Look at the Birds

“I am in blood stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er.”
-William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth (act III. 4.136–8)

Black snow slumbers in the rafters of the court and the dreams of trembling subjects. The old, cursed king stirs in that dread silence, shaking the armoured dust from his wreath to expose its deep purple atop his greying brows.

“I hunger,” he says. His is the voice of white bone dragged over uneven rubble. “Who will feed me?” Silence. Diverted gazes. Sweat hidden by clothes, collecting in the temples.

“I will feed,” he promises from the oak throne. His Kingdom is the world, and the world is ravenous. “Who will feed your king?”

White footsteps in the black. A hand tugging at the edge of a sleeve, unable to deter the body in motion. “I will,” I say, in a voice unlike my own. The old king smiles at me, and from between his teeth, I glimpse the carcass of civilizations past. Somewhere, a baby girl has begun to cry. I kneel, and already I know the magic of the king is upon me. I do not look back.


Four black-eyed ravens beset me along the king's highway, making perch along the caravan that are my rooms, dragged through snow and mud by an ancient donkey. “Norrin, Norrin,” they call my name, reedy voices laughing. “How fairs the road to ruin?”

“My master sends me forth,” I say. “He hungers for new lands. I must sate him.”

“Will you watch him feed on foreign babes?” the birds ask, tapping gently at the mobile of my home.

“It's them, or us,” I say, imagining loved ones I must not name, hearing the wailing of a child again. “Them or us.”

“How will you choose them, Norrin?” They ask. “How will you choose?”

Have you ever felt the terrible judgment of the birds? It is a talon in my stomach. I know one day; it will spill me.


“Tell me why your country must remain in the constellation of worlds?” I ask, and the ambassador of a nameless land bursts into snotty tears before me. The tips of my fingers ache. Poor circulation has become the cold traveller’s curse.

“If you like, I can argue for you,” I say, doing my best to sympathize, to remember that but for the burdens, she could have been me. “I can make the usual appeals to life, and love, and reason.”

“Do those ever work?” She asks.

“I am sure they must, from time to time,” I say. All that you know has ended, my blue pen says to the notebook that lives on the left-hand corner of my desk. “You have to hope,” I say. It is, supposedly, my task to deem which corners of space might be fit for the feast of my king. But I don’t fool myself. I know there is no argument against hunger.


Fabulous flashes of light sign names on the end of the world. I watch the colours of mountains and cities become running water, vanishing between the jaws of the tyrant to whom I've sworn my love. In his wake, he leaves only the black snows of my homeland, and whatever mysteries the lives of that unknown country once had held are lost forever in the maw.


Through a terrible storm, I huddle in my caravan, that private collection of spaces I've come to call the Herald Rooms, allowing the unmanned animal that drags me to face the elements alone.

At my first glimpse of the annihilation I bring, fever has taken me. I lie shivering in a narrow bed. Between my arm and my ribs, my little cat companion nuzzles, a wet nose to clammy skin. To him, I am grateful. Since my outwards odyssey, it's become clear to me I can no longer sleep in a bed with nothing breathing but myself. This troubled me at first. I thought on the many long years of childhood in still, lonely beds and the fitful sleep they'd once brought me. have I become so weak, to have lost that power to solitude? After reflection, I decided to be proud of it, this mark that I have been loved. I wrote the realization into a letter and asked if the ravens may take the words to my wife.

“How is she read the realizations of dead men?” croaked my midnight watchers. I chased them from my herald rooms with a scream. In the next town, I took this silver kitten and named him my little sons name, and the king took all the rest.


On the edge of shining metropolis does my donkey die, and we mourn him, my kitten and I. The stillness of that skeleton animal, the way he tumbled forth still with our weight on his back.

The caravan has tipped on its side, my maps and papers of devoured lands spill out into the muddy road. I watch them take flight, the little signs of my handwriting kissing a distant sky, all those files, notes, and names. Behold the bureaucracy of apocalypse.

I chase after my papers, gathering up the names of now dead countries to bring them back to proper places. When the caravan moves again, it is my back that aches, my legs that burn, my weight that pulls us forward.

