Suje and the Raven

New Fiction from E. Avery Cale

The boy was walking the game path on the cutbank, the river wide and sluggish below him, when he saw the half-fish. It was just the tail half lying there in the middle of the path with no sign around it. On seeing it, he had in one swift sidestep darted off the game path, and he crouched in the weeds there.

It smelled strong.

He did not know how he had not noticed it.

The smell of the highbush cranberries fermenting on their bushes or where they fell on the moss was strong, but this was far stronger. He was too deep in his thoughts, in replaying the faces of the men who had taken his cousin, of how he would find them and what he would do when he did find them.

He was hungry.

He watched a while. There were no tracks around the fish. No other signs that he could see. Low grey clouds moved in overhead, and then a flight of cranes came low beneath them by their thousands and tens of thousands flying back upriver out of the evening sun, wheeling and calling their high trilling calls, and then they passed on. A soft rain that smelled of the cold nights to come started to fall, and it fell for a while before stopping.

Still, the boy watched.

After the rain, he caught a different smell. Not a dead-fish smell but the rank smell of carrion and mud. It was faint, seeming to rise up from the path itself.

After a time, he circled the fishtail, stepping lightly on the moss, with eyes alert. When he’d gone past it down trail, he leapt across into the weeds again and circled back to where he’d first seen it. No fresh signs. Only old tracks of animals on the trail.

He thought a minute longer, then he stepped back onto the path and walked up to the fishtail, and without touching it, he crouched on his heels, and he looked at it for a long time. Strong smell. No sign of rot. The flesh plump, and the scales smooth. A clean cut between two vertebrae. A small hole, smaller than his pinky finger, just before the tailfin. He looked at that hole for a long time.

Then he stood up and looked around until he found some young green willows. He broke off branches thick as his thumb and stacked them near the fish and stripped the twigs and leaves from them. Then he laid the green willow branches crosswise against each other to form a bier six inches from the ground. Then, under it, he laid pieces of the birch paper from his rucksack and built dry twigs that he found around him onto the birch paper, and then he laid the fishtail on the bier.

He measured out from the bier the width of his hand, and there he drove stakes of green willow into the ground until he had a fence around the whole thing, and he crisscrossed more willow over the top until he had a tight cage about the whole thing. Then he lit the birch paper with his flint.

As the first tongues of flame licked the fishtail, it began to wiggle slightly. Then it quivered from the tailfin back up the dead spine to where it was cut and back again and began to flop and arch against the flames. The hole at the base of the tail dilated and stretched, and with a squelch, a black bird tall as the boy’s leg came out of the hole screaming and squawking.

The bird thrashed and hopped on the fish, but the cage of willow branches was too tight, and he could not extend his wings. With one screech, he stopped and looked at the boy.

“You better let me out of here,” said Raven,

The boy stared at him.

“What, are you dumb?” said Raven, “I said you better let me out of here.”

The boy took a step closer to the willow cage, but all he did was straighten some of the branches. He did not say anything.

“Do you know who I am?” said Raven.

“Yes.”

Raven stood on one foot and then the other. The red flames were licking his black claws.

“Then you know what I can do.”

“Yes. Whatever you want. Nothing is too hard for you.”

“Then you know I can get out of this cage.”

“Yes. But the fire will hurt your feet first. And you could lose some of your tail feathers.”

“Yes, I could. But you will lose much more than that when I do get out.”

“If I let you out now, what will I lose?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe something,” said Raven, as his tail feathers started to singe.

“Then you can stay.”

As the ends of the feather started to smoke, Raven said, “How about this. If you let me out, I swear not to make a flute from your arm bones or dice from your knuckles.”

“No. I need more than that. I need help, too.”

“Help? I cannot just give you anything.”

The boy said nothing. He lay on the ground and started blowing into the fire, and the flames grew bigger and curled around Raven’s feet. The big bird started to hop fiercely and bang his head on the willows, but the boy took another stick and smacked Raven’s head whenever it pushed against the top.

