God Feeds the Ravens

Ivy started to grow through the air vent last night. Long, deep green stalks twist around the metal like tangled fingers. If I keep my eyes still, I can see the new plump leaves budding from the branches. It is nearly raining, but not quite. She will not let it rain until she had made her arrival. She enjoys making an entrance, and nothing pleases her more than to announce her presence with water. It is only when I blink that I realize sweat is rolling down my eyes. I am, I notice, soaked in it. So is the mattress.

More water. She is close.

I was twelve the first time I saw her. My mother had just been killed, struck by a car that kept driving and left her to bleed out in the middle of the road. My brother and I found her a few blocks from our house. I had not even recognized the bloody carcass. The hunks of red meat. My brother had been the one who ran to get help. He left me there in the middle of a back country road, staring at the rotting thing that had been my mother.

It took twenty-three minutes for the police to arrive with my father and brother in tow. For twenty-three minutes, I stared. I watched, somehow waiting for her to be reconstructed. Part of me imagined that she would still get up, that she could still be my mother despite the way the black asphalt ripped her face away. I had never known death, but this was a great distance from the version of it my father - a true and devoted man of the cloth - preached. This was not a smooth elevation into the light he had promised me. As his god had promised us all. This was shredding. No part of her had been left whole. What thanks was that? To be devoured and forgotten as road-kill. All that love and her meat was the only thing left.

I swallow and the saliva crawls down like a wad of sand. She could not spare me a bit of moisture, it seemed, for the back of my throat. My ears prick up at the sound of hesitant footsteps entering my room. I swivel my head over on the pillows, tendrils of hair plastered over my face. My brother enters the room as he always does. The same stooped posture, the same upward gaze up through his bangs, the same loose-limbed puppet walk. He ambles like an old man.

He perches on the edge of the mattress, his eyes affixing to the ivy coming in through the air vent. He does not react as he once did. The first time he saw the bouquets of fungus that came in through the walls, he tried to rip them out, root and stem until his fingers were bloody.

He says, “Dad wants to try it again tonight.”

“Alright.”

My brother has lost weight, more than I realized. His clothes hang on his bones. His bangs have gotten too long, curtaining his eyes. I used to cut them. I doubt father would let me anywhere near him with scissors now.

“Maybe it’ll work this time.”

He sounds young when he says it.

“Maybe.”

*

I wondered if my mother would still look like she had on the road in Heaven, and I kept wondering until it was all I could see. Our old photographs seemed like a lie. I had seen the insides of her outside, so I no longer recognized her whole.

But I saw something else on the road that day. My mother had not been alone. At first, I thought it was a vulture or a buzzard, perhaps a raven. But its frame was hulking, black feathers that covered a too-pale body and picked apart pieces of my mother’s corpse to swallow.

I allowed the bird that was not quite a bird to feast upon the corpse of my mother and I did nothing. I stood there and I watched and I did nothing. When the police arrived, the creature took flight. It moved so smoothly, as a breeze moves through the trees. It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Later that night, when my brother was wailing in his bed and I was lying still, I asked him, “What was that?”

He took a break from his weeping to answer, “What are you talking about?”

“That thing,” I replied. “That was eating mom. What was that?”

“I didn’t see anything. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The bird. With black feathers.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

I thought he was lying. How could he not have noticed the beast that gorged itself on our mother as though it was starved for her? Who rested its talons along her sun-bloating corpse and touched her mutilated face? It had been the only one who would. Even my father could not look at her without hurling the contents of his stomach all over the grass. The creature had. The creature was not afraid. The creature still wanted my mother, every bit that was left of her. By the time night came, I was not thinking of her. I was only trying to remember every detail of the bird. My mind was consumed by the way its feathers had swayed like the fabric of a gown as it took flight into the trees. I imagined the remains of my mother sitting safe and warm within its gut, not on the cold metal of a morgue’s bed or still smeared across the asphalt.

