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The Crow Child


2 great black crows had lost their only chick and were mourning their empty nest when they spied a little peasant girl wandering in the forest. She stopped beneath their tree, pausing to etch a heart on the old bark. She was a very tiny child, dressed in dark worsted. The crows were very large, with sharp talons. They looked at the child with eager eyes, they looked at each other, and then they swooped down to the foot of the tree. Two talons fastened on each frail shoulder, and then the child was lifted screaming into thin air. They dropped her right into their reeking nest and sat on her to stop squawking. They had a new chick now.

She wasn’t a patch on the old. She struggled and spat and wouldn’t eat up all her juicy pink worms. Her dark covering fell off, exposing useless white flesh, and her long red feathers were no use at all when it came to flying.

The crows pecked her to punish her. They pecked at her arms, at her legs, at her thin white neck. They even pecked at her forehead, horribly near her eyes. Her only respite was at night, when the 2 crows slept. The child squeezed herself out from under their wings and looked up at the silver moon. A nightingale started singing. It sang of the dark woods, the rippling water, the soft clouds and the silver jewel in the sky. It sang of love and death, happiness and heartbreak, while the child listened and wept. She wished she had the courage to clamber out of the nest and climb right down to the ground. It was such a long way down. She could so easily fall. And the crows might wake and catch her and peck her eyes out as a punishment.

So she stayed crouched in the nest. The ageing crows pecked at the cowering child until the nest was slimy with blood. The twigs started rotting until one day the whole nest suddenly fell apart. The crows cawed and flapped their wings in fury. The child screamed as she tumbled downwards. She crashing in and out of the branches and landed flat on her back amongst the brambles.

She was free at last but she could not move. Her body seemed broken. She lay there all day long. Whenever she saw a bird in the sky she closed her eyes, in case the crows were coming back. It grew dark and the silver moon shone in the sky and the nightingale sang—and far below in the brambles the child cried…

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