I leave the dead donkey for the birds.


“Hail stranger,” calls the man in the metal mask.

The ropes with which I hoist my caravan forward have bloodied my shoulders. The soles of my shoes have long since burned away. My bare feet drag through the hybrid roads of gravel and snow. “Hail, I say. My voice is rusted iron and phlegm. So little remains of the man I used to be

He makes no move to help me in my struggle, The cold green eyes that watch the only human reference of a hidden face. “Welcome to the great country,” he says. “The land of forever, where I am Lord.”

I would laugh if I could. But it's been too long. “Your city is poorly named,” I tell him. “All that you know has ended.”

I ask him if he knows who I am, he tells me he knows all. I ask him if he knows whom I serve and what my arrival must herald. So far down the journey of annihilation, I no longer presume any judgment but death. I no longer pretend for the sake of the dead that they might be spared. I am tired. My master hungers.

“Let the king come,” proclaims the man in the metal mask. “Only Doom lives here.”

I ask him what he intends for my master, and he says he shall kill him. Perhaps he imagines I might gasp and faint, or else issue a challenge on my king's behalf, to begin exalting the power of he who rules me. All I can say is, “I wish you would.”


From mountain top, I watch the doomed city vanish into the mouth of the devourer. Once, I had a family, but I can no longer summon their faces. “I miss people,” I say, thinking only the ravens can hear me. “I miss the people I've forgotten.”

“I hunger!” Calls my master, striding forth from the wreckage of his feast.

“I know,” I say, as my own stomach groans.


A city thought of hiding in the stars, but I found it. A city thought to hide in the sea, but I found that too.

They are in my papers. They are in the belly of the devourer. Oh, how I once yearned to find only empty lands, but I no longer hear the weeping child in my mind.


“Master, where do you come from?”

“In the beginning, I was cursed, and before that, I was.”

“Who were you before the beginning? Before the curse?”

“I was you.”

“But why were you cursed?”

“Because I killed the one who came before.”

“Do you ever miss it, master?”

“Miss it?”

“Being like me.”

“Slave, I was never like you. I was you.”


Behold me, the blood of nations stained into my ancient silver armour. I fear one day I too shall die, and my master will return to the Kingdom I can no longer picture, to eat the people I can no longer remember loving. I fear I shall die with the taste of an apple in my mouth. The herald rooms of my caravan always provide, stealing endless resources from the universe with the magic of the starving king. Always pale green apples for me, always sliced herring and gravy for the cat that lets me sleep. Once I thought the narrowness of my diet was down to the specificity of my master's spell. But his inclusion of food for the cat, which was not my companion when the journey began, tells me otherwise. The myth of my master is that he is driven by his curse, that the armageddon he provides is only the will of nature. I let his victims think this; it is the only mercy I have left for them. But the sly tricks of his magics tell me better. There is cruelty in the beast as well. Once, I had yearned for other foods to arrive. Now I can only imagine the pale apples in my mouth. Even those corners of my mind have been eaten away as he eats all things. I do not miss who I used to be. The apples I eat do so little for me, and in my search for life, all I feel is hunger.


“No one can walk forever, Norrin,” Call the Ravens, who have become heralds of my own, reaching out through the black.

“He hungers, and I shall feed him,” I say. I fear soon, I shall become my donkey, a body lying still on the mountain path. I know not what a Norrin might be. I am the stoic herald of the king. I carry my rooms to strange places and allow the hunger to win.


On the other side of necropolis, I find long streets of white snow crystals not yet blackened by ravenous curses. Is this what all the world might once have been? Can there be time without entropy? Can there be life without him?

Here, my most petite companion leaves blood across my face, the testament to our first and last debate. Though he does not say that he understands what I brought to the home of his fathers, mothers, and sisters. And though he doesn’t say, his blame is all for me.

“Don’t go,” I say as we struggle in that strange white snow. “Please, my friend, don’t go.” But though the kitten loves me, he hates me, and when I grab for his retreating tail, he makes slices of my frozen fingers. When I cry, I make echoes. These tears are the first to sting me. For some sad reason, they remind me of a baby.

