THE PATH UNTO THE KING - PART II WHAT THE CROWS REMEMBER There are memories which fade. There are memories which haunt. And there are memories so grievous that Time itself seems unwilling to touch them. For more than a thousand years... I had prayed this one would die with me. It did not. The fire stood between us. Bexxy watched beneath the crooked crown Gerald had fashioned for her. Kitten remained beside her, still clutching that ridiculous walnut as though creation itself depended upon its survival. Above us... the Murder waited. Hundreds of black shapes clung silently to the trees. Some of those eyes... I remembered when they were human. I looked toward Gerald. “Attend the King.” He descended into Bexxy's open palm. “Dante.” Tap. “Attend the Keeper.” Kitten frowned. “The what?” “You will understand.” “I don't particularly like the way you said that.” “I'd be worried if you did.” Dante settled gently into her hand. I knelt beside the fire. “You asked why Gerald is afraid.” Bexxy nodded. “Then do not look at me.” I looked toward my oldest friends. “Look at them.” Gerald met Bexxy's eyes. Dante met Kitten's. And I began speaking words I had not uttered aloud in centuries. Harsh old syllables fashioned by men accustomed to salt, iron, winter, and gods mankind has long since abandoned. Another voice joined mine. Then another. Then dozens. Men dead a thousand years began chanting around us. Other voices followed. Older voices belonging to the people of this land. Different tongues. Different gods. Different worlds. Slowly... the two chants became one. The fire twisted. The forest grew shorter. And memory became flesh. Sunlight. Woodsmoke. Children laughing beside a river. A continent before its familiar names. Before roads wounded the earth and wires scarred the heavens. Beyond the settlement stood strangers. Men carrying iron. Men who had crossed an ocean which should have killed them. Bexxy noticed one first. Broad-shouldered. Bearded. Laughing. Someone called to him. The man turned. Hmmm. Bexxy stopped breathing. “Gerald...?” Human. Beside him stood another. Quiet. Watching. Remembering. Dante. Then they saw me. Kitten whispered: “Oh...” Looking precisely as I did beside the fire. A thousand years had passed. Though my face wouldn't show it. Then came the screaming. Warriors descended upon the settlement. Whatever grievance brought them there has mercifully been swallowed by history. We strangers had no place in their war. Then one of my brothers saw a child in danger. He moved. Gerald followed. Dante drew iron. And I followed them. Perhaps everything began with that single, profoundly human decision: “Not my people” was insufficient reason to let a child die. Three peoples bled beneath the same indifferent sun. Then one of ours fell. His blood touched the earth. And the world became silent. Wind. River. Birdsong. Gone. Blood crawled sideways through the soil... toward the forest. An elder saw it and screamed. Then the earth inhaled. Once. Twice. Three times. Something beneath us had awakened. What emerged from those woods I cannot describe. Bexxy remembered impossible height. Kitten remembered vastness beneath the earth. Gerald remembered another shape. Dante another. The memory itself refused to agree upon what it had witnessed. Men who had been killing one another moments earlier lowered their weapons. No treaty was signed. No forgiveness offered. They simply looked upon something infinitely worse than one another... and understood. Whatever we had been before that moment, we were human now. And humanity was losing. The Old Keepers uncovered a stone buried beneath the settlement. Time had gnawed its edges smooth, yet two figures remained with dreadful clarity. The Key. And beneath it... a man bearing wings which no man was born to possess. The figure knelt. His back opened beneath those terrible wings. My brother stared at it. Not brother by blood. Brother by that older bond forged between men who repeatedly survive things which should have killed them. “Jager.” “No.” His fingers traced the carving. “I know that shape.” I knew it too. Gods save me. I knew it. Behind us, men screamed. Children fled. The Thing drew closer. My brother seized my arm. “Ask me.” “I will not.” “Brother.” “No.” He pressed his forehead against mine. His eyes were wet. Yet... he smiled. “Ask me.” My voice broke. “You understand what this requires?” “Yes.” “You will die.” “I know.” He looked toward the fleeing children. Then back at me. “Ask me.” And so... I did. “Do you give yourself willingly?” His eyes never left mine. “I do.” Then he squeezed my shoulder. “Remember me.” I wish he had asked anything else. A young woman stepped forward from among the Old Keepers. Blood ran from her brow. Around her neck hung a single feather. We shared no language. No gods. No history. She touched the feather. Then the symbol carved upon the stone. The Key. Her hand moved toward my brother. Toward those dreadful wings. Then... toward me. I understood. She knew how to close the door. I knew the terrible shape required to close it. Neither people possessed the whole answer. Together, we did. Our voices rose. Hers in the tongue