The wind whipped through Crow's feathers as he crouched at the edge of the cliff, a black wind, cold and sharp in the pre-dawn darkness. The forest far below rustled uncomfortably, and Crow stared, his eyes intent on the eastern horizon. He was waiting for the moon to come up.
His mind skittered and jumped, but Crow did his best not to think about the way the satchel leaning against his side clattered whenever he shivered. He shivered often, though, clamped as he was between the cold black above and the hard gray below with darkness swirling all around him.
At last, over the long straight edge of the horizon, Crow saw the red tip of the thin crescent moon rising. He stood and clasped his wings together, pointing toward the growing spike until the sliver of moon had risen entirely and was balancing blood-red on the horizon.
Crow closed his eyes then and whispered, "Lady Raven, please hear me and have pity on me. I have done a terrible, terrible thing; I don't know if you can ever understand, but I had to come and explain."
He knelt down and felt the satchel cold against him. "I don't really know how it happened, but what else could I have done? The poor thing was dying, was nearly dead when I heard it crying out. Its parents shouldn't've let it out of the nest; it was just too young to be out by itself. There was nothing I could've done to help it, nothing at all, and it was nearly dead when I found it. I couldn't just let it suffer, could I? Could I? Please try to understand, Lady Raven, please try. Sometimes things just happen; it was luck, that's all, bad luck, yes, but, I mean, it wasn't anyone's fault is all, and I just wanted to try to explain how ... how it happened..."
Crow gathered the satchel up and held it against his chest. "I ... I brought h--its, its bones, here in my satchel. I thought I should bury him--it, it, bury it up here where you could see and understand." Crow scraped a shallow pit in the loose dirt at the cliff's edge and carefully laid the contents of his satchel at the bottom. His wings were shaking. "Why did it have to be out alone? It shouldn't've happened, not ever..." He stared at the bones for a second, bright points flashing in the dark earth, then covered them over with dirt and small stones.
When he was done, he turned back to the moon. Its brightness was beginning to fade as the coming morning made gray the sky around it. Crow clasped his wings and bowed. "Please, Lady Raven, don't let it happen again. Please do everything you can not to let it happen again." Then he brushed the ground with his wing tips to hide the traces of his digging, gathered up his satchel and, stepping over the cliff edge, glided out over the forest as the sun started sparking at the horizon. Crow winged his way home and curled exhausted into bed.
The sun rose, slid across the sky, and settled into late afternoon before Crow finally stirred and awoke.
He wasn't really feeling any better, though; his head ached and his back was stiff and wooden. A nice flight over the forest, he was sure, and he'd feel like his old self again. The acorns in the pantry didn't appeal to him, and it was too early for dinner anyway, so he just gathered up his satchel and took off into the autumn afternoon sunlight.
Below him, the forest rustled with reds and golds. The sky was a deep, sharp blue, and Crow turned lazily through it, his mind doing its best to stay away from memories of yesterday and this morning. He managed to concentrate on riding the winds, diving and climbing, and the cold gusts washing through his wings.
He drifted north and east with no real destination in mind until he became aware of an odd sort of piping floating along through the breeze from off to his left. It sounded like calliope music.
Crow wheeled left, his ears intent on the snatches of piping that danced around him in the wind. The music got louder and more coherent as Crow approached Valder's Clearing, and he could tell now for sure that it was calliope music.
But who would be out in these woods playing a calliope? It had to be a gypsy caravan. It was autumn after all, and the gypsy squirrel families always held their Autumn Festival in Ree's Meadow just about a month after the equinox. This had to be some northern gypsy squirrels on their way down to the Festival.
Crow winged over Valder's Clearing, and there, set out in a crescent beside the little spring, were the wagons of a gypsy caravan. Crow could see strings of gray and burgundy flags fluttering in the breeze and various mice and sparrows and other such folk walking about between the booths set up in front of the wagons. The long afternoon shadows were lying deep throughout the clearing, and the music steamed and gushed up from the calliope parked at the end of the wagon row.
Crow circled the clearing and flapped to the ground next to the machine. Its pipes stretched tall and bright into the autumn sky, a massive fan of pipes into which a bronze frieze had been pressed showing the Twelve Curials. The detail was incredible, the smooth strength of the Lady Lioness, the august bearing of the Lord Tiger, the flashing fire of the Lady Squirrel's eyes, all captured more perfectly than Crow had ever seen, right down to the dark sheen of the Lady Raven's feathers. The whole instrument was a marvel, gleaming with brass and ivory and marked in places with the same gray and burgundy as the flags.
The squirrel playing the calliope was thin and rather tall for a squirrel, his burgundy vest hanging loose from his shoulders. He was lunging back and forth over the keyboard, the tempo of the piece climbing and soaring, the music rushing louder and louder. The squirrel's claws flashed through one final cadenza, and, with a grand flourish, he leaned into the keyboard and drove the last chord bursting out into the air.
The squirrel fell back onto his stool as the chord sped into the sky and was gone. Crow began applauding and was surprised when no one else joined in. Looking around, he saw that the other folk were all further along the caravan, all engrossed in the items for sale.
'Hmmph!' Crow thought. Still applauding, he said aloud, "Bravo, sir, bravo! Absolutely wonderful! There's nobody can play a calliope like a gypsy squirrel, I always say."
The squirrel turned around in his seat and flashed a broad smile, his golden front tooth catching the rays of the setting sun. "Ah, Corvine!" The squirrel leaped down from the calliope and bowed low. "I have always said there is no one appreciates the calliope like a corvine. She is a misunderstood instrument, eh, Corvine?"
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