CHAPTER ELEVEN: {THE DREAM}
Unaware she had closed them, Crow opens her eyes to see she is home, in her familiar forest and there is a jug full of ripe red berries at her feet. She begins to eat them. Each berry is juicy and delicious but she can hear a strange sound in the distance—a rushing, a roaring— it is getting louder and louder. Crow keeps eating, a little faster now as the sound rises. In a moment, she understands—the river is flooding—and suddenly the rushing, rising current crashes through the trees and overwhelms the forest. Crow clasps her wings around the jug of berries as she is swept up in the torrent…
Spun in circles by the powerful river, she is relieved by a strange sensation that she can breathe underwater. Her fear washes away and she lets go of the jug. She discovers that swimming is a lot like flying, just much slower. As she swims through the twisting current, the waters around her darken and spin her faster into their depths…
Again her eyes open but she can’t make out what she is seeing. Is it the edge of the forest? Is she so far up in the sky she can see the edge of the forest where it meets the water? The image gets further and further away until she realizes it is actually lichen, patterned on a rock. The rock! It’s the rock from her nest! She is surprised to feel such glad relief to be near it again. But just as she recognizes the rock it starts to fall away from her again—No! Stay! My rock!
“Your rock?” Crow hears a familiar voice in her mind—it’s the mountain. She is in its dark belly. “Come, let me show you…” the mountain says. Crow feels herself growing larger and stonier, she is becoming a massive solidity that stretches out farther than she can see. Far down below her she senses a worried, fluttery little creature. She can feel how frightened the creature is and surrounds it with mountainous protection, but the little creature keeps throwing little rocks in all directions.
All at once she is in a dappled forest full of green sunlight. She sees garlands of flowers and ferns trailing from her antlers. She is aware of herself as an exquisite beauty, a miracle of the forest. But a small, irritated creature is flicking rocks at her—she can’t see the rocks, she only hears a harsh cawing and with each caw she feels a tiny sharp pain. The pain isn’t just physical, it feels like an attack on her dignity—like being poked and prodded into the wrong shape…
Now she is spreading her huge wings, striped and barred with black flecks. She sees a strangely beautiful creature, with shiny black feathers and keen eyes, and she moves down to know more about it…She hears that same cawing, and feels those tiny sharp stones pricking her, and this time the pain feels like loneliness and being misunderstood. She flies away, disappointed…
She soars on broad, silent wings and the dark air becomes liquid and her path becomes a river and the river becomes a snake and she feels a power deep inside her. She is dancing, and the earth is dancing with her…
Crow opens her eyes, again, and sees her home forest submerged in water but the torrent has slowed to a trickle. Her jug of berries is cracked open. Some of her berries have taken root and begun growing in the soil underwater. Many berries are floating on the gentle current, off toward other forests.
She smiles at the thought of hungry animals finding them.
May they be accepted as gifts.