Free Story! The Raven 2
Over the next few weeks I'll be posting some of my little "bon-bons"--very short stories reprinted from my collection Herding Ravens, which Peter Schwotzer at Famous Monsters of Filmland called "brilliant...a totally insane group of tales that can't really be pigeon-holed into a genre."
Enjoy!
The Raven 2
copyright © 2012 by Christopher Conlon
I had been writing in my chamber—a small, ill-lit, melancholy room whose main feature is a huge painting of my lost love, a beautiful young female whose name is untranslatable into the present tongue but which means something along the lines of “swift graceful huntress”—when there came a tiny rapping at my window. Pulling myself from my oppressive mood of sadness, I hopped over to the ledge and discovered a very small human standing outside.
Angling my beak just so, I pulled open the window and stood staring at the little man. He was perhaps three inches high. He wore a silver suit which covered his entire body, neck to feet.
Once upon a time, in the years before the Great Light, we ravens feared and loathed human beings for their guns, their stones, their shouted voices—and their sheer size: if one of us was hapless enough to fall into their hands, lo! all hope was lost. They were vastly bigger than we and capable of utterly destroying us. Our only way to survive came through our sheer slippery cunning.
How things changed after the Great Light. Whence it came we know not. But one morning it was there, obliterating almost all it washed over: and after it passed away virtually everything was dead. Horses, dogs. Most vegetation died and then grew again in new shapes and colors. Happily, rats and mice and other such tasty prey survived, though many in the raven community agree that they tasted somehow indefinably different—not without savor, but different.
The humans all perished—or we thought they did—and their carcasses were a pleasure to devour for weeks to come. That was the great period for the ravens. We ate our fill without fear. We circled the skies and cried out to each other in joy.
And we grew. Perhaps in reaction to the sudden cornucopia of food available, we rapidly became enormous—I myself, once about eighteen inches tall in the way man formerly measured such things, am now nearly four feet high.
I said earlier that we thought man had utterly perished. We were soon proved wrong by some of the mightiest hunters of our clan, who began bringing back strange little creatures with arms and legs, creatures the likes of which we had never seen before. One of our greatest and profoundest thinkers pondered the problem for some time before coming to the conclusion that, as we ravens had grown, the humans had shrunk. Millions of them had died, yes—but the ones that hadn’t perished had shrunk, as this one before me now, to a height of around three inches. The Great Light certainly moved in mysterious ways.
And now here was this man before me. I could easily have grabbed him with my lightning-quick beak and devoured him, but I am not particularly partial to the taste of these new miniature humans. Anyway, I was curious about this one, and taken aback by its boldness. I decided to discover what the little animal wanted.
It was waving to me and saying something. Its voice was very small and low, but it was audible. Happily I am well-versed in the language of humans as it was once spoken in this land.
What the human said was, “Filthy bird!”
Now this was even more surprising. Surely the creature understood that it could be assassinated at any instant by the simple application of my own rock-hard beak to its soft, tender man-flesh. I was tempted to laugh, but laughter was not an indulgence in which I had engaged for many moons. Something about the miniature being instead made me take pity. I leaned close to it and spoke its language—my ability to speak human is limited because a raven’s vocal apparatus is completely different from that of a man, but I can manage a few words of the barbaric tongue.
“O Man,” I said, “wherefore dost thou come to me in my hour of sorrow?”
For I had indeed been sorrowing, staring at the picture of my lost Swift Graceful Huntress and attempting to peck out a poem to her blessed memory.
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
This was most strange. Perhaps, I thought, the poor creature was demented. After all, in addition to the aforementioned fact that I could kill the thing at any moment I chose, there was the additional truth that ravens, myself included, are very clean birds. We bathe assiduously and work constantly to keep our feathers free of fleas and mites. I myself had had a lovely bath in a pond not far from my chamber only a few hours before. Afterwards I had preened for some time, wanting to feel as clean and pure as I possibly could in order to compose my poem to my lost love. Therefore, while I was admittedly and proudly a bird, I was most certainly not filthy.
“O Man,” I said, working my way around the unnatural sounds and syllables as best I could, “thou art confounded. No doubt the new order of the world hath baffled and bewildered thee. Perhaps thou art frustrated that we ravens hath overtaken everything that was once Man’s. Perhaps thou once lived in this chamber, or one like it, long ago, before the Great Light. I feel sorrow for thee, O Man.”
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
“What I suggest,” I continued, ignoring the poor thing’s feeble insult, “is that thou stayest here with me. I will care for thee as a beloved pet. I will feed thee and bathe thee and give thee a place to sleep thou shalt find comfortable. Thou mayest ride upon my head or seated atop my feet as I go about my daily duties. I will protect thee, O Man, and guide thee, and love thee.”
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
I confess: at that point I grew enraged. Already overcome with my feelings of loss for my Swift Graceful Huntress, I reached with my great beak to silence the minuscule vulgarian forevermore.