“Gah!” Raven squawked. “I will give you help, just let me out now. I have lost too many feathers already.”

And so, the boy did.

“What is your name?” asked Raven when he was free.

The boy was silent for a moment, looking at Raven.

“No one.”

The Raven clucked at him.

“Try again,” said Raven. “That is an old trick.”

“Suje,” the boy said.

“Suje. You are the most hairless marten I have ever seen. You are sure your name is Suje?”

“That is what you can call me,” said the boy.

“Hm. You are no fool, I will give you that. A name is never a matter of indifference; in it are implied all series of relations between the one who bears it and the source whence it comes,” said Raven. “Hm. Are you sure? Yes. So then. I will call you Suje. Now, Suje, what is your favor?”

“I need a canoe,” said Suje.

“Don’t you know how to make one yourself?”

“Yes. But I’m alone, and I don’t have time. Already, I see the geese looking for each other so they can go away for the winter. The cranes are leaving. I have to get downriver before it is too late.”

“I see. What is it that you need downriver?”

Suje thought for a moment. “I have something I need to find there. I lost something.”

“Ah. Is it maybe a boy that looks like you, only smaller?”

Suje’s eyes grew big.

“Ah. It is. I saw him. And the men that took him. And” he said, “that other thing they took from you.”

At the mention of this, Suje stood, surprised.

“Anyway, I need to make you your canoe.” Raven flew up through the trees and circled.

“Start walking,” he said, “and when you come to the next sandbar, I will be there with your canoe.”

When Suje arrived, he saw the canoe. He did not know how Raven built it.

“I made it strong for you,” said Raven, “the river here can be rough. Lots of logs. But it is a good canoe, I made sure it will not break on any log, and I think you can catch up with what you lost. Only then, what will you do?”

Suje shrugged.

“I am sure you will figure it out,” said Raven. “Climb in, and I will push you out.”

The boy did as he was told.

As he drifted into the middle of the river, Raven waved and said, “Goodbye now! Good luck!” And he started laughing a strange, cackling laugh.

Suje adjusted himself so his weight was right and looked around.

“I left the paddle,” he yelled back at the Raven, “can you throw it to me?”

“What?” said Raven, “I cannot hear you! Let me come closer!”

Raven flew up, circled, and then landed on the prow of the canoe. “What did you say?”

“I left the paddle on the shore. I don’t see it here.”

“Oh, that is because I did not make you a paddle. You only asked for a canoe. Goodbye now! Watch for widowmakers, they are everywhere down here!”

Raven hopped from the prow of the canoe and started circling up, cackling at the boy. He hovered right over the canoe there, cackling.

Suje could see many sweepers ahead and the roil and bubble of the logs hiding just below the surface. As the river swept him toward the tangle of trees along the cutbank opposite, he leaned from the canoe as far out as he could without falling out and pushed himself off the nearest log. The canoe spun out from the tangle and spun around again and drifted back toward the cutbank and the roil and the snags beneath.

“You did not crash this time,” cackled Raven, “and have only the whole rest of the way yet to go! Be careful not to fall out! The nights are coming, and the cold, and you might not be able to get a fire going. But, like I told you, that canoe will not break!”

Raven laughed again and swooped down to land on the prow. Already the canoe was rushing toward another snag, more tangled than the first and in swifter current.

“Of course, if you had a paddle, you could avoid them all, easy.”

“When I get to shore, I will make one,” panted the boy. “And then when I have found my cousin, I will come back for you.”

“You might,” Raven hopped into the air again, just as the canoe crashed over a hidden log and listed, water splashing into the belly of the canoe. Suje leaned hard against it and righted the canoe. “Or maybe I could bring you a paddle now, to save you the trouble. But only if you promise to help me.”

The boy set his chin and glared at the gleaming black bird, then leaned out and started paddling furiously with his hands.

