Convergence
Sitting on his haunches, the boy listened. He wasn’t sure what he was listening for, or if it would come, but something in the way the forest felt and in the way the air smelled, told him he should be still and quiet.
The trees did not whisper in the crisp wind, and the birds were quiet, for they had settled for the night. The ground was still slightly warm from the autumn sun baking the clay of the earth, but the boy could still feel the heat as he buried his hands deep in the duff that lay atop the land, decomposing and smelling like rich soil. He brought some of the duff to his nose and inhaled before it trickled out of his hands like magic. That’s when he heard the music.
It had seemed to the boy that he had heard this song before, but he was certain he hadn’t; so how could it be so familiar? It was as if I heard it in another life, or maybe in the womb, he thought, standing then, head tilted as the wind ruffled his hair. It was a mocking song that seemed to go on in riddles. “Who goes there?” the boy called. “Are you the one who has called me to this forest?”
The music stopped and a foreboding came over the boy then. The crisp wind was suddenly filled with bitter frost, and the reds of the maples roared overhead as the leaves leapt away from the shadow. The boy turned to run but he found that the shadow had come across his own, and it held him in his spot. The boy wanted to cry and began to beg the shadow to let him go, that he never meant any harm; he said, “I had only come to the forest tonight for a walk, I did not mean for the magic to over take me; please, I won’t tell a soul what I saw tonight, if you’d only let me go!”
“Silly boy,” the shadow coughed. Suddenly, the shadow was less shade and more feathers; and where the feathers were on the ground suddenly formed into a shape of a man. “You should know better than to enter Black’s forest once the moon has risen.” The boy shook his head slowly. “Black? But—I haven’t seen anyone in the forest since I got here. It’s a public forest, he can’t own it,” he said. The feathered man laughed. “Black? He can own anything he wants. Everything he touches becomes his, and every place he leaves shudders relief that he has gone. He holds all that he touches in tyranny, and once you hear his song, you’ve become part of his plans, too.”
The boy winced, his bare feet becoming number and number. “Who are you?” he asked, his blue eyes dark with a quiet fear. The feathered man let go of the young man’s shadow and he fell to the ground, scrambling to escape. A crow passed him over and landed far above him in the tallest, reddest maple. Ducking onto the path, the boy ran from the crow. The man had vanished as soon as the crow had come, and in the rising moonlight, the crow’s shadow looked strangely human.
It crowed once, twice, and three times. The boy had just gotten to the exit of the forest when he heard it. The song seemed to come from all around, and he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but it seemed to have two voices now—one dark and human, the other ancient and wise; crow and human together, whispering songs in the creeping cold.
Where is it we have gone, that our tyranny has not touched?
Where is it we have left that does not fear our return?
Is it so hard to imagine the new ways overthrown?
Who can stop the blighted cough?
The Murder of black sees you there;
We dance in your street and mock you;
Oh, humans, do take care
To beware the ways of the Crows!
His feet scurrying from the laughing song, the boy exited the forest; and such, the forest released him. But he could not shake the feeling that Bad Man Black and his crow mafia would be with him for an eternity, now, watching, laughing, cawing and clawing their way into his skins.
A blackbird passed over the moon. Samuel fell beside the door of his car and hoped it was all a dream that had turned out terribly, terribly wrong.
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
