Wake, Wake

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, before the happily ever after, there was a crow, and a dove.

The winter that year had been bitterly cold, and a dense blanket of white snow draped and coiled over the yews and such conifers in such long rivulets it was as if a child had lain them there, steepled them, before she might roll over, and get to sleep.

It was here that, though the dove very much regretted the cold and skipping her yearly migration, she cozied amongst the sunken bark, and fell asleep.

“Wake, wake!”

The dove startled to.

“Wake, wake!”

She took a look around, and a puff of happy, relieved air left her little dove lungs, as there, upon a slightly higher branch, was her old friend the crow.

“Wake, wake!” He coughed, and hacked, and cawed.

“Why, I am awake,” chuckled the dove. She felt a bit guilty, knowing the reason for the crow’s harsh voice, but the immediacy and panic of his repeated command struck her as more funny than anything.

“Heavens, heavens,” cawed the crow, “I was certain I saw you there, forever gone, in dead sleep."

“Why on earth would you think that? I merely declined to head to the south this year. My wings are quite tired, but indeed I have the warmest of feathers.” She nuzzled her beak against her breast to assure him so.

At first, crow didn’t speak. He rocked his head from side to side as if in trembling, as if to rid himself of some sort of pest or bee, and for a moment, dove wondered if maybe the creak in his voice was growing worse, still.

“The girl,” he said, “the girl and the witching woman. You must come see. Though alas, I think you will wish you had not.”

Dove tried to ask more, but crow would simply shake his head and say, “wake, wake, I am glad you awake.” It stumped her for a long while—whatever could he mean, ‘the girl and the witching woman’?—and then she remembered.

It had been not so long ago, in a place not so far away. Perhaps only a year. Perhaps a little more.

It had been spring then, and oh, it was a joyous spring for a dove and a crow! Great early rains brought a feast of many early worms, and she had grown quite plump on their slithery little bodies. Oh, it brought her such warmth to remember such a feast now, cold in the snow. But there was something else to remember, for it had not all been tasty worms and warm rains, no. There had been somebody there. A voice, such an elegant, beautiful voice. Nothing like the birds of snow or sun.

She had been in a sort of garden, listening to the voice, plucking worms alongside crow, so many worms she could hardly lift her little wings to fly! She never thought she could be so happy, that fattening spring, but. That was when she had seen the cat.

Oh, the great, miserable thing! Wretched with gnarled fur and a haughty turn about its white-capped snout; it had her by the wing and she was certain she was done for. Crow cawed until he went quite hoarse and the cat had nearly snatched him from the sky as well, and then there came a break in the beautiful voice, quite nearly birdlike in its squawking. The singing girl, a human, ran from the house, swinging a stick with teeth of straw on the end, until the ugly cat was vanished.

“Oh you poor little things,” she had said, or something like, as she picked Dove up, and pat her head. Dove trembled, fearing she was about to become a pie, like her old cousin Seymour, but that was not the case. The girl turned up her lips in a way that seemed pleased, far as Dove could understand, and placed her gingerly atop the stone fence, where the cat could not reach.

Dove was astounded, and for days after, she and crow discussed nothing else. Crow insisted he had seen such kindnesses from the human little ones before, but she, certainly never. A human, showing kindness to a bird before a house cat? How strange! In gratitude, she and crow would flit among the trees, and alternate in their songs, to join in the girl’s harmonies, and bring her to laughter.

It was easy to feel pleasant about so sweet a girl, dove had thought, but quickly learned from her perch that, just as for every songbird there is a cat, for every sweet girl, there is a witching woman.

Crow, who seemed to know all there was to know about human happenings, knew of the witching women, too. He claimed to have been a friend to one, once, a ‘familiar,’ though that was not a story he often cared to tell. What dove knew, though, was from the moment crow laid eyes on the grown woman of the house, things would not be right for their songhuman friend, and indeed, the cruelty was beyond dove’s wish to recall.

“She has finished her, then,” she said, back from remembrance. Her words seeming to echo among the white-cloaked branches.

Crow did not give her the hope of a pause. “Yes,” he said. And then he said more. “But perhaps.”

Dove perked the feathers around her neck. “Oh?”

Her friend’s eyes stayed in the middle-distance. “I might have a memory of a way around these such things.”

Her excitement was turning to warmth, drips from the melting snow made little plops around the trunk. “Well, out with it. We must help her, of course.”

