Veracity (45 page)

I walked up to the bird with a rock in my hand, and after catching it again when it tried to flutter away from me, I tied the strand that was still hanging from its leg to the rock. Then I cleared a circle in the tall grass around it, the bird eyeing me suspiciously as I did so. It was beyond exhaustion, terrified, and now completely confused. And whenever it managed to regain a bit of strength, it would try and fly away again, only to be wrenched back down to the ground by its tether. (I was hoping that the stress I was putting it through while trying to save it wouldn't end up being the cause of its death.)

I sat as close as I could for quite a while, waiting for it to calm down enough to notice the beetles crawling inside the jar in my hands. When it finally did, I removed the lid with slow, fluid movements, and poured the beetles out into the grass between us. One flew away, while another, which was much faster than I remembered it being, scurried deep into the grass and escaped. But once the bird seemed to recognize that its window of opportunity was closing, it tentatively hopped toward me and pecked the other three from the ground in rapid succession. It was over in seconds.

"I see. This might be harder than I thought," I said, with as soothing a voice as I could muster. "Do you eat fruit?"

I picked through some of the fruit that I'd been carrying in the blanket and sliced open one of the sweeter ones, cutting it into tiny cubes and placing them in the same jar as I had the insects. When I returned, the bird tried to fly away again, and I decided to scatter the pieces of fruit beside the rock and walk back toward the houses until it calmed down. When it did, it noticed the bright colours and began to snatch the pieces of fruit from the grass and swallow them down.

The rest of the day was spent gathering insects and experimenting with different kinds of fruit, trying to find out which ones it preferred. I stayed as close to it as possible, hoping that it would become accustomed to me - even though this never really happened. No matter how slowly I moved, when I approached, it would try and fly away, and subsequently batter itself against the rock or the ground. It had lost so much plumage that, even if it were to have several days of food and rest, I doubted it would be able to fly. It would have to grow new feathers, which could take weeks, maybe even a month. And seeing as I wasn't prepared to stay beside this useless set of buildings for more than a night, if I really wanted to save this bird, I would have to bring it back to the hut with me.

That evening, I lay in the grass, watching the subtle colours of the sky shift and fade into darkness, 'conversing' with my newfound companion in a mild voice. "So I've been thinking about the name of your species. I tried to remember it the first time I saw a flock of birds like you crossing the sky. I remember there being a reference, and I'm not sure if it was in the art book, or medieval history; one of the war books, belief systems - but there was definitely a reference to you somewhere along the way."

The bird made an odd gurgling noise, and in this respect, it
was
something like conversation, as it often murmured sounds between my pauses, as if it were reacting to what I was saying.

"I'm pretty sure you're either a crow or a raven - though they might be different names for the same thing. I don't really know. But I do know that you sparked people's imagination enough to be mentioned in books, which, Dana would say, meant you either represented something people saw in themselves and hated, or saw in themselves and wished they had more of; or both. I'll have to think about that.

"Anyway, tomorrow, we'll travel all day and see if we can make it to the hut. You've eaten a lot of food, and I'm thinking that, after resting for the night, you should have the energy to survive being carried for a long day of hiking. What do you think?" I put my hands behind my head and crossed one leg over the other. The bird crouched low to the ground in reaction to these movements, ready to flap its wings, but didn't.

"And as far as tonight goes, you certainly won't have to worry about predators. I'm sure my smell alone is enough to keep anything from coming within eyeshot; because, well, everything alive is afraid of humans - which I guess only makes sense. For tens of thousands of years we've sent mixed messages, either holding out gentle hands to lure animals closer with food, hoping to catch them and change them from what they are, to mould them into a form that we could see more of our domesticated selves in; or simply luring them with those same gentle hands until they were close enough to kill."

I slowly turned my head to look at the bird, "You should know that I'll release you when you're well again. Promise. Really."

