Crow
by e rathke
Grow Me a World
(publishing December 6th)
Mudpunks
(publishing December 7th)
Crowdance
(publishing December 8th)
Grow me a World
I was born in a dying world. A ravaged world caught in slow collapse. I will always remember watching nature documentaries while my mothers wept, holding me close in their arms, making quiet promises to themselves. I will always remember listening to their whispered shouting of their late-night arguments full of despair.
“This dead and dying world—she’ll never see the glaciers or a wolf out of captivity. We’re giving her a dead world!”
And I will always remember seeing Crow dance for the first time when I was eight years old. The high autumn grass, ready to be threshed, blown like undulating waves as we walked through them. Higher than I was tall at the time, my mother held me on her shoulders. Now alone, because my other mother couldn’t face each new day knowing it would be worse than the one before. “More extinction, more death,” she used to mutter until one day her muttering stopped and she was gone.
When we came to the clearing, there stood Crow. Alone with her bioluminescent mushrooms bathing her in light. She stretched her arms draped in feathers from the last generation of birds. Already old, her white hair fell down her back like a curtain as she spoke to us. “We dreamt of better worlds, of new ones bursting through the husk of this decaying earth. Let the oceans rise, let the sun burn; shatter the concrete and let the towers collapse in waves of dust and debris.” Her voice coarse and hoarse, as if scraped raw by decades of poisoned air, poisoned rivers, by the bitter earth rejecting us.
Her words vibrated through me. My skin goosepimpled, all hair standing at attention. Expectant. Even as a child, I was waiting for my life to change. For beauty to bloom within me.
That’s what I remember most about that twilit autumnal hour off in the abandoned Iron Range mines being rewilded by Crow and her people. For when she danced bathed in fungal light, spinning elliptically around us, weaving through us, her glowing mushrooms responding and reacting to her as she showed us new life, a path through death and desolation.
I gasped and then held my breath until the dance was over and my mother dragged me away.
And I will always remember how my mother called it a waste of time, a page ceremony to impossible hope. The disappointment near shattered her, for she sought hope. She needed a future. Something to believe in.
I remember how, in many ways, that was the night she died, though the funeral would not be for another twenty years.
The world collapsed as the year turned over and over. The oceans rose and swept nations away and the fires burnt what remained. The industrialists escaped the burning, drowning earth, leaving us with nothing. Not even hope. But I remember how the warlords and their armies fought even over that.
A decade later and wheelchair bound, I watched Crow dance again in those same abandoned mines, now green and rainbowed by thousands of wildflowers. The goats bellowed all around us as my girlfriend carried me through the fields of beans and squash and corn.
I remember how Crow did not abandon us. As the world burned, as war accelerated our species suicide, Crow gave us a dream. Her words giving shape to our hope, to our belief. Her voice boomed as she danced before us, spinning and dancing between us.
“Bloom and bust—the algae wilds these decrepit cities. The fungi swallows the pools of spilled oil, consuming the asphalt and plastics of the world we poisoned. All to make a new world. A new life.”
I closed my eyes and felt the promised world pummeling against me in perpetual waves. Her voice reverberating in my skull, rattling through my bones, galvanic on my skin, even radiating through my insensate legs.
I remember the old world from those long ago documentaries with my mothers. A world of animals and birds, of ice and clear water, of plastics and instant communications.
I did not miss it. I cannot. But I will not forget.
Nor will Crow. She remembered us. She stretched out her hands to embrace all that we were. All that we hoped we could one day be.
A world once teeming with life that generations of humanity massacred leaving only a dead and desolate world.
We exchanged it for blooming life.
A decade gone and I have never left the new world Crow birthed. With my hands and all that I am, I have shepherded the mushrooms sucking carbon from the air, oil from the earth and lakes and rivers. The mushrooms healing the earth. The mushrooms Crow gave to us that we fashioned into our homes, into our tools. The mushrooms that sustain us, that give us life, that shape our world.