The creature found me a few days later after we buried what was left of my mother. I wandered outside, staring up at the trees, trying to see if the great bird was nesting there. She swooped down with her great wings unfolded, blotting out the sun for a moment. The antlers that sprouted from her skull were covered in moss and grass and flowering buds. She perched before me, cocking her face that was too sharp and angular to be a human’s. I cried for the first time since my mother had been killed.

“Why do you weep, child?” she asked me. “I have no need for your tears.”

Even I did not know.

“Are you afraid?”

Perhaps. Though it felt too bright to be fear; whatever it was that blossomed in my gut when I saw her. It felt too radiant. You run from what frightens you. I did not run.

“You ate my mother.”

She nodded, her glowing eyes like searchlights. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I was starved for her. Her flesh beckoned me, little lark. Hunger should never be denied. Now she fills my gut, and the famine in my belly is quenched. She tasted of lavender and roasted meat and smoke. Your mother’s meat was sweet. Ripe. I saved her. Saved her from the beating sun and the maggots that will burst from where her eyes once were. Her juicy, dripping eyes. She is safe now, my love. The rot of the world will not touch her. She breathes through the beating of my wings and is eternal.”

“But won’t you be hungry again?”

“Ah, yes, sweet wren. For my hunger is the forest’s hunger. My stags know as they graze on my grass. My wolves know when they tear the deer’s flesh from their bones. The crows know when they pluck the eyes from the wolf’s corpse. It is the breath of the hunt, and the hunt does not end. Just as the hunger does not, nor the feeding.”

I paused and was silent. I could feel my mother burning through her gut, giving life when her own had been stripped bare.

“Can I -” I hesitated, but only for a moment. “Can I help? Can I help you be less hungry?”

She quivered at that, shaking out her wings. “Oh, to feast on a soul that burns white hot. Yes. Yes, little dove. Let me feed upon you, still living, and I will make you my own. I will show you the way of the wilds. Death will be your kin, not your master. I shall breathe through you, and through you, I will expand. I will swell into your world as I have never done before and through me, you will be made whole. You will be made perfect.”

The rain comes just before eleven that night, droplets hitting my window. Soft rain is loud in a quiet house. I watch. I wait.

Then, in an eruption of thunder, in comes her voice.

The first time I heard it, I was fourteen. I had asked her for a year to tell me her name. For a year, she warned me. “My name is for the trees to whisper,” she told me. “My name is for the wolves to sing. It is for the echo of wind across the mountain’s bow. It is for the crows to feast upon.” But I begged and begged until eventually, she relented. I remember how my palms grew sweat-damp and started to shake. She was right. Her name was not meant for me. It coursed through me in an explosion when she whispered it in my ears. My left still gives me fits some mornings.
My being jolts, something akin to a shock lighting my nerves on fire. I almost cry out but clamp my hand over my mouth before any sound can be loosed. I shake, hard and furiously, tears coming into my eyes of their own accord. The window is thrust open, a rush of cold wind rolling into my room. I consider calling for her, but my voice catches.

Then comes the light. It is a white, burning one. The haze of the rain is swallowed. I try not to squint against it, but I do. The backs of my eyes sear once I can finally pry them back open. The light that I swallow is congealed and drips down the back of my throat.

Then she comes.

She pushes herself through the window and moves against the air as though it is water, her white hair spread out in a levitating cloud above her head. She told me once her hair was made of spun snow. I can never tell when she’s lying. She hovers for a moment before lowering down onto the floor, shaking out her black feathers. She has more and more every time I see her. She gazes down at me with the two white orbs set in her face, like dual moons. The moths pool around her, the beating of their wings frantic as they try to land on her translucent flesh. New pools of moss grow where her antler tips brush against the ceiling. As drags her fingers across the wall, more toadstools bloom in her wake. Her hulking frame stoops as she tries to fit the liminal boundaries of her flesh within my four walls.

“Little dove,” she coos, her voice echoing in my head.

I let out a sharp sob before I can swallow it. I curse myself. She curves her back, stalking toward me. My eyes ache once she is next to the bedside.