To my astonishment, however, my beak snapped closed on nothing.
Looking up I saw that the human was flying about the room. Flying, as a raven would fly—though of course with none of a raven’s grace. There was some sort of device strapped to its back that emitted two little flames which seemed to grant the human the means of this aerial locomotion. The human swooped this way and that through the air and, although I cannot be sure, I believe that I heard the ill-mannered thing laughing.
This was an outrage I would not stand. The impertinence! Man in flight! It is true that in the days before the Great Light Man did have its mechanical contraptions which flew with great noise among the clouds, but this was different. This man was flying—himself!
I resolved to pursue him and bring this blasphemous farce to its conclusion by snapping the wretched animal in half. Yet, try as I might, I could not seem to catch the creature. It was so small that it could dart like a sprite and hide in small cracks and crevices I could not penetrate. Chasing the thing in that small, enclosed space, I was at a disadvantage—I was too big, too clumsy.
At last I was winded and, in despair, flapped back to my desk, with my incomplete poem under my feet.
The little man had taken refuge atop the bust of Polly which stood above my chamber door. Polly the parrot, the first bird, according to our tradition, ever to speak. Just below his bust was the smaller statue of the cracker Polly is said to have requested with those initial words.
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
But now, to my surprise, the man continued speaking.
“It won’t be long now!” said he. “Mankind is coming back! There are pockets of us everywhere around this city! We’ve developed technology, like my Jet Pack here! We’ve developed weapons—deadly weapons! Weapons a size we can use! Weapons that will destroy you and your kind! The reign of the raven is about to come to an end!”
The pitiful little human raved on insensibly about its mad fantasies regarding its technology, its weapons, its glorious future. It all made me sad, almost as sad as when I looked up and beheld the image of my Swift Graceful Huntress.
“O Man,” I answered, inspired to metaphor, “take thy beak from out my heart!”
The man merely laughed. It obviously had no understanding of the compliment I had (admittedly insincerely) attempted to pay it, suggesting that Man too might contain the power and beauty of a bird’s beak, if only metaphorically. Nor did it comprehend how melancholy I had been made by its meaningless babblings, which truly did hurt my heart.
The strange thing is that the human still is sitting on the bust of Polly above my chamber door. It watches me day and night. Occasionally I hear it laughing, though for what reason I know not. Yet something within me whispers that a time of great change may be coming, a change possibly as tremendous as that brought on by the Great Light. But such things are too large, too foreboding, to think about. Instead I return my beak to the paper, slowly pecking out my sorrowful ode to her whom I shall meet again—nevermore!
#
Enjoy!
The Raven 2
copyright © 2012 by Christopher Conlon
I had been writing in my chamber—a small, ill-lit, melancholy room whose main feature is a huge painting of my lost love, a beautiful young female whose name is untranslatable into the present tongue but which means something along the lines of “swift graceful huntress”—when there came a tiny rapping at my window. Pulling myself from my oppressive mood of sadness, I hopped over to the ledge and discovered a very small human standing outside.
Angling my beak just so, I pulled open the window and stood staring at the little man. He was perhaps three inches high. He wore a silver suit which covered his entire body, neck to feet.
Once upon a time, in the years before the Great Light, we ravens feared and loathed human beings for their guns, their stones, their shouted voices—and their sheer size: if one of us was hapless enough to fall into their hands, lo! all hope was lost. They were vastly bigger than we and capable of utterly destroying us. Our only way to survive came through our sheer slippery cunning.
How things changed after the Great Light. Whence it came we know not. But one morning it was there, obliterating almost all it washed over: and after it passed away virtually everything was dead. Horses, dogs. Most vegetation died and then grew again in new shapes and colors. Happily, rats and mice and other such tasty prey survived, though many in the raven community agree that they tasted somehow indefinably different—not without savor, but different.
The humans all perished—or we thought they did—and their carcasses were a pleasure to devour for weeks to come. That was the great period for the ravens. We ate our fill without fear. We circled the skies and cried out to each other in joy.
And we grew. Perhaps in reaction to the sudden cornucopia of food available, we rapidly became enormous—I myself, once about eighteen inches tall in the way man formerly measured such things, am now nearly four feet high.
I said earlier that we thought man had utterly perished. We were soon proved wrong by some of the mightiest hunters of our clan, who began bringing back strange little creatures with arms and legs, creatures the likes of which we had never seen before. One of our greatest and profoundest thinkers pondered the problem for some time before coming to the conclusion that, as we ravens had grown, the humans had shrunk. Millions of them had died, yes—but the ones that hadn’t perished had shrunk, as this one before me now, to a height of around three inches. The Great Light certainly moved in mysterious ways.
And now here was this man before me. I could easily have grabbed him with my lightning-quick beak and devoured him, but I am not particularly partial to the taste of these new miniature humans. Anyway, I was curious about this one, and taken aback by its boldness. I decided to discover what the little animal wanted.