“You are a stubborn one. Suje is right, maybe. Never letting go, even when caught.” Raven looked back over his shoulder at the terrible current and the sweeps and the tangled logs. “I will wait a bit to see if you change your mind.”

He hopped into the air again and flew to the sandbar opposite, landed, and watched the boy.

He did not have to watch long.

The swirling current flung the boy against the cutbank and under a timber that hung from the bank down into the water. The prow of the canoe wedged in it and groaned as it began to tilt to the side and squeeze under. Suje scrambled to the front and lay down on his back. He dug his fingers into the wet wood and pulled, pushing his shoulder against the side of the canoe as he did so to keep it from tipping. The canoe groaned and screeched against the timber, then slid underneath. Cold water splashed in, but it did not tip or swamp.

As soon as he was through, there was another just ahead, thicker than the last. Suje was ready for this one. He leapt from the boat nimbly onto the log, crouching, one hand still on the prow, and with the forward momentum of his leap dragged the canoe across, and as it passed, rolled over his shoulders back into the canoe.

From the cutbank, Raven hooted and called. “Very good! You’re almost halfway around the bend, and then only the whole river is left to go!”

It took the boy a long while to make it through that other half.

He was wet and cold when, at last, he had passed the last of the logs and put them on the muddy cutbank. There he jumped onto the shore and dragged the canoe up behind him, and he lay down on his back and breathed deeply.

When he opened his eyes, Raven was perched above him on a birch that hung over the water.

“You know I saw a porcupine on here a couple of days ago,” said the bird. “Maybe you could catch it and have something good to eat.”

Suje grabbed a clod of dirt and threw it at the bird, who dodged it lazily.

“That was a weak throw. You must be tired. It would be a lot easier if only you had a paddle.”

The boy sat up and sighed, letting his fingers stretch and dig into the mud. “What is it you want?”

“You ruined my trap. I was waiting for the brown one. The one to be afraid of. Great big one, he is. Bigger than any you have ever seen. Too big for me alone to catch in the regular way. But I had a good trap for him. When he ate the fish, I was going to come out inside him and cut my way out with this-” Raven flashed a cold knife from beneath his wing- “Ah, yes, you have seen something like this before. Only bigger. Much bigger. And I think you want it back. Maybe more than you want your cousin back. And I will let you have it, too. You will not even have to do anything more for me. You can have it and the paddle too. But first, you must help me with the brown one.”

At the sight of the steel knife, Suje’s eyes grew wide. He had seen this before, the cold steel that could cut through any weapon. The steel of his father’s sword was the only of its kind in all the world. Or so he had thought.

“What do you want with him?”

“The same thing anyone wants. Fat for the winter. You said yourself; it is not far off now. And he knows it too. He has already eaten up as much as he can and has gotten fat. He is already getting his house ready. That’s where we will have to go to get him.”

As the long afternoon of late summer stretched into twilight, Suje and the Raven crouched in a stand of alder and watched the entrance to the cave, which lay at the bottom of a brush-covered hill. In Suje’s hand, he held a long wooden spear. Two more of the same lay on the ground beside him. Their ends were hardened black in the fire they had made on the sandbar. Hard enough? They would see. The steel dagger flashed between the black feathers as Raven spun it.

“You never know what you might find in caves,” said Raven. “There could be little people. Or big people. With spears twice as long as the ones you carry, and copper at the end. With flaming red hair and eyes blue like a winter sky. And that is just in these parts. In that place where I used to be, there were many strange things in the caves. Great big men, with red hair like the fireweed in the fall time and blue eyes, but dead, dead for a long time, lay on their piles of gold and their nice things, dead men that got up and came after you if you went inside. Little people, too, like these ones around here, but much, much cleverer with their hands. All kinds of clever things they could build. Liars, too, and covetous. They always want everything for themselves. And sometimes in the biggest caves great long things, long like the otters but big, big, big as the timbers, and these things they had wings like bats that they folded onto their backs while they slept, and they slept a long time, very long time, but when they woke, they breathed fire, like a dry summer wildfire. Fire like the sun in the sky.”

