Not Even Death's Foul Taint...

A tale of love lost, recounted by crows.

     "I watched them grow." The raven said morosely and fixed his brothers with an ink-spot eye. "I watched them build and I watched them love."
     A storm was threatening to boil and roll in off the hills and the air was muggy in prelude. Thane had seen it in the cinnamon sky and ruffled his sable feathers. "Sad... so sad." He whispered.
     "Such is life brother." Corazin pointed tapping absently at the peeling Yew bark with his black beak.
     "Bah! Life is death. Death is life! It is all circular." Balazin cawed, cocking his head to the side. "Cast about your beady eyes - all here is shrouded in Mr Still's dark mantle." He hopped from clawed foot to clawed foot and stretched his wings. The resulting crucifix shadow fell upon the figure that sat, hunched, beneath them. "See there!" Corazin hissed. "Death lays his black hand upon him."
     "Be hushed foolish brother!" Balazin snapped in retort. "Your suppositions and superstitions sicken me."
     "When Mr Still comes for they who live below the branches, disturb not his work lest he deigns to lay his cold touch upon you also." Corazin intoned much to Balazin's chagrin.
     "Ah... it is not only Mr Still who haunts him though." Thane lamented. "See how his human heart is rent."

     Morientes the fisherman sat beneath the crooked boughs of the naked Yew and stared into nothingness. His eyes were red rimmed hollows in a gaunt mask and his chin suffered two days growth. His dark hair was lank and matted with filth and his strong, callused hands were slack, bloodied and encrusted with grime.
     Beyond him, atop the hill, a shadowy, hand-dug grave yawned.
     Arielle had died two days ago. She had fallen from the step that he had had no time to repair. The ravens had watched him claw at the sky and listened to his cries tear the air, the anguish in that sound had drawn them closer to him for they were birds of despair and death.

     "He blames himself." Thane wailed. "Poor man. Poor, poor man�"
     "I saw her tumble." Corazin empathised. "I saw her pretty head strike the stone."
     "Aye. I saw the blood on the stone and saw Mr Still bow to suck the very last breath from her body." Balazin commented, his coal eyes alive with macabre lustre. "At first I thought the stone to be her heart, bloody and lifeless in Mr Still's clutches - but alas, mere stone it was, stained deep scarlet and wet though it was." The old raven fluttered to a branch and paused to regard the sombre clouds as they whorled and surged like ink in water. "I watched the life leak from her."
     He snapped his beak malcontentedly. "I would have had her eyes too had the fisherman not found her so soon."

     Under a skull white moon that struck the Yew a silver stand, Morientes found himself some hours later. Mechanically and despondently, he unfolded himself from his knotted position and stumbled away from the tree and the hill. The farmhouse door clattered on its hinges in protest at being laid open to the elements and autumn's leaves had cart-wheeled and fluttered within. The blazing log fire had long since burned out and soot drew designs upon the stone floor. Food lay unprepared on the table, left now to the appetites of the insects and the vermin.
     Within and clad in her favourite dress of emerald velvet, laid his wife of a mere three seasons; sweet Arielle. He slumped to his knees beside her, utterly ruined. Tears pricked afresh at his eyes as he laid a trembling hand upon her porcelain cheek. The seeping moonlight sculpted her alabaster beauty and the twilight cast her in ethereal sapphire.
     "Not even death's foul taint can malign you." He whispered.
     In the distance the storm grumbled and signalled its dark approach.

     "What is it he does within?"
     The three ravens huddled for warmth in the rafters of the wretched barn and watched keenly through a flaw in the wood. Morientes laboured tirelessly through the storm emerging every so often to bellow and berate the chaos outside as if it were to blame for his wife's passing.
     "Madness has seized him." Corazin rasped.
     "Despair has whittled him to this." Thane bemoaned.
     "Pah! His heart has no fight� Mr Still shall soon come for him." Balazin concluded his beady eyes savage with carrion hunger and glittered in the lightning. "We shall feed then."