“Father will start soon,” I grit out, my voice rough and broken.

“Yes,” she says and sweeps some hair from my forehead with her taloned fingers.

I collapse back against the bed the moment I feel her sharp hooks against my skin. Her swan’s neck snakes toward me, and I stare up at her as she stares down at me. Her white light pupils glow in the inky darkness.

“You’re tired, little sparrow,” she says.

“I’m alright. I can do it.”

“Yes, you can,” she says. “You must.”

Her body flows onto the bed. I try to cup the side of her neck and the skin turns to mist in my palm. Her beauty overwhelms me for a moment and I start to cry. She shushes me, the deep hum of her body felt against my own. When she curls herself around me her black feathers are downy on my skin.

“Quiet, my wren. Quiet now.”

I close my eyes. She keeps herself pressed up against my back, her talons scratching gently up my spine. I shiver every time she moves near my neck. We lie still and listen to the torrent of rain. The room smells wet.

Finally, her smooth breath washes over my ear. “Are you ready?”

I open my eyes again. The rain sounds like a dozen tapping fingers against my window.

“Yes.”

She purrs, her long neck carrying her face toward mine. She nuzzles my temple and a sharp heat lightly sears the skin there, like getting too close to a candle.

“Open your mouth.”

I obey.

My sandpaper-rough lips part. Her neck cranes toward me, arching up. Her ebony feathers begin to flutter. The moths praising the glow of her flesh beat about her head frenziedly. They could almost be a crown when the rain-damp moonlight hits them right. She presses her lips to mine and I feel her tongue, long and smooth like a snake. It tastes of silk and honeysuckle and sage. It burrows down my throat, hot against my insides. I squirm for a moment against my will and she fans her billowing wings over my ugly body. My fingers twist into her feathers. I pull. She hallows me out. I drink light in gulps. My throat spasms as it expands, contracts, and then relaxes. I keep her feathers in my grip until I have swallowed them all.

She stretches out from within my gut, the current of her coursing through my limbs and down my numb feet. I feel her sprawl out into my fingers. She stretches them, one by one, and cranes our neck back. Our lungs are wrung of breath before taking in the silver taste of midnight air. The rain smells of ripe earth. Its tremors are felt beneath our thin layer of flesh, and roots swell down below. There is nothing but the weight in our stomachs and the glow of the moon at our feet.

*

Our father arrives and our mouths water. He opens the door without knocking and enters as though it was always his right. He does not ask our permission. He moves with a prowl. Long, weedy legs. His arms cradle a bible, and he looks down at us. His thin lips twist into something between a smile and a grimace. It is an ugly thing, set into his face like stone.

“Daughter,” he says.

“Father,” we reply through our many tongues.

His sneer deepens. We smile at him and he has to look away.

“Son,” he calls. “Come in. We’re about to begin.”

Our father beckons and our brother arrives. He comes in with his hunched back and lowered eyes. A beat dog. He carries silk ties in his shaking hands.

“Go on, get her tied down.”

Our brother swallows loudly enough for us to hear. He nods, gliding past our father like a ghost. Our priest father in his black shroud watches as our brother kneels by the bed, his palms clammy and trembling when he wraps the silk ties around our ankles, and then our wrists. The boy steps away, leaving us to stand in the corner of the room. He has learned how to stand still.

We look back to our father. “We are ready. Do not keep us waiting any longer.”

He steps forward. “Name yourself, demon.”

“Ariel,” we say. “You call us Ariel.”

Their name for us is an empty, thin thing. So little. The priest in his black shroud chews on the word like grizzly meat. We let him keep it between his teeth. We let him masticate on nothing.

“Who sent you, Ariel?”

“The wind sends us. The mountains bow in our presence, and all the beasts of the world are at our call.”

We can see through him, though the pounds upon pounds of gray skin that lie in heaps over his bones. Fear seeps through his flesh. The old man fears everything. The boy in the corner drops to his knees, his prayers feeble and dry and hollow. No meat on his words. Only bone.