That night, I slept in the grass beside the bird, and woke the next morning to a grating call that I hadn't heard it make before, and which, at close range, almost hurt my ears with its volume. "TOC!" It was abrupt and assertive, and seemed to signal that it was feeling better, regardless of how mangy and pathetic it still looked. It was more active than the day before as well, and was hopping around at the very end of its tether, furthest away from me, taking in the world as only birds do, jerking its head gracelessly in all directions, tilting its neck to eye things with furtive, sidelong glances.

I had gone to sleep forming a plan of how to carry the crow, or raven - or whatever kind of bird it was. (Eventually, I settled on calling it a raven; but only because I had to pick one of them, and, out of the two possibilities, I liked the sound of this one a little better.) This plan of mine was largely based on the appealing image of the raven perched on my shoulder, patiently balancing itself as I walked. It was also, as I would find out, completely unrealistic. After preparing to leave, I untied the rope from the rock and walked up to the bird, which was watching me nervously, as if well aware of the ordeal that was about to take place. When it tried to fly away, I grabbed hold of the rope, quickly looped it around my arm, and yanked down on the tether so that the bird would be drawn up to my shoulder while it was still flailing around. At which point, the back of my skull was beaten with the thudding of its wings, and I tried to lean away from it; but I wasn't far enough, because it managed to jab the side of my head with its beak. I swore, flinging both the rope and the bird up into the air, proving, if nothing else, that it really was unable to fly. Despite flapping as hard as it could, it crashed into the grass, and then began hopping away with the greatest of urgency.

I touched the side of my head, sucking air between my teeth, inspecting the blood on my fingers. "I'm trying to
save
you! Do you get that?" As if in reply to this, the bird plunged behind a thick bunch of grass and continued to flee through the meadow, apparently not caring to 'get' anything - it just wanted to escape. I wasn't worried about losing it, knowing how weak it was; I imagined it would stop as soon as it thought it was out of sight.

I went into one of the buildings to get cloth of some kind, hoping that if I covered its eyes, or beak, or maybe its entire body, it would make the journey more bearable for both of us. While I was inside the cluster of buildings, I also decided to cut off a large section of the rope that I found the raven tangled in. It would be useful, as I only had frayed cord that I was constantly braiding into longer pieces back at the hut. I uncoiled the spool until I came to a spot where it wasn't as damaged by the sun, and cut a long piece from there.

When I returned, I found the raven not very far from where it had disappeared, squatting in the grass, trying to lay hidden, a ragged black shape against the green-yellow strands. "Okay. Let's try this again," I said, holding out the piece of cloth that I'd taken from one of the houses. The bird, seeming to understand that there was going to be another attempt at picking it up, turned and began scurrying away through the meadow again. "Look," I shouted after it, "you can come with me and be fed, grow your feathers back, and be released when you're strong enough; or you can stay here, starve to death and get eaten. The choice is yours." But it wasn't really, and I walked up behind it, tossed the cloth over the whole of its body, and wrapped it into a kind of bundle.

We travelled the entire day, stopping to rest and eat some fruit now and then. I found that as long as the bird was completely covered, with only its beak sticking out of the cloth in order to breathe, it wouldn't try to flap or escape, or even worse, gouge my skin. Unfortunately, it took me a while to learn that I couldn't let my guard down for a second when it came to its opportunistic pecking, and my arms looked like a map of welts; red islands splaying across a skin ocean.

When we arrived at the hut, just after the sun had gone down, I tried to bring the bird inside for the night to keep it safe from predators. But it didn't think much of that idea, stubbornly flapping and squawking until I brought it back outside. In the end, I decided to take the boughs and leaves that were padding my bed and move them outside, having to sleep a second time under the open sky for the raven's sake.