     A new sun blazed on the edge of the sanguine sky and the tempest was but a smear of lingering clouds when desolate Morientes finally re-emerged from his farmhouse. He tugged at a heavy cart and manhandled it around to the front of the stead.
     "What is this?" Balazin croaked hopping from talon to talon, his eyes, saucers of pitch. Something gleamed in the morning light. "What is this foolish ploy! This gambit!"
     Thane and Corazin awoke to their compatriot's furious squawks.
     "You see! You see what he has done!" With a flap of his sooty wings the ancient raven dropped from the rafters and soared out of the barn. His brothers settled beside him in their familiar perch on the Yew as Morientes the fisherman began to struggle up the ragged hillside with the ponderous cart.
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     Dawn light glinted off the glass lid of the casket that rocked and lurched on the back of the cart as the man worked it up the furrowed ground. "The windows! The blessed windows of the house they built." Thane stepped along the branch cocking his head. Beside him Corazin exuded a cackle that could have passed for laughter. "Likely you'll not be feeding on any eyes today Balazin!"
     Within the structure and sealed away from the harshness of the world; replete in her velvet wedding gown, Arielle lay, her cold and slender hands clasping a single lily to her bosom. The tree-filtered sunlight cast dappled streams across her beauty as they passed beneath the Yew and onto the incline that disclosed the sparkling azure bay beyond.
     "You loved it so much here." Morientes wept, bearing the coffin onto the lush grass. He stood quietly for a countless time staring out to sea, his fingers tracing invisible designs on the cool glass and his heart cast of stone.
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     Finally, as the sun began to dip and burn up the fringes of the western mountains, Morientes lowered himself into the shallow pit that he had dug. The cloying earth was cool and strangely consoling against his body as he stretched out his weary limbs. Reaching inside his shirt he pulled forth a gently furled, parchment scroll fastened with red ribbon. The painstakingly delicate script upon it bearing testament to their love and matrimony was spotted and blurred in places like small blooms. He stared up at the sky for the last time; he had never seen it so blue.
     "I am coming, my love." He whispered and slowly closed his eyes.

     A gentle breeze stirred up twirling eddies of dust. "He comes." Superstitious Corazin hissed. Thane and his brother cocked their ebony heads and listened in silence. They stared down at Morientes and Arielle and a deep melancholy settled over the pair; even wicked old Balazin looked on silently with a feeling indescribable. A faint breath passed over the place then, hushed like a child's whisper but colder than the north wind. When it had passed, the old raven spoke, his words staggered and forced. "I have never seen a man will himself into the embrace of Mr Still like that... it was most... strange." He blinked once and turned aside hunching his sable wings against the impending gloom. "I� hunger no more."
     Corazin and Thane exchanged glances and both knew that something deep inside their brother had changed. It was something that they would never speak of.
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     Beyond the hillside the sun had reduced to a mere blush; a spark of dying light flickered once, the faintest of shimmers on a gilt edged horizon.
     ...And then it was gone...

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Music courtesy of Danny Elfman.

Reviews

[Chantal-lise Mirman]

What a great Crow mythology you've conceived with Balazin, Corazin and Thane, waiting for the eyes and philosophizing like Shakespeare's gravediggers! Or like the Darkside of Chip 'n Dale (from the Disney cartoons). And Mr. Still is a brilliant metaphor... no-one should call Death anything but that from now on! The whole tone of the story seen from this unusual perspective is sad, but matter-of-fact, and even a little wistful. The birds may be somewhat blunt, but not un compassionate. And they have distinct personalities. I could envision a whole raft of crow stories coming from this... at the very least, the three crows should host a weekly horror show on TV!

You have some wonderful original images in here: being whittled by Despair; the embrace of Mr. Still; they who live below the branches; a skull white moon. Morientes' story of classic grief is laid out in his own words and the music a perfect accompaniment to his willful passing.

What an amazing portfolio you're compiling, Howie! I hope you're sharing this with publishers - these stories deserve to be seen by more people.

(Yes, yes... I'm saving this one tu favorites, too... was there any question?)

[Kristen]

macabre and yet well-written.