Crow Mother

For aunties and surrogates everywhere.

And for Reuben

Everyone and no one understands the mystery of birth. The superlative creation that any woman can do, if she wants to. Pouring living things out of her, slimy things that wriggle and scream – unlike the dry dead promises of men.

Something animal and entirely Godly. The screams and grunts a woman makes as she digs into a deep and primal place to bring forth her child are more abandoned than any that animal musters. Like dancing; primal and poetic – birthing is too. The wild circles of cries painted in the air – blended whorls of relief, pain, wonder.

This is not a Christmas story.

But a child was born.

*****

He came into the world and blinked – huge black myopic eyes. They tell me all babies are glass blue-eyed when they’re born.

He was not.

His cave-black eyes still reflected the dark safe womb and he stared down at the shadowed table – for comfort. The world is so cold, so loud, so hard. Everything hurts. His skin is as soft as insides and instead we show him edges. Horrified, he screams his way into the world and only those soft dark things – flesh, crevices, darkness comfort him against a world so sharp, so bright and green it hurts.

Mother crow heard him cry. All crows are mothers and aunts and when they hear a baby cry their breasts tug, their lower parts hurt, and it wells together to engender their desperate wailing caw.

No crow can hear a child cry without pouring out her own wail in sympathy.

*****

The little child was loved, so loved, and he was dressed in white and laid in his cradle in the garden in the shade of a great eucalyptus tree. The breeze stirred the leaves to peek through and whispered ‘oh! What a lovely child!’ And the tree jealously wrapped round its trailing tresses so it could keep the lovely child to itself. The bees loved the flowers then followed the budding glow of the child and said to each other ‘he izzz lovely’ and the flowers craned their necks to look at him. Birds flitted down to sing him lullabies.

The child dimly smelled milk and honey. Colours were bright and smudgy. In the glow, he felt better – much better. The sun was warm and soft on his little cheeks; his blankets were soft and edgeless and this new sensation of the gentle breeze and birdsong was lovely to his sightless eyes.

The bees and the trees and the craning clematis and all the flowers agreed he was beautiful, beautiful and they loved him deeply.

And in the garden, under the apple tree, the fairies felt it. They heard the talk of the flowers and the bees and trees and the birds and resolved to take this beautiful baby for their own.

*****

A woman – animal – primal – civilized – creator – walks into her garden with a book and milk; milk for her child.

The cradle is empty.

Her wail lifts and pierces the grey sky.

*****

In fairy land, the changeling child is doted on and loved. Fairies bring him milk and honey and tickle his toes. They sing to him. He is rocked in a cradle woven with dog roses and willowherb and the hawthorn fragrance soothes him on the bank by the stream. The bee sucks at the cowslip and the baby sleeps.

Are fairies wicked? Are they parts of nature? Is the bee wicked for taking the pollen from the rose? We devise romances – she is the go-between, passing love notes between rose and apple blossom until soaked in warm sun and scent, they meld together. Maybe this is like what fairies do.

Or maybe if you are left alone too long, they steal babies away to fairy land out of jealousy – like Oberon jealous of Titania’s changeling boy – and refuse to give them back.

*****

The little child had serious eyes. He awoke to find he was surrounded by ladybirds, moths and newts. He cast his dark eyes down because he remembered his milk and scented mother and she wasn’t there. Then with a crinkling of his smooth brow, like silk crumpled, he closed his eyes on flower and fairy, opened his mouth and cried.

Mother crow, black huge mother, felt his cry pierce her heart and opened her beak to wail.

Mother crow sobbed and wept at the despair of the little child. She hopped down, heavy from her high branch and crept silver-eyed towards him. She laid down her head on his tiny chest to hear him cry and nestled there, burrowed there, with her eyes closed while crystal tears moistened his cheeks and fists. She put her head on his aching heart and felt it – took it –as she nudged in.

And her own heart broke.

Hearing the fading suspiration of her last cry, the other crows flocked down from their high branches, desperate for their sister who had died for the sadness of a human baby. They set up their wail in chorus till the echo lanced the fairies and the people above fairyland, and together the crows carried the baby boy home to his mother.

Mother crow – who loves children so much she keens in despairing fellow feeling when she hears a baby cry – was carried home with the changeling child and brought out of fairy land; back to the garden.  Mother crow laid open eyed and dead upon his breast, but he slept; comforted, with his tiny arm around her wing.

Mother came out into the garden and rejoiced in the sunlight to find her beautiful child restored.