“Yes,” crow’s dark eyes sparkled. “We must.”

It was nearly an hour’s flight by the noon sun before the old friends came upon the coffin of glass in the forest. Inside, sure enough, older now, taller, though perhaps in more awful a state than she had remembered, was their little human songgirl, her skin pale, and her eyes closed and sunken, as if in far more than simple sleep.

“It is hibernation,” said crow, panting, wheezing, “like the badger, she rests, but she won’t come out of it. Not on her own.”

“The glass is too heavy for her?”

“Like ice, it weighs her down.”

“We must get her to the sunlight!”

“No, that won’t do a thing.”

“Then we shall warm her with our bodies. Or call our friends, the bears, to sleep upon her case.”

Crow seemed to think on this for a moment, but shook his beak. “What makes your kind or my kind wake from sleep?”

“Why, the love of a friend, of course.”

He nodded. “Then that is it.”

Dove fluttered, her weariness gone. “We must find her a friend to wake her from sleep.”

“It’s not enough,” crow said, after another moment. “Even if we were to find her a human friend, where will she go? The humans are not so hospitable as she.”

He was right. Dove did not want to admit it, tired though she was, and tired more still of feeling so foolish. “Then what do you propose we do?”

“We must find her a mate,” he said. “To take her away, give her a new nest far away.”

“Far away as a crow and dove might fly?”

“So indeed.”

Dove and crow flew two days and two nights, until they came upon a stone wall not unlike the one where they had met their little human girl. There they sang and squawked their silly tune, until the whole family ran out to see.

“Ack, awful,” said the mother, her face wrinkling, as she ran back inside. The littlest girl clinging to her skirts went, too. Another daughter huffed, and left.

“Throw a stone,” said the father, a well-dressed man with a plump middle, “see if the wretches can fly,” but the middle child, a boy, did not listen. Crow looked at dove with that certain knowing all his own as the human boy stared and stared, his lips turned up in a way that seemed pleased.

That night, after the family slept, as the boy was putting his horse in the stables, dove and crow circled his head, and sang their little song in a way that made him duck and laugh in delight. “Where on earth did you two come from?” He said.

Crow put a wing-feather to the little stone in his neck that took away his beautiful birdlike singing voice in his days as a witching lady’s familiar, and he said in fine human words, “would you like to see, young master?”

And certainly, the young master did.

They left at once to resume the two day’s ride, pausing only to hunt for rabbit and berries, as suited each beast, and to dove’s surprise, and the boy’s credit, he had not once complained of the cold. ‘He is perfect,’ she thought. He would save their friend.

When crow asked his age, and if he might like an enchanted companion much like his own, the boy surprised them by answering favorably on both counts, as if the idea were something he, himself, had been silently waiting to hear.

Dusk was easing down as the three—cold, wet, and sniffling—made it back to the sleeping songgirl’s hidden grove. The day had been warm, and streams of liquid sunlight sent themselves spiraling down the trees’ bark, over the tips of branches, bramble, and thorn. As the last sun fanned along the forest floor, it flooded the glass coffin with an aura of light.

The human boy did not need to be told any such instructions, or even one further thing. Dismounting a relieved horse, he trailed his fingers along the glass, and watched with awe as it melted away beneath his touch.

“Has that coffin been ice all along?” Asked dove. “How has she lived? Is she human or snow girl?”

“Shh,” said crow.

Slowly, the little songgirl was exposed, and as the last of the water splashed away from her eyes, she woke, gasping. The boy pulled off his cloak. He held it up to her. She took it with trembling hands, though her eyes were wide with fear.

“Hello,” he said. “I-I’m told you’d like a friend or a companion, or a mate?” The three held their breath. Though the melting glass of the witch’s spell had released her, the fear had not, and she clung to the rough wool with knuckles white as bone.

Dove looked at crow, and crow looked at dove, and they hopped together to the edge of the coffin plank. Dove made a chirp. Then another. Crow cawed and coughed and wheezed back. “Wake, wake,” he said. “Yes, wake, wake,” dove tried.

The boy laughed as he had in the stable, and, crick by crick, the thawed girl brought her terrified eyes to birds chittering on the edge.

Slowly, the corners of her mouth turned up in a pleasing way, a certain remembrance came upon her, and little Snow White laughed.