“Can you control me? Maybe you’re limited to simpler creatures, less
complex neurological systems.”
Black eyes glittering. Sharp orange beak parted slightly.
“Or maybe you’re learning the ecology here, the flora and fauna,
figuring out how it works in this place, honing your skills. Hmmm?
Maybe you’re working your way up to me. Is that it?”
Watching.
“I know there’s nothing of you in the bird, nothing physical. Just
like you weren’t in the raccoons. An autopsy established that much.
Thought you might have to insert something into an animal to control
it, something electronic, I don’t know, maybe even something
biological. Thought maybe there were a lot of you out in the woods, a
hive, a nest, and maybe one of you actually had to enter an animal to
control it. Half expected Potter would find some strange slug living
in the raccoon’s brain, some damned centipede thing hooked to its
spine. A seed, an unearthly-looking spider, something. But you don’t
work that way, huh?”
He took a swallow of Corona.
“Ahhh. Tastes good.”
He held the beer out to the crow.
It stared at him over the top of the bottle.
“Teetotaler, huh? I keep learning things about you. We’re an
inquisitive bunch, we human beings. We learn fast and we’re good at
applying what we learn, good at meeting challenges. Does that worry
you any?”
The crow raised its tail feather and crapped.
“Was that a comment,” Eduardo wondered, “or just part of doing a good
bird imitation?”
The sharp beak opened and closed, opened and closed, but no sound
issued from the bird.
“Somehow you control these animals from a distance. Telepathy,
something like that? From quite a distance, in the case of this
bird.
Sixteen miles into Eagle’s Roost. Well, maybe fourteen miles as the
crow flies.”
If the traveler knew that Eduardo had made a lame pun, it gave no
indication through the bird.
“Pretty clever, whether it’s telepathy or something else. But it sure
as hell takes a toll on the subject, doesn’t it? You’re getting
better, though, learning the limitations of the local slave
population.”
The crow pecked for more lice.
“Have you made any attempts to control me? Because if you have, I
don’t think I was aware of it. Didn’t feel any probing at my mind,
didn’t see alien images behind my eyes, none of the stuff you read
about in novels.”
Peck, peck, peck.
Eduardo chugged the rest of the Corona. He wiped his mouth on his
sleeve.
Having nailed the lice, the bird watched him serenely, as though it
would sit there all night and listen to him ramble, if that was what he
wanted.
“I think you’re going slow, feeling your way, experimenting. This
world seems normal enough to those of us born here, but maybe to you
it’s one of the weirdest places you’ve ever seen. Could be you’re not
too sure of yourself here.”
He had not begun the conversation with any expectation that the crow
would answer him. He wasn’t in a damned Disney movie. Yet its
continued silence was beginning to frustrate and annoy him, probably
because the day had sailed by on a tide of beer and he was full of
drunkard’s anger.
“Come on. Let’s stop farting around. Let’s do it.”
The crow just stared.
“Come here yourself, pay me a visit, the real you, not in a bird or
squirrel or raccoon. Come as yourself. No costumes. Let’s do it.
Let’s get it over with.”
The bird flapped its wings once, half unfurling them, but that was
all.
“You’re worse than Poe’s raven. You don’t even say a single word, you
just sit there. What good are you?”
Staring, staring.
And the Raven, never Jutting, still is sitting, still is sitting .
Though Poe had never been one of his favorites, only a writer he had
read while discovering what he really admired, he began quoting aloud
to the feathered sentry, infusing the words with the vehemence of the
troubled narrator that the poet had created: ” And his eyes have all
the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming, And the lamplight o’er him
streaming throws his shadow on the floor–” Abruptly he realized, too