of this land. Mine in the language of men from across the sea. At first the chants fought one another. Then somehow... they found the same rhythm. My brother knelt. And I began. I will not burden another soul with every detail of what my hands were required to do. It is enough to say that when I finished... my brother wore the wings carved upon the stone. His opened ribs formed their dreadful span. His lungs rested across them like the crimson wings of some profane angel. And I... his brother... had put them there. I remember the blood upon my hands. I remember Gerald turning away. I remember begging forgiveness long after my brother could no longer grant it. Dante never looked away. Of course he didn't. The Archivist remembers. The Old Keepers cried their ancient words. My brothers answered. The young Keeper seized my trembling hand. The feather rested between our palms. Together... we turned a Key possessing no lock. And creation screamed. The Thing did not die. It went... away. Into some impossible direction beneath the world for which mankind possesses no word. The wound closed. The Blood was accepted. The Key endured. And morning came. Among the dead, former enemies tended one another. A Norseman carried water to an Indigenous elder. A warrior bound the wounds of a man he had arrived intending to kill. A child slept safely among strangers. Humanity had remembered something. If only for a day. The young Keeper placed her hand against my chest. Then hers. Then gestured toward the sealed earth. No parchment. No signatures. No common tongue. Yet the promise was unmistakable. When the darkness returns, we stand together. The Old Agreement. But prisons require guards. Gerald stepped forward. Dante followed. Then the others. Every surviving brother who had crossed that damned ocean beside me. “No.” Gerald smiled. “You have given enough.” He shook his head. Then placed his hand upon my chest. “You remember.” The Old Keepers began chanting. And I understood. “Gerald...” My friend looked at me for the final time as a man. His eyes were wet. So were mine. He tilted his head. Hmmm. Despite everything... I laughed. “That is your final wisdom?” Gerald shrugged. Then the rite took them. Men became shadows. Shadows became feathers. Human voices rose into the morning... and returned as the cries of crows. I called their names. Every one. I remember every one. When it ended, Gerald stood before me. Small. Black. Impossible. I fell to my knees. He climbed into my hand and pressed his feathered head against my chest. Hmmm. Something inside me broke. Dante landed upon my shoulder. Tap. The first. Somehow... I understood. Remember. Then they flew away. For one dreadful moment... I thought that was their goodbye. Gerald returned. A twig rested in his beak. He dropped it at my feet. Dante came next. Another twig. Then another crow. And another. Leaves. Grass. Vine. One miserable dead leaf. And there, beneath a morning sky which had witnessed the end of one world, men who had possessed hands only moments before attempted to weave using beak and talon. It collapsed. They began again. Again. Again. That was when I wept. Not when Gerald surrendered his human face. Not when Dante's voice became the tapping of a beak. But watching my brothers, deprived even of hands... trying desperately to make me a crown. Eventually Gerald stepped backward. Before him rested a crude circlet of crooked branches and dying leaves. I laughed through my tears. “It is hideous.” Hmmm. “Yes. I know you tried.” Gerald took the Crown within his beak. He rose... and placed it upon my head. Then he bowed. Dante followed. One by one, the others lowered themselves until the earth before me had become black with crows. There had been no Crown upon the stone. No prophecy had demanded one. No Old Keeper had spoken of a King. Gerald had. The Crown never meant dominion. It meant duty. Memory. The one condemned to remain when everyone else was gone. And beneath a sky blackened by the wings of men I had once called brothers... the First King was made. Years became decades. The first Keeper became my friend. She aged. I did not. Eventually, I sat beside an old woman whom I still remembered standing bloodied beside me at the end of the world. She removed the feather from around her neck. Placed it into my hand. I shook my head. “No.” She smiled. “Until another.” Her fingers closed mine around it. “Until another, King.” Before morning... she died. Gerald remained. Dante remained. And I... remained. The vision shattered. Fire. Forest. Night. Bexxy gasped. Kitten fell to her knees. Gerald remained in Bexxy's trembling hand. Dante sat silently within Kitten's. Bexxy stared at Gerald. Tears ran freely down her face. “That was you.” Hmmm. She laughed through the tears. “You've always done that?” Hmmm. Then she pulled him against her chest. Gerald let her. Kitten stared at Dante. “You remembered all of it?” Tap. “All this time?” Tap. She gently closed her hands around him. For perhaps the first time in a thousand years... the Archivist was permitted to stop watching. Only for a moment. Bexxy touched the crooked Crown upon her head. “Gerald...” He looked