The cat looks up at me. My assailant, my friend. I see him for the first time. I see grey fur with flecks of white and the tufts that disguise his ears for a bobcat. I see his eyes, pale greens that trap commanding shadows. He’s alive, as I’m alive, as all those the king has eaten are no more. He is alive, and I’ve stolen him, as I’ve stolen many.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and with my words, our perils precipice gives way. We tumble, two bodies and a structure. The pages of the herald rooms fly free, and I watch them along our descent. I see the maps and names in my pen of countries long since eaten. I hold him close to me, my unwilling partner. “I'm sorry,” I echo before my breath is stolen by the fall. Dashed against the cliffside, we lie in the ruin of my rooms. High above, circling ravens do laugh.


There will be an animal for us too, once the tumult is ended, hiss the Ravens, picking at the bloody fingers that hide bruised and frightened silver cat.

“Do I not yet give enough?” I moan in swollen lips, “Is one master so far not one master to many?”

We hunger too, Norrin. Did you think it was only you?

Against my chest, the kitten cries for my betrayal. But I won’t let him go. I’ve given everything. I won’t give him to the birds, not even as his teeth draw blood.


We dream of the feast of the king and wake sliding gently forward through kindly snow. A sled hugs us, soft wolf fur cradling my bruised body. My companion has remained despite all breaks. Perhaps he knows that even now, without him, I cannot sleep. I turn my neck with aching bones to see what new creature drives us forward. A little girl holds the reins, blood hair peeking out from reindeer hood. “You should have left me to the birds,” I tell her. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Ravens are always ravenous,” she tells me, never looking back. “If I’d let them have you, would they not have moved on to the crops and the creatures?”

In the flat distance, a tall farmhouse grows. “All you know is at an end,” I say.

“How dreadful that would be,” laughs the child. “For all we know is everything.”

In the doorway of the farmhouse, she abandons you for her brother. sprinting out into crisp air. Before us are two sentries, one a raging fire, the other a face carved itself from the mountaintops from whence I’d fallen. “Where are they going?” I ask as their tiny screams are swallowed by the snow.

“Where do all children go?” Asks the Fire.

“Into the world,” replies the Stone.

“There won’t always be a world,” I tell them.

“There’s always something,” the Fire says.

“There’s hunger,” I say.

From between my slackened fingers, my long companion leaves at last, diving for the warm mystery that awaits under the gabble roof. There’s a gnawing inside me.


The old welcome scents of smoked meat, apples baking, and the musty taste of pages I've always known.

“Come in, friend, come in!”

I find an older man in the kitchen, his back stooped and his temples grey. All around him in the place of silver kitchen spoons, spool notebooks scrawled in familiar type, pages upon pages of the crossed-out places. “These are my rooms,” I say, though I know the wood of the herald rooms is now wilting broken wood jumbles dashed in the space between countries. “These are my papers,”

“My son found them before my daughter found you,” the farmer says, thumbing through my notes of the dead. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing them. Fantastic cartography”

“You knew I was coming?”

“My most fragile of cousins sent word.” A hand holds up a long since rusted metal mask.

“He was eaten as all things are.”

“And may his long sleep bring peace.”

A seat arrives and the farmer thanks empty space, mistaking air for a wife. He gestures that the seat is mine and says he's glad I'm here at last. “But I bring with me the end.” But my host only smiles.


I sit at table for the first time since court. The fair and his unseen partner besides, the children before me, the sentries at my back. In the distance, my master roars, his footsteps thunder in my ears, the old question I always hear: “Who will feed your king?”

“Do you have a name?” Asks the girl,”

“I think I did, once.”

“Where do you come from?” Asks the boy.

“Far away,”

“Do you have a family too?” Asks the girl.

“I think I did, once.”

While they speak, I am fed at last, relief from the stale apples of my travels. At last, sweet pastries, hot meats, fresh bread. At last, I fill plates. And yet, though I swallow, I am never full.

“Were you happy there?” Asks the woman in the air.

“I don’t know,” I say, as good wines flood my throat.

Can they not hear my master? Are they not afraid?

