IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK

The Freezing Crow

A fairy tale

There once was a crow, so large that he could have been a raven. His name was Blackwing.

Although Blackwing had a large family and knew many, many more of his kind, he preferred his own company and often set out alone, much like a raven, in fact.

And another thing he did like a raven, although he was a crow: he would glide on his wings. First, he would flap, flap, flap high up into the air, and then, into the wind, he would keep his wings stretched and just glide and glide, riding the air almost like an eagle. Or an albatross. The other crows thought him a little crazy, to be frank.

This one winter’s day — the sky was draped by a whole flotilla of snow-bearing clouds, ready to bear down upon the land below — Blackwing took a long look at the sky before he made up his mind: he would not spend the whole day shielded with his blizzard-expecting family and all the other crows here in the forest, he would, as usual, set out for another solo expedition. He would make it back before the snow, he was pretty sure, though not entirely.

Those around him, both family and not, told him (and anyone else nearby) that he was crazy to set out on a day like this. Snow soon; too cold. Blackwing ignored all this and took to the air, soon gliding away just like a raven.

Blackwing was as good a judge of weather as any crow or raven and was seldom wrong, but this day he was wrong. He had flown for nearly an hour, now surveying a village far below, when the blizzard broke.

And not only did the flotilla of clouds burst and spill their millions and millions and millions of flakes upon the little village, but the temperature dropped as well, plummeted.

He would have to find shelter, he knew that, and soon, so he wheeled toward the nearby forest where he hoped to find some tightly-needled pines or firs to creep below or within, and he thought he had spotted the perfect huddle of trees when out of the forest, heading right for him came four hawks aiming not to kill but to chase away — this was the hawks’ (and their family’s) forest, no crow will settle here or find shelter.

Over their dead bodies.

Blackwing knew he would not even have a prayer against these larger and more sharply-beaked birds, and so swiveled around and headed for another part of the forest the other side of a narrow field — not that the hawks would have any part of that either, for they took up chase to make sure that Blackwing stayed out of their forest altogether, all parts of it. He was not a hawk, and being un-hawk, he was un-welcome.

As he flapped his way back over the small lake toward the little village the temperature kept dropping and the snow kept swirling and he knew that he would have to settle and find shelter among or, if he were lucky, within one of the houses below. And soon.

Alighting on the porch of a large, well-lit house with smoke billowing out of two fat chimneys, he walked up to the door and knocked as loudly as he could with his beak.

He listened but could hear no approaching footsteps, so he knocked again and even harder this time.

The door flew open and the man looked around in confusion, there was no one there; until Blackwing spoke: “Would you let a freezing crow warm himself inside your house?”

The man looked down at Blackwing and didn’t even bother to answer before he slammed the door shut in his face, almost crushing his beak.

The next house was not quite as large but looked just as warm, and had a nice, fat pillar of smoke rising from the tall gray chimney.

He knocked and knocked, and as the lady of the house finally opened the door, he asked the same question, “Would you let a freezing crow warm himself inside your house?”

At least the lady answered him before slamming the door shut. “Not on your life Master Crow. This is not a zoo.”

He tried three more houses with the same result.

Very cold now and stiff and partially white with frost, he came to the last house in the village, a small, paltry looking one, not much more than a hovel, really. Still, he knocked, knocked, knocked.

The man who opened was old and needed a cane to get around.

“Would you let a freezing crow warm himself inside your house?” said Blackwing.

“Oh, my, Master Crow,” said that man. “You look like one very cold bird. You had better come in out of the blizzard.”

“Thank you so very much,” said Blackwing and hopped on in just like happy crows like to hop (like fat little priests).

This blizzard was no ordinary blizzard. For days the snow just kept on falling, adding first inches then feet then yards to the snow already on the ground and covering all the houses, and by now only a narrow tunnel of air made it from within these houses — from the hearth through the chimney, then through the snow and out into the sky above — snow-tunnels drilled by the fire and widened by warm, rising smoke.

One morning the man said to the crow, “I only have firewood for one more day. If the blizzard doesn’t stop, the chimney will freeze and the snow will crowd itself in to fill the tunnel and then you and I will die of the cold, or of starvation, or of suffocation, take your pick.”

Blackwing, who was smarter than the average crow (or raven) gave this some thought. “I know what to do,” he said.

“What would you do?” asked the man.

“Bank the fire as much as you can so it doesn’t burn me as I climb out.”

“Climb out?”

“I will climb up the chimney and up through the snow tunnel and into the air and fly back to my forest to fetch help.”

“Can you fly in this blizzard?” wondered the man.

“With the warmth and the food and the nourishing conversations I’ve had in this house, I can fly in any weather,” said Blackwing.

“Well, all right,” said the man and set out to bank the fire.

Once it burned more slowly and not so hot, Blackwing scaled the chimney and then the snow tunnel (which was almost ten feet long by now) and then heaved himself into the cold air above. He stretched his wings and shook off the soot and took to the air.

All birds, as you know, can find home blindfolded, and Blackwing being a crow who is a bird knew precisely in which direction to fly even though he could hardly see a thing through the falling and swirling snow. And fly, fly, fly he did, flap, flap, flap (no gliding in this weather) all the way back to his own family and his own village of crows.

They were all surprised to see him back, and alive at that, can you believe it, in this weather. Once settled, Blackwing told them all about his adventure and about the old man who had let him into his house to ride out the blizzard in comfort. But now, he added, his firewood has run out and soon his chimney will be filled with snow, and he might die soon if we don’t help him — for lack of air, or food, or warmth, or all of the above.

“Once the blizzard dies down, or takes a sizeable rest, we must all fly over to his village and help him,” he said.

“We?” said his family.

“We?” said the other crows (there were many, many of them, a little over eight hundred of them).

“We,” repeated Blackwing. “The man did one crow a big favor, and so did all of us crows a big favor, a big, unselfish favor, and we owe him one in return.”

It sounds like quite an uproar when eight hundred crows discuss the pros and cons of saving a human life, and this goes on for a while. In fact, it went on all through the night and into the next morning, which rose, clear as a bell, a fresh, white sun rising on the whitest world.

“Okay,” said eight hundred crows. “Let’s go help the man.”

And so it was that a deep and wide cloud of crows set out from the forest for the village and before the sun had climbed too far into the sky they arrived, all eight hundred of them.

“That is his house,” said Blackwing.

“How can you tell?” said the crows — for there were no houses visible anywhere, just big small mountains of snow, some of which — all of which, in fact, but one — still had smoke rising up through the snow and into the clear air.

“It’s the house without smoke,” said Blackwing.

“What would you have us do?” asked eight hundred crows.

“We have all seen thousands of starlings explode into the sky as living cloud. We will do the same, but not high into the air but above and all about this house, where we will flap and flap to loosen the powdery snow and where we will circle and circle faster and faster as fast as a whirlwind to lift all the snow from his house.

Crows, as I think I mentioned, are very clever, and soon enough they all understood what to do and had descended upon the little snow-mountain house as a flapping, whirling cloud, and soon, perhaps after a thousand fabulously fast spins around the house, all the snow had been cleared from the house itself and from several feet all around it as well.

The man opened the door. “Blackwing.”

“Yes.”

“You came through.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“Yes, a little,” said the man.

Eight hundred crows still circled the house, but much more leisurely now, while the man, standing and warming himself in the sun, thanked them over and over and over again.

As for the rest of the houses in that village, those larger snow mountains, they all starved or froze or suffocated to death for no one could make it out through the snow, and by the time they ran out of firewood, Blackwing along with the rest of crows had long since returned to their forest.

© Wolfstuff