Raven looked at the boy and seemed to blink, with black lid across black eye against black feathers. “I am very old, you see. I have seen many things that are no more.”

Suje nodded.

“Anyway. There won’t be those things. Not in here. The one to be afraid of is too big. He did not build this cave. He scared out whatever else in there, whatever built it.”

Suje looked at the spears. “How big?”

“The biggest you ever saw,” said Raven. “Come.” And he hopped up and flew toward the entrance of the cave.

When Suje caught up to him, Raven took a rope of twisted babiche from somewhere in his feathers.

“Tie this to your ankle,” he said.

While Suje did as he was told, Raven hopped over to the hole and looked inside.

“That hole is not so big,” said Suje.

“Quiet now,” whispered Raven. “We are not ready yet to wake him. No. This hole is not. This is the back way in. He did not dig this. His way in is around the other side. Maybe he won’t see you, coming this way in.”

Suje finished the knot, and Raven inspected it.

“Good,” he said. “Do you know what I am going to ask you to do?”

Suje looked at the cave, then at the rope. “Yes. I have seen my uncles do it. But you do not look strong enough to pull me back out.”

“I am very strong, you see. Stronger than I look. Let’s hope I am strong enough to kill him.”

Suje looked at him.

“Why do you not go in?” asked Suje. “You are smaller. And it is dark in there. You’ll blend right in. And I won’t be able to see, anyway.”

“Nor would I,” said Raven. “But I have to be here to come down on him when he follows you. To stab him behind his head. You cannot do it. You cannot kill him. Have you prepared? You have gone days without eating, I can see that. How many days have you gone praying to him that he does not come find you after you kill him? It is a simple question of piety.”

Suje smiled. “I could now,” he said, “I could start tonight, and we can come back in a few days.”

“You are cowardly to even suggest such a thing. And impious. And anyway, you need to be on the river. If you want to get your cousin. I’ve flown up high and seen the ice moving already. Way up. But you have a long way to go. Soon you will not be able to go anywhere. I will have to kill him. I prayed while I was in the fish. Really, there is no other way.”

Suje took one of the spears and handed it to Raven. “Climb up there then, and ready your spear.”

“These spears are not for killing him. They have not been prepared either. Like you. And anyway, I need only this.” The cold knife flicked out from somewhere in his feathers and disappeared again. “It is ready. It knows what it must do. You take this spear and go wake him up. I will keep the others out here. Maybe we might need them to pin him down.”

Suje crouched down and looked into the hole, and then, on his hands and knees, he crawled into the hole. The dark soon covered him entirely, and with it the hot smell of the animal, the smell overwhelming, making him want to wretch, the smell he should have smelled right away when he stopped to look at the fish, a smell of blood and the reek of carrion and the root-y smell of the creature itself. The light of the long evening behind him disappeared beneath his own shadow. He kept on. Soon, in the dim half-light, he saw the walls of the tunnel drop away. He was in the den now. He sidestepped out of the shaft to avoid being backlit against the entrance, and he listened.

He could hear the breathing. He stood still and closed his eyes. He waved one hand slowly before his eyes in the dark, then stopped. He could feel the wet, hot breath against his hand. He readied himself.

He crouched and stepped back before the entrance, moved forward a half step and raised the spear over his shoulder. Then, with his left hand, he reached down to the babiche tied round his ankle and tested it to be sure it was tied tight and he gave two short tugs. He waited as the slack was taken up from the other end, until he felt Raven answer with two tugs, then he drew in a deep breath. When he let it out, he bellowed and let the spear fly straight into that wet hot breath and low snore.

He felt the spear leave his hand, heard the soft swish of it through the air, heard the piercing squelch where it landed, and the breath cut short. All this he heard in the instant between the spear leaving his hand and him being pulled back out of the tunnel. He threw himself down when he felt the pull on the other end and closed his eyes against the dirt.