“You know nothing,” we howl, our voice a chorus in the silence. “Your girl is no prisoner, little worm. She has heard my name and knows my voice. She has chosen me and denies you and your toothless god that swallows whole.”

The little man in his shroud breaths harder. The little boy on his knees prays to silence.

“Lies,” he says.

We are the only truth.

“God of power,” he says, “who promised us the Holy Spirit through Jesus your son, we pray to you for these catechumens, who present themselves before you. Protect them from the spirit of evil and guard them against error and sin, so that they may become the temple of your Holy Spirit…”

The words are void. We are endless. We are eternal. We are the cycle of life and death he seeks to control but cannot.

“I am everlasting, and the child that sprung from your withered loins knows it. Her body is mine, her mind will soon meld with my own. And we will feast on your husk. Your blood will flow like water down our throats as I will take her into my core. She will suckle at the milk of my bosom. Together we will fly with my owls into the night. And you shall watch, beggar, as your girl takes flight, her belly swollen with the meat of your reeking corpse.”

Our father takes the bait we leave at his feet. He is no better than a starved rat, gorging himself on rot. His hunger will never be satisfied, never sated. He dives for our bed, covering our mouth with his hands. As though that could stop our words. As though our voice could be bound by his wrinkled palm. We take his fingers between our teeth, and we bite. We taste and lick. Red, warm blood sprouts from his fingers and flowers across the bedsheets. The shriek he releases has no music to it. He goes for our throat, and we smile as he seeks to drain the air from it with his crimson-stained hands.

“Dad! You’re killing her,” the boy cries, lunging from his space in the shadows to pry our father off of us. “Stop. Please, stop.”

He does not stop. The boy takes the old man and thrusts his thin body to the ground. His head hits the ground too hard, but his skull does not crack. It ought to have cracked. It ought to have broken. We are left gasping, heaving for air on the bed.

Our voice and our song still echo through the room. We are heard. The night is done.

I feel her leaving me in a rush. A wave that crashes and then recedes. My body aches and arches like a dog as I vomit out her feathers, hacking on her moon flesh as she pours from my gut and out into the room. But my father and brother see only bile. They cannot perceive the way she swells into the room like an imploding star.

Her leaving is the worst. Bits of me go with her, and she takes more and more every time.

When she laughs the room trembles. She laughs at my father, and at my brother huddled on the ground at his feet. She flows out of the room in a vapor, seeping out of the house and into the night. I reach out to try and touch her feathers, try and feel them against my palm before she goes. But she does not let me. And she does not look back as she melts with the star-laden sky.

Without her, the room goes silent. The men are still at the foot of my bed, and the room is silent.

*

I can feel it drawing closer; the perfection she promised me. Even as a child, I had no notion of what it meant. I only ever knew that I wanted it. I wanted to be a part of her so badly I would have killed for it. I would have killed myself if it came to that. But I do not feel whole, lying still in my bed after my father and brother depart. She empties me. She takes me into her mouth and chews, and what she does not spit out, she digests. What is she leaving behind?

She comes back into my room just before dawn can break. She settles down at my back, her feathers cocooning my flesh. I take her taloned hand in my own. I wrap her feathered arm tighter around my middle, and I do not even realize I am doing it until I am. She purrs, the vibration moving through me.

“You were beautiful tonight, sparrow,” she tells me. “Our song is almost complete.”

I say nothing.

“Do you believe me?”

I believe that she believes it, so I say, “Yes.”

She hums, and I cannot stop a whimper at how sweet the sound is against my ears.

“I will make your hunger divine.”

*

My father enters my room on his own the next day. He comes in the next morning and looks at me. His hand is bandaged. I am surprised by the ache of guilt as he stands in front of the bed for a moment before sitting down, holding his wounded hand.

“I didn’t work,” he says, somewhere between a question and a statement.

“No.”

He sighs, the long breath deflating him.

“I’m sorry, about your hand,” I say. I cannot tell if I am lying or not.

He smiles a little, with the corner of his mouth. “It’s alright.”

