CHAPTER ONE: {THE MESSAGE}
One night Crow had a dream—there was something broken in the earth. Mountains sprang up through the forest, their jagged peaks piercing the tree canopy and pulling meadows and rivers apart. Water flowed uphill and sideways, trying to right itself as the landscape kept changing. Crow heard a great groaning noise as the earth splintered into cracks and fissures, sending all the birds into the air and all the land animals scurrying. In the dream, Crow’s comfortable nest, safely tucked into the upper arms of an oak tree, was swept up by this sudden change. The ancient oak lost its grip on the earth and toppled down the mountainside. Crow saw all her beautifully woven twigs and pine needles coming apart in the rushing wind.
Crow woke with a start. The echo of that dreadful groaning still rang in her ears. With a twitch of her wings and a quick look around, she found she was still safe in her nest; the world around her unchanged. Except it wasn’t. When her eyes settled she saw something new—a new thing that had not been there before—a thing that didn’t make sense.
It looked like a rock. A white rock with blue translucent planes, embroidered with rich green lichen. And there it was, just sitting across from her in her nest. It reminded her of the dream and she shuddered, imagining it as a broken-off piece of the raging mountain, landed in her nest as a warning, a message. She pecked at it but it did not budge. Up close the rock was strangely beautiful, like a miniature landscape, but Crow would have preferred to admire it from a distance, or at least where it belonged-—on the ground. Big rocks do not belong in comfortable nests. They are cold and pointy and heavy. How did it get here? What did it mean?
All rainy morning Crow huddled in her nest considering this stone, puffed up against it in a distinctly unfriendly way. She thought and thought, but remained mystified that a rock this heavy could fall from the sky into a nest as high as hers. She felt prickly and nervous, but no matter how big she puffed out her feathers the rock did not move and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Despite the dreary weather, she decided to fly out and pay some visits to see what she could learn.