When he popped out of the tunnel, he blinked and opened them. Raven had run the babiche rope around a tall birch for a pulley and was standing there at the entrance. He was indeed stronger than he looked. The steel knife flashed in and out of the sun from somewhere in his feathers. Raven looked at the boy.

“Good, he did not get you yet. Here,” Raven flashed out his knife and cut the rope. “Grab another spear there and hurry. He is coming.”

Raven flapped his wings once and flew up to his perch above the tunnel entrance. Suje ran to the other spears and grabbed both, then turned round, posted himself before the tunnel entrance, and planted one spear in the ground beside him, holding the other at the ready in the low-centered position he had seen his uncles take when fighting a bear.

“You are quick. And brave. So very close you’re standing,” said Raven. Then he listened. “But where is our friend? I thought he would hurry too.”

Behind Raven, the hill tore itself open.

A great spout of dirt flew into the air and came crashing down all about them. The head of the bear roared up out of the hole, and the roar shook the boys’ bones. The great claw of the thing followed, ripping away chunks of the hill. A clod of dirt had taken Raven from behind and knocked him down to Suje’s feet, and his knife had spun out and landed in the dirt. He leapt up again and hopped after the knife.

“Try to get him before he is all the way out,” he squawked at the boy.

Suje scrambled up the hill. The terrible bear now had one shoulder free and was pulling and clawing the ground before it and raking out huge swaths of tundra tea and the trailing vines of crowberries. Blood was streaming from the right eye, splinters from the end of Suje’s first spear sticking out from the blood.

Suje was almost upon it, the smell overwhelming, the hot breath in blasts upon his face. He raised the second spear above his head in both hands, and with a cry fierce and terrible, he brought the spear down toward the other eye, but the shoulder ripped free of the dirt and the force of it threw Suje into the air and sent him tumbling down the hill. The paw that came free slashed through the air where he had been when he was thrown. With both claws free, the bear grabbed the hillside and pulled himself out. He was indeed the biggest that Suje had ever seen.

Suje lay where he had fallen at the bottom of the hill. His breath had been knocked from him. In that moment of clarity, he realized what a fool he had been to trust the Raven. Against such an animal, what could he do? What good is a birchwood spear? The first blow to the eye had been pure blinding luck in the dark, and his mad rush at the other eye was pure blind instinct. Now, as the animal reared up on its hindquarters, its greatness blotting out the sky above, he realized he was no more than bait for the Raven.

The Raven.

Where had he gone? Suje looked around for where the knife had fallen. Raven had abandoned him, either as revenge for upsetting his trap or upon seeing the animal and realizing that he could not be defeated now that he was out of his den.

“It is to me alone, then,” thought Suje, “to fight the animal or die on my feet.”

All this he thought in the moment the bear raised itself up and came crashing down again. As it tensed its legs to spring at him, Suje looked to the last spear and rolled toward it.

He snatched it up and ran toward the trees. Behind him, he could hear the beast coming down the hill, charging through the brush, near upon him now.

Suje darted behind two strong old birch trees grown close together and spun around as the bear snatched at him with his jaws. The massive head was caught between the two trees. Suje lashed out with his spear, but the bear batted it away with his paw. The spear flew from the boy’s hands. The beast pushed forward. The strong old trunks that had seen more winters than any man Suje had ever known groaned and buckled and cracked before the shoulders of the bear. Suje looked for the spear. It was too far. He clenched his fists and turned to face the bear one last time, and at that moment, with a mad squawking cry, Raven fell upon the beast. He had the knife in one curled black claw and was hopping madly on the bear’s back, stabbing over and over with the knife, the silver of it glinting in the sideways light of the low evening sun and spouting black blood with every strike.

In a rage, the bear roared himself up to his full height, tearing the cracked trees as he did so and sending them crashing down. He roared and thrashed, but still Raven clung on, one gnarled black claw twisted into the blood-soaked blond fur, the other stabbing with the knife until the bear in his rage flung his shoulders back and landed full on his back, the black bird leaping away just in time.

