I met the crow while taking a walk in a park during winter. The park was barren and devoid of all life, but I liked it that way. I preferred the snow-laden boughs of once flowering trees and the frozen limbs of once fragrant rose bushes to the ceaseless chatter and barren faces that haunted me every day. I went to the park to escape my unhappy life; to be alone with sleeping nature and shining snow.
As I walked the frosted trail and breathed the frigid air, I watched my breath form clouds of shapeless steam and mused that I was like a flame wandering alone through the cold, just barely warm enough to stay alight. I hunched my shoulders against the chill and wondered if I would burn hotter if I had fluffy fur or shining feathers to keep me warm, instead of this frail, thin skin that had to be wrapped in this worn, scratchy coat just to keep from cracking. I supposed that fur or feathers surrounding a flame would smother its glow, and may even put it out completely, but that didn’t concern me too much. I wasn’t exactly shining as it was. Feathers would be best, I decided, feathers meant wings. With wings, I could fly high above the frantic ground, and spend my days basking in the isolated quiet of the skies. The kind of quiet that, as I was now, I could only find in this empty park.
It was at the very moment I had this thought that I was shaken from my pleasant reveries by a horrific cawing that shattered the silence I had been enjoying. The source of the sound was a black blot on the white landscape. A shadow, perched on the thin branch of a sleeping lilac bush just down the trail. It was a crow, whose beady eyes seemed to bore into me as I came closer, taunting me as it opened its ebony beak and repeated its ugly squawk.
I grimaced at the bird’s incessant cawing, which grew louder as I approached it. When I reached the lilac bush it had made its home, I waved a tired hand at it. “Shoo, won’t you?” I sighed, “It’s quite rude to interrupt someone’s peaceful walk with that awful noise. I came here precisely to get away from that sort of thing.”
At this, the crow cocked its head at me, squawked again, and flapped one of its midnight wings at me, as if mimicking my gesture. Then it opened its beak, saying to me in a cackling voice, “Why don’t you ‘shoo’? It’s quite rude to interrupt a bird’s peaceful singing with your awful clomping. Perhaps I also came here to get away from that sort of thing.”
I was surprised to hear the crow refer to the horrific sound it had been making as singing that I hardly noticed how strange it was it had spoken at all.
“I wasn’t clomping,” I said, “I was just walking. And peaceful singing? You call that terrible chirping song?”
“All humans clomp,” replied the crow, “And yes, I call it a song. It was a happy song to match my happy mood. Not that you would understand that.”
“And why do you think I wouldn’t understand?” I asked, with an eyebrow raised.
“It’s as clear as the ice at your feet that you aren’t happy, walking around here in the snow and cold, alone, with that frown on your face. I bet you don’t even know how to sing. I feel sorry for you humans, always clomping and making noise, but forgetting how to use your voice.”
“Well, it’s easy for you to judge,” I said, “you’re just a crow. You get to do whatever you want. You glide and fly instead of trudge and stomp, and you can squawk and caw in whatever way you feel like and call it a song, without anyone telling you what a song is supposed to be. It must be easy to be happy when you can live like that.”
“And who told humans to live the way they do?” the crow asked, with a tilt of its tiny head and a glint in its marble eye. “But if you think it is so much better to be a crow, why don’t you become one?”
I laughed a little at this, my warm breath billowing around me as it met the cold air.
“I wish I could, little crow,” I answered, “Maybe I would be happy as a crow. Maybe I would sing, as you do.”
The crow said nothing. Instead, it opened its sleek, black wings and flapped them gently, lifting itself off of the branch it had been sitting on and sending the snow that had settled there showering to the ground below. It set itself down on top of my head, and I felt its clawed toes poke into my scalp. Then I blinked, and the lilac bush that the crow had been perched in was suddenly much larger, and the bird stood next to me, but I was now the same height as it. My scratchy jacket lay pooled on the ground around me, and I no longer felt the cool air biting into me, or saw my breath hover in front of me.
“There,” the crow said, “Now you can see if being like me sets you free.”
With that, the mysterious bird flew into the air. Amazed, I spread my arms that were now shining feathers and flapped them as the crow had, sending snow swirling around me as I lifted into the air after it. We soared over the park, and I thought that its icy streams, snow-covered hills, and frosted trees were more beautiful from above than they had ever been from below. I no longer felt the cold or imagined myself as a struggling flame. Instead, I imagined myself as the sun, making my journey across the sky, shining brightly on the world below.
The silence that I had imagined would surround me up here in the air was even more complete than I could have hoped, but somehow, I didn’t feel like I needed the quiet anymore. As we flew, the crow and I sang.