The parliament of crows, I think.
/And I’m there, in bitter air between layers of white cloud like mirrored landscapes of snow; the great dark winter-trees are massed to the density of black cliffs against the icy billows of freezing cloud. The crows’ parliament is in the tallest, greatest biggest tree of all, its brown-black twigs like the sooty bones of a million hands clutching at the chill blank face of heaven. The meeting breaks up when they see me and they come squawking and screeching out to mob me.
I beat, pushing down the air, rising over the pestering birds, seeking one who stays back, directing.
The crows swarm up around me. A few land blows on my head but it doesn’t hurt. I laugh and stretch my neck, swivelling my head and ripping a few of their little toyish bodies from the air. I toss them aside; red blood beads, pulverized white bone pushes through their coal black feathers and they tumble torn to the snow-cloud billows. The rest scream, pull fluttering back a moment then mob in again. I stroke forwards. Air snaps swirling under my wings, rolling the pursuing birds round like bubbles under a waterfall.
I see my prey. He’s a big grey-black fella perched on the topmost twig of the topmost branch of the parliament-tree and he’s just realised what’s going on.
He rises, cawing and shrieking into the air. Foolish; if he’d dived into the branches he might have had a chance.
He tries some acrobatic stuff but he’s old and stiff and I snatch him so easily it’s almost disappointing. Snap! and he’s neatly encased in one cage of foot, flapping and screaming and losing feathers and pecking at my toes with his little black beak and tickling me. I slice another couple of his fellows out of the air, spreading their blood like a artist would, paint on a white canvas, then I think eyrie.
/And am alone with my little crowy friend above a tawny plane of sand and rock, beating towards a fractured cliff where a gnarled finger of rock juts out, its summit topped with a giant nest of sunbleached timbers and splintered white animal and bird bones.
I land and fold the soft cloaks of my wings and stand upon the brittle nest – timbers creak, branches burst, picked-clean bones snap – looking down at my balled foot with the old gray-black crow imprisoned in it, flapping and beating and hollering.
Skreak! Skrawk! Awrk! Gerout!
Oh shut up, I tell it, and the rock-crushing weight of my voice stuns it to quiet stillness. I balance on that leg, compressing the trapped crow and reaching through the bars of my talons with a talon from the other foot, tickling the bird’s grey-black throat while the breath wheezes out of it.
Now then my little chum, I say – and my voice is acid on a slicing blade, boiling lead down a open throat – I’ve a few questions I’d like to ask you.
Next original section
* * *
TRANSLATION – SIX – 4
Original text
You know what I’m going to do if you don’t tell me what I want to know, don’t you? I says to the old crow caged in my talons.
I’m resting in my big nest on the finger of stone looking out over the desert, sitting here quite happily pulling out the old grey-black crow’s feathers one by one with my free foot, humming to myself and trying to get some sense out of the old bird.
I don’t know nothing! the grey-black crow shouts. You’ll pay for this, you piece of filth! Set me back where you found me immediately and maybe we say no more about this – eark!
(I scrunch his beak a bit with two of my talons.)
You swine! he blubbers.
I decided it’s time to fix the old fella with a serious stare, so I lower my great-beaked head down to his level and look in through the talon-bars at his little black beady eyes. He tries to look away but I hold his head round looking towards me with a talon and put my head closer to him (though not too close – I’m not stupid). Crows can’t actually move their eyes very much and now he couldn’t move his head neither. They’ve got a thing called a nictitating membrane what they can flick over their eye and this old chap’s nictitating like mad trying to block me out and if I wasn’t such a fine firm fleshed-out example of a simurg he might block me out (or even taking me over if he was trying), but I am, so he couldn’t and I was in there.
I had decided in my own mind by this time that simurgs were related to lammergeiers and as any fool will tell you lammergeiers are also known as bone crushers. So the old crow looks into my mind and sees what I intend to do and promptly shits himself.
I look at the mess on my fine razor-sharp talons and my nicely decorated nest and then look at him again.
Oh f-f-fuck, he whimpers. Sorry about that. His voice is quivering. I will tell you anything you want to know; just don’t do those things to me.
Hmm, I says, lifting him up a bit to look pointedly at the shit on my nest. We’ll see.
What you want to know? he shrieks. Just tell me! What you looking for?
I jab my head towards him. An ant, I tell him.
A what?
You heard. But let’s start with the lammergeiers.
The lammergeiers? They’re gone.
Gone?
From the crypt. Gone.
Gone where?
Nobody knows! They been weird and distant for a while and now they just ain’t around no more. It’s the truth; check it out for yourself.
I will, and before I let you go, so you better be telling the truth. Now what about this bleeding red-face thing goes gidibibidibigibi etc. etc. you get the idea, eh? What’s it when it’s at home then?
The old crow freezes for a second, then he starts to shake and then he – I can hardly believe it – he laughs!
What? he shrieks, all hysterical. You mean that thing behind you, is that what you mean?
I shake my head. What sort of bird you take me before? I ask it, shaking it up and down so it rattles like a dice in a cup. Eh? Eh? Just how stupid you think I am? Do I look like a bleeding pigeon?
Gidibidibigidigibigi! screams a voice behind me.
(I feel my eyes go very wide.)
I stare at the bedraggled black crow trapped in the talons of my right foot.
Another time, I says, and crush the crow to the size of a thrush.
I whirl round and throw the dead crow at where I hope the horrible red head thing is, pushing myself off the nest at the same time.
Gidibidibigidigibigi! the skinned head shrieks, and the old dead crow explodes into flame and disappears as it hits the jagged red hole of the thing’s flayed nose. The head’s bigger than it was before and it’s got wings of its own now; wings like the wings of a skinned bat, all wet and bloody and glistening. Fucker’s bigger than I am and its teeth look sharp as hell. I beat my wings, not turning and flying away but hovering there, staring at it like it’s staring at me.
Gidibidibigidigibigi! it screams again and then it’s expanding, rushing towards me like it’s a planet bloating, a sun exploding. I’m not fooled; I know it’s still the size it was really and this is just a feint. I glimpse the real thing coming straight at me like a punch thrown through the exploding image.
This is my nest. The head’s over the edge of it right now.
I take one quick flap closer and reach out with a foot and slap down on a huge white-bleached hunk of timber; the timber is most of a tree-trunk and it levers up in a explosion of smaller branches and smacks straight into the face of the thing going Gidibidi-urp!
Its wings close involuntarily around the tent of branches sticking up in front of it and it falls flapping to the nest, all tangled and shrieking and bouncing and flapping and tearing its wings and I just know I should get the hell out while the going’s good but call it instinct, call it madness, I just have to attack.
I give one more flap to get a bit of height – noticing that the sky seems to be getting brighter – then spread my talons and start to drop towards the horrible head thing.
The sky’s gone very white and bright.
I cancel the stoop and flap once more, hovering over the flapping screaming entangled head and looking up at the sky; it’s gone dark again, but it’s starting to bulge somewhat.