claire shuffled through some papers on her messy desk. She held her phone to her ear with her shoulder while she rifled through some old receipts.

  “I shipped it out last week, I’m sure of it,” she said to the woman on the line, not sounding very sure. She flipped through the book of stubs. “It should have arrived…” She stalled, flipping some more.

  She raised a finger to another woman who was waiting impatiently at the counter, signalling she just needed another minute. The customer sighed.

  Claire cringed, realizing she had forgotten to ship this order. She deflated. It was supposed to be there by now.

  “You’re right.” She sighed and grabbed the piece and started wrapping it hurriedly in tissue. “I have it right here…I’ll ship it out today, priority post, okay?”

  The phone beeped, signalling another call coming through. Claire pulled the phone away from her ear to see who it was. It was Elsa’s school.

  “Listen, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. My kid’s school is on the other line.” Claire hung up on the disgruntled caller and signalled for just one more moment to the customer at the counter. The woman shifted her weight with a hint of disdain.