The stones are hard through my thin soled boots. There is an influx of new canal boats - White Rose, Stanley Baxter, Water Dance. The day is grey and the light is still low and the canal is flat and still, black and glassy. I follow its straight cut edge, down the slope beside the lock, where water pours out of the gap between gates. I will walk down to the bend and then I will turn back. I will skate the rough edges of puddles and I will reach the point where the path branches and I will turn there. Except I don’t.
Instead, I pause by the small grassy common that leads to the lake, where the water holds unbroken reflections of bare branches. There, in a shaft of sunlight, stands a small muntjac deer. Its head is cocked away from me, watching a crow on the grass in front of it. For a moment we stand there, all of us, me watching the deer watch the crow. Still as a held breath. The deer’s back is burnished in the shaft of early sun; the crow’s feathers glossy. She extends a wing, feathers furling out, and the deer startles, aware suddenly of my watching presence. He bounces into the undergrowth and is gone.
It feels like a window to a story I know nothing about. A girl trapped in the body of a deer, searching for home. A crow, wise and old, harbinger of death and doom, crop stealer, wise old woman. The battle between the two. The fascination of contradiction.
There are many stories of crows. In The Three Crows, three men come come from war, one with savings. The others plot to steal his money, take him deep into the forest, beat him, tie him to a tree. Blind him. (It is common in folktales, this blindness as a punishment - an outdated, ableist trope that the blind are somehow less than, or have been morally judged, that needs revising - or at least acknowledging- in contemporary retellings. See Disfigured by Amanda de Luc for more)
While tied to a tree, the man hears three crows above him, talking. They call each other sister. They speak of the princess’s illness, that can only be cured by eating the ashes of a certain flower. They talk of the drought, which can only be ended by digging under a certain stone in the village square. They talk of a dew from heaven that will rain down in the night and make a blind man see. (Again, with the blind having to see as the only happy ending. Last time I’ll mention it. But, notice it, these unfair ableist narratives snuck quiet into the heart of the old tales.)
You know what happens next. The man breaks free, washes his eyes with dew; he can see. He takes the princess the flower’s ash and heals her, brings water to the town, marries the woman he healed with another’s wisdom. His assailants go into the wood themselves, to where they tied him. They want some of his wisdom. But the crows have noticed what is happening. The crows do not want their wisdom stolen. They look about for eavesdroppers, spy the men, swoop down and beat them with their wings, blinding them.
The princess is healed by a man she must then marry.
The princess is healed by the wisdom of a sister crow.
The crows hold the wisdom, for how to heal a princess, for how to heal the hurt, for how to heal the world.
The crow on the grass turns to me, head cocked, watching. She does not startle as the deer did. She watches me. I watch her. I have to believe there is wisdom here, in the quiet overlooked natural world, in this small patch of grass beside an oil streaked canal, beneath trees that edge a busy road and an industrial estate. The world seems such a mess, so discouraging and hopeless and frightening.
I see myself reflected back in a grey puddle, branches wriggling across the sky behind me, just the same as the year before, just the same as next year. I cannot see my face in the water, only shadows. Perhaps if I stay here long enough, Sister Crow will lend me some of her wisdom.
Wonderful storytelling--- your walk, the deer, the crow and then you spun us into your tale and back out the other side. I really enjoyed it.