Suje, who had thrown himself down to avoid being crushed by the falling birch, leapt to his feet and looked around.

There was the gaping hole the beast had torn in the hill. He ran for it. What he would find there, he did not know, but it was better than being in the open.

The beast was still rolling and thrashing on the ground, and Raven had taken to circling the air above, snapping at the bear with his black beak. The silver knife was under the bear.

Suje dodged past the claws and scrambled up the hill. Before he dove into the hole, he turned back to look. The massive brown bear was up now, on his hind legs, slashing at Raven with his claws. The hilt of the silver knife Suje could see poking out of the matted bloody fur of its back, the blade buried deep in the fat there.

Then he leapt down.

In the twilight of the cave, he could just see the foul formless gobbets strew about the blood-soaked dirt, the pale white of bones cracked and the marrow sucked out, the bits of hair from moose and caribou and man and shed by the beast itself. As he turned, his foot struck something soft. He leaned down. It was the crushed head of a man.

A face he knew. The face of one of the men who had taken his cousin and killed his father. He spat on it and tossed it into the deep shadow of the cave and stood up and looked around again.

The sword lay half in and half out of the orange light that fell from the hole above. The old, grey-coloured blade was rusted with dried blood. Outside, the bear let loose another roar, a roar of triumph, Suje thought, and the Raven squawked in pain. Suje looked at the sword. How easy to take it now, to flee, to make his escape while the brown one was busy with the black bird.

Suje stooped and took up the sword and held it high in the dying light, the ill-boding runes now traced by the tempering blood. This was not the first time it had been called to perform heroic feats. The boy turned and ran, kicking aside fragments of bone, viscera, and carrion, then out and around the hill.

The beast had the Raven, his black wing in its maw, and he was shaking his head furiously as the black bird tried with its claws to slash at the face of the terrible one. A mortal bird would have been shredded in an instant, but Raven only screamed in pain.

Suje ran past them up the slope of the hill above, then turned and, raising the sword above his head, pointed down, curled his legs beneath him, and leapt down at the brown one without uttering a cry.

The tip of the blade came down between the shoulder blades with all the slim weight of the boy and all the force of his leap behind it. It was sharp and it sunk deep, and he leaned forward and pushed until he had driven it to the pommel. He planted his heels against the shoulder blades and drew it out slick with blood, and as the bear threw back its head and roared, the boy took the hilt in both hands. He used all his might to shove it into the neck of the bear just behind the skull. The roar turned to a howl of pain, and the great terrible forelegs of the beast slackened, and the bear collapsed under its own weight.

As he fell, he threw out his left arm to catch himself, but the arm caught and twisted beneath him. He felt a snap in his wrist, then the warm, reeking bulk of bear in a last trembling convulsion tossed about, and one great arm of the bear flung out and landed on him. He felt smothered in blood-damp fur. He thought he would suffocate from it. He passed in and out of life, and then all at once the weight was gone, but the smell remained.

Raven sat atop the animal’s corpse, the babiche rope in his beak, the looped end around the bear’s leg, and the other end around a tree.

He hopped down next to the boy and looked at his wrist.

“That won’t ever be quite right again, you know,” said Raven, nodding at the wrist. “Always a little off. I can make it a little better, anyway.”

The bird broke off green twigs with his beak, and as Suje held them against his wrist with his other hand, the bird wrapped them in babiche and then held them while Suje tied them off.

“You are very brave,” said Raven. “And stronger than you look. Maybe I could have finished the animal myself. But it would have hurt me a lot. Anyway, you should not have killed him. What will happen now, I can’t tell you. It will be bad luck. His spirit will come for you. But I am glad you did it. My wing was getting sore. Let’s get him open before he gets stiff.”