Crow. Always Crow. She saw and she knew and she led us to this brave new world bursting with fungal life and light.
“Grow and grow and grow.” Her voice boomed, “Light up the night with bioluminescence, with flowering mushrooms awash with moonlight. Digest the world we inherited to grow and bloom, to brighten and spore the night skies.”
Crow’s voice faded but our eyes remained shut, dreaming this new world blossoming all around us, as she danced, calling the future to us.
And for a moment we forget our pasts. Forget the brokenness, the derangement, the dying earth and the dead gods, and we luxuriate in this vision of a new earth born from the disasters we unleashed upon her. We dream of new gods. Not of spirit and faith, but of mud and blood and earth and light.
Crow danced and Crow sang and we believed.
And now we dance as she danced. We sing as she sang. We spread her fungal light and watch the skies and rivers clear.
Mudpunks
My hands in the mud and I don’t itch no more. Look over at Lorax and she’s waste deep, laughing. Baijiu says she ain’t coming cause Coyote says it’s god and we shouldn’t be wading into god but Lorax keeps laughing about that and I says to Baijiu that Coyote said it’s god’s blood and god had to die and bleed all over the earth or resurrection wouldn’t ever happen.
Baijiu still won’t come in so me and Lorax start making mudballs and chucking them at her but she squeals off before we hit her to tell Coyote but when Coyote comes and we’re just laughing and splashing in the mud, she stretches her mouth wide and laughs along with us, tells Baijiu that it’s all right, honey, just a game and life’s for games and fun and all kinds of fine things.
That night in the mushroom housing all the brothers and sisters, Coyote tells us again about those that abandoned earth for stars after poisoning her body and how Coyote and Wolfe and Crow found the mushrooms that eat the poison and clean the waters and clear the skies and we all just gobble those same sacred mushrooms down as she tells us about this new world rising from the dead old one. That night we name those who went to the stars angels but Coyote laughs, tell us they was devils and that’s got to be the truth of it.
Crow Dance
Crow dances bathed in fungal light. Elliptical, she spins cycles around us, her arms draped in extinction weave through the air, showing us a new life, a path through death and destruction and desolation.
I was eight when I first saw Crow dance. Already old but when she moved—lithe and fluid, powerful. My mother called her crazy. They all did. Back before the world collapsed.
Before the oceans rose and swept nations away, before the fires burnt what remained. And when the industrialists escaped the burning, drowning earth, we were left with nothing. Not even hope.
But Crow never abandoned us, nor did she forget us.
Her voice booms as she flows through and around us.
“We dreamt of better worlds, of new ones bursting through the husk of this decaying earth. Let the oceans rise, let the sun burn; shatter the concrete and let the towers collapse in waves of dust and debris.
“Bloom and bust—the algae wilds these decrepit cities. The fungi swallows the pools of spilled oil, consuming the asphalt and plastics of the world we poisoned. All to make a new world. A new life.”
We close our eyes and feel the promised world pummeling against us in perpetual waves. Her voice reverberates in our skull, rattling through our bones, galvanic against our skins.
I remember the old world. The one with animals and ice, with plastics and instant communications. I do not miss it.
A dead and desolate world. We exchanged it for blooming life.
Crow. Always Crow. She saw and she knew and she led us to this brave new world bursting with fungal life and light.
“Grow and grow and grow. Light up the night with bioluminescence, with flowering mushrooms awash with moonlight. Digest the world we inherited to grow and bloom, to brighten and spore the night skies.”
Crow’s voice fades but our eyes remain shut, dreaming this new world, as she dances all around, calling the future to us.
And for a moment we forget our pasts. Forget the brokenness, the derangement, the dying earth and the dead gods, and we luxuriate in this vision of a new earth born from the disasters we unleashed upon her. We dream of new gods. Not of spirit and faith, but of mud and blood and earth and light.
Crow dances and Crow sings and we believe.
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