up. “You remembered.” Hmmm. I looked at the sticks. The leaves. The terrible craftsmanship. “He made yours better.” Bexxy looked at me. “What?” “Mine had a dead leaf.” She reached upward... and pulled a dead leaf from hers. Silence. Gerald looked at me. I looked at Gerald. A thousand years... and some things apparently refused to change. Kitten noticed the necklace around my throat. “The feather?” I removed it. Placed it into her palm beside the walnut. “The walnut was never the Key.” Her head snapped toward Gerald. “YOU THREATENED MY TOE OVER A WALNUT?!” Gerald: Hmmm. “The walnut was the test.” I closed Kitten's fingers around the feather. “This is the promise.” “What bird?” “Passenger pigeon.” “There were once billions.” Kitten frowned. “Once?” I nodded. “Mankind has always possessed a peculiar talent, Keeper.” “For what?” “Mistaking abundance for permanence.” Bexxy looked toward Gerald. “You made me King.” Hmmm. “Why me?” I expected Gerald to look toward the Crown. He didn't. He looked toward her home. My blood went cold. “Gerald?” Nothing. Then I understood. “You chose her before the Crown.” Hmmm. “Before the Candle.” Hmmm. I stood. “You weren't watching her.” Gerald lowered his head. Dante did the same. “What did you find?” Bexxy's expression hardened. “What are you talking about?” Words spoken by the first Keeper near the end of her life returned to me. Words I had carried for centuries without understanding. I looked at Bexxy. “King...do you have a child?” Everything about her changed. “Why?” I knew immediately what she feared. “No.” My answer came sharply enough that even Gerald looked toward me. “Whatever thought just entered your mind, bury it.” I stepped closer. “The child owes us nothing. No blood. No Crown. No sacrifice.” Bexxy said nothing. “The Old Keepers spoke of one who would come when the Crown returned without blood.” And finally... I remembered. Born of the world that forgot, yet known by those condemned to remember. No debt shall bind the child. No blood shall purchase the child. For what was sealed by sacrifice...may yet be ended by innocence. Bexxy stared at me. “What happens to the child?” “Nothing.” Immediately. “Nothing happens to the child.” I looked toward the ancient earth. “The child is not another sacrifice.” Then toward her. “The child may be the reason there never needs to be another.” Silence. And suddenly... the spoon. The walnuts. The watching. The Crown. The dungeon. The Candle. Every absurd step of Gerald's campaign assembled itself into one terrible whole. I looked at him. “You knew.” Gerald watched me. “From the beginning?” Slowly... he nodded. Gerald had not stumbled upon Bexxy. He had found her. After a thousand years of searching, he had sensed something around that house the darkness could not quite touch. So he watched. He tested. And somewhere along the way discovered something he had perhaps not expected. The mother. A woman who befriended crows. Who protected those she loved. Who, when presented with the ancient arithmetic of sacrificing the few to preserve the many... refused. Find another way. Gerald had not merely found the Child. He had found a King willing to end the cycle which had created us. For a thousand years, I believed the Old Agreement demanded sacrifice. My brother's life. Gerald's humanity. Dante's voice. The Keeper's mortality. My eternity. But perhaps... we had misunderstood. The sacrifice had never been the Agreement. The Agreement was what came afterward. Enemies tending one another. Strangers protecting children. People with different languages, histories, and gods deciding that none of those differences mattered more than keeping one another alive. I looked toward the new King. The new Keeper. My oldest friends. And somewhere beyond us... a child who owed ancient monsters absolutely nothing. Bexxy placed the Crown upon her head. Kitten closed her hand around the feather. Gerald flew to his King's shoulder. Dante settled beside the Keeper. And I... the last remnant of the first Agreement... stood before the new one. For more than a thousand years, I had carried the memory because someone had to. I had crossed kingdoms. Watched nations rise from wilderness and return to dust. Buried friends. Buried enemies. Buried every Keeper who came after the first. And waited. For Gerald. For the Crown. For her. At last... my journey was finished. I looked at Bexxy. “The Old Agreement began with strangers choosing to stand together.” She regarded me quietly. “And now?” I smiled. For once, there was nothing left for me to teach. Nothing left for Gerald to test. Nothing left for Dante to reveal. The Crown had returned. The Keeper carried the Promise. And somewhere nearby existed something none of us ancient fools had possessed when this nightmare began: a future unburdened by our past. I bowed my head. Not deeply. Just enough. The First King... to the next. “Now, King?” Gerald became still. Dante lowered his head. The Murder waited. I looked into her eyes. “Now you decide what happens next.” And with that... The Path Unto the King, a journey I have made and described so many a countless times; now possibly will be my last. #CrowLady#