CHAPTER EIGHT: {THE TEACHER}
In the blue hour right before dawn, Crow awoke in a forest that wasn’t her own. It sounded familiar, though. She heard the first few timid bird songs, and more voices joining into a welcoming chorus that swelled through the treetop canopy. And if she listened just right, she could hear a gentle, jazzy rhythm of woodland scuffling on the ground below her. Crows have very beautiful voices, but right before dawn is their time to observe silence. Until the sun has risen, they fly quietly or stand still in order to listen and attune to the day in particularly crowlike ways.
It was in this private moment that Crow heard something exceptional—a crashing, rushing, dragging kind of noise—and then her tree was shaken by a large animal scratching up against it. Typical deer behavior, she muttered to herself, but when she looked down she couldn’t be sure it was a deer. It had the back legs of a deer, and the shoulders of a deer, but beyond that it seemed to be an assortment of plants, much like the forest floor itself—vines, mosses, flowers, broad leaves, ferns, and mulchy dead leaves—all gathered around an invisible center that was rubbing itself against the tree. The creature was so large and so strange that she remembered the mountain, the roses that grew on the mountain, and her heart leapt with an irrational flutter of excitement. She flew down half from curiosity and half from courtesy to make the acquaintance of this dweller—it was not her own forest, after all.
From a lower branch she could see that there was a deer’s face under that headdress, that it was a full grown stag whose antlers supported the weight of all that plant life. Noticing her, the stag stopped scratching and courteously nodded his head. She bobbed her head in return and then asked, “Friend Stag, I’m from a distant forest beyond that mountain. I’m curious to learn more about your ways here. Can you tell me about your beautiful headdress?” This seemed to strike the right chord, as the stag stretched his neck proudly to be admired.
But deer think and speak and do everything more slowly than birds do, so before he could answer Crow had even more questions. Crow remembered the story of the anemone and the hermit crab, and thought this could be something similar. She was intensely curious about how animals might all be helping each other. Animals and maybe plants, too? She kept her questions coming—“or perhaps this is a friend of yours that you carry always with you? Or are they poisonous plants, to threaten your enemies? Do you keep the same plants when you drop your antlers and grow new ones?” And finally, since Crow was quite romantic at heart, she excitedly asked, “Or have you sworn an oath of mutual love and protection to each other?”
The stag looked confused. He lowered his head and shook it a few times as if to clear his mind. Crow rushed in again, “Oh—or maybe I’m mistaken and you’re trying to get free from these plants! You must have just stumbled into a bush and got them caught on your fine, broad antlers. Here, I can help you pluck them off!” And Crow fluttered toward a dangling vine and was about to grasp it when the stag bellowed, “No!” Crow flew off a little ways, cawing in alarm, then landed on a higher branch. They were both silent for a moment, Crow preening her feathers and the stag tossing his head to adjust his flowers. Well, that was very rude, Crow thought to herself. But perhaps the plants were poisonous after all and the stag was trying to protect her. Then she remembered that deer need a lot of time to think before they’re ready to speak, which helped her forgive the fright he gave her. After what seemed like a very long time to Crow, the stag began to speak.
“I liked you most at first,” he said, “when you recognized my beauty. You could have stopped there and I would have thought well of you, and your people beyond the mountain.” He snorted a little and pawed the dirt, then continued. “I don’t quite understand everything else you’ve said, but you certainly like to rush in and make up stories! Because of that, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anymore about my headdress than you’ve already noticed—it is beautiful, and it is mine. Whatever else I say is bound to be taken up like some shiny trinket to weave into another story which is not my story.”
Crow hopped from foot to foot on her branch, and bowed a little, feeling nervous and ashamed. “I apologize, Friend Stag,” she said finally and clamped her beak tightly to keep from launching into explanations or asking even more questions. The stag seemed satisfied. He nodded to her again and began to wander off between the trees, picking his way with regal grace. But before he was out of sight, Crow couldn’t resist asking one more question: “Your beautiful headdress!” she cried out, “How does it help you? What is the benefit of it?”
Without looking around, the stag replied, “I adorn myself because I adore myself.”
“But why?”
The stag turned his head slowly and held Crow’s gaze. A silence fell again as the stag pondered the question, and Crow held in all her many other questions. Finally, he answered, “You seem to believe everything has a purpose and if you don’t know its reason for being you cannot let it be. I feel sorry for you, Crow, because if you can’t see beyond usefulness you’ll miss out on so much strange beauty in the world—and in yourself.” And with haughty, delicate steps, he disappeared into the trees.
Now it was Crow’s turn to fall silent and feel confused. She liked the sound of “strange beauty.” It reminded her of the mountain, and even of the rock in her nest. But what strange beauty was there in herself that she wasn’t seeing? The stag was the strange one... wasn’t he? As she asked herself these questions she felt a pressure building, somewhere deep below her quick and curious mind—as though a rising river was about to overflow an inward dam.