“What was it like to be cursed?”

What? Who asks me that? I am not sure. All I can focus upon is the feast. All I can feel is the piercing sadness that all this will soon be gone. I must taste it; I must take it before it is gone forever. “I’m not cursed,” I say.

“Norrin.” says the farmer.

“Who will feed your king?” Roars fate.

“What’s it like to be cursed?” Asks the little girl. Little girl, baby girl? Is there another baby girl? I can hear them, somewhere. I can hear my baby crying.

“King Norrin.” the farmer says, and suddenly, everything stops. There are no distant footsteps; there is no voice in my head. There is no food, table, or farm. We sit on our knees in an empty, devastated field, and soot-filled storm clouds roll over a once pristine winter. “When will it be enough?” Asks the man without a farm. What was it like to be cursed?


A baby was born in a crumbling castle, and his wails filled the cracks in the firmaments. A boy peers out at the world from the edges of a collapsing kingdom, knowing his nation is dying, needing to know what might take its place. A man watches his people prepare to leave as a castle collapse, refusing to follow his mother and father into the sunset of the old world.

A Man curled in the ruins of his dead nation, letting newcomers build up new walls around him. The heavy construction of his barricades filled the sky with smoke. The purple crown of a new world sits heavy on his brow. At last, the ancient king stood, with black snow slumbering in the rafters of his court. “I hunger,” he calls. “Who will feed your king?” Somewhere, his children begin to cry. High above, the ravens circled.

“I will,” comes the call, so stepped forwards the most faithful servant of the king, who drew a knife for dreadful things, and with bloody steps, carves a hole in things. He takes the crown with a hungry heart and then takes all the rest. All the while, the children are crying.


I open my eyes to the family that lives beyond the mountain. I’ve eaten their farmhouse and the life of the land, as I’ve eaten countries of their cousins. “To be cursed is to be ashamed.” I told the little boy. “And to forget why you are ashamed.”


“Will you go home?” Asks the little girl at sunset.

“I hope not,” I tell her.

“Why not?” Asks her brother.

“Because that would mean I’ve forgotten it as my home.”

At the end of the road, the forms of trees do fly. The farmer's wife, whom I'll never see, shapes a newer, better caravan for me.

The farmer arrives, holding the lead of a familiar shape. A donkey, not so unlike he who once set me loose on the world, blinks at me from pooling eyes. I promise to treat him better.

“Where will you go?” Asks the farmer as I take the steady reins. I could tell him somewhere quiet. I could say to him somewhere new. But I can't deny what I feel, still ever-present deep inside. These reins I hold are no herald rooms, for I herald only myself. I am the destroyer. I carry my halls with me.

“I hunger,” I tell him, and for a moment, the world is cold. “But I'll see if there aren't any empty countries in the world left to fill me.”

The groan of earth. The sentries turn again to the sky. “Look at the birds,” they say.


“Tell me, why should your land remain in the constellation of worlds?” I ask. Before me, the trembling chieftain of a tiny seaside village rocks back and forth. “I can make arguments for you if you like,” I tell her. “The usual appeals to life, and love, and reason.”

“Do those ever work?” She asks me.

“They must,” I say.

In my blue pen, I write down all their names. Deep inside, my empty organs pang. The hunger never fades away. But it can wait, can't it? I smile at the children as reassuringly as I can. In my lap, my silver companion long since reconciled sleeps, the gentle piercing of his claps the burden of my hands. Above, sparrows dance in the fridge air, their bright feathers a fire for the morning, bright colours resisting the temptation to become something darker.


“Now, I ride the Eternal winds once more! And none shall ever be my master!”
-Stan Lee & John Buscema: The Silver Surfer Volume 1.

***

Ben Berman Ghan is a writer living in Calgary, treaty 7 land and home of the Blackfoot Confederacy, where he’s a PhD student in English at The University of Calgary. He’s the author of the books What We See in the Smoke (Crowsnest Books), and Visitation Seeds (845 Press). His next novel The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits is forthcoming with Wolsak and Wynn for 2024. You can find him @inkstainedwreck or https://inkstainedwreck.ca/