It was waving to me and saying something. Its voice was very small and low, but it was audible. Happily I am well-versed in the language of humans as it was once spoken in this land.
What the human said was, “Filthy bird!”
Now this was even more surprising. Surely the creature understood that it could be assassinated at any instant by the simple application of my own rock-hard beak to its soft, tender man-flesh. I was tempted to laugh, but laughter was not an indulgence in which I had engaged for many moons. Something about the miniature being instead made me take pity. I leaned close to it and spoke its language—my ability to speak human is limited because a raven’s vocal apparatus is completely different from that of a man, but I can manage a few words of the barbaric tongue.
“O Man,” I said, “wherefore dost thou come to me in my hour of sorrow?”
For I had indeed been sorrowing, staring at the picture of my lost Swift Graceful Huntress and attempting to peck out a poem to her blessed memory.
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
This was most strange. Perhaps, I thought, the poor creature was demented. After all, in addition to the aforementioned fact that I could kill the thing at any moment I chose, there was the additional truth that ravens, myself included, are very clean birds. We bathe assiduously and work constantly to keep our feathers free of fleas and mites. I myself had had a lovely bath in a pond not far from my chamber only a few hours before. Afterwards I had preened for some time, wanting to feel as clean and pure as I possibly could in order to compose my poem to my lost love. Therefore, while I was admittedly and proudly a bird, I was most certainly not filthy.
“O Man,” I said, working my way around the unnatural sounds and syllables as best I could, “thou art confounded. No doubt the new order of the world hath baffled and bewildered thee. Perhaps thou art frustrated that we ravens hath overtaken everything that was once Man’s. Perhaps thou once lived in this chamber, or one like it, long ago, before the Great Light. I feel sorrow for thee, O Man.”
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
“What I suggest,” I continued, ignoring the poor thing’s feeble insult, “is that thou stayest here with me. I will care for thee as a beloved pet. I will feed thee and bathe thee and give thee a place to sleep thou shalt find comfortable. Thou mayest ride upon my head or seated atop my feet as I go about my daily duties. I will protect thee, O Man, and guide thee, and love thee.”
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
I confess: at that point I grew enraged. Already overcome with my feelings of loss for my Swift Graceful Huntress, I reached with my great beak to silence the minuscule vulgarian forevermore.
To my astonishment, however, my beak snapped closed on nothing.
Looking up I saw that the human was flying about the room. Flying, as a raven would fly—though of course with none of a raven’s grace. There was some sort of device strapped to its back that emitted two little flames which seemed to grant the human the means of this aerial locomotion. The human swooped this way and that through the air and, although I cannot be sure, I believe that I heard the ill-mannered thing laughing.
This was an outrage I would not stand. The impertinence! Man in flight! It is true that in the days before the Great Light Man did have its mechanical contraptions which flew with great noise among the clouds, but this was different. This man was flying—himself!
I resolved to pursue him and bring this blasphemous farce to its conclusion by snapping the wretched animal in half. Yet, try as I might, I could not seem to catch the creature. It was so small that it could dart like a sprite and hide in small cracks and crevices I could not penetrate. Chasing the thing in that small, enclosed space, I was at a disadvantage—I was too big, too clumsy.
At last I was winded and, in despair, flapped back to my desk, with my incomplete poem under my feet.
The little man had taken refuge atop the bust of Polly which stood above my chamber door. Polly the parrot, the first bird, according to our tradition, ever to speak. Just below his bust was the smaller statue of the cracker Polly is said to have requested with those initial words.
Quoth the man, “Filthy bird!”
But now, to my surprise, the man continued speaking.
“It won’t be long now!” said he. “Mankind is coming back! There are pockets of us everywhere around this city! We’ve developed technology, like my Jet Pack here! We’ve developed weapons—deadly weapons! Weapons a size we can use! Weapons that will destroy you and your kind! The reign of the raven is about to come to an end!”
The pitiful little human raved on insensibly about its mad fantasies regarding its technology, its weapons, its glorious future. It all made me sad, almost as sad as when I looked up and beheld the image of my Swift Graceful Huntress.
“O Man,” I answered, inspired to metaphor, “take thy beak from out my heart!”
The man merely laughed. It obviously had no understanding of the compliment I had (admittedly insincerely) attempted to pay it, suggesting that Man too might contain the power and beauty of a bird’s beak, if only metaphorically. Nor did it comprehend how melancholy I had been made by its meaningless babblings, which truly did hurt my heart.
The strange thing is that the human still is sitting on the bust of Polly above my chamber door. It watches me day and night. Occasionally I hear it laughing, though for what reason I know not. Yet something within me whispers that a time of great change may be coming, a change possibly as tremendous as that brought on by the Great Light. But such things are too large, too foreboding, to think about. Instead I return my beak to the paper, slowly pecking out my sorrowful ode to her whom I shall meet again—nevermore!
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