Raven hopped down, and with his knife, he made a long cut, and while the boy watched, he gently pulled all the guts out and laid them steaming in the evening air. Then Raven separated the stomach from the rest and examined its contents.

“Very lucky you are, he said. “Very lucky. Plenty of other men like you are already in here. I am sure he wanted to add you to the collection. You want to know. I can tell you want to ask. No. That little one you are looking for, your cousin, is not in here. Hm. Some fish. Lots of fish. I think maybe my trap would have worked if you had not ruined it.”

The Raven picked through the contents of the stomach with his beak, overturning every bit of gore and inspecting it closely for some time. The boy watched, lying on his back against an alder. When the Raven was satisfied, he hopped back over to the boy.

“Lots of fat, he’s got. Lots of fat. Good fat for the winter. Gah. My wing is so sore. It might be a couple of days before it is better enough to make you that paddle.”

Suje met the black eye. Neither blinked.

“I really would rather wait until I feel better,” said Raven.

Suje said nothing.

“Well. Maybe I might do it later today. Let me see that sword first.”

“I need that paddle.”

The Raven blinked at him, black sliding across black. “Then carry me on your shoulder over to find some wood. My wing hurts too much, and I can’t fly. And my legs are tired from stabbing. While you carry me, I can look at that sword. Do not worry. I will let you hold it.”

Suje picked the Raven up in both hands and set him on his shoulders. The black claws flexed a moment, and Suje thought he might try something, might dig the talons into the flesh of his shoulder until he dropped the sword, but they relaxed again, and the Raven began to talk in a chatty, friendly voice.

“Yes, yes. I thought so. I have seen this one before. Many times in many places. All long ago. First, a man of many ways. From across the wide and boundless sea. Many places he went and many adventures, many the pains he suffered in his spirit. Like your world traveler, he was. Yes, I knew him, too, your world traveler. He was your father’s father’s father, way, long time back. It was he who first got this one, this sword, from far away.”

Raven leaned silently forward, his eye nigh upon the fell runes of the blade.

“Oh yes,” he said, “this is certainly the one I am talking about. It will do good for you. But it won’t do everything for you. It will not get back that boy for you. Those people who took him, there are too many of them. Too many for you, as there were too many for the world traveler and for your father’s fathers and their fathers. No. You will have to be like me if you want him back. You will have to think. You will have to be careful. Sometime later will be the time for using this again, and it will do well for you. But not until after you have him back. If that is what you want, anyway. He did not seem so careful. Otherwise, why did he get caught? Anyway. If you want him back, that is your business.”

Raven stopped him. “Here. This is a good tree. Old. Strong. Don’t look at me while I work.”

Suje squatted down and let the bird hop off his shoulder, then he turned around, his back to the Raven.

“You still have a long way left to go yet, you know. Way long way. Maybe you don’t believe me that that sword won’t help, but there are too many of them there. Always been too many of them. That’s why your people lost the first time. And all the other times after, always losing and losing. Little bit here, little bit there. Someday they’ll take the whole river. Your whole river. Anyway. Maybe I’ll help you a bit. But those people down there are my people, too. And I won’t play favorites. I never play favorites. Unless I have to. For some reason. And anyway, you helped me here. So we’ll see. But don’t count on it. Like the sword, too. Anyway. You can look now.”

When Suje turned, there was a paddle lying on the ground before the bird. Nothing odd about it that he could see, no trap.

“Take it,” said Raven. “It’s yours, didn’t I say? Nothing funny about it. Take it and your sword, too. Don’t take anything from the brown one, though. Not that one. No meat. No fat. Not anything from his stomach either. Then he will definitely find you. Do you want anything from his house?”

“No. I think I’d better get on.”

The smell was still strong, too strong.

“You’d better hurry, then. Not much sleeps now, and the night will be long again, and then they get longer and longer. You don’t want to get on this river at night. Too many sweepers. Anyway. You did well, Suje. I will see you again. I am sure.”

And he did, but it was many sleeps yet before that day.