The next day I built a cage out of sticks and some of the tattered strands of rope from the hut, which worked quite well. While I tended the terrace during the day, I would keep the bird tied to a rock, where it would flap and exercise its wings, pluck beetles and other insects that happened to wander its way along the ground, and eat fruit that I cubed and placed in front of it every few hours; then, overnight, I would put it inside the cage to keep it safe from other animals. But one day I spotted a long and thin scavenger ambling along the rim of bushes, which looked similar to a cunning little mustelid that we had on the island. I hadn't been taking an animal like this - which could easily fit between the bars and kill the raven anytime it wanted to - into consideration when I'd built the cage, or when I'd been placing it on the ground outside my door overnight. As a solution, I decided to hang it in my open doorway, thinking that if my smell wasn't enough to keep the tiny predator at bay, then the raven making noise as it approached would be; as I would wake and probably scare it away before it did any damage.

It had only been dangling in the doorway for five nights before that very thing happened, the raven flapping wildly and clawing at the sticks of the cage until I roused from sleep. Only, it didn't turn out to be the tiny scavenger that woke me.

36

I rolled over, suddenly awake, my eyes darting around the darkness of the hut. There was a deep, sickening feeling in my chest that something was wrong, but that I'd become aware of it too late; as if I'd been thrown into a race without having any idea which direction to run. The raven was restless, rattling the wooden cage, wishing that it could break out and fly away, vanish into a jagged silhouette in the night sky where it could watch things unfold from the safety of the air. The fact that it wasn't making any vocal sounds only added to the urgency, as if it somehow understood that in this kind of situation - whatever this kind of situation was - silence was a far better tool than alarm; that the time for giving signals of warning had long since passed. It clacked its beak together when it noticed I was up, seeming to chide me for taking so long to wake.

"Shit," I whispered, rubbing my eyes, "What is it?"

The bird crouched down and jerked its head to look out into the night.

I crept out of bed and ducked under the cage, stepping into the cool air outside. I stood in front of the door and listened for what must have been a few minutes, until I heard a sound above the rush of the stream; just one, coming from behind the hut, far into the terrace.

Believing that there were only animals left on the mainland, and knowing that animals would run as I approached, it didn't cross my mind to bring a knife; I just rounded the building and walked toward the fruit trees, stepping as noisily as I could to give fair warning that a human was on its way. A gentle breeze drew up the long slope to the terrace, pressing my clothes against my skin, and I could hear some of the leaves in the fruit trees rustling, one of them tapping a distracted rhythm against a branch. There was no moon in the sky, yet there was enough starlight that I could make out specific trees, and I kept walking until I was roughly in the centre of them all. Which is where I stood, looking around, listening, wondering why I hadn't heard anything scurry away as I'd approached.

I must have been there for a few minutes before a disturbing thought crossed my mind: the small scavenging animal, which I was so intent on protecting the raven from, would have had ample opportunity to climb the doorframe and crawl into the cage in the minutes I'd been away from the hut. While I was investigating what was probably only a piece of fruit falling to the ground, I might have been giving the sly predator a golden opportunity. In fact, I thought to myself, it might even have been the mustelid skulking closer to the building that had agitated the bird in the first place. I turned to walk back, shaking my head, feeling stupid, careless.

But then I stalled, and was suddenly standing stiff, holding my breath. There was something in the stillness, something hidden beneath the lazy flutter of leaves. And the more I concentrated on it, the more I was sure it was there. It wasn't anything specific, or, for that matter, even audible; it was more like a tenseness that didn't belong to me, the weight of another's anticipation. And it seemed to be in every direction, as if I was surrounded, as if my movements were being watched from all sides with fanatical concentration.

I don't know why I chose to speak, but, for some reason, this is what made sense to do. My voice was hesitant, doubtful. "Hello?" I called out.

At the exact moment the word left my mouth, the trees and vegetation around me came to life. There was motion everywhere. From right behind me, to far below the terrace, near the rim of the bushes, close to the hut, high in the trees, immediately to my left, directly in front of me. Everywhere. I didn't look around to try and see what was happening, or stand firm in a defensive stance, nor even try to run; instead, my knees weakened, and then buckled, and I crumpled to the ground, covering my head, waiting for a spear to pierce my skin, or plunge through my rib cage, pin one of my limbs to the ground.