I open my mouth to reply and no words come out.

“Sometimes I look at you and I see your mother as clear as day. You have her eyes. You have her smile when you still used it. There are days when I can’t remember what her voice sounded like, but you speak and I hear it.”

He looks down at me. He looks at me.

“When we lost her, you changed. Not enough of you came back.”

He is right. There is so little of me left. He keeps looking. He keeps on looking at me. He will not look away.

“I was there," he says. "I was always waiting for you to come back, but you never did. Where did you go?”

Why does he not look away?

“Come back to what?” Come back to who? His god left me to starve. My god feeds.

My father stares at me, and he sees. He sees me.

“You aren’t fighting it.”
He sees me.

“No.”

No.

She enters my room as she has never entered it before. The beating of her wings is thunder, and the heat of her flesh is lightning. For the first time, he sees. He witnesses us both. I can see it in his gray face as it falls.

“By God,”

She shakes her head. “There is only me.”

He looks at her, at both of us, and scrambles off the bed. His fear is ripe and heavy. I smell it. I smell it for myself. God, it reeks. It curdles in my gut. Yet I feel it sharp against my tongue.

“I won’t let you take her,” he says.

“She is not yours to give, nor to keep.”

I look at her. I look at my father. His god swallows. My god chews. I reach out for her feathers, and they are soft on my skin.

He looks at me and his heart breaks. “Baby.”

She looks at me and smiles. “Little dove.”

His hunger has starved him. It has left him a husk. Perhaps I too will be a husk, but it will be glorious. Our hunger will be beautiful.

I feel it first in my teeth, feel them sharpen inside of my mouth. Every scent is an echoing breath within me. Then my fingers ache and grow. Long claws sprout where they used to be. The memory of my mother’s corpse turns into visions of red. It does not hurt. I am starved for it. The scent of blood comes in through my nose and out of my mouth.

My father, the little man in black, changes too. He wails as his thin body begins to stretch. She laughs as he screams, and I do not fear the laughter. Nor the screams. I fear nothing as my skin grows thick with fur. My father fears. He is afraid when long, bone-white antlers sprout from his head. His horror is thick while a tawny brown hide stretches over his skin. His hands tighten until they are hooves.

When my claws touch the ground, the frantic tapping of his hooves calls to me. The ripeness of his blood makes my core ache.

“Feast, my beauty,” she commands. “Feast.”

And I do. My jaws clasp around his throat, and I bite down. The stag lets out a bleat as the wolf rips through him, tearing his hide. There is no grief here. The stag feeds the wolf, and thus my belly is filled.

She lets me gorge myself. My jaws are titans. They shatter bone and I let the marrow drip down my tongue. I rip through his meat. When it travels into my gut in chunks, I am no longer hungry. The thirst, for now, is sated. I have never been sated before.

“Come, my love,” she tells me. “To the woods.”

I obey. My legs carry me through the house. I can feel the call of the wind, only kept at bay by the four walls that have trapped us. Before we can flee into the sun, a boy stops us. He holds a gun in his hands, but he trembles. He shakes as water comes from his eyes to wet his face. We knew this boy once, but the memory is an ancient one. His scents are not known to us, not anymore. We pause, our shoulders stooped, growling low. We wait for the shot to ring out, but it does not. Instead, he drops the gun. He stares at us for a moment before opening the door.

“Go,” the boy cries. “Run.”

And we do. We do and we do not look back.

Her wings beat hard as she flies beside me, and we run. We run until there is nothing but the taste of blood on our tongues, and the beckoning echo of the wind at our backs.

We are free.

***

Taylor Denton began writing short stories when she was in middle school, publishing her first poem at thirteen. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder with a BA in English, now working towards her MFA at Lousiana State University in Baton Rouge. You can find her creative work in several journals including Coffin Bell, the Anti-Languorous Project, and Scribble. Her novella, The Mountain was published through Running Wild Press in 2019. Her debut novel, Antlers of Bone was also published